Goofy Golfer

Summer is gone and I haven't even blogged about our first "18" hole course of the year. Just before the year was half I finally managed to plan me some time to play 18. Broekie suggested to go and play at WitBos as his/our old pro is working there now.

WitBos is actually a 12 hole course, but 6 of the holes are played twice. It is a former military course now open for the public. The opening hole is a strange one. You start off on a small part of grass and and before you even see the real fairway you have to conquer one of the old military buildings. The building , about 15 meters high sits somewhere inbetween the 40 and 120 meter mark. The fairway starts behind it. But don't hit your ball too far as at about 180-200 meters there is a nice creek protecting the green. So yes the green is drivable, but your ball has to start high enough , and if you are short you are punished also.

Although lots of interesting par3 , the course also has some challenging par 5's. The 4/11 the hole has a small fairway with threes on the left and oob on the right. If you dream of hitting the green in 2 ,your teeshot must land exactly in the opening between the woods and even then the green is only half visible. (Obviously the time of the year can change that :)

One strange thing about Witbos is that in some of the ponds surrounding the greens there were signs "No Fishing" , which we found pretty normal .. however what they actually meant was "No fishing for balls" ,

I can imagine that on a busy day Witbos can get crowdy as 6 of the 18 holes are being played twice.

But being slightly more expensive than a 9 hole course and getting to play 18 , Witbos is definitely a good course to spend your afternoon.

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On Monday I played 9 at the Domburgsche Golf Club in Domburg , the Netherlands, a 9 hole Links course at about 1u15 car drive from home. The course requires a 30 HCP if you want to play there in the weekend or during July or August .. but a 36 will do for the other days.

And unlike most other foreign course they actually did ask for a handicap proof.

Although a 9 hole course you have to pay a Day ticket which allows you to play for the day , having only time for 9 makes it kind of expensive but still worth the money. Note, that they only accept Dutch bankcards and no Credit Carts when I played there.. so I was happy to have enough cash on me.

So up to the first tee .. an elevated tee with a great view over the rest of the course. Not having played for over 2 weeks, not having warmed up, the only reasonable thing to do is to hit a practice ball into the fairway to see if you still know how to swing, some people call it a mulligan, I just call it a practice ball.
Standing up there the fairway seemed extremely tiny, was I really aiming for something that looked like it was 10 meters wide (and in reality probably just 15 at some places ) .My Iron 4 teeshot found the middle of the fairway about midway beyond 150 and 100 meters marker, an easy Iron 8 up the hill reached the green. Green in regulation at the first hole of a new course, I think i can count the number of times that happened so far on 1 finger :)
If it wouldn't have been for the extremely fast greens I could have made par .. but my first put was way to far.

I took a glimpse at the second fairway during my climb up to the 2nd tee. From the teebox the fairway let alone the green were nowhere to be seen. The only guide for direction you have is a largish pin on top of the dune that points in the general direction of the fairway. This time a my teeshot was bit to the left on the fairway but again a reachable green, I however missed it by 3 meters, a chip and a 2 put further I had my 2nd 5 on the card.

At hole 3 the danger starts, the danger being the holes being a little bit to close to eachother, yes they have placed priority signs on which hole has priority over which one, but being a first time it's not really easy to figure out which tee belongs to which hole. Hole 3 is a 140 meter par 3 , however depending on the wind direction your clubselection will differ. I took mine a bit short, and missed my bogey put.

Hole 4 is the SI 1 hole of the course , a longer par 5 , some local players were still looking for their balls and waved me trough, my 3rd shot was still on the fairway, but I still has 70 meters to go till the green. Usually 3 good shots with my 4 bring me far enough , the seaside wind decided against that.

There was a queue on the par 3 5th, again a group of locals that suggested I'd tee of with them and then continue ahead. The 3 of them hit their woods to the left and let the wind bring their balls back on the fairway .. having a slight error to the right I opted for the same approach only to hit the straightest shot ever, straight on to the nearby road , even hearing the ball bounce there before it disappeared. The locals told me that I really wasn't the first to do such a thing and that years earlier someone had hit a similar shot into a car driving by. It however was the car of one of the dutch ministers and the sound of the ball hitting the car made them think it was a terrorist attack.
Luckily for me , there was no car in sight . My second ball was better :)

I missed my teeshot on the 6 thole.. to the right just in the rough .. could correct it however .. I however managed to hit my final green approach in the pothole next to the green, took me 2 shots to get out of it.

When teeing up at the 7th you have to make sure you don't hit the people putting on the 6th, no danger on the 8th, but more danger on the 8th green when people are teeing of from the 9th tee. I had seen people tee up on the 8th with heavy woods not reaching the green. So I was a bit in doubt ..I opted for the Iron 6 , almost over hitting the green, but with a chip and a put my par was in.

