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Patrick Sheridan's blog« See all PatPenguin's blogs
US Open T-Minus 2 Days
20 Jul 2017 at 04:05 | Posted in: Competition | Views: 3228 | Comments: 0
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Important to Stay Cool Today at the not-too- early hour of 8am as I swung by Dunkin Donuts for a quick bite and a coffee before kicking off the putting. I was bit surprised to see the volume of people on the course at 8:30 but perhaps it was because people were trying to get in as much putting in as possible before it got too hot. By the time I took a break around 2pm, the temperatures had reached into the low 90s and as I've mentioned before there is very little shade on the course. I saw that most of the Connecticut crew had arrived and were already out working on a few shots. While most of the Europeans, including my friends in the UK, often talk about which minigolf club they belong to, we really don't have the same concept here in the States. So mostly we just align ourselves by geography when it comes to side hustles or bragging rights. There’s already some discussion of a North vs South bit to be had and usually we played for the Connecticut cup at these tournaments where a group of us our present.
I started the morning with some warm up shots on holes where I wanted to focus on the ace shots. It wasn't long before I started in on practice rounds with Justin and his girlfriend Anna, both part of our Connecticut contingent. Justin has been playing quite well over the past two years and is always in the running to finish the top of our Connecticut group. After he and Anna went to work on ace shots, I played a couple of round with Mark "The Highlighter", thus named for his colorful outfits with today being no exception. Eventually all of us would play some rounds. Thus went 5 and a half hours of the first part of my day. We all broke for some food and I stopped by Chick-Fil-A and a solid #1 (chicken sandwich, waffle fries and a lemonade) prior to spending sometime laying around the hotel room. We were back at the course around 5pm and I put in a couple more hours before chatting with a few folks and shooting some videos. In case you’d like to see one, you can check out my ace on 16, which I hope to replicate many times in the coming days.
The putting was much better today. I managed to bring my overall average down for the rounds I’ve played (now up to 16 that I’ve tracked over two days) to that of around where I was in 2014 on this course. It should be a respectable finish if I keep it that way. I’m under on about a third of the holes with many others where I’m just playing a bit over. Aside from a couple of holes where I was getting fairly consistent aces, I would find a way to screw up a different hole each round. I didn’t manage any clean sheets but did drop one 34 along with a couple of 36s today, which made me happy overall. I was also very happy with some runs that I had on certain holes, dropping 3-4 aces in a row as I played them. Made me feel much more confident when I lined up those shots. My plan for tomorrow is another grind of rounds for most of the day but I may call it a bit earlier evening. I guess it will all depend on how I’m feeling about my game. I’ll also be giving some thought about my predictions for this tournament including who I’m going to pick as my winner (spoiler: I’m not picking me).
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