Goofy Golfer

I think I played my worst round ever today ..

There's a couple of courses around Antwerp and somehow we never managed to play at Ternesse before... today we finally managed ...

The weather has been pretty dramatic for the past couple of weeks , so I wasn't really expecting a course in good state.. I was expecting temporary water on the fairways etc. (On days like this you really don't want to play at Bossenstein) .But they had announced good weather for today ..

Due to the not so great weather I hadn't played for a while

So let's start with the good news... we stayed dry ... not a single raindrop... and we even saw some sunshine.

My first 4 holes were ok .. I was playing my handicap as expected.. but then things started going downhill...
I missed a couple of shots and not a single put dropped... over the course of the day I had about 6 puts that lipped out and 2 that made a 360 turn before the dropped in the cup..

My shots were mostly first grass.. then ball and therefore I didn't have any distance ... most of my shots were about 60-80% of their regular distance ... when we finally figured that it was my ball placement a couple of good shots came back but there were fading way more than usually .. so I missed even more fairways ...

A round to quickly forget ...

Technorati Tags: bad day golf round ternesse worst

A couple of weeks ago I was travelling to the UK with some spare time
I had a meeting around 1500 but my plane arrived already at the airport around 0730,
Between the airport and the conference location there were about 10-15 golfcourses, afterall this was the UK. I decided toe plan ahead and try to make some online reservations for a T-Time, google maps learned me what courses were around,
so looking at their websites , I decided to try online reservations,

Most courses either did't not have an online booking form, had a broken link to an outsourced site , or you couldn't make reservations on the correct day, some of them only allowed reservations up to december 2009 , and so on..

So the next step was trying to mail to the email addresses on those sites, out of about 10 addresses tried, only 3 mailed back .. 1 of them told them they had no availble times on the day I asked, the other 2 just replied with a telphone number that I'd need to call to make reservations.

I checked the year.. indeed this is 2010, the internet has been around for ages, but apparently making online golf reservations from abroad still isn't possible.

Which brings you to the next problem, opening hours, I arrived at the airport at 0730 local time. I had a couple of phone numbers ready to call.. none of the courses / proshops listed opening times.. so I just started random dialing till after about an hour later someone picked up a line. They got lucky I jumped in a taxi and drove over there.

The weather was great .. being the first round of the year .. my scoring was ok... and I was fully relaxed by the time I arrived at the conference.

Technorati Tags: golf online reservations t-time travel

When Ian Poulter told the world last year that he wouldn't return to the French Open because he was disturbed by a local photographer clicking away on his backswing , my first reaction was , ah common.. you're a pro.. you be used to this kind of things , and yeah offcourse that's going to disturb you.

After yesterday I know he's right ... I was playing at an event at La Tournette and a bunch of photographers were shooting pics of the visitors playing on the 17th green and the 18th tee, or the bushes around there..

I teed up , looked at the 18th fairway ahead of me and started my backswing, umpty seconds later the two photographers started clicking away and I looked at them, rather than my bal.. I missed my teeshot.. the ball ended up somewhere in the bushes ... Bummer.

Well.. for the rest of the day .. 2 pars and one birdie , on the 12th a 500m par 5 , a good t-shot, a good second shot and my approach was a pitch away from the green. The ball was lying about 25cm below my feet, but somehow I managed to perfectly pitch it within 3 meters of the hole and holed it out.

Technorati Tags: backswing golf ian poulter photograph

I wasn't planning to play any golf soon .. with the snow covered fairways many courses are closed . But my homecourse sent out mails this friday that it was actually open for play, well 7 out of 9 holes are open obviously wintergreens open ..even the wintercup and mondays senoirs games were planned to go on as normal as possible. I realized that this might be a once in a lifteme opportunity to try.

My first plan was to go on saturday but the weather didn't really agree with that .. heavy winds made the -2 feel like -20 Sunday morning I was the first on the course ... it felt a bit strange .. the teebox was covered with snow but the greenkeepers were busy cleaning the wintergreens .

After trying to force a tee into the frozen ground I realized I did have wintertees with me. ... I never saw my first ball fly .. but my 2nd ball was OK .. about 30 meters left to the green.

