This course doesn't have the fresh air of the Bay Point Golf Course but it had more to see and a few more challenges. It was equally fun for us to play.
Culture with Camoluscious Gally |
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Hombre Golf Course in Panama City, Florida is the place to play the good, bad and ugly golf courses if you're up for 27 holes. We only played the bad and ugly because we were sure 18 would be challenge enough. The Hombre Golf Clubhouse (see photograph above) is downscale in appearance but offers some fun golf equipment buys. We were challenged on one hole to make it onto the green for a prize of money off at the golf store and even if you missed you at least got the $ten challenge fee off any buy, so of course we went for it. I ended up with a golf marker while my husband got a shirt. It made the game more fun and was worth a laugh or two. One of my favorite parts about playing at Hombre golf course were the beautiful gardens. These are near the first tee where we met our partners for the round. They were much better players than us, but they were very patient and polite enough to not mention it. The course is lovely despite some holes with homes right on the green. Luckily, or unluckily the water came into play more than roofs or windows or screens (the greens were big). Many of the greens were tightly sculpted around water. Some of the greens took you past treed areas where we found lots of birds such as Blue Jays, Towhee, and warblers.
This course doesn't have the fresh air of the Bay Point Golf Course but it had more to see and a few more challenges. It was equally fun for us to play.
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On our recent visit with my sister to see Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, we had the chance to play the Williamsburg National Golf Course. The Pro Shop was busy quite early but with our tee time one of the first, we were able to get out on the course and it seemed like we were playing alone. Morning was essential especially since it gets quite hot and muggy in the summer. Luckily, the cart comes complete with water bottled with a Williamsburg National label. The golf course on the front nine meanders through the trees. Most of the scenic sand didn't come into play for us, the course was fairly wide when you land your drives. Don't get into the trees though, they are quite dense. The course is fantastically maintained. Some of the holes surrounded by homes but most did not. The greens were often tough to play, large and multiply sloped and were often raised, so the golf ball didn't just run up onto the green, you had to have loft on your shot. The back nine followed along a couple of lakes so there were more chances to lose your ball to water. The golf experience at Williamsburg National Golf Course left us feeling serene after the overload of history and crowds at Colonial Williamsburg (definitely worth the trouble). We had lunch in the small golf course restaurant--sandwiches and beer and diet coke for me, before we headed off to do Yorktown. A fun part of the Williamsburg National Golf course is their use of named tees (the gold tees were Yorktown tees).
The very friendly Brookside Golf Course in Ashland, Ohio, offers students at Ashland University a great chance to unwind from their studies. Played mostly by the local community, this pleasant course is open to the public. The Clubhouse is small and inviting and offers snacks for players and some golf supplies. One of the main challenges on the Brookside Golf Course are brooks that cut across the fairway; I love this roofed bridge show in the photograph! Other challenges include variations in height (see photo below), surprisingly wet fairways and slow greens due to the unusual 2014 rains, all those beautiful trees along the fairway, and sand traps that are ordinarily easy to miss. The rains weren't really a problem for us, we just put on our wet weather gloves and continued along our way. Luckily for us the lightning and thunder was brief, the rains very light, and quickly disappeared. Most other players also continued. The above photo shows why many golfers walk this course which is like a park almost. After paying fees, golfers practice a fee putts then check in at the starter then play with few delays.
When we played golf in Baden Baden, Germany at the Baden-Baden Golf Club, we ended up playing with rental golf clubs. The MacGregor golf clubs were much different from our usual golf clubs; I play with Kunnan Golf Clubs and Bob normally plays with Callaway Big Bertha golf clubs.
