The Fourteenth At Colonial

Here’s a photo from my 2011 trip to play in the Crowne Plaza Invitational Pro-Am at Colonial Country Club. My pro partner was Stewart Appleby.

Colonial’s Fourteenth is a 464 yard par 4. What you don’t see in either the photo or the hole illustration is that there’s a rather imposing (oppressing) grandstand very close to the tee boxes here. I couldn’t tell you how many people were in it, or even how many people were following us a t the time, although Mrs. GolfBlogger reports that there were more than a few. I had thought that playing in front of people would make me incredibly nervous, but by the third or fourth hole we played, I had tuned them out. I was thinking only about the fairways and the greens. I now think I have a sense of how the pros handle the crowds.

This hole was a disaster for me. I put my tee shot over near the tree you see on the right. My second ended up in the rough left. My third was into the right bunker. It took me two shots to get out of that. The shot that cleared ended up on the back side of the green. I was going to putt it back on, but by that time, one of my teammates was in the hole with a net par, and following the rules, I picked up.

This hole actually was an adventure for a couple of us. One of my teammates ended up along a fence line behind the trees right. His second shot didn’t improve the situation. Nor did his third.