Post by philknj on Oct 31, 2021 23:43:56 GMT
I was on the road at 5:45 AM and negotiated the hairy Route 280 West exit off the northbound Garden State Parkway for the first time ever ... and was honked at only once. 
The next trick was trying to find the shuttle lot in a minimally signed and dim corporate park ... the fog did not help as I missed it twice before finding it. Getting there early didn’t matter as fog had delayed the start of the golf ... just like the day before.
I walked through the course entrance at Mountain Ridge CC and the first player I saw was Jenny Shin walking towards me with her boyfriend. The clubhouse, pro shop and practice green were on my left, while further ahead on the right was the 1st tee box. This venue has the right name ... the clubhouse is the high point while the rest of the place pitches down into a multi-tiered valley.
I didn’t realize until later that they had a double-ended driving range. The “amateur” end near the clubhouse attracted Haeji Kang and another player who hit a few lob shots into the mist, but they lost interest quickly and left. The downhill 10th hole was a sight to see ... although there was nothing to see, except pea soup that would have shrouded Jack the Ripper in old London.
They had a good-sized free food sampler area ... “healthy” drinks and snacks from brands I never heard of before. Ever have cauliflower tortilla chips? They don’t taste like much of anything, but they’re good for you!
There was no official announcement for spectators on when play would start. The players were given more information, although not terribly helpful, per comments Bronte Law made to a couple of gal pals: “They said it would be a 15-minute delay, then they added another 15, and another 15 ... it’s cumulative. I could have been putting that time to good use.”
Many other players were making good use of their time on practice green. A Lim Kim was near the spectator entrance going through some elastic band stretches, per the direction of an Asian guy who had the look of a fitness trainer. I’ve heard of swing gurus showing up at tournaments, but not physio people ... maybe he is part of her regular entourage, who knows.
Ten threesomes had not completed Round One on Thursday and they included a player I wanted to follow, super am Amari Avery (playing with Sarah Jane Smith and Mind Muangkhumsakul).
Amari Avery practices on the putting green as fog delays the start of the second round of the Cognizant Founders Cup LPGA golf tournament, Friday, Oct. 8, 2021, in West Caldwell, N.J. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)
Before the early thirty started heading for the golf carts, I started trudging through wet grass to get in position at the par-4 14th hole. Drives were measured here, although it was not ideal as it was a little uphill and a bunker on the left ran along the fairway about 240-250 yards out. Amari hit it 250 and was usually the longest in the group. Smith was the second longest and Mind (wore two gloves) was third. Amari’s first putt was quite short, but made par.
The par-5 15th (487 yards) had a deep gorge of bunkers cutting through the fairway near the second shot landing area, although most players of this caliber would not be affected by it. Amari sure wasn’t, hitting the front-left corner of the green in two, while the other two players needed three shots. Mind made her birdie putt. Amari had a long first putt to a back-right pin, which she hit poorly ... two-putted after that for par. I think her lag putting could use some work. She finished at #18 with a 76. Smith shot 72 and Mind shot 76.
Pre-fog, Mi Hyang Lee had a 1:12 PM tee time, but clearly it would be a hopeless task for her group (including Lindy Duncan and Wichanee Meechai) to complete Round Two today.
Meanwhile, I had time to kill and joined a good group starting after 10 AM from the 10th tee, Jenny Shin, Chella Choi and Anne Van Dam. All three were under par on Thursday.
Chella was the shortest hitter in the group, which I expected. I was under the impression that she has lost distance over the years. In 2009, I saw her hit it 274 at the 9th hole of Upper Montclair CC. But I was wrong ... after looking up her stats, that bomb must have been an outlier, because she has NEVER been a long hitter ... her driving average has never hit 250 in 13 years on the LPGA. It surprises me because her swing looks sound and she is not a small woman. She bunted, scrambled and lag-putted her way to a one-under score on her first nine holes.
The first video is JTibs’ 3rd shot into the par-5 18th green. The second one is a shot into the par-4 3rd green ... her shorts are different, so it must be from Thursday:
You can hear the airplanes flying overhead in both videos above. The neighboring Essex Co. Airport was quite busy. I wonder if a plane’s radar can pick up a flying golf ball. If anyone’s ball can be detected, it would be Anne Van Dam’s. She put on a show at #18 with her second shot finishing maybe five or six feet from the hole ... made the putt for eagle. There were only two eagles there during the first two rounds; Mel Reid had the other. No. 18 was also the AON Risk Reward Challenge Hole, although I didn’t see much risk there for this field.
