For those interested, the course held its own over 54 holes of play. Some serious rainfall softened up the greens to the point where players could fire at pins, but the soft fairways made holes like #2 and #18 play quite long, even for these guys. Congrats to the PA team for winning by 3 strokes. The winning PA team featured a golfer, Mike Van Sickle, who may be getting a tour card quite soon.
Cudos to everyone from pro staff to volunteers. The players loved this venue and were very appreciative of everyone's efforts. The USGA seemed impressed with the course and people too.
Above: The 490y Par-4 hole #2 (converted Par 5 played from our white tees)Course Stat Highlights:
> The average score for all 3 rounds was 75.1 (4+ over par) / current course rating is 74.3 - go figure
> Hole #2 clearly ate the most lunches for the week with 49 doubles and 21 others (triples and quads). Players had difficulty staying out of the water, as do many of our own members (yours truly included).
> The second hardest hole was the 480y Par-4 hole #18. The creek short and right was a dangerous place to hang out on that hole, but not dangerous enough to keep Scott Shuemann away from collecting a whole lot of virtually new ProV1s (see pic below). Word is he's trying to get $20 a dozen.
> An impressive stat is that the 394y Par-4 hole #10 finished as the 6th hardest hole, plenty harder than the 446y par-4 hole #8. #10 was also the 6th hardest hole for all 4 Metro Open events held here too.
Above: The 480y Par-4 hole #18 (a number of players thought members played this as a par 5)Rolling Rolling Rolling
> Despite the rain throughout the week, the greens consistently rolled between 11-12 on the stimpmeter. Longer putts often double-broke while short putts hit firm would hold the line well. Trouble is that a firmly hit 5 footer that lipped out would often yield at least a 3 footer coming back.
> Players were generally very good about fixing their ball marks on the greens, so members will see them in very good shape this weekend. Also, the middle and up tee boxes have been left untouched for a week, so they will be pristine before we all start hacking them up again (fix your divots!!!)
Scott wants $20 a dozen, at least that is what we heard- Raj B
pictures obtained from USGA MST website.
Raj: Love the blog... I picked up over 40 brand new Pro V1's out of the creek on 18... some great team balls in there from the event, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Nevada, and a couple of "Crump Cup" logo balls from the Pine Valley event. For the record, there was Vodka in my system as I entered the creek...
Posted by: Scott Schuemann | 09/27/2009 at 06:47 PM
Scott: I will take 3.5 dozen for $20 each. Nice work!
Posted by: Mike Clark | 09/28/2009 at 05:28 AM
How about 9 and 10 both playing harder than 3 & 8?
Posted by: Mark Horstman | 09/29/2009 at 09:24 AM
#18 being a par 5 could be interesting??
Posted by: Phil Seifert | 09/29/2009 at 10:29 AM
You better hurry to play Ference... he wasn't on his game yesterday at the volunteer outing....
Posted by: Scott Schuemann | 09/29/2009 at 11:51 AM
Although the ruleing was unfortunate to our team, the 4 putt on the last hole is really what caused us to not win sole possession of 2nd place. In addition, I think not enough has been reported about the very poor showing of the so called "amazing, unbeatable" team of AMANT/JOHNSTON. I think it is now clear who the money players are and are not!
Posted by: Jim Nienhaus | 10/23/2009 at 08:41 AM