Barnbougle Dunes

I know that I'm quite lucky to be living in Perth where we have good weather all year and some great courses to play on but the topic of having group golf holiday came up with some buddies a few weeks back and I can't help nut get excited at the opportunities available. There are some great courses right on our doorstep here in Australia and Barnbougle Dunes in Tasmania looks to be one to play if I ever get the chance.

http://top100golf.blogspot.com/2010/05/barnbougle-dunes-golf-links.html

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US Open

The US Open is on at some whacked out time in the morning and I plan
on watching it. Apparently my wife has informed me that I will be
doing the graveyard shift with our 5 week old bub tonight. So with the
golf and the World Cup on tonight - is there any need to sleep tonight?

The Driving Range Beefcake

Spend any amount of time on a driving range and you're bound to come
across a range of characters. One guy I came across yesterday I will
call "The Driving Range Beefcake". This is the guy that knows he can
hit the ball a long way and likes to 'flex' for others to see.

I don't try to listen to other people talk on the range but Beefcake
was talking loud enough for the people around to hear. Telling his
friend that he doesn't practice with his driver until he gets it right
(not sure how he will ever get it right if he doesn't practice with
it) and that he is happy to hit 2-iron off the tee all the time.
Friend then states that it'll be easier to hit driver and short irons
into the tee. Beefcake says that's not an issue because he hits 2-iron
250m and proceeds to tee it up. I'm not looking but I hear the swish
of a club and an ugly clunk sound, followed by laughter and his friend
saying "that was a pure shank dude".

As I pack up to leave I take another look and this guy is built like
some underworld hard man. He's swinging so hard that my back hurts
just looking at him. I have to say that he was making good contact
with the ball and that they were probably travelling about 200m. Who
knows if they were going straight.

I salute you Beefcake and your awesomeness. :)

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Another shocker

.... is this starting to be a common thread on this blog? I've really
been struggling for the last couple of weeks with my game. Well it hit
a new low on Saturday with me shooting 9 points on the front. To add
insult to injury, I also put a ball in the lake and broke my 5-iron on
the front.

It's not often that I've felt like packing up and going home after 9
holes but that's how I've felt for the last two weeks. I have no idea
what's going to happen with each shot. I hit several worm burners and
I also hit several fat pork chop divots. High slices and duck hooks
with the driver also thrown in for good measure. My swing feels very
tired and weak.

Not knowing why you're playing badly can be really fustrating. So I
headed out to the range on Monday to try and get in the groove again,
and apart from a few bad shots most of them were ok. I hope that my
game holds up this weekend.

The 5-iron is currently being repaired. It must have rusted slightly
inside the handle (or maybe I've just abused it too much) but it broke
on my downswing. Lucky it happened inside the grip which held it
together and didn't result in a flying rod.

I did flirt with the idea of getting a new set of Mizunos or Titleist
irons but it's probably not a good idea with a baby due in the next
week. :)

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FIGJAM

Watching Phil Mickelson hit that shot on 13th from the pine needles
was awesome. The sound of club and ball was like a whip being cracked.
Why can't I get a sound like that?

It's probably why I hit 6-iron 140m and Phil hits it 190m.

Great tournament overall an it's too bad KJ Choi couldn't make more of
a charge. I've got his signature on a hat of mine and was looking
forward to it's value going up. :)

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LOL ... gold!

So close...

... to my first win at the club.

Stableford was the game of the day and I had a pretty average start
with bogey, bogey, par, bogey. I thought it was going to be a bad day
out on the course but I then birdied the next hole and finished the
front nine at 2 over and 23 points.

The back nine was more of a struggle as I failed to keep up the
momentum and was forced to scramble a lot to score some points. I was
pretty happy at not wiping any holes and finished with 17 points.

40 points only got me tied for second place with five other guys and
that went down to fourth place on countback. It still got me a $30
voucher which is better than nothing.

I've also been hitting my long irons pretty sweet and have been able
to hit the 170m par 3 green two weeks in a row now.

Handicap took a dive and I'm now off 12.7. It's probably a good time
to peak before the birth of our first baby as I might be away from
golf for awhile. :(

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Found my swing again

Went out last week after about a month off from playing 18 holes and my front 9 was a shocker. Went out with 45 and 2 shots back from my dad. I was hitting big cuts with the driver and even hitting it onto adjacent fairways. Not fun at all!

Not sure what was wrong but I felt very disconnected from my swing. Made a few tweaks on the back 9 and I then started to hit them straight (and long) again. Managed to make 4 pars in 5 holes and things were looking good.

I was tied with my dad on the last hole (a par 5) and only had 100m to hit the green on my third shot. I proceed to hit the fattest shot ever which didn't make the green and I finished that hole with a 7. Call me Greg.

Highlight: Making birdie on the 200m par 3
Lowlight: Driving my ball OB on the next hole

Alex Miceli Rips into Tiger

Thankyou Stephanie Wei for uploading this gem..

Alex Miceli Calls Tiger Gutless from Stephanie Wei on Vimeo.

Bandit?

The winner from Saturdays competition shot a 64 nett. A 10 handicapper
who played two over off the stick. Who knows if this bloke is a bandit
or just a guy who had a really good day.

