I found MetroWest very lush, well-maintained and well-managed. Despite all the work in progress, we were never bothered by noise or machinery delay. The lunch in the restaurant was quite tasty and my husband as usual loved his beer.
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The wonderful clubhouse at MetroWest Golf Club in Orlando, Florida features a snack shop downstairs and sit down meals upstairs. The golf course is doing major renovations on the sand traps so the cost is very affordable and the annoyance minor. Most of their sand traps are enough out of the way, experienced golfers won't even notice them (except around the greens). Soon though, with all the rain Florida has had (13" in June that usually comes in the afternoon to cool things down after hot sunny mornings) everything will green up. The difference between a badly maintained sand trap and a freshly renovated sand trap can be immense. This golf photograph shows one of the most scenic holes at Metro West, on an almost island in the lake with sand traps blocking it. As part of the renovation, they've cut out the traps with a bulldozer, later they'll add more topsoil, refit hunks of grass over the top, dig a new sand trap hole with nice clean sharp edges and fill it with light sand. On a bad sand trap, the edges can be clogged by grass, or have areas where the edges have eroded. When your ball falls into the edge, it can get caught instead of nestling amid the sand. When you try to chip out of an edge, chances are you will cause additional damage to the trap. You always have the option of pulling the ball out of a trap filled with water due to poor drainage or to remove your ball off a bad edge. The downside is the extra stroke. Sand that is wet is harder to get out of because your sand wedge doesn't cut into it easily. The real challenge on MetroWest is all the uphill holes. A golf course with many uphill holes will play longer than its rated because you won't get as much role and for short hitters, that can mean extra strokes on every hole. I found MetroWest very lush, well-maintained and well-managed. Despite all the work in progress, we were never bothered by noise or machinery delay. The lunch in the restaurant was quite tasty and my husband as usual loved his beer.
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This photograph taken of the eighteenth hole at Eagle Creek Golf Club in Orlando, Florida shows way a golf game here can be a delight and challenge. They are one of the nicest courses near to Disney that you can find. They even have condos--I'm not sure if they rent them or not. The keyword about this golf course is sand trap. It's an easier course to play then many of this quality, 4.5 star rating from Golf Digest because of the wide fairways. But the sand traps can make it less easy since they are strategically placed around the greens and at the usual driving distance where a slice or hook can land you into trouble. Here's a close up of one of the worst sort of sand traps--it's not really filled with sand, instead its just a deep pit on rocky soil. There are regular sand traps, some even this deep, these little pits will test anyone's chipping skill. Homes are being built on the back nine of the golf course. I assume this course may go private eventually. Right now its open to the public. The food at the Belfry Restaurant is really tasty--I had a bacon, turkey, apple sandwich that was unusual and tasty--it normally also comes with carmelized onions and cheese which I don't do, but I expect some would find it really wonderful. Eagle Creek currently (5/31/2013) have a golf and lunch special, click here to find out more.
Bay Point Resort Golf Club Pro Shop
When my husband and I visited Panama City, Florida, we found it quite warm and beautiful and of course had to play golf. Our first game was played at the Bay Point Resort Golf Club (seen in the photograph to the left), the only time available was in the afternoon. Since we moved to Florida, we try to play in the morning because it is cooler. Luckily, Bay Point Resort Golf Club had two advantages that made it wonderful to play. The pro shop is a small place, but very welcoming and they have pretty nice items for sale. On one hole during our golf game, they offered us a golf deal, bet you'll land on the green and if you win, you get double your money at the pro shop, if you lose, keep 1/2. So my husband and I each bet $5 and we both lost, but we managed to pick up a nice palm tree pineapple marker clip for me and then my husband found a Nike Golf shirt with a pocket so he picked that up. Shaded Tees on Bay Point Resort Golf Course But the two advantages I mentioned Bay Point Golf Club had, what are they? The first is they managed to keep old large live oaks near the tee, so even if you do wait to tee off, you do so in the comfort of considerable shade. The second advantage that Bay Point Golf Club has is the cool refreshing breeze coming from the ocean. The golf course is along the coast, but except for the parking lot beside the marina, golfers rarely see the ocean. Favorite Water Hazard Hole at Bay Point Golf Course This golf photograph shows my favorite hole--it has this lovely lake and bridge (only to leave). The Bay Point Golf course has many water hazards, but most don't interfere with your game as long as you hit the ball straight. Many of the holes are quite narrow. Luckily, most of the golf carts have a GPS device that explains how far from the hole you are and show a map of the hole so you have advance warning. The Best Golf Courses with the Most Water Hazards may have you traveling all around the US in order to try them out.
