Golf Today

Yes, that's right. I played a round of golf today. Well, half a round. Ok, it was only an executive course with a generous par of 29. I took my girlfriend today out to the par 3 course at Bald Mountain (http://www.baldmountaingolf.com/score_card.htm). As a course, it's decent. For the price, it's excellent. For $7 each, I'll play that course all day. And for a few reasons.

First, the course is hazard free. But that doesn't make it any less challenging. The opening hole is a pretty long par 3, measuring just shy of 200 yards from the general tee placement. The second is a longer "par 4" that measures around 220, which is no where near what an actual par 4 would play. The yardages on the markers are all way off, even from the "back of the tee boxes." The course is pretty open, with the only threats being woods along the left side of the third hole, and someone's backyard about 10 yards beyond the fourth green. The yardage on the fourth hole is off by around 15 yards, which is clearly some sort of ploy to collect golf balls and sell them back to Bald Mountain for customers to buy.

I played the course pretty often on Mondays and Wendesdays after class before heading to work and shot as low as a 35, 6 over par. Considering that I normally shoot in the 90s, 6 over is pretty good. Today, on a day when the wind was calm and the sun was shining, I played the worst round I've played on the little, hazard-less monster.

"If I shot some of the shots that you were shooting you would've put me on your back and carried me to the green," my girlfriend Kelsey said after the round. And she was right, I really would've if she had managed to cut 10 yards off her pitching wedge to get on the green in one on the final hole, or if she had chipped to inside 2 feet from the tricky sidehill on the seventh hole.

But I expect myself to shoot those shots. Perhaps unfairly, but I do. I watch a lot of golf, I read about it a lot, and I play it a lot. This is my first season golfing seriously, so I can't say that starting off at a 123 and finishing at a 95 is terrible. But it's a little par 3 course! And today, that little par 3 course showed me what was what on my way to a stellar 49. The very first time I played the course I shot a 45 to give you some idea of what a huge setback it was.

"I hate that course, too," my friend and occasional playing partner Brett said. "That course is impossible." Brett doesn't like the course because the par 3 course at Bald Mountain is actually in my opinion tougher than a regular course when it comes to scoring. Length-wise, it's a joke to call the 210 yard second hole and 225 yard fifth hole par 4s. But, the greens are about half the size of greens on a typical course, meaning you have to be more accurate with your irons. Without a lot of spin, the ball really has a tough time staying on the greens. And at this time of year, the amount of leaves that scatter the greens can make putting especially difficult.

Tomorrow when I replay the deviled course, I'll work on some specific practice techniques and report back to give you the hopefully improved scores. I will have to spend some time marking up some new golf balls before I go though as I only have one left after today's loss of three! (One into the woods on 3, one hits the side of the house at 4 after a bladed 60-degree wedge, followed by another into the woods on 4). For anyone struggling making putts that wants to try their hand at some easy alignment improvements, this blog has a great little tip. http://www.grouchygolf.com/2005/06/line-up-your-golf-ball.html. However, the new Gatorade rings don't fit on golfballs like they did when this was published, so I use a the same idea but with the ring from a milk carton.