First complete round of the year -

Monday I decided to head out to the course for a quick round of 9 holes but what I found when I got there was a different story.

It was a great afternoon - Mid 60's temp, slight wind and I figured that the course would be pretty open as it was Mid afternoon on Monday and most people would be at work.

As I pulled into the course I was surprised to see the lot FULL! I knew at that point it was going to be a long 9 holes. I went in and got my player card punched and headed towards the first tee. My push cart was nice and clean and I spent the evening on Sunday cleaning up my gear and lubing up the bearings. I also attached a make-shift bracket to the handle to that I can display my Sky Caddie. With anticipation of a good round in my mind I hit a few putts on the practice green, there was a two-some playing the tips in front of me and I was hitting putts on the green I watched one guy shank his first drive. I immediately knew that the day just got longer but the weather was great and I was still in high spirits. By the time I finally tee'd off I launched a dart straight down the middle of the 1st fairway. I ended up making par on the first hole and was ready to wait on 2nd tee for the knuckleheads to hurry up. 2nd drive again was a dart down the middle of the fairway. Again, made par.... This time the knuckleheads in front of me have not even tee'd off yet as they were waiting on a group to clear off the par 3, 3rd hole. They did the polite gesture and asked me to play with but I was not interested in playing with 2 guys who were playing the tips but had no business playing anything longer than the whites, so I politely declined and waited. Just as they were finishing up on the green the group behind me that had not even started playing 2 when I started waiting on 3 caught up. I invited them to join me as I recognized them from leagues last year. Mike and Spike were their names - Playing with those guys was nice, we were all of equal ability and we all didn't waste anytime zig zagging the course. I ended up shooting a 39 on the first 9 and as we were walking up the 9th fairway Spike asked if I was going to make the turn. I thought about it for a second and accepted. *Btw - after hole 3, the knuckleheads in front of us kept pace and our 3 some rarely waited longer than a few minutes on each shot.*
Fast forward to hole 12, sank the first birdie of the year, pushed tee shot to the right rough, 123 yards out and hit my gap wedge to what would have been perfect with no wind, the wind did hold up my shot and I thought for sure I had landed in the green side bunker protecting the pin however I just cleared the bunker and landed on the down slope and that pushed my shot onto the green where it rolled to within 5 feet of the cup. Yay!

After that birdie, I went on a run of 5 bogies and finished up with a par on 18 to land a 40 on the back. 39 on the front, 40 on the back = 79 on my first 18 holes. Great warm up for leagues that start on Thursday. Looking forward to another great year on the links.......

Golf 2011

Again - Were going to try this again for blogging for the 2011 season!

1 Round under my belt with a 46 for my first 9 holes. This year I used some reward points from work and redeemed them for a Sky Caddie SG5. So far so good, I used it with my range finder to save some time and I liked it.

I joined the mens league again at Tanners this year. Looking forward to Thursday's again and earning some more $$ on the course.

Also the mens trip again is scheduled for June 21-24th This year we are going to stay at Craguns and play Deacons, Legacy and the Classic I believe.

Where did the summer go?

Geez -

It's September 20th already....

Lots of golf stories to share but no time to share them...

lets hear some of yours..

2nd and first place!

Been a few weeks since I posted about leagues - Time to give a quick snapshot -

For the week of 5/16 the game was best 2 scores of the 4 players - I ended up shooting a 41 personally and our team shot a total of 59 - remember 2 scores were counted per hole. Our 59 placed us in 2nd place behind Steffen and his boyz.

For this last week, it was best score of 2 players. We broke our group up into the following 2-somes, Jim and I - Stenny and Meyerz. Jim and I ended up shooting great and we really complimented each other on the holes. For example, I started off with Birdie on 10 while Jim had an 8 - and we ended up with my 7 on 18 and Jim's Par - After bumps we ended up shooting a 29 and took the victory.

Each week of leagues, I have not been in the money with my mates - I know that people are starting to get suspicious but when you think about it, if the other teams shot to their handicap - they would be in the money as well. Actually - last week I found out that were not supposed to post our league scores in the GHIN system because Craig does that for us - so we have been double posting our scores - if anything we are actually playing to a lower handicap because of that due to shooting great scores during leagues - So we have been actually putting ourselves at a disadvantage.

last week I hooked myself up with some nice Nike Golf Shorts - 70 bucks worth! I figured since I was spending the clubhouse's money *Winnings* that I would treat myself to a nice pair.

This next week we will have 2 subs as Meyerz and Stenny are out. Game is best 3 of 4 balls on par 5's and 3's and best 2 of 4 on par 4's

Should be interesting!

2 weeks ago -
Thursday Results
Two Best Balls of Four.
Chad,Stanius, Chad Schillinger, Todd Steffen, Jesse Fiddle.
56
$20 each
J Meyer, Dustin Williams, Aaron Viehauser, Blind
59
$16



Last week -
1 Best Ball of 2
Men's Club Results.
A Viehauser,J Ball S Stanius, T Jensen,
29
$19 each
D Suneson,Spike J Meyer,S Stensrud
30
$11.50

Leagues Week 2

Just got the E-mail from Tanners Brook.

Thursday Results
One best ball of Four
J Wagner,J Wagner, J Dustin, Blind
26
$18 each
J Meyer, J Ball, Blind,A Viehauser
27
$13 each
C Schillinger,C Stanius, L Douglas, T Ashton
27
$13 each
M Price,S Stanius, T Jensen, J Furlong
28
$7.50 each
M Peterson, P Dillion, P Berg, C Berg
28
$7.50 each





Ended up with a tie for 2nd place!



