I got up to the club last night at 5.15 with the intention of doing a light bit of practice. However Stephen was also at the club and as there seamed to be a lot of people/match plays milling about getting ready to start we decided to head out fast, after playing the first we saw the front nine of the course was already quite busy and we changed plan to head down the 12th and play a few holes out of the way (teeing off of our 12th is allowed if the 11th is not occupied). Well just as we teed off a guy appeared on the tee of the par 3 11th and so we had to get a shift on so as not to hold him up. What proceeded was the fastest 10 holes of golf I ever have played, the guy behind was supper fast and so we kept in front, never letting him wait for a single shot as we played 11 holes in one hour! We figured he would walk in after the 18th but he also continued back up the first after us!
In fact it was far too fast to be enjoyable, just get to the ball hit it, find it, hit it, chip it, putt it and move on. I played bogie golf from memory, it was too fast to record scores and stats, even my memory of the shots is hazy all I can remember is having a great draw going with my driver and for the first time ever using driver on the 14th and drawing it around the right to left dog leg away from the right hand OB, a shot I would never try in a comp!
The guy chased us around back up the first hole and so on until I called time out after the we had played the third. I wanted to practice golf not practice speed playing.
So back we went to the putting green to putt for about 45 Min's, I was working on lag putting from 40 ft and holing out 4 footers. After getting my tempo back on the putting green the course had become more deserted so we played the first hole for the third time that night and then off the 4th tee, got up to the green and spent the next half hour in chipping practice which is what I really headed up to the course to do in the first place!
After about 30 Min's Gavin's arrival was announced when his drive landed with a thump some 20 yards short of the green, the hole is 333 from the forward tees, you can cut some off as it doglegs a little but that drive had to be 290/300 carry into what little wind was wafting. Gavin is the course record holder around our place and hit's it rather a long way!! In fact he hits a 4 iron almost as far as I carry a 3 wood, it's quite amazing. We decided to play on with him and put in a few more holes messing about with 2-3 balls and hitting pitches/chips etc.
Watching someone really good is actually nice for your game, that is if you don't try to murder the ball in response to their mammoth hitting! I resisted trying to hit it a long way and just tried to copy how he hit down through the ball. Really good players get this trajectory that I envy, the ball takes off lower, on a shallower piercing angle and actually climbs higher eventually but always on that piercing angle, then kind of stalls and falls out of the sky much steeper as it runs out of forward momentum. Compared to us hackers and our rainbow trajectory it is very, very different. Especially on short 40-60 yard pitch shots Gavin plays these almost punch shots that have that piercing trajectory they stay relatively low and stop dead quick. Those shots were what I was trying to emulate with very limited success!!
Anyway by this stage having had nothing to eat or drink since lunch time I was feeling it, in fact I was almost feeling a little drunk and wobbly and I could not hit driver for toffee by the end, we finished up on the par 3 11th at five to ten and you could only follow the ball for about a hundred yards before losing sight of it.
In all I spent close to five hours at the club, played 20 holes, and must have hit hundreds of balls, when you include the putting/chipping time it was like a whole weeks practice in one night :p
Very enjoyable but very tiring.
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