Rub of the green. It is a poetic way of saying the bounces just didn’t go your way on the golf course. That was definitely true today. I don’t think I got a single “good bounce.” Every time a ball was on the edge of being good or disastrous, it went the wrong way. I had a ball clip a tree and go straight right into the hazard. I had balls hit the fairway and bounce right into the hazard. I had balls roll into bunkers when I didn’t want them too and a ball bounce over a bunker into the hazard when I would have been happy with the sand. I had a ball hit the top of a hill 10 yards to the right of the pin bounce over and roll 60 yards down the hill into the last fairway. I hit the pin and bounced out with a birdie putt because it wasn’t in correctly. I had a 180-degree lip out for par. Now, this isn’t to say I had the best day on my own, because I was certainly disastrous with the driver.

I could not find the face of the driver today. I was super on the heel a few times, high on the toe on some others My swing with the driver is a complete disaster right now. I only hit three fairways with the driver and didn’t have a single drive over 300 yards despite very dry, fast conditions. I hit a 5-wood 280 yards today, which matched my longest driver. Granted, one was uphill and one was downhill, but that’s still absurd and if I was driving it like I can I could have ripped some well past 320 with how much roll out I was getting today.

The bigger problem than length was the huge right miss. I was blasting it off the planet to the right. It happened a little with the irons, but those misses were still decent (aside from the one on a par 3 that got that unlucky bounce mentioned previously that rolled away 60 yards). I put 4 balls in the hazard thanks to huge blocks and push-fades and push-slices. On the 6th, I still miraculously made a par 5 thanks to a good banana cut 4-iron around some trees and a stuffed 60-degree to 2 feet. All the rest resulted in double bogeys.

Thankfully, I was good off the tee today with 3-wood and 5-wood. I don’t believe I missed a single fairway with those. I hit them all off the deck which was a good experiment and something I will continue to do. I also kept my score in check with good iron striking. I was hammering the ball. I was basically playing a club down from my “normal” distances I was hitting it so far with my irons. It was warm (85 degrees), but I think most of it was strike. I have basically figured out my wedge distances as well. I stuffed some wedges in real close, and was pretty good around the greens as well.

Putting was an adventure, but good overall. I made some poor lag putts worrying about the fast greens, but I also drained some long ones. I didn’t have any three-putts which is an accomplishment on those Nicklaus multi-tiered greens. My lone birdie of the day came on a 20-footer after a good 7-iron to pin-high left on the par 3 8th. (The one that hit the pin on the par 5 14th arguably could be counted with the current corona rules, but it was a little quick and I’m not 100-percent sure I wouldn’t have done the same thing putting with the pin in with no foam even if I could technically take it out.)

I definitely could have broken 80 today if I just put away the driver. If I was in a comp or betting or had some reason to shoot lower, I probably would have. But, because this is an exercise in getting better, I kept going to the driver trying to find it. I never did. On 18, I hit my worst drive of the day — a huge slicing push that bounced into the water nearly 100 yards right of my intended line. Over the last week or two, I haven’t been closing the face and then the errors compound after I see the first one go right. For a long time, my biggest swing thought with the driver was closing the face to stop a slice. Then I fixed it and moved on to getting a fuller turn for more speed and making sure my ground interaction was good. I even added back in a baby cut and switched my driver settings because I was drawing the ball too much for the first time in my life. The funny thing is everything else in my bag I can move how I want. Something about teeing it up with driver breaks my swing. I think I am going to work on the basics before my next round and then try to get out of my head.