Craw's Nest Tassie Round 2

I reckon I have played in the region of 1,600 rounds of golf in my life, but I have never played one in conditions like those that I encountered this morning.

The 5.45am alarm call wasn’t great to start with, but by the time I got onto the first tee I had been awakened by the wind. It has got progressively stronger all week, from about 20mph on Sunday, about 28mph yesterday, and today it was around 35mph, gusting up to about 45mph. The round stayed dry until we played the ninth, where the anticipated rain started. The remaining 9 holes were the worst conditions I have ever played golf in. Wind I can handle. Rain I can handle. Rain and wind together are just a complete nightmare. Within 2 holes, even with waterproofs on, I was completely soaked, and the grips on my clubs were completely wet. Trying to dry them with a towel had absolutely no effect as they were wet again within a matter of seconds. By the time I played the last it was just a case of putting out and getting off the course, I was as wet as I could possibly have been, and with the combination of rain and wind, on the east coast of Scotland that also means cold, so was absolutely freezing too just to round things off.

As for the golf, it didn’t seem like a game of golf today. There were very few standard golf shots played. Downwind everything was a little chip, landing it miles short of the green and letting it run and run and run. Into the wind it was just a battle.

Some examples of the extremes; downwind on the 2nd hole I drove the ball 345 yards, and that was with it hitting into an upslope on its first bounce. But on the 14th, playing 168 yards today, I hit a 3 wood that finished just short of the flag. The par 4 17th was a driver, 3 iron and a 5 iron for me to reach the front edge of the green, and the 18th was the piece de resistance. Having hit a ball out of bounds, I left myself 120 yards to the flag with the drive of my second ball. I hit a punched 5 iron, off the back foot and hit very well, and it came up about 40 yards short. That’s a full punched 5 iron a grand total of 80 yards. I swear it was actually coming backwards before it came down.

I scored 84 in the end, and that was down to putting like a demon, I holed several 10-20 foot putts today. A total of 169 over the 2 rounds may not sound very good, but it may well qualify for the last 64. There were dozens of people walking off the course as we finished, and anyone teeing off after 9am would be doing very well to shoot less than 90 on the Burnside course, and 100 on the Championship course. We estimated the Burnside had an effective par of 79 today.

There was a rumour that today’s round was going to be cancelled and played tomorrow, with the matchplay being top 32 instead of top 64, but nothing has been confirmed, and if the greens aren’t flooding (which they won’t) and the ball is not moving of it’s own accord on the greens (depends what the wind does), then I don’t see how it can be cancelled when several groups have managed to successfully complete their round. It is still raining now and will remain raining for the rest of the day. So at the moment I don’t know where I stand, but one way or another hopefully I’ll be playing golf tomorrow, when the wind is forecast to drop down to about 20mph again, and it should remain dry.