Drive, Chip, and Putt Challenge.

Layla has been pretty into golf for a while now. T bought her golf clubs for Christmas when she was almost 3 and they’ve played around with them now and then. Last year she did her first 8 week golf clinic through the city, and then did the same clinic again in the spring. They have to do it twice before being able to join the city youth golf league. T has also been working with her outside of these clinics (which are very newbie oriented) as well. He even took her for a private lesson last week with the guy he’s been taking lessons through! It was pretty cool to watch. All of it lead up to this past weekend. We drove to Prattville (without my camera.) to the Robert Trent Jones course up there (Capitol Hill) for the Drive, Chip, and Putt challenge. The day was PERFECT. It warmed up a bit after lunch but for the most part, it was just a beautiful day.

It was so fun watching Layla warm up and be there with all the other young golfers. She started off practicing driving and chipping.

After practicing that for a bit we ate lunch at the club house and then came back out to practice putting. Well, T practiced with her. I kept Timmy busy up on the club house deck. He played Angry Birds with a couple sticks while I watched L practice.

Eventually it was time for our age group to sign in and get ready to go. First was driving. Of course, she’s a Wade, so she was second to last in her age group. Each kid got to hit 3 balls and scores were giving based on longest drives. When she walked up she got to say where she is from. There were some Auburns, Birminghams, Destins…we told her to say Hawaii but she chose Enterprise instead.  Oh well.

I was nervous for her but she wasn’t so I tried to chill out. I think this was the first time she’s had to tee up and make the shots without T there coaching her. All on her own = nervous mom.

She was great though.

Not all of the drives got her a lot of points but, still, I was SO proud!

Next was chipping. T and I both took zero pictures. I think we were both too nervous and focused on what she was doing and trying to read her thoughts on how she was setting up each shot. One rolled too far and went outside of the scoring zone, the next she hit way too light, and the last was almost JUST right but fell a tiny bit short.

Now, time for putting. She’s pretty good at putting and I had no idea! This time each of the 3 shots were from a different area around the hole. I loved watching her focus as she set up each shot.

After putting we went up for scoring. The upside to being almost last is that we only had to wait for one other girl to finish before all the ribbons were handed out. Out of 15 girls there in L’s age group she placed 6th. No ribbon and no moving on but woah! For her first time ever competing like this and going out without someone coaching her that’s pretty dang good. Afterward we rode our golf high across the street to Academy Sports and got some new golf gloves and shirts for L. Monday she has another lesson with the guy in Dothan and T’s going to take her to get fitted for new clubs that aren’t Craigslist hand me downs.

Now, we just have to hope she decides to stick with it!