Anyway off we went to the back nine and after squaring the 10th hole of the match but the 1st on the scorecard we made our way to the 2nd hole, a par three downhill of 203 yards, that is 182m roughly. We were 2 down in the match at this point and hanging on. The par three was downhill but playing into the wind today. Our opposition hit off first and to our delight they both found the water to the left of the green!! Matty Griffin was my partner for the day and he hit first, missing the green to the right side but safe, no water there!! I made comment "good work skipper, good safe option" knowing that he would probably win the hole from there. After hearing my comment one of the opposition boys said "so what, you think you can just take it straight at it now that Matt is ok down there!" I replied with "yep, don't see why not?" So a couple of practice swings, set up and hit. The ball never left the flagstick to the murmurs of the boys behind, pitched on the green about 2-3 feet from the flag and casually rolled straight into the hole!! My first ever hole in one in 22yrs of playing this game!!!! Finally!!!!!
I wanted to stop there and then and go and celebrate this occasion but the boys wouldn't have it as the match was on. A birdie by my partner two holes later for a half after I holed a 60m pitch shot in practice, followed by a 2 foot tap in birdie for me and all of a sudden it was all square. Just to finish a good stretch of holes off, I made eagle down the next on a par 5, driver then 7 iron to the green and a 30 footer to start the squeeze on the boys. Chris made a birdie down the next, the 17th of the day to tie it up heading up the long par four last...... I'd like to say that someone holed out or chipped in or hit an amazing shot but instead we all just made fairly boring pars to square the match...kind of leaving a flat feeling about it all.
As much as the match was good fun, today was about learning the course. As you can see from some of the photos, the course is still coming out of the winter, dormant period and so the rough is still really sparse and brown. The course itself is good, not super long or tough but enough out of bounds and trouble that if you aren't hitting the ball well it will jump up and grab you. The greens are its true defence, big and with big slopes making putting difficult if you hit your ball in the wrong part of the green for the pin. I enjoyed it though and am looking forward to tomorrow. There are definitely holes I will attack and certainly some where par is a very good score. With 144 players teeing it up and a cut of the top 60 and ties after 1 round tomorrow, it is go time and there is no room for recovery so you better just step up!! I am looking forward to it and am hitting the ball pretty well!! Hopefully I will blog some good news tomorrow night!!