A Twisted Round

April golf in the Atlantic City area is always a toss-up. After sitting at a computer for the winter the muscles are weak, your touch is off and flexibility is virtually non-existent. However, you can go out your first round of the year and play a remarkable round, or want to burn your score-card in disgust. And then there is this round I played yesterday at Twisted Dune Golf Club (Map).

With a day that simply couldn't be beat, I headed to a course that I had the opportunity to play last week and it really blew me away. Twisted Dune is a course that I don't always have the money to play, which is the main reason I have waited so long to play there. But, in spring, Atlantic City Golf course prices are remarkably consistent for the upper-tiered facilities in the Atlantic City area.

The round started off with a bang. My mind saw the first nine holes as the primary challenge and then it would be clear sailing to a 78. Closing the front nine with a blistering 39 I was on my way to meeting this goal. I kept a level head and stayed focused, but after the turn I downed a Kashi Powerbar and a bottle of water I hit the tenth hole.

The tenth is a tricky par five. One thing to remember about Twisted "Dune" is the area between the fairways. As you might imagine, it is covered in "dunes" with thick, clumped, 2-3 foot grasses. A perfect place to lose a ball. My tee shot was great, and the second was lost in the dunes. I had a 12 foot par put that I missed, but a bogey wasn't bad work of the hole with a lost ball. Well, the remainder of the round was the exact opposite of the front nine. At every turn, I was getting eaten alive. The strange part was that I was actually playing pretty well, but for every great bounce I got on the front nine, I got two really bad bounces on the back.

You can walk away from a round like this learning several different lessons. I came away motivated to once again begin the road back to being limber, flexible and strong, a road I take almost ever spring. However, it gets more frustrating each year knowing that a summer's hard work to get in shape will be tossed in the trash once winter returns. What course of reasoning will convince my wife that Florida is the place we should move?

And so the great Twisted dune took another golfer's score and shredded it to pieces. However, a good time was had by all.