Goofy Golfer

I wasn't planning to play any golf soon .. with the snow covered fairways many courses are closed . But my homecourse sent out mails this friday that it was actually open for play, well 7 out of 9 holes are open obviously wintergreens open ..even the wintercup and mondays senoirs games were planned to go on as normal as possible. I realized that this might be a once in a lifteme opportunity to try.

My first plan was to go on saturday but the weather didn't really agree with that .. heavy winds made the -2 feel like -20 Sunday morning I was the first on the course ... it felt a bit strange .. the teebox was covered with snow but the greenkeepers were busy cleaning the wintergreens .

After trying to force a tee into the frozen ground I realized I did have wintertees with me. ... I never saw my first ball fly .. but my 2nd ball was OK .. about 30 meters left to the green.

I Played 6 holes ... only 7 were open and the Green keepers were clearing the 8th green so I let them do their job.

I actually even played Par on the 7th hole , altough the snow was flattened on most of the fairways there were some parts where even if you hit it straight in the middle your ball would be lost ... I can imagine that when the snow starts dissapearing there will be plenty of balls found in the middle of the fairway or even 2-3 meters from the greens .. where today you couldn't find your ball anymore. With 10-15 cm of snow.. spotting the difference between a small imprint of what could have been a ball.. or just a bird .. it's almost impossible ..
even with the brightest colored balls.

Anyhow .. some pics are below and more in the Snow Golf gallery !

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It was 7 weeks ago since I had last been on the course, or even hit a ball. Way, way to long ... the first tee was pretty scary.. would I still know how to play ... the sun straight in our eyes, pretty difficult to see where your ball was heading .

Even with no idea where my first shot I was lucky enough to find it in the middle of the fairway I scored bogey ...

The wind was strong, much stronger than we're used to .. so on the 4th tee we ran into the first real problem, both our balls arrived on the 7th fairway I had to play my 2nd shot over the bushes separating both fairways only to arrive on the right fairway with our second shot. 150 meters front green, I pulled out my 5 iron, and told Peter "I'm gonna put it on the green", gues what . . I put it on the green, my GPS measured 173 meter.

The next hole the wind took my teeshot again, my ball enterred the deep rough from where I magically escaped with a 6 iron, well .. escaped .. I almost reached the green.

The 8th was also pretty scary.. a 130 meter par3 , into the wind so I figured a 7 iron should be able to do the trick , pretty straight ball, good direction but it catched the wind , it must have traveled aprox 170 meters, 120 in the good direction then 50 back in the wrong direction. A pitch should take me to the green, however the wind decided against it and pushed the ball into the greenside water. It was pretty dry so I could actualy clearly see and play it. Which I did. My sandwedge came out all muddy and so came my ball it rolled onto the green. I was too lazy to pick it up and clean it and 2 putted. When I picked it out of the cup I noticed it wasn't my ball bummer. The ball I hit was surely my ball I had seen my logo on it , the ball that came out however wasn't, weird.

The final hole was also pretty interresting, the wind took my ball to middle of the the 3rd fairway under the three that splits that fairway in tow... but with a clear line of view to the 9th green. With a no risk , no glory mentality I took out my 3 iron and hit a green in regulation from the wrong fairway. Too bad I three putted ;)

17 pts stableford over 9 holes after not playing for almost 2 monhts .. I was satisfied .. I just hope next round will be sooner :)

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So last saturday I played one of the last qualifying games of the year ... probably even the last ... it wasn't great ... I was fighting with my game ...

When we arrived at the 8th , a shortish par 3 of about 130 meters , I hit my iron straight but a litle bit short, it looked like it need a short bounce to reach the green and the pin but instead it jumped up about 20 meters.

The 3 of us looked at eachother and then back a the fairway .. no ball in sight ... Obviously we started wondering what could have caused the bouncce ..Ssome piece of concrete on the fairway ? A piece of wood, we didn't know

Upon walking to the green we found my ball about 25 meters in front of the green , thats 15-20 meter closer to the teebox from where we expected it to be.

The only reasonable explanation was that I'd had hit the cup, the cup of the wintergreen.

Next time the real one ...

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I`m not sure how I should qualify this course, 14 out of 18 holes are flat lakeside holes,
4 holes (6-9 ) however let you play a very different hillside landscape. The difference is significant. I write lakeside but on the front 9 , the water really never plays a big role, maybe when approaching the 4th , a par 5, green you should make sure you don't go for the right side of the fairway , but the fairway is wide enough to capture even a very bad shot.

