Played a little course out near my work called Deertrak. Pretty fun, spaghetti noodle thin fairways, sloped greens, trees all over.
My college team played at a course near Rochester called Blue Heron Hills.
If we never play there again, thatâd be okay by me.
The only other post that references this course may be this one from 2019.
Itâs a terrible course.
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Got out and played the course Ray Floyd grew up on yesterday with a buddy. Fun/simple course thatâs a great value for theirs part of NC. Only picture I took is of the par 3 9th. A s**** followedâŠ.
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Played in a work scramble last night at Cambridge here in Evansville, IN. Got treated to an awesome golden hour coming down 18. I blame the sunset for my missed 15 footer to win it on that green and also for the 60 footer the team we tied with drained on the putting green to beat us in the playoff.
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Checked out the course on maps
Fascinating windmill par 3 we have here. Was there a rake for each bunker?
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Does anyone know if Justin Hueber has a Refuge handle? We have to tag him every time we post #16 at Everett Golf & Country Club until he comes out and sees it for himself.
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I actually think there was at least for the front ones I walked past. We ended up front left to a front right pin, so I didnât check out the other bunkers. There are honestly some sweet holes and a brutal closing stretch of a 550 yard Par 5, 185 uphill par 3, 400 yard downhill ish par 4 with OB right and left
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Looks like a lionâs mane. You could lose half those bunkers and it would still probably have more than it needs.
From their website:
Cambridge, a public golf facility, is an 18-hole par 72 course that features 10 acres of water in nine in-play lakes and multiple pot and flat bottom bunkers.
Cambridge opened for play on July 15, 2000, and has received rave reviews and strong play ever since â a testament to the quality of and enthusiastic reception for this young course and its true Scottish-style links layout, and to pure greens. USGA rating at Cambridge is 74.6 and the slope rating is 137.
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It was too perfect of a fall day to spend it sitting in my office so I snuck out to Madison Golf Course, of Strapped: Peoria fame. Literally played only 3 shots from fairway cut all day, the first being my 3rd shot on the 9th hole. Only hit two fairways and had birdie putts on both holes. Needless to say, there were lots of doubles out there today.
Also the trees where @MerchCzarâs mega bonus died have been trimmed up and wouldnât require an unplayable now.
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What a day for it, extremely jealousâŠ
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Incredible honeymoon round at the Hapuna Course at Mauna Kea Resort on the west side of the Big Island. Huge elevation changes, breathtaking views of both the Pacific and mountains of Hawaii, and tons of goats. Wife also had a blast, hit some of the best shots of her life. Shoutout @eurofan for the recco, Refuge never fails.
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This course was hard af. We had like 50 mph winds when we played, and I think I hit 0 fairways because of that.
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Had a great fucking day today.
About a year ago I cajoled my then-fiancĂ©e into giving me the green light to bring the clubs on the honeymoon trip. Initially we were gonna hit Hawaii but our various points & loyalty programs werenât gonna get us very far there relative to other destinations, so Kapalua will have to wait. Swapped Maui for Milan in the flight redemption algorithm and behold, we were headed to Italy courtesy of Amex points.
Naturally I looked up Italian resorts that had golf courses, and Castiglion del Bosco soared to the top of my wish list after a few minutes of Googling. Designed by onetime Open champion Tom Weiskopf, CdB first saw play in 2010 by Massimo Ferragamo (yeah, that Ferragamo) and 25 of his buddies. Their once-fully-private Tuscan playground is now a Rosewood-operated resort property. The club has ~140 members and allows play for Rosewood hotel guests. A few Ferragamo family dogs have made the heckle deck of the classically Tuscan stone clubhouse their permanent home in recent years.
The main range is being rebuilt and the back 9 recently reopened following a complete overhaul of its irrigation system, and the fellas running the pro shop (Allesandro and Guido, couldnât have been kinder hosts) politely warned me about the conditioning being less than perfect. They refunded me a hundred euro for having to deal with only 3 practice areas being open, a few bunkers being incompletely reconstructed on the 713-yard 13th hole, and seams between patches of fresh fairway sod still showing some sand. The cart paths were also down to the standards of typical Italian country roads thanks to the heavy equipment doing irrigation work in recent weeks, which they apologized for profusely, but I honestly enjoyed drifting my cart through dirt hairpin corners like rally track. Anyway, the CdB staff could teach a few muni supers a thing or two about how to inform players of substandard course conditions. This place is going to be stellar when all the ongoing work is done in the spring.
