Wow, what a day! Another warm day with a bluebird sky, a competent caddie to get us through the rough stretches and lovely playing partners... The whole kit and caboodle, not that I have any idea what a caboodle is.... but it included a little wind, a wee breeze to the locals, but a club-and-a-half worth at times.
The issue of Tessie's tees resolved itself when I consulted the conversion guide in the pro shop, only to discover a set of hybrid tees well suited to the purpose. On those holes where she played from the so-called women's tees it was still overly short, but at least it had us in reasonable parity.
Funny what one misses the first go around.... The second green, on the longest Par-3 on the golf course, is far more akin to a Biarritz than I sensed yesterday. Then my tee ball was to the right of the green, and my sense was that it was a more conventional two-tiered green. See what you think, though, as I think the B-word fits:
That's my ball on the front fringe, Madam successfully 2-putted from the depths of the swale. The early going went all her way, as she played well and.... Well, let's just say that I didn't. Remember that field of wild flowers of to the right of the third hole? I deposited two Callaway Chrome Soft X's into the depths thereof, only the easiest hole on the golf course.
This look towards the water features a massive bunker reminiscent of that on the 13th hole at Pacific Dunes:
I must confess that I can't get my fill of the sixth hole with its marina of commercial fishing boats:
Madam won the 8th hole to take a three-up lead, and there were calls for a fork to be stuck in me.... some of those calls coming from your humble correspondent. That 8th green featured a very linksy demand:
I had all of 51 yards in from this spot, but note the contouring of the green surrounds. One could play the shot along the ground or lofted softly, though I chose the middle option of bumping it into the hillock short of the pin. I made my par, but that was insufficient to the task.
I birdied the ninth for the second day in a row to make the turn two down, and clawed my way back to respectability early in the back nine. Nos. eleven and 12 played into the wind, and on the latter I came up with the linksy shot of the trip, at least to date. From 210 yards out, I hit a laser of a four-wood that's apex seemed no more than fifteen feet off the ground, mercifully covering the flag the entire way. Blind squirrel time for sure, but attempting and occasionally pulling off such shots is what makes links golf such a hoot.
No. thirteen turns back downwind, featuring the longest of the forced carries on the course. Our playing partners took two widely divergent but equally effective routes, first Han straight down the middle:
Then Sho with more left-to-right movement on his ball than one typically finds:
That would be his golf ball just above his hands.... Two young Aussies that found their way to New York and Toronto, respectively, and were great company on the course. They headed off to drive the Cabot Trail after the round, and we hope to get a scouting report at the Cliffs today, as they're in the group following us. I'll have to remember to give them an Unplayable Lies business card, as they'll want to see themselves immortalized.
I managed to eke out a 2-up lead as we came to the 16th tee, but there's no quit in our Tessie. The sixteenth is about as good as it gets, running along the water line. First, the bride with our caddie Andrew:
Andrew will be with us again today, but is soon off to pl his trade at a fancy new golf club near Melbourne. A new club that he described as having 100 members and four caddies.... Apparently they do as many as three groups a day.
That sixteenth hole gets my vote for the prettiest green complex:
So perfect it deserves a close-up as well:
But it's more than eye candy, as one can sling a low runner in and watch it feed to that back left pin location. You'd think that it would have been perfect for your humble blogger, but I chose that moment to thin a 9-iron that ran off the back of the green and might still be moving for all we know.
That Tessie girl made a nice little four-for three, so I'd have been hard pressed to even halve the hole, but still. And she made an equally good five-for-four on the difficult finishing hole to steal a halve from me. The most amusing part of that finishing hole was Han hitting the bar/restaurant building with his second shot, which made quite the God-awful sound.
As noted above, we'll get our first look at Cabot Cliffs this morning, the Coore-Crenshaw design that's located a couple of miles north of the Links.
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