Wow its been a long time

Hello everyone, I am going to start blogging again on request from my brother. There has been a lot of things going on in my life since I last posted in April. I have been getting into tournaments on the Hooters Tour, I made a cut posting three straight rounds in the 60's (67,68,69), I have met an amazing girl that has truly changed my life for the better, we had 6 weeks off from the Hooters Tour which I came home for the first three then I went on a mission trip to the Czech Republic for the rest and now am back on the road playing golf tournaments. So like I said a lot is going on. I don't even know where to start there is so much to say, so I will start with the cut that I made. It happened in the 5th tournament that I got into in Miami, Oklahoma. The course had experienced some torrential downpour in the month before we showed up, so as you can imagine the course was saturated to the max. The greens were very soft, but because it was so wet there was no roll in the fairways so the course was playing a little longer but still easier with the soft greens. The first round was one of the best rounds of golf I have ever played shooting 67 (-5) bogey free. When I was finished with the round I was feeling pretty good about my golf game and the gift that God has given me. I was a little nervous the second round to make sure that I followed it up with another good round. In the past if I have shot a good round usually the next round isn't so good, so my track record was not really in my favor. I started out with a par on the first hole and then I made my first bogey in 20 holes on the second hole of my second round. So there goes my brain spiraling down toward bad golf, but I was really focused on not stringing bad holes together. So I stepped back read a Bible verse that I had been memorizing, set my mind right and went forward. I made birdie on that hole and finished the front nine even par. I made the turn and preceded to play very well shooting 4 under par on the back nine for a final round score of 68 (-4). This was by far my best 36 hole score, 135 (-9) Saturday's round got rained out so there was a good possibility that it would only be a 54 hole tournament, but the officials wanted to try and get it all in by playing 36 holes on Sunday. I have to be honest I was hoping that we would only play 54 holes, because I had to drive 7 hours to Memphis, Tn as soon as I was done with the round to make my plane flight the next morning. Needless to say we played all 36 holes, I played well in the morning round with a 69 (-3), but then I lost a lot of momentum getting tired very quickly and finished the last round with a 78 (+6). I finished the tournament at 6 under par (my best tournament ever), but because of my last round I dropped from a top 20 to 69 place (boooo). I know that I didn't finish as well as I would have hoped to, but I am still happy with my performance and I am using that to build confidence for these next few tournaments. It's exciting to me to see God really work in my life strengthening me and changing me to be more like Christ. I will post again tomorrow with more about my trip to the Czech Republic.

Joe