By D.A. Weibring
Last week the Tour took me to Kansas City and the Greater Kansas City Golf Classic. As I mentioned in my article last week, it was a team championship format similar to the Pebble Beach Pro-Am where the amateurs have a chance to make the cut play and earn the right to play on Sunday. I played with Bob Gilder, and we had the good fortune to play with two scratch golfers, both former Club Champions at LionsGate Club in the Kansas City area, so we had two good days.
Bob Gilder and his partner played very well and made the cut. I played pretty good for the first two days and my partner helped me a good bit. I shot 73 the first round with 5 birdies. My second round was better and I shot 69 in pretty breezy conditions. I made a couple of mistakes, but all in all I played pretty well. The good news is that I played better each day and on Sunday I shot 65 with one bogey.
The fun part was, with both par fives playing downwind, I had a good shot at making an eagle at the 10th and 12th holes. On number ten I played a good shot just over the green maybe 15 or 20 feet from the hole into a pretty thick grassy lie. I then I chipped in for eagle. I did the same thing on the 12th hole, playing it just over the green into the light rough. I had maybe a 40 or 50 foot shot and chipped it in for my second eagle in a three-hole stretch. That jump-started my rounds helping me play my way back into a tie for 13th, and kept me under par for the week.
Now it's on to the U.S. Seniors Open in Hutchinson, Kansas, at Prairie Dunes, one of the top ranked golf courses in the country. It's a very natural looking golf course cut into the sand dunes, with lots of high native grass, thick rough, and extremely undulating greens. I think the natives are hoping for lots of wind and high rough to protect Prairie Dunes' reputation. If the wind is up scores will be up. If the wind goes down, the scores will go down. It's as simple as that.
I look forward to playing this week. I've got a little bit of an aggravation in my right foot, Planter Fasciatus, I'm told. I can hit the balls, it's just getting to and from the balls that's a bit of a job, so we will see what happens.
