Got The Nerves Out!

So today was my first round.  Let me begin by saying that yesterday's practice round was a massive race against time to play before a huge storm rolled in around 10:00 a.m.  Needless to say, today was mine and everyone else's first long look at the course...and you can tell by our scores!

I ended up the day shooting an 81.  I was NOT happy, however, when I entered the scoring tent, I saw that an 81 didn't put me at the bottom of the leader board believe it or not!  The leader shot a 1 under, 72...so I'm 9 strokes back.  No biggie, right?  It was a tough day for a lot of us!

I have to admit that the nerves got to me the first couple of holes.  Put those together with a couple of poorly executed shots, and the situation only got worse.  I'm going to attribute that to the first tournament of the season.  Nerves aside, I made some course management mistakes today, and definitely learned better ways to play certain holes.  I've got to say, this is a tricky little course!  It may not be terribly long, but it's got a fair share of blind shots and trees stuck in the middle of fairways!  However, I did manage to putt pretty well, squeak out a pair of birdies (one chip in), and pull it together in the end.  I FINALLY settled down and focused on my target:  fairway, green, putt.  Despite a rocky start, I felt much better about my finish and got in some reassuring practice afterwards.

Tomorrow starts at 10:40, and I'm excited about a new round!