It is almost a week post tourney, but it takes some time to get photos edited and words on page. In any event, here's the account of my favorite annual event, the World Amateur Handicap Golf Championship in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Click on heading links for additional photos.
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| Chris Capps & I checking in |
There’s nothing like stepping up to the first tee on Day 1
of the World Amateur Handicap Championship. At that moment, you have the chance
to beat over 3000 players and lay claim to the title of "Best Handicap Golfer in the World." True or not, you can claim that, because the World Am hosts players from
over 30 countries and all 50 states. Ain’t my fault if players who play great
at home aren’t interested in testing their games against players from all over
the world.
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| Ramiro Gamboa and I watching Jim Chobrda |
In any event, Ramiro Gamboa of San Antonio, Texas; Jim
Chobrda of Ontario, Canada; Cliff Johnson of Bellevue, Nebraska and I all
stepped up to that 1st tee at River Club with hopes that our beloved
but fickle game would be good to us this week. I led us off, my tee shot found the fairway, and it was on.
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I was feeling pretty
good about my game, having played some terrific tracks all summer, all of which
were more difficult than what we would be facing that first day. River Club is a nice
facility, but there wasn’t a ton of challenge for a guy who had just played Old
Corkscrew in Estero, Florida and Rich Harvest Farms in Sugar Grove, Illinois.
This was my fifth World Am and the first round at River Club was my best start of the five. We started on Hole #10, and after the first six holes I was one
under par. Really? Yup. My golf buddies Chris and C.J. will not be surprised to hear that my focus was starting to slip a bit at that point.
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| River Club Course |
On our 7th hole (#16) I carded a bogey, and I tried to be cute on our 8th hole, a little 158-yard par-3, and ended
up with a triple bogey 6! Just like that, all that good play was just about wiped out. Ah, but I’m learning how to play the game, and managed to post a
birdie on the following hole, a short 493-yard par -5.
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| More scenes from River Club |
So, after almost 30 years of “playing” golf it feels like
I’m just starting to learn how to play the game, and am just beginning to learn about myself
playing the game. I’m learning that I have a certain allotment of
concentration, and once I’ve used it up, the rest of my round is all about
trying to manage my way around the course without throwing away too many shots.
I think I used up all the focus I had left on our 1oth hole, River Club #1.
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| My best birdie hole ever |
Hole #1 is a 358-yard, slight dogleg left par-4,
with a tree on the inside corner of the dogleg. Coming off my second birdie of
the round, I lead off with the worst drive I’ve hit so far. It’s a low screamer
left, could end up on a hazard, but I’ve hit it hard enough to carry the junk,
but I’m left of the tree with no clear shot directly at the hole. However, there is a possibility of hitting a
cut around the tree, having the ball land on the high left side of the green,
rolling down to the lower right side of the green where the pin was placed. It
was, without doubt, the best shot I hit that first day and it was worth a nice
chunk of change as my first skin ever claimed in the World Am. Oh, the shot
flew exactly as anticipated and ended up about four feet from the hole. I never had a doubt that I would make that putt to complete the unlikely birdie.
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| River Club |
I rode the high for one more hole, posting a par on our 11th hole of the day. From then on, it was pretty much hang on time. Over the next
six holes, I posted five bogeys and a double bogey.
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| Day 1 Scorecard |
I finished the round with a
par to punctuate Day 1 with some positivity. My score of 80 tied the best round
I had ever posted in the 16 rounds of the World Am I had played to date. I would go into Day 2
tied for 4th in my flight of 49 players. Not too bad a start.
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| River Club Clubhouse |
Before I move on to our second round, I must commend Krista
Bodensteiner, General Manager / Head Golf Professional Litchfield Country Club
/ River Club and her staff, particularly Eric Glosick her First Assistant
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| Eric Glosick- Photo courtesy of facebook.com |
for the terrific job they did. In fact, when we were talking about
that first day, Steph (my favorite photographer ever) remarked
that River Club’s staff was "outstandingly friendly,” and that she "hadn't
been to a facility in a while with such friendly staff."