AVD was just getting warmed up. The par-4 2nd is the other drive measuring hole and she pounded it to the 285 hash mark. There’s a little bit of a drop-off in the fairway around 250, but she didn’t need any ground gravity help for that blast. She made “only” par and then threw away the two strokes she picked up at #18.
The par-4 4th hole is 436 yards with a stream running up the right side and then it cuts across the fairway diagonally ... oh, and there are four bunkers guarding the front of the green. This should have been the AON R/R hole. To avoid running her driver into the drink, AVD teed off with FW or hybrid, but hit it dead-right and into the stream in the rough. She hit a pretty good third shot from there, but still made bogey. She followed this with a bogey at the par-3 5th hole.
AVD also had the visual shot of the day, which was her tee ball at the par-5 8th hole (537 yards). She pulled an iron from her bag and hit a cloud-seeding draw ... it might have looked like a SAM to low-flying aircrafts buzzing the course. When I reached the LZ, her ball was 15 yards past Chella’s driver. I checked AVD’s bag later and noticed a 22-degree utility iron, which had to be the weapon she used. If she is playing this hole like a three-shotter, then I assume almost everyone else did. There were no eagles at #8 during the first two rounds ... I don’t know if anyone reached that green in two shots.
Shin and Choi finished at -6 as both shot another 68. Van Dam finished at -2 with another 70. The players exited the 9th green, but I could not. The roping going up the hole’s right side stopped abruptly next to a reserved mini booze grandstand/pavilion and the 10th tee box, creating a dead end. Am I supposed to walk 800-1,000 yards round-trip to reach the 10th tee box?! No, I ducked under the rope and walked inconspicuously through the 9th green’s player exit.
The start time for MHL’s group was pushed back to 3:42 PM (I think), so I still had time to check out other groups. Muni He started her day at the par-4 1st hole a little after 2:30 PM, playing with Dana Finkelstein and Elizabeth Szokol. All three made pars.
I stationed myself behind the 2nd tee box to watch Muni’s drive ... just as I saw at Shoprite the week earlier, it was low trajectory with no leakage in either direction. I didn’t follow this group and decided to hang back for the next group with Katherine Kirk, Gerina Piller and Jing Yan. I later learned that this was a mistake because Muni holed-out her second shot for an eagle! Meanwhile, Capt. Kirk drove it 275 and Gerina drove it 260.
I left the 2nd tee and walked over to the nearby “professional” end of the driving range. The ropes were far back from the players. MHL, wearing a matching light pastel green long sleeve top and skort, was hitting on the far-left of the range. An Asian guy with a backpack was close to her space ... as with A Lim Kim, he looked like a physio trainer to me. Maybe it’s a new trend to bring these guys out to the course. Mr. Lee was also there.
I was down the left side fairway as MHL’s group (with Duncan and Meechai) teed off at #1. Two of the balls were not far apart, while the third was 20-30 yards ahead. The long ball belonged to Duncan, which really surprised me. I had never seen her play before and this was the pattern for the day ... the longest in the group, sometimes by a little and sometimes by a lot. Duncan had the Cally Epic driver and MHL had the Cally Maverik driver.
The flag at the par-4 2nd was on the back-left. All three players went long at that pin ... when I arrived there, I discovered that the flag was on an elevated knob with a shaved run-off immediately behind it ... a sucker pin for sure. I was surprised that none of these players settled for the middle of the green instead. MHL and Meechai made bogeys, while Duncan saved par. That was another pattern for Duncan ... she missed a fairway or green on almost every hole, but hustled for pars every time.
The par-4 4th hole was part of a pattern for Mi Hyang ... uncashed birdie putt opportunities. She hammered her drive down the left side of the fairway, leaving her a shot in the 170s. Using a UT or FW, she flushed it directly at the flag on the left. I’ll bet her putt was less than ten feet, but she missed it. As with last week at Shoprite, she had Harry Ewing on the bag, still imploring “confidence” before shots.
MHL stuffed her approach shot at the par-4 6th. I was 150-200 yards away behind the par-3 7th green, so I’m guessing she had no more than three feet, but missed that birdie, too. It was around this time that a club member wearing a MRCC cap dropped by and declared the state of affairs:
The greens are slow and soft ... they never play like this for us ... they're probably no more than tens today ... normally, when your ball goes ten or fifteen feet past the flag, you're left with a treacherous shot ... I hope time will improve them this weekend, but they can't get the moisture out.
