OK, the Senior Open qualifier is done and the experience was a good one. 
It was interesting being the only female in a field of men who all knew each other from other events...didn't really have much interaction with them, however I was also keeping to myself as I prepared for my round. I teed off in the second group so I wasn't really in amongst most of the players until we all finished. 

For the most part the men were gracious to me with a couple of them mentioning to me they thought it was cool I played, but most of them also mentioned they couldn't understand why we didn't have a Women's Senior Open and that there definitely should be one (I kind of read into that they would rather I'd be playing in that than in "their" qualifier).

Going into the qualifier on my home course I figured my lack of comparable distance might be overcome by my local knowledge of the greens so I was feeling fairly confident before we got started. I had practiced almost exclusively from the back tees and knew I could handle the distance of the holes. The greens at Mendakota are a little tricky and local knowledge is a must...I thought I was all set. 

Unfortunately my strategy didn't pan out...the greens had been running at about 9.5 - 10 on the Stimp meter the last month and today they were at 12! In addition, the tricky pin positions on side slopes were hard to get close to as I was hitting fairway woods into greens and though I was on the greens, the first putts were long and winding. I lost my feel and confidence after sending a couple putts in the first few holes 10-15 feet past the hole on my first approach putts and struggled to find it the rest of the day.

The best part of the day was that I got to feel those pesky nerves that like to creep up when I haven't competed for a while.  Generally these days it takes a day of competition to work through them, so I'm glad it happened today as I head into next week's Women's Open.  I was disappointed with my result but happy to say I was far from the highest score of the day and look back with a little regret that a part of my game I consider a strength was anything but that today. I will learn from the day!