Flirting with a C-Note

First thing- playing in temperatures with heat indexes above 100 degrees is brutal.  Mind you I'll still play-also in freezing temperatures, rain, almost anything except for excessive wind.  Unless I am across the pond I have no desire to play in windy conditions. 

Second- I have had plenty of bad days on the course and this past weekend was no exception.  I honestly can't remember the last time I shot over a 100.  Not saying I'm wonder bread (best thing since sliced bread) but really bad rounds I'm usually at around 95.  Shooting that high is something that's definitely not hard to do especially if you hit your ball out of bonds, have to take drops, and re-tee due to errant shots.  All things I did over the weekend.  A friend and I played at Renditions Golf course over in Davidsonville, MD.  If you are not familar with the area it is approximately 10 miles from the capital of Maryland, Annapolis.  I will leave my review for Renditions at the end, but I enjoyed the course and is a course I  played  before a few years ago. 

Ok, back to my hackfest on Saturday.  Again I played poorly a few weeks ago in a Golf Channel Amateur Tour event where I shot a 95.  I wanted to redeem myself and in my mind I wanted to flirt and break 80 on a course I haven't played in awhile but was somewhat familiar with.  Whenever I play a non tournament event I tend to just not worry about my score and enjoy my time with my friends.  I usually just work on my game on areas where I need improvement and if I am finding a good rhythm then I become more aware of trying to score low(scoring low for me is to break 80). 

Our tee time was at 6:40 am.  I like early tee times but when the course is an hour away from the DC area it tends to be a little too early.  Renditions is a course where the course is popular for its course design that replicates popular holes on the PGA tour.  The only holes that are familiar to me and I enjoy the most are the holes from Augusta National, Amen corner, and TPC Sawgrass' famous island green par 3.  Again I never played Augusta or Sawgrass but the holes look like they were carved out of TV and placed on this course.  We played from the white tees at approximately 6041 yards with a rating of 69.8 and slope of 122.  On a normal day I should fairly do well on course with a rating and slope with similar ratings.  The length of 6041 is a tad shorter than where I usually like the course to be.  I chose to play from the whites due to playing any further back would be too long for my partner and the twosome we played with also chose to play from the whites.  Since I don't like segregation, I chose to play from the same tees, thinking in my mind I'll have a better chance to score lower.  My ideal length for a par 72 course would be between 6300-6500 yards.  Anything longer than 6500 is too long and anything less than 6300 tends to be too short.  Like I have written before my two biggest areas I struggle with are the shots between 65-90 yds and the driver.  Where courses less than 6300 yds tend to have a lot more shots in the 65-90 yds area and above 6500 yds the driver will be heavily relied upon, most likely in a lot of tight fairways. 

Now the many problems I ran into this past weekend.  This was the first time I can remember that for all the par 3's (4 holes) I played, I posted triple bogeys for each hole.  You don't need a fields medal to know that is already 12 over for the day, so if I parred out, my score would be 84.  I didn't hit a single green and my tee shots on two of the holes were too long and found trouble and the other 2 holes I found water before the green.  If I was more familiar with the holes I may have saved some strokes but again it was my fault to find so much trouble on relatively easy par 3's.  Other than the disasters on the par 3's I relatively hit my irons and woods decent all day.  I hit a few errant shots off the tee but nothing out of the ordinary, but the errant shots ran into bad breaks and either landed in the water or not found.  I had a particularly bad day on the putting greens.  I never really found a rhythmn on the greens and my putting stats reflect that.  My total stats for the round and I'm embarrassed to post them are as follows(all stats were tracked by my skycaddie):
Fairways hit:  28.6%
GIR:  11.1%
Putts:  35 putts (1.9 putts on avg) six 3 putts
3 par's
1 birdie
4 bogey's
9 double bogey or worse

As for flirting with C-note, I came to the 18th tee with a score of 92.  The 18th hole was a relatively easy hole with a small revine a 100 yards to a uphill green guarded with bunkers, playing about 380 yards.  Since I was trying to play it safe and to give myself a good chance of par I chose to tee off with a 5 iron.  Off the tee I can probably hit a 5 iron anywhere from 180 to 195 depending on carry and roll.  I hit a decent shot with my iron and left my ball on the right hand side of the fairway.  I left myself with a 205 yd shot to the green, I hit a 4 iron and landed my ball right in front of the green about 15 yards to the pin.  A bad chip and 3 putts later a double bogey is posted and that's how you score a 98.  The funny thing is my playing partner(Tiger) who shot an outstanding 116 who still has not broken a 100 yet used my score as a reference on how to break a 100.  A whopping 50 on the front 9 and a 48 on the back 9.  No excuses on the bad play.  I will attempt to redeem myself this weekend by playing 36 holes(18 at Stonewall Golf Course and 18 at Heritage Hunt and Golf Club).  As I see it I don't think I can play worse so it can only look brighter for me. 

The premise of today's rant is to remember not setting a scoring goal for yourself before the round begins.  Everytime that I can recall where I wanted to shoot really low that day, I rarely ever do.  My best scoring rounds are usually when I have no expectations at all but still prepare myself(hit the range, work on chipping and putting prior to my round) to shoot well.  You can't expect yourself to shoot well for 18 holes if you don't practice its that simple.  The last two times where I told myself I wanted to shoot and set to score low for a particular day I shot 95 and 98 respectively.  My lessons I learned over the weekend:  don't set scoring goals for yourself and sunscreen is your friend on a hot day. 

Renditions Golf Course

On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 would be a Pebble Beach and a 1 would be hitting on your backyard with patchy grass, Renditions would rank a 7.  The course is relatively in good shape due to all the dry weather.  The greens are surprisingly fast for greens that have recently been aerated.  The twosome who decided to retire after 13 holes were members and said prior to the aeration the greens were ridiculously fast.  The course provides a great value at $69 for a weekend rate.  Pretty much in the DC Metro area you are not going to find non twilight rates much cheaper.  For the price it is definitely worth its bang for the buck.  The replica holes of Amen corner is worth the price of admission.  The course used to charge a premium at around $100 a round on the weekend.  Again I recommend playing early for this course.  It seems they send groups 10 minutes apart and load up the course accordingly.  I finished the round in exactly 4 hours and 1 minute(again skycaddie tracks pace of play too) at a 6:40 am tee time with 4 players for most of the morning.  Expect at least a 4 1/2 to 5 hour round if you play later in the day.  Renditions is definitely a place for your next golfing destination.  The course supplies a GPS unit for your cart and utilize it heavily.  Plenty of blind shots where without course knowledge your score will suffer.

Recovery