So played Verrado with JoshK yesterday afternoon/evening. Very very impressed. Course was in great shape tee to green. Greens were still showing signs of being punched, but they rolled just fine. And for $15, It's easily the best value I've gotten in the 2 years I've lived out here. That's including the $35 round at Troon North last summer. Course is tough. You really get punished for wayward tee shots(lots of unplayable lies and lost balls) but with the length of a lot of the holes, laying back with a fairway wood or long iron really isn't an option. I played like **** (must stop playing so heavily medicated), but had a great time anyway.

Some great views of the valley on a lot of the holes, especially from the highest elevation holes on the back 9. Definitely wanting to get back out there a time or two this summer before prices start climbing.

Playing lol starfire today with the family...heard it was in good shape atleast so hopefully a fun round

Starfire definitely not in really good shape...it was okay tee to green but greens were really slow. Made a bunch of birdies though hitting it close but can't really brag about a score there....

All this rain should be awesome for the stretch run before overseeding (once it all dries out lol)

Starfire looks like its under about ten feet of water haha.

I saw people golfing at starfire today so maybe u were thinking silverado...

No on the east side of Hayden where that lake is. Maybe they closed that 9.

I saw people playing that side when I drove by but anyways whatever lol

Played Orangetree yesterday for the first time in awhile...heard it was in rough shape but I thought it was okay and fully playable even after all the rain this week

I got my ass kicked today at Camelback Ambiante. The course is in really good shape but I couldn't hit my driver to save my life. Lost a lot of balls.

bump again just for the excitement factor of my golf trip coming up...we just confirmed all of the golf courses/tee times so the trip is set in stone.

September 20 - Seven Canyons (Sedona)
September 21 - Pinewood CC (Flagstaff)
September 22 - Forest Highlands Canyon
September 23 - Forest Highlands Meadow
September 24 - shed a tear because it's over until next year

Format will be "practice round" at Seven Canyons with side games obv
Ryder Cup 6 on 6 on 21st-24th...first two days we typically do 2 on 2 matches with 2 members from each teams and then single matches on the last round and pair together the 1-1, 2-2, 3-3, etc ranked players from each team (which is always a drunken debate lol) Stakes aren't crazy for this Ryder Cup but usually it's something like $50/man for all 3 days but mostly it's about just winning. Beyond the $50/man there's always a ton of side action on matches, individual low score bets and then of course a wild .50/1 NL poker game that runs late into the night.

I really don't know how our group of 12 guys makes this happen every year when there's only like 3-4 of the group that still works at courses. We are upfront and honest with the courses and I think our rates are comped at Seven Canyons, $18 cart fee at Pinewood, then $20 cart fee at Forest Highlands each day if you don't work at a course. So my grand total in fees is looking at about $60 lol.

Here's a pic of our degen home for 5 days right behind the 14th green on Meadow at Forest Highlands


beyond pumped up

also played Silverado on labor day for free since my buddy knows someone high up there and they wanted us to do a secret shop to rate service, conditions, etc. Overall a fun time and the course played much harder than I remembered probably due to really long rough from all the runoff from the rains a couple weeks ago. Greens were okay and fully playable...back nine a much better layout than front.

Back to our favorite cheap course Aguila on Sunday if it doesn't rain. Really surprised more of you ITT don't venture out to play there as it's always cheap and always in great condition. Papago is nice but it's always a little bit pricey it seems.

so.jealous.

About 9 lessons in with Blair who is a teaching pro at Dobson Ranch. Anyone here familiar with him?

Lessons? Gtfo lol

Last practice round today before our flagstaff trip. Played Aguila....place got pummeled by rain and some serious ponds out in the desert but everything was mowed and played real nice. Donked around and didn't make any putts and got around in 73.

Paid $22 at 9 am, excellent value still IMO

Plane about to takeoff from Seattle.12 rounds in 6 days here I come!!

The only thing I know for sure is we're playing Longbow tomorrow afternoon.

Anyone play it lately? Curious what type of shape it's in as I've only played it once and that was when it first opened.

