This weekend I went on a bit of a golf binge. The annual Girard memorial calcutta was this weekend at The Links at Northfork in Ramsey. I was able to work some extra hours Monday-Wednesday so that I could take Thursday afternoon and Friday off to play some warm up rounds at The Links.
On Thursday I went out to the course by myself and had gorgeous weather to play. The course was not too busy but unfortunately I got stuck behind the slowest twosome around. Apparently they had money on the round and kept apologizing for their slowness, but never offering to let me play through until the ninth hole. Because of the slow play in front of us a single caught me after only the first hole while I was waiting on the second tee. We decided to pair up. I forget the gentleman's last name but his first name was jay and he was a member at the course. he said he plays every day, at least nine holes after work. On Thursday he was off for the week so he thought he would come out and play a quick round. Too bad we were not able to play that quickly. Despite the putrid slowness of our round, I must have been inspired by Jay's excellent play. I shot a 41 on the front with nothing worse than a bogey on the card. 4 pars and 5 bogeys. On the back I ended up nearly eagling the short par 5 10th and had a tap in bird. I parred 11 and then chipped in on 12 for another bird. On 13 I had another easy regulation par. So through 4 on the back I was 2 under for the side. Unfortunately I ended up going on a bogey train after that and finished with 5 straight for a back 39, giving me an 80.
Feeling confident from my first round I returned on Friday with my friends Trent, Kris, and Keith. Keith was a last second confirmation as he had been diagnosed with a blood clot in his leg earlier in the week. After tests revealed the clot vanished he was cleared to play. We had another great day on the course. Usually the winds on the links style course can be pretty fierce and it was very unusual to have 2 days in a row with little to no wind. Everyone kind of hacked it around on the front. I managed to shoot the low round of the group with 42. I had 3 pars and 6 bogeys. On the back nine I had some problems controlling my drives and ended up taking a 44. I could not repeat any of my previous day's birdies and that compounded with the poor tee play resulted in at least one double on the back.
After the round we headed to NE Minneapolis where the calcutta team drawing and auctioning were happening at Jax Cafe. The draft was not bad but the auction seemed to last forever. We did not get done for over 4 hours. This year we set an all time purse record from the auction at $44,000. A couple of teams for the first time broke the $4000 mark. Including at team that had the best player in the tournament's history with a +2 handicap. He was a member of the Nike tour and could hit the ball a country mile and dead straight. We had the privileged of watching him play, as we were the team behind them in the tournament.
Our team went for $1800, third lowest in the tournament. My friends Trent and Kris were A players on two teams and went for the lowest of any teams at $1500 and $1600.
I guess you could say this year was the year of the bargains as Trent and Kris' teams finished 1st and 2nd, tied at -11. We finished at -10 tied with another team but lost in a sudden death playoff to finish in fourth place. It was my first time in the money circle and a pretty fun time. Certainly better than last year when we finished at even par and dead last.
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