3rd Tournament Win

Well, I won the tournament at the Ocean Hammock Conservatory course, shooting a 76 (+4). As my third win of the year that should qualify me for the GCAT National Championship, but I'll find out for sure. I didn't play my best, but it was good enough. The score definitely could have been better, but I took some unnecessary risks and paid for them.

Mentally I also got ahead of myself. After 9 holes I was even par and started thinking about how I was in contention. I noticed that I started to play more afraid. Not so much in course management because I was still playing aggressive targets, but I started to get tentative in my swing. Generally this happens when I'm trying to control every shot to make it perfect - unfortunately golf is not a game of perfect.

A lesson from today is that when I'm in contention I remember to stay aggressive. When those feelings of excitement and adrenaline kick in I need to use them to make even better shots. Swing hard, swing free and see what happens.

That tentativeness even got me on the greens on the last few holes. I had birdie putts I should have made and I had a few par putts get away from me.

On the positive side I was able to win and shoot well without having my best stuff. The pulls and hooks were back again today - right off the first tee in fact, but rather than fight them I started to just go with them and recognize that I was going to pull or hook the ball most of the time. It worked out well - if I didn't and the ball went straight than I was on the right side of the fairway or green. If it did the pull or hook, then I was close to my target.

Some quick stats on the round:

• Fairways - 4 of 14 (29%) - that's pretty low, but it's reflective of my struggles off the tee with the pulls/hooks. Plus it was windy and wind is not friendly to side spin.
• Greens in Regulation - 11/18 (61%) - not bad, but lower than I'd like. Even so, that means my short game and putting kept me in contention, which is a great sign given my recent struggles in that department.
• 3-putts - 3 - too many. That's 3 strokes I gave away. Looking back I also know that those 3 strokes were more mental than anything. I don't think I was in the right frame of mind when I made/missed those putts.
• Total putts - 34. Way too many. Ideally I'd like to get that to around 28, although my ball striking being off today didn't really help this stat.

Despite my critical nature of my 3rd win today, I'm happy about how I kept my head in the game and never let a bad hole blow up into a big score. I had nothing worse than a bogey and did everything I could to keep it that way. In fact, on the last hole (a par 5) I hit my drive in the water off the tee (bad idea to use driver), hit my third shot to the right of the green, chipped it up to about 15' from the hole for my 4th shot, and ended up making the 15' left-to-right 3' break, downhill putt to save par. I wasn't about to give in.

And even though my game wasn't great, most of my bogeys were because I took unnecessary risks. I got too aggressive on those holes and paid for it. But that's okay. I get better from those failures. For instance, you won't find me going for greens on par 5's with hard right-to-left wind and with water on the left of the green on days I'm hitting hard hooks again!

Tomorrow's another golf day - playing with the members in the morning and probably another round in the afternoon. Yeah, I'm playing a ton of golf right now.

Maybe later I'll update the post with a picture of the scorecard and my shot-by-shot recap.