Week 3, Tournament 4

I headed off a little south of Kissimmee to play at Kissimmee Oaks Golf Club on Sunday. It was the first of hopefully 3 stops this week.


I arrived in Kissimmee and just like always, drove out to the course to check everything out and see what little I could learn without playing it. I pull up to a beautiful course, surrounded by plenty of water, canals, preserves, and "wasteland". Immediately, I knew it wasn't going to be a driver day.


After a fair nights rest at the Red Roof Inn, I proceeded to McDonalds to start the morning off right. Having plenty of time to read, ponder, or just watch the people come in, I started to wake my mental game up. I guess waking up at 4:30 for a 10:52 tee time doesn't make much sense. What can I say, I get anxious. I arrived at the course and did my routine of getting a few pointers from Mr. Frank (the head of Moonlight Golf Tour), start stretching for about 15-20 minutes, hitting the range, the finish at the putting green because that's where the magic happens.


At 10:52 I was called to the tee box. We were playing in a foursome, instead of the usual threesomes because of the large turn out. I hit a long, solid drive about 305 in perfect condition, right down the middle, which set up a nice par to start off right.


Finishing a strong front nine at negative two, we headed off to the back. I ran into a little trouble off of 10's tee, pulling a drive out of bounds, but squeezed by with a bogey. A long putt on 11 gave me a testing 2nd putt, which lipped out for a tap in bogey. However, determined to regain focus, I hit a long drive on 12. Somehow it ended up in a waste bunker with the ball situated just right that I had to hit out to the side back to the fairway. Laying 2 in the fairway, I hit a 6 iron from 182 yards and holed out for a birdie. It looked like something off of TV. It hit perfectly and rolled right at the stick and then just disappeared. That will definitely get the adrenaline pumping.


Then up on the next tee box, an issue with a player arose, that ended up with him and another in the group being disqualified over a ruling. Whats bad about the whole thing was we had to about 40 minutes and I don't want to give excuses but I just became stiff and lost my concentration. I had trouble finishing out the round, so I went home with a 78. I came in the top ten but missed qualifying for the big tournament on Friday.

After the round there was a small banquet for us and we played a few holes with glow balls and fun stuff like that. It was a good way to meet some interesting people.

I went to the Jameson Inn near Tampa for my next nights stay, and found a Denny's nearby. I got some sleep and woke up the next morning ready to play.

Bridgewater was a course designed similar to St. Andrews. It had 15-18 foot deep bunkers, a minimum of 10,000 square feet greens and the entire course was rolled. With 3 200+ yard par 3's including on at 285, the course played especially hard since the entire course was rolled and played extremely fast. In simpler words, it was long, windy, and hard. I told Brittany earlier that breaking 80 was my goal.

The course had areas that were labeled as "environmentally protected and sensitive areas". To make a long story short, I hit a extremely long drive right down the middle of the fairway but the fairways were so hard that my ball ended up rolling through the fairway into one of these "sensitive" areas. We were told that if its within two club lengths of the stakes then you could play it as ground under repair, take a drop and hit it. There was a misunderstanding about the rule and I was disqualified. The way the ruling was approached (by a bystander, rather than a player) was not "proper" but those things happen. I was allowed to finish my round since the ruling was on the second hole. I shot another 78 and when I left I was in second place and would have qualified for the big event on Friday but the disqualification knocked me out of it. I am not sure how I finished and don't really want to know. I left before everyone was in. It was a lesson learned and I am a better golfer and person because of it now.

So, I withdrew from the third tournament and headed home. I needed a little time to comprehend what happened. If you would like to know more detail on the "ruling" and the long story, call me.

I won't play again until next Friday, February the 6th, at Palisades in Clermont (the course I played my first tournament on).

I would like to apologize to everyone who emails me and doesn't hear back from me for a while. I don't have the internet so everything gets taken care of on one night. Please forgive me. I'm working on that.

Also, many of you have called and emailed me saying that I should post how much my career is costing. That is an area that I don't want to publicly put on the blog. So, I am going to link a site to a very detailed "register" for those who are interested. If after you look at it you have more questions feel free to contact me and/or my mom, Liz Bishop (850-508-9459, lzbish@aol.com)
That link will be up before long. I will also email all of you letting you know when its there.

Once again, a huge thank you goes out to my family for the total costs sponsorship for last week.

Thanks for the many emails and calls of support!

Glen Bishop
benjaminglenbishop@gmail.com, bgbishop32@aol.com, 850-508-4536

"I never played a round when I didn't learn something new about the game"
- Ben Hogan