Round 3, on the front 9, I was playing nicely and had extended a lead by another 3 shots.
I don’t know what it was, but started to leak shots, hitting poor drives, over hitting approaches and missing putts. I think I finished even par.
Round 4, was better. I felt I was playing well, but each time I birdied a hole, dropped a shot the next hole. Then at the turn I bogeyed two consecutive holes and the rot set in.
On the second dog leg left, I put my drive long into the trees, hit the branches with my second shot and then over hit the green and 3 putted for a double bogey. Managed to cling on to par for the remaining holes, but it must have been close.
Great course and the conditions really suited it. Looking forward to the next one.
So this took me a bit to figure out today. I wanted to play The Masters - Augusta National (a week late as a mini protest). Due to licensing issues, HB Studios is quite aggressive with squashing any references to Augusta, The Masters, or anything related to the tournament. You can’t search for things related to Augusta, they won’t show up (in game), and when they find references to it, they squash it and remove it. The way “around” it is to find a Society that has hosted the tournament in the past, using a non-descript course that approximates Augusta National without actually saying it. Even Reddit mentions of courses that are similar to the Masters get removed…and then I guess the HB interns go find the Societies that host it and kill the society. Interesting stuff.
I did find my way to a society that has a replica of Augusta National - and once you “Favorite” it, it stays in your library forever. Apparently HB deletes references to it, but can’t actually remove the course from the cross platform libraries. Woo hoo!
So…long story shorter…we have Augusta National on the menu for the next event starting tomorrow and running for five days…
Round One will be default conditions…hopefully pin placements are reflective of the ever increasing difficulty of the real Masters event…with Day 4 being murderous and the greens shaved to the speed of marble. I took it easy and kept Round 4 winds at medium and the greens at firm and fast instead of the maximum level of pain. In a bit of a stretch - I also made the swing difficulty Master level instead of Pro ( ). I have no idea how this will affect the rounds…but it could be ugly!
I tried to name the tournament Mudspike Augusta Open and HB apparently has Augusta in the profanity filter. I resisted the sophomoric temptation to call the event the Mudspike Mastersbater Open…
So…the “Master” swing setting is…haha…unforgiving. And these greens. Oh…man…seasickness just looking at them. But, in all fairness to the course and conditions…I just played terribly. I gotta get my mind out of this “strive for 100% power” mentality…particularly on this course. You really have to play a protective game and I didn’t. It was really bad.
Well…a better Round 2 with a +5 round. I suspect that Round 1, which I had set on “default” conditions, is probably set super-hard by the designer…probably more like the Round 4 manual settings. Round 2 the greens are softer, fairways softer, etc… I still hit some bad shots and had two holes that really ruined what could have been an even round. I played the front nine even thanks to an eagle on #2…and sort of fell apart (just not as dramatically) on the back nine. #15 is brutal if you don’t get the ball off the front of that green with the approach shot.
Yeah…those green contours are nuts. And the speed on that default round #1 settings were scary. I wonder if that is pretty accurate with regards to the green contours on that course…
I’m pretty sure Round 4 settings are probably very close to what the default Round 1 settings were other than pin placement. Probably murderous. I’ll try to get a round in tonight…
Well…a terrible but not quite catastrophic enough Round 4 let me squeak that one out. I was uncertain during the first few holes though…at the pace I was dropping strokes I really thought it would come down to the wire…but I finally managed to settle in to evenly poor play
I felt that the Round 4 conditions were actually not as bad as whatever the “default” course conditions in Round 1 were. Those greens must have been on full firm and fast on the default setting.
I’m being measured for my extra classy green jacket…
). I have no idea how this will affect the rounds…but it could be ugly!