Clubhouse at Forest Lake Golf Club, Ocoee, Florida
We visited Forest Lake Golf Club and because it was rather warm out, we decided to skip out on our putting practice. This is a very bad idea. My husband and I were not the only golfers coming in with three and four putts a hole--putting this badly is a serious ouch for your score. So what can you do to help our your putting at Forest Lake Golf Club? One thing that will improve your putting on a golf course such as Forest Lake Golf Club is to make use of a golf range finding device. Each golf cart at Forest Lake Golf Club comes equipped with a ProShot Golf GPS device. Not only did it give the distance to the hole from your current location, but it also gave the distance to several spots on the green and other hazards such as sand traps. We still augmented the advice provided by the ProShot Golf GPS with our exact distance ranger finder. What both of these devices are supposed to do is get your approach shot as close to the hole as possible. That only works if your chipping is close to exact. So good chipping practice and club selection is in order. The photograph of one of the greens at the Forest Lake Golf Club shows some of the difficulties involved with golfing this course:
So how do you handle putting on such surfaces:
When our group started paying close attention to our putting, our putt count went down. One reason that my husband and I report our scores as the number of strokes / the number of putts is to remind ourselves how much our score would go down if we dropped out putt count for the eighteen holes to below 36. The photograph to the left shows one more reason why putting at Forest Lake Golf Course is difficult--complicated approaches insure that your chipping can put you into difficulties such as blocked by a tree, by a bunker, rolling into a lake, or sandy area on the lake fringes, sand hazards, and woods. Overall, Lake Forest Golf Club is sure to test your skills as a golfer. There are a number of hazards in the game of golf that help to increase the challenge of the game. Some of these hazards are natural, some of them are constructed to look natural as in the photograph to the left taken at Walkabout Golf Course in Mims, Florida. This raised green sits in a place surrounded by water hazards. A water hazard is a hazard because it is very difficult to get your ball out of the water with a typical golf shot, pulling it out of the water requires the payment of a stroke. Sometimes the penalty is the loss of the ball entirely. The Top Rated Golf Courses with the Most Water Hazards is a handy guide to finding out how to challenge your golf skills playing courses with water hazards. Other hazards include man made obstacles, sand hazards, bunkers, moguls, rough grass, trees and woods. Water hazards are often marked with a red stake as in this golf picture to the left, taken at Providence Golf Club in Davenport, Florida. If your ball falls in a water hazard, you take a drop, one club's length from the marker line. If a water hazard is not marked with a red stake, or a red chalk or paint line, the rule is to take the drop from the top of the bunker where the ball went in. Many water hazards are sloped sharply to provide a deeper water catchment to keep water off the golf course. Some, like this particular spot, seem hidden to golfers during play, due to curvature of the slope or indentures near the green. It helps to check the golf card or the hole post to see a diagram of the hole so that you know what is coming. Sometimes water hazards are constructed as barriers between the fairway stretches or the green as seen in the photograph to the left taken at Black Bear Golf Club in Eustis, Florida. The barrier here is formed by a lake. If your ball falls into such a water hazard, the golf course typically has a ball drop marked on the far side, where you take your next stroke. Sometimes the distance needed to be covered exceeds the ability of the player--this is the main reason for the ball drops. Water hazards can be made by lakes, streams, rivers, ocean, ponds, swamps. In areas in the Southeast United States, use a ball retriever to fetch a ball in the water due to American Alligators and Cottonmouth snakes. This particular photograph was taken at Providence Golf Club in Davenport, Florida. This card is posted in the golf carts there so that golfers will know where the golf will be on every hole. The starter at Providence Golf Club informs golfers which placement the flag will be for the day. Just before chipping on to the green, golfers can check the car to get an idea about how the green