Why the heck is it that Monthly Medal is the comp I seem to have a couple of blow out holes on?! Very frustrating…

Summary of the round:

Date played: 4th February, 2012
Score: 92 off the stick

Highlight: Definitely the par 5 6th hole which measures 439 metres (480 yards). After a cracking drive and a beautiful 3 wood approach, I had a downhill putt of around 2.5 metres for an eagle. Only my second ever eagle putt. I left the putt short, but made the birdie with a very easy tap in.

Lowlight: A tough call. Two shocking holes today. The par 3 tenth hole (the first hole played in the round) where I put the tee shot out of bounds (by around 30 cm’s) and I ended up with a 6. Or, the par 4 12th hole. After a great tee shot, my wedge into the green flew a little left of the green (not far!) and I couldn’t find the ball. I had to go back down to the location of the approach shot, dropped a penalty and then put my approach wedge left and into the greenside trees, duffed my chip and ended up with an eight on the hole. Those two holes were two of the first three played, thank heavens I corrected the round and got things back on track. I’d end up going with the effort on the 12th, my average on that hole is 5.5 and I ended up with an eight.

An interesting looking scorecard this weekend which included five pars and a birdie went with four bogeys. The round also included four penalties, FOUR! Two lost balls, one out of bounds and one in the water. #lesigh

The scorecard can be found http://golfshot.com/Rounds/Detail/34-8671929-8671977

Putting continued to improve this round. I had four one putts, but also had 2 x three putts. A total of 34 putts for the round. Putting continues to improve from the 40 plus putts in a round about a month ago. I can definitely continue to improve this phase of my game and aim to get down to the 30′ish putts per round consistently by the end of this year.

Pre-round handicap was 22 exactly. This round was a new entry into my best 8 rounds for handicapping purposes. It knocked out a 95 off the stick and my handicap drops to 21.6, so I still play off a 22 in next weeks comp.

I’ll try and get a couple of photos during future rounds. I know these reviews are a little droll without imagery… (maybe even with imagery they’re drool)

This years punters club trip will be to a golfing trip to China. Very excited by this. I’ll post more info here over the coming weeks, but I’ll post the weekly update here.

After 3 bets by each of my clubmates and two bets by me, the winning % is below… A % of 100 means money back on bets laid.

Oh yeah! That’s me out in front at the moment. I’m following my regular strategy of multi-bet combination on short priced fav’s.

(PS…. I bet these posts really bring in the SPAM)

Summary of the round:

Date played: 21st January
Score: 90 off the stick

Highlight: Par three scored on the fifth hole. My tee shot (9 iron) flew the green and landed on the tee block, some 15 metres behind the green. My lie was sloped severely and I needed to chip down an embankment. Given the difficulty of the shot I was happy to land on the green and have a 7 or 8 metre putt left. I sunk it. My scores on the par 3′s today = 4, 4, 3, 6.

Lowlight: The par three 8th, which I knocked my tee shot well left. Chipped through the green, duffed a chip back on and then three putted… #lesigh

Last week I undertook an AimPoint putting lesson. More info to post on that later. I was hoping my putting would improve and it certainly did. I only recorded one three putt (break in concentration) and recorded three one putts.

No 7′s on the round! Nine bogeys and three pars.

Round result 21st January

The scorecard can be found http://golfshot.com/Rounds/Detail/20-8542412-8542446

Putting definitely improved a touch. I played the par three’s better than usual (except the 8th) and no blow out 7 or 8 scores on any single hole. Definite improvement, but had a couple of brain explosions.

My handicap pre-round was 22. Considering the round was inside my best 8 of the last 20, my handicap should drop lower. This round will knock a 95 out of the equation.

Summary of the round:

Date played: 27th December
Score: 84 off the stick (my best ever score) which was 45 Stableford points
Highlight: A near chip in second shot from 40 metres out, which resulted in an easy putt for birdie on the 9th hole
Lowlight: A disastrous three putt 7 on the par 5 third hole after having a pretty easy par putt.

My putting score was 30 putts. Statistically an excellent result, but this was achieved with a chip in “no putt” par on the first and two lengthy single putts on holes 12 and 16. There was two shocking three putts on back to back holes (holes 3 and 4) and I slide a lot of putts past the hole or missed short putts I should have made. I felt this was the least satisfactory phase of my game yesterday.

