Burns Park Championship Course

 I played the front nine of Burns Park Championship Course this morning with John and Dan. Dan scored 41. I scored 44 and John 50. I had 2 pars, 5 bogies, 2 doubles, and used 16 putts. ...Dan and I also played the Championship Course on Monday. Dan scored 86 and I scored 91.

Oaklawn/Burns Park Championship Course

HOT SPRINGS—I walked an elongated route from the Oaklawn press box to my car after the horseraces last night in 34:40. ...By the way, my second vaccine was not nearly as crippling as the first. It might have helped to have gotten it in my right deltoid rather than the left. Who knows?. ...I worked on a new driver swing for a while yesterday. Got it from a utube fellow named Danny Maude. It seemed as if I was hitting very hard shots into my net. I plan to take it to the course at daybreak here in a half-hour or so. We'll see how it works (of course, these sorts of things usually amount to dick). ...Maude's videos helped get my driver back in play (I took it out of my bag about a month ago), but I'm still not particularly good with it. My best drive today went about 200 yards. I played Burns Park Championship Course this morning in 84, with nines of 40 and 44. I had 1 birdie, 6 pars, 8 bogies, 3 doubles, and used 31 putts (with a four-putt).

Burns Park Championship Course

 John, Dan, and I played Burns Park Championship Course this morning. I played the last six holes in one-over-par to hold on for an 88. Dan scored 82 and John 95. I had nines of 45 and 43, with 8 pars, 5 bogies, 3 doubles, and 2 triples. I used 33 putts.

Overheard

 OVERHEARD  "You suck, all of y'all. Every one of you."—fan at Great American Ballpark after the Cincinnati Reds gave up a three-run triple in the top of 10th, an inning in which they surrendered five runs in a 14-11 loss to the Arizona Diamondfucks

Burns Park Championship Course

 Ed, Dan, and I played Burns Park Championship Course this morning. Dan and Ed scored 86. I scored 97, with nines of 48 and 49. I used 31 putts.

Burns Park Championship

 I played Burns Park Championship Course by myself this morning in 92, with nines of 44 and 48. I had 4 pars, 9 bogies, 3 doubles, 2 triples, and I used 27 putts.

One of two big ol' long stories I had to write yesterday from Oaklawn in Hot Springs:

PETE PERKINS

HOT SPRINGS — There might be a shakeup in the rankings.

German Larrea’s Letruska, the 3-1 third choice in the hands of 2020 Eclipse Award champion trainer Irad Ortiz, Jr., ultimately outran North America’s top-two-ranked older female dirt horses to win the $1 million 1-mile and 1/16th Apple Blossom Handicap for fillies and mares four-years-old and up before an estimated crowd of 8,000 at Oaklawn on Saturday.

Monomoy Girl, currently ranked No. 1 in this category by Daily Racing Form, finished second, a nose back. Swiss Skydiver, the second-ranked superstar, finished third, another 6 1/2 furlongs behind the winner. Getridofwhatailesu finished fourth, another 1 1/4 lengths back.

“To me, this race was a big chance,” Letruska’s trainer Fausto Gutierrez said. “I didn’t have anything to lose to run against these two horses. Really, I have absolutely nothing to lose.”

The Apple Blossom was set as a race between Monomoy Girl and Swiss Skydiver, two of the best female horses of their’s or any other generation of racing. They each brought extraordinary credentials to the race.

Consider Swiss Skydiver's.

The Triple Crown of racing consists of the 1-mile-and-1/4 Kentucky Derby, the 1-mile-and-3/16th Preakness Stakes, and the 1-mile-and-1/2 Belmont Stakes. Since 1867, there have been a total of 443 Triple Crown races. Two weeks from the 2021 Kentucky Derby, traditionally the first Triple Crown race, the count of fillies to have won in the series stands at 12, or 2.71 percent.

Swiss Skydiver is the latest of those 2.71-percenters with her win the last season’s Preakness on Oct. 3, 2020. Before her, no filly had won a Triple Crown race since Rachel Alexandra won the Preakness in 2009.

Then there is Monomoy Girl.

Whereas she has yet to attempt a run against male horses, her superlatives otherwise compare to any female horse to have raced. Her overall record through four months of her fourth season of competition stands at 17 14-3-0 with purse earnings of $4,776,818. She is two for two in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff attempts. She has won Eclipse Awards as champion three-year-old dirt filly and older dirt female. Monomoy Girl is 8 6-1-0 in Grade I starts.

Letruska outran them both.

As expected, Letruska led from the start, though an equally as expected interruption came throughout most of the homestretch.

"The instructions were, ’We are the speed of the race,’ ’’ Gutierrez said. She started a little bit slow in the last races. I told Irad, 'No matter if this happens, you try to move and go in front and set the pace and make the others think: What do you have to do?'

Letruska led through the first quarter-mile in 23.56 and the half in 47.96 with Swiss Skydiver just off her right flank, one length back. Monomoy Girl was in third, 1 1/2 lengths off the lead.

Letruska still led through three-quarters in 1:12.26, but Monomoy Girl and Swiss Skydiver had reversed order as the three leaders, 6 1/2 lengths clear of the three other entrants, approached the head of the stretch.

Monomoy Girl, ridden by Florent Geroux, moved out and passed Letruska as they straightened for home. Ortiz, Jr., said he thought a second-place finish against such stars would suffice.

“I thought, ‘OK. At least we’ll get second,’ ’’ Ortiz, Jr. said.

