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| Lessons with Uncle Chuck. |
Our travels brought us to Rhode Island to celebrate the wedding of my cousin, Chris, and his beautiful bride, Kerry. The whole extended family was gathering for an extended vacation out east, and we thought this was another great opportunity to play a new course – and cross Rhode Island off the bucket list. Who knows when we'll be back to Rhode Island. Newport National kept appearing in my searches for great Rhode Island golf, and the course pictures looked gorgeous. Newport is a links-style course like our home course, so I was excited to try my hand at little more challenging links track.
Uncle Chuck and Aunt Kathy are my golf icons – they've traveled near and far playing golf. Now that I have officially committed to learning the game, Shawn and I thought this was a great opportunity to share a round of golf with our loved ones. Uncle Chuck is working on the fundamentals of the game with my beloved Godson, Tanner, so he decided to make the sacrifice of an early wakeup call to join us.
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| Aunt Kathy warding off wet. Thank goodness for neon balls. |
The weather is less than ideal. It could best be described as porridge. Not even soup. Soup sounds better than porridge. The temperature is warm, but you can't see more than 100 yards in front of you due to the dense fog. The moisture is just hanging in the air. You are wet just standing there, and when you start walking, it's somehow raining on you, even though you don't see rain. 100% humidity? I think so. Perhaps my late, golf-loving Grandfather is joining us for the round as well, because it looks like we're playing up with the angels this morning. While it was evident I wouldn't see all the great landscape I looked forward to from the pictures, we were up for the challenge of playing what could best be described as blindfolded golf.
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| Shawn launching into the mist. |
Our tee time was delayed a half hour to let the fog lift a little, but we all soon realized this is what it was going to be, so we just went for it. This must mean it's going to clear up be gorgeous for the wedding tomorrow. On a good day, my drives go about a buck fifty. With the visibility at 100 yards (or less), I can't see where my shots are going. Meaning everyone else is really taking a shot in the dark. That also means we have no idea where the pin is either. Did I fail to mention the scorecard is lacking a course layout? *Sigh*
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| When the visibility was a little better. |
I can't tell you what our favorite hole was because we couldn't see any of them, and we all probably played the worst round of golf ever. This round was still an incredible experience because of the quality time and memories we shared together. The lack of visibility led to more lost balls than I care to mention, and a round of golf that took us six hours to play. There were a number of times throughout the round we were each ready to throw our towel in, but Uncle Chuck kept pressing through. Being the young bucks, I felt like we had to follow suit.
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| Uncle Chuck |
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Despite the rain, she's still one happy camper!
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The sun did start to peek through once we reached 18. After that memory-filled round of golf, all five of us went to lunch before returning home. It wasn't our best round of golf, but it is undoubtedly one we won't soon forget. We might just have to go back, after all, to see what it looks
like in the sunshine.
In case you were wondering, the soupy skies set sail, and the skies were sunny and blue for the wedding the following day.
Newport National Website