Last night we stayed in a house that was built in 1780-something. An old house. But it was particularly cosy & we had a great time meeting our hosts, Shelia & Richard Evans and their son John. The Evans are on a farm outside of Auchtemuchty a name a of township in Fife that I could say all day long despite my awefully kiwi accent not working too well with these Scottish place names.
After a lie in until around 11am and a time to catch up on blogging duties, we headed out to our course for the day - Ladybank.
Ladybank is a parkland course set amongst pine trees and heather. It is quite similar in character to courses back in NZ with similar turf and routing through the trees. There are plenty of dog-legs and playing off the general tees we regularly needed to hit mid irons off the tee. If I may share with you a gripe of mine that we are generally not allowed to play off the back tees here in Scotland and are often left playing what could be a difficult golf course, off tees which were put in place before steel shafts were invented. I can understand the rationale of courses that they want to keep the pace of play up, but when your constantly playing 4 iron 9 iron into par fours you don't see the beauty of some of these courses.
That said, Ladybank was a good test because if you go astray you're in serious trouble. Starting on the second hole which was just like being back home with pine trees on the right along a fence line and an incredibly narrow landing area. Generally off the fairways here is not only trees but heather which grabs your ball & if you're lucky enough to find it you're pushing your luck to get it out. I wish I had video'd my efforts on 12 where after 3 futile efforts to hack the ball out I was more than a little flustered & finally took my medicine and chipped out.
The match of the day was a four ball with myself and the crafty Richard taking on the young bucks JP and John. There were a few shots flying around but it was on the stroke one handicap hole, the 9th where things got interesting as everyone made a par 4. A win to the good guys courtesy of Richard's two shots!! Unfortunately our run did not continue and we came up just short on the last hole.
There are some bomb craters in the terrain at Ladybank - I don't recall how they got there but, being the random kiwi punters that we are we re-enacted what would happen if it came mid swing:
Have a look at some of the photographs from Ladybank below, it is a strong track (off the tips anyway) and home to the final stage of the Open Qualifying which puts it in a revered standing over here. Re our scores, I am in the process of putting them all up on the stats link at the top of the screen - so stay tuned for this addition to the site! Unfortunately the birdie counter has not been rollicking along and today we added just 3 to take our tally to 49 + 2 Eagles. Again, we'd love for more people to be involved in this challenge as it really motivates us and is a great way of raising funds for The First Tee. If you're new to puregolf2010 - all the $ we're raising is going straight to TFT NZ and none to our expenses. We're getting by at the moment anyway from the sale proceeds of our beloved Dodgy.
John knocks it up on the par 3 10th hole.
see the heather & narrow shutes. This is 16 - a terrific dog leg left. Although there were about 6 such tee shots which did not favour my shot shape!
Thanks to Sheila and Richard for having us and Ladybank for kindly hosting us at their track. Another good day and 210 rounds of consecutive golf...
Q: what do you get when you play golf every day? A: a hideous golf tan - check out my feet
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