Played with CeeBee. The round started off on the right foot with a decent drive and a nice short iron on, for a two-putt par. It started to get ugly after that. Ended up pretty piss-poor. However, other than weak driver most of the day and some pretty bad putting, everything else was acceptable. I did, however, hit a terrible 5i on par 3 early in the round (and another on a back nine par 3). I could have played it with a penalty drop from where it went into hazard, but instead re-teed and hit a great shot with a little draw to about 12 feet. The damage was already done though. Mulli-par (which translates to double). The first of three penalties for the day and three lost balls. (More balls than I have lost in the last two weeks!)
There were a couple nice shots during the round. A 5W slightly uphill from about 185 out, which looked like it was about 3 feet from the pin. Unfortunately, it was about 12 or 13 yards past, leaving me a long downhill lag. Surprisingly, I actually got it in in two for a good par. Made a nice bird on 8th with a tee shot to 3 feet. Ball mark was a foot closer to pin.
I really did not putt well at all for the most part. Played too much break all day. After awhile, I finally realized these greens don't break anywhere near what they look, but I am so conditioned to WM's huge breaks, I just could not believe my putts here could actually stay as straight as they did. So, the whole round, even knowing there wasn't as much break as I thought, I STILL played too much break on many putts. The greens were slower than I like, but in great condition overall.
The course played very long compared to the 6400 on the card, which is long for the whites to begin with. Seemed more like 6550. Plus, the tees were back further than normal on most tee boxes according to Chris. On top of that, the fairways were really soft. They must water the crap out of them 'cause there hasn't been any rain to speak of for a long time. Their areas of "rough" around the greens were often only hard pan with no grass, surely because there has been no rain. I had to clean the mud off my ball in the fairways on many occasions though.
We played with a couple nice guys, Frank and Glen who, on the few occasions when they hit it cleanly it went far, but they struggled much worse than us all day. Sooooo,...at least there's that!
It was good to play with Chris, but not so satisfying otherwise.
