After a cold and disappointing performance at the Coppinwood event, I played the Golf Town National Amateur series the following day. This is my first GTNAS event, and I was pretty excited to place in second place shooting an 86 in the B Flight — earned a $270 GT gift card ($160 registration came with a $10 lunch voucher, cart, range, etc.)
The GTNAS events are always shotgun events, so I started on hole 8 (group B). Meaning, there are two groups of 3 per hole at the start (mix of Pro/Am, Champ, A, B, C flights). The good thing is, once you finish the round, it takes less than an hour to know if you have won, and the score updates live on the website so you see a lot of people refreshing their smart phones 😉 Although slow at times, it was a nice day out. If you ever decide to play at one of the GTNAS events, be sure to arrive early as you will not likely get a spot on the driving range (line ups) with 18 x 2 groups x 3 people per group = 108 people at the range within that 1 hour slot when the range is open. I wish I took a picture, it was quite funny because the sheer amount of people almost made it impossible to putt on the putting green (advice: bring some tees, use those as holes)
But all in all, the event was well organized, I really do like their prizing structure where $40 of each player gets put into a pot (so the prize pool is based on how many players per flight) and of course, lunch and cart included always sweetens the deal.
Anyhow, here is my score card: http://golfshot.com/Rounds/Detail/122-9958943-9959078
I will go over some highlights. Remember, I started on the 8th hole.
Hole 8: Hit the fairway with a 270Y drive with only 125Y left to the pin. PW it to about 12 feet. 3 putted, since I wasn’t familiar with the green speed (didn’t have space nor time to hit the greens to practice putting). But, these 3 putts taught me a lesson and got me accustomed to the speed.. somewhat.
Hole 13: I bombed my drive out there with only 201Y left to the pin. It was a front pin, with only about 5 feet from the front of the green to the pin. The green (from far) was a 2 or 3 tier downwards towards the pin, so I know if I went long, it would be a really challenging putt downwards. However, if I went short, I would probably roll back into the waters. So I decided to go Wedge Wedge layup (in hindsight, I should not have been scared of 200Y, that would have been a comfortable 4i in situations without water). Wedging it to the 80Y marker, which is perfect distance for my LW. I chunked my second shot, and it rolled to the edge just before the water. Here the ball sits at the edge and I had no stance. I was able to climb down a little bit, but the ball was about knee level (so I’m swinging like a baseball bat). Two thoughts came into my mind, I could take an unplayable, bring it back to have a nice chip wedge (3) strokes, or I could attempt hitting it out since my swing wasn’t interrupted. It felt and looked like it could be a easy chip out.. however, I was wrong. It landed into the water. If something like that occurs again, I would be sure to just take an unplayable. Anyhow, so I dropped, chipped it, hit the side of the green then rolled to the right off the green into the heavy stuff. Chipped it out of there to about 5 inches to the cup, and tapped it in for an 8.
After a bad hole, it’s best you forget and just move on to the next focusing one shot after another. As you can see, I par the next 5 holes.
In summary, hitting only 6 fairways, and 5 GIRs, I know I’ve done better and can do a lot better. My irons were listening for majority of the time, just sometimes going just a little longer than expected and these greens didn’t bite as much as I’d want them to.
Fun times, had a blast!