The game was best 2 of 4 scores per hole



I ended up shooting a 40 this week, Played the back 9 of Tanners and started on hole 15. Had a good round and finished up on hole 14 with a scramble Par. Starts off like this: Tee'd off with 3 wood and sliced it hard right, I spent about 5 minutes hunting for my ball over by the 12 Green in the natural rough and found 3 other balls except my own. Just as I was going to give up looking Jim found my ball in woodchips in a lightly wooded backdrop to the 12th green. I actually had a shot of about 170 yards to the pin from this position. I took my 5 iron and choked down on the club and tried to punch out from where I was. I made it out clean and ran my ball up to roughly 40 yards of the green but on the side of the embankment going down to the swap just to the left of the 14th green. I chipped up and ran my ball past the cup by about 50 feet. At this point I am just hoping to 2 putt and make a 41 with a bogey. The putt had a huge Left to right break as it was a 2 tier green and I was on the top tier and it was going to break hard on the roll. Well as I am sure you can gather, I ended up making the putt center cup. Good thing I hit it center cup as this ball was moving and if I would have missed the hole, I would rolled past the cup probably 10-15 feet "If I was lucky"

Still trying for the elusive round in the 30's Hopefully this week coming up will be it! Noel will be subing for Jim as he will be at the Doc's office!

I'm Back

Greetings blog readers

I am going to attempt at blogging about my golf game again this year.

Quick recap up to this point,

The courses have been open for roughly 3-4 weeks already and I have roughly 5-6 rounds under my belt. Highlight for the upcoming season is that I joined the Thursday Men's league at Tanners Brook this year. Previously I had played in a smaller make-shift league but this year I graduated to the big boys league!

Last Thursday was week 1 of leagues and I have to admit. I think I am a part of a great 4-some.

This year we got Jim Ball back on the course and we are teamed up with "MeyerZ" and "Stenny" We played an individual game for week 1 as everybody is still working on establishing their MGA handicap. It was Low Gross, Low Net. To get into the side games, everybody that wants to play has to put in 5 bucks towards the game and with 13 4-somes playing in this league it turns out to be a pretty good chunk of change. For week 1 I was very happy with my performance. I ended up shooting a 42 before handi bumps and a 34 after handi bumps.

Leagues start out shotgun style and we tee'd off on #7 to start. On hole #9, a long 561 yard par 5, I hit my 2nd shot to within roughly 40 - 50 feet of the pin. Putting for Eagle I ended up lipping my put and had a tap in Birdie. That was the highlight of my first week of leagues.

Week 1 I placed 3rd for Gross and 5th for low Net - Made 20 bucks out of the deal! not to shabby..

I have a few goals for myself in leagues this year, Goal #1 - Establishing a handicap in the single digits. I will be happy with 9.9 as long as I am in single digits!

Goal #2 - Getting my putts per green under 2.0 - I am a consistent 2 putt per green golfer and I have to admit that my putting has really improved this season after the purchase of my New Putter towards the end of last year! However I really want to start hitting more 1 putt greens. I am confident that if I get my putts to around 1.7 or 1.8 I should get my handi down into the single digits. I leave so many shots on the putting surface that it makes me sick.

As far as equipment goes, I did purchase a new Driver this year - I purchased the Taylor Made R9 and so far I love it! I have the head tweaked in 1 degree and also weighted at the heel as to close the face faster and prevent the slice. Much more consistent off the tee and my distance has actually improved as well.

Quick update on the Brainerd trip this year. I am in for the entire golf portion this year. Planning on hitting Deacons Lodge for 18- Legacy for 36 - and Golden Eagle for 18 - The dates are June 24-June 26

I figure it's time to get to work so I am going to cut this post short, but I promise you this much. I will be better about posting blogs in the future.

New Putter

I finally got off my ass and bought a new putter. I had been playing with a Ping putter that I had won in a sales contest about 7 years ago. Putter was crap and I putted like crap with it but could never muster up enough courage to put it down and get a new one, UNTIL.... I was at Golfsmith one evening and putting and I was just lights out inside Golfsmith with a Odyssey Tour putter. I decided to pick it up, paid $130 for it due to me having a 15% off coupon from the net with me. As I drove home, I called a buddy of mine and he told me that the Black series was a much better putter but they normally ran for about $250-299 and I told him that was out of my price range. He quickly interrupted me and stated that Golf Galaxy had them on clearance for $194 and that right now you can also take a additional 33% off all clearance products, so I turned around the vehicle and headed for the Galaxy. Sure enough, $133 dollars later after discounts I was the proud new owner of a Odyssey Black Series 1 putter. Back to Golfsmith I went to return my Odyssey Tour putter and after I was asked "Why I was returning it" and I told the guy the price I had just gotten the Black Series for, he pretty much told me I was lying to him. Too funny, I actually went out to my truck and brought it in with the receipt and showed him and he actually asked if they had any left cause he was going to run over there and get one as well!

The first time I used this putter was when I was up north in Brainerd and I love this thing! Sure I am still getting used to it, but my speeds are really getting dialed in and anyone who knows the golf, knows that speed is crucial in putting. Great putter and I really am glad I made this purchase.