Carolina National in Bolivia, North Carolina was the most
picturesque and challenging of the four courses we played in Myrtle Beach.
Every hole drew the eye and sparked interest.
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| Carolina National Clubhouse |
Fairways weren’t overly generous,
and were diversely contoured. The greens were superb, despite some moisture,
and every shot felt like a challenge. Throw in the ever-present wildlife, and
Carolina National eased past Prestwick as the course I’d like to play again
when I return to Myrtle Beach.
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| Day 2 Foursome |
That Tuesday I played with Tom Baggett of Louisville,
Kentucky (who has now finished 3rd in his flight for the third
consecutive year); Dave Erickson of West Yarmouth, Massachusetts; and Daryl
Wolff of West Burlington, Iowa.
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| Daryl Wolff & Tom Baggett |
We began on the back side again, this time the
514-yard par-5 16th (Ibis #7) was our opening hole. Perhaps it was
because I watched Tom and Daryl pound some long draws down the fairway, but I
got off to a rough start, yanking my tee shot left into the woods.
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| Pitching out after drop from the woods |
A pitch out and five shots later I carded an opening double
bogey. Ugh! Definitely not the way you want to start your round. But I’ve learned
over time that golf is about the next hole, the next shot, not the previous
one, so I swallowed hard and moved on. Perhaps it was the challenging views,
the sense that no shot was a gimme, or the level of competition that precluded
a sense of comfort that second day, but I felt that the course was in charge
all day.
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| Which fairway would you choose? |
Although I didn’t play great golf that day, I played smart
but courageous golf for the most part. Perhaps the best example was after
starting with a double and following it up with a bogey, we came to our third
hole, Hole #9 on Ibis which presents you with a challenging choice of two
fairways from the tee box. Somewhat surprising to me, the big hitters in our
group chose to go right. I chose to hit toward the left fairway. When the ball
left my driver, made a comment that suggested I hadn’t hit it well. I replied,
“Perfect!” I had a 124-yard shot into the green, with the only angle that
seemed to offer an attempt at birdie. I hit the green and narrowly missed the
20-footer for birdie.
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| Riding with Daryl |
It felt like a really tough up and down day out there, although
my cart partner Daryl was making things look easy, except on the greens where
he struggled. He carded an 81, even with
at least five putts he should have knocked down.
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| Day 2 Scorecard |
When I posted double bogeys on
holes six-through-eight, it felt as though I had shot myself right out of the
tournament. I was 10 over par on the first eight holes! However, Like I said
earlier, in golf you just have to keep swinging. I finished the next 10 holes
in two over par to card an 84. Tom notched an 84 as well, and Dave posted a
number he wouldn’t want me to print I’m sure.
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| Tom & Daryl |
Although I wasn’t thrilled with that 84, I suspected that
the challenge of the course would keep me somewhere in the hunt. As it turns
out, only four players in our flight shot better than 84. In fact, of the 93
players in the two flights that played the course that day, a total of seven
players shot better than 84. Yes, Carolina National was a very good test of
golf.
Day 3: Derailed by
Delay
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| Steph putting her feet up |
Steph and I decided she should stay home to recover rather
than come out to fight the weather while still recovering from illness on Day
3, and maybe I left my game with her in the room. With all the dire weather reports, I really
didn’t think we’d be playing our third round. I was wrong…well, not entirely,
because I’m not sure I can call what I did on Day 3 “playing.” Ok, I’m being a
bit harsh on myself there.
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| Chris & I at Prestwick the day before World Am |
Mario Garita
of Santa Ana, Costa Rica; Rex Meyer of Brownstown, Indiana (2015 flight winner),
and Rudy Purwien of Vaterstetten, Germany joined me for Round 3 at Blackmoor Golf Club that day, and no one
had his best day. My 87 turned out to be second best in the group, but it was a
score that I expected to push me far down the leaderboard.
