Golfing!

This weekend, my friends Ian, Heley and I decided to head down the road to the golf course right next to the campus. I'd never been golfing other than mini-golf (which I am notoriously bad at) but I was excited to see how it would go. The golf course next to campus is a nine-hole course with good prices for students, so we decided that since we didn't have anything else planned this weekend, we would go golfing on Saturday. It was raining in the morning, so we waited until the rain stopped, and then we headed to the golf course.

Lining up the shot...

On the walk over, we joked about discovering that one of us was in fact a golfing prodigy. Heley had been golfing before, but I can't remember if Ian had or not. We just thought how funny it would be if one of us turned out to be an amazing golfer. (Spoiler, none of us turned out to be excellent golfers.) We got to the course, paid for our tickets, clubs, and golf balls, and then headed out to start golfing. Since we didn't really know what we were doing, we let the two men right behind us go first. Good thing, too.

Heley's shot wasn't bad, nor was Ian's--they both got about halfway to the hole. Mine wasn't terrible, but it was much, much closer to the tee than the hole. After nine strokes, with a line forming behind us, I just grabbed my golf ball and we moved on to the next hole. The second and third hole I did increasingly poorly, scoring an 11 and a 13 (well over par!). But on the fourth hole, I did it in five strokes--only two over par! On the next two holes, my golfing improved a bit--the ball was moving more than a couple of feet per hit, and I was happily in the single digits.

I made it to the putting green!

And then came the Lochside hole. This is the second-longest distance on the course. Unlike the longest though, this hole has the worst terrain I had yet golfed on. The loch is to the left, to the right is a handful of trees, as well as a roped-off area of green that looks like the hole belongs there. Instead, the hole is 132 metres away. The distance isn't too terrible, but from the point where you tee off, there's a slight hill down, before a much sharper hill up to the hole. If you were skilled enough, I'm sure you could easily get the golf ball from the teeing off point to the top of the hill, and then you'd have an easy time of finishing out the round. But, not having much golfing skill, I ended up with my ball at the lowest point of the hole, awkwardly placed so that there were several trees between me and the hole. It took several swings to finally get up the hill to the hole, and then a few more strokes with the putter to finally finish the round for me. It ended up taking me 18 strokes to finish that round. 18! (That's fifteen over par haha).

Now, there were only two holes left. The second to last hole, I started pretty well (I say it's because there was a tee left at this hole, so I didn't have to golf off a turf mat. But on the second swing, it felt like my left shoulder popped out of place. I've always had some issues with my shoulders (my guess is that rises from my discovery at about 6 years old that I could pop my shoulders out with no harm done). But after that swing, my shoulder hurt. I didn't want to hurt it more, so I didn't finish that hole or the last one. Even without playing out the last hole and a half, I ended up with a score of 74 (par for the entire game was 27).

Winding up to hit...and this stroke was perfect!

Before I say anything else, I should say that my shoulder is completely fine. It was just a little painful after twisting it the wrong way or something. With that said, I think golfing is pretty fun. I've never tried it at home, but maybe with some more practice, I could improve on my 47-over-par score. Ian, Heley and I may not have been the best golfers, and we may have been completely showed up by a really, really young boy playing behind us, but we had a really good time, and I can now say that I've been golfing in Scotland!

After we finished up our game of golf, we walked into Bridge of Allan for fish and chips for our early dinner. I really cannot get over how much I enjoy fish and chips. They really are the best. If I'm craving fast food in the States, it's a cheeseburger and french fries. If I'm craving fast food here, it's fish and chips all the way. I'm going to have to find a good fish and chips place back home this summer!

A tout a l'heure!

P.S. Opa, Mom told me that you read this, so I figured the post about me going golfing would also be the perfect place to wish you happy birthday....so, Happy Birthday Opa! Love you!