Day2 Links Trophy, St Andrews

A postponed post from the St. Andrews Links Trophy held a couple of weeks ago. I went over to visit family in rural France immediately after tournament and did not have access to publish the update.

A later tee time for our second round, 14.30pm on the Old Course, and we are looking for a solid performance to make the cut of Top 40 & ties. The final two rounds are played over the Old on Sunday. The temperature has dropped 12' degrees from yesterday's scorcher and an extra couple of layers are required to resist this cold easterly wind of 12-15mph.
Swilken Burn running hard against 1st green Old Course

After scoring a good par round of 71 on the New Course yesterday we continued along OK over the first eight having a few, good, opportunities for birdie but never capitalising on them and then a strong birdie putt from 15 feet on the ninth bounced out of the cup to 2 feet and the subsequent par putt got a bad 'kick' and spun out...resulting in a bogey from nowhere and a front nine of 37. It all went according to plan at the beginning of the back nine, albeit the birdies did not appear at 10,11,12 or 13th and the putts were from no further away than 18 feet, until the par5, Long, 14th. On the green in regulation 3 shots and perhaps 10 feet we managed to commit cardinal sin of three putting and walk off with a bogey 6. On the par4, 16th we drive into the Principle Nose bunker and a double bogey brings our round to a lovely +4!  A good par on the 17th & another par4 on 18th does little to lift the sense of doom I have that we will be on the wrong side of the 'cut'.

The line is drawn, for the 40 golfers and ties, 2 hours later at 146, we are 147. Apparently the last golfer, with the last putt, on the 18th of the Old Course birdies the hole and roughly x10 golfers on 147 mark are eliminated from Sunday's two rounds over the Old Course. Ah well...not to be this year, we did have our chances but just could not get the birdies required to qualify for the last day of the tournament. I am sure many others have equally painful stories to tell.


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