So Paul has joined the Plateau Club now. This will make our decisions about where to play much easier now. Cheaper too. We played there twice this weekend, on Saturday with Rick and on Sunday with Matt, an intern at Microsoft this summer who is a member of the Harvard Golf team.
My Saturday round was pretty mediocre. I only hit 6 of 14 fairways and my long irons and woods were pretty inconsistent. Mid irons were good but a little directionally challenged. The high points were my putting and the bump and run. For putting, I was on fire today, ending up with only 28 putts. Wow! Eight 1 putts and no 3 putts makes for a pretty good round. This made up for some of the seven penalty strokes (ugh!). I ended up shooting a 94. After lunch, we tried some of the back 9 again and I was 3 under for 5 holes. Something was starting to click. On 11, I hit a good driver tee shot, then two 5i shots to be next to the green. Rather than trying to get as much as I could on the second shot with my 3 wood, I was just going for the 160 yard range. I was a little short of that target, but safely in the fairway. I think I'll be keeping that strategy for a while.
Sunday was just as much a nature walk as a golf round. On the third hole, someone came by to tell us that the bear had been spotted in the area. We never saw the bear, but we did see a hawk circling and hovering over one of the ponds looking for frogs, a couple of deer and two coyotes - one of them a pup - wandering along the cart paths. I've seen the coyotes before, but it is rare. Today I saw them twice.
My actual round was a little less wild (fortunately). After trying Rick's TaylorMade R7 driver yesterday, I started to figure out that part of my problem with the Ignite is the regular flex shaft. So today, I brought back my stiff shaft TaylorMade R580 and it was a lot better. I hit 8 fairways today (not great, but better than yesterday) and generally had more control with my driver. More on that in a different post.
On one and three, I had bad second shots that cost me a ball, but in both cases I sank long putts to save bogey. I expanded on the bump and run using it over longer distances to try to reduce the risk of errant wedges and that helped some as well. I need to get used to it more to get the feel, but I used it to pretty good effect today. Putting continued to be "on", I sank 4 long one putts and several other long putts. Only a couple of 3 putts (unfortunately, one on my only GIR). Rescue irons were crap today, very right. 3 and 5 wood were also both pretty crappy. It was nice to have a driver I could begin to trust again though.
My final score was 92. Not bad and it would have been better if not for my nemesis hole 18. I had not lost a ball since 3 but 18 did it to me again. I got greedy with my 3 wood and pushed it right into the trees. Ah well.
Paul had a tough round today with an injured hand but he kept at it. Matt did very well on his first time at the plat. It took him a while to get used to the Plateau greens but he was really feeling it on the back 9 saving a bogey at 11 with 2 penalty strokes and with birdies on 13, 15 and 17. He finished the day with 79, quite good for a first try at the Plat.
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