Scoring wise, I managed a birdie (mentioned above as the highlight hole), six pars, seven bogeys and 4 doubles.

You can find my scorecard on golfshot -> http://golfshot.com/Rounds/Detail/360-8309406-8309779

This was my lowest off the stick score. An 84, which could have been so much lower without a few dodgy putts. I dont know that I could have broke 80, but I would have gone close. The 45 stableford points was enough to register as second in the comp on the day.

My handicap dropped from 23.9 to 22.7. Means I am now playing off a 23 handicap. One more competition to play in 2011 and my handicap started the year at 28.1.

I played this course in August 2011. Surely it must be one of the world’s most spectacular golf courses. You access the course by a 10 minute ferry ride from Hamilton Island and the club house sits atop a hill which gives great views out over the Whitsunday Passage.

There are some tricky holes made even tougher by a stiff breeze which waits to push your ball off the fairway and into the coarse rough just off the fairway. I paid several penalties for lost balls, when tee shots hit the fairway and then rolled off the fairway into the rough.

The most memorable holes are definitely on the back nine. The par 3 14th, with fierce winds and a long carry over native bushland is as tricky an iron shot as you’ll find. The 15th is a great par four which runs downhill & into a stiff breeze, you’ll be best hitting something which keeps low here. Another distraction, when I played this hole, was the pod of humpback whales passing through the passage. The par 4 18th, hitting down the hill & with views forever is a great closing hole.

I thoroughly enjoyed the course, though it was one of the more challenging I have played.

To see my scorecard for the round: http://golfshot.com/Rounds/Detail/218-6406508-6406739

This round review is a couple of weeks late in being posted. This was a mixed round, with five pars and a birdie being the good side of the round, the dark side of the round being the four bogeys and the eight double (or worse) bogeys. That’s a 56% rating on bogey’s or lower.

The main culprit of the dark side of the round being the four – FOUR – penalties in the round. Three of the four fell on the one hole, with three out of bounders off the tee on the 11th.

I was pretty happy with how I hit the new driver, with a driving accuracy of 42.9% on the day. This result is by far my best result off the tee with the new club.

Highlight hole is pretty easy to see on the card. The first hole. I smashed the driver off the tee, nearly through the fairway, which left me with a reasonably short chip (around 60 or 70 metres) onto the green. The chip ended up around four metres to the right of the pin and the putt went into the back of the hole! That’s how you play the first at Pine Rivers.

Lowlight hole is also pretty easy to see on the card. I still feel sick thinking about the play off the tee…. Driver, right and out of bounds… Tee it back up again. Driver, right and out of bounds. Switch to the hybrid, but same result, right and out of bounds. U G L Y.

Forthy-three stableford points, with three washes. I ended up getting a mention in the run down. All in all though, the result could have been a lot better though.

This was round number one with the new Ping i15 Driver. I was not terribly accurate with it, hitting 3 of 10 fairways from the tee. However, it was a shot with this club that provided the highlight of the day.

Highlight of the day: A par 4 on the 13th hole. This hole regularly kicks my ass, I do not play it well. There’s a lengthy water carry and historically I play the hole by hitting hybrid, then a 9 iron on hopefully, but normally I miss the green and then have a chip on to a multi-tier green which is tricky to two putt. In other words, if I play it very well, I normally end up with a five, but chuck in a wayward chip / tee into the water and I reckon I would average around a 7 on the hole.

In this round though….. I hit driver from the tee to green side! This was a massive shot and one of the best I’ve ever played. The hole measures 308 metres, I’m not sure where the tee box was on the day, though I am sure it was forward. My shot ended up around 20 metres short of the green – hurray! After that tee shot, I was able to chip up nicely and just run the first putt past the right hand edge and sink the second putt for the par.

Low light of the round? Definitely the “Road Hole”, which is Pine Rivers fourth hole. I put my tee shot out of bounds and then ran my second tee shot into a difficult spot behind some trees, which I had to chip out of and from there it was an ugly road to an eight.

The round broke 100, with 99 shots. I had 3 penalties, had 32 putts (this is ok) & only had two pars…. hardly a great round.

Anyways…. In a nutshell, this application lets you track the scoring of your golf round and comes up with some handy stats and information at the end of the round too. I started using it for a round in January, but it wasn’t until the last couple of rounds I’ve come to understand how useful this app can be.

