One Moment In Time

There's always an air of anticipation around any golf club on club championship day and Royal Ascot is not different. The first round was greeted by fine warm weather and the course was starting to firm up following a week of sunny weather. The championship is held over two rounds for a gross prize (club champion) and a for a net prize with a cut made after the first round. I've a shocking record in this event and have never made the cut. Time for a change.

I had a fantastic draw playing with my usual partner Mike Stannard, a friendly Geordie, Roger Wing and a guy I'd never had the pleasure of playing with before called Chris Garrett. Warm up went well and I wandered to the first tee cautiously optimistic. The opening hole plays 228 yards and is a par three. The group made what can only be described as an absolute mess of it. Two of us walked off with a double bogie and two of us walked off with a triple bogey. Guess which score I got. I hit a good five wood but it somehow trickled into the left hand bunker and nestled right under the lip. I just about got it out but short, and followed it with a duffed chip. I got it on to about five feet but missed the putt.

I bounced back with a stunning birdie at the par five second hole hitting my pitch to four feet. I hit a good drive at the third and didn't deserve to see it kick left into a fairway bunker meaning I came up short and could only make a bogey. After that I settled down and was hitting the ball nicely and with few dramas. That lasted until the ninth. An agricultural swing was ungainly but the ball found the fairway. With 178 yards left I hit a solid 4 iron but it came up short just missing a bunker.

My short game had been a little indifferent but I hit what I thought was a good chip which somehow ran to the back of the green leaving a twelve footer downhill. It exploded off the putter and ran eight foot past. I missed the return to record an ugly and unnecessary double bogey six. There's never a good time to throw shots away, but when you're trying to make a cut, wasting shots from nowhere isn't going to help. I was out in 42 (+7 gross).

The back nine started well. The tempo was still good and I managed to par the first two holes of the second half. I pulled the drive left on twelve to make a five but as this is stroke index 1 and therefore the hardest hole on the course, according to the scorecard at least, it wasn't an issue. I missed the green left at the 178 yard par three thirteenth. A shame as I hit it well. A mediocre chip left nine feet. I didn't strike the putt well but it dropped.

I was still very much in the mix and close to playing to my handicap although I can say hand on heart I wasn't thinking about the score. I was enjoying the challenge and the fact that I was swinging reasonably well. I hit a poor drive on the fourteenth into the rough. I wanted to hit a low pitch back onto the fairway but hit a horrid shank into deep, deep rubbish behind the thirteenth tee box. I found it but it wasn't appetising. The grass was growing towards the green but to go that way would mean a longer carry back onto the fairway. Going the short route meant the club would inevitably get tangled up and contact and the outcome couldn't be guaranteed.

I took my time to weight up the options and took a pragmatic approach and decided to take an unplayable and drop back by the thirteenth tee. I should have been able to get onto or adjacent to the green. From nowhere I hit a horror shot. A big high cut straight out of bounds. I had no option but to drop again and in the end ran up a catastrophic five over par nine. It blew the card and the round apart. I still had a chance to make a reasonable score, maybe two or three over handicap and the cut but it would be tough.

A par at the next and an acceptable bogey at sixteenth meant I could still make it into a respectable round. However a carved tee shot at the long seventeenth put me on the back foot and the resulting double bogey knocked the fight out of me and killed my chances. I closed with a bogey at the last for a terrible 45 for the back nine. All in all that came to an 87, net 76 (+6) and I left dejected and convinced it was another missed cut.

In the end though I squeezed in so on one hand it was mission accomplished. However the fact that I'm third group out indicates just how far down the field I'll be starting tomorrow. I can't say that the double on seventeen and the poor drive off the last tee wouldn't have happened but the tempo had gone and I was bereft mentally after the nightmare that was the fourteenth. It was a shame as I'd worked hard to recover from a nightmare start and that annoying double on nine.

I have to take the positives and the swing for the most part was very good and had the putter been a little more accommodating it could have been a little better. The short game wasn't top drawer so room to improve there too. I guess I'll need to shoot two or three shots under handicap to haul myself into mid-table but I can go out with no pressure, no expectations and play relaxed golf. Aside from that one moment in time when I sent the ball flying out of bounds I am happy I did as well as I could. It would have been nice to finish close to par and been right in it for the handicap prize and enjoy the that tight feeling in the stomach you only get from being in contention. It might not be all over and the fat lady may not be singing but she's definitely tuning up the tonsils.