One week after shooting 80, I repeated that score again this morning at Mt. Si. Noteworthy in today’s round was a birdie on hole #13 (after a birdie on that same hole yesterday) and just 11 putts on the back nine. Given my recent putting woes, I was very pleased to sink eight of ten putts from 10 feet and closer today. And my scoring average for the year stands at 89.84, my lowest ever.

Playing with my golf-crazed neighbor, Darrold Baker, I shot my best score ever at the challenging (136 slope rating) Washington National course–90 from the blue tees. My previous low there was 93 in May of ’07. My short putting woes continued. Although I nearly holed four putts of over 45 feet I missed three inside five feet.

Three days after my pathetic performance at Gold Mountain, I shot an eight-over-par 80 at Mt. Si. It was a superbly steady round with 11 pars and just one double bogey. I’ve only shot better than 80 twice: a 78 in June 2007 and a 79 in October of 2009.

The weather was perfect but the golf was pathetic. With a couple of friends I spent the day at the beautiful Gold Mountain near Bremerton, playing both the Olympic and Cascade courses. The morning round on Olympic was just terrible: I shot 55-50 for a woeful 105, one of my worst scores ever. The afternoon on the Cascade course was slightly better with a 96 but I had just three pars all day. And that nice under 90 scoring average ballooned to 90.3 in one day.

With a 42 for nine holes this morning, my scoring average for the year dropped to 89.97 — under 90 for the first time ever!

A cool, misty morning provided perfect weather for me and my golf game was equally delightful. After topping my tee shot on hole number 6 at Mt. Si I pared eight of the next 12 holes to shoot an 82, including 39 on the back nine–my best on that stretch in a year.