For most of the day, Meechai showed me nothing ... was the shortest driver and didn’t have the greatest looking swing, although her looper’s mantra before she swung was, “trust your process.” Her bogey at #2 was followed by three more at the par-3 5th, the par-3 7th and the par-5 8th. She drove it lousy at the par-4 9th, short, left and into the rough. Her recovery shot was well-short of the uphill green (flag in the front-right).
...and then Meechai threw a switch and became a different player. Her wedge shot was all over the pin and made the putt to save par. Next was her first birdie at the par-4 10th. From long distance, she jammed her approach to within kick-in range at the par-4 11th and made an easy birdie ... good timing, too, as it was starting to get dark.
After the bogey at #2, MHL plodded along with pars thru the 10th hole. No. 11, listed at 419 yards, had its flag in the back-right. She lined up on the right side of the tee, perhaps aiming at the left side of the fairway to create a better angle at this pin. Unfortunately, her ball ballooned right and drifted into the first cut of the rough. She powered the ball out and it reached the front-left corner of the green, leaving at least 40 feet uphill. But, there was no “slow and soft” green here ... she rapped the ball past the hole, leaving her at least seven feet slightly downhill for par.
The horn had sounded to suspend play at 6:20 PM, but you had the option of finishing your hole. Meechai cleaned up her easy birdie putt. I can’t recall what Duncan did. Mi Hyang decided to mark her ball with a tee and sleep on it.
On my way out, I stopped at the par-4 17th green where Annie Park (playing with Min Seo Kwak and Pornanong Phatlum) made a birdie putt and three middle-aged Korean women went bat guano bonkers! Although Annie grew up on Long Island, I’m guessing that the ladies were not relatives or friends, but they all gave Annie a hug anyway. One of the ladies gave Min Seo Kwak a hug so she wouldn’t feel left out.
The ride to the shuttle lot was uneventful, but then I made a rookie mistake. Instead of killing time somewhere nearby for 30 or 60 minutes, I jumped on Route 280 East immediately, which was just fine until the GSP southbound exit. Oh my gosh, all these cars at 7:15 PM on a Friday, where were they going? The constant sound of emergency vehicles trying to slip through this mess explains part of it. I’ll have to plan this commute better in the future as long as Cognizant is the title sponsor, which has its HQ in Teaneck, NJ. I wonder if they have many big shots fly in to Essex Co. Airport and go straight to MRCC.
The next trick was trying to find the shuttle lot in a minimally signed and dim corporate park ... the fog did not help as I missed it twice before finding it. Getting there early didn’t matter as fog had delayed the start of the golf ... just like the day before.I walked through the course entrance at Mountain Ridge CC and the first player I saw was Jenny Shin walking towards me with her boyfriend. The clubhouse, pro shop and practice green were on my left, while further ahead on the right was the 1st tee box. This venue has the right name ... the clubhouse is the high point while the rest of the place pitches down into a multi-tiered valley.
I didn’t realize until later that they had a double-ended driving range. The “amateur” end near the clubhouse attracted Haeji Kang and another player who hit a few lob shots into the mist, but they lost interest quickly and left. The downhill 10th hole was a sight to see ... although there was nothing to see, except pea soup that would have shrouded Jack the Ripper in old London.
They had a good-sized free food sampler area ... “healthy” drinks and snacks from brands I never heard of before. Ever have cauliflower tortilla chips? They don’t taste like much of anything, but they’re good for you!
There was no official announcement for spectators on when play would start. The players were given more information, although not terribly helpful, per comments Bronte Law made to a couple of gal pals: “They said it would be a 15-minute delay, then they added another 15, and another 15 ... it’s cumulative. I could have been putting that time to good use.”
Many other players were making good use of their time on practice green. A Lim Kim was near the spectator entrance going through some elastic band stretches, per the direction of an Asian guy who had the look of a fitness trainer. I’ve heard of swing gurus showing up at tournaments, but not physio people ... maybe he is part of her regular entourage, who knows.
Ten threesomes had not completed Round One on Thursday and they included a player I wanted to follow, super am Amari Avery (playing with Sarah Jane Smith and Mind Muangkhumsakul).
Amari Avery practices on the putting green as fog delays the start of the second round of the Cognizant Founders Cup LPGA golf tournament, Friday, Oct. 8, 2021, in West Caldwell, N.J. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)
Before the early thirty started heading for the golf carts, I started trudging through wet grass to get in position at the par-4 14th hole. Drives were measured here, although it was not ideal as it was a little uphill and a bunker on the left ran along the fairway about 240-250 yards out. Amari hit it 250 and was usually the longest in the group. Smith was the second longest and Mind (wore two gloves) was third. Amari’s first putt was quite short, but made par.
