A busy week

The first at BOL

This weeks golf started on Sunday, when Ellesmere had a match against Romiley in the Bell Cup, a knockout for ladies teams in the Manchester area. Each club has to play the lowest handicapped players of those available so I was a little lucky to scrape into the team in the 7th place. I didnt ply brilliant, I managed to go 2 up early on but at the end of the first nine we were back to all square. Fortunately I had a purple patch and parred the first 3 holes of the back nine to go 3 up. Particularly pleasing was the 191 yard 12th where I put my tee shot on the green for the first time ever. I then received a shot on the 13th and won that hole to go 4 up. Despite, my opponent winning a couple of the holes that were left I held on to my lead to win the match. Happily the team won the mach by 5 games to 2, so we are through into the next round.

The next game was on Tuesday in a Shield team match against Blackley, we played Blackley a few times last season and always seemed to lose the match so we were hoping to turn the tables on them. As it turned out I was playing against a girl who beat me in a very rainy match at Blackley last year. In fairness it wasn't the greatest match and in the end it was down to the player who made the fewest mistakes, after being only one hole in it all the way round we reached the 16th all square and after both finding the fairway, I pulled my 2nd shot left, it ran through the trees lining the fairway and finished up in a ditch, my opponent then did the same thing but luckily for her, her ball hit a tree and bounced back onto the fairway. I took a penalty drop in the trees and managed to get my ball close to the green in 4, but my opponent messed up her chip and then left her next short of the green, I maanged to get down in 2 more shots and my opponent 3 putted so I very fortuitously won the hole, I then won the 17th for a hard fought 2&1 win. Happily the team did very well and we won the match 6-1.

Now, I hadn't been too happy with my iron shots of late and so had booked a lesson on Wednesday, James my pro, spotted a couple of things I was doing wrong, so on Thursday I was a bit more confident for the medal round we were playing. Sadly my very first shot was with a 6 iron amd it squirted right of the tee into a bank, which started me off rather badly, also my driving wasn't as consistant as usual and although I generally didnt play too badly, I scored very poorly, mostly by taking on risky shots following bad drives, although on reflection I didn't really play that badly on the holes where I hit a decent drive.

Too many shots to detail one by one, but here is a brief breakdown of the round

Hole 1, awful tee shot ended up with a 7
Hole 2, played it well got a 5
Hole 3, Poor teeshot and failed poor recovery took 8
Hole 4, hit the green and 2 putts a par 3
Hole 5, On the green in 3 and 2 putts for a bogey 5
Hole 6, On in 4 and 2 putts for a bogey 6
Hole 7, on the fringe in 3 but took 3 more to get down double bogey 6
Hole 8, poor drive into trees ended up with double bogey 7
Hole 9, caught water with tee shot, got a double bogey 5
Hole 10, unluckily hit a tree with my 2nd, double bogey 6
Hole 11 3 good shots but just caught greenside bunker came out too strong and found a tree, finshed with an 8.
Hole 12,  hit the green off the tee but 3 putted,  bogey 4
Hole 13, just short in 2 bogey 5
Hole 14, short of green off the tee, bogey 4
Hole 15, on the green in 3 and 2 putts for par 5
Hole 16, short in 2 down in bogey 5
Hole 17, bad drive, failed to hit good recovery then found a water hazard finished with a 9
Hole 18, good teeshot but just caught branches of a tree anf fell back into ditch, tired again and hit tree again, ended up taking 10.

so I went round in 105 but 35 shots were taken on just 4 holes, the other 14 weren't too bad,  bu tthe result meant another 0.1 added to my handicap which is now at 19.6.

So today, friday, saw me off to Bolton Old Links (pictured at the top), perched on the hills above the town, to play the first round in an informal competition organized on the Golf Monthly forum by some of the members in the North West.

http://gmgolfnorthwest.blogspot.co.uk/

It was a lovely day and not too windy fortunately as due to the location, when the wind blows it is brutal up there. I had a great game playing with two low handicappers, one of whom scored 22 points on the first nine alone with some great golf, although he did go off on the 2nd nine. For myself, I actually hit the ball as well as I have for a few weeks, although I found the pace of the greens very hard to judge, which resulted in 5 three putts and one four putt. I also didn't have the best of luck staying out of bunkers. Nevertheless I scored 31 points off 7/8 handicap, this included 6 pars but also sadly 4 blobs but overall I was very happy with the way I played and unlike thursday I drove well.
I have to say that BOL is great course with no two holes the same and I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone looking for a round in the Manchester area.

So ends a busy week of golf and I still have the clubs Opening Mixed competition to look forward to on Sunday.