The Country Club at Soboba Springs : Regresssion to the mean?

This past Saturday I ventured a little further from home and took on The Country Club at Soboba Springs. On the land of an indian reservation, this course was in pretty nice shape and probably the best I've seen to date. I found out later that one main reason that was the case was the fact that qualifying for the Mackenzie Tour was going to be held in just a few days. As luck would have it I got to play with two aspiring pros out to get in some practice.

Too bad I left my game on the range, pretty much literally. I hit the ball really well as I warmed up and I had some high hopes for the day, though the driver wasn't near as comfortable as the irons had been. Ends up the driver is really what did me in as I just couldn't get the ball in play off the tee most of the day. Even one of the best drives I hit on the day wasn't good enough due to some unfamiliarity of the course. What I though was a nice drive down the right-center of the third fairway ended up finding a extended finger of the water hazard that jutted into said fairway. My ball landed, took a huge hop to the right and vanished into the murky depths. That was discouraging to say the least.

I ended up shooting 87 on the day, with four penalty shots hurting the cause (two in the drink, one hitting a cart path and rocketing out of bounds). Like last week I only hit five fairways and five greens but with the penalty shots and a more demanding course the score suffered quite a bit. I did hit a number of good iron shots along the way, even a couple of fairway metals did decently enough. The driver was poor and I never made a putt of any real length either. However, the scenery was nice :

As far as those two pros, no, I don't remember any names. I suck at names. I'm sure I didn't hear their last names anyway, though I did see one guy was likely on the University of Idaho golf team at one time or another. And yes, they just mashed drives from the tips without much of a thought, though one of them was struggling with a bit of a hook it seemed. Hopefully he'll work that out by Tuesday. They only hung around for the front nine, leaving me and the fourth in our group in order to hit the range and grab dinner.

As for the elbow, it held up pretty well and gave me no problems so I guess whatever I've been doing this last week helped. The weather here is turning cooler and wetter this week so I might be forced to skip out on playing this weekend, which could be a blessing in disguise. Maybe with the extra time I'll give the elbow more of a chance to heal up for good and not be an issue, especially since I plan on playing 54 holes while in Vegas in a couple of weekends. In fact, I *almost* looked into playing more on Saturday (despite how bad I performed) but I decided to be cautious simply vowed to return at a later date.

So, my plan is to resist swinging a club around for a few days. Later in the week I might go hit some balls and see how it does. If it feels good and the weather gives me a window I might give in and find a round somewhere but I almost hope it doesn't happen. In the meantime I'll continue with the ice and the rest and go from there.