Daniel plays in his first match of the season

Daniel hits a drive during his first golf match of the season.

Daniel played in his first match of the golf season last week. He didn’t have a great day, but since he had only been playing for about a week since coming back from an injury, he did all right, and his team won the match.

Daniel started out with a triple bogey on his first hole and had five double bogeys on his way to a 15-over pay 51 in the nine-hole match. There were a few bright spots as he had one par and had two birdie opportunities even though he three-putted for bogey both times.

The course was wet so he wasn’t getting much roll on his drives and his iron shots weren’t going as far as expected. He also was having trouble on the greens, which were slower than usual. He had a number of three putts after leaving his first putt well short of the hole.

For what it’s worth, Daniel said he also was distracted at one point by an over-zealous father taking photos during the round. We’ll have to learn our lesson on that one and stay farther away with the camera or at least make sure he doesn’t see me.

Daniel has played better in practice rounds since the match. He shot a 90 over 18 holes and had nine-hole scores of 51, 46 and 45 when he played 27 holes yesterday.

One of Daniel’s goals as he learns how to get better at golf is to eliminate the bad holes which lead to high scores. He also is working on his putting, trying to get rid of the three-putt greens.

His next match isn’t until next week, so he should be closer to regular form by then.

Here is a video of Daniel discussing the opening match of the year.

And for those who can’t get enough of seeing Daniel and I (mostly me) flub up on camera, here’s an outtake. Daniel ends the video with a comment about not using it.

And we’re even throwing in a bonus outtake, as it took us several tries to get a decent video of Daniel talking about his first golf match of the season.

As you can see, I realized that it was heading for the outtake file pretty quickly.