Heh, these recaps take a lot longer to write than I expected, so after this one, I'm going to be very brief.
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--Day 3--
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Day 3 was a blast even though it was the worst weather we had all week. We played at a place called The Ranch, a relatively new course in San Jose. I hadn't played this course before, but it has a reputation of the toughest course in the area, and I'd have to say that it didn't disappoint. One review I found suggested to bring as many balls as your handicap and be prepared to lose them all.
When we arrived, it was drizzling, cold, and very windy. The staff warned us that the course was playing even more difficult than usual, so if the wind was too much, to just move up from the white to the red tees. Naturally, since we're fools and there was no one behind us, we played the blues, which has a 71.3 course/147 slope.
This was easily the craziest, most tricked-up course I've ever played. Almost every hole had a forced carry off the tee, but it was made even more difficult because of severe elevation changes and angled fairways, so it was a guessing game as to which club to use off the tee that would carry the hazard, but not go through the fairway into an environmentally sensitive area, all with a major elevation drop.
It was just me and my arch-nemesis that day, and we played Stroke Play. We were too lazy to calculate the course handicap, so we just went with the difference in our indexes (indices?), and I got 6 strokes that day.
The match went back and forth all day, and I think I was losing by 1 stroke going into the 15th hole. The 15th hole is their signature hole, a short par 3, with a bunker in the middle of the green. I'd read about greens like this, but had never played a hole like it before. The flag was in a position similar to the picture below, maybe a little more to the right, behind the bunker.
Well, I tried to shake my normal strategy of aiming for the middle of the green for this hole, but it didn't work, and I hit my tee shot right into the bunker in that damn green. At least I didn't land on the green on the wrong side of the bunker and have to putt around it. I proceeded to double-bogey the hole and my opponent parred it.
The next hole was a par 5 and the rain started coming down really hard. Luckily, my arch-nemesis started playing very defensively with half-swings which he's not used to and he racked up a 10 on the hole as I got a par, and the match swung in my favor.
We both got bogeys on #17, and I still had a two stroke lead going into the 18th. The 18th hole was more eventful than it should have been as I put one into the water, but I pulled off a pressure 3-footer at the end to win by 1 stroke.
Ongoing Series: I'm up 3-0 (but the tide would turn...)
