How'd you play?

[Rob Person]

What a day!!! Tl/DR skip to bottom.

I mentioned this morning that I was offered a spot for a charity tournament. There were over 200 participants!!! Shotgun start at 12, free chikfila lunch prior, chipping and putting contests,  etc.

It was for the Alabama Child Advocacy Center. Since I was gifted the spot, I ponied up some cash for raffle tickets and chipping and putting contests. 

The putting contest was fun. $ 20, 3 balls from 3 distances. I sank 2 of the 3. 10 footer and 30 footer. I lipped out the 20 footer. I thought for sure I was the winner. After the tournament i found out I placed solo 2nd ! The DB was on fire today! Won a $25 gift card to the pro shop. (Where I also work) the chipping contest I did not fare well. The sponsors got to place the balls and I wish I grabbed my 56 over the 60. I bladed 2 of the 3. We were 20 yards from the green for 40 yards total to the pin.

MY TEAM partners - 1 was someone my age and similar handicap,  the other 2 were late 20s , former college golfers. Boy could they drive! (One of them won the longest drives contest on 3 holes) he was pumping out 290-320 yard smoke shows.!!!

We carded 2 eagles,  and 2 pars, the rest were birdies.

We used all of their drives except 1 where they both got into a deep bunker about 285 out. We used my drive at 255 yards center fairway. I smoked my 19⁰ 210 yards and it rolled up  20 yards onto the green, 4 foot from pin. They let me putt for a natural eagle.  I was ecstatic and we all did the eagle dance, cawwwing and arms flapping.    

So we used their drives, the other partner (my age) was a weapon on 120 yards and in approaches. Used alot of his approaches, and 12/18 putts were on me. The DB was on fire!!!

I doubt I would have played that well on my own because they had the orange tees set at the backs of all the tee boxes. Which I would never choose to play from like that.

We finished at 25/29 -54 total 

  There were no buy-ins for special options like mulligans and throws like most tournaments. Instead they had raffles at all the par 3s and par 5s for prizes.

We tied for 3rd. The lowest scores being 49, 51, 54, 54, 57.

This was probably the most fun I had playing in a tournament. 

I have only a couple of pictures.  As I didn't realize until our 3rd hole that my phone was MIA. Fortunately someone turned it in to the pro shop.

[Rickp]

1 minute ago, Rob Person said:

What a day!!! Tl/DR skip to bottom.

I mentioned this morning that I was offered a spot for a charity tournament. There were over 200 participants!!! Shotgun start at 12, free chikfila lunch prior, chipping and putting contests,  etc.

It was for the Alabama Child Advocacy Center. Since I was gifted the spot, I ponied up some cash for raffle tickets and chipping and putting contests. 

The putting contest was fun. $ 20, 3 balls from 3 distances. I sank 2 of the 3. 10 footer and 30 footer. I lipped out the 20 footer. I thought for sure I was the winner. After the tournament i found out I placed solo 2nd ! The DB was on fire today! Won a $25 gift card to the pro shop. (Where I also work) the chipping contest I did not fare well. The sponsors got to place the balls and I wish I grabbed my 56 over the 60. I bladed 2 of the 3. We were 20 yards from the green for 40 yards total to the pin.

MY TEAM partners - 1 was someone my age and similar handicap,  the other 2 were late 20s , former college golfers. Boy could they drive! (One of them won the longest drives contest on 3 holes) he was pumping out 290-320 yard smoke shows.!!!

We carded 2 eagles,  and 2 pars, the rest were birdies.

We used all of their drives except 1 where they both got into a deep bunker about 285 out. We used my drive at 255 yards center fairway. I smoked my 19⁰ 210 yards and it rolled up  20 yards onto the green, 4 foot from pin. They let me putt for a natural eagle.  I was ecstatic and we all did the eagle dance, cawwwing and arms flapping.    

