Pasadena Report...

I finally posted a good score at Pasadena today. Previously, Pasadena had this way of beating me up when I knew I was capable of scoring better.

My past scores were:

110 on 10/12/2005
111 on 10/20/2005
113 on 11/23/2005

Not too good, and I'm sure I wrote about some of those rounds just to share the pain. Well today, I gave Pasadena the beating with a solid 95 (68 net, 44 on the front, 51 on the back)! The course was in pretty good shape for this time of year. The greens looked pretty good, but putted pretty slow compared to other courses I've played. I arrived at the course at 7:00 and finished by 9:40. I even let a few single guys riding in carts play through. Normally, I can keep ahead of a cart, but there are several long treks from one green to the next tee at Pasadena and most folks won't walk it.

Here's the stats on the round:

Fairways hit... 8
GIRs........... 3
Birdies........ 0
Pars........... 5
Putts......... 32
Bogeys......... 6
Doubles........ 4
Triples........ 3
Balls lost .... 4 (4 water)

My driving was solid and I barely missed 2 fairways and one I landed in a fairway bunker. That fairway bunker was a first for me. I was near the front of it and I had an uneven stance. I hit a 7i out but missed the green pin high to the right. I measured 11 drives (217,239,202,272,278,214,217,205,224,274,272) and came out with an average of 237.6. The wind was howling as expected but I managed it well, trying to hit lower drives into the wind.

Nearly all of my drives looked like cut shots. My draw was not working at San Jac so I went back to aiming to land on the left of the fairway. Many shots went straight, and some had a little turn right at the end. Very nice looking shots, often landing smack in the middle.

My putting was average today. I missed three birdie attempts and suffered one three-putt. My chipping was hot, giving me 5 one-putts. My irons were off and on. I'd pull shots, push shots, and hit some great shots. This is weird since I just spent a month working my irons at Green Caye. I learned that I do best with a full swing. If I try to take a little off of it I make a poor shot. A few of greens I only missed the GIR because I rolled onto the fringe. I just missed the greens and the par putts on 16, 17, and 18. Each of these three holes I tried to fly the ball from the fringe to the hole with the 60* wedge and came up short by ten or twelve feet each time. I may have done better with the flat stick, but I was feelin' the love comin' from my wedges. I made a nice out of the sand on #7. Now that I've been practicing the flop shot, I no longer fear the sand. I can hit a pretty good line out of the sand, I just need to work on my distance control. I did shank a couple of shots, but overall, I made pretty solid contact today.

Smiling on the happy side of 100,
-Greg