Larry and Billy Golf Bet Match #3

We played our third match last Sunday. I was up 2-0 coming and feeling very confident.


Once again I jumped out to an early lead by playing the first two holes in 1 under par. By the time we were through the first 7 holes I was up by 4 strokes. It could have been more. On the 3rd hole, Bill hit his tee shot out of bounds and was staring triple bogey in the face. My second shot was pulled left and hit a palm tree up near the fronds. We were looking all around the tree for the ball and could not find it. Finally I looked up in the tree and there it was, lodged in the palm fronds 35 feet above me. The good news was that I could take an unplayable lie and only take one stroke for a penalty. The bad luck came from the fact that this was the first time I have ever hit a tree and not had the ball fall out.


I was cruising along just fine until the 8th hole. It was here that I started to miss my short putts. I bogeyed 8 and double bogeyed 9 to shoot a 41 on the front 9. My lead was gone and so was my confidence.


I continued to play poorly including missing a couple more short putts. The coup de grace was having the cart girl fire up the engine on her gas cart right in the middle of backswing when I was trying to pitch out of trouble on 17. I proceeded to pull the shot left and it landed right behind another tree and I had no shot at hitting the green.


The final score was Bill 83 and I had an 87.


I am going to take a series of lessons from Byron, our teaching pro at the club starting on January 19th. Hopefully he can straighten out my game quickly.