Over the weekend I played my first round of golf in a long while, likely since last summer.  My good friend Ken turned 30 on Saturday and a group of us decided to play a round of eighteen on Sunday to celebrate.  I woke up on the west side of town, at Kim’s parents’, just before six that morning.  That’s my normal wakeup time for a work day, but it wasn’t a work day and the time difference made it four in the morning Denver time.  Fortunately I had planned ahead, and already had a borrowed set of clubs and shoes from my dad in the trunk, so I just had to drive to the other side of town to the Hickory Woods Golf Course.

I arrived ten or fifteen minute before the supposed tee time.  It turns out that Ken and his brother-in-law Bryan had told everyone a time twenty minutes ahead of the real tee time.  Well guess who the only late ones were?  That’s right, the birthday boy and the event planner.  I quickly found another good friend, Jon, and then met up with others who would be playing in the group.  Soon enough we were on the tenth tee and were on our way.  I quickly realized that this course was going to be a little tough for me, and I was glad I brought along plenty of extra balls.  The fairways were all pretty narrow and the holes were filled with rolling terrain.  I had some decent shots, and managed to escape the back nine feeling alright.

From there we moved onto the front nine holes, and immediately I was struck with how different the two were.  The front nine was very wide open and relatively flat.  This suits my playing much more, as I was able to lose very few balls, and I even managed a couple of legit pars.  I even had putting attempts for birdies a couple of times.  My worst hole was number one, which I had a quadruple bogey on, but the rest were all triple bogeys and lower.  Compare that to the back nine, where I had numerous quadruples, and nothing close to a par the whole time.  Regardless of the score, I had a great time, and I was excellent catching up with all of my old friends over a nice morning and afternoon.