The Classic - Summer 2022 Recap

 

The Classic – Summer 2022 Recap:  Fox Hollow

Let’s start with the Good:  We got the round in despite the chance that we would be hit with a tropical storm.  The new season has finally started after what feels like an eternity.  There was grass on the course pretty much everywhere there should be grass.  While the mowers clearly had not been used for a couple of days, there was grass on the tee boxes and around the greens.  The layout is a typical Robert Trent Jones, Sr. design:  challenging but fair most of the time, with some diabolical holes and greens thrown in (Holes 3 & 18 immediately come to mind, as well as the green design on Hole #7 and the green design / pin placement on Hole #13).  There were no birdies on Hole 3.  Shout out to Adam and Dan who both birdied the 18th.  Dan did so from the Blue tees and into a stiff wind that really picked up over the last hour of the round.

Troy and Travis tied for 2^nd at 3 under Net.  Troy shot a 41 Gross, 29 Net on the Front 9, and was in great shape making the turn.  However, it is hard to imagine a hole that sets up worse for Troy’s game than #18 with a long forced carry off the tee and then again to get to the green.  Holes 14 and 17 are also very long Par 4’s that were playing more like Par 5’s due to the soft fairways and wind.  Troy gave 5 shots back to the field on the challenging Back 9.  Travis took advantage of the 4 extra strokes he received by moving to the Blues and avoided any really big numbers that could have blown up his round.  Overall, it looks like he had a pretty consistent day.  Dan birdied 3 holes on the Back 9 to scratch out an even par round and finished solo 4^th.  

Buchert (Hey, that’s me!) shot 1 over Gross, 10 under Net, on Holes 5 through 16 to help overcome a bad start and provide a cushion coming down the difficult stretch, finishing with a 2 shot victory at -5.  The victory is just my 5^th FBGC win and pushed my career winning percentage up to 5.88%.  For those keeping track at home, only JW, Topor, Crum, and Hauch have a worse career winning percentage and only JW would not jump back above me with a win in the next few tournaments.  In other words, despite winning, I’m still a loser.  Thankfully, it ended my winless streak at somewhere in the 30’s and I can go back to losing tournaments without fear of catching JW’s winless streak anytime soon.  Faz has to be getting close though, right?

The Bad:  It was hot, pace of play was slow, and the greens were very slow.  Really frickin’ slow.  Our group had lots of putts from less than 5 feet and downhill putts come up short.  I’m sure Fox Hollow either received a ton of rain Saturday or just expected a ton of rain so they decided not to mow Sunday morning and maybe Saturday morning as well.  This is completely understandable, but the greens were still very slow.  The grass on the tee boxes had also not been mowed, which I find kind of annoying on the Par 3’s.  Looking through the scorecards on the App, it looks like there were a lot of triples and quads.  This isn’t too surprising as pretty much every hole after #1 offers some way to blow up.  Despite the difficulty of the course, there were only two bad pitchers purchased.  Casey and Crum both owed their pitchers to a few holes where they got a little crooked off the tee, went OB, and had to reload.  It appears that the course is fairly rated from a Rating / Slope perspective even though it is quite challenging.

Overall, it’s just good to be back.  Sadly, I’m missing next weekend.  Not so sadly, I am also missing Bayou Club.  I hope you all have a good Father’s Day and 4^th of July.