Today proves that numbers sometimes do lie. If you just looked at my stats and score today, you might think my problems were mainly driving and putting, and because of how many greens I hit I had a good iron day. You would be entirely wrong.

Off the tee, I had two bad drives all day. One was on the dreaded 4th hole. I didn’t account for the wind and started the ball slightly left of my intended line, so it followed the creek and wound up in it. However, I still parred the hole because I hit a great 4-iron to 15 ft. from over 200 yards away in the drop zone and made the breaker. The other was a terrible pull almost straight left on the 7th. A pushy weak 5-iron and a bad 60-degree chip kept me from repeating the heroics of 4. The rest of my misses were small and the proper misses. Like on 14 (the No. 1 index), I purposefully missed right of the car path into the rough on 10, but I ripped it over the hill and rolled out past 300 yards. I then proceeded to thin a 50-degree that almost rolled off the back of the green. However, I saved it with one of my many brilliant lag putts back down to the front pin.

That was the story all day. I would hit a good drive. My iron, or a lot of the times wedge, would be on the exact opposite side of the green and I would have to hit brilliant lag putts to make my second putt a gimme. That will catch up to you though and it did three times on the back which led to three three-putts. None of those lags were exactly terrible, but they required anywhere from 4 to 6-footers and I pulled or pushed all of them over the lip of the hole.

The first and most heartbreaking occurred on the 10th. I hit a 280-yard drive to the right side to give myself a decent angle in. I ripped a 5-iron, it didn’t draw, but I still carried the bunker and ended up the on very right and back of the long green. My lag down the hill to the left, front pin came in with way too much pace, but I hit the pin and bounced away to 4 feet. I pulled the putt over the left edge. On the par 3 14th, the same thing happened but in reverse. A 5-iron came up short thanks to a thin, weak strike and my uphill lag left some meat on the bone and I pushed it over the right edge. On 17, my 60-degree into the green hit pin-high left but caught the backside of a mound and shot the ball to the back of the green. A push to save par slid over the right edge.

The only truly must-make birdie look of the 10 greens I hit came on 18. (The first birdie on 2 was uphill but a bit of 5-foot breaker.) After a good if slightly pulled drive and a perfect 5-iron layup, I had just a little flip 60-degree to the back pin. I stuck it to three-feet. The nerves were flowing because of my previous misses, but it was relatively straight and I found the bottom of the cup to end on a high note.

Should I have three-putted three times today even if I had a ton of 30, 40, and 50 foot lags down and uphill all day? No, of course not. Maybe, one. The second putts weren’t hard and I should have made them. However, I putted well today. I loved how fast the greens were. They were some of the best and most true I have putted on this year. St. Peters has come a long way since the beginning of the year. My poor iron and wedge play put me into those positions. I missed left and right and long and short badly all day even with scoring clubs in my hand.

The best example of the countless examples is the 16th. I hit a nice and easy 4-iron to get down to the creek. I had about 100 yards in from the fairway and chose a nice soft 50-degree. I drew it into the bunker left of the green about pin-high. I hit a good bunker shot, but there is nothing to stop it on the downslope and I missed the 15-foot comebacker.

There is nothing more frustrating than missing target by 10 yards with a wedge in your hand.

Part of the problem might have been how hard the ground was. I am more vulnerable to weird turf interactions than some other golfers I believe. I suck off crappy AstroTurf mats with no give which is why I scout out ranges before I go. As I have mentioned before, when it is super wet I have a tendency to thin balls in an effort to pick it clean because I have a history of club swallowing divots and the ball dribbling forward. Today, the ground was so hard you could barely get a tee in the ground some of the time. I felt my club bounce and not take a proper divot sometimes causing some funky strikes. Now, this is part of golf, and I need to be better at adjusting.

I will chalk this one up to the first very dried out summer course of the year and being slow to adjust. We are supposed to get a ton of rain tomorrow with the remnants of the Tropical Storm that hit Louisiana coming up the Mississippi, so they might not have watered so the course can take on all that water.

Due to that storm, tomorrow will be a wash due to rain. Wednesday courses might be closed depending on how much we actually get and even if they aren’t we will still have the wind from the storm sticking around and wreaking havoc on the golf ball. Hopefully, I can get back out there Thursday or Friday when the weather turns gorgeous yet again.