Goofy Golfer

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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So how does it feel to play your best round ever ?

You'd expect it to feel great, awesome, you expect to play great golf and superb shots.

Well.. it doesn't, I just played my best round ever. 24 points stableford over 9 holes, and it didn't feel great, frankly I didn't even think I was playing great golf. I played 0 birdies, 0 pars, 6 bogies and 3 double bogies. (I`m a Goofy golfer remember :))

You dream of your best round ever is going to be one with perfect teeshots, greens in regulation , some pars and maybe even a birdie.

Nope .. on my first hole I hit a tree left of the fairway .. my recovery shot hit 2 trees and magically hit the fairway again , pitch over the green.. 3 put for 6.

Then a teeshot on the wrong fairway, but bogey as result. The average shots kept coming, no superb straight shots , but always a decent recovery. Like my teeshot on the 7th went in the bushes unplayable.. took the punishment 2 shots later I was on the green, putted for par and nearly missed .. ..

I Putted 6 times for par .. missed 6 times ... but still
I hope to be able to play a similar round qualifying one day ..

Best round ever ... not bad to end the weekend :)

Technorati Tags: 3eycken best round golf

Last week I got the chance to play 2 rounds at BitBurger land according to their site the course is rated nr 11 in Germany, so I was in for a treat :)

I played my first round on monday in great weather, 21-25 celcius, got a 9h50 Tee time but I could start earlier ... which luckily placed me well in front of the dutch group that was also staying in the hotel.

The first couple of holes went pretty ok , the course isn't short +5 strokes compared to home meant that I had to look at different par 4's as if they were par 5's. Holes like a 193 meter par 3 really aren't reachable on an average day for me .. I do reach the 200+ with my 4 iron but not uphill :)

And no a 397 meter par 4 , also uphill usually isn't reachable for me in 2 either.. at least they called it "Hole in 5" but then why is it a par 4 ?

BitGolf goes up and down like a Jojo.. which makes it a real physical challenge if you are walking the course, again that showed in my score.. I played my HCP on the first 9 .. but totally flunked the back 9

My thursday round was a bit more in balance ... my front 9 were less good.. but I made up for it in the back 9, probably because I was less frustrated by the extreme slow flights in front of me. Really if you are driving around with buggies that does not give you an excuse to drive back and forth 3 times on a hole blocking everyone behind you. If the flight right behind you bails out and the single player behind them closes that gap in 1 hole you might take the hint a bit
earlier and wave him trough before he almost arrives at that next teebox together with you.

Overall BitBurg is a really nice course its just too bad some people have absolutely no ettiquete and don't repair their pitchmarks what results in sometimes heavily tortured greens as you can see in the pictures.

Back home on saturday it showed that I had trained that week.. Played 28 points on 11 holes ...

Technorati Tags: bitburg bitburger golf resort bitgolf golf

So the weather is slowly getting better...

Last week I celebrated 1/3 of a century on this planet,

The goal of having a Handicap Lower than my age has now been achieved , off course, the sooner the better and time would eventually have solved that problem, but it's one goal less :) Fact is that if you don't play enough you don't get better.

But as compared to last year at least we already got a little bit more practice. We managed to play our first 18 hole round already , on Millenium. Last year we only managed to do so the last week of june, And now we also played a round at the Ostend Wellington Course

And I'm are already making plans for more rounds..

Truth is that when in Belgium you have to play when the weather allows it .. I'd love to live elsewhere for a couple of years.. somewhere where the weather doesn't demand prioritizing other things.

Who knows .. one day ..

Technorati Tags: belgium golf

So the last round of the year was on newyears eve. Temperature was -6 and we were playing the Cleydael wintercourse but with winter greens.

What can I say .. it was one of the best golf experiences I ever had , I don't know why but the scenery was awesome, we never had cold, and we pretty much had the course for us alone. No waiting, just a round of relaxed golf, enjoying the view.

We both played a really great round .. and in close to 3hours we finished the 17 holes, the 18th doesn't have a wintergreen so it was closed .. 6 pars in a round is great golf to me .. even on wintergreens, afterall your one but last ball has to be within that 1 meter range of the hole.

Fast forward 24 days and the weather finally allowed me to go out again for a round . well the weather didn't really allow it .. the course was still soaked, there was a lot of temporary water on the course and again wintergreens were still in play.

But the first shot of the year was a pretty good one.. I couldn't see it into the Sun, but it fealth great and so was it's result ... just a short pitch away from the green. Too bad I didn't find my provisional ball anymore :)

And so was my last approach of that day, a wedge over a tree that landed at approx 5 cm from the cup, too bad the shot was my 4th as I had to drop outside an overflowing bunker , there was absolutely no way to play the ball form in the bunker :(
(Actually had to look up the rulings on that one)

If the last 2 rounds were the prequel to this next season It's going to be fun,I'm a happy camper with a 47 ss score over 17 holes to finish the year and a 21 score over 9 holes to start the year ..

Now if only the weather would become a bit more accpetable :)

Technorati Tags: bunker filled with water golf round of golf

A teetime at 8u45, would it be light enough already to start ?
Would we even see our balls the first couple of holes... a question soon to be replaced by will the fog disappear.

A upon driving to the course the view was around 200meters.. when I arrived at the parking I couldn't even see the 18th clearly.

Albeit being cold it was really busy on the course for a winter day, 2 flight gathering behind us on the first tee and at least 2 flights before us ,

At least 2, as I had seen at least 2 groups departing to the first tee
The flight in front of us started ... and then it became clear .. or rather unclear ... the view was less than 160 meters.. so for the first couple of holes our teeshots would be pretty blind. The problem was bigger however .. we couldn't see if our landing zone was clear or not.. we had to really look hard into the fog to see if there were still people standing on the fairway before we could start ourselves.