Longbow is alright at best....lots of better options out there

Where else u planning on playing? Some courses have started to overseed so options will be prolly cut in half because of this

Sorry I meant Lone Tree lol.

I'm playing with old retired guys who don't venture too far from the Queen Creek area.

We're only rotating 4-5 courses throughout the whole trip, which is fine by me. I've played one round of golf the past two years (no joke) so this trip is just about making as many birdies as possible and having fun.

I lived here for 8 years fyi so pretty tuned in on the options. Just going with the flow though.

Cheers.

Played lone tree all the time when I lived in Chandler 2002-2003. Loved the course

Yeah I like that track a lot, especially for the price.

Got back last night. Had an absolute blast even though I struggled through some of the afternoon rounds.

I got eaten alive by mosquitos the first 4-5 days which kinda sucked but whatever. It felt more humid those days then I pretty much ever recall during my 8 years living there.

Best score was 69 (-2) at Los Colinas. (It's a lol easy course but the greens are **** which made it really tough to make putts) Worst was an 82 at Apache Creek of all places. My excuse is we had a threesome and right after we all teed off on 1 the ranger yells for us to wait and up comes this 300 pound single to hop on my cart and ride with me. His first drive was a 120 yard pop up slice (wat) and I pretty much wanted to quit right there. I processed to drive this ****er all over the damn course looking for his ball and watching him duff, chunk and skull his way to each green.

So I said **** it and smoked a bowl every other hole or so to cope. I hate that course independent of that experience and have vowed to never go back.

alright now that my body is finally feeling back to normal I decided to write the TR for our 11th annual Flagstaff Trip! I didn't take as many pics as I normally do (due to heavy boozing) so I have added a couple of old pics for those that havent seen some of the places.

September 20...
- Our group of 12 left the valley at approximately 6:15 AM headed to Seven Canyons for our 9:00 tee times.
- Conditons at Seven Canyons have officially got back to "normal" now that they are fully private. The clubhouse is finally starting to be built and the place is getting ready to be truly special in another year or two when everything is done. The greens were running very well (not terribly fast) but lush and held well. Ended up faltering down the stretch and shot 76 which isn't terrible considering I wasted 2-3 shots into the desert.

old pics of Seven Canyons (conditions were much better this time than what is shown on these)




- Finish our round and drive up 89A headed straight for the meca known as Forest Highlands. Picked up a keg of Mr. Pineapple San Tan that we had reserved of course!. We got a brief shower on the way up the 89A and this ended up being the only rain we saw for our entire trip which was a miracle considering the forecast all week.



- Arrive at Forest Highlands, pick out our rooms to stay and continue boozing and head straight to the putting course for some gambling and degening. Ended up pushing our team matches so no blood there. Cooked up some bomb grilled chicken and mashed potatoes and then continued to booze/degen and play cards until approximately 4 AM.

picture of my buddy's cabin


View from my buddy's patio behind 14 on meadow


September 21..
-Wake up feeling pretty groggy but muster up the energy to cook up some egg mcmuffin style breakfast sandwiches for the group before we head out to Pinewood (about 15 miles south of Flagstaff in Munds Park). This has always been our favorite round of the trip. The course is relatively easy and the laid back atmosphere tends to lead to a ton of drinking and lots of fun. Before we head out we put 15 lbs of pork shoulder in 3 crockpots and filled it up with Mr. Pineapple beer so we would have some epic pulled pork sandwiches for dinner.


- Course conditions were perfect to say the least. The greens at pinewood are quite sloped so when the greens are running fast some of the shots that you get are downright impossible to get close but fun to try. I started off pretty bad playing 2 over through the first 8 holes but then got it going on the back nine and ended up shooting the low round of anyone on the trip 70 (2 under). Really pleased with this score considering the beer count was HIGH.

only one crappy pic from Pinewood (too much boozing)


- Headed back to the cabin at Forest Highlands (I wasn't driving obv) and it was time to grub the pulled pork and then go fishing (see pic). Really happy with how this turned out as it was super easy and didn't have to spend any time cleaning up. Plus we had plenty of leftovers for rest of trip. Repeat night 1 with boozing/degening and poker until probably 5 AM this night (I think lol).




