Bill and Larry Golf Bet year 3

The matchup to decide the best golfer between the two of us for 2009 started today. 10 rounds of golf. Each round will be stroke play. Each win counts as one point. The first one to 5.5 points win the bet. Bill had made some noise a couple of weeks ago about not betting any money on it due to the economy. I of course, questioned his man hood and goaded him into agreeing to a $500 wager. He finally accepted.

Due to the crowd of players today we started on hole number 10. In a surprise, Bill's 5 year old son, joined us for the first 7 holes. I knew this might be a distraction for Bill and sure enough, he had a couple of bad holes when he got distracted.

Bill had jumped out to an early lead as I bogeyed the first 4 holes. My first stroke of luck happened on 14. I hit a 3 wood left, that hit a tree and managed to stay in bounds by about 6 inches. I had to lay up to 50 yards in front of the green and made a bogey 5. The good news was that Bill had hit his tee shot out of bounds and missed the green on his approach. He finished with a 7 to my 5 and I suddenly had a 2 shot lead.

Then I got lucky and birdied the next two holes including number 16 where I sank a 35 foot putt. In the mean time Bill continued his downward spiral by bogeying 15 and double bogeying 16. Suddenly I had a 7 stroke lead after 7 holes.

In my usual fashion I proceeded to give back a bunch of strokes. I got an unlucky bounce off the cart path on 17 and make double bogey. Then I managed to hit the ball in the water on 18 and my lead was back down to 3.

The backsliding continued as we made the turn. To make things worse we had been playing behind a very slow group of 5 old men who would not do the courtesy of letting our foursome play through. It was cold and threatening rain plus the group behind us was losing patience and had yelled at us a couple of times to hurry up. I went back to talk to one of them and let them know that it wasn't our fault. They ended up skipping a couple of holes to get in front of the both of us.

By the time we arrived at the third hole, my lead was down to one. I finally found my groove and went on a run and played the last 7 holes in 1 over par. Bill had some chances to put the pressure on me, but he 3 putted on 7 to miss an opportunity to pick up a stroke and he missed the birdie putt on 18 that would have put the pressure on me to make my 3 footer for par.

The final score was Larry 81 and Bill 83. I now lead the best of 10 rounds 1-0 and the momentum continues from 2008 into 2009.