Columbia Mens League playoffs week 1

Last night was the first of the three week playoffs in the Columbia men's league.  We are playing with John Hawley and Joe Bidwell for the playoffs.  The pairings were established based on the finish placement during the regular season.  John and Joe are fun to play with so at least we have that going for us.

Now on to the bad news.

We have to golf.

I had another trying round on the back nine.  I was having trouble staying down on tee shots and was topping the first few holes.  I really stinks to hit your tee shot 40 yards and then know you have to play perfect to have a chance at par.  I was far from perfect.  I ended up shooting a 47, net 43.  Vigen played pretty much bogey golf (7 of them).  He finished with a 45, net 37. Not too shabby but it is not going to be low enough I have a feeling with the league being rife with sandbaggers and 20 some handicaps.  Vigen did almost win the weekly contest of closest to the pin on hole 17.  He missed by maybe 6 inches.

John played well most of the night and needed a par to shoot 40.  unfortunately he scored an 8 on 18 to card a 44, net 36.  Had he parred he might have netted one of the lower rounds at a 32.  Joe could make it to golf.  Looking forward to playing with him next week.

Hopefully I can get it together next week.  The playoff format is to take the 2 lowest of your 3 scores and use them for your overall net score. At least we have 2 more weeks to do better.

During the round John commented on how the greens at Columbia have once again turned to crap in a lot of areas.  Today I got an email from the Wilderness at Fortune bay.  This portion, from the grounds superintendent, I found interesting:

Putting greens, particularly ones that are built using a sand-based mixture, are in many cases vulnerable to drying out on collars and on higher elevated areas.

He mentioned that they hand water each green rather than rely on their in ground irrigation because the irrigation system provides too even of water coverage and in order to provide enough water to the areas that need it, they would have to over-water all of the other areas.  I can bet Columbia is not hand watering and that is why the edges of the greens on other areas are likely dying off this summer.