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.

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