First ever tournament!

[flopster]

  rkim291968 said:

4 hours?   That's dumb (no offense, K).  Today at day 2 of my 1st ever tournament, I showed up 45 mins early, and just worked on putting.  Spanish Bay was fun (and beautiful) but hard.  Although Del Monte white and Spanish Bay white tees have almost identical difficulty rating, for me, Spanish Bay played 9 strokes harder today.   Some of you know from my posts that I average 32 - 34 putts per round.  I did 44 putts today at Spanish Bay.  44!  That's the worst since I started recording stats. I wasn't nervous at  putting.   The greens were just "diabolical" to say the least.  Green slopes, undulations, or whatever you call it were at extreme.  Holes seem to be always near greens' edge.   3 - 4 times, my 2nd putt ended up longer than my 1st.  Couple of my putts went off green and well into rough.   All in all, it was a good experience.

I played SB some years ago and what I remember was very firm geens to the point of ridiculous it seemed, I never played a course that dry and hard ever before so it was a long day on the greens, I think that was back in 1989 and I think I must have shot about 91 or 92. Just curious what is your home course?

[rkim291968]

  flopster said:

Just curious what is your home course?

Wente Vinyards Golf Course.

The SB green was very fast but the pin locations that day were joke.   Someone forgot to remind SB caretaker that 80 of us playing that day were amateurs with handicap index ranging from 2.5 - 39.   Pin locations were something I saw on PGA tour (on TV), near edge, on top of mound/slope, etc..   They published everyone's score on that day and average score seems to be 8 - 10 over handicap.   That begs the question ... how did they arrive at their course rating?

[flopster]

  rkim291968 said:

Wente Vinyards Golf Course.

The SB green was very fast but the pin locations that day were joke.   Someone forgot to remind SB caretaker that 80 of us playing that day were amateurs with handicap index ranging from 2.5 - 39.   Pin locations were something I saw on PGA tour (on TV), near edge, on top of mound/slope, etc..   They published everyone's score on that day and average score seems to be 8 - 10 over handicap.   That begs the question ... how did they arrive at their course rating?

I don't know why I haven't yet (Livermore is only 30 minutes away) played Wente but I think this next year I'll make it over there, Home is Roddy for me. Nothing is more frustrating than crazy pin placements, my course on #8 green is almost impossible to do a middle pin placement and have it fair but they do it anyways and the back of #14 can get wicked also. How are the greens at Wente?

[flopster]

  Kelzzy said:

Yeah, dude, congrats. My first tournament was in Redwood and I won it with like an high 80's.. when I was asked how long I've been playing and responded "a couple weeks" i got some weird looks. Hahahaha. But they sucked down there, the real competition is down here.

Really, how many other players were there? I think one of my fellow members nephew lives near there and plays golf.

[rkim291968]

  flopster said:

How are the greens at Wente?

Well maintained and on a faster side, no huge slopes but have enough breaks.  Number of holes have optical illusion effect where it's hard to tell which way the ball breaks.  Except for few holes, all greens are well protected by bunkers, and OB areas.   For your handicap, it should not be a big issue.   But fellow members with low HI & staff told me that the course plays 2 - 3 stroke more difficult than its rating.  Everyone's HI goes up by about 2 points when posting numbers from this course.  Mine did, too.   I think it's the sole reason why I did well on my 1st ever tourney.  Sandbagging unintentionally ...