So I just flew back from Melbourne and boy...my arms tired. (insert canned laughter) Was a great yet long weekend at the Vic Open. My plane got delayed on late Thursday night and didnt land at the airport in Avalon until 2:30 AM. Didnt get to bed until 4AM and woke up at 730 to go play in the doubles event on Friday. When I got to the doubles course, I realised that I had left my sneekers at the beach house so I played in my crocs...interesting to say the least... I got paired randomly with a local and we did ok finished 5th out of 11 teams getting beat by the Pro teams. (No entry fee for the doubs so it was all 1 division for fun.)
Saturday (Day 1 of Tourney) Got to the course abt 8am and did a quick walkthrough of the course. EXCELENT course: possibly my favorite course that I have ever played. Lots of steep elevation change. Good balance of long to short/ lefty to righty/ open to wooded. Par for the course was 59..
Round 1- Played so so for the first round. Drives were not too bad, but my mid range upshots were rather crappy which didnt give me any looks for birds and tough par putts. Thankfully my putting was solid or else I would have been sunk from the get go. Had no birdies for the round and was feeling like I should have shot much better. Shot 63 for the first round while the leader shot 58. Leaving me about 6th place IIRC and 5 behind the leader.
Round 2 - Decided that I was gonna be a little bit more conservative and use better course mgmt. Try to attack where I could but take my 4's when I had too. Told myself that if i could be smart I could reel tha leaders in and hopefully be on the top card. Now that I had seen the course, I played much better. I threw a few different discs off the tee than I had in the 1st round. It really payed off. Driving was really good which took the pressure off of my up shots. Putting was still solid. Had a nasty rain storm hit with 5 holes left in the round. Winds jumped up from abt 20kph to gusting over 50kph!!! The rain really didnt affect me too much, I was smart enough not to throw champion plastic in the rain, swithced to pro-line(innova) and x-line (disccraft) and that made a huge difference. I had the hot round of division shooting 58 in the crap while everyone else stumbled. Finished day 1 in 2nd place 1 shot behind the leader.
Sunday (Day 2)
Round 3 - Confidence was really high after my hot 2nd round. Decided that I would work on the upshots/ midrange drives again during warmup..EXCELENT CALL!! Started out a little slow, but didnt let it get to me. Played really smart and conservative again. Everyone on the card was shooting abt the same untill the last 4 holes. Finally got my midrange drives to click and hit 2 huge birdie putts on the last 2 holes to post the low round in the division again. I shot 59 while the leader crumbled at the end shooting 63. This gave me 3 shot lead over 1 guy and 4 shots on 2 others going into the last round which was a final 9 holes.
Round 4 (Final 9 holes)
Again started out slow and took a bad 4 on an easy hole while 1 guy hit birdie and the other 2 made drop in pars. At this point I started haveing flashbacks to my famous meltdowns on the final holes which had cost me sooooo many tourney wins in the past and earned me the nickname S.S. JB (Sinking Ship). SO at this point I have a 2 shot lead. On hole 2 i was able to get it back under control, crushed my drive, and made a solid par. Told myself that there was no way I flew out here to fold up now, so I let all the BS in my head go and tried to relax. Holes 3,5& 7 I parked my drives and made easy birdies; hole 6 i took a 5, but so did everyone else on the card (6 was a nasty uphill dogleg left with a semi blind tee shot and a Tightly guarded pin surrounded by 4 trees) and finished of with 2 easy pars on 8&9. On hole 8 I Had a 400 ft+ drive into a 40kph headwind!!!! Threw a turnover TRex that rode the wind perfectly.
End result shot 27 on the final 9 and clinched the win in the 2011 Vic Open in Advanced division by 5 shots!!!!! Now I can proudly say that I have won tourneys on 2 continents!!!
