It’s bee a slow summer. In fact, I am actually writing this post almost 2 weeks after this round was played. This isn’t turning out to be the competitive summer schedule that I was hoping for this year, but with the leg feeling stronger and stronger every week, it’s starting to fee like progress is getting made. Even if it’s not competitive play, at least getting out is nice. That said, with a bit of consistency in my play, I could go from shooting some OK scores, to really ripping apart a few courses here and there. A great example of this was my round at Blue Boy West in Monroe. The par 66 course isn’t especially difficult, but with it’s small, target style greens, it plays much tougher than some of the longer courses around. So, let’s start with the round and see how I ended up playing this short little course this time around.
The first hole is a short, dog leg right, par 4. On the 321 yard par 4 first hole, I was tempted to play my 17° hybrid from the tee, but with the left to right movement of the hole, I opted for the shorter 5 iron cut instead. It was a good move as the ball tracked to the corner, then continued to turn around the corner and down into the middle of the fairway. It was about as good of shot as one could play on the hole without taking a shot at the green. I followed that up with a solid 51° wedge to the left edge of the fringe and a two putt for par. The second hole plays a bit funny at Blue Boy as the green has a giant plant in the center of it. It breaks the larger green apart into two sections. Playing about 145 yards today, the pin was tucked left of the planter and about half way back on the green. A solid pitching wedge held up a bit in the wind and caught the front edge of the green. Another two putt par kept the round rolling nicely early. The par 3 third hole was up next. I fell victim to the same wind that caught my ball on the 2nd in reverse on the 3rd. My 125 yard 51° wedge flew the green by 25 yards when the wind came up and took it on a ride. Another 51 ° wedge from under the trees rolled out nicely to about 2 feet and I managed to make a par out of the situation, but this was turning into a scrambling round very quickly.
The uphill, par 4 fourth hole plays much tougher than it looks on paper. In fact, on paper, some may consider the 200 yard hold a long par three, but with the defenses built into this hole, it can be a very tough four. Fortunately, the hole was playing closer to 190 today from the blue tees, which made the 6 iron my club of choice for the tee. It’s not often that I hit the ball “exactly” where I was aiming it, but this was one of those cases. My Wilson Golf FG100 6 iron (total club plug!) flew dead on yardage wise with a slight draw right at the green. It landed perfectly about 4 yards to the right (with the line to actually hit the green, this shot would have ended up in the mound in front of the green had it moved 3 more yards to the left. A 60° wedge bumped the flagstick, but failed to drop for eagle, resulting in a tap in birdie. At one under par, I was about to enter the ‘beast’ run on the course. Back to back to back par 4’s, while not difficult, they do require a bit of strategy to navigate well. I decided that I was playing sketchy and aggressive already today, so I pulled the driver for the short par 4. It was the wrong move. I pulled the tee shot left, into and fortunately almost through the trees. My 60° wedge found the back edge of the green, even though my yardages showed the distance being better to the front than the back. A 2 putt par allowed me to escape my bad driving hole and move on to the 6th. Given the horrendous drive on the last hole, I opted for my 17° hybrid on the 300 yard sixth hole. It turns slightly left about 190 yards out, so this selection made sense on so many levels. The ball started a bit further right than I wanted, but it was drawing nicely and just barely clipped a tree about 200 yards off the tee. Not ideal, but it would still leave me a 60° wedge into the green, which was just fine. My wedge came up about 25 feet short of the flag, leaving me a challenging downhill birdie putt. I managed to run the first putt about 10 feet past, which caused me to miss the comebacker for par. I left with my first bogey of the round and didn’t even play the hole that poorly.
I moved to the par 4 seventh at even par, hoping to make a mini-comeback of sorts. Having missed the last two fairways and knowing that there was trouble in the fairway past about 215 yards, I pulled my 5 iron for another cut on the tee box. The iron was almost perfect off the tee, coming to rest about 80 yards short of the green. Another poor approach was my undoing on this hole as well. My 60° wedge found the middle of the green, but on the left side, which had a pretty good slope towards the back. I managed to scrape out a two putt par and was happy to run to the next tee box still even par for the day. The 8th hole played almost as much fun as the 6th did for me. A decent 20° hybrid found the left edge of the rough, though the rough is more like crazy grass here, not the lush stuff that is found at many courses, so playing from it was more like hitting from hardpan. I caught my wedge clean, but it headed left and missed the green. I chipped for the first time in I don’t know how long, and it didn’t work out well for me. My 7 iron chip ran 20 feet past the hole, even though it looked great coming off the face. My par putt came up 2 feet short, and I left the 8th with a bogey. That brought me to my arch-nemesis, the 9th hole. I love to hate this hole. It plays about 132 yards, uphill and it’s just nasty. It isn’t a hard hole, but it just doesn’t fit my game, or my yardages. The tees were once again up on this hole, which created the perfect gap for clubs. The last two times I played the hole, I flew the green, so today, I underclubbed. My 56° never had a chance of getting to the hole, but it did hold the fringe at the front of the green. A very poor first putt led me to take two additional putts on the hole, or translated a bit differently, a bogey to close out my 9.
It wasn’t a pretty nine holes, but I was set to make the turn and start up anther nine after grabbing a drink and mentally recovering from my streak of bogey golf. My 35 on the outward nine was not a good score, but I honestly felt like I played far worse than that, but scored better early on. With the exception of the drive on 4, I wasn’t finding much to cheer about in the long game. My approach wedges were adequate at best and my putting was atrocious. Overall, I was happy to escape with a birdie and three bogeys. I managed to hit 50% of my fairways, and 67% of the greens. Now something else that I didn’t mention up to this point in time is that I was actually ball testing while this round was happening as well. I had the opportunity to take the Aris Golf trio of balls out for a spin while all this was playing out. Could that have had something to do with the inconsistencies in my game, probably not, but you never know. For the record, head on over to www.airsgolf.com and check out their offerings. The Scout is an incredible distance ball. It’s a two-piece design that is actually spinny around the greens – not like Pro V1 spinny, but not bad – where as their Hero ball is a tour ball through and through. In the middle is the Captain, a blend of the two, which makes for a nice performance ball. The Aris balls are all exceptional performers in their own right, and each of them is available at a price that not only makes them a deal, but practically a steal.
My only issue with the entire line is that the urethane covers that are used tend to ‘rip’ up a bit after a few decent shots. Now, I compress and spin my wedges pretty hard, so this may not be an issue for all players, but it was for me. It’s not that I couldn’t keep playing them, but the fact that I could grind the cover off the ball in one shot (the photo above is a Hero after one full 90 yard 60° wedge) made me worried about the long term wear that the cover may take on. Again, this was a non-issue with the Scout and wasn’t as bad with the Captain, so if you are needing a distance ball, or maybe arn’t so hard on compressing them, please head over to www.arisgolf.com and try out a dozen of them that will best fit your game. With that shameless plug out of the way, it’s time to finish this wrap up. Overall, I played fairly poorly, but managed to get a decent score put up there. The repeat of the back nine was up next, and I was feeling like making a comeback and getting myself back to even. Stay tuned to see what happens next.
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