It didn’t turn out
that way. I didn’t get off to a great start on the Gary Player
designed track, but it wasn’t all that bad either. After the
first four holes I was just one stroke over par. And then the deluge came and
chased us back to the cart barn for an hour and 45 minutes. One of the few
disappointments of the week was the way I came out after the rain delay. It was
my first rain delay in a tournament, but playing in Southwest Florida, I wasn’t
concerned about the delay or the rain that was falling as we went back out.
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| Scenes from Blackmoor- Photo courtesy of blackmoor.com |
I suspect I should have prepared better mentally for post
delay, because I had my worst two holes of the entire tournament within three
holes of coming back from suspended play. My first drive I pulled left and I
notched a nasty nine on the first hole back; my first and only quadruple bogey
of the tourney.
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| Scenes from Blackmoor- Photo courtesy of blackmoor.com |
Pretty bad, but I bounced back with a par on the following
hole, a short par-3. Back on track, right? Not! I slice my next drive into the
woods, failed to chip it out, took a drop, and by the time I was done on that
hole, I was looking at another nine on my card, this time a quintuple bogey!
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| Scenes from Blackmoor- Photo courtesy of blackmoor.com |
Let me put this into perspective. The first day of play, I
went 18 holes and shot eight over par. Coming out from the rain delay on Day 3,
I shot nine over par in three holes. A year ago, I think that would have been
all she wrote for me. I would have been so caught up in how badly I responded
after the delay that I might have carded another couple of nines before the
round was over.
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| Day 3 Scorecard |
Instead, now that I am beginning to understand the game a
little, I posted three consecutive pars on the following three holes. Ok, so
nine over par on two holes, and six over par on the other 16. A third-round 87
is definitely not what I was looking for, but it was what I got and I expected
to be well out of contention going into the final day.
And yet, despite the two tough days, the three consecutive
doubles on Day 2, the quadruple and quintuple bogeys on Day 3, I was still in
fourth place, two shots out of third and three shots from second. Winning
didn’t appear to be an option, because the leader was ahead of me by nine
shots.
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| Final Foursome |
I was thrilled to be playing in the final group on the final day of
flight play for the first time. My objective going into the final day was
merely to play some good golf and finish the tournament in a manner similar to
the way I started. Wherever I ended up on the leaderboard would be fine.
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| Add caption |
Reviewing the course, and having shot my best round in the
World Am there a few years ago, I knew that unless the elevated greens proved
to be problematic, Shaftesbury Glen with the tee boxes moved up would play as
easily as any other course we played that week.
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| Tom Morrison- Flight Winner |
We started the round on Hole
#10, with Flight Leader Jim Morrison of Crossville, Tennessee leading my second
round playing partner Tom Baggett by six shots, and Bobby Stokes of Rosharon,
Texas by seven. I figured he’d run away with it and the rest of us in the final
group and the seven players who were within three shots my position would vie for second. It was obvious from the first tee shots that I would be
playing my second shots first or second most of the day. Tom and Bobby had a
clear distance advantage over Jim and me. That doesn’t faze me because I play
with C. J. Weber and Chris Capps, and both of those guys outdrive me by quite a
bit consistently.
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| Tough bunker shot |
I started off the round with good, under-control golf for the
first five holes, recording par on all five. On Hole #15 (our 6th), although
I made, perhaps the best up and down from a bunker I’ve ever made, the tee shot
was the first shot that felt out of my control, like the focus was beginning to
slip. Geez! We’ve only been out about two hours and already it’s beginning to
slip?
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| All-world up and down on this hole |
Ah, but that up and down on #15 was a thing of beauty. With
the tees up, the par-3 hole was playing 138 yards. With wind in the face, an
elevated green, and the pin on the right, I chose to cut a 7-iron in to the pin
location. The wind may have been a bit more left-to-right than anticipated, and/orI
didn’t hit the shot with as much authority as I should have, and it tailed off
into the right greenside bunker. When I
approached my ball, I chuckled to see the fried egg lie about 10 inches from
the lip of the bunker, with the green surface about five feet above my head,
and the pin about 10 feet from the right edge of the green. I surveyed the situation, envisioned and hit
the shot, which nestled about 10 feet past the pin. One heck of a shot from
where the ball lay just moments ago. I dusted off my shoes went up to the green
and drained that 10-footer for par! I wouldn’t see another par until six holes
later.
