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Hello everybody!
Well, I’m back in the Portland area, yay! I flew home yesterday morning from El Paso, happy to be home, and had so much fun over the past month! Last week in El Paso, was interesting, to say the least. Everybody knows El Paso can get very windy, sometimes even incredibly windy. On Friday, when play began it was incredibly windy. Thirty mph sustained winds with gust of up to 50 mph. Saturday it was beyond anybody’s wildest dreams. We had sustained 35-40 mph winds with gusts upwards of 65 mph. Never have I played in such conditions, and wow, all I can say is that sometimes golf can get to be a little less fun when you are dealing with those kinds of elements.
On Friday I played extremely well, considering the circumstances. I tee off at around 2 PM and all afternoon we dealt with a good 3-4 club wind, sometimes even more. I was +1 through 9 holes, and really felt good about the round. I was playing with confidence, hitting great shots, and really keeping my game under control. On the par five 15th, I sat 85 yards from the pin and put my pitching wedge to 15 feet. I proceeded to four-putt. Extremely disappointing considering I only made one bad stroke and the wind just seemed to continue to blow my ball off line. So I turned to the par three 16th, in hopes of getting a shot back. I put my 4-iron in the greenside bunker and got it out to about 5 feet. Again, I had problems dealing with the wind and three-putt. Going from somewhere near the Top 15 to the middle of the pack,…..again. When I finished at 77 I was extremely disappointed because I had played so much better than that all day. But I let it go, and realized that I had made some drastic improvements and that I would have a good chance at posting a score on Saturday morning that would definitely be good enough to make the cut.
Little did I know…..Saturday morning was horrendous. Wind speeds were up again, and play got to a point where it was nearly impossible to understand why we were still on the golf course. At 1:30 p.m., after we had finished 15 holes, the horn sounded and we were pulled off the course. All of us had the same question. Why now? We had played all day in these awful conditions, and now, with three holes remaining we were told that play would be suspended until Sunday morning. I sat in the clubhouse weighing my options. I was +10 through 15 holes, I really hadn’t played poorly, but I knew that even if I birdied 16, 17, and 18, I wouldn’t make the cut. You see, almost half the field hadn’t teed off yet, leaving them to play their entire 2nd round in ideal conditions on Sunday morning. Scores would be much lower and because of it the cut was going to be somewhere around +9 or +10. So I decided that rather than return at 6:45 a.m. to play three holes and miss the only flight that would get me home on Sunday, I would withdraw, and head home.
So, now, I’m home, and find myself to still be bothered by the Tour’s decisions on Saturday afternoon. A lot of girls including myself had no chance at making the cut when the other half of the field that we were competing against wouldn’t be playing in anywhere near similar conditions. Unfair? I think so. Could I do anything about it? Not really, so I did the only thing that made sense to me. Got out of the situation as quickly as possible.
I had such a wonderful month on the road, and can’t even begin to explain how much I’ve learned. I really look forward to meeting up with the Tour in Chicago in mid June. For now though, I will be qualifying for the US Women’s Open in a week and then will be taking a little time off to get my wisdom teeth pulled….fun, fun. 
I will be spending a good amount of time at Pumpkin Ridge over the next month, working hard on my game, as well as putting quite a bit of time in at the gym. (Sharon, the workouts are going really well!)
If anybody would like any further details or has any question, I welcome you to get in touch with me! Thank you so much for all of your support! I will be in touch after US Women’s Open Qualifying.
Take Care!
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