18 Holes This Saturday, Wellshire, 10:50 Tee Time

As I mentioned in Friday's post, I've gotten a Tee Time for Saturday 18 holes at Wellshire. Even though I was on-line at 7:05pm, only 5 minutes past when they are supposed to release the Saturday times, the earliest time available was 10:50 AM. Hopefully this will work for some of you so e-mail me if you want to get in a full round this Saturday. Be sure to e-mail me at n3xt@arrl.net to be included in the foursome. As always it is first come, first served and reservations will close at 1PM on Friday so I can modify the reservation if necessary. Note, this time is in addition to the Thursday Tee Time of 4:37pm at Kennedy. So make sure in your e-mail you specify Thursday or Saturday.

In other golf news, Andres Romero posted an early enough score on Sunday to hold off the field and win the Zurich Open in New Orleans yesterday. This despite an obscure ruling where he moved his ball that was touching a rake on the 18th hole on Saturday. After taking the penalty stroke, he calmly holed what was now his 4th shot from 50 feet. The golf gods smiled upon him on Sunday. As an added benefit, he gets to play in 2 weeks now at The Masters.

Lorena Ochoa continues to dominate the competition in the LPGA by winning by 7 strokes at the last ever Safeway event at Superstition Mountain in Arizona. Safeway is pulling back to sponsoring just one event, the Safeway Invitational held in Portland, Oregon. So far the LPGA is struggling to maintain their tournaments despite better competition and, arguably, more fan appeal. Up this week is the LPGA's first major at Mission Hills, California.

Bernhard Langer won for the 2nd time in the last 3 weeks taking the Champions Tour Ginn event in Florida. He's just playing significantly better than the competition right now, and though he's just plain ugly to look at, and I don't mean the advertising billboards he wears for shirts, he looks unstoppable in rough conditions which the Ginn event played in. It looked miserable for the gallery out there.

Feel free to join The Official Masters Pool at the golfchannel.com discussion board. Winner gets a sleeve of the balls of their choice from all the losers. It could seriously fill your bag for the season no matter how many balls you lose in the lake. The only down side is that if you lose, you have to send a sleeve of balls to the winner. And if you join and lose, make sure that you do send your balls since it is my job this year to run the pool.

I'll post a new Thursday Tee time this Friday, so until then, work on your swing as best as you can given this mornings snow.

David

Thursday Tee Time, But....

I hope your Easter weekend was enjoyable and you got out and had some fun in the good weather last Saturday. For the 2nd year in a row we've had snow on Easter Sunday. Last year at least we had The Masters on TV. This year we just got to see Geoff Ogilvy at the top of a star studded leaderboard. Oh well, at least The Masters is only 2 weeks away and with it, the start of the golf season for most of the country. I can't wait as I have been stuck at home sick this past week and decided not to venture out to the course yesterday figuring I'd let the antibiotics do their thing. That said, I went to bed before making next Thursday's Tee Time, and lo and behold, it appears to be filled up for any 9 hole rounds after about 1pm. I'm not sure if this is a function of the leagues starting up or if there are just that many people that want to play our beloved course. So for next week at least, the tee time is for 4:37 PM at Kennedy. For whatever reason, JFK is also $2 more expensive than Wellshire, and at $16 for 9 holes it's getting fairly pricey so I'll be sure to bring my own on course beverages. As with all of our Tee Times it is first come first served at n3xt@arrl.net , and I need to know by about 1PM on Wednesday so that I can modify the reservation if necessary.

Next weekend I may get to play on Saturday as the girls fairy godmother (Jill's best friend Adrienne) is flying out for a visit. The last thing they will want to see is me unless I'm doing the cooking so it may be possible to get a full 18 in if the weather cooperates. E-mail me if you are interested, and if I can remember on Saturday night, I'll make sure I get a decent tee-time. I'm thinking a 9:00 AM or there abouts would work best to keep the afternoon free for your other friends and family. I'll publish another post to this blog with the details late this Saturday or Sunday after church.