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| Final Day Scorecard |
I may not have been making pars, but at least I was scraping
by with bogeys. No doubles, no triples and quadruples on the card, and I’d
surely snag another par or two, and perhaps a birdie (I had had at least one in
every round thus far). Well, with four
holes left to play, I was six over for the day. By the time those four holes
had been played, I was 12 over for the day, after carding three double bogeys,
which included two shanks on consecutive holes and my second three-putt in the
final six holes. I had had zero shanks, and only two other three putts during
the other three rounds combined.
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| Bobby Stokes who finished tied for 1st, but was reduced to 5th |
Here’s a description of my demise: Nice drive on our 15th
hole, a short par-4, and I’m in great shape, about 111 yards out. Tom was in a
bit of trouble. I’m holding a pitching wedge in my hand for my second shot and I
shank the ball into the woods. I take a drop, hit it on the green and two putt
for double bogey.
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| Winning technique from Bobby |
Our 16th hole, another short par-4, another
terrific tee shot, and I have a sand wedge in my hand about 95 yards from the
pin. I shank that one into the woods as well! Took another drop, on the green
in four, two putt for a second consecutive double. Are you kidding me! All the
work you put in all week and you’re coming down the stretch with a chance to
finish near the top of the leaderboard, and you conjure up consecutive
double-bogey shanks!!! Oooooo, that is not good!
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| Tom Baggett finished 3rd |
All right, still two holes to go. Just keep playing golf, or
some reasonable facsimile thereof, right? Our 17th hole is a
medium-length par-3 (174 yards with the pin in the back), and I hit a decent
shot, lag the long putt almost in the hole and walk off with a par. Although I
don’t know for sure, I think when we get to the last hole that I’m about even
with Tom and need to get par or better on the final hole. I hit the best drive
of our foursome on the 400-yard par-4, and chose the same club I’d hit into the
previous green. It’s another uphill shot, and I don’t hit it very well. I’m on
a side hill about ten feet below the hole and about 15 yards from the pin. I
pitch it to about 12 feet above the hole.
I know I need this putt, and I’m grinding. It’s downhill,
and breaking a little left to right. By the time I’m over my putt, I’ve totally
forgotten that it’s a downhiller, and I smash it six feet by the hole. I miss
that putt, the first putt under 10 feet I think I missed all day! Double bogey!
I gave up six shots in the last four holes, and it was pure meltdown, nothing
else. Given the positions I was in off the tee, I should have given up one,
maybe two max. Given how I hit the ball off the tee and putted, 80 or below was
the shoulda-coulda that didn’t happen.
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| Scene from Shaftesbury Glen |
If you're wondering about Chris' debut, I'm thinking he'd rather I wait until next year to talk about his World Am.
In the end, after my miserable meltdown, I finished seventh
in my flight and although that was disappointing, there were quite a few good
takeaways:
- Steph recovered from illness enough to be there 3 of 4
days
The Skins Guy & me - I entered skins game for the first time and won $460
- I won the skin on the most creative birdie I have ever scored in competition
- I had my best up and down out of a bunker
- I played in my lowest handicap flight to date and made it into the final group on the final day
- I played with 11 other players in my groupings (Tom twice) and finished better than 8 of the 11
- I hit 73% of fairways off the tee and 43% of greens (lifetime is 58% & 32%)
- Of the combined 87 players who finished the event in the two flights that played the same courses, only 10 finished with better scores than I scored
- I had one round without a three-putt and only had four for the week
- I played competitive golf for four consecutive days with a good bunch of guys
- Regardless of my score, when I got off the golf course Steph was there
- Quite a few of you sent your much appreciated support
Well, that's about it for World Am 2016. Next up on the golf menu is the Southwest Men's Amateur at Fort Myers Country Club and Eastwood Golf Course at the end of October. Thanks for your support and feedback! I'm out...T. A.