I Played 6 holes ... only 7 were open and the Green keepers were clearing the 8th green so I let them do their job.

I actually even played Par on the 7th hole , altough the snow was flattened on most of the fairways there were some parts where even if you hit it straight in the middle your ball would be lost ... I can imagine that when the snow starts dissapearing there will be plenty of balls found in the middle of the fairway or even 2-3 meters from the greens .. where today you couldn't find your ball anymore. With 10-15 cm of snow.. spotting the difference between a small imprint of what could have been a ball.. or just a bird .. it's almost impossible ..
even with the brightest colored balls.

Anyhow .. some pics are below and more in the Snow Golf gallery !

Technorati Tags: 3eycken golf snow snow golf

It was 7 weeks ago since I had last been on the course, or even hit a ball. Way, way to long ... the first tee was pretty scary.. would I still know how to play ... the sun straight in our eyes, pretty difficult to see where your ball was heading .

Even with no idea where my first shot I was lucky enough to find it in the middle of the fairway I scored bogey ...

The wind was strong, much stronger than we're used to .. so on the 4th tee we ran into the first real problem, both our balls arrived on the 7th fairway I had to play my 2nd shot over the bushes separating both fairways only to arrive on the right fairway with our second shot. 150 meters front green, I pulled out my 5 iron, and told Peter "I'm gonna put it on the green", gues what . . I put it on the green, my GPS measured 173 meter.

The next hole the wind took my teeshot again, my ball enterred the deep rough from where I magically escaped with a 6 iron, well .. escaped .. I almost reached the green.

The 8th was also pretty scary.. a 130 meter par3 , into the wind so I figured a 7 iron should be able to do the trick , pretty straight ball, good direction but it catched the wind , it must have traveled aprox 170 meters, 120 in the good direction then 50 back in the wrong direction. A pitch should take me to the green, however the wind decided against it and pushed the ball into the greenside water. It was pretty dry so I could actualy clearly see and play it. Which I did. My sandwedge came out all muddy and so came my ball it rolled onto the green. I was too lazy to pick it up and clean it and 2 putted. When I picked it out of the cup I noticed it wasn't my ball bummer. The ball I hit was surely my ball I had seen my logo on it , the ball that came out however wasn't, weird.

The final hole was also pretty interresting, the wind took my ball to middle of the the 3rd fairway under the three that splits that fairway in tow... but with a clear line of view to the 9th green. With a no risk , no glory mentality I took out my 3 iron and hit a green in regulation from the wrong fairway. Too bad I three putted ;)

17 pts stableford over 9 holes after not playing for almost 2 monhts .. I was satisfied .. I just hope next round will be sooner :)

Technorati Tags: blog bogey bogie fairway golf wind

I`m not sure how I should qualify this course, 14 out of 18 holes are flat lakeside holes,
4 holes (6-9 ) however let you play a very different hillside landscape. The difference is significant. I write lakeside but on the front 9 , the water really never plays a big role, maybe when approaching the 4th , a par 5, green you should make sure you don't go for the right side of the fairway , but the fairway is wide enough to capture even a very bad shot.

The back nine is very different , already on the 10th hole the water plays a role protecting the green, on the 11th tee many T-shots reach nothing but the water , you really have to aim left, but not too far left as then the green is blocked by trees. On Hole 12 and 13 , a longish par 5 and a par 4 bordering the course with a right side out of bounds no water comes in play, but on hole 14 the green is once again protected by it. When you are afraid of water you probably won't like the 15the either, a 130-150 meter shot is required to reach the fairway crossing the lake, once the fairway reached you should be safe however. At the 550 meter par 5 16 th, the water comes back into play when you go for the green , but doesn't really scare people. If you are a chicken and your balls already reached the water on the 11th and 14th you might as wel skip the 17 , a par 3 crossing the water again, if you still have enough balls , watch out, when I played it last week the distances on the sings at the teebox were different from the distances on the scorecard, the shorter ones on the scorecard however felt more correct. So make sure not to overclub (as I did) and you are on your way to the par 4 , 18th. A very nice last challenge, a local player told me he never saw anyone reach that green in 2 so far, so they might as well call it a par 5 :)

