A Great Week for Golf

As the title suggests, last week was a great week for golf. I got in 18 holes at the Wellshire Men's Golf Club Tourney, and another 9 last night. Although I didn't play particularly well on Saturday, it was still good to get out and swing the clubs. I seem to be settling into a consistent pattern of only having one hole that I totally blow up on so that my ESC score for handicap purposes is not getting too out of hand. I have noticed that the long winter layoff has set my overall game back, but I think it is improving from this point. I scored a 55-52 / 107 on Saturday and carded a back 9 52 on Thursday night. The 52 would have been shattered had I not dropped 2 balls in the hazard on 18 costing me 4 strokes. Oh well I guess that's why they call it golf. Anyway, I do have a tee time scheduled for next week, and given the longer days, it should work out better for most of you.

Tee Time, Thursday, May 1st 5:20PM at Wellshire Golf Course

Let me know by Wednesday at 1:00 PM at n3xt@arrl.net if you want to play. As always, it is first come first served.

A note to consider, is that the fairways are getting their spring aeration on Monday and Tuesday, the 28th and 29th, 9 holes each day. I'm not sure how it will effect play on the first, but I do know that the Men's Club ABCD scramble is scheduled for the following Saturday so I would think that they should have the plugs picked up by Thursday. As for the greens, they were still pretty bad on Saturday, but there seems to have been some improvement between then and Thursday. At least I was hitting more putts on Thursday night so it might not have been the greens at all, maybe I'm just getting better.

As I noted earlier, my play at the Men's club tournament last weekend wasn't stellar, but I was better than my eventual playing partner who seemed to 4 and 5 putt every green. He blamed it on his putter, but it WAS his first time out for the year. To solve his problem for the scramble he indicated he was going out and getting a new putter, probably one of the new Nike IC versions (which I like from an alignment perspective, but not a roll perspective). In anycase we ended up next to last with a best ball score of 75, the other 2 players in our foursome won the event with a net 63........hmmmm. Anyway, there was at least one group who scored worse with a Best Ball 80 which according to one of its players (who shall go unnamed) spent a little too much time in the beach. This after spending the week ON the beach in Mexico, go figure.

I don't have a website for you this week, but suggest that you go to the blog and check out my past suggestions as well as the list on the right hand side of the website. The URL is http://www.theurbangolfer.blogspot.com/ check it out and you can see how things are going in my golfing world.

One item of interest from a software standpoint is that Caddie Master Pro has a brand new version 3.03g which was just released which adds some nice new features to the software. For those of you unfamiliar, this is the sofware I use to create your scorecards when we play, and I also use to track the key statistics to see how my game is improving. I highly recommend the software and am real appreciative of Brian Yager who develops it. The price isn't too high either for having something that you own vs relying on a website.

For those interested in watching golf, The EDS Byron Nelson Classic is being held this week at the TPC at Four Seasons near Irving/Las Colinas, Texas. With a complete redesign of the course it should make for an interesting tournament and one in which the late Byron Nelson could be proud.

That's it for this week, there will not be a tee time on the 8th as I will be in LA, so get your e-mail to me so we can play sooner vs later! If not, I'll see you in the clubhouse.

David C.

Weather, Again.....Plus First Tournament

Once again the golf gods could not intervene to get us a good Thursday night of golf. The snow had mostly cleared in my neighborhood, but it was still pretty cold out. Now today should be a great day with highs in the 60's and Saturday with high's approaching 80. It's just not fair. Oh well, we didn't begin our streak of no weather delays until the end of April last year so hopefully things will improve.

Our next Thursday night event is next week, April 24th at Wellshire where I have a 5:00pm tee time. Please e-mail me at n3xt@arrl.net to reserve your spot. I need responses by about 1:00pm Wednesday in order to modify the reservation if necessary.

