The Rest of the Progressive Best Ball Tournament

Written on 8-30-25.

    I am in Room 248 at the Courtyard Marriot in Ft. Collins, CO.  Belinda is resting on the other queen bed, and we just had lunch with Casey and Rowan.  James went to go get stuff set up for Mike Zoccoli’s wedding tonight.  I just texted Dan Spykstra, because we are very close to Windsor.  Unfortunately, we won’t have time to see him, but I wanted to let him know I was thinking of him.  James and Casey are in Room 246.

The wedding starts at 4:00, but we have a bit of time before we start to get ready.

Back to golf…

I helped the team again on hole #16.  Brett, the tournament coordinator, stopped by on this hole, and everyone else on my team melted down.  Was it because of his presence?  The next best score was Marc’s double bogey.  He got a stroke, though, so that became a bogey.  Russell also got a double, but he didn’t get a stroke.  Anyway, I really helped on this hole, and we needed it.  These were the holes where they were counting three scores now.

I got a par on the next hole, and I was proud of that, too.  My approach was interrupted by...

the group behind us.  As I was settling in to take my swing, I thought I heard a ball hitting the ground nearby.  I somehow had the wherewithal to step away, and as I did, I saw the golf ball bouncing and rolling towards my feet.  I split them apart, and the it rolled between them.  Wow!  Mike yelled back at them to pay attention, but they either didn’t hear him  or they chose to ignore him.  

After that, I noticed that I really do have a consistent pre-shot routine, because I had to start it all over again.  I repeated everything from before and hit a great shot to the upper tier.  I got a net birdie on this hole, but that didn’t count because we got a gross score prize.

Now, it came down to the 18th hole.  We all had to get decent scores here to have a shot at placing.  I thought if we could all manage bogeys that would do it.  Mike pulled out of his slump (he had breakdowns on holes 12 and 16) to earn our only par on this hole, so that was wonderful.  Russell and Marc then got their bogeys.  

My drive landed in the right rough again behind some trees, so I had to punch out low.  I did, but I left my pitch to the green well short.  Now, for me to get my bogey, I had to get up and in from the front of the green.  The pin was on the back on the right side, so that was no easy task.  Marc helped me out a lot.  He gave me the line for the first putt, and despite hitting it very hard, it still came up short.  

Russell exited quickly after putting out, because he was headed to Denver.  Marc helped with the second putt, too.  It was from 15 feet, and I saw some left to right break in it, so I aimed just outside the hole on the left side.  Marc said it was straighter than that, though, so I changed my aim line again just like I had done on the birdie hole.  I gave it some extra oomph to get it to the hole, and it fell in.  Phew!  I did not want to be the only person who scored a double on the last hole, so thank you, Marc, for helping me with that final read.

Gotta go get ready for the wedding now.  Until next time…