Royal New Kent was not kind to me this week. I probably had one of the better ball striking weeks of the year, and got some horrific breaks that resulted in a 11th place finish. The golf course was fine, but it appears that the place is having some financial problems because there were very few maintenance workers and the bunkers were not raked one time during the tournament. The fairway bunkers are very severe in the first place, and you make huge footprints getting in and out of them. I avoided them the first 2 days, but was in three the final day and had no shot each time. We're talking about being unable to move the ball more than a few feet! I was in footprints that were 4 or 5 inches deep. What a mess. The greens were good, but soft, and some had a lot of slope. I had one putt on the 6th hole the first day where I was about 60 feet for birdie and had to putt up a slope about 7 feet tall. The pin was cut about 8 feet on top of the slope, and my ball got to the rise, stopped, started coming back to me and I had 70 feet for par!. As you can guess my next putt was hit hard enough, missed the next one as well and made a routine 4 putt! I actually putted well, missing only one putt inside 4 feet all week. My lag putting was good. (except for #6 1st day) My short game was good as well, getting up-n-down 6 out of 9 times. The issue was that a few drives were severely penalized, and that led to big numbers.

I am off now until Labor Day, and I will be playing 2 events in Myrtle Beach September 5-13. More after that trip.