ASU Karsten Golf Course

On Sunday, Chad Feldheimer and I played at ASU Karsten Golf Course in Tempe near the Arizona State University campus. This is the home course for the ASU golf team. Players like Billy Mayfair and Phil Mickelson played Karsten when they were student athletes at ASU. It is a 7,002 yard, par-70 Pete Dye-designed, Scottish links course with rolling hills and railroad ties. The course is built on only 156 acres in the barren wasteland of the river bed of the Salt River adjacent to an electric substation with huge overhead power lines running across the golf course and within the flight path for Sky Harbor Airport. The course was completed in 1989 and the clubhouse was completed in 1994. The golf course is a brilliant use of virtually worthless real estate.

Playing from the professional tees, the course rating is 73.8 and the slope rating is 131. The front 9 is a par-34 with no par-5 holes. Chad Feldheimer and I both started out par-par-par. I also parred the par-3 7th hole and bogeyed the 494-yard par-4 5th hole (of which I was pretty proud), but double-bogeyed 4 holes for a 43 on the front 9. Chad did not play well and shot a 42 on the front 9. By the time we got to the 9th hole, the wind was blowing more than 20 miles per hour and we were struggling.

The back 9 is a 3,751 yard par-36 and we decided that playing from the professional tees was too masochistic even for us so we moved up to the champion tees, which are 3,395 yards. It seemed like we were hitting into the wind on almost every hole, although sometimes there seemed to be a cross-wind. The 10th hole is a 478-yard par-4 (498 yards from the professional tees). I had 2 pars, 5 bogeys and 2 double-bogeys for a 45 on the back 9 and an 88 for the round. Chad started bogey-bogey on the back 9 and was even par on the last 7 holes for a 38 and an 80 for the round. The wind on the back 9 was howling and it was a struggle just to finish. On the signature hole, the 217 yard, par-3 16th hole, Chad made a birdie and I made a par I hit the ball pretty well off of the tees, but I was missing the fairways so I had a lot of blind shots over the hills or shots with the ball sitting on the side of a hill either 2 feet above or 2 feet below my feet. I still hit a lot of good hybrid shots and I chipped and putted reasonably well. A number of greens are elevated and a shot that misses the green rolls down into the collection area below the green and I do not have enough confidence to consistently hit a high pitch or lob onto the green.

Because of the difficulty of the golf course, my 88 equated to a 12.2 handicap differential. With back-to-back 12.2 differentials my handicap index should go down when the new handicaps are posted on June 1.