Currently, my biggest goal here at WGT is to earn the gold award for the best round at each of the stroke play courses. And with Monday nights round in the week 35 single play, I just took a huge step towards accomplishing that goal with an unbelievable (IMHO) 2 under par at The Olympic Club!!!!!!
My card
Ever since joining WGT, this has been one of my most hated courses. Partially because of the length, partially because of the elevation changes, partially because its hard to hold the fairway on some of the dog legs, and partially because some of these greens -- number 13 in particular -- are damn near impossible to 2 putt from any distance outside of 5 feet. But on this last round, everything seemed to magically fall into place. Shoe and Icon had dialed down the VEM, the wind wasn't overly crippling and for the most part I managed to save par even when missing the fairway or green.
This particular round earned me 3 awards: silver Olympic Obliterator, gold Olympic Obliterator, and silver total career Eagles after a chip in 3 on number 17. It lowered my average by almost a quarter of a stroke, and even (at the time of writing this post) put me at the top of the Day 1 leaderboard for my tier, even though I was the last person to shoot this particular score. So as you can no doubt imagine, I was positively over the moon thrilled with how this round turned out. And yet, at the same time, I was absolutely stark raving PISSED because I missed 2 birdie putts inside of 6 feet!!!!!! The first one I over compensated for the break, and then the ball somehow didn't break. But the second was an even bigger facepalm. It was a straight putt, but it was phantom uphill with an ↑0 elevation change and I forgot to give it extra power to get it there. Never up, never in, story of my life. And just to add insult to injury, I had a 39 footer for Bird lip out on number 8. I guess I can't complain about that one too much though, b/c my birdie on #4 was 52 foot hit and hope miracle that somehow managed to drop.
http://www.wgt.com/replay.aspx?ID=674dc3f7-f594-4422-ad44-a227000789d6
That leaves only three more courses on my bucket list: Whistler, Congressional, and the Par 3 best of. Technically its 4, because even though I have the gold Bethpage Rage award, I got it with a 2 over 72 and I'd like to knock at least 2 strokes off that total. Now that I know this course is manageable, I might start adding it in to my regular rotation. I'm not expecting to fire a 2 under every round, but I look forward to playing this course again in the near future. I might be singing a whole different tune once I reach the Master tees, however. LoL.