Is Renting Golf Clubs Worth it? Yes and no. You do pay plenty to rent golf clubs, but to ship golf clubs via the airlines is usually at least $30 per bag and more like $50 per bag each way, while rental golf clubs cost from $20 per bag on up. If you play once, you've saved a bundle on shipping fees and saved annoyance hauling them to the airport and you don't take the risk of loss or damage of your golf clubs. Anytime we've planned to play golf several times on a vacation, we've deemed it well worth our time to ship them. Here's a comparison of two golf bag covers we've used; in general they cost from $30 to $1000 depending on the quality. The main difficulty I had playing with the rental golf clubs was due to a lack of golf glove; without a glove, the golf club reverberated in my hand and I had more slippage and less control. Also, the surprise with rental golf clubs is that most golfers keep their glove, tees, balls, hats, golf ball markers, golf repair tools, golf ball retriever, suntan lotion or sun block, lip gloss, golf shoes, golf range finder, etc. in their golf bag. Most rental golf bags don't provide any of this golf equipment. Yet, we did rent golf clubs and I am glad we did so. My golf score was off a little from my golf handicap, but we got to experience golf in a foreign country at a golf course we would never have visited. It's a rather fun experience to find golf culture pretty intact around the world. Mini MacGregor Golf Club Review From my husband's view, he liked the MacGregor golf clubs better than his Callaway golf clubs. I've wanted to get a set of Callaway golf clubs because they were heavier than my Kunnan golf clubs and a heavier club cuts through wet turf much easier. I haven't needed a heavier set since I moved to Orlando, Florida because the grass rarely gets as thick and heavy as it did in the Seattle area during the wetter months. I was less happy with the MacGregor golf clubs since I found it more difficult to get any loft. They also exchange my favorite fairway drivers, the five wood and seven wood for hybrid clubs and these weren't as effective on the fairway. Hybrids are good for heavy turf so if we'd played earlier in Spring I might have like them better. The edges of the clubs seemed soft and the club head didn't launch the ball as well. I did keep pretty straight on my shots which is the reason I don't like many other brands. Choosing a Golf Club When I chose the Kunnan golf clubs, the manager at ProGolf Discount found me the correct size and told me the ladies clubs tend to have a lot of flex in them, especially with graphite handles which the MacGregor also used. I tried about six brands of golf clubs at the ProGolf discount driving range in the store. The Kunnan golf clubs gave me the cleanest hit and straightest drives. A club that is good for a straight hit saves a golfer a great deal of grief on the golf course. On our recent trip to Germany, we reached the lovely spa town of Baden-Baden and it was incredibly hot, so hot you didn't want to move unless you were perhaps a true German and wouldn't even mind wearing leathers to ride your motorcycle on a 90F+ day. As I flipped through the hotel's guide to where to find the wonderful parts of town, I spotted an ad for golf. So I said, "Why not?" My husband agreed, somewhat hesitantly. The price turned out to be about 200 Euros at the local golf course, the Baden-Baden Golf Club but because it was a holiday, and there was a tournament, we would start about 10:00 on the first come first serve schedule. The hotel got us a taxi who dropped us off at the Pro Shop/Sekretariat, the later served since the Pro Shop was closed due to the holiday. The woman in the office very kindly found us rental golf clubs, sold us golf balls, found us some tees, checked us into a golf cart (most people were walking but it was hilly and extremely hot), and rang us up for it all along with 18 hole fees. The good news is all those trees offered welcome relief from the heat. The course is rather short and our main challenge from the narrow spots in the course and from rental equipment and from creative use of the hilly terrain. Many times the hole was out of sight, around a hill, over a creek or below a drop. We had fun and I can say that the small golf club restaurant served good food--Bob had a cold salad, me a Cornish hen.
I went golfing and had a valet from the hotel and when he delivered us to the golf course I realized I hadn't taken my Tiva sandals I usually wear. So I bought Footjoy Superlite Golf Shoes and actually made it through 18 holes without blisters or aching feet. They have a light weight sole made with rubber and fake cleats. The cleats aren't hard and high so they haven't hurt my feet. They also give a bit so they haven't hurt my toe,my normal complaint.
But they are not waterproof. These will be good cool she's to wear golfing with some additional grip during hot weather. It is still likely that I will wear my Tiva sandals if it rained recently or is going to rain since they are waterproof. The King and Bear Golf Course is somewhat similar to the Slammer and Squire Golf Course in that both ate operated by Honors Course golf management. Both golf courses are immaculate. The clubhouses both offer a similar menu and treat their guests to icy cold apples on the 1st and 10th tee. You can't possible imagine how good the red delicious apples taste until you bite in and they crunch and the juices quench your thirst. The main difference between the two golf courses includes the following: 1. much more active local play 2. more homes on the course 3. slower play 4. more challenge from water hazards Many of the fairways at King and Bear Golf dogleg around a water hazard, many times with narrow fairways. Or the tee is set so that you drive over water, although most are sized equitably for your handicap if you're playing from the correct tee.
