What a weird game.
I've played Valley Ridge twice this year - first time about 10 days ago, second time today. Last time it was a bit windy, today it was quite hot in the sun but the greens were slightly softer.
The last time I played, I felt like I couldn't get anything to go right. I was either short or long on approaches, I missed a couple of drives badly (though no penalty strokes), I didn't make basically any putts and had a couple of dumb 3 putts. The punishing holes on the front inflicted their punishment in just the way that the sadist who designed them intended. I left feeling like I'd played pretty poorly and was a little frustrated that the course got the better of me and I didn't make good strategic decisions.
Today, I felt like I was striking everything quite well. I hit a few fat and a few thin but nothing too bad other than my first tee shot, and I recovered from that immediately. I did have some bad luck - a couple of "5% from being amazing" shots kicking into the water for my only two penalty strokes of the day, and a bunch of really good approaches that just didn't get the rolls on the green. But I left pretty happy and satisfied with my play, because I stuck with it and was proud of myself for battling through, generally solid course management, and grinding out a score... the exact same score as the first round.
Weird game.
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