My normal week of golf consists of 9 holes in my Tuesday night league and another 9 or 18 holes later in the week, then an 18-hole round on the weekend, which is often a tournament. This weekend however, I played two full rounds -- no tournaments, just golf with my friends... and I shot my best back-to-back rounds ever! These rounds also bumped my "under-80" streak to an all time high 13 rounds, a streak which started with my 500th round!


Golf with friends by Michael Vaughan

On Saturday, I played with my regular playing partner on one of the easiest golf courses I've ever played (70.8/112, 6642 yards). It's only about 45 minutes from home, but I've never played it before. It's a links course -- wide open, windy, firm fairways, good greens, and no houses! However, the greens were recently punched, so putting was a challenge. Winds were down though, so hitting fairways and greens was relatively easy. I learned quickly to just hit my putts firm, right at the hole.

I started off with a string of easy pars. I hit the fairway, hit the green, made my 2 putts. I finally got a birdie after 4 or 5 holes, then hit a par 5 in 2 from 200 yards out after a good drive and made the putt for eagle! After a couple more pars, I finished the front nine 3-under -- my best ever nine!

I missed a 4 foot birdie putt on 10 to get to 4-under, but a punch mark veered the ball away from the hole with 6 inches to go. I kept my string of pars going until the middle of the back nine, where I failed to get up and down for par on a 220 yard par 3. I then bogied the following par 5 with a poor drive, poor second shot, too much club on the approach, and a poor chip shot. Pars on the final two holes limited the damage on the back nine and got me in with a 1-under 71.

This was my second time ever breaking par on a course I'd never played before!

The next day, I joined some buddies from my hockey team for a round at one of my two home courses. We played the "combo" tees - half white, half blue tees (70.0/126, 6140 yards). It's still a challenging course from these tees, but moving up to the white tees on some of the harder holes certainly makes the course more scorable.

I started the round with a bogie on one (3-putt) and bogie on 2 (chip and 2 putts). On the par 5 3rd, I hit my drive right into some trees, clipped another tree trying to punch out, then clobbered a 3-wood from the rough to get within 40 yards of the green. A perfect shot from a hilly lie in the rough with my lob wedge put me 4 feet from the hole. I made the putt for par. After a poor lag putt, I made a 6 foot putt for par on four to stay 2-over.

Then things got going.

I birdied five by sinking a 20 foot putt, barely missed an 8 footer for birdie on six, but tapped in for birdie on seven after driving the par 4 green and barely missing my eagle putt. My two birdies got me back to even, but a plugged lie in a greenside bunker on the difficult par 4 eighth and failing to get up and down after my next shot resulted in my first double bogie. I then hit an errant drive on the par 5 ninth but recovered nicely with a strong 3-wood from the rough. My following approach came up just short of the fringe in front of the green, but close enough to putt. I drained the 15 footer from off the green for birdie to finish the front with 3 birdies and a 1-over 37.

I parred ten and eleven, then birdied again on twelve from about 12 feet to get to even par. I missed a 4 foot birdie putt on thirteen, but then birdied fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen! Now 4-under on the back nine and 3-under for the round, I hit my 7-iron into the trees on the long downhill par 3 17th. Fortunately, I had an opening to the pin and pitched to about 10 feet where I then made a slippery breaking putt for par!

So I walk up to the par 5 eighteenth 3-under for the round with a career high 7 birdies (I average about 1.5 birdies per round), and I often birdie this finishing hole! I hit my drive 285 yards leaving about 200 yards to the back left pin over a large lake. I decide to go for it. But I bailed right during my downswing with my 4-hybrid to avoid the long carry over the lake, leaving a long 60-70 foot putt from the right fringe. From here my lag putt came up short of the hole, leaving me with a left-to-right breaking 6-foot putt for my 8th birdie and career round of 4-under! I made a good stroke but read too little break and had to settle for a tap-in par.

I finished the back nine with a 4-under 32 and the round with a 3-under 69!

My artful weekend included 36 holes at 4-under par with 10 birdies, 7 birdies in a single round to beat my prior record of 5, my first 3-under 33 for nine holes followed by my first 4-under 32 for nine, and my second-ever round under 70! These two scores also got my index back down to my career best 2.4! A couple more good rounds and I may finally break the 2.0 barrier!

Going back over my Sunday round, I found that I only hit 7 fairways and 13 greens in regulation, but I 1-putted 8 greens! I 3-putted the first and last holes and missed a very makeable birdie putt on thirteen.

An artful round is rarely a perfect round.

Labels: Rounds