Golfing gods were mocking me...

I just couldn't buy a break. Nasty lies, bad bounces...ah well

I have recognised that it is important for me to hit a few balls and stretch properly before I play. My hope is that by doing this I will avoid playing like a weapon for the front nine before springing into life on the way in. That said there will always be times in an evening when you just need to get out there. That happened last night. Guess what I only played like a weapon on the front five and a lot of that was due to the golfing gods exercising some McIlroy-esque misfortune. This isn't a woe is me rant but on five occasions last night I got well and truly stitched up. I bet the golfing overlords were peeking out from behind the limited cloud cover wetting themselves.

Incident number one the inexplicable gust of wind. Shot was looking good dead on the pin when all of a sudden it just stopped moving forward and dropped like a stone, hit the fringe and spun back into the bunker. I didn't get out that well. Pants.

Incidents two and three were nasty bounces on the fairway that threw my ball off line and directly behind gorse bushes. For crying out loud! A pulled approach on 4 that we saw bounce and the inexplicably vanish into thin air like a David Copperfield illusion was incident four. All this in the first five holes and after a solid opening three points I'm looking at a score of five points through five.

They were having a real blast upstairs now and kicked my tee shot on the sixth way right and just for good measure buried it in the rough. I didn't give my chip enough va va voom and was sitting off the green. At this point I thought enough is enough and using my X factor chipping sunk it for par. Flicking two fingers skywards I padded 7 & 8 as well. Another overhit sand shot cost me a double on 9 but a bogey on 10 gave me 13 points for the last five holes.

Positives are that my driving and chipping are much improved (seriously, if you struggle with chips read the blog post below). My putting from distance is solid but I must spend some more time on those four footers. Pleased with how inlayed and quite glad I used up so much bad luck in one half round. I'll save my positive karma for when the score counts!

4(3), 8(5), 5(3), 8(4), -(5), 3(3), 5(5), 4(4), 6(4), 5(4)