The back nine is very different , already on the 10th hole the water plays a role protecting the green, on the 11th tee many T-shots reach nothing but the water , you really have to aim left, but not too far left as then the green is blocked by trees. On Hole 12 and 13 , a longish par 5 and a par 4 bordering the course with a right side out of bounds no water comes in play, but on hole 14 the green is once again protected by it. When you are afraid of water you probably won't like the 15the either, a 130-150 meter shot is required to reach the fairway crossing the lake, once the fairway reached you should be safe however. At the 550 meter par 5 16 th, the water comes back into play when you go for the green , but doesn't really scare people. If you are a chicken and your balls already reached the water on the 11th and 14th you might as wel skip the 17 , a par 3 crossing the water again, if you still have enough balls , watch out, when I played it last week the distances on the sings at the teebox were different from the distances on the scorecard, the shorter ones on the scorecard however felt more correct. So make sure not to overclub (as I did) and you are on your way to the par 4 , 18th. A very nice last challenge, a local player told me he never saw anyone reach that green in 2 so far, so they might as well call it a par 5 :)

With a slope of 141 from the front tees this is not an easy course, add the fast greens to that and some heavy weather including rain and thunder and you'll be happy be back in your car or the clubhouse with a 31 stableford score :)

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Drive or any other shot, how do you correctly measure them , or how are you sure how long your shot was ?
Say you stand on the teebox, you can measure how the distance from the official tee marks (if you can find them) to the actual position of the tees pretty accurate, you know the lenght of the hole, at least you think as sometimes the information on your scorecard isn't really correct, but let's assume it is.

So you arrive at your landing spot, from there it's once again guessing how far your ball landed from a familiar landing spot, say you're lying 15 meters away from the 50 meter mark that means your shot was the length of the hole - 65 meters, was it ?

Well not really as the length of the hole is measured till the center of the green, and the 50 meter mark is till the front of the green.
So it's length of the hole - 65 meters to the front green - 1/2 depth of the green say that 'd be 30 meters / 2 , therefore 15 meters.

So given a 295 meter PAR 4 your shot was about 215 meters ..

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Being a goofy golfer the good news is that I can improve a lot , so when a couple of months ago I was happy playing 24 points stableford over 9 holes I played +12 on 9, in the meanwhile my HCP went down, but I trumped my best round ever again (and I hope I`ll keep doing that for a while ) , last time I was pretty surpised that I didn't even play a single par in that round , this time it was different, 4 pars, 2 bogies and 3 double bogies, 27 stableford +8 for 9 , heck theres times that I play worse on WGT :)

Now if I could only repeat that during a qualifying round .. but then again .. I'd need to change the name of my blog :)

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It happened to me earlier this week.. I arrived at the course for a late round knowing my regular mate was going to join me a couple of holes later. I started with 2 other players playing steady below my hcp . After hitting my teeshot at the 4th straight on the fairway in plain sight for everyone to see, Peter arrived at the course and I decided to let the group I was playing with go ahead and wait for him. There was 1 flight behind that group and I also let them go trough , politely asking them to leave my ball.. the white one on the right side of the fairway (while pointing to it) where it was ..

We chatted a bit while waiting till Peter could hit his t-shot and when I looked at the fairway again , my ball was gone, It was picked up either by the flight I let pass by, or by one on an adjoining fairway.

At first I assumed it was just out of sight because I was looking from a different angle, but when approaching the place where I should have been it became clear .. the ball was absolutely gone.

So what do the rules say here ?

Frankly I couldn't care, I dropped a ball where I was supposed to find it, hit the green and 3 putted it.

I don't get this.. yes you can pick up a ball you find in the rough, the bushes etc when you know it isn't one lost there by somebody still playing , but picking up a ball in the middle of a fairway when you see there's still people on the that fairway ?

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Yesterday Golf IT Belgium teed of for the first time at the Kampenhout Golf Club .

Around 0800 a the first flight of a group of almost 20 Golfing IT folks started their round for the first event of Golf IT Belgium. Gert Mentens initiated the idea a while ago and since then over 150 people joined the LinkedIn group

6 hours after the first group started the last group arrived in the clubhouse just in time for the prize giving and reception. The competition had the regular longest drive (18), closest to the hole (3) but also a closest to the water competition on the 11th hole Some pretty high scores, up to 49 points stableford , were noted.

