I played today and..(Rolling) -originally created by JohnnyDee

[Crazyface]

....Sunday actually. With the wife and a very nice couple from Crompton and Royton at St Annes OLd Links Lytham in a mixed pairs. THe bloke had NEVER played in a comp ANY COMP ANYWHERE in his life before. He was about 62 ish. Lovely day with the pair of them. The wife, well all of us were in soooooo many of the bunkers. Great laugh getting out of them. Sometimes it required a little chuck with the hand. LOL. One hole by the green the lady was in a bunker got it out in one and watched it role into the bunker right behind the one she was in. How we all roared!!!!!! Soooooo funny!!! Then we all straight faced said "unlucky" LOL. They had never played the course before. At the 16th, par 3, I said to the bloke. "You get nowt for short, nowt for left, nowt for right and nowt for long. His face was a picture. None of us scored on that hole! Two of us were only 20 meters from the flag and still scored nowt. Both teams came in with 39 points so honours shared. But the bloke was heard to say afterwards "that wasn't as scary as I thought it would be". I take this as a nice compliment to my wife and my chatty charms.
It will live long in my memory as one of the best golf days ever.

PS I birdied the 9th !!!!!! That'll do for me !!!!

 

[Crazyface]

Why, why, why did I have to birdie the first.....

Bandit!

 

[patricks148]

Played the Kings today, greens have come a fair bit since I last played there. Pretty dry and hard though

 

[Mandofred]

Just going to change my name and get it over with.......Front Nine Fred. Better than ***** ***** Fred

Again...+1 on the front, +7 on the back.

 

[Deleted member 21258]

Played Harlech at weekend, millionaires golf. 3 birdies, hitting it fairly well, still lost a ball, 10 over. Its crispy brown out there.

Got closest to having a HIO on 11th, was about 7 inchs away, numb nuts. Next time maybe!

 

[Deleted member 25575]

Broke 80 for only the 3rd time tonight. 78, 3 bogies coming in on 16, 17, 18, a top off the 2nd tee and 2 3 putts make me wonder what could have been, but i'm happy as hell.

 

[davidy233]

Early morning start for our 7.20am tee time on the Old Course. Arrived and parked at Links Clubhouse by the first tees on the New and Jubilee courses.

Walked up to the first tee of the Old and paid our dues at the starters box, showed handicap certificates, got our goodie bag of course guide, tees, pencil, scorecard and a nice pitch mark repairer - then we were off.

Didn't know I could hook my Taylor Made mini driver but apparently I can off a first tee early morning with no real opportunity to warm up - and having taken the advice to aim well left I had a scary vision of missing the widest fairway in the world for a second or two - luckily it stopped on the turf.

It had been nearly thirty years since I last played the Old Course and I played sensibly and pretty solidly apart from my second on the third which I pulled well left and then tried to be too cute with my flop shot over the massive Cartgate bunker - this was not a good idea especially when my ball ended up right at the foot of a vertical face taller than me - I didn't write a score on the card for this hole .

The fourth was the first hole where the general advice to 'hit everything left' became obvious with the marker post well left of the line the tee markers indicated and even for shorter hitters that 'go left' advice is very sound on most of the holes.

Pace of play seemed brisk at the start but it wasn't really particularly fast - we were round in three hours fifty minutes and never felt pushed from behind - likewise there were only a couple of times we were momentarily waiting for the folks ahead of us.

Weather was lovely, warm but overcast and hardly a breath of wind for most of the round and in those conditions the course is very playable for even high handicappers like me as long as you don't visit the bunkers - thankfully I was only in the one - my wife too was in just one while my brother in law visited five including going bunker to bunker on the 13th. Greens were slower than I expected - I three putted the first, second and fourth before consciously hitting the putts firmer and putting much better.

There's more room than it appears when standing on some of the tees and the rough in general isn't penal, you'll usually find your ball and have a shot even if it's not to where you'd like to go.

Really enjoyed the course and as we walked off I thought to myself I'd love to go straight back out there, may be a while before I can do that though.

I organised the round as a birthday treat for my missus after she said she'd like to play TOC, most people in our area who want to play it will have and next time it comes up in conversation she can say 'played there for my birthday' - her birthday isn't until September and with other stuff we'd not been able to enter the ballot till last Sunday, intending to enter each week a couple of times in the hope we'd eventually get a round - so it was something of a surprise to get picked first time - It got suggested to me in St Andrews today that this is a good time to try to get a ballot time. If anyone is thinking about it it costs £195 per person which isn't cheap but I thought was well worth it as a one off.

Oh and the wife holed a twenty foot putt on the 18th with an audience.

Got into the Links clubhouse in time to get breakfast - cost a tenner and it was excellent. Former Leeds and Liverpool player Gary McAllister was sitting at the next table before going out for his afternoon tee time.