The CdB routing makes two laps down and up a huge hillside with the clubhouse perched on top, weaving across and between many dune-like mounds (very few flat lies in fairways, always a slope to navigate). The course is situated below the main resort borgo (which itself is stunning), and the gravel road leading up to the resort from the Val dâOrcia splits the two nines. The clubhouse overlooks the back 9 and practice areas, so the front 9 across the road feel a bit more secluded. While I wouldnât recommend walking all 18 (itâs a proper hike), walking would be doable with a half set on a mild day in the early spring or late fall. Thereâs not enough play to justify a caddy program so youâd be hoofing your own bag.
Anyway, Iâll let the pics do the talking.
The unofficial 19th âBrunelloâ hole was serving as a short range (green is 80-130 yards deep), and the stone clubhouse & restaurant are perched in the background:
View of the front nine from the back of the first tee box (first hole goes uphill, then the course loops back down thru the holes you see here, then 7-9 come back to this point):
Short-sided on 6:
View from 9th tee box. The Rosewood hotelâs main borgo is perched on top of the mountain dead center in the background.
While I think the front 9 is the better overall collection of holes, the back has some real stunners. The 10th is a total launch into the abyss. A massive par-4 that plays several hundred feet downhill, you can barely see the fairway aside from its right edge due to the dunes and brush directly in front of the tee, but thereâs a huge halfpipe-y fairway riddled with knolls that could either stall your ball on contact or kick it forward all the way to the green. Probably the most exciting tee shot of the day and you just canât beat this vista.
13 might be the longest par-5 in the world, tipping out at something like 713 yards. However, like 10 it also runs downhill. While the slope isnât as severe or undulating, itâs consistent enough to add probably 80-100 yards to any solidly struck drive and similar gains on a second shot, so getting on in 3 from the tips shouldnât be impossible. I was playing the blues but would have chosen to rip this one from the tips. However those tees are adjacent to the range undergoing reconstruction so they were closed. The blues had been moved up to make way for heavy equipment, so it was a comfy 580ish today. Reached the green side in 2 and then forgot how to chip & putt, made bogey.
18 is an electric finisher. Winding back uphill with a death ravine off the right edge of the entire fairway, it asks how much you think you can bite off and chew from the tee. The clear layup area to the front left is a big easy target from the tee, but would leave you 200+ into a L-shaped green with cliff drops long and right. I decided to take on the fairway bunker and managed to carry it, leaving myself 135 in. Dumped a bailout ball into the grassy hollow left of the green to ward off a triple bogey that might lurk behind a rightward miss and made a comfy (if unexciting) bogey to finish.
Conditions were solid, save for a few abnormally damp spots and ground-under-repair zones. Greens all rolled very pure but had absolutely hieroglyphic contours, so reading them was a challenge. I had at least 3 long-ish putts that I swear turned at least 5 feet straight uphill. Totally confounding. Putting is normally not my weakness but I posted seven 3-jacks on the card. Short game also did not serve me well. Driving and irons were stellar though. Only missed 2 fairways off the tee all day and hit 11 GIR en route to an 87 that included a quintuple bogey on the 3rd (note for any future visitors, long and left of the green is a death sentence jail when dealing with a back pin).
Overall, 9/10 golf course and highly recommend to anyone who can swing a visit (Rosewoods are pricey but you can book using credit card points via Amex, Chase etc. to offset all or part of the price tag). If I was to rehash it, I would axe 16 (a perfectly fine par-3, just doesnât have the same juice as many other holes) and make the Brunello hole part of the official 18 hole routing (not sure how, but that decision doesnât need to be made anyway). I think dinky par-3âs surrounded by trouble can be a lot of fun, especially for match and stableford games that are more popular in Europe. Plus, it would add some yardage variety to the par 3 collection. Anyway, thatâs just my two cents, and thereâs nothing stopping anyone from just playing Brunello as a 19th hole anyway.
Next up will be a TBD round on Sardinia. Til then, saluté!
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Yeah the wind was the problemâŠ
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I will say, that from the back tees it plays 7200âŠthey also never have the back tees even out. Itâs a good course, but (no offense to any of the other 3 Nest members within 50 miles of it) it is over hyped by the people that live there. The staff has also left a LOT to be desired in previous visits. Double booking scrambles on top of each other, not deleting online tee times when they book in person, and trying to send groups out in the middle of scrambles. Unfortunately, they have the best conditions for a public course in the area and they know it. Finally, the only thing linksy about it is the fact that there arenât many trees.
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Good point. I did get new equipment since then, so it could have been the equipmentâs fault.
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Shame the weather wasnât any better today.
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