Welp. Sometimes things just don’t go to plan– especially in golf.

The purpose of “Going Low” is to play a shorter tee I don’t normally play and try to make birdies. I will do this at Bear Creek most of any course because it is a near-perfect match for Forest Hills Country Club in yardage and layout from the White tees at both courses. I want to periodically check-in to see how I am playing because that is the venue for the Lifewise (Formerly Kingdom House) Charity Tournament every summer (unless Coronavirus gets it canceled like seemingly everything else).

I knew it wouldn’t be a true test because they raised the cups at Bear Creek to try and limit contact with the hole to help prevent the spread of Coronavirus. However, I thought this would be fine because the tourney is two-putt maximum, so it’s a very specific type of putting where you are not hitting lags. “Corona holes” (patent pending) honestly might even give me a reference to go back to for hitting it harder at the hole because I am such an *attempted* perfect pace putter normally.

However, the challenge further fell apart once I was at the course. Bear Creek was slammed. It seemed like they had 100 foursomes in the 12 o’clock hour alone. There was a huge line from the first tee waiting to tee off the whole 45 minutes I was getting ready and putting. I ended up linking up with a two-ball and heading to the back (against management orders– Bad Boy of Golf, living up to the John Daly headcover). The single we hopped in with on the 10th was playing the Blue tees, so in order to keep pace-of-play up, we all did. The Blue tees are not a huge step down from the Tips at 6500 yards and it doesn’t really change your strategy around the course. If you go by their suggested tees by handicap, they are actually the tees I should be playing all the time.

To make matters worse, they seemed to be in varying stages of aerating the greens. Some were normal. Some were punched. Some were punched and covered in sand. Some appeared to have been punched, sanded, and then finished with the brush. Therefore, even though the Corona holes did make anything inside of 5 feet a tap-in that you could just slam into the cup, longer putts were still somewhat challenging from hole-to-hole depending on the break. I somehow had three or four of what could only be characterized as lip outs on a hole with no actual lips.

I didn’t help myself away from the greens. I drove the ball pretty well barring a couple of snap hooks that I managed to keep in play. However, my irons were a disaster, especially on the back nine. I was pulling off the ball and hitting toey soft slices. I did wallop my fairway woods, and hit some of the purer irons I have ever hit when I actually got everything square. The downside is those pure irons went just long because I was surprised by the distance.

The bright spot was the second hole we played– the par 5 11th. I hit a 300-yard drive down the hill and hit a beautiful low 5-wood over the pond into the front slope and rolled up onto the green. I just barely missed a long eagle putt down the hill and tapped in for birdie. I played the Par 5’s under par for the fourth straight round which I should be doing.

The problem was I double-bogeyed two par 4’s — one of which was a three-putt. On both holes, I hit good drives and messed up my approach into the green. That was the story of the day. I only hit 5 greens and three of them were my last three holes when I finally figured some stuff out I guess.

I am going to do my year-to-date breakdown tomorrow to try to get some idea of where I am at in my game from more of a bird’s-eye view. A quick preview and something I have been lamenting after a ton of my rounds is the lack of greens hit in regulation. That is the single biggest decider of my score. When I am hot with the wedge and miss in the right spots, I can overcome it like at Incline Village. However, things would be a lot easier for me — and nearly mandatory for me to break par — if I hit more greens. That is going to take becoming a more consistent ball striker. I have it for some rounds and for that challenge it only takes one. But that is unquestionably the next step in my game. That or add 30 yards off the tee. Focusing on hitting the ball in the middle of the clubface while it is square seems like the easier of the two options.

I shot lower than my last round from the Tips at Bear Creek and made more birdies (1-0) even playing slightly worse I believe. However, I played to the course handicap, so I don’t really see how you can call it a win when I didn’t go low even in Net.

Luckily, it is supposed to be a beautiful week, so I am going to play as much golf as possible and am thinking about mixing in at least one Going Low to start off the next month — possibly at Links at Dardenne.