An early evening spent on putting practice -am playing with standard versus crosshanded putting. It seems to me to be two games -the home run hitting long ball and the short game.
Tag Archives: Wakonda Club
Golf Chatter and a little about Tiger
The first true spring day arrived with temperatures in the high seventies and low eighties, and everyone else got the same idea that I did. Wakonda Club’s greenskeeper, Mr. John Temme, did something magical last fall and the results are apparent. After being covered in a blanket of 3 to 5 feet drifts as recently as two weeks ago, the greens and fairways emerged and almost instantly greened. The turf is near perfect despite it being so early in the season and everything is green. The greens haven’t been rolled to Augusta speed yet, but challenging nevertheless. It’s the fairways though that have finally come to fruition, nearly two years after the club pressed a giant reset button on the whole course and resurfaced the whole course from tee to green. Last year, the greens came into full bloom, but it is this year that the fairways are back to true form. It is fully 3 years since the project was proposed and now we are enjoying some of the best conditions I have ever played on so early in the season.
I wandered into the Lower Grill and ran into T who invited me into his group. I grabbed an Arnold Palmer and marched out and met his playing partner K and we marched along, a happy company. Blogging and operating has made me a social retard because I can no longer make polite small talk.
Me: So K, do you think any differently about Tiger when your wife is not around?
K: You have a way of asking socially awkward questions to complete strangers.
Me: It’s been stewing in my mind for a while.
K, smiling: I think that I admire him for his talents and achievements on the golf course.
Me -looking for ball: Have you ever seen those bears in the Russian circus? They get that way from conditioning -from a life of negative and positive reinforcement from the time they were cubs. I think Tiger’s pathologies only mirror the pathologies in his development. I question the place from where his golf comes from…
Let’s say we have a whole professional tour based on people who love to balance on a ball and they practice and compete out of joy of walking around on that ball, and all of a sudden this bear comes in to compete. He takes all the prizes.
From this whole sad season, it’s become clear to me that Tiger is not unlike this trained circus bear who must be a bit sad and lost when he’s not walking on his giant ball. For Tiger, golf is what he does well. Come two weeks, and we’ll see him take the trophy. I’m rooting for it.
So I shoot a 48, not too bad for a peripatetic round of a triple, bunch of bogies, and three long putts for birdie missed by a hair, missing comebackers through carelessness. It was too fun an evening to care. That is probably why I am a much better surgeon than I am a golfer.
The Perfect Golf Shot
I played 27 holes this weekend. My 9 holes yesterday were played in windy, cool weather and I got a 50 for my efforts. It was notable for a par on the treacherous second hole which has a tilted green. I hit 5 of 7 fairways yesterday but three putts and botched approaches made life difficult.
Today, I hit the reset button and armed with a new 58 degree wedge from Callaway, I set out solo onto an empty course. The picture above is from the first hole. My drive was directly into a 20 mile per hour wind which made the 48 degree weather a touch more miserable -hence the absence of players on an otherwise very golf-worthy Sunday morning. The drive was in the left rough off the first cut, leaving me 200 yards out on a sidehill lie that left the ball below my feet. I tried to play a duck hook around the tree, but I lost my balance and lucked out by having the ball settle on a steep upslope with line of site to the green.
The first hole at Wakonda is officially a par 4, but it really is a par 4.5, and with the wind, it was a stretch to make par. I was 150 yards out and the pin was in the middle of the green -the green tilts to the right and I had to land the ball center or left to get to a makable par putt.
The wind was going a sharp right to left and the green is a good 20 feet above me. The ball is on the upslope. I chose to fade a 5 iron -the upslope would take some of the distance off and the fade into the draw cross wind would straighten the shot, I hoped.
It is always here on number 1 where I have my most intense golf moments -where concentration and visualization becomes very clear and I decided to pour myself into this shot. I set up aiming slightly to the left of the pin and practiced a fade swing, trying to keep my head still and my shoulders in line with the slope. The shot I had in mind was “locked in” and the actual shot became the apotheosis of my mind’s vision.
The ball launched after a clean hit
-this is so important on wet, sodden grass, and the ball kept climbing and going straight -this despite my having hit a near slice. The winding motion of the ball that normally creates a slice now was creating more lift with the right to left wind. The ball landed on line with the pin and I knew the ball would be 10 feet from the cup with a straight uphill putt (image -right).
I missed the putt by a hair, but still made a 5 which on this day was fine. I ended up with a 47 on the front -a great round given that I had great difficulties with my initial approach. After 18, I hit 10 of 14 fairways, but made only one green in regulation -this will require work. Despite this, I am still in bliss from the perfection of that approach on number 1.
Wakonda -she’s baaaa-aack!
Tee box, Wakonda Club No. 12
I played Saturday and Sunday on Wakonda -it’s convalescence from a replacement of her greens and fairways now complete. Many trees are gone, more have been planted, and it’s not playing any easier. I was playing in the 80’s and 90’s this spring on other courses. Coming back, I barely got through just 9 holes on Saturday in 38 degree wind chill and 25 mile/hr winds. Yesterday, I played in club 2 man best ball -was bested by a pair of brothers, but found a new friend in partner TR.
The greens -I can’t say enough about how
A1/A4 hybrid bentgrass -the good stuff
perfectly smooth the grass is and how wicked fast the ball rolls. On 14, a par three with two tiers, my ball on the fringe, on failing to roll up to the second tier, rolled back and off the green. It is like the surface of a very expensive billiard table -the never skipped or jumped but rolled end over end like on a glass surface.
The look of the course is sharply different on some of the holes. No. 11 which I blogged about last year (link) had what I termed an oaken shield wall -all gone. The before and afters are below. The hole plays the same, but you can’t rely on underbrush and trees to slow your progress off to the next hole with errant shots. You need a perfect tee shot to the left center onto an ever narrowing fairway to get an uncluttered approach, or if you go right, you have to deal with the tree of despair which, gratifyingly, has been kept with a high fade with a long iron or hybrid.
Wakonda No. 11, May, 2008
Wakonda No. 11, May 2009
After the third putt...
The course remains a relentless test of golf and character with no bailouts, no quarter given. There is no safe place to run up the ball, no place to bail out with a short slice, and no place to ever let your guard down. It’s stunningly beautiful.
Wakonda No. 3, third of the toughest starting 3 holes of golf in Des Moines, possibly in Iowa.
HAC tomorrow, and Wakonda Club Opens
Our match played among 20 of our esteemed neighbors is tomorrow afternoon. Its suppose to be fine weather. Game format and rules? -haven’t a clue. Too excited to start playing at all.
I have hit more practice balls this winter than all my previous years -here’s to hoping it paid off.
Wakonda Club opens with its newly resurfaced greens and fairways. Many old growth trees have been felled. I was at the practice tee this evening and it was a line of very happy golfists. Which lead me to think, what fine wives we have who let us enjoy this greatest of activities.
While golf marriages don’t have to be legalized, they really need to be recognized as a double plus good positive thing. When a friend fretted about playing on Friday, then Saturday, then putting in our matchplay event on Sunday morning, I pointed out that our dear club won’t be having such another grand reopening again for a long, long time, and so it would be cruel to have him not participate in what is surely an historic event. Deny that man golf, and he’s sure to start fantasizing about other women and Porsches.
Golfism -life is a metaphor for golf 