Now because of the lack of hitting balls the last 2 weeks I expect that I will be pretty rusty out on the course on Saturday for the first tournament of the year. Hopefully my eventual partner will bail me out accordingly. The format for Saturday's Earl Wilcox memorial tournament is a blind four-ball format where your partner for the 18 holes will be determined by blind draw AFTER the round is played. It should make for a fun and interesting day especially since you can't give advice to your partner if you don't know which one he is. For those of you unfamiliar with the term four-ball, there are two forms of play called four-ball, one dealing in match play, and the one we are using Saturday which will be the stroke play variant where each person plays their individual ball for the entire hole, and the lowest score between the individual partners on the team is the one counted.

This Saturday April 19th is also the due date for RSVP's to the Wellshire Men's Golf Club spring banquet and calcutta being held on Saturday May 3rd, and the ABCD scramble event for the following day Sunday May 4th. So be sure to get your entry form in the mail or bring it to Wellshire on Saturday as I'm sure they'll take your entry during the Earl Wilcox.

Congrats to Trevor Immelman who grabbed a green jacket at Augusta National Golf Club last week. The coverage on DirectTV was excellent and was fascinating as you got to see each player take on the various holes covered. I was torn between watching Amen corner 11, 12, and 13 vs holes 15 and 16. The green on 16 is just wicked while just getting on the green on 12 was fascinating to watch. Anyway, this week the PGA is at Harbor Town Golf Links for the only PGA tour stop in South Carolina. As I'm typing this morning, Boo Weekley has taken the lead in this tournament he won last year, his first PGA tour win. The LPGA is at the Ginn Reunion resort just South of Orlando, Florida in a tournament that has one of the highest purses on the tour. 49 of the top 50 golfers in the world are present. Lorena Ochoa will be going for her 4th straight win this year, she's making Tiger look almost pedestrian (not that he's going walking anytime soon after his surgery this week). The only downside to the LPGA event is that it only airs for 2 hours and is in standard definition. These girls deserve better coverage than this.

The latest Big Break series got underway in Kaanapali, Hawaii. It looks like we will be in for a real cat fight as at least half of the women have at least some professional golf experience. Look for the first elimination this coming Tuesday night.

The link of the week is http://www.golfnow.com/ not only can you get some discounts on some pretty good courses here in Colorado, but they have a daily trivia contest featuring a very cute Keri Murphy. The prizes are all golf related and you can earn entries each day which are good for 30 days. Today's prize was a bag boy pull cart. Check them out.

A special Happy Birthday to Derek Burnett today who has just turned 40! Hopefully he will shoot his age on the front 9 tomorrow.

That's it for now, I'll let you know how the tournament went on Monday.

David C.

The Masters is Here!

I don't know about you, but I know that golf season has officially arrived when The Masters is played. The first major of the year, and the only one that is always played at the same place each year, The Masters is a unique golf tournament played on an even more unique course. More wide open than a US open course, the 18 holes of Augusta National Golf Club were built in 76 working days in 1932 and 1933 at the location that was once an ornamental tree farm. The course has got to be one of the most beautiful places on earth to play golf on. The only trouble with that is that 99.99999999% of us will never get the opportunity. Heck, that many of us will never even get to see the tournament live such is the difficulty of getting duckets to the event. So I will have to be satisfied with watching the event on TV. It is very beautiful in HD, and with DirectTV's coverage of Amen Corner, and the 15th and 16th holes, I will be more than satisfied. The ESPN coverage was more fluff pieces than golf so I would opt only for the network coverage at the very end on Sunday in order to see the final groups go up 17 and 18. Other than that, if you've got your laptop plugged in, you can keep track of the leaderboard and all the other activity on the course without having to get up and change channels. It should be a wonderful weekend ahead.

And I need the weekend to heal. I played my first 18 holes last Saturday at Wellshire in brand spanking new golf shoes that hadn't been broken in. After 5 holes I was in pain, after 10 I tried to slap on a bandaid, and if it weren't for the beers I wouldn't have made it. Add to that, despite a good warm up, my second shot from the practice tee I pulled a muscle in my back. It must have been the pain in my back that kept me from noticing my heel beeing rubbed raw. At the time of this writing on Friday, I still can't put on a shoe over my left foot. But all is healing now and I am hopeful to get on the course next week. Oh, by the way, I may have been in pain, but I saw some definite improvement in my putting and ball striking by the end of the round. I recorded my first birdie of the year on 17 and managed to finish the round with a par on 18. Overall I shot a 107, and given the pain and the lack of playing recently, I feel it was a good score. Now to get out more often.

