Sometimes the golf gods smile upon you in the middle of winter with a good day, and it was extra-cosmic that our first good day in weeks also happened to be New Year’s Day. I wasn’t going to waste it, so I went out to my current favorite course, Links at Dardenne. I was obviously not the only one who had this idea, so it was a slow, packed day, but it was good to just be out there again.

I got to play a couple Pinehurst courses when I was back in North Carolina to see my family for Christmas. It was fun playing the differences, especially the greens. They weren’t fast for Pinehurst, but compared to what I had been playing out here they were lightning. Making that transition back was a little tough.

The whole front nine was rough. My lone bright spots were an easy birdie on the 2nd after one of my few good drives and a par on the fourth. I bogeyed every other hole on the front besides 9, which I doubled.

The back was significantly better. I hit 5 greens in regulation thanks in large part to driving the ball miles better than I did on the front. Unfortunately, my putting still wasn’t that great, and I didn’t have one-putts. However, you can’t be that mad with +4 after you were +7 on the front.

Winter golf can be a little frustrating because the weather doesn’t allow you to get into a groove, so I’ll take the small win of just being on the course in January in decent weather and playing pretty good golf by the end.

ScoreCard from Tim Kaiser on The Links At Dardenne (Links At Dardenne) – 18Birdies https://18birdies.com/s/AKZFTofyBS8