Saturday April 5th is the last day to sign up for the Wellshire Men's Club Earl Wilcox Tournament which will be held on April 19th. Check out their website for details as to where to send your money. I've found that if I want to get better at golf I need to play more, and the best way to play more is to either come out on more Thursdays or play for money at one of these tournaments. The Wellshire Mens Golf Club is a good sized group, but for any given tournament approximately 25% of the players will win something. Not bad odds, and the tournaments are not all stroke play events. There are best ball, foursome, and other tournaments that tend to spread the love around. Add to that skins for both gross and net scores and you will find yourself getting better before you know it. I improved 9 strokes off my handicap just last year so I know that even a duffer such as myself can get better. Information about the Wellshire Mens Golf Club can be found at their website which is today's Link of the Week the URL is noted in the links section of this blog so visit the blog, and visit the links. I encourage you to just poke around at least see if it's something you'd be interested in. They've recently upgraded their website, and I think more upgrades are planned such as online payments for upcoming tournaments, but I could be wrong about that.

Hopefully I'll feel good enough to get out and hit some balls this weekend and be ready for next Thursday at JFK!

David C.

Finding Rust

As the title to this post implies, I found my game a little rusty the first time out, but there are a lot of things to talk about this week, including:

1. Tee Time for Next Week
2. Next Wellshire Men's Club Event
3. Status of the course at Wellshire on March 20th
4. Status of my game
5. New Things
6. New Links

So, I do have a Tee Time for next week Thursday, March 27th at 4:30pm. As always, first come first served for the available slots. E-mail me at n3xt@arrl.net to reserve your space.

For those in the Wellshire Men's Golf Club, the entry due date for the Earl Wilcox event is April 5th. This is a blind foursome so it should be great fun playing, THEN finding out who your partner from your foursome actually was. In addition to that, the night before the Earl Wilcox, Friday April 18th is meet the board night at the Wellshire Pub for new members (there are over 30 at last count), where the board will pick up the bar tab. Not a bad way to start off the new tournament season in my opinion.

The course at Wellshire is still pretty much in winter hibernation. The rough is cut to the same length as the fairways making just about every ball hitable. The course itself is pretty dry which will see your balls roll a lot farther than they will later in the spring and the summer. The greens have 4 pre-cut holes in them, with 3 of them covered up. That said, you don't want to have to putt over them if at all possible. The greens are generally lightning fast and hard, probably more like Augusta at The Masters than at any other time I've played. The green on the par 3 11th hole has so many ball marks though, that a putt of any distance will likely go off line when you try to get it close. It looks like nobody has repaired a ball mark all winter, and those that did, took out all the roots underneath. Given most of today's ball mark repair tools though, it isn't surprising. Check out the GreenFixGolf link at right for a better solution, and one that I used several times during yesterday's round. If you do pick a blister pack of the tools, pick the black ones, the more expensive gold ones are just gold painted plastic. You'll save $10 on two going that way. The tee boxes were not marked as far as blue or white tees in any way so it was up to me and my Sky Caddie to get us set up at around the right yardage for each hole. So overall, spring is yet to really come to the course, but it's still very playable as I explain below.

As far as my round yesterday, I got to the course early for my 4:20 tee time thinking I'd get some time to putt and generally warm up for the round, but when I checked in with Bob, the starter at 3:45, he said I was free to join a threesome that was just going off the 10th tee. So without any warm-up I teed off with Ed (editorial cartoonist for the Rocky Mountain News), Dave (a retired guy), and Jason (who's wife called him at least 3 times during the 9 holes to find out what he was making for dinner). My usual drive off 10 with the hybrid started good, but hooked toward the left rough, but was OK, my next shot however was topped and I found the pond which, though very low, still had enough water to swallow up my ball. In fact, if you were desperate for balls, now would be the time to hit the course. You could have a couple dozen of balls that were partially buried in the mud of the pond and probably another dozen or so if you looked in the grass on the embankment of the left rough. Now laying 4 it took me another 3 shots to get on the green, and with the speed of the greens off the charts, I wrote down an 11. In other words, not a great start. Now on many a past performance, this would simply set me up for a disasterous round, but having just finished Dr. Bob Rutella's "Golf is Not a Game of Perfect," I put in my mind not to let the bad start get to me. And you know what, it really worked. Though my round was weak at best, I played every shot going forward without consideration as to the trouble encountered with the shot just played. I highly recommend the book as an intro to the mental side of the game. On the par 3 11th, I hit the green on the tee shot, but it went about 10 yards farther than I thought my 9 iron should (I've usually played the hole in the past with an 8 iron). Four putts later, and I was 8 over after 2 holes. Things got better though and I parred the par 4 13th hitting a laser of a 3w from 227 yards out to within 20 feet of the pin. It was a beautiful shot, and showcased the addition of the 3w into my arsenal. It should give me much better options on par 5's and shots that I only had my 3 hybrid for last year. My drives weren't the straightest this evening, but I did have one that went 270 yards and an incredible drive on the 17th that went 283 yards. My total strokes for the round was 56, but after taking into account ESC for number 10, I posted a 53, not great, but still reasonable given it was the first round of the season. The big take aways were that I need to spend more time practicing my wedges and getting used to the new putter. Hopefully the weather will be decent over the next week for me to get some work done in these areas before next week. By the way, green fees went up a buck so now our Thursday nights will cost $14 for 9 holes. I find this was not calculated for my golf budget for the year so I expect to make this up by bringing my own beer, see below for how I plan to do this.