Gutierrez thought the same.

“When (Monomoy Girl) took the lead and I saw Swiss Skydiver start to go a little bit back, in my mind, I thought second is very good,” Gutierrez said, “We finished close.”

Instead, it was Monomoy Girl who finished close.

As the two neared the wire, Monomoy Girl appeared to struggle, and Lutruska was able to get a nose in front to win in a photo finish.

“We just made the lead, she started wandering around at the end,” Geroux said. “Done that pretty much all her career. It’s too bad we got caught today.

As a result, Lutruska, 18 13-1-1, picked up, to this point, her career highlight.

“She started to come back and come back,” Gutierrez said. “I didn't see the picture very clearly. Someone said, ‘I think you might have won.’ I went carefully to check the replay and I thought, 'Oops, we won.' For me, this is incredible because I come from a small racetrack in Mexico City. This horse started her career there. We had the confidence to send her here (United States) and she started to improve, improve and improve. She's run at different tracks. She's run at Houston, Saratoga, Gulfstream. She's a very tough horse, but this is the best result she's had in her career."

Oaklawn

 HOT SPRINGS—I walked for 44:44 from my car to the press box before I covered horse racing at Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort this afternoon.

Baptist Hospital

At least so far, my reaction to my second Pfizer vaccine hasn't been nearly like my first, except the part where my right shoulder feels as if someone hit it with a ball-peen hammer. I do, however, feel as if I was peer-pressured into it, which means my peers are now a bunch of goddamn 20-40-year-old female members of the Little Rock Hash House Harriers, much like thirty years ago, except the part where the women were men and no one gave a fuck how I led my life enough to advise me in any way, i.e., the good ol' days.

Levy Trail South

I walked Levy Trail South this morning in 28:14. After approximately 28:14 of research, I concluded that I have not walked two miles any faster since July 4, 2011, when I race-walked the first two miles of the Firecracker Fast 5K in 23:33. Sometime back in 2014, I walked this same course in 28:26. I'm nearly positive of this, but I think I also walked two miles in just over 24 minutes either shortly before or shortly after that 5K attempt (which, by the way, came two days before I drove to Limon, Colo., for the U.S. Women's Open. I have not forgotten how sore my shins were from walking a 5K in 37:20 as I walked the very, very hilly layout of the Broadmoor Golf Club with Jan Vratil).

QUESTION OF THE DAY Does anyone other than I think I should change my tune on the following matter? At least a decade ago, Rock wrote on Pam's Boy that only bums wear hoods over their heads in warm weather. Since then, in deference to the racial (not cultural, as they misguidedly say, but racial) diversity of bums, wealthy elites and their followers (e.g., ass-wipes like Ashton Kutcher and his fans) have also begun to wear hoods over their heads in warm weather, so that the two boys with hoods over their heads I walked past on the Levy Trail this morning might not have been bums, rather common children with ass-wipes for role models 

Oaklawn

 HOT SPRINGS—I walked for 34:38 from the Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort press box to my car tonight after I wrote 2,112 words about the Arkansas Derby and the Count Fleet Spring Handicap. ...I lost $4 on an Arkansas Derby bet and am now up $0.40 for the season, which has three weeks to go.

Burns Park Championship Course

I only had time for nine holes today. John, Ed, Dan, and I played Burns Park Championship Course. Dan scored 42, I scored 44, Ed 47, and John 48. I had 3 pars, 4 bogies, 1 double, and 1 triple, and I used 16 putts.

Burns Park Championship Course

 This was probably my lifetime's best round. Ed and I played the Burns Park Championship Course this morning. I scored 82 and Ed 85. I had nines of 43 and 39, with 3 birdies, 6 pars, 5 bogies, 3 doubles, and 1 triple, and I used 30 putts. I had never had more than two birdies in a round (my irons were very good today—my birdie putts were from 3, 4, and 6 feet). I was 11-over par to break my personal record for strokes relative to par in a round by one. Finally, it was my low score on a par-70-or-over course by one stroke. Two bladed iron swings that bounced 15 and 20 yards over greens most likely cost me a sub-80 round.

Burns Park Championship Course

 John, Ed, Dan, and I played Burns Park Championship Course this morning. Dan scored 79. I scored 87, Ed 89, and John 92. I had nines of 45 and 42, with 6 pars, 9 bogies, 2 doubles, 1 triple, and I used 32 putts. My streak of no three-putts came to an end after 37 holes and now stands at four.

Hot Springs/Oaklawn/Hash

HOT SPRINGS—I walked for about 35 minutes last night from the Oaklawn press box to my car. ...This afternoon, I walked for about ninety minutes with several others on a run of the Little Rock Hash House Harriers from Alsopp Park. ...I lost $11 at Oaklawn yesterday and am now up $4.30 for the season.

Burns Park Tournament Course

 I played the front nine of Burns Park Tournament Course this morning with John, Ed, and Dan. Dan scored 40, I scored 45, John 47, and Ed 50. ...My left shoulder hurts ten days after my first dose of Pfizer. Otherwise, I feel close to normal. I might try to take a walk tomorrow morning. I will not share this with anyone other than my Pam's Boy readers, but there is at least a chance I won't go back for another dose. Most likely, I will, but I question the value versus the cost. Nevertheless, I remain a staunch vaccine, mask, and distancing advocate. I'm pleased that most Levites continue to wear masks two days after Governor Hutchinson told them they didn't have to.