Camelback Golf Men's Club

I was invited by my partner Right Guard to play golf with the men's club at the Camelback Country Club this morning. Right Guard played football at Arizona State University in the early 1960s and then graduated number 3 in his class from the University of Arizona Law School. He is one of the eminences of the real estate bar in Arizona. But Right Guard is still feeling the effects of his football days. He had a hip replaced a few years ago and has very little flexibility. He and his wife took up golf ten or so years ago and are both avid golfers (I think that she beats his butt!). Right Guard is about a 24 handicap. We played with Gene and Mark. Mark is 77 years old and a former club golf champion. He has all of the shots and still has a long smooth swing and a sweet putting stroke. Gene is in his early 70s and strikes the ball very well and quietly scores pretty well. There was a lot of good natured ribbing and jokes and a lot of whining by each golfer about his poor play, but you could tell that they enjoyed each other's company and the camaraderie of the men's club.

We played the Padre course from the burgundy tees, which are only 6,457 yards. The Padre course has a lot of water hazards and I found every one of them! I started off with a 7 and a 6 on the first two par-4 holes and it did not get much better from there. I shot a generous 94! On the positive side (and there were very few positives) I won the closest to the pin contest on the par-3 11th hole hitting a 6-iron to about 4 feet from the flagstick and I made the birdie putt. I also only hit into one greenside bunker (generally because I was so far right or left of the green) and I hit a nice sand shot out of the bunker. The rest of my game was miserable! The entire round I was hitting my iron shots thin and right, or worse, skulling my shots. And I either skulled or chili-dipped my chip shots (I did skull one chip shot that hit the flagstick and went in the hole!). Even when I thought I hit a relatively good shot, somehow I found the water hazard. A small portion of my problems were because I was not familiar with the course, but most of the problems were because I was not hitting the ball where I intended, which makes for a long day.