is shaped and how much space on the green there is for the ball to roll to the hole. Other golf courses may not be as sophisticated in their pin placement. Some golf courses don't have starters and the club pro or person at the cash register when ringing up your green fees will tell you. Some golf courses only use the color of the flag to indicate pin placement. Again, the golf cart, or the score card will tell the golfer what the color of flag means. Not all golf courses change their flag color or provide a map. Then it is up to the golfer to estimate based on experience (and sometimes a sneak and peek drive ahead) to determine where the hole is. Why is it important to know pin placement if you have a distance reader? Pin placement maps show you how much space surrounds the flag. Depending on the space around the flag, you may choose to have a chip with more or less loft. Hazards will also affect the decision. Eagle Dunes Golf Club is easy to find, especially if you use Google Maps on an Android device like me--we were able to find out the unnamed road on MapQuest was actually County Road 437, use this map, it works well. But like most of the golf course in Florida right now, the lawns are dead and dry, the usual result of frost. This photograph is the first hole at Eagle Dunes Golf Club. I almost hate to show it since in general the course is in really good condition as seen by the brightly green tee box. You can tell much about the course on this first picture--it has lots of water and sand hazards and some heavy clumps of grass in places you're not supposed to go to. This photograph shows how the sand traps often come into play, even on your drives. The golf course has strategically surrounded the greens, as show here, to make your approach shot a challenge. Using a distance finder can make the job easier--be sure to add one club for uphill and since the course can be windy, add one club when you're facing the wind directly. This photograph shows the mine field of sand traps on the next hole when you go to drive. Each of the four large traps are positioned to have you likely land in one of them. I played between the two distant sand traps and landed fine, but it turns out the lady I played with had the best plan, to go over the second trap in the foreground--she had a downhill roll that added distance. One thing about a challenging golf course like Eagle Dunes Golf Club is you will likely want to play it again, even if the women have their choice of an easy and a tough tee at times and there are portapotties instead of bathrooms. We arrived early at Waterlefe Golf and River Club in Bradenton, FL and it was a good thing, because my husband and I were both hungry. The Grille Room service was awesome and the food tasty--I had the fresh turkey slices on a homemade nut bread that was very good and came toasted like I really like. My husband had a deli sandwich and loved the cranberry mayonaise that came with my sandwich. The Grille Room is cozy, but had enough tables for a party of twelve, us and several other folks. It was a busy Friday due to the Veteran's Day weekend. So we were paired up with another couple who live in Germany and visit Florida several times a year. I got to use my three or four words I know in German, to their amusement--somehow Aufgang(sp?) doesn't come up in many conversations. Waterlefe Golf and River golf course has many, many holes in which water is located along the course edges. It's quite pretty. Most of the water hazards don't come into play since the fairway is quite wide. But there are many long carries over water hazards, some The Waterlefe Golf Course has bathrooms midway on each nine of the 18-hole golf course. I couldn't resist taking a picture of the lovely art on one of the walls, which shows a bit of humor in the otters playing with golf balls and storing them in their nest. Other places to get golf art include: FineArtAmerica Artist Rising Golf Player Mania One advantage of Waterlefe Golf and River Club is their access to the Upper Manatee River and some homeowners could lower their boat at the River Club into the river and head out to the Gulf of Mexico. See Picture below. They also have GolfLogix by Garmin GPS devices on their golf carts. We played the Country Club of Mount Dora in Mt. Dora, Florida last week. My husband informed me I should play the gold tees in order to play a full 5300 yards since the red tees were much shorter to play. Women typically play the red tees since the handicap for most course play is set up using the red tees. A person's handicap will usually determine which tees a