The par-5 15th (487 yards) had a deep gorge of bunkers cutting through the fairway near the second shot landing area, although most players of this caliber would not be affected by it. Amari sure wasn’t, hitting the front-left corner of the green in two, while the other two players needed three shots. Mind made her birdie putt. Amari had a long first putt to a back-right pin, which she hit poorly ... two-putted after that for par. I think her lag putting could use some work. She finished at #18 with a 76. Smith shot 72 and Mind shot 76.
Pre-fog, Mi Hyang Lee had a 1:12 PM tee time, but clearly it would be a hopeless task for her group (including Lindy Duncan and Wichanee Meechai) to complete Round Two today.
Meanwhile, I had time to kill and joined a good group starting after 10 AM from the 10th tee, Jenny Shin, Chella Choi and Anne Van Dam. All three were under par on Thursday.
Chella was the shortest hitter in the group, which I expected. I was under the impression that she has lost distance over the years. In 2009, I saw her hit it 274 at the 9th hole of Upper Montclair CC. But I was wrong ... after looking up her stats, that bomb must have been an outlier, because she has NEVER been a long hitter ... her driving average has never hit 250 in 13 years on the LPGA. It surprises me because her swing looks sound and she is not a small woman. She bunted, scrambled and lag-putted her way to a one-under score on her first nine holes.
Jenny from The ROK was rock-solid, shooting two-under on her first nine holes. Not even the bugs that were swarming inside the ropes could derail her scorecard, although she was waving her hand at them constantly and once slapped her own face! 
She told someone that she killed at least three of them so far. She is also hitting her irons HARD ... they will loosen the wax in your ears.
She told someone that she killed at least three of them so far. She is also hitting her irons HARD ... they will loosen the wax in your ears.https://www.instagram.com/p/CVGRZf1Jszd
You can hear the airplanes flying overhead in both videos above. The neighboring Essex Co. Airport was quite busy. I wonder if a plane’s radar can pick up a flying golf ball. If anyone’s ball can be detected, it would be Anne Van Dam’s. She put on a show at #18 with her second shot finishing maybe five or six feet from the hole ... made the putt for eagle. There were only two eagles there during the first two rounds; Mel Reid had the other. No. 18 was also the AON Risk Reward Challenge Hole, although I didn’t see much risk there for this field.
AVD was just getting warmed up. The par-4 2nd is the other drive measuring hole and she pounded it to the 285 hash mark. There’s a little bit of a drop-off in the fairway around 250, but she didn’t need any ground gravity help for that blast. She made “only” par and then threw away the two strokes she picked up at #18.
The par-4 4th hole is 436 yards with a stream running up the right side and then it cuts across the fairway diagonally ... oh, and there are four bunkers guarding the front of the green. This should have been the AON R/R hole. To avoid running her driver into the drink, AVD teed off with FW or hybrid, but hit it dead-right and into the stream in the rough. She hit a pretty good third shot from there, but still made bogey. She followed this with a bogey at the par-3 5th hole.
AVD also had the visual shot of the day, which was her tee ball at the par-5 8th hole (537 yards). She pulled an iron from her bag and hit a cloud-seeding draw ... it might have looked like a SAM to low-flying aircrafts buzzing the course. When I reached the LZ, her ball was 15 yards past Chella’s driver. I checked AVD’s bag later and noticed a 22-degree utility iron, which had to be the weapon she used. If she is playing this hole like a three-shotter, then I assume almost everyone else did. There were no eagles at #8 during the first two rounds ... I don’t know if anyone reached that green in two shots.
Shin and Choi finished at -6 as both shot another 68. Van Dam finished at -2 with another 70. The players exited the 9th green, but I could not. The roping going up the hole’s right side stopped abruptly next to a reserved mini booze grandstand/pavilion and the 10th tee box, creating a dead end. Am I supposed to walk 800-1,000 yards round-trip to reach the 10th tee box?! No, I ducked under the rope and walked inconspicuously through the 9th green’s player exit.
The start time for MHL’s group was pushed back to 3:42 PM (I think), so I still had time to check out other groups. Muni He started her day at the par-4 1st hole a little after 2:30 PM, playing with Dana Finkelstein and Elizabeth Szokol. All three made pars.
I stationed myself behind the 2nd tee box to watch Muni’s drive ... just as I saw at Shoprite the week earlier, it was low trajectory with no leakage in either direction. I didn’t follow this group and decided to hang back for the next group with Katherine Kirk, Gerina Piller and Jing Yan. I later learned that this was a mistake because Muni holed-out her second shot for an eagle! Meanwhile, Capt. Kirk drove it 275 and Gerina drove it 260.
