Sunday:
43-44-87 at Asheboro Municipal, Asheboro NC. Donald Ross 9 holer, went around twice. Nothing fancy about the course but I liked it. Nice warmup. Bad short game.
43-41-84 at The Carolina, Whispering Pines NC. Palmer design, pretty wide open. More short game woes.
Monday:
38-47-85 at Anderson Creek, Spring Lake NC. Davis Love design. Nice course. Made a slew of doubles on the back as my short game completely fell apart.
43-40-83 at Deercroft, Wagram NC. Nice layout that's suffered from years of neglect. New ownership and greenkeeper looks like it's making a difference but it's still a little rough. Smart of them to get the greens right first. Finally started putting better.
Tuesday:
40-40-80 at Mid Pines, Southern Pines NC. Ross design and the 2nd most beautifully maintained course I've ever seen (after Augusta National). It is hard to imagine how the course could have been in better shape. Tons of flowering trees and bushes in full bloom. Nice elevation change. Finally got the short game mostly sorted and I got up and down about a million times.
18th hole at Mid Pines, from the fairway
45-40-85 at Southern Pines Golf Club, Southern Pines NC. Another Ross design and one of my five favorite golf courses in the world (courses played division). It's not conditioned as well as Mid-Pines but the design is about as good. What can I say, I really like Ross courses.
From what I've read, Ross designed 36 holes for Southern Pines. Only 27 were built and for some reason one of the nines was abandoned some years ago. I wonder why – you can still see where those holes were and there are still a few stone tablets standing that identify the tees.
Wednesday:
40-42-82 at Legacy, Aberdeen NC. Jack Nicklaus II design. Definitely more in the modern style but a nice course. Fairways were a little shaggy and there were some patchy spots. Greens were re-done last year in the same dwarf bermuda variety that's now at East Lake and they are fantastic. This is the future of greens in the South. They rolled super true and were nice and quick.
Hated to leave. Great weather, course conditions were the best we've ever seen – most of the bermuda was out of dormancy which I don't think is typical on April 1. All of the greens were in great shape. Most of our rounds took about 3.5 hours as a twosome – we never got paired with anybody – and we essentially never waited on a shot other than at Deercroft where we played behind a couple groups playing a scramble (and still finished in 4 hours).
Driver was good for early in the season. Irons were solid early but really tailed off – I am not compressing the ball and the short irons in particular just go nowhere. I hit an 8 iron late in the round Wednesday that went about 90 yards. Pitching and chipping was horrible as usual other than during my round at Mid Pines and a few times that afternoon. Putting went from awful the first two days to incredible the last two. I probably one putted 20 times at least in the last 54 holes. Four birdies total.
Was hoping to play the Dormie Club, the Crenshaw/Coore design that's been getting rave reviews and will probably go ultraprivate very soon but elected to pass. One greens fee exclusive of caddy would have been more than we paid for six afternoon rounds elsewhere.