Golfing
I spent yesterday afternoon playing on two different courses in Long Island.
The first was the Peninsula, a 9-hole par 37 and relatively short course. It's pretty cheap at $16 for the first 9 and $13 for the second round of the day. Despite that, it was in surprisingly good shape. It was in better condition than every course I've played this year except Bethpage. The other good thing is it has a lot of yardage markers, which makes Frog happy.
One very weird thing. It had a number of bunker shaped depressions that only have sand in 1/5 of the area. The rest of it is covered in grass. Luckily I didn't find any but they looked tricky to play out of. (Twice I had balls going right at bunkers. Once it took a hard kick to the side and it bounced over on the other.)
Since it was only 9 holes, I decided to walk it and to make it a bit easier I trimmed the number of clubs I was carrying to 11. Turned out to be a good decision as my hybrid was working off of the tee, my chipping was good and I would have posted a 48, except for one hiccup. I was playing with three guys, two of which were riding. On the seventh hole, I hit a great tee shot down the right side. Unfortunately, it hit something and kicked into the right rough. The other walker tee off last, flubbed his shot, took off immediately after it, flubbed his second shot into the right rough near mine. (Guess where this is going.) I spent a couple of minutes talking with the two riders before we all made our way down the fairway. Obviously, I'm behind everyone else when I arrive at the spot where the two balls are, one five yards ahead of the other. When I get there, they point to the closer ball and say, "This is your ball." I look down and see the "TE" at the end of Top Flite, confirming this is my ball, because the other guy was playing Titlelist. So I grab my club make a great swing and the ball ends up four feet from the pin. Excellent. Not so much. The other guy goes forward and realizes, that this ball is a different model of Top Flite ball that he had apparently started playing 2 holes ago. I go over and see, to the surprise of no one, my ball. So to recap: They were all there at least two minutes before me. They said quite clearly that one ball was mine indicating, at least to my ears, that they'd checked. One of them said it was mine even though he was playing the same brand of ball. And who gets stuck with the two-stroke penalty?
Anyway, that 48 on a par 37, would have equal ~95 on most courses we play and that would have been my second best round ever.
The next course is called Heartland Golf Park. It was about a 20-minute drive from Peninsula so my legs had a little time to recover from the 3000-yard walk. Its main feature is that is replicates 9 famous par-3 holes from around the world, including what is arguably the most famous (and intimidating) hole in the world, the 17th island green from the TPC-Sawgrass. This was the ninth at Heartland and I was really looking forward to it.
Since it was dark and late fall, I had the pleasure of playing the round by myself. That meant I could take multiple shots whenever I wanted which was often. I took two tee shots on every hole, landing both shots on the green three times.
The one thing that is counter-intuitive is that this course is actually a little easier than the other par-3 courses we've played for one important reason. Everything for me was a full swing. A 40-yard shot is a lot easier to navigate if you've never played golf. Once you have a reasonably repeatable swing, the half swings are, in comparison, much more difficult. Five of the holes play right around 115-120, which is a smooth 9-iron for me. It's not surprising that my score ended up being a respectable 35 with 3 pars.
As for the island… I had been very good with my 9-iron all day and this one was 115 to the center of the green. Of course, I hit it a little fat, but it still looked like it had a chance… right up until the splash two yards short. My next shot found the middle of the green and I two-putted for a five.
All in all, a great day of golf, which is a pretty good way to end the season.