Spring

It's about a month since my last post, but it seems years away from the snow and cold of this long winter. I am headed out to play golf this afternoon and the high today is supposed to be 85*- wow.

The trip to Pinehurst over spring break began this stretch of nice weather.  Our only new course was an old Donald Ross design called Southern Pines.  Most of us liked the course well enough, but the clubhouse was a dump- they argued that the recession means that they don't stock any merchandise anymore. Sounds like bad business to me, but what do I know about running a golf course.  The problem is that because the course had such a "temporary" almost-out-of-business feel to it, I doubt we will go back.

I am a fan of links and links style courses along with the old fashioned courses I grew up with in the midwest with oak and maple trees and streams- stuff that looks like old farmland. The courses in the sandhills region around Pinehurst all have the same look and feel to me, especially in early spring when the bermuda grass is dormant and brown. There is inevitably lots of bunkering (though oddly I stay away from them most of the time) and many fairways lined with pine trees.  You rarely lose your ball because there is little undergrowth and you can see it against the pine straw. The courses aren't long, so keeping the ball in play is the most important thing so you aren't hitting little 90 degree chips out of the woods back into the fairway. The greens are mostly larger than I am used to and so there are more three putts.  Some are quite fast even in the sprin and others aren't so you never know what you will find from one course to the next.

My vintage clubs of choice for the trip included my Honma woods and the rechromed MacGregor colokrom irons I mentioned in the last post. Line everyone else, my game was rusty and this showed itself in erractic driving and a mediocre short game.I shot 83-83-87-83. The 87 was on a beautiful day on what is usually my favorite course- a Nicklaus design called The Legacy. The last few years I have averaged in the upper 70s on this course (which we sometimes play twice) but this year I made a real mess of it. On the last day I shot a 45-38 while working on a swing change that I happened on during practice on the range before the round.  It took 9 holes to kick in, but it helped considerably, making my swing feel more natural and comfortable which is what I didn't feel most of the trip.

The Colokrom irons were nice enough, but seemed very short and had dynamic gold shafts- not my favorites. So after I got back I switched to Hogan Apex Grinds (early 90s) with Apex stiff shafts.  Ilike these a lot better. I have a couple of new persimmon drivers to try out and will report on them in the next post.  In the meantime, here are a couple of photos from the trip. The first shows me proudly wielding my Honma persimmon- with Doug obvioulsy admiring its U-shaped grain!  The second picture is of the "gang of twelve" who went to Pinehurst this year.