Sunday 20th May, 2007: Match Play Round - VGL Pennant Match.
Will try and keep this short, yesterday I played a Match against a fellow 16 marker. The round was a real "roller coaster" for me, both in terms of my emotions through the round and in terms of the state of the match.
As is now seemingly always the case, I lost the first hole with a double bogey 6. I have lost the opening hole in all 5 of my matches this season. Given I own a 4-1 win loss record on the season, I am unsure if I am unhappy about this fact alone.
From there, I would win the next with a par. Halved the next 3 in either bogey or par. I would win the 6th with a birdie 3. Halve 7 in pars, win 8 with a par, lose 9 to a par to make the turn just the 1 up.
Still don't know why, but, I decided to check my score at this point and was surprised to find I had taken 41 strokes to this point. 5 over the card with 2 doubles. Better to this point than Saturdays round.
I would then lose 10 to a par. Lost 11 to a double!!! Hit a poor drive and then in attempting to get back to the fairway, hit a tree and ended up further back. My opponent was having troubles of his own with this hole. So when I was on the green for 5 and he had only gotten there himself for 4, I was hoping we may still half, but, I missed my putt for 6 leaving it 3inches short in the heart. Not happy at this point. Now find mysaelf 1 down after having been 2 up only 3 holes ago. WHY did I look at the card???
I gave myself a talking to and resolved to let the match play out as it would...
12 I would win with bogey 5's. Back to Square.
13 we would halve in par 5's. Still Square.
14 I would win with a tap in par 4. 1 up again, 4 to play.
15 we halved in bogey 5's. Still 1 up, 3 to play.
16 I lost to a bogey 5 after hitting my second ball OOB
, back to Square, 2 to play.
17th: a testing par 3 into the breeze, my opponent's tee shot with a 5W (interesting club selection into the breeze I thought) lands well short of the green. My 4I is dead on line and looks good in the air, pitches just short of the green and plugs in the fringe grass, 6 inches from the putting surface, 10 feet from the pin. Advantage me I think to myself... His Pitch shot checks dramatically on pitching near my ball and stops dead. I'm away and my birdie attempt with the putter starts online, but breaks away left at the hole to finish about a foot from the cup. His chip shot is never on line and actually hits my ball on the green. Unsure about a ruling here as he didn't ask me to mark and I didn't offer. The result was that we were both left with much the same putt. He was happy for me to putt first, as was I it should be said, and I knocked it in for par 3 and a win.
1 up again with just the Par 5 18th to play. AND, it was playing down breeze. A distinct advantage for me, given I had been consistently longer than my opponent all day.
18th: Taking Driver and with the honour, I strike it sweetly, it starts down the right edge and takes a massive kick left on landing, finishing centre right of the fairway, only some 170m away. My opponent's tee shot is not a good one and he finishes some 100m behind me. He then hacks the second one poorly and finishes level with me. I play 6I and hit it beautifully, flies straight on my intended line, but it dies off right on the breeze a little and finds the greenside pot. His 3rd from a similar spot to me fades right on the breeze finishing in the second cut about 10m from my ball and a little farther away from the hole. So he is now away playing 4 and I'm in the pot for 2. He blades his pitch attempt across the green and is now lying 4. I have never been a good sand player and was feeling very anxious about this next shot. Thankfully, the fact that he was still not on the putting surface having played 4 calmed me down a lot and I walked into the pot to play my shot. My ball had popped forward out of its pitch mark, meaning I had a pretty good lie and the sand was a little damp, so I figured I could just try to pick my ball clean and I should be OK. My bunker shot flew softly out of the pot and landed on the green and rolled out to about 20 feet from the pin. Now I was happy. His 5th found the green but only 15 feet from the pin. So now I had 2 putts to win the hole and the match. My first putt was on line and rolled out to about 2 feet short, I would tap that in for the win...
Did I say I was going to keep that short...???
Bottom line, I won, my team won the day and we now go on to a Pennant Final in 2 weeks time.
Afterwards, sitting down in the clubrooms over a drink, I checked my card. 41 the front, 43 the back for 84 off the stick with a couple of doubles and a triple. Honestly though, the score didn't matter given we were now off to a final...
Thanks for reading.
Cheers