September 22.....
- Wake up feeling like **** obv. My buddy cooks up a bomb ham egg, etc scramble and we start to feel a little better. Head down the road about a half mile to the Canyon clubhouse at Forest Highlands. If you haven't been to Forest Highlands, it has a really stuffy feel about it. Like you feel like you can't even laugh or even talk too much out on the driving range/putting green because it's so quiet and calm. Obviously we don't want to draw attention to our 12 comp players but it's always struck me as really stuffy if you understand what I'm saying.





-Anyways, we tee off and the course is impecable as always (a theme for this trip). This was the first time they let us take carts off the path on the canyon course and it made a world of difference. Usually Canyon is rough because it's a ton of walking out to your ball, guessing yardages, etc. The greens are fast as hell and the fescue is so thick that you could literally lose your ball 1 yard off the rough. I played very well and still managed to only card a 77. There's so many ways to make bogey out there it's not even funny. Now during this round I start to feel a muscle strain/pull in my ribcage that's bothering me coming down the stretch. I don't think much of it and just drink it off (this will end up being a major issue).

- Rinse, repeat...dinner/degen/cards/bed time.

September 23
- Last day of the trip playing my favorite course in the state which is the Meadow Course at Forest Highlands. Immediately upon getting up for the day I know I'm screwed. I can barely get out of bed, move, cough, sneeze, etc anything that I do hurts bad. I'm not even sure I can even chip a ball much less play a round of golf. I can't just quit since we are playing a ryder cup format so I decide I need to gut it out. I get to the practice range and decide I can't even hit any range balls because I don't know how many swings I have in me. We tee off and I proceed to have to swing about half my normal swing speed just chopping it around wincing in pain every shot/swing. To be honest it was terrible but I made it through the round shooting about a 93 which is a laughable score for me but at least I finished the round.

-The Meadow course conditions were outstanding and there was no one really out there but our group. It's the end of the season up there and they barely have any players so it works out well for our degen group to troll around. Greens were fast but not quite as fast as we had seen them in the past but that helped us out actually.





-My squad ended up winning the "Ryder Cup" which included a trophy made by spray painting a Jack Danield Bottle and putting a golfer guy on top.



All in all the trip was great and obviously I left out many degen details but you can just imagine what goes on with 12 guys for 4-5 days away from gf's and wives.

Looking forward to next year!


bonus pic of stupid girl that drove a cart into the water while texting and trying to get pins while we were fishing like 20 feet away....luckily she was okay



again sorry for the lack of good course pictures as there was just too much bull**** going on to really take good pics on this trip....hope you enjoy

Epic TR :thumbup:

Everyone in that last pic looks to be 5 6" or shorter. Just the angle tho I'm assuming.

lol I'm 6"2 or 6"3 on the left in the ASU sweatshirt but yeah everyone else is really short....plus I had my hurt rib so I was slouching real hard.

in fact now that you mention it I might be one of like 2-3 people out of 12 that are taller than 6 ft in our group

terrible angle in that picture though obv

Are you all fairly similar skill wise? Is there one person who's ldo the best? Just curious.

not trying to brag but I'm probably the consensus #1. We always try to make teams by either having the 2 worst people be captains or just decided on a 1-12 rank for everyone and divide up the teams that way.

The way it breaks down is there is a solid 5-6 of us that shoot anywhere from even to 6-7 over par and then the rest of the people are in the 82-95 range. We mix up the teams pretty well and the matches are always pretty fair.

The best day is the singles matches on the last day and of course I was hurt with my rib and still almost beat the 2nd ranked guy by just gutting it out and chipping/putting really well. It was a sad scene for me at Meadow course at Forest Highlands trying to get around the course only being able to swing 75% at maxxxxx and wincing on every shot.

Figures my favorite course of the year and I'm hurt lol