Well... the overweight, out-of-shape fat guy with a bad foot and an occasional bad back continues to enjoy one of his best seasons ever, despite being overweight, out-of-shape, and spending most of his days hobbling around on a foot that sometimes has him thinking he should just have the damn thing amputated and be done with it.
My season started back in late-March. For the second consecutive year, I decided to once again be one of 12 guys to represent our club in the three weekend series of inter-club play with some of the more prestigious clubs in the Philadelphia region. We send 6 guys to travel to play away at their clubs, the other clubs send 6 guys to play away at our club, and 6 guys stay home. It's matchplay format... individual and team.
Although I enjoyed traveling to play some of the really nice private clubs in the Philly area last year, scheduling issues and time commitments forced me to play all my matches at home this year. It turned out to be a positive outcome for our club. I shot 74 the first day, trounced my opponent. Excellent player, as they all were who I competed against this year really. But having the local knowledge, and our course being extremely tough for those who're playing it for the first time - was a huge advantage that must not be overlooked. Nevertheless, I easily won all three of my matches, shooting 74 the first match, 75 the following match, and 74 the final match. Unfortunately our away team this year wouldn't do quite as well... we ultimately ended up being relegated back to the next level down, after what was only our first year playing at the top level. But all in all - I couldn't have played any better and I had some optimism about the upcoming season, for sure.
Then came our biggest club tournament of the season - the Member-Guest. It is likewise the absolute toughest to win... it's almost like some of our members put ads out in the local papers looking for guys who sport a 1 handicap and can hit the ball 300 yards... lol But anyway, a good friend of mine from another club joined me, and he's usually a very strong player. My thought going into the tournament was to make as many pars as I could, giving him the ability to play loose and make some birdies. I played as well as I could've hoped, but he really struggled on the greens. It didn't help that every team we played in our five 9-hole matches - the highest score of any one player was 40, which was one guy, the last day. The rest of our opponents individually shot either under par or around par every match. Tough division. Especially when your buddy is struggling to make 3 footers. I felt really bad for him... it's $750/team, plus roughly another couple hundred bucks thrown in for ringer scores and skins. But that aside, we had a great time and look forward to doing better next year. It really is a fun event, however highly competitive it is most years.
Then I played in some just-for-fun tournaments... scrambles, 2-man better ball tournaments, etc. did reasonably well, won some cash, got to play some different courses.
Then this past weekend was our club championship qualifier. Which I will detail below, just out of courtesy to those who don't like 1000-word braggadocios essays. I'll try to keep the next one around 500 words or less.