Golf is such a fickle game – after struggling to break 100 a few weeks ago, I visit Highland National in St. Paul last week and shoot a lifetime best score for 18 holes.

Granted, the 6,204-yard white tees, with their 70.3 rating and 128 slope, isn’t quite the same as playing from the tips at Hazeltine. The new design does have a fair amount of water, though, and you still need to hit the shots.

My favorite hole this time was the 405 yard, par four seventh hole. I pushed a drive to the left, with a large tree blocking my approach shot to the green. I hit a nice iron shot, but it clipped the top of the tree and dropped straight down. Still about 100 yards out with some branches in the way, I hit a low 7-iron shot that landed short of the green, then rolled up and in the cup for a birdie three.

Even with a three-putt on the par three fourth hole and a double on the par five twelfth, I shot a 40-41-81 (+9) to beat my previous best by one stroke (82s at Crystal Lake in 2000 and Hidden Greens in 2008).

The weather was perfect, with fog rising from the ponds during our early morning start. It looked like the greens had a deep tine process done recently, which didn’t effect putting nearly as much as normal aeration with top-dressing. The grounds crew was applying a lot of chemicals on each green in front us all morning, though.

The clubhouse had a power outage the previous night, so we weren’t able to pay until after the round. The weekday walking rate is $30 now, which we decided is just about right.