person will play from. Championship courses will often have five tees: black (for the men pros), blue (for the men with handicaps below 10), white (for most men), gold (for seniors and women with handicaps below 10), red (for women). Every person can choose which tees they play from--often choosing a longer course length can allow players to use their longer clubs more often, but they should do it when the course isn't crowded. The gold tees were sometimes placed with the men's tees, sometimes on their own and sometimes with the women's tees at Mount Dora. My first hint that Mount Dora was going to be tricky to play when I found this interesting sand trap with a staircase down to the sand. I thought, no problem, with all that wide open fairway, I won't be dumb enough to get into this trap. Turns out I was far too greedy for safety. When I drove for the green, it neared the flag, then tumbled into the bottom of this trap on the right. This hole at Mount Dora Country Club was supposed to be an easy par 4, but after your first shot, your second ball had to carry over this narrow neck, avoid the sand traps and manage to stay on the green. Luckily for my sanity, they saved this green until near the end of the course. Yes, easy golf can take you past the lake, over the creek, over all the little sand traps and land near the flag and stay. On a par 5 hole no less than a little challenge will make every golfer please to play the Country Club of Mount Dora. Well, I had my first ever golf lesson at Twin River's Golf Course in Orlando, Florida with Golf Pro Mitch. My husband and I have played for fifteen years, just learning by doing. One of our biggest frustrations is our short game. So we asked Mitch for a joint 1/2 lesson. The cost was $30 for a half hour, then half price for the second person, me. So what does one do in a chipping lesson? Well, we took our clubs in a cart over to the driving range and practice green area. Mitch brought his own pitching wedge, a bucket of golf balls and set up a flag on the green. His first question was what did you want to learn? My husband answered that he wanted to be able to chip over a trap, land on the green and stop. There are many varieties of chips and pitches that one does during the game of golf, but Twin River's Golf Club has many holes in which there is a sand trap right in front of the green or surrounding the front of the green with only a narrow neck on which to bounce up. The photograph here shows a chip used to get under low hanging growth, not one we wanted to explore at the moment. So Mitch said, "Show me what you do." With a pile of golf balls in front of us, my husband and I each chipped onto the green near the flag. After we did so, Mitch focused on what my husband was doing and explaining what parts of the chip were not quite right. He explained how the stroke should be continuous from reaching back all the way through connecting with the ball on toward the flag. He explained that distance was subject to how far back you reached, not slowing the down stroke and not shortening up the follow through. So what did we learn? The number one thing we learned in our chipping lesson is that every person has their own unique weaknesses. The second thing we learned was that being told how to do things better, is not the same thing as doing them better. I started chipping up pretty close to the flag, but as I worked to modify what I was doing, I started committing the number one mistake in chipping: I didn't look at the ball! The photograph here shows the way turf can hide a ball--balls deeper in the turf are likely to slow down your shot. My yellow golf ball I use often is easier to spot in the bright sunny weather in Florida. How did our lesson differ: My husband found he wasn't rotating his hips through his chipping stroke. And that he was trying to use his wrists rather than the club angle to create the loft. I found that I wasn't standing near enough to the ball and that I was rolling my wrists back rather than lifting them up, to do Phil Mickelson's hinge and hold technique he talks about in his book that I discussed in my review of the Secrets of the Short Game. Unlike my husband that was accelerating through his shot, I tended to also slow down through the shot as the ball connected. Was the lesson worth it? You bet. Both my husband and I learned what to pay attention to in our stroke, something we couldn't necessarily diagnose for ourselves. |
Sheri Fresonke HarperSheri loves to golf, travel and to write. Follow Sheri Fresonke Harper on Quora
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