All players were given a box of Golf IT Belgium logoballs and a book on Networking, and off course some bubbles.

The next event of Golf IT Belgium will be played at the Millennium Course in Paal on September 18

Gert mentioned that for next year he already planned some interesting competitions such as Golf IT Manager of the year and others, with already committed prizes from sponsors.

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Couple of weeks ago I had about 3 hours to kill while waiting for some stuff, I was close to the Lilse Golf club so I called them to see if they had some open slots to play a quick 9. They don't have teetimes and when I arrived at the course I found the parking lot almost empty.

I payed my greenfee and started of at the first tee. I`m not used to wide fairways but this one wa really small , the first hole measures just above 300m from the dogleg, but it's a dogleg to the right with the real small entry to the green even being blocked by a tree in the middle of the fairway. Double bogeyed it.
Mostly because I was to carefull of the tee then had to navigate trough the small entry :)

The next thing that struck me was the amount of cut off grass still lying on the fairway, not really a joy to play from.

Off to the second tee, which is actually a shared tee with the 5th serving both fairways. When standing on that teebox you also have to wait for people teeing off on the 9th which fairway actually crosses both the 2nd and the 5th.

I hit my t-shot short but I was still within 100 meters of the green for my approach missed the green by a meter, chip , 2 puts for a bogey.

Local rules say that you can't approach the 2nd green while there is still someone on the 3rd teebox so the elderly couple I had passed on the 2nd hole had to wait.. they were hiding in the bushes when I teed off , so I hadn't even noticed them till I passed by. The 3rd hole is one of the 2 longer par 4's on the course , you'd think you have some room on the right but that isn't so.
The teebox of the 9th hole is partly on the 3rd fairway but it is protected by a fence, and not for the longhitters only ... my Iron 4 ended up lying right under that fence .. pretty nasty spot to recover from.

The 4th hole is a 188m par3 next to the driving range where you realize how short that driving range actually is .. I aimed slightly left of the green and hit a beatiful straight shot , that's what happens when you try to correct your bad shots by aiming different... it must have landed 1 meter left of the green.
Upon arriving there I saw a ball lying clearly where I expected it, then another one, and another one ... there must have been 15-20 driving range balls lying next to the green , my ball however was nowhere to be found :(

The 5th hole is almost a copy of the 2nd, same tee box, similar slight dogleg different green , and it also feels shorter but it is longer. Yet a better T-short and sand into the dirty green protected green.

The 6th and the 8th share teeboxes but again the fairway splits towards 2 different greens. Both are the same lenght on paper, wind direction is the same, so a too short iron 7 to the 6th meant I'd hit a too long iron 6 on to the 8th :)

From the 6th green it's a long walk to the 8th teebox, from there you have some room onto both the 1st and the 7th fairway , but take care of the out of bounds on the left and the woods everywhere else :)

Via the 8th it's back to the 9th tee, while heading there watch out for people teeing of from either the 2nd or 5th tee. The 9th is a left dogleg heading back to the clubhouse, this time I didn't go for the safe shot but hit my Iron 4 straight right in the middle of the opening to the green. The result was a par.

The course plays really short , with only par 3 and 4's and not really long ones either there's maybe 2 holes where some people might want to use woods. As I didn't have anyone before me I actually played the course in little over an hour. The 2 20 minute drives included I ws back in less than 2 hours

Oh well.. played well within my buffer and I had some fun...

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Last week during the USOpen living in Belgium meant that there little to no ways to follow the players live, you have the live scoreboard lagging behind, you had almost no functional live streams (I catched the monday final on Justin.tv in acceptable quality hoever) , but we had Twitter there were different people reporting live from the BethPage black course what happened in the flight they were following , which gave us an stream of realtime updates. Combine those updates with having played the Virtual US Open a couple of times and maps.google also gave you some visual idea of what was happening.

Most interresting however was the live twittering of Ian Poulter before and after the rounds, and he is now also actively commenting on his French Open progress.

I`m guessing different upcoming tournaments will also provide us with live updates on twitter, but for those who can't wait .. here's a list of Famous Golfers to follow on Twitter :

• Ian Poulter
• Stewart Cink
• Natalie Gulbis
• Boo Weekly
• Stuart Appleby
• Davis Love III
• Annika Sorenstam
• John Daly

And don't forget to follow the PGA Tour

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