So we used their drives, the other partner (my age) was a weapon on 120 yards and in approaches. Used alot of his approaches, and 12/18 putts were on me. The DB was on fire!!!

I doubt I would have played that well on my own because they had the orange tees set at the backs of all the tee boxes. Which I would never choose to play from like that.

We finished at 25/29 -54 total 

  There were no buy-ins for special options like mulligans and throws like most tournaments. Instead they had raffles at all the par 3s and par 5s for prizes.

We tied for 3rd. The lowest scores being 49, 51, 54, 54, 57.

This was probably the most fun I had playing in a tournament. 

I have only a couple of pictures.  As I didn't realize until our 3rd hole that my phone was MIA. Fortunately someone turned it in to the pro shop.

Charity outings can be a lot of fun.  For the last 5+ of employment I did a shipload of charity golf, it was almost my job description.  Most of them were great but some took forever 5+ hours.  Our company believed in giving to the community and to many causes especially veterans.  I kinda miss them especially the people who played in them, a lot of dedicated people!

Happy you had a great time!!

[Rob Person]

8 minutes ago, Rickp said:

Charity outings can be a lot of fun.  For the last 5+ of employment I did a shipload of charity golf, it was almost my job description.  Most of them were great but some took forever 5+ hours.  Our company believed in giving to the community and to many causes especially veterans.  I kinda miss them especially the people who played in them, a lot of dedicated people!

Happy you had a great time!!

Uh, yeah, this was definitely a 5+ hour round.  It's expected though,  as alot of teams were newer or weeknd type golfers 

[Johann Oosthuizen]

This weekend my 3 sons are treating us to stay at a game lodge in the Waterberg region in South Africa.  This is for my 60th birthday, which was in March, but coincidentally coincides with my eldest son's birthday today.  We are playing golf at Zebula Golf Estate (https://zebula.co.za/) on Monday and doing an elephant interaction on Sunday.

Watch this space for feedback on the golf.....

[Rickp]

8 hours ago, Rob Person said:

Uh, yeah, this was definitely a 5+ hour round.  It's expected though,  as alot of teams were newer or weeknd type golfers 

Yup, Charity Golf have to expect long rounds.  All for good causes.

[Boris119]

Bad week this week. For some reason my irons were all going right. The driver and fairway woods were good. But I could not hit a green with my irons today to save my life. Even my wedges were all going right.

[TJ Hall]

How I played is not important, but who I played with…got out with @cnosil and @Wheelieb.  To keep things interesting, we decided to go to Royal New Kent.

The weather was great, this course is something else.  Great shots are rewarded, ok shots are punished and bad shots are gone!

Had one of the worst lies I have ever seen…fried egg in a fairway bunker, basically embedded in the face of a steep bunker.  Escaped that to then pull my approach and end up on a severe downslope.

Did set up the Rapsodo on one of the par 3s (it was not a LW that I hit), was not a bad shot (pin high but slightly pulled).

 

@cnosil hit some awesome shots (may have referred to his golf as boring), driver to fairway, approach on green and 2 putts!

@Wheelieb had the LAB putter rolling today.

Overall, awesome day with some other Spies!

[Wheelieb]

I’d rather not talk about how horrid I played today. I made some pretty boneheaded decisions with club selections and then decided to not listen to myself when I said I needed to use a different club. I was a spectator to what @cnosil called boring golf with @TJ Hall, while I decided it was adventure time. I will say that Hole 10 TJ hit his on the right shelf of the green. Us two that didn’t had to putt up a hill that was close to half the length of Mt. Rainier. Kidding, but it made that put more daunting to look at. Overall, I may not have played great, but I had fun. And it was great to meet @cnosil. 

[cnosil]

2 hours ago, TJ Hall said:

@cnosil hit some awesome shots (may have referred to his golf as boring), driver to fairway, approach on green and 2 putts!

@Wheelieb had the LAB putter rolling today.

Overall, awesome day with some other Spies!

