Why’d you edit out the first picture? I thought it was a nice addition. 
keeping it clean here 
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Played Pine Valley a few weeks back, and am still thinking about it. It is so hard, but I’d love another crack at it. My game hasn’t been at its best the past month, so it was a tough scene at times.
Tee to green is hard, but the thing I didn’t expect is how tough the greens are. I consider myself a decent putter with a good short game, and I think I made 3 up and downs over 3 rounds. It makes Oakmont feel like a manageable course
It’s insane how precise every shot needs to be. A slight pull/fade with a driver and you will still be in the fairway, but blocked out by a tree. Or get a firm bounce and run into some bad lies off the fairway, or in a small and deep bunker. Slightly mishit an approach it’s either off a false front or ends up on the green 40-50 feet away and you’ll probably 3 putt. Over the three rounds, I had one putt that had less than a cup of break. Every other putt broke massively.
15 is probably the hardest par 5 in the world. Long, uphill, fairway sloped left to right, but trees overhanging on the left so you can’t just hit a stock cut of that lie. Instead have try and draw it into the green. Oh and you get close to the green and realize there’s a severe false front that extends a good 8-10 yards into the green. Playing partner who is a 2 handicap, sensibly played to the back of the green on our second round, but then proceeded to 4 putt, because of how severely the green slopes back to front And it’s like this on repeat. And when you get a short par 4 breather like 8, it’s the smallest most severely sloped green I’ve ever seen.
It’s a par 70 and from the regular tees (6500 yards) the rating is 73.6 with a slope of 153!!
Membership is pretty cool and most of them are sticks. More than half the members I met, played in the Crump cup and were/still are elite amateurs.
Opening tee shot
The famous 2nd hole
Tiny green on 8 that I mentioned above
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Never heard of it
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Yeah reloading… lol
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Pine Valley this, Sedge Valley that…but have you ever played where The King played college golf?
Paschal Golf Course, 1917 in Wake Forest, NC. A 9 hole, 2950 yarder with some great blind tee shots, uphill/downhill/sidehill lies, tiny greens. Rough around the edges but a fun 9 holes.
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Sorry, I had to!
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Hey no worries, I laughed after frantically trying to delete lol
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Sorry can never miss the opportunity to drop this
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Got to play Jim Furyk’s debut course design in Port St. Lucie FL. Glynlea Country Club. Played with @JShades33 & @Jaffacake79 on a beautiful morning. Course was very playable and had some gettable holes, course opened a few weeks ago and is very firm and fast.
Loved seeing Jim building a massive centerline bunker on a par 5
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A few weeks late on this post but I was in Hawaii on vacation at the end of October and got a couple great rounds in.
My second round of the trip, but most important, was a round with @RyMo, @nuclear_niblick, and @topflitetopper at Royal Hawaiian. Many were saying this was the Aloha Roost’s NIT qualifier 
. This was a fantastic experience with great company. It’s very cool that we get to meet such high quality people through this message board. A special thank you to @RyMo who continues to be a great host to everyone who visits the island. He picked @nuclear_niblick up at the house he was staying at and then grabbed me at the rental car facility at HNL, then took us to and from the golf course.
This was my first time playing Royal Hawaiian, which is on the windward side of Oahu, meaning it gets a lot of rain. I played Ko’olau Golf Club down the street years ago (before it closed), this is very similar.
Royal Hawaiian was designed by Pete Dye and in many ways it shows. Royal Hawaiian is extremely demanding, not only in the ways you’d expect a Pete Dye course to be, but in the fact that most of this course was cut through canyons, ridges, and valleys of dense tropical Hawaiian land. Really not a place a golf course should be, but sick that a golf course is there.
The day before I had the opportunity to play Waiʻalae Country Club, the site of the Sony Open. I say opportunity because we spent the beginning of our trip at the Kahana Hotel, which sits alongside the course and while the course is private, they do allow resort guests to play on a limited basis. With that said, it was $500. It’s a very good golf course, it’s not a $500 golf course. I knew that before I played it, my decision to spend that much money was solely based on that fact that I’ve watched this course on TV for over two decades and I’d probably kick myself if I passed on playing it.
The course is built on a very flat and uninteresting piece of property. The layout honestly feels like your average $65 public golf course. With that said, the conditions were dialed. The greens are subtle but beautiful and they were running at about a 13, which took some tuning for this public golfer.
The greenside bunkers appeared simple but they were deceptively big, deep, and everything ran down to the center of the bunker leaving a long carry. Prior to this round I hadn’t played a round of golf in five months and these bunkers really challenged my short game, which is generally my strength. I felt like every time I ended up in a bunker, I had a 50ft carry out of the bunker to a pin that is 75ft away. I didn’t have the precision at the moment, I left three shots in the bunker over the course of the round, each just feet from carrying the lip and being a shot I’d be happy with.
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sick! always feel like it’s a good experience to play a tour course because you have better perspective when they play there every year
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Sweet, you saw Jesus out there!!!
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Waialea is very intriguing. Land certainly never looks interesting. Is there much raynor left?
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Dude was fly fishing on a super windy day, very impressive.
I’m not certain but I think the Doak work was part Raynor restoration. The greens definitely show that.
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What a fourball!
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Bali Hai Golf Club - Las Vegas,NV
Had a fantastic time at Bali Hai. Off at 7:10am Sunday morning with a foursome in town for a conference. Polynesian themed club house and “driving range”. Staff was amazing from the moment we walked in. Great Strip views and you are literally at the end of the runway so every two minutes at jet is on top of you. Not a course I would want to play every day but very Vegas and I would absolutely go back and play again. Marshal brought some warm homemade chocolate chip cookies. We ordered food at turn and they asked for cart numbers and delivered on 11.
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Preface: This isn’t the mental health thread
I have played Bali Hai in 2015 and anytime I think about that course a heavy cloud of mixed feelings hangs over me.
In May 2015 I was in Chicago for a work training. My Mom had been having abdominal pains and asked her doctor for a CA 19-9 test because her Dad died from pancreatic cancer. I was in my dystopian dormitory at the Q Center in St Charles, IL when the results came back that my Mom likely had pancreatic cancer. I spent a day cutting class and realizing how awful pancreatic cancer was, something that would kill my Mom 4 years later.
After the training I bordered a flight for Vegas for a work retreat with everyone from the Los Angeles real estate practice. The second night we had bottle service at a big club and I was very drunk and was flirtatious with a coworker*, touchy feely, etc. The next day a senior partner sat me down and told me that was unacceptable.
The last day of my Vegas trip I had a prebooked tee time at Bali Hai. I played with some random tourists and I was hungover. I played like shit. The whole time I was conflating my Mom likely having terminal cancer and embarrassing myself at a work event. I was literally in a pit of despair.
I still have such a strong feeling of guilt and despair every time I think of Bali Hai but I’ve never actually said that out loud or written it down. It feels better to do that now.
(*) now my wife 
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