Where new golf things are concerned, and as mentioned above, I am most impressed with my new 3 wood. It seems to be what I have truly been missing as far as distance is concerned. Other new things tried out for the first time were the Cool paq for my Sun Mountain cart. I brought along some sodas and they stayed nice and cold. I look forward to putting in some malt beverages in next week so that I can save a little money vs paying for the beer at the course. Let me know what you like to drink and I can add a can or two to the pouch for the next time we play (the cool paq holds at least 6 12oz cans). I'm still evaluating the e-data coach as far as how useful it will be. My initial impressions are that it needs to find a place on my hip vs carrying it in a pocket to truly make it useable, I also kept getting messed up on whether I needed to record the distance my ball traveled or whether the distance recorded should be the distance left to the hole. I'll give it at least another try or two.

For my golf link of the Week, check out www.coloradoavidgolfer.com . The magazine related site has a cool identification for those who have signed up, and include a free game-tracker interface if you wish to track some of your stats. The forums are pretty empty, but given some increased Colorado interest, they could be an enjoyable read.

Well that's all I have for now, the days are getting longer and I look forward to playing some golf with all of you soon.

David

First Tee Time of the Season!

As of today, the 14th of March, the golf season is open in Colorado! And in order to fully celebrate the season I've booked the first Tee Time for the Wellshire Thursdays group. As noted to the right, I've got a tee time booked for 4:20pm on Thursday March 20th. The early time is necessary to avoid darkness. Sunset will come around 7:10pm. As always, the spots are first come first served, so if you want to play, get back to me as soon as possible. 2 ways to do that are either by entering a comment below this post, or e-mail me directly at n3xt@arrl.net .

The current forecast for next Thursday is a high of 57 with no precipitation currently expected. Obviously if the situation deteriorates significantly we'll have to change our plans.

I went out and hit balls at Park Hill on Tuesday and followed that up with some putting at Wellshire on Wednesday. The one thing for certain is that there is rust on my game, no telling how long it will take to get back into form, but the only way to do that is to start playing and keep practicing in between. At Wellshire I had the opportunity to talk some more with Bob the starter who confirmed that there are at least 4 leagues scheduled for Thursday nights, the good news is that 2 of them, the early league and late league, are every other week, so there should still be good opportunities for us to get on the course. He also stated he'd work with me to squeeze us in. I'm sure the leagues won't be starting up until at least May, so until then we don't have anything to worry about.

The pub changed its menu a little bit, for the worse I'm afraid, they took a number of items off the menu including the Burrito, and the Noonan, but the Nachos, and Burgers are still there. I talked with Ilona who indicated that this summer they will be having grill specials on the patio including 6.95 for burgers and 9.95 for ribs before 7:00pm, so eating early will always be a possiblity.

The practice greens, though not in their summer form, were running pretty fast, so no telling how they'll play on the course.

I was researching the other day on the proper way to fix ball marks as I don't think I'd ever really seen a demonstration, when I came across a new tool that is better for the green and heals the ball marks up to 3 times faster. Check out http://www.greenfixgolf.com/ for information and some videos. I've inquired with both the CGA and the City of Denver Golf courses as to whether they are looking into the system as a way of improving our greens, as well as cutting down maintenance costs required for existing greens, which the tool, if used, could save a ton of money. That and just being a good steward of our city golf courses seems to be a good thing to do.

