Rain, the bane of any dedicated golfer, thwarted my plans to go to Virginia and play Meadows Farms. The backup plan was to play Bethpage Blue on Saturday and use our free passes for Harbor Links in Port Washington, New York on Sunday Morning. We headed over to Bethpage on Saturday expecting iffy weather and received a gorgeous sunny day. Even with a couple holes shortened the course was still amazing as usual.

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Off to a Good Start

We played with some people from Indiana that were in town to play the Black Course while it is in shape for the 2009 U.S. Open. They were really nice guys who explained that they were sleeping in the parking lot trying to get a tee time on Black after accidentally canceling the one they had set up before the trip by hitting the wrong button on the phone! A 13 hour drive and they may end up not getting to play! I hope they got their chance because the holes that we could see from the Blue looked amazing.

I played pretty well and am starting to get my putting on track. I think that lack of concentration has really been the issue along with crappy speed control. My short game didn’t let me down and I started to really see how good that new sand wedge really is. I hit a low flying bunker shot that I thought for sure was off the green only to see it bounce twice and stop due to the amount of spin on it. It was pretty amazing. I ended the round with another 103 after blowing my chances to break 100 on the 17th hole. I hit a terrible tee shot and recovered well only to over shoot the green on my approach making an 8.

A New Day

Day 2 at Harbor Links was very different. A slow drizzle made us nervous all day but the skies waited until we were on the 17th hole to open up. Besides the weather, both my partner and I played terrible. I was slicing my drives like I just started playing. It was pretty embarrassing to say the least. My irons game and decent short game kept me in it. That combined with the course playing easier than we expected (it was a slope 125 compared to 122 at Bethpage) meant that our scores were the only thing that didn’t look different. I shot 52 on the front thinking that I should have shot 60.

On the back nine I realized that I wasn’t putting my back swing in the “slot” that I had been since my last lesson. This was causing me to be wayyyy over the top and hit that terrible slice. After I got that corrected things went much smoother. I was more consistant playing bogy and double bogey golf the whole back nine where on the front nine I went from triple bogey to par. I did three put in situations where I shouldn’t buring the edge on my second putt due to a push or misread. Shooting 52 on the back as well wasn’t very disappointing but I was hoping I could come back and reach my goal that day.

This week is chock full of rain again so I hope to get in at least 2 rounds. Maybe I can get the monkey off my back before we hit Memorial Day?

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