I’ve decided another of my regular posts here will be using the results of the Golfshot app for each round I play. I’ll mess around with the format a bit until I get it just like I want. I’ll post the first “Round Review” soon.

As an update on the new Ping i15 which I recently bought, I am loving it! My next “Highlight hole” post will feature the i15 & I’m getting warmed up to it now.

At Cabo del Sol I hit the Taylor Made woods well and was going to get myself the new R11. Those things look amazing cool and the trickery in being able to adjust the club is phenomenal. I have the R9 Taylor Made three wood and I’ve managed to hit it fairly well, so thought I’d get the Taylor Made R11 to go with it. I had some Golf World vouchers so went to Golf World at Newmarket. The dude who helped me out was great, I’ll get his name and update the post later on.

Unfortunately the R11 is not in stock yet through most Golf World stores, but I wanted to get a driver whilst motivated, so decided to try out a couple of clubs in the net & on their “hawk eye” system which helps determine what shaft strength / style club you need and determine club suitability. I liked the looks of the Ping and also Adams drivers, so tried them both out.

Both clubs held a similar visual appeal for me, in that they didn’t look like massive bulbous distractions. The clubs both also felt good to hit shots with and produced similar results, but I ended up going with the Ping.

The “hawk eye” swing & shot tracking system was great as it effectively measured the trajectory, path and distance of the shot. I have been hitting shots with a high trajectory and this means they effectively stop where they bounce, with no run-on. So, even though I hit my irons well and a fair distance, they dont run on and I get robbed of distance. There was no evidence of this in the “hawk eye” tracking, with the shot trajectory being good, the shots straight (just a minor adjustment in stance required) and the ball carrying just under 200 yards (approximately 180 metres) on the fly. Once on the course and with some more practice I should be able to work that out a bit further.

Thanks very much to the guys at Golf World Newmarket, I appreciate your help!

Looking forward to next weekend’s round at Pine Rivers Golf Club and testing out my new Ping I15.

A review on the Ping I15 Driver can be found http://www.golf.com/golf/equipment/article/0,28136,1941092,00.html

Here’s the commercial for the I15 which has Bubba Watson in it.

So…. I got to thinking about another reason to get me posting regularly to this here little blog.

How’s about a “Highlight hole” post for when I play a golf hole particularly well. It might be one a round for the good courses I play and once in a while for Pine Rivers Golf Course (http://www.pineriversgolfclub.com.au)

It just so happens that I do indeed have a highlight hole from this weekend’s round at Pine Rivers. The competition this weekend was single stableford (my favourite) and Coxy had changed to play in the afternoon and John and Dean had both called in a no-show Saturday morning (lazy, hungover bums), so I was hitting the round with Ollie.

The highlight hole for this post is from a round played on Saturday the 30th of April at Pine Rivers Golf Club. The hole is the 162 metre long par 3 8th hole. This hole plays around 180 metres up the hill and there was quite a wind blowing left to right across the hole. The description from the club website reads:

More to this than meets the eye. Hole plays longer as the green sits on top of a crest. Due to its length and a small bunker which guards the front right part of the green, this hole can be very intimidating.

The hole is indexed so that I get two shots on this hole and I played it well on Saturday (obviously, or it wouldn’t be the highlight hole!).

I played a 4 iron and smashed my tee shot basically pin high and only just off the green. Very close to the green, but just off… maybe 10 cm’s off the green, so I was definitely going to putt. The putt though was tricky, as the green slopes towards the front of the green pretty sharply and I was going to have to put the putt high of the hole and if I ran it past too far, the ball would end up running right down to the front of the green basically. The putt would have been between four and five metres long. I had decided I was putting for a two putt par result as I was, to that point of the round scoring two points every hole and didn’t want to eff up the round. The putt though was a beauty and went straight in the back of the cup. That putt was my best of the day and other than that one putt, the putting over this round was VERY forgettable.

The result of that wonderful 4 iron and a 4 – 5 metre long putt was a birdie on a pretty tricky hole. The stableford score for the hole was a 2 for 5 points .

The 9th hole was the last of the round (we tee’d off on the 10th) and I hit a 5 and 2 to score 40 points on the round. A pretty good result, which saw my handicap drop 0.5 points and down to 27.3. My goal is to get that handicap down to 18 eventually and by the end of the year I want it down to 23.

Highlight hole for this week: 8th at Pine Rivers Golf Club. Birdied for 2 shots and five points.