hehe
i got new shorts for my birthday but they haven't made it into a video yet!
tourney trip report below, might not be of interest. tldr:
had fun at the tournament though i didn't do well.
carded a 91 which included a 9 on the par 4 16th and a penalty stroke for slow play (bad beat story to come).
didn't really play that bad, though. course is pretty tough, if you miss a shot you can get really screwed. deep pot bunkers and and gnarly weeds. i think that it lives up to the name of a links style course.
so, the
16th hole. second 9 was going ok, i had just parred 15 and was +3 for the back. i was feeling good because i had hit every fairway. i decided to hit driver to take the fairway bunkers out of play, even though the fairway is narrow, it seemed like the right play, and i was feeling good.
i hit a pull-hook, but everyone in the group thought it would be fine since i hit it pretty pure and it went far. it looked like i had cut the corner and would be in the rough. i ended up not being able to find my drive, and didn't play a provisional upon the advice of one of my playing partners, so i had to make the embarassing drive back to the tee where the group behind us was waiting.
we had already fallen behind the group ahead of us on 15 and we were trying to play quick. pulled a 3wood into the weeds and hit a provisional which would end up being my 5th stroke. made a 20 foot putt for a 9 and was just glad that i was no longer holding up the groups behind me with my crappy play. i had already written off the round so i just wanted to gtfo off the hole...stupid rules of golf.
as we're driving away from the 18th tee, we find my original drive from the 16th hole, about 100 yards from the green, over the weeds about 50 yards farther than i was looking
. siiiiiiiiiiiiiigh. i finish with a bogey on 18 and stagger into the clubhouse to drop off my card.
the guy running the tourney goes into a speech about how we finished 20 minutes behind the group ahead of us (we were 12 minutes behind at the turn, which was apparently fine) and that we were subject to a 1 stroke penalty. we were asked to fill out a piece of paper to state the reason why we think we don't deserve the penalty stroke.
standing there severely sunburned, half way to a heat stroke, and having blown a perfectly good back-9 because of not finding a ball that was in plain sight, part of me was annoyed that he was taking the net division of a meaningless tournament so seriously when nobody in the group was even in contention.
i wanted to tell them to just give me the penalty so that i didn't have to fill out the piece of paper, but i showed them respect and scribbled something down with a frowny face and handed it to the gentleman.
the penalty was obviously dumb and i could have made a pretty good case had i been in contention. the group ahead of us was a 3some, and we were a 4some. we had a woman in our group, and she was playing from the forward tees, so that adds like a minute to every hole no matter what. also, we were playing ready golf and were well aware we had fallen behind and were trying to catch up. i bet the group behind us would have attested to that even though i had to drive back to the tee on 16. we were all just sucking and golf takes longer when you're sucking.
my score is listed as 91 so apparently they assessed the penalty. at least i learned a valuable lesson and will no longer suffer the embarrassment of the drive of shame for a lost ball!