80

The title should tell you what the post is going to be about :)

Of course its Golf!

On the day that is Republic Day, four of us drove down a few hundred kilometers to play a round of golf at the Eagleton Golf Club. OK, so it's only 33km from Bangalore, but trust me, it feels a lot longer. Especially after a full round of golf. And even longer if you've refreshed yourself afterwards with a beer or two.

Anyways, I digress. So we landed there and found out that there were not enough caddies for all of us. So the inevitable and unenviable wait…these are the most hated moments on the golf course. So near and yet so far. You're there, but you can't start. Finally after the caddies consented to accompany us on our round, we landed up at the first tee.

For the company that we usually play in, it is more often than not the feeling that we are good players and so we prefer to play Eagleton from the Championship Black tees. After all, we need more challenges than the ones our own game would be throwing at us.

We started with an all par first hole, a rare occurrence. If you had a look at our tee shots, you would have never believed that we all got on (or near) the green in 3 and made our pars. And just like that, the round was underway. I was playing so-so for the first 6 holes and then made two back to back birdies on the 8th and the 9th to finish the front 9 at 4 over. The back nine started very similar to the front and I started feeling a little more comfortable with my swing, but not quite.

Funniest moment of the day was when my ball was on the edge of the water hazard on the 13th hole. I had to stand with my spiked shoes on the cemented lip of the water tank to hit the shot. Only problem was every movement I made would make my shoes slip and as I tried to hit the ball, my feet moved from under me as my club barely touched the ball to start its roll into the water. Penalty!

Ended up shooting 80 (8 over) which, considering that we played from the most difficult tees, is a pretty good score to shoot.

The thing different about this round is that I was carrying my camera with me all the time and shooting everyone's swing. I am planning to make a video on it, should be ready by tomorrow evening :-)

All in all, am happy with the way I played, despite not playing close to my best. After all, grinding it out when you are not at your best is a good sign that there are better things to come when you do hit that occasional and rare peak. And that's what golf does to me, keeps me in the hunt for the next round!