 

2 hours ago, Wheelieb said:

 Us two that didn’t had to putt up a hill that was close to half the length of Mt. Rainier. Kidding, but it made that put more daunting to look at. Overall, I may not have played great, but I had fun. And it was great to meet @cnosil. 

It was definitely great playing with @TJ Hall and @Wheelieb.   

I played pretty well tee to green but fell apart a little on the back nine.   As mentioned we had to putt up Mt. Rainier and after hitting the par 5 10th in 2 I proceeded to 5 putt the hole as several putts did not make it to the peak and rolled farther away than the previous putt.  @Wheelieb learned from my struggles and was able to get up the hill a bit more efficiently        I really need to work on putting,  lost a lot of strokes with that part of my game.    Maybe I need to go back to a LAB; @Wheelieb putted really well with his.  

[fozcycle]

Heading out to Hilton Head Island for two whole weeks this year. In the past my spouse always wished for a longer stay so I secured a second week, tacked on to our first week so we won’t need to pack up and move to a different location.   This year I am the only male as we host our Daughter and Neice. I will be golfing solo while the girls are “shopping”.  This year my courses will be Shipyard(27 holes), Old South, Golden Bear, Palmetto Hall(2 courses) and Bear Creek.  My cost will be about $50/round as the rack rates are $145+. The courses are very good about pairing me up with other golfers every year.

The courses are a bit longer than the 5,033 yards I play at home. Most are 5,500 - 6,000 yards.  Wish me luck. I’ll let you know how it goes……with pics!

[Dweed]

22 hours ago, Donn lost in San Diego said:

First time back on the course after a 2-3 month pause for vision problem.  Played poorly.  Twisted a back muscle in the shower getting ready for a 7:40 tee time, and it wouldn't let go or loosen up.  I enjoyed the 6 good shots and 3 good putts I made.  I do plan to start playing early morning 2-3 x weekly.  Hardly worth writing about but this is my primary social media.

Always worth writing about Donn. We're here to listen.

[sirchunksalot]

I hit the ball better today than I have in a while. It was a beautiful, hot day for this time in September and I was able to get out and play 9 at Flagstone. 

I played off the green tees which are 2870 yards which I do when playing solo with a goal of bogey golf before I move back to the white tees. I shot 48 today and if it hadn't been for a couple of wayward drives, I could have went lower. 

I started out bogey, par, par and was +1 through 3. I guess I got to thinking about it and let it get the best of me. It's just nice to have a couple of holes where I'm thinking, "hey, I can do this". 

The first hole I hit driver left and had 145 to the pin and completely compressed a 7 iron that went off the back. I made a decent chip and was able to 2 putt. 

Driver was a bit suspect today with a lot of balls going left. My irons were as good or better than I've ever hit them. The hybrids were good with the exception of one topped 4 hybrid. 

Where I was really happy with my wedges. I was hitting some crisp chips, I wasn't always as close to the hole as I wish I could be, but I only hit one stinker which was a bladed chip on 4. 

I'm happy with how the round went today and I can't wait to get out there again. 

 

[alii1959]

Last day before club championship....I think I need more time, a lot more time.  

A couple of doubles...mostly bad decisions and six bogeys...more bad decisions.  I keep forgetting that the Chrome Soft is 5-10yards shorter than the Supersoft balls are for me.  If I can keep that in mind I do much better.  It isn't that easy, in the heat of battle, to remember for some strange reason.

Another 82 raises my handicap to nearly a 5.  Not real happy...but, it is what it is!

Tomorrow, I will test my skills against the Geezer Gathering as we plod our way around my home course.  I hope to play well.  The theme for the day is "course management" coupled with "no hero shots".