With a slope of 141 from the front tees this is not an easy course, add the fast greens to that and some heavy weather including rain and thunder and you'll be happy be back in your car or the clubhouse with a 31 stableford score :)

Technorati Tags: aillete birdie golf laon par storm

Being a goofy golfer the good news is that I can improve a lot , so when a couple of months ago I was happy playing 24 points stableford over 9 holes I played +12 on 9, in the meanwhile my HCP went down, but I trumped my best round ever again (and I hope I`ll keep doing that for a while ) , last time I was pretty surpised that I didn't even play a single par in that round , this time it was different, 4 pars, 2 bogies and 3 double bogies, 27 stableford +8 for 9 , heck theres times that I play worse on WGT :)

Now if I could only repeat that during a qualifying round .. but then again .. I'd need to change the name of my blog :)

Technorati Tags: golf stableford

It happened to me earlier this week.. I arrived at the course for a late round knowing my regular mate was going to join me a couple of holes later. I started with 2 other players playing steady below my hcp . After hitting my teeshot at the 4th straight on the fairway in plain sight for everyone to see, Peter arrived at the course and I decided to let the group I was playing with go ahead and wait for him. There was 1 flight behind that group and I also let them go trough , politely asking them to leave my ball.. the white one on the right side of the fairway (while pointing to it) where it was ..

We chatted a bit while waiting till Peter could hit his t-shot and when I looked at the fairway again , my ball was gone, It was picked up either by the flight I let pass by, or by one on an adjoining fairway.

At first I assumed it was just out of sight because I was looking from a different angle, but when approaching the place where I should have been it became clear .. the ball was absolutely gone.

So what do the rules say here ?

Frankly I couldn't care, I dropped a ball where I was supposed to find it, hit the green and 3 putted it.

I don't get this.. yes you can pick up a ball you find in the rough, the bushes etc when you know it isn't one lost there by somebody still playing , but picking up a ball in the middle of a fairway when you see there's still people on the that fairway ?

Technorati Tags: golf golf etiquette rules stealing balls

Yesterday Golf IT Belgium teed of for the first time at the Kampenhout Golf Club .

Around 0800 a the first flight of a group of almost 20 Golfing IT folks started their round for the first event of Golf IT Belgium. Gert Mentens initiated the idea a while ago and since then over 150 people joined the LinkedIn group

6 hours after the first group started the last group arrived in the clubhouse just in time for the prize giving and reception. The competition had the regular longest drive (18), closest to the hole (3) but also a closest to the water competition on the 11th hole Some pretty high scores, up to 49 points stableford , were noted.

All players were given a box of Golf IT Belgium logoballs and a book on Networking, and off course some bubbles.

The next event of Golf IT Belgium will be played at the Millennium Course in Paal on September 18

Gert mentioned that for next year he already planned some interesting competitions such as Golf IT Manager of the year and others, with already committed prizes from sponsors.

Technorati Tags: gert mentens golf golf it belgium it kampenhout linkedin

So how does it feel to play your best round ever ?

You'd expect it to feel great, awesome, you expect to play great golf and superb shots.

Well.. it doesn't, I just played my best round ever. 24 points stableford over 9 holes, and it didn't feel great, frankly I didn't even think I was playing great golf. I played 0 birdies, 0 pars, 6 bogies and 3 double bogies. (I`m a Goofy golfer remember :))

You dream of your best round ever is going to be one with perfect teeshots, greens in regulation , some pars and maybe even a birdie.

Nope .. on my first hole I hit a tree left of the fairway .. my recovery shot hit 2 trees and magically hit the fairway again , pitch over the green.. 3 put for 6.

Then a teeshot on the wrong fairway, but bogey as result. The average shots kept coming, no superb straight shots , but always a decent recovery. Like my teeshot on the 7th went in the bushes unplayable.. took the punishment 2 shots later I was on the green, putted for par and nearly missed .. ..

I Putted 6 times for par .. missed 6 times ... but still
I hope to be able to play a similar round qualifying one day ..

Best round ever ... not bad to end the weekend :)

Technorati Tags: 3eycken best round golf