We sat and added up the scorecards - I hadn't scored on the 3rd so had to work out the stableford points I'd have got - was pretty happy with 34pts.


Nasty bunker right in line between the tee and flag on the par 3 8th


View of par 3 11th from the tee


And the walk towards the green - trollies are allowed all day this summer - that's not normal


Looking back down the 12th


Approach to the 15th green


Cartgate bunker - a hell hole I never wish to visit again - still in here after four attempts while playing the third - picked up


Approach to 16th green


17th tee

 

[HeftyHacker]

Thought I'd add a General play card in tonight as I only had 8 so one more meant it was the average of the best 3 not best 2... fully expected to go up, which would have been quite welcome ahead of the club champs at the weekend. Ended up playing well and shooting my best score with a card in hand and getting a one shot cut!

Hopefully its the start of a bit of form!

 

[Deleted member 3432]

Mediocre at best this evening, hit the ball better than the score suggests but 3 dumb doubles.
Course is a lovely colour.

 

[rudebhoy]

Momentous day today : 45 points and broke 90 for the first time.

Started off poorly with 2 1-pointers, but it all came together. Nothing flash, putting was average, but driving and hybrids were decent, and just played percentage golf rather than going for ridiculous shots. Scored on every hole, never looked like losing a ball.

Last few holes were a bit nervy as I knew it was close!

Chuffed as the two goals I set myself for this summer were to break 90 and to get the handicap down to 20. That's currently 22.8 after 4 cuts in recent weeks, so going the right way. Unfortunately today wasn't a comp so no help with the handicap, but that doesn't really bother me at the moment, just glad to have reached one of the targets.

Went out yesterday hoping to keep the good form going. Played the front 9 well for 19 points. Then lost one off the tee on the 10th, and repeated the feat on the 11th. And the 14th. Went from bad to worse, scored a grand total of 7 on the back 9.

26 points in total, 19 worse than the previous day. Stupid game!

 

[Whereditgo]

Our club champs last weekend, 18 holes Saturday and Sunday, the course was in fantastic condition, best I can ever remember. I can't realistically compete for the gross competition the winner of which is the obviously the club champion, but I won the nett trophy last year.

Started pretty well. 3 over on the front with a triple, followed by a car crash back 9. Recovered a bit to finish with a nett 72.

Round two was a similar story, steady front 9, 4 over gross having doubled both of the par 3's , then a bit of a wobble, followed by a bit of a recovery. On the par 4 18th hooked a hybrid OB, then shanked a 5 iron into some trees, never to be seen again and walked off with a 9

Every tale should have a happy ending though.........Tied first for the nett comp and won on count back

 

[Lord Tyrion]

Played Harlech at weekend, millionaires golf. 3 birdies, hitting it fairly well, still lost a ball, 10 over. Its crispy brown out there.

Got closest to having a HIO on 11th, was about 7 inchs away, numb nuts. Next time maybe!

Could you play any part of the course and not have the song echoing through your head? Just reading your post has put it front and centre of mine

 

[IanM]

First comp today playing off plus figures. Started well until I got to the Si.18 par 3. Standing on the tee knowing it’s a par 2 will take a little getting use too.
Made a complete hash of it and walked off with a triple. (ducking?mint).
Rallied for a 75 but would have been far better with a par on that hole.

Not a problem I have, but forget the SIs and just think you need a birdie "somewhere!" Chances are it'll be easier to find on a par 5 than on par 3

 

[Orikoru]

Could you play any part of the course and not have the song echoing through your head? Just reading your post has put it front and centre of mine

Eh? What song?

 

[Whereditgo]

Eh? What song?

Men of Harlech?

 

[Orikoru]

Men of Harlech?

No idea what that is.

 

[Lord Tyrion]

Eh? What song?

Are you still in isolation? If so, look up the film Zulu online and watch it. 'Men of Harlech' is one of the great Welsh male choir songs and it is belted out with gusto in the film.

 

[Orikoru]

Are you still in isolation? If so, look up the film Zulu online and watch it. 'Men of Harlech' is one of the great Welsh male choir songs and it is belted out with gusto in the film.

Strangely enough, Welsh male choir is not a genre I'm overly familiar with.

 

[Lord Tyrion]

Strangely enough, Welsh male choir is not a genre I'm overly familiar with.

Time to educate yourself . It is a powerful song, part of Welsh heritage. You don't need to have it on a playlist but you should take the time to hear it, even better in the context of the film .

 

[rudebhoy]

Time to educate yourself . It is a powerful song, part of Welsh heritage. You don't need to have it on a playlist but you should take the time to hear it, even better in the context of the film .

Just watched the edited version, looks like they cut the song out