Coming off a week where I scored "Don't Ask Me What I Shot" at my Golf Channel Amateur Tour outing, I felt I had a lot to prove to myself. Skills and ability in question, I stepped to the first tee at Dyker Beach aiming to regain my focus and confidence.

This was the first informal event for Urban Golf NYC, my weplay golf group; I used weplay scheduling and blogging to organize everything but the tee time. The day was soggy and cool for late April, but the wind was down and the grass returning to life after the long winter. Dyker is not a long course, but the greens can be difficult to read and the challenging par threes can easily derail a good round. The air was heavy so a lot of shots were coming up short without the expected carry.

After a few solid but unexceptional holes, I hit the center of the green at the long par 4 3rd and rolled in a 25 footer for birdie and a boost of confidence to go with it. Despite this encouraging start, I only hit 5 greens on the day, so the theme was all about getting up and down. Trouble at Dyker is left and right, so I was ok in coming up short on most greens. With the pressure on my short game, I responded by getting up and down 9 out of 13 times -- a pretty good percentage at this point of the season. With only 26 putts on the day and surviving the diabolic closing trio at even par, I shot a 74, beating my previous Dyker best by one stroke.

The shot of the week, fittingly a short game highlight, came on hole ten, a shortish par 4. After a clunky drive and another short approach, I left myself a twenty yard uphill pitch to a short side pin. My lob wedge skipped on the first bounce and rolled straight into the pin and fell for a birdie three. Leave the putter in the bag!

The 1st Annual UGN was a lot of fun, but I'm looking to get more participation for the next time around.