I left the 2nd tee and walked over to the nearby “professional” end of the driving range. The ropes were far back from the players. MHL, wearing a matching light pastel green long sleeve top and skort, was hitting on the far-left of the range. An Asian guy with a backpack was close to her space ... as with A Lim Kim, he looked like a physio trainer to me. Maybe it’s a new trend to bring these guys out to the course. Mr. Lee was also there.
I was down the left side fairway as MHL’s group (with Duncan and Meechai) teed off at #1. Two of the balls were not far apart, while the third was 20-30 yards ahead. The long ball belonged to Duncan, which really surprised me. I had never seen her play before and this was the pattern for the day ... the longest in the group, sometimes by a little and sometimes by a lot. Duncan had the Cally Epic driver and MHL had the Cally Maverik driver.
The flag at the par-4 2nd was on the back-left. All three players went long at that pin ... when I arrived there, I discovered that the flag was on an elevated knob with a shaved run-off immediately behind it ... a sucker pin for sure. I was surprised that none of these players settled for the middle of the green instead. MHL and Meechai made bogeys, while Duncan saved par. That was another pattern for Duncan ... she missed a fairway or green on almost every hole, but hustled for pars every time.
The par-4 4th hole was part of a pattern for Mi Hyang ... uncashed birdie putt opportunities. She hammered her drive down the left side of the fairway, leaving her a shot in the 170s. Using a UT or FW, she flushed it directly at the flag on the left. I’ll bet her putt was less than ten feet, but she missed it. As with last week at Shoprite, she had Harry Ewing on the bag, still imploring “confidence” before shots.
MHL stuffed her approach shot at the par-4 6th. I was 150-200 yards away behind the par-3 7th green, so I’m guessing she had no more than three feet, but missed that birdie, too. It was around this time that a club member wearing a MRCC cap dropped by and declared the state of affairs:
The greens are slow and soft ... they never play like this for us ... they're probably no more than tens today ... normally, when your ball goes ten or fifteen feet past the flag, you're left with a treacherous shot ... I hope time will improve them this weekend, but they can't get the moisture out.
For most of the day, Meechai showed me nothing ... was the shortest driver and didn’t have the greatest looking swing, although her looper’s mantra before she swung was, “trust your process.” Her bogey at #2 was followed by three more at the par-3 5th, the par-3 7th and the par-5 8th. She drove it lousy at the par-4 9th, short, left and into the rough. Her recovery shot was well-short of the uphill green (flag in the front-right).
...and then Meechai threw a switch and became a different player. Her wedge shot was all over the pin and made the putt to save par. Next was her first birdie at the par-4 10th. From long distance, she jammed her approach to within kick-in range at the par-4 11th and made an easy birdie ... good timing, too, as it was starting to get dark.
After the bogey at #2, MHL plodded along with pars thru the 10th hole. No. 11, listed at 419 yards, had its flag in the back-right. She lined up on the right side of the tee, perhaps aiming at the left side of the fairway to create a better angle at this pin. Unfortunately, her ball ballooned right and drifted into the first cut of the rough. She powered the ball out and it reached the front-left corner of the green, leaving at least 40 feet uphill. But, there was no “slow and soft” green here ... she rapped the ball past the hole, leaving her at least seven feet slightly downhill for par.
The horn had sounded to suspend play at 6:20 PM, but you had the option of finishing your hole. Meechai cleaned up her easy birdie putt. I can’t recall what Duncan did. Mi Hyang decided to mark her ball with a tee and sleep on it.
On my way out, I stopped at the par-4 17th green where Annie Park (playing with Min Seo Kwak and Pornanong Phatlum) made a birdie putt and three middle-aged Korean women went bat guano bonkers! Although Annie grew up on Long Island, I’m guessing that the ladies were not relatives or friends, but they all gave Annie a hug anyway. One of the ladies gave Min Seo Kwak a hug so she wouldn’t feel left out.
The ride to the shuttle lot was uneventful, but then I made a rookie mistake. Instead of killing time somewhere nearby for 30 or 60 minutes, I jumped on Route 280 East immediately, which was just fine until the GSP southbound exit. Oh my gosh, all these cars at 7:15 PM on a Friday, where were they going? The constant sound of emergency vehicles trying to slip through this mess explains part of it. I’ll have to plan this commute better in the future as long as Cognizant is the title sponsor, which has its HQ in Teaneck, NJ. I wonder if they have many big shots fly in to Essex Co. Airport and go straight to MRCC.
