First Round Report

Well, first round is over and now it's time to report. I shot 72, I hit 17 greens, 12/14 fairways (the new Pro S Driver seems to be working fine!) and had 35 putts. Now, before anything I would like to say that I didn't putt all that bad. I had 4 horrible lipouts and one normal lipout, so that accounts for most of the putts, besides, I hit some greens on the wrong side (testing those pesky downhill putts I was talking about yesterday) and of course it was hard to two-putt. But I'm nothing but encouraged by this start. I'm rolling my putts well, I'm striking the ball awesome and its a matter of time before I get a good round going and even a good tournament going!

Now about the course. Unfortunately, last night it rained ALL night, so the course was completely soaked. My worries about having mud on the ball were dissipated after I found out that the first round would be playing with lift-clean-and-place rule. The fairways are pretty wet and its all carry with your driver. The greens are in ok shape, they have some brown spots, but I'm not sure why. It seems that they tried to get them fast too soon and scalped them. But it still they roll fine.

I play at 9:30 tomorrow, again with Rodrigo, who didn't have a great round today. He shot 74 (+2).

I'm ready for a good round tomorrow... I hope it doesn't rain tonight!

Ready for the First Round...

Well, I've played 2 rounds at the Manizales course and it is a pretty nice layout... It is a short course, where you can hit a bunch of drives. It is pretty wet (we are in the middle of the rain season down here). The ball is picking up a lot of mud, which is a pain, because it affects the flight of the ball and it is very hard to measure how much. On the other hand, the course will play a little easier with wet fairways, since they are very undulated and have some runoffs towards out of bounds and hazards. It is a short course, I believe it plays around 6,600 yds. The greens are protected by a bermuda collar which is around 3-4 inches long, penalizing errant shots, good thing I played in bermuda grass last week!
The greens are bermuda also, but they are not in very good shape, I would say they are in ok shape. Some are flat, but most of them have a lot of movement to them, and they are lighting fast going downhill.
My tee off time tomorrow is at 9:20am and I will be playing with Rodrigo Castañeda, who is ranked 6th on the money list this year.
I'm looking forward to playing tournaments again and I feel good about my game! I will try to write after my round tomorrow! Cheers!

I made it!!!

Well, I just finished an 9 hour trip from Bogota to Manizales, where I will be playing my next tournament... It was a long trip, but I was traveling with 13 other pros from down here (we rented a bus) so it was a fun experience, well, not really, but it was ok! ;-)

I will be playing my practice round tomorrow, pro-am on wed and tournament starts on thursday. I've never played this course, so I will tell you what I think about it either tomorrow or wed, depending on how much time I have to write....

logging off....