Yikes. It’s hard to believe the same golfer played the front and back nines. Those are the two ends of the spectrum when it comes to my scoring. On the front, I was just 1-over. On the back, I was 9-over.

Driving the ball and the ability to recover from a less than ideal shot were the differences between the two sides. On the front, I hit 6 of 7 fairways and 6 of 9 greens including the first 5. On the back, I missed all but 1 fairway (a 3-wood) and only hit three greens.

I was brilliant with my irons and 5-wood on the front. I opened things with a short, dippy drive (I was using the Snell MTB Black, which like the Pro V1 takes off too much spin if I hit it in the spin-killing upper part of the face). However, I hit a great 5-wood for an easy two-putt par. I hit one of the best 4-irons of my life on the second to pin high right of the back pin and hit a good enough lag to two putt for another par. My only birdie of the day came on the long par 3 3rd. I hit another great 5-wood that drew just to the left of the flag and stopped quickly. I rolled in the 8-footer. The rest of the front was pretty routine. My bogeys came on a lipout after a fat 5-iron on the par 4 6th and a bad miss with the putter to miss my up and down after going just off the back with a 6-iron on the par 3 8th.

On the back, I went double, bogey, double, bogey, double to open. I just put myself in the worst possible spots on the tee shots and couldn’t get out of them. I did a better job on the last four holes. The lone bogey on those came on the par 5 16th. My drive went way right because it didn’t draw, but I had a decent line. However, the 6-iron had the weirdest dippy draw ball flight I have ever seen with a 6-iron and ended up in a bad spot behind more trees on the opposite side and forced me to just knock it right of the green, and I couldn’t get up and down.

I did finish strong though. I hit a good 5-iron to the middle of the green on the par 3 17th for an easy par. On 18, I tried to rip a drive and didn’t shut the clubface and blocked one off the planet to the right. However, it gave me enough space to hit a great 7-iron over the trees to just below the pin. Unfortunately, I pulled the putt, but it was still good to finish that nightmare with a couple of pars.

The most frustrating thing about the back nine collapse was I didn’t have a single penalty stroke. I just was missing behind trees, and couldn’t pull off hard but possible shots to get out of trouble. This is just one of my faults as a golfer. I am a little like Bubba Watson or Phil. When everything is working, it looks awesome. However, when my aggressiveness doesn’t work out things get out of hand in a hurry. I am going to rip driver and then try to hit the hero 54-degree cut over a tree to try and make birdie or par. Sometimes it hits a branch and drops straight down. I should have probably just taken my medicine a couple times and punched it back in the fairway.

Today was this challenge in a nutshell the last almost five months. When I’m good, I’m good enough to break par. When I’m bad, it is ugly. And I’m not good enough for a whole round. I have at least a couple terrible swings and blow-up holes that keep me from breaking the barrier.

Playing 5 times in a week was fun, but I have to slow down a bit. This site doesn’t pay all the bills, so I have some other work I need to catch up on. I am thinking about playing in the first Metropolitan Amateur Series Event, so I am going to try to play just a couple times the next couple weeks, and then grind the week before the event. I am definitely going to try to play Landings at Spirit once next week to get an idea about the course and see if I won’t embarrass myself playing a competitive round there.