Irish Creek

Just finished my second round at Irish Creek in Kannapolis, NC. Thought I would update the blog while it's still fresh in the mind.

Overall a slight feeling of flatness but at the same time optimism coming off a 73 (+2) & 71 (E) this week for the Southern Open. I played well in parts but 3 double-bogeys over the course of the 2 rounds halted my progress.

Again, conditions were pretty favourable, apart from some rain in the second round. Soft greens and little wind made for relatively good scoring.

Teeing off the 10th, I started round 1 with a couple of nice swings and 3 pars on the first 3 holes. I made a mistake on the par 5 13th hitting my 3 wood 2nd shot into the trees left, punched out from there but couldn't save par. I bounced back well with a birdie at the next (30 yard bunker shot to 5ft). But then, my first double of the day came at the par 3 - 15th. After finding the bunker from the tee, I caught too much ball (yes a bit thin!) and found myself in a tricky position putting severely downhill. I left the first short, and missed the next one to walk off with an ugly 5.

I started to fight back on the back 9. I birdied the first after a nice wedge shot, and same again on 4. But then the round came unravelled for the second time at the nearly-driveable par 4 - 5th. I didn't hit the best of tee shots, a little left (blind from the tee) but I thought, along with the members of my group it would be fine. We got down there and unfortunately never found it. I had to go back to the tee and play another and ended up with another damn double! Anyway, I finished with 4 pars and posted a 73. Just a couple of errant shots and costly mistakes at the wrong time. I sat a long way down the leaderboard so I knew I needed something low in round 2 to make the cut.

I was first off at 7:30am this morning which was nice, no wind and fresh greens. I started pretty solid. I birdied the 2nd and the 5th (got revenge!), but bogeyed the par 3 4th. I added a birdie at 7 after a good approach shot and putt to move to -2. Unfortunately this round was to lose momentum on the 9th tee. My tee shot was slightly pulled down the left, actually heading for the left edge of the fairway but caught a tree that overhangs and kicked left down into the water hazard! To be quite honest, not sure how that happened but I had to accept it and move on. Which I did pretty well, but couldn't prevent the double that ensued. After that, I birdied the 10th which I think is a sign of good character and then a string of pars followed for the rest of the back 9, including one bogey at the dreaded 15th!

So all in all this week was a bit of a disappointment but I'm still not far away. +2 for the week with 3 doubles isn't disastrous. I have some more work to do on the long game and if I can keep my putting up to the level it has been, I will get ever closer to that breakthrough that we are all anticipating.

Cheers for reading

Lee