Golf has a way of playing with your emotions. I objectively played better today than yesterday, but I somehow felt much worse after the round. I shot better than my handicap, but I feel like I left shots on the course. I 100 percent should have broken 80 and could have even reached the elusive par barrier by eliminating some mistakes and burying a couple makeable putts.

I guess that is the reason I’m an 8.1 handicap and not scratch. I’m just not consistent enough right now to break par. My ball striking is not where it needs to be. By pure numbers, 30 putts is a good number and actually better than yesterday. However, that number should have been lower and is only as low as it is because my chipping is so good. My wedge play put me in position for five tap-ins. There were at least 3 more holes where I had putts I should have made and another where I just missed a hole-in-one and missed a birdie putt coming back.

That is not including the mental mistakes I made off the green. I started on the back. I made a good par on the 10th thanks to a good recovery with one of the few good irons I hit all day. On the 11th after a better drive, I was in position to either play it safe and lay up or rip a 3-wood to the other side of the water for a better angle into the green and a wedge in. Trying that difficult of a shot while still warming up is incredibly dumb, but I thought even if I slice it I had room. I was wrong, overcooked a slice and came up short and it rolled down the steep hill and into the water.

The ironic thing is that after that 3-wood, it was arguably my best club. I used it on the front to get pin high on the 2nd and 3rd to get up and down with easy chips for tap-in pars. With my driver distance still being an issue, it was the only reason I was in position to do as much damage as I did and some that I let get away.

All in all, I need to be happy with a round like today. I did a lot of things right. While my driver wasn’t long, it was my most accurate driving day in over a month. I hit 6 greens which is average to good for me. I made a birdie. (Nearly identical to yesterday, except this time I was in the fairway. I hit it to nearly the same spot on the 15th green though.) I didn’t have any three-putts. And to top it all off, it was warm enough that I played most of the second nine without a jacket.

MVP: 54 degree. Yet again my chipping and pitching were superb. It used to always be the best part of my game. Somewhere near the end of last summer, I got a bit of the yips. I was duffing shots all over the place. I fixed it to a degree after a couple of rounds, but it never got back to being my strength until this weekend. I was actually mad at myself the few times I didn’t nearly hole out. That’s a long way from wanting to throw it in the lake at Links at Dardenne. My best shot with the club actually came on my worst hole. I was in the trees after a debacle of a shank of an 8-iron from the middle of the fairway. I hit a perfectly flighted ball through the trees and was a small bounce (or a drier course) from being inside 5 feet and saving par. Honorable Mention: 3-wood and Driver. As I mentioned, 3-wood was huge for me today. I wouldn’t have had as many brilliant 54-degree shots into greens if it wasn’t for my good fairway wood day. The ol’ (new) Cobra Speedback gets a mention purely because I completely turned it around from yesterday. It still is nowhere close to where I need to have it working this summer.

LVP: Irons. Yesterday I raved about how well I struck them, so I should have guessed the opposite would happen today. I still had the pully ones, but today I had the added bonus of toeing a few and downright shanking an 8-iron from the middle of the fairway which led to a double instead of what should have been a guaranteed par. My sunglasses did nearly fly off my face near impact, but I think that was because my head was moving so much indicating it wasn’t a good swing before that distracted me. I got lucky on bad strikes on a couple 9-irons on Par 3’s, one of which nearly rolled into the hole. I would say I only hit two on my line– a good 5-iron that ended up just short on my first hole of the day in good position to get up and down and a beautifully played baby cut PW around a tree on 5.

The weather goes back to being terrible this week. Rain early in the week gives way to it yet again allegedly snowing on Wednesday. Hopefully, it dries out and warms up enough by Sunday, the end of the handicap offseason and the first day we here in Missouri can post scores under the new handicap rules.

ScoreCard from Tim Kaiser on Belk Park Golf Course (Belk Park) – 18Birdies https://18birdies.com/s/AKS3IRlsMMg