I should really give him the benefit of the doubt, but having recently
played with a genuine low handicapper who was initially given a high
handicap makes me a bit sus.

Perhaps the club handicapper has changed to the bloke who started me
off on 11.

Grrrrr!

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Driver troubles and early starts

Decided on an early tee off at 6:45 am so that I could make a 12:00
lunch. I finished 18 by 11:00 and was home 20 mins after that. I do
love being a member at Hartfield - online bookings for tee times and
course marshals to keep up the pace of play is awesome.

As for my actual game, it was terrible. My handicap recently went down
to 13 despite some patchy play. I think my scrambling is what kept me
from blowing out. But yesterday couldn't be saved. Started off pretty
well with a front 41 off the stick. I then 3 putted the 10th and
scored a triple on the 11th. It was hard to get the momentum back (I
think I'm a streaky player) and I finished with 88 / 75 net.

With birthdays and birth classes for the rest of this month stopping
me from playing comps, i've got plenty of time to work at the range.

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Go Geoff!

Keeping an eye on the PGA tour website. Hoping that Geoff Ogilvy
notches up a win to start off the season with his new Titleist sticks.

One behind sabatini who is currently 10 under for the day... Crazy!

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One of those days ...

... where I struck the ball great (most of the time) all day, and I scored on every hole (stableford). I had a bunch of 3's on my scorecard and yet I ended up with only 36 points. It's one of those games you have where it fells like you played much better than you scored. To make matters worse, the course CCR was 71 - so I actually played one worse than my handicap. 

I hit 11 out of 14 fairways (78%) so there was nothing wrong with my driving. My GIR was probably about 50-60%. 

So how would you rather play - scoring worse than you played or scoring better than you played?

My preference is to score worse than you played. I might walk off the course confused about my score, but that's better than walking off frustrated with a shonky golf swing .... imo :)

Stroke play stress.

Stroke play is such a different beast to stableford or any other type
of comp. It can get quite stressful when every single shot counts.

Normally it doesn't bother me too much but I was especially nervous
today. I had just gone down a shot in my handicap to 13 and was
feeling like I had to play one shot better than last week to contend
again.

It went fairly well for the first 5 holes but then I shot a triple
bogey. And that just did my head in for the front nine. Another triple
on the back and my energy was gone. I felt tired and couldn't wait to
finish the round.

Oh well, my handicap should go up by one so that gives me an extra
buffer for next week. :)

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New equipment!

Well it's not quite as exciting as it sounds. We've had two weekends
where the temperature soared to 38 degrees. I played golf on one of
them and was throughly beat after the round.

Something that wasn't performing up to scratch was my drinks. They
would just stay cool for the first few holes and then turn into a warm
energy drink...ick!

So this new bag will hopefully keep things cooler and me fresher
during the round.

Melbourne Visit

I flew to Melbourne 2 weeks ago to visit Rare Birdie. The purpose of my trip was to catch up and play a round of golf with an old buddy ..... oh and to see some guy called Tiger at the Australian Masters.

I arrived on the Friday and being 3 hrs behind with my body clock I didn't know how I'd perform on my Saturday round at 4:30am Perth time. I'd be playing at Yarra Bend Golf Course, a public 18 hole course just a few km's from Melbourne central.

Looks pleasant enough when you arrive.


A hole with a downhill approach. There were a few shots like this where there was a big dropoff at the back of the green. Something to think about when making the approach shot.


[EDIT] One other thing that was enjoyable about 'the bend' were blind tee shots that had to be struck over hills and trees. It just adds a little bit of the unknown when you can't see your ball land.

It was quite an enjoyable round of golf and the course was in pretty good condition. The greens were better than what you'd find at most public courses. I managed to shoot 42 points (equal first) that day and part of that was due to a well behaving driver.

Well that was 2 weeks ago and I haven't touched my clubs since I got back, but I'm hoping to have a good round tomorrow with some of the form I showed at 'The Bend'.

Funny Callaway Commercial

Setup issues

Spent some time at the driving range on the weekend to try and sort
out some issues with my game. There were two issues to address:

1) big hooks with the driver
2) high fades with the irons

Started with my irons first and a lot of my shots were ok. They still
had lots of height but just a touch of fade. But I did notice that I
wasn't taking any divots. It was then that I noticed that I had a lot
of shoulder lean away from the ball. Tried making my setup a touch
more horizontal and the change was almost instant. Shots had a better
trajectory and I started taking some nice divots. Such a small change
to your setup can sure make for significant change in ballstriking.

My next item was the hooks with the driver. Didn't make too much
progress with this problem. There is a pretty good chance that I'll
lose a bunch of balls the next time out :)

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Shocker

Had a shocking stableford round on the weekend. It started badly with me turning up 'late' - the groups were actually teeing off 10mins early.

So I had to tee off immediately without even a stretch. Never got into a rhythm for the whole day and my shots were very erratic. Moments of brilliance followed up with truly hacker golf. I lost 4 balls that day, and got to the last hole with one ball left. 

At least my new Reebok "Play Dry" shirt performed well and made me look like a good golfer.

$1 Million Dollars!!