71 Holes!

This past Monday was Martin Luther King/Civil Rights Day so SO and I took a mini-vacation to Palm Desert in California. Palm Desert is about 4 hours by car from Phoenix. It is in the Sonoran Desert so the topography, scenery, temperature and rainfall are similar to Phoenix. I think there are more golf courses per capita in the Palm Springs area than anywhere in the United States!

We stayed at The Westin Desert Willow Villas. It is a new Starwood/Westin timeshare project. Because I have a Starwood Preferred Guest card (although I have almost no points on the card), I was invited to the project for a very reasonable price. The amenities are constructed and the first phase of the project is completed. There will be five phases when the project is completed. It is located between holes at the Desert Willow Golf Resort, which is a city-owned 36-hole golf complex. Desert Willow Villas is not affiliated with the golf courses, although we were told that guests get a small discount on the daily fee. The Firecliff course at Desert Willows is ranked as one of the best public golf courses in Southern California.

On Saturday, I played The Golf Club at Tierra Lago - North Course (formerly the Landmark Golf Club). The course was in good condition and the fairways were cut very close so you got a lot of roll off of the tees. However, because the lies were so close in the fairway you really had to concentrate on hitting the ball first and taking a divot in front of the ball. I played my best golf. I played from the professional tees, which are 7,060 yards with a course rating of 73.7 and a slope rating of 137. I was hitting my tees shots in the fairway and the ball was rolling so I had a lot of mid-iron approach shots. I had 3 pars and 2 double-bogeys on the front 9 for a 44 and 4 pars and no double-bogeys on the back 9 for a 41 and a total of 85. Because of the high course rating and slope rating, my differential was 9.3, the first time I broke double digits! Also, I played another 18 holes without losing a golf ball. That is 54 holes in a row without losing a ball! As an admission against interest, on the 183-yard par-3 15th hole, I hit a low line drive tee shot that landed in the pond in front of the green and skipped onto the grass. That is clean living!

On Sunday I played the Firecliff course at Desert Willow. Firecliff is a city-owned course. Palm Desert residents pay $45 per round. The "rack rate" is $175 per round. I paid $125 using http://www.standbygolf.com/. I would highly recommend this site if you are traveling to the Palm Springs area. The listed courses and prices were better than golfnow.com and golfhub.com. The website also lists other cities, including Phoenix, but it simply defaults to the golfhub.com site for Phoenix. I was paired with a father and his two sons visting from Michigan. The course was extremely lush with wall-to-wall turf. The scorecard says that the course is irrigated with reclaimed water as part of a conservation effort, but it is still using a lot of water.

We played from the Blue tees, which are 6,676 yards with a course rating of 71.7 and a slope rating of 133. Because of the lush fairways the course plays longer because you get very little roll in the fairways. The course is known for its more than 100 bunkers/waste areas and I was in a lot of them! I started off reasonably well and was playing under bogey golf through 6 holes and shot a 45 on the front 9. On the back 9 I did not think that I played that poorly but I shot a 49 for a 94. It was my worst scoring round in quite a while, but I did not feel that I hit the ball badly. It was simply a difficult course with which I was not familar and I did not play my best golf. Most importantly, through 16 holes I was still playing my Titleist Pro V golf ball. But on the 71st hole, a 204-yard par-3 with the pin tucked into the right-hand side of the green, I aimed to the center of the green and hit my 1-hybrid, but the ball faded a little more than I wanted and barely landed in the water pin high. Good bye old friend!