Our jet-lag helped us with an 8:15 am tee time for Rob 1.5 hours away. Being awake since 3 am you really have no excuse for tardiness ! Yet we started off a little rough. In the rough.
The shot is done.
I make some positive sounding platitudes.
The shot is done, Mom !
We have just spent 23 hours in an airplane during which he was airsick the whole time, did not eat and hardly slept. The body is weak but the mind is resolute.
On hole 2 his drive again goes left into tall grass. He hits a near perfect provisional. After a good search, during which I found 4 other balls, we give up on his until he stumbles on it. It’s in a place it should best have remained lost but it’s found now and he wants to play it with a bravado that conjures up confidence but perhaps not judgement. He gives it a good whack and it lands two yards away, still in the long grass. There is now no hope of calling an unplayable and he has no choice but to take another hard whack. Miraculously he connects the ball perfectly and in the end the ball is sitting 10 yards further down the fairway than the provisional. Whew !
It’s hard on one to constantly be scrambling from the edge of the fairway. It’s easy to say – keep it up the middle – but it’s a difficult game. He found 2 pars in a row and was on the way to a 3rd when he topped his 3 wood so the ball was barely touched on a drop from cart path relief which should have been done better. Relief well taken should not result in your feet perched awkwardly on the ridge of the cart path with a precarious downhill lie.
Given the extreme heat, jumping to longer distances with the new age group, and the physical fatigue associated with international travel we did not walk the course and took a cart. A good decision given that we would also use it to catch up and watch Bear caddying for himself for his round of 18 that started just before we finished.
Everything considered, plus a couple of strange shots that came out of nowhere and did not help our cause, 46 is OK for today …… however, 10 shots over what he played on this course the last time he played it with Dad on the Bag ………
We caught up with Bear on the 4th hole where he was playing in a 2 ball and keeping it solidly around the greens, but waiting on every tee.
2 under at the turn turned into a winning 75 with only 1 minor meltdown in excruciating 95 degree heat when his ball lodged impossibly in a large un-raked footprint in a bunker.
This is a Public Service Announcement : You’ve got to play the ball as it lies in life and on the golf course.
That being said : Rake the Bunker !!