 

[TheBirdieMasterLOL]

 I forgot to post my round from yesterday. Had school until 3:30, then played 9 holes from the tips at Sterling Hills. I was trying out ProV1x Left Dash for the first time. I played pretty well, but it was a failed experiment. I felt like I didn't have control over the ball, so I'm sticking with ProV1 for the future. Putting was also tougher than normal with the left dash. Here's the scorecard. For stats, X is Missed and C is hit. Oh yeah also my brother and I are listing some of our old clubs on ebay, and we're going to use the money to buy some new clubs. He's had some putting problems so we just ordered a blue LAB DF2.1 off ebay (got a great deal on it too). He might do an unofficial review on it and post it on my account, because I don't think he has MGS.

Holes:1 2  3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Par:    4 4  3 5 4  4 4  3 4    35

Score:3 4  4 4 4  5 4 3 4     35

FW:    X X    C X C C    X

GIR :  C C X C C C C X C

Putts: 1 2 2 2  2 3 2  1 2 

Edited 8 hours ago by TheBirdieMasterLOL
Forgot to add my score to my stats sheet

[LeakyValve]

Okay one more try. From the abysmal round the other day. Highs. And lows.  

 

 

 

Edited 7 hours ago by LeakyValve
I hit save and it loaded things a bunch of times. Ahh

[JB2334]

IT FINALLY HAPPENED!* I've mentioned in most of my posts here recently that I haven't broken 80 since back-to-back rounds of 76/77 in early April. All 20+ rounds (except for the one 92 we won't talk about) over the last 23 weeks have been between 80-87. I'm so close to getting myself down to a solid single-digit handicap, it's been frustrating the last couple of months.

*In the interest of complete honesty, the course was par 70.

Today, I played at Tri-Cities Golf Club in Blountville, TN. The course was oddly busy for noon on a Friday - then I remembered it's a race weekend here in Bristol. I ended up playing with two great guys in town for the races, and we had a lot of fun. Tri-Cities has 27 holes (35/35/36). It's a pretty basic layout, especially for a course here in Appalachia, where most of the courses have several holes with extreme elevation changes. It has the potential to be a very nice golf course, but the owners need to pump some money into it - especially the greens. Probably the most challenging thing about this course other than the terrible condition of the greens is that they are all postage-stamp sized and the primary cut is shaved short, so you need to either be able to get the ball up in the air to land soft with some spin, or hit it low short and run it up.

Where the greens I played on Sunday at Crockett Ridge were overgrown and slow in their efforts to bring them back from drought damage (it looks like someone cut the greens with an uneven deck and did some damage too), the greens at Tri-Cities were short...they rolled well where there was grass, but there were large spots in most of the greens on the back 9 that are dead and dried out, there is no grass, no dirt - just the drainage layer - making those areas of the green like a parking lot. This did unfortunately come into play on a couple of holes, but oddly not as bad as the slow greens did at Crockett Ridge on Sunday. 

Another oddity about today - not only was I hitting my driver competently, I absolutely striped it most of the day...I'm not used to having 9i or PW in on 400 yard par 4s lately. It's been one of the biggest reasons I haven't been able to get below 80 the last several months. Usually 2 iron is my fairway finder...I used it 3 times today off the tee, and didn't catch it clean once. Golf is weird...a few highlights:

#3, Par 4: One of two bad drives today. I straight up topped it off the tee and still had over 320 yards left to the hole. Hit a decent 3H down the middle out of deep rough, and had 160 yards left. The one good shot on the hole was the 7i I stuck to 5 feet and made the putt. One of the best pars I've ever had.

#5, Par 3: Short Par 3 with an odd, kidney-shaped green that I have never hit in reg. Choked down on a PW and put it on the green to about 12 feet, pin high. Left the putt a couple inches high...but I never complain about a tap-in par.

#6, Par 5: Great tee shot down the middle, had about 185 left to the hole. (Disclaimer - No, I don't typically hit the ball 330 off the tee, about 50-60 yards less on a good day...but this was an elevated tee, and I hit the downslope of the fairway). While the drive was severely downhill, the approach is severely uphill to a very small green. I hit a good 5i, but left it a touch to the right...but I was still pin-high in 2 on a Par 5. The chip checked up a little more than I expected, and I still had 10 feet for my birdie...I would have been soooo irritated if I missed it...thankfully, I didn't.

