Rub of the Green

Sometimes its hard to explain where a round starts to go "wrong." Other times, its quite clear ex. a blowup hole, four-putting a green, you get the idea. I had an interested round the other day that was somewhere in between.

I felt like I couldn't hit the ball any better...then came hole number 7. The pin was tucked in the back right hand corner of the green (bordered on the right side by bunkers). Feeling confident, I hit a slight fade into that corner of the green: risky but why not? I was playing well. "Take dead aim" I told myself. Well as it turns out, the wind picked up and carried what looked like a perfect shot that would have left me with a nice look at birdie, right into the bunker. "No big deal" I thought, I will just get up and down (which I just did on the previous hole too).

Once I got to my ball, I saw that my lie was uphill/sidehill but I still thought,"take dead aim". I mis-hit the shot a little heavy, and as soon as I did, I realized where I made my mistake. It wasn't the mis-hit, but by being aggressive with my line, I brought the next part of the bunker into play and guess where I ended up... yup right back in the bunker. In an instant a potential birdie hole turned into a big mess of a hole with multiple bunker shots, and multiple putts. All I had to do was adjust my aim on that first bunker shot to get on the meaty part of the green instead of being greedy and aiming right for the flag. Needless to say I didn't recover and I didn't play very well the rest of the day. More bad breaks even when I thought I hit good shots.

So lesson learned: play aggressively, but don't be greedy. Listen to the "golf gods" or they will put you in your place :)