To that end I do have a tee time for this coming Thursday, April 17th at 5:00 PM at Wellshire. As always, first come first served, and let me know by 1:00pm on Wednesday.

I also have the first Wellshire Mens Club Tourney happening on Saturday so it should be a good week for golf. I just think I'll break in the new shoes at home a little bit more and stick with the old comfy Addidas AD Comforts.

The website for the week is http://www.digitaldivot.com/ a website that will track your handicap without you having to actually join a club. Not a bad little site, and the service is free!

So if you don't play golf this week, at least watch The Masters this weekend, it will make you anxious to get out and play!

David

The Secret to Thursday Tee Times

Needless to say I was becoming frustrated at the Denver Golf Reservations system. For the second week in a row it looked like there were no tee times available for Wellshire even though I was on the site at 7:01pm. Now I could understand if there were no openings on Thursday nights due to leagues, but as I mentioned in an earlier post, I should have been able to make reservations at least every other week. So last night I looked at all the Denver courses, and guess what, Wellshire was the only course that I could not book a tee time on for Thursday because "There are no tee times available for the date and time desired". I even tried for 1:00pm and different days and each time got the same message. Thinking I must be blackballed by Wellshire somehow I booked a tee time for 5:00pm at JFK. Then sometime in the wee hours of the night it hit me that I HAD been successful at booking the Saturday Tee Time for tomorrow. The only difference was that it was for 18 holes. This morning first thing I cancelled the JFK reservation and went back to Thursday at 5:00 pm at Wellshire, but this time instead of clicking 9 holes, I clicked 18. Voila! We now have a tee time set for next Thursday evening at 5:00 PM. I'm not sure what is wrong with the Wellshire reservation system, and I hesitate bringing it to the attention of the management, but the secret to booking a tee time at Wellshire is to specify 18 holes. Now given the time of day, it will be impossible to work in 18 holes even in the heart of summer so I know that they can't expect us to pay for 18 when we can only get 9 in. I expect that next Thursday I will go in, tell the pro shop I'm playing 9 and go from there. If they ask I will tell them that it is the only way to book a tee time at Wellshire. In any event, we are ON for next Thursday at the desired time and the desired course. As always, participation is first come, first served, and I need to know by Wednesday 1:00pm so I can modify the reservation if necessary.

Remember too that I have an 18 hole (really) tee time for 10:50am tomorrow, April 5th for Wellshire. Please respond by 1:00pm today (4th) if you want to play, there are still spots left.

Next week is the super-bowl of the golf year with The Masters. The coverage should be great from ESPN, CBS, and DirecTV with multiple channels available to those with DirecTV. Coverage will begin in earnest on Wednesday when the par 3 event will be televised for the first time ever. What do you want to bet that no one mentions that co-founder of The National, Clifford Roberts committed suicide at the lake just across from the Eisenhower cabin, or even mention that the 'cabins' include 8 bedrooms, 2 living rooms, saunas, and other amenities that could be easily found more likely at Vail than in any conventional cabin you or I know. I've been listening to Curt Sampson's book 'The Masters' which gives a very interesting history of the place, and the men who created it. A must read for those who love The Masters Tournament as the greatest of the 4 major golf championships. My DVR will be working overtime next week as the only thing better than watching golf (at least in Hi Def) is playing golf. And speaking of which, I can't quite figure out what kind of paint the folks in Texas use on their golf courses. The fairways at this weeks PGA event at the Restone country club almost look like the blue football field that the Idaho State Broncos play on. It just doesn't look right. On the other hand, the ladies event at the Kraft Nabisco looks natural, at least I think so as I found it difficult to keep my eyes off of Paula, Natalie, and Suzanne.....anyway.....

Given yesterday's weather, I did not get out and play, so I will give you an update on playing conditions at Wellshire sometime this weekend. Until then, dream of green fairways and smooth greens.