Monday Qualifier Today

Today is another great opportunity for me to get my foot in the door this year.  I'm playing in the Nationwide Monday Qualifier today for the Raleigh event.  I played a practice round yesterday and made a good number of birdies.  It's maybe not your signature MVS course, as it forces some shorter clubs off the tee, but certainly a course I can definitely have some success at.  I tee off today at 1:05

This last week went pretty well, for a while at least.  I shot a 69 in the first round of the eGolf event in Lake Wylie.  The 69 included 7 birdies and 2 Doubles at the Palisades.  A great 16 holes of golf, too bad we play 18 holes…  I would go on to shoot 74 the next day, but with more incident.  I was on 12, sitting at 1-over par on the day, 2-under for the tournament.  Waiting to hit 8-iron in on my 2nd shot of a par-5 when I was almost struck with a tee shot from the group behind us.  This was the third time we had been driven into on the day, and the second time in 3 holes.  I was visably shaken and dumped my shot in a right bunker, made par, and was still rattled on the next tee when I sudo-shanked a 4-iron off the tee into a hazard, leading to a double.  There was no confrontation with the players behind us, as they were too slow in playing the hole.  But I had a long and frustrated discussion with eGolf officials after the round.  And basically received the response, "Sorry, that's too bad, nothing we can do."  Obviously a very frustrating day on the course, being in position to shoot a good score on a tough course and have that sort of thing happen, but I'm over it now and looking ahead.

In the unlikely event I don't qualify today, my plan is to head home and prepare for the US Open Sectional qualifier in Columbus.  I'm playing June 4th, here's my pairings…

7:00am off the 10th tee at Scioto with Scott Piercy and Nick O'Hern
12:00 off the 1st tee at the Scarlet Course, same pairing

Feeling good about the game, think these qualifiers are two great opportunities I'm about to take advantage of!