Today was local qualifying for the US Open held at Marietta Country Club in Marietta, GA. I started on the back side first which is the harder of the two sides. My game plan was to shoot -2 on the back and then play solid on the front and then see what I come up with. This seemed like a good plan being that the front is not as difficult and if I could do one I could most certainly do the other. The only curve ball I ran into was the weather. Winds were a constant 15 mph with gusts in the 20’s. The greens were blazing as well and may have been rolling a 12 or 13 on the stemp. For those of you who don’t know how fast that is it would be about two steps below putting on a wood floor. This made chipping and putting extremely hard due to the fact that the wind actually affects your putts!

Well as planned I start my day by shooting -2 on my first side (back side of course). I made 3 birdies and one bogey. I putted really solid with only 12 putts. As I made the turn I felt extremely confident and knew I was right on track. I smoked a drive down the middle, just miss the cup on my second and almost make birdie and remain at -2. I miss both of the next two greens and miss 5 footers to go bogey, bogey and fall to even par. After I accessed my tee shot on the par 3 fourth hole I swung a confident 5 iron right over the stick. After climbing the hill to the green we realized I had only one inch for birdie. This would get me back to -1.

At this point I thought that the birdie would kick start a turn around for me but alas I continued to play poorly on that side. For my remainder of holes I went bogey, bogey, bogey, double bogey, par and shoot 74. WHAT A DISASTER! The three bogeys were all missed 5 and 6 footers. I just received a phone call from a friend who said that 71 will be the qualifying score. Three shots kept me from qualifying. As bad as I played on the back really makes this one sting.

Not qualifying is not what is bothering me. The fact that this is two tournaments in a row in which I have put myself in the mix after my first nine (both of which were the harder side of the course) and then shot myself out of it. I could list excuses here, but I wont. I am going to put it all together soon and play really well this summer.

MY CONSTANT VARIABLE: In my last two qualifiers I have had a target score for the harder of the two sides I played. Both times I hit my target. I think I may have to set a firm goal for the other side. This seems like a no brainer, but for some reason I haven’t done so in the last two events. For my next event I will set my goals more narrowly and hopefully it will prove to be successful.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 12th, 2008 at 10:10 pm and is filed under Golf Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.