110 Degrees and Climbing!

I have a big weekend of golf planned so I need to catch up on last week's golf. It is supposed to be in the low 90s this weekend! Last Sunday the thermostat was was boiling over at close to 110 degrees. Chad Feldheimer and I ventured down to Maricopa to my favorite semi-private, daily pay golf course, Southern Dunes Golf Club. See the post "Southern Dunes - An Unmitigated Disaster" for a full description of this wonderful golf course. Southern Dunes is 7,517 yards from the tips and 7,307 from the black back tees. Although we are often gluttons for punishment, we decided that the gold tees at 6,889 yards with a course rating of 72.6 and a slope rating of 131 was as much as we could handle.

We had a 7 a.m. tee time and it was only in the high 80s when we teed off. Chad talked the starter into letting us play the back 9 first and then fit us in when we made the turn. Somehow we were ahead of the mower and the greens were slow and bumpy, which is unusual for Southern Dunes. We played the front 9 in 1 hour and 20 minutes. I felt like I was on the Jersey shore playing almost every hole from the sand. I started off 8 over par on the first 6 holes and then lightning struck! I shot even par for the next 8 holes with one birdie and one bogey and I also missed a 5 foot putt for another birdie. I even impressed Chad during that stretch! He was thinking that he would have to eagle a hole from the fairway to wrest the tee box back from me. Then reality reared its ugly head and I finished double-double-double-bogey on the last 4 holes for an 87. Overall, I was very pleased with the 87 score, but after 14 holes I was thinking about shooting in the low 80s. As Chad said, "that was my problem, I was thinking." It is hard to believe that I am the partner and Chad is the associate!

I kept my drives in play and I hit my iron shots really crisply. I was hitting my 7-iron 150 yards, rather than my normal 135-140 yards. I feel stupid telling my followers why I think I am getting the extra distance. About a year or so ago I was hitting the ball off of the hosel of the club so I started lining the ball up at address a little toward the toe of the clubface. This resolved the shank problem, but I was not hitting the ball square on the clubface and I was losing distance. I moved the ball alignment at address back to the middle sweet spot of the club and the ball starting flying further. The other change, which is not as self-evident and a little counter-intuitive is that I opened the clubface just a little, which also seems to help me hit the ball square in the middle of the clubface.

Chad has a new driver and he was booming his drives 280+ yards. It was a little depressing because I do not think I outdrove him all day and I was usually 20 to 50 yards back. Chad had a couple of brain freezes where he chunked his iron or fairway wood. On the par-5 holes, which average about 580 yards, Chad's approach shots were generally 180 to 200 yards, but he was 1 over par on those 4 holes. With those drives he should have been at least 2 under par. He ended up shooting a 77 leaving 3 strokes on the par-5 holes. He will not even let me touch his new driver, let alone hit a ball with it. He is afraid that I will leave a dummy mark on the top of the head of the club.