A hard second day

Maryland Junior Girls' Amateur · June 22, 2026 · Lakewood Country Club, MD

By Myra · June 22, 2026

Day one felt like progress. Day two felt like a wall. That's golf — and I'm learning from both.

I went into the Maryland Junior Girls' Amateur at Lakewood Country Club feeling pretty good. The course was playing 5,972 yards, which is on the longer side for a girls' event, but I'd been hitting the ball well in practice and wanted to see where my game was.

Day one I shot 79. Not my best, but I kept it together — fairways were mostly in play, I managed my misses well, and I didn't give away too many strokes around the greens. It felt like a round I could build on.

Day two was different. I shot 88. There's no sugarcoating that — it was a tough round. A few bad swings early got in my head, and instead of resetting, I let the frustration carry over. By the back nine I was pressing on every shot, trying to make up strokes instead of just playing hole by hole. That never works, and I know better.

The hardest thing about a round like that isn't the score itself — it's knowing I have the game to play better and didn't bring it. But I also know that learning to bounce back from a bad stretch mid-round is one of the most important skills in competitive golf. The players who make it aren't the ones who never have bad days. They're the ones who don't let a bad day become two bad days.

I'm taking what I learned and moving on. Onto the next one.