You'd expect the fog to clear out after a couple of holes, but that didn't happen. If you had never played Cleydael before you were going to be in trouble, you really had to know where the fairway was and have a good idea of what your ball did. There were 2 options .. either your ball was on the fairway or it was lost ...

Well there was a 3rd one which we did encouter on the 15th
2 perfect (or seemingly perfect) shots... both straight , both long .,
both still high up in the air when we saw last sight of them.. Given the clubs we were using the distances of the balls shouldn't be that far apart ..
Like maybe 2-3 meters apart from eachother, just as on the 8th.

Upon arriving at the landing zone.. we only found 1 ball.. just 3 meter short of the water, and then we realized we were both playing with the same ball so we didn't know which ball it was.

As the 15th is a PAR 5 , we didn't think of taking a shorter club, usually we don't have to worry about the water and today we had about 10-15% less distance due to the fog. However as we were playing from the winter tees the distances on the holes were a bit shorter.

We hadn't seen any of the balls land.. there fog was way to thick for that so we decided to both continue from the same place. We both made PAR.

It's a weird experience, blind shots on pretty much every hole.
Obviously you have holes designed that way on lots of courses but if you can't see your bal land on 16 out of the 18 holes you play .. it's weird..

But fun ... we both played a pretty good round with stableford scores that would be in the mid thirties and low forties if we would have played from the regular tees.. no clue on how many strokes we'd get on the wintertees.

Technorati Tags: cleydael fog golf

As mentioned 2 weeks ago.. I had booked me 2 intrresting T-Times for during my Gran Canaria holiday.

The 2 were at Maspalomas and Meloneras Golf in Maspalomas

My first course was the Maspalomas Course, I had a start time at 11.38 I arrived 20 minutes early payed my greenfee and set off to the 1st tee. The starter however redirected me to the 10th where I was grouped with an English and a Swiss guy. The Englishman's wife was caddying for him. The good thing about starting on the 10th tee was that we had really low traffic in front of us as compared to the people on the first 9.

Maspalomas is what some people will call a Tourist course .. the fairways are pretty wide, it's pretty flat , it has little or no "Wow" holes and on only 2 holes water came in play, and apart from 2-3 holes near the dunes even missing the fairway isn't really a punishment. The fact that I putted on the 18th hole with the same ball I started on the 10th and putted on the 9th with the ball I stated on the 1st proves that.

My Second course for the week was Meloneras. Meloneras is a totally different course from Maspalomas, although not even 5 Km apart this course really has a lot of "Wow" moments. I was grouped with a Spanish and a German player .. and they both had played the course before. The first 9 have a great view on the mountains, they are absolutely not flat compared to the Maspalomas course and by the time you reach the tee of the 5th hole the view to the sea is magnificent.

As usual I played from the yellow tees, but the course surely has the opportunity to host international tournaments with often even 2 tees behind me.

I'm still not sure which rule I should have followed on the 2nd hole.
I hit my 3rd shot out of a bunker right off the fairway , on the other side of the hard road for the buggies. My ball bounced back on the road in its gutter and then rolled back downhill for about 30 meters to drop still in an empty concrete water reservoir, or maybe it was just a road as some time later I saw one of the greenkeepers driving his tractor trough that same construction. So was it a free drop or a drop + penalty ? And if it was indeed a water hazard where did I enter it .. the moment my ball dropped in the empty gutter or the moment it dropped in the bigger empty reservoir ? I'd love to see the European Tour play there and see a PRO face the same problem. Obviously I won't see that as they'll play the green in regulation.

The 3rd hole plays about 165 meters over water, but the most dangerous part of that hole is the fact that there are numerous balls from the driving range on the teebox and the road to the green, so watch your back when you stand on the teebox. Both other players didn't reach the green and my Iron 5 hit the fringe. the birdie lipped out however ;(

The real nice holes however are in the backnine. They start with an easy 10th hole , a short one down hill , once again however, just as on Hole 3 the course might want to invest in some fences, my first and bad teeshot hit the parking lot, didn't hit a car however .. I think. Hole 11 is where the real fun starts, its a dogleg to the left, if you are a long hitter you could think you could carry the corner, but you probably won't , no really you won't , take my advise here.. keep too the right .. don't try to cut the corner.

Hole 12 is the signature hole of the course.. it's a par 3 uphill that is being pictured on most of the brochures and sites you see about the course. The view is magnificiet. You hit towards the atlantic if you miss the green on the left that's where your ball ends up.. if you hit it short .. same result. ..I got my 2 points so I was happy.. the 12th was the first hole of 3 that plays next to the Atlantic. The 13th is a long SI 1 par 5 where you absolutely don't want to go left (that is if you want to keep your balls...) and the 14th start starts of over a gaping 130 meter ravine. When heading back to the clubhouse Hole 15 , 16 and 18 also require you to carry small ravines.

The views on the course are great... too bad I didn't have a decent camera with me.. who knows next time.

Both courses I played 19 points in the first 9 holes .. then absolutely failed to confirm that in the second 9. So the final conclusion .. I really should try more to play 18 holes. My scorecards usually show .. I play 9 fairly well.. then break down. So I`m pretty sure what my next year goal will be .

Technorati Tags: golf gran canaria maspalomas meloneras

I've just got confirmation for a couple of interesting Tee Times next week..

Really looking forward to them.

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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.

Technorati Tags: 12 holes golf military golf witbos

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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