Break 80 blogs are back and there are more updates about my golf journey. Where are we today? Francis A. Byrne – my favorite public golf course in New Jersey. If you don’t know how I feel about Francis Byrne, I urge you to check out my review of the course in my Best NJ Public Golf Courses list.

Today was a perfect golf day, no clouds in sight and the temperature topped out at a nice 72º. There were some ferocious winds gusting up to 30mph which I will indefinitely blame my score on as a cop out, but beyond that not even the big man himself could have painted a better golf day setting.

If someone told me I’d start off my round with a GIR on hole 1 and 2 I’d have jumped for joy thinking today is going to be my day. If they then followed up by telling me I would 3 putt for bogey on both I’d have to take that one on the chin and keep moving forward. And that’s exactly what I did. 

What can we take away from that? Dial in the putter and keep hitting greens. 

To make matters worse I hit a ball OB on back to back holes, defiling my scorecard of bogeys and pars. This did a few things; it took me out of my zen mindset of loving the round, the weather and just being out there. It also put me in the mindset that now I have to be aggressive and try to save a score. As any golfer knows that is a mental funeral. After trying to force a 3 wood into the wind on a long par 4 on hole 9, I put myself in a bad spot way right of the green and almost OB leaving myself a less than desirable putt down a large slope resulting in another bogey. 46 on the front to open my day.

I didn’t find my putter until the back 9 where I figured some things out around the green. With a par on 10 and 11 I felt like I was back in my grove. A lost ball off the tee on 12 was a minor set back, but I was able to get myself together and par/bogey out the rest of the round. I finished with a 42 on the back, and an 88 on the day.

Did I break 80, absolutely not but in general I was pretty happy with the way I turned my game around at the turn. Rarely do I lose 3 balls a round these days and if I could have had better control on those 3 holes who knows what could have happened.

Biggest takeaways from the day:

• I am really starting to get my irons together and I am hoping to see some low rounds in the near future
• A single digit handicap might not be too far away. After today’s round were a 12.1
• Still need lots of work on those greens. I need way better speed control, I cannot be 3 putting as much as I do
• I need to be hitting over 50% of those 5ft and in putts. Currently im probably hitting 20%

Onward and upward as the journey continues! Hopefully I’ll be back with my next update later this week as we continue to trend down. As always, hittem long and always fade 👊 ⛳