Golf/Brewer Day #9

Yesterday was the 9th annual Bubba/Adubya golf/brewer extravaganza. We left Cottage Grove at 5:45am heading for DeerTrak Golf Course just north of Oconomowoc. After a 10 minute detour due to some poor navigational skills by Bubba we made it to the course a little before 7. Lucky for us the course was pretty empty.

The course is pretty nice looking, enough trees, ponds, blind shots, etc to make it interesting but not super tight or long to make it too difficult. Only thing that bugged me constantly was the lack of yardage markers. I never saw a 200 marker and I think the longest mark I saw was 176. They did have 150 and 100 yard markers but that was about it. Many times we were left guessing the yardage.

I played ok in spurts and terribly at other times. Ended up shooting 43/47 for 90 while Bubba went 50/50 for 100. He probably would have beaten me on the back had he not had a nuclear meltdown on the last par 5 and took an 11. Or if he hadn't missed a half dozen short putts just to the right.

I had a couple nice shots. On a par 4 where you have to lay up short of a creek I hit a 6 iron from 178 yards to a back pin that stuck about 5' from the hole and I made the birdie. Almost had the chip of my life on another hole. After thinning a lob wedge from about 30 yards clear over the green and under a tree, I punched out into the rough above the green. It was a 2 tiered green with the pin down on the lower tier. I chipped just to the edge of the green and it barely made the down slope and turned and went right at the hole and missed by a fraction of an inch. I made the putt to salvage a bogey.

I putted pretty well with the new putter, 1-putting 4 times on the front 9. I did have a couple of 3 putts, one where I was about 100 feet away and the other where I rammed it past the hole too far. All in all, I'm pretty excited about it.

We finished golf about 10:30 and our plan was to head to the game and eat at Friday's grill at Miller Park. Unfortunately we hit some traffic on the way to Milwaukee (opening day of the state fair) and didn't get there till 11:45 and by then Friday's had a 45 minute wait so we just ate from the concession stands (polish and a hot dog). We grabbed a beer and drank it but it was so hot that even beer didn't taste good (oh my god, did I just say that?), so we pretty much stuck to water.

Craig's choice of seats, while a good thought, was not comfortable. We were 8 rows from the field just past 3rd base, which is directly under the sun the entire game. I don't think I've ever sweated so much just sitting still before. And to make matters worse we were situated amongst dozens of Mets fans, including one woman I referred to as "the stalker" who was alone, in all her Mets gear with a sign that said "The Future Mrs. David Wright." As the game wore on she kept getting closer to the field. I was certain she would be running on the field at some point to attack Wright. She didn't, but I'm sure she was waiting for him at the team hotel.

As for Wright and the rest of the Mets, they put an ass kicking on our Brewers, 12-4. They are really looking like the pressure is too much for them. Lots of pop ups in clutch situations, bad pitching, Hardy made an error on a ball that didn't look that tough, and then Yost and Estrada get into some fight in the tunnel after the 7th inning. I still don't know what that was about. They need to get their shit together and soon.

We left in the bottom of the 9th and lucky we did. Traffic was awful when we left but half way home we heard a traffic report that said Miller Park to Moorland Road (8 miles) was taking 73 minutes. Phew, I didn't have enough left in me to handle that. We got back to Cottage Grove by 5:30.

I laid around for a couple hours then it was time for hockey. By the time I got to the game at 8:30 I was ready for some serious nap time. I ended up volunteering to go back on D since I knew I wouldn't have the energy to play up front. We ended up losing 8-3. Our goalie didn't help matters at all, allowing 3 goals from behind the goal! He's really bad and I pretty much gave up trying to hard by the beginning of the 3rd period.

Got home around 11, quick shower and straight to bed. Usually I can't sleep after a game and have to stay up for at least an hour but not last night.

We'll see if I can make it through a full day of work today.