The flight on the 9th was still looking for their ball and again waved me trough.
The 9th tee again is a blind shot where I missed the fairway .. my 3rd shot ended up in the pothole bunker next to the green. First time I was in a pothole bunker that size.. I could barely see the flag, but I managed to get out in 1 shot.. and even put it close enough to the hole for one bogey put.

Sadly I had no time for 9 more .. , maybe till next time.
But 20 points Stableford over 9 holes with a fresh handicap on a coourse I never played .. I can't complain..

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Awesome .. I just learned about Golfbug.tv

I just launched my browser on my mythtv box and for the past half hour I've been seeing fullscreen GolfTV from my lazy chair.

Hmm.. Maybe I had better gone to the driving range for some practice :)

But definitely good stuff for a friday evening ..
They seem toe have a magazine called the Back 9 which is also really enjoyable to watch.

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No really it happened to me !

Last week I played a Qualifying game at my home course. I didn't feel like playing well but I played good enough to cut 0.5 of my handicap.

So I was expecting to get a lower playing handicap for my next game.

I didn't even have time to check out my new playing handicap before a mail popped up in my inbox that the Stroke Index and the Slope Rating for the course have changed . Up from 117 to 125

So in stead of losing 1 stroke I actually got 4 strokes extra.

I kind of was expecting that when the new green on hole 5 was going to be taking in production we would get a change in Stroke Indexes and extra strokes as it was supposed to change from SI 18 to SI 1 as the sign next to the hole said. It only changed to SI 9.

So either the sign next to the hole is wrong, or there is going to be yet another change when the new green will be used.

Anyway I hope to play exactly the same game as last week on my next qualifying game :)

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for the dog,

This dog really liked walking the golfcourse with his master,

He even liked the golf balls so good he didn't just bring them back, he even swallowed some of them..

Yummie .. GolfBalls :)

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Alexander

What about letting us know when you figure out a livestream is going on :)

thnx in advance ..

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Broekie

It's obvious why you played horrible, I took all the good shots that day.. although I didn't really felt like playing good still..

But I'd blame the drinks :)

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Are you also frustrated by slow play, by way too much pitchmarks on the greens ? So am I

What can you do about it .. you can urge your fellow players to speed up play, or you can repair the pitchmarks. But if the damage is done by another flight not that much ..

So the R&A set out to create a movie together with Open Champion Padraig Harrington to put together a guide .

Watch them here

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Short summary: This is not a golf course :)

I have nothing against compact courses or 9 hole courses, far from.
Par 3 courses, 6 hole courses all give you the advantage of being able to play but not needing 4 hours to play the whole course.

However I`m expecting a little bit of quality from them.
The 9 hole compact course in Les Allicours wasn't really maintained when I was there earlier this summer (end of june) . Not sure if the last week of june qulifies as low season , but when you want to play there you get the key to the golfcourse from the reception. Yep the KEY, because there might just be 1 or 2 people on the course , or nobody.

When first walking up to the course I noticed there were NO balls on the driving range, that's right no, 0 , zero. The driving range is about 150 meters so not really that interresting but nobody seems to use it. I couldn't find a ball dispenser either so I skipped the driving range.

So when you arrive at the first hole you wonder.. where is the actual T-Box,
you find no clear marks on the ground, no signs, nothing. Just an open area that could be used as a T-Box. After chipping my 2nd shot on the really small green I the decision was quickly made .. Winter Green rules ... No really the quality of the greens was really really bad .. and not just from a maintenance point of view.. but also from a design point of view.. who in his right mind places a sprinkler in the middle of a green ?
The first hole plays about 150m and that's the longest on the course, from there it's just a pitch or a 9 iron on the last hole to the green.

When looking at the course from a distance it really looks nice and well designed , however when standing on the course the fairways look like rough, and the greens look like bad fairway. It's sad because it could be a really fun course to play.

You pay a cheap greenfee which allows you to play for 2 hours, at least that's what I understood so if you play fast you can play the 9 holes 3 times in that period.

But still a bit of quality is expected even for a low price ...

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Again .. yesterday evening was the 2nd time this year we were blown of the course by some really heavy storm passing over the golfcourse.

So what do you do when you are on the Tee of the 5th hole and you see bad weather. You see lighting, hear thunder It might pass by at 5Km , it might fly over or it might even head the other direction.

We both hit our T-shots and when we realised that our balls were just reaching about 70% of our regular distance because of the heavy winds we realised we should run for the clubhouse.

So we left our bags behind and picked up our balls. By the time we got back to our bags the wind really started to become stronger and by the time we were halfway the 7th we were soaked. From dry to soaked in approx 170 meters.

Off course by the time we reached the clubhouse the worst part was over and play could be resumed .. which we decided against , we preferred a hot shower :)

The joy of living in Belgium .. :)

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