Summer 2023 - Week 1 Recap

I feel like we learned a lot of things yesterday at Heritage Isles. First and foremost, the course is a reminder that you can't just look at yardages when determining where to play. And unfortunately, you can't just look at Rating/Slope either.

The Course Setup Committee (yep, that's me) usually does a good job selecting base tees that produce the most fun and chances of "decent" scores. Sometimes people chirp about it being too easy or short... even though you always have the option of moving back to gain some strokes with additional challenge.

Heritage isles offers yardages of 6,236 and 5,615 — a gap that is incredibly egregious. With a Slope of 126 on the longer Blue tees, we went with those and allowed the 55/25 Club the option of moving up. This was a mistake, and the Committee regrets the error.

Long carries off the tee, narrow chutes, and par 3s of 175-200 yards is just too much for our standards. Some of us probably shot the same scores from the Blues that we do on the Whites. But it wasn't enjoyable. Our base tees should always be enjoyable.

 

Moving back and removing the "fun" should be a choice you make to possibly gain a stroke advantage. Yesterday most of us had no choice.

It doesn't help that some of the conditions out there were absolute shit. Fairways and rough were nice. The actually grass on the greens was good. But the surfaces were bumpy, almost as if ball marks were never fixed. The bunkers were the worst I've ever seen, and I mentally couldn't get over losing two brand new balls in bunker-lakes on the first 4 holes.

Dave correctly opined that the only reason he won was because most of the field had to play his tees. This might be the first time the winner's handicap calculation didn't even take the round, as Dave had no equitable adjustments to further reduce his score. He just played steady and smart golf, avoiding any big mistakes.

Melberg couldn't avoid triple bogeys (3 of them), but finished 2nd for a lot of the same reasons.

Billy, Gorecki, and Adam were higher handicaps that fell into 3rd place. It was some of the best golf I've ever seen Gorecki play... despite some of the absolute worse swings I've ever seen. He could be dangerous again this season if he stops randomly shanking the ball.

 

We also learned that golf is hard, and you can't just proclaim things are going to happen — or never going to happen — and will it into existence. There's a fine line between overconfidence and delusion.

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We got the Skins Game next week at Southern Dunes at 8:39am. It might be the best course on our ROTA at the moment. We have two Members who need to confirm if they're in, one of which needs to pay his dues.

More on the course later... but base tees are WHITE... 55/25 people can choose WHITE/GOLD.

 

While the WHITE tees are nearly the same distance as we just played at Heritage Isles, it's a drastically different track and very manageable. Most importantly, it's fun.

Scorecard is here.

Let me know your tee choice if you haven't already.