As one of the guinea pig's in Tim's analysis, I thought I'd offer a couple thoughts...
- As Tim noted, #5 at BD completely owns me. It's the approach that gets in my head as I've lost more than one ball in the thick grass on the dune on the left. I also have hit some very bad tee shots on this hole that would be bad on any hole.
- The low handicapper's blow up day on BT was more a factor of fatigue (we had played 54 the day before) and the fact that he was partnered with me that day.
- PD #13 doesn't seem as hard to me because of the hazard stakes to the left. This last trip I made two bogeys with penalty shots. For me, there are many other holes where one bad shot does not cost only a one shot penalty.
- For the three 10 - 13 handicappers in our group, we could all string together several good holes in a row. However, we would almost always have one or two blowup holes "ruin" our scores. To me, it is amazing how many different holes have played that role in my rounds (much less including everybody elses). And in many of those instances, it is the green complexes that deliver the punishment.
RE: Keeping score while playing...Whether I write it down or not, I'm going to know what my score is. For me, though, it is often the pursuit of a score that makes golf fun. Tim can tell you plenty of stories about my trials in the pursuit of breaking the arbitrary 90 barrier at any of the Bandon courses. I have a very high number of 90 - 92 scores there. This shows me how weak my mental game is, but it makes it sweeter when I do execute shots late in a round where I'm trying to meet some goal because I've suffered those failures.