I was even par through 6 - the triple bogey on the very next hole took care of any delusions of grandeur. My failure to change what hole I was on  in my app contributed to a bogey on 9 to finish the front with a 39. What I was happiest about was that I only hit 3 greens in reg, yet had only 14 putts. Despite the crappy greens, my short game was on point.

I also have to admit that I was a little excited because the last time I played the back 9 on this course, I played it under par. Once again, the golf gods would quickly dispatch any delusions of grandeur.

#10, Par 4: This is a good hole. Dogleg left with a lake on the left and a creek on the right if you run through the fairway. If you can carry it about 240, you can cut the corner over the lake...but there are also two massive oak trees before the lake that you have to hit over if you take that line. I was hitting driver well, but not that well. What I did do what hit a drive with a nice, big draw that ended up in the first cut. PW into the green. I went a little deeper into the green, and I thought at first that I had caught a flier out of the rough, and that's why it didn't spin back...but this was the first of my issues with my shot landing on the hard drainage layer...that I now had to putt through too. This led to my first 3-putt bogey - the bane of my existence.

#11, Par 3: Short par 3, downhill off the tee. The pin was in the back, about 10 feet from the fringe...this is where I should have used my brain, but failed. Instead of a flighted 9i or PW that kicked forward a little and stopped, I hit a beautiful, majestic GW right at the pin that landed about 5 feet short...and promptly spun back 20 feet to the front of the green, leading to a second consecutive 3-putt bogey. After 14 putts on the front, I already have 6 on the back - with 7 holes to go.

#12, Par 4: Another great drive. Caught a 9i thin and went a little long over the back. The first 10 feet of the green that rolled downhill from back to front was another instance of the rock-hard drainage layer. If I land my chip on the green, it's going to hit the hard ground and take off...if I land it over the hard ground, it will hit the slope and run off the front of the green. My only play is the land it on the fringe and hope it rolls down to the hole. Of course, I catch it thin and not only does it fly onto the green, it hits hard and rolls off the front. Double bogey.

I am actively destroying a really good round at this point. I would recover, however...

#15, Par 5: Another great drive on this short Par 5. Left with 175 yards, a little into the wind, pin in the front. Pure 6i with a little draw, right at the hole...to the extent I even yelled "Go in the hole!!!" Thoughts of my first ever albatross flashed through my head...as I watched the ball land just past the pin - and instead of spinning back a little or just stopping like usual, it bounced high and rolled all the way to the back of the green - the hard drainage layer was right in the middle of the green. I try to keep it in perspective and remind myself that I'm putting for eagle, but I am steaming mad at this point. Instead of max 10 feet for eagle, I have 40 feet through what resembles a demilitarized zone. I really should have taken a few pictures to show y'all what I had to deal with. I lagged it down to about 3 feet somehow and salvaged a birdie. I can't remember the last time I had an eagle, let alone from a makable putt. This one hurt my heart a little.

#18, Par 4: After a par and a bogey, I'm confronted with a scenario I've dealt with a few times the last few months - I need a par to break 80. Medium-length Par 4 where the last 100 yards goes about 50 feet up hill. I hit my best drive of the day here and had 75 yards left to the green. Caught a 60 degree just like I wanted, where it should have had plenty of spin. I saw it come down just past the pin and expected a tap-in birdie when I got up to the green...but at this point, you know what happened...but after I lagged it about 20 feet through the DMZ, I had a tap-in par.

40 on the Back 9 for...a 79. After a 39 on the front with only 3 GIR, I had 6 GIR on the back, yet had 6 more putts, and scored 1 shot higher, which should give you some indication on how bad those greens really were. Either way, I'm encouraged and have already made a tee time for Sunday morning. 

Edited 3 hours ago by JB2334
Correct typo