Lets pray for some great weather next week and get hold of me if you want to play next Thursday!

David

Will the Season Ever Get Here?

Well I sure hope so. Officially, for handicapping purposes, the season doesn't start until next Friday the 14th of March for clubs in the Colorado Golf Association. This includes all the men's clubs associated with the Denver golf courses. But we've had a taste of things when a week ago we saw temperatures in the 70's. My girls and I went and flew kites that day, and by Sunday morning we saw near blizzard conditions and 3 to 6 inches of snow. Such is the weather in Colorado in March. Historically, March is the snowiest month of the year in Colorado, but for those like myself who have been stuck indoors since October, we are finding ourselves going stir crazy. I can't wait to get outdoors and enjoy playing golf. I've gotten most of my winter repairs and upgrades taken care of, I've got the clubs shining, the bag cleaned out (I highly recommend going through your bag just for the purpose of seeing things you thought you lost years ago, like the petrified Snickers bar that had found it's way to the bottom of my bag with an unreadable expiration date, yeachhh), and I've even gotten some range balls hit. So bring on the good weather and let's get out there!

For those that expressed interest last year, the software I use to create the scorecards we used last year and track my rounds was Caddie Master Pro. Brian Yager is the software developer living in Canada, who is a real live golfer. Obviously this is his passion and his product is very good. In an e-mail with him last week he indicated that an update is due any day so hopefully it will fix the one problem I encountered last year and add new functionality to make it even more user friendly. I highly recommend the program for tracking your rounds, the link to his website is over to the left.

This year I'm also going to test out a new product from Medicus (the people who brought you the hinged clubs) called the eData Coach. The product is a little handheld device that you input the particulars of each shot including the club used, the yardage hit, the direction it went, etc. The output is downloaded to a website and reports can be generated that indicate that my drives go 230 yards but tend to hook. From all the data a practice plan can be developed that will allow me to work on the identified weak parts of my game. One of the developers of the product was formerly a teaching pro at Kennedy golf course and will be back in town to work with and promote the eData product this summer. I'll know how well this works pretty fast depending on how well the input device works. It looks a little clunky from a form factor perspective, but I'm sure if it is successful for golfers like you and me, then there will be improvements made over time. If you happen to play with me early in the season, be patient with me if I seem to be fumbling with yet another electronic gadget on the course. At least I'm not taking business calls. More information about the eData Coach can be found at http://www.edatacoach.com/

On these cold days at the end of the week I am enjoying XM satellite radio's coverage of the PGA without paying for XM or using a new piece of equipment. If you are at a computer with a broadband connection you can connect to the full XM radio coverage of tournaments at http://www.pgatour.com/ . The website allows you to connect and listen gratis from the comfort of being in front of your PC. I find it nice to listen to as I am struggling with creating my software applications for work. It's sure beats listening to the regular drivel from sports talk radio that generally doesn't say a thing about professional golf.

We start the next segment of Fantasy Golf with the ESPN Best Ball Challenge next week. Sign up and take on Jason and I, as I seem to be an easy mark the last few weeks. And don't forget that The Masters is only 5 weeks away and DirectTV will feature some great coverage on multiple channels with the standard network coverage to include 56 minutes of golf every hour (only 4 minutes of commercials). Could this be the start of the first Grand Slam since Bobby Jones? Who knows, but so far this year Tiger has won twice, Phil once (came in second once), and Ernie once (he also came in second once). So all the top players are having success which could make for an interesting tournament. Augusta National has so far escaped the drastic measures that the level 4 drought in Georgia has exacted on other golf courses, but if the drought continues and the situation worsens in Augusta, it will make for a less than lush environment. In other words, pray for rain for the area.

Well I should really get back to work, but I'll let you know when I head out to the range, and when I expect to play my first round of the year. And if you don't hear from me for a week, it's because it's still too cold for me to get out of my basement.

Don't forget to 'Spring Forward' and move your clocks 1 hour ahead this Saturday night. If you don't you'll be late for church on Sunday.