It was a beautiful day today MrM. It was clear and the temperature was mid-70's with winds in the 5-mph range with occasional gust 15-20.
I started my day off with maybe the worst double-bogey imaginable when you consider I absolutely striped my tee-shot. I came back solid on the next 2 holes though with one routine par and another fortunate one.
Now though come to the 4th hole. A seemingly simple and short Par-3, I say seemingly because it's very deceptive. It looks from the tee box as if it slopes front to back but what you realize once you get there is that it drops off midway and anything past the middle of the green rarely holds on. Today's pin was right at the crest so anything pin high probably goes over the green and anything short stands a good chance of spinning back off the green as well. Adding to the difficulty of the shot was the wind which had been calm was now in the midst of those gust.
Now many golfers like to take an extra club and swing smooth into the wind. I'm not most golfers MrM. I tend to take my normal club and swing much harder. It would only be responsible to tell you that what most golfers do is generally far more rewarding than what I do in such instances but I digress.
The yardage I got from my trusty range finder was 152. The 150 range is a normal 8-iron and it was my club of choice. With the wind though I had to jump on it or face coming up short. I drew the club back and no sooner than I started my downswing I could feel myself coming up out of it. MrM, when you come up out of the swing you generally aren't pleased with the results. As expected I caught it thin but but just thin, not topped. It left the tee box slightly above head high and it held itself at that elevation till just before the green. It's a sloped green as I said but it is also elevated so the apron is steep. My ball dives into the apron and I know instantly that it is gonna scream all the way across and over the green.
Over the green is what should have happened but on this faithful day the persons playing before us had placed the pin back into the hole properly and the flag fit snugly into the hole completely straight up and down. My ball screamed into the apron, bounce up pnto the front of the green and is scorching it's way across and over the green when it slams into the pin in the most perfectly dead center way possible and then disappeared into the warm welcoming bottom of the cup.