A Great Round At Argue-Ment

Last month my father and I cut out early on a beautiful Friday afternoon to get in a round of golf at our regular course. We both played pretty well, and I was hitting exceptionally well off the tee. I managed to clock a drive on #3 that we estimated to be around 330 yards! It was the kind of day that even the bad shots didn't go too badly, though I can't claim the same about my putting. Above is a picture that I took from the tee at Hole #4, a scenic par three that starts in a horseshoe-shaped hollow and looks out to the farm and clubhouse over the pond. I've always been fairly inconsistent on this hole. I used to always tend to the left, which mostly always resulted in a lost ball. Lately I've been hitting right, where I'm lucky to hit the cart path and more likely to lose the ball altogether. That's what happened on this day, but I did manage to find a couple of other lost balls to offset it. Here's a picture from the tee on Hole #6, which is one of my favorites on the course. The safe play on this hole is to lay up short of the trees and hit a long iron on the second shot. I know this, but regardless of so many past mistakes I always drive away and try to shoot the gap. For four years I've consistently missed, but this year I've been relatively consistent in actually doing this. In fact, put one right down the left tree line on this shot that left me perfectly set up for a short iron shot to the green. Unfortunately I flubbed that iron shot, but that's the game of golf for you. As we came around toward the end of the course we both hit safely on Hole #8, a par three over a pond that has claimed at least 20 golf balls from me over the years. On the backside of the green, close to where I ended up having put a little too much on the swing (a common mental mistake I make when I've looking at this pond), I found that I had a spectator.