We loved our experience at King and Bear golf course until after we finished and had to wait for almost an hour for pickup from the Renaissance hotel by Marriott at the World Golf Hall of Fame. Strange things happen sometimes. I was just explaining to my husband how golf courses could use native grass planting on the rounded upper edges of sand traps when I found them in place at Victoria Hills Golf Course in Deland, Florida. Here's a few photographs: The advantage of this tactic is that it is easier to avoid watering the edges of sand traps to keep them green using native grasses which are much more drought tolerant and don't need to be mowed. The bad news for golfers is that these native grass plantings are hard to escape, although I watched on ball today hit and richochet of the grass to somewhere safe. The benefit is that the sand stays much fluffier and easier to escape when they don't get watered every day. The rough here, is not long grass, but lightly seeded almost sand. In a dry, sandy environment, this strategy makes a lot of sense.
When we played Digby Pines Golf Course in Digby, Nova Scotia last year, I ran into some golf clubhouse decor featuring golf humor art prints. So I had to look up Charles Crombie and see what else he had to offer. It looks like a lot more of the same, featuring historic golf situations that are decidedly unfair. He has a talent for making golfers laugh. Click here to visit the Charles Crombie Webpage. So my own little tale of trauma on the white tee occurred when I moved to Orlando. My husband hated that I would win when we played at first, so he suggested that I play from the white tees. I liked playing from the white tees after I got my five wood since I wanted to practice using it and it helped if I had longer holes to play where I would need it often. Also, we typically ended up in similar places if we played from close to the same holes since my husband is 16 years older and his drives don't travel very far any more. Here's the video about the man on the woman's tee: Is it sexist to have a woman's tee and a men's tee? Yes. But it corresponds more to typical drive distance and most golf courses encourage players to play from the tee that corresponds best to their typical driver distance. For me that is the red tee, for my senior husband that is the yellow tee. You can play from a longer distance tee box if your handicap is low or play is open enough to allow practice. Most people have a much more fun and less humorous experience when they play from the correct tee.
Well, for me it was easy because I had a husband who made all the arrangements for staying at the Barcelo Bravo Palace Deluxe Resort in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic including all of our tee times online the internet (the link takes you to their webpage where you can arrange a room and a tee time). That was the first step. The second step involved getting our golf clubs to the golf course. We took the resort train from the pick up stop at the end of our hotel building (the place is very large) but I think perhaps getting the golf cart first and picking the clubs up in the same spot would have been much easier. The third step is checking in with the pro shop--lunch is available in the dining room right next door and since our first tee time was late in the afternoon, this mean lunch first was a great choice. The restaurant here has a dubious reputation for being really slow with some of the people we met, but for us it worked out fine. The restaurant didn't open until 12:30 so we had drinks first until they opened. Barcelo Bravo Palace Deluxe is an all inclusive so the beer (Presidente), Coca Cola light, hamburger, roast beef sandwich, and a dessert had we wanted it were provided without charge. The tee time cost us a charge for use of the golf cart. Had we played 5 times instead of three, the cost would have been less but as it was ended up at $40 per person. Afterwards, we were able to store our golf clubs at the Lakes Golf Course. The fourth step is choosing the appropriate tee. My husband thought the blue tee distance was about his pace for his first game, the next two were played at the more typical white tee. The reason is on a couple of holes over the water, the distance can be pretty long. My husband had a much happier, less stressful time on the white tees. For women, the red tees play within a usual handicap. Other hints about playing the course involve the challenges. One of the hallmarks (see photo above) of the Lakes Course at Barcelo Bravo Palace Deluxe are the scenic golf shot lakes especially the number 9 and number 18 hole with their wood braced raised greens. Play it with the exact right club (the holes play long when faced with wind) with a high arching chip shot. Another is the hidden greens (see photo to the left). Place your approach shot so that a high, arching chip shot that lands and stops is your best bet. Another hint is to stay in the center of the course, choose the right distance club to stay out of the lake with any additional roll. A last warning is to stay out of the sand traps. Many are hidden. You get over one sand trap only to fall in the smaller one hidden behind. The Barcelo Bravo Palace Deluxe golf course is in excellent condition. We played after heavy rain and found you had to punch the ball hard to get it in the hole on the green and we also had to walk (most of the course was closed via cart path only rules due to soggy turf). Two days later, the greens were fast and driving on the course was allowed. Rain drizzled and was a relief from heat, the heavy rains came at night. Be prepared with sun protection. Note: WiFi from the Barcelo Bravo Palace Deluxe resort isn't available on the golf course. |
Sheri Fresonke HarperSheri loves to golf, travel and to write. Follow Sheri Fresonke Harper on Quora
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