The Black

(For some pictures, check here)

The executive summary: The most difficult straight-forward course I've ever played. Tobacco Road is hard, but mainly because you can't see half of the pins or fairways. The Black is just big and hilly and has the most penalizing bunkers imagineable. However, the greens are relatively dull, and so if you have a good ball striking day you can make a decent score. Check that -- a great ball striking day.

Here are my notes/thoughts from the day:

Pregame: Get there really, really early: 8:00 for a 9:51 tee time. Maybe the earliest Wiseman has ever been to a golf event. The clubhouse is gorgeous, and looks a lot like a real country club. That said, the range is ghetto, and amazingly small for a facility that hosts 5 golf courses. The security associated with teetimes at the Black is impressive: golfers get wristbands once they pay, and the wristbands are cut off by the starter on the first tee. The weather looks dicey as we tee off.

#1: The first tee is right there where everyone is watching, and with the signs for the Open looming above it is pretty nerve racking. The first hole is 40 feet below the tee box and a sharp dogleg to the right. I hit a solid drive just into the rough at the elbow of the dogleg, but still can't see the pin. 8-iron from 138 gets pin high on left. Easy chip to 5 feet below hole, knock in putt for par. Best drive may have been Mike's, which was 75 yards left of the fairway into the fairway on the Green Course.

#2: Probably shouldn't have hit driver, because I would have rather been on flat spots. Drive into right rough, can't hit any sort of fade/cut/slide off the side hill lie, so I pull a 7 iron into the rough 50 yards short of green. Hit a 60 degree wedge to 15 feet, two-putt for bogey.

#3: Playing about 152 from the whites. I knock it 5 yards right and 5 yards past pin, two putt for par. Wiseman hits 6 iron on the front part of green and rolls in a nice 25 footer for birdie.

#4: Yarg. Something makes me hit 3 wood to try and stay short of trouble that I couldn't have reached anyways. I leak my tee shot into right rough, try and get a 4-hybrid onto the 2nd plateau, but instead hit into giant bunker. Good lie, hit a 7 iron pin high about 40 yards right of green (great angle). Hit a good chip, but three-jack for double. Just a fantastic risk/reward hole for the pros, since they have to kill a long iron uphill to reach in two, but there is a false-back to the green.

(You'll notice a theme here: missing to the right. I have no idea what the left side of the course looks like. I hit a couple of drives down the left half of the fairway, but that's it. It could be really easy over there, but I'd never know.)

#5: Bust a high fade down the middle, which is perfect for the diagonal fairway. You could hit the left side of fairway and have 250+ yards. I have 180 back uphill and hit a 4-hyrbid pin high, 15 yards right of green (magically, not in bunker). Hit another good chip and knock in the putt for par.

#6: +3 through 5 holes, and the wheels come off. Kind of a tough tee-shot, since you can't really see anything except a little sliver of fairway (hole turns left and goes steeply downhill about 225 yards off the tee). I hit a weak two-iron that leaks into the fescue, chip out into the rough on the other side of the fairway, and chunk something just short of green. Try a miraculous flop (to an absurd pin position), blade it over the green into the fescue collar of the back bunker. Try to play it from the bunker (ball was level with my chest)... miss twice, come out of the bunker and hit it lefty... back into the bunker. Hit out, two-putt for X (counts as 8 for handicap purposes).

#7: Hit a decent drive into the fairway, but am pretty far left (another diagonal fairway). Hit a terrible weak layup into right rough, but am able to muscle an 8-iron from 132 onto the back of the green. It starts pouring. POURING. I try and make my 5 footer for par with the rain pouring down, but alas I miss. Bogey.

#8: We kind of play this on the run since the group in front of us was scared by the rain. I hit another weak fade 5-iron, nearly get stymied by a tree but hit a decent chip, two-ish putts and we're off to #9.

#9: Fantastic drive down the right side, although since it's a dogleg left I'm not in the best position. (Incredible fairway... not a flat lie anywhere.) Hit another weak fade 3-hybrid about 20 yards right and 10 yards short of green. Try and punch a wedge back onto the green but come up short. Plug into the lip of the bunker (remember that rain?). And I mean "plug" and "lip". Manage to get it onto the fringe, cover myself in wet sand, chip, and hit two putts for a triple.

So I was 3 over through the first 5 holes and 9 over over the next 4 holes. Suh. Weet. At least the weather was sucky.

#10: Great tee shot down the left side. 5-iron from 180 ish comes up short into the bunker. Rain is pouring again, we wait it out under the shelter. When it starts slacking off I chunk my bunker shot (yeah wet sand), finally get out and two putt for double.

#11: Dumb stuff all around. I'm too lazy to put my glove on and hit my worst drive of the day. Amazingly I find it in the fescue and the lie is a little bare. I try and hit a 4-hybrid back out to the fairway, but the club gets twisted and I barely make it back to the "short" rough. I hit the same club and chunk it down the fairway into the left fringe. Next comes a 60 degree wedge from 70 yards. The fringe is so nice and the grass is so dense that my wedge slides right underneath the ball, so I hit a really high shot that comes up about 5 yards short of the green. You shouldn't be surprised to find that there is a bunker short of the green. And that I had a buried lie. Again. I leave first bunker shot in the bunker, finally get out (hitting the pin) and two putt for my 2nd quad of the day. That's +15 over 6 holes.

#12: Turnaround. Decent drive down the right side leaves 235 to hole (my fade really doesn't do much good on a dogleg left). I don't trust my 3-wood so I try and rip my two hybrid. I remember doing the same back when I shot 77 and adjusted my posture so that it was a little more upright. Boom! I don't quite hit it 235 (more like 220, and then it plugged). Hit a 9-iron bump and run that rolled right past the cup and onto the back fringe. Cozy a putt down the hill to an inch for a bogey.

#13: Big par 5. Leak a drive a little right, but am able to hit a 4-hybrid out of the light fescue. Have 81 yards for my 3rd shot. I hit a 3/4 54 degree wedge exactly 81 yards. Unfortunately I hit it with a ton of spin (or, at least some spin -- that should be a pitch for Vokey, since I can't spin anything) and pull it back down onto the front shelf. Run the birdie putt by 5 feet and miss the downhill slider on the comeback.

#14: Leak a 6 iron from 167 to the right. Finally figure out how to hit out of the sand and hit a great bunker shot to 10 feet. Miss the putt, but hit my 3rd bogey in a row. That's pretty good here.

#15: The hardest hole on the course, and arguably the hardest par 4 anywhere on earth. I bust my drive down the middle and am left with 175 to the hole. I play it 2-3 clubs uphill (3-hyrbid), but catch it thin and land in the rough short of the green. (I did hit a 2nd 3-hyrbid and knocked it on... it was the club.) Make a good chip, miss a 20 footer for par, end up with bogey. Feel like a champ.

#16: Hit my 2nd consecutive fairway but am rewarded with 216 into the wind. Two-hyrbid comes up into the right bunker, hit a great bunker shot to 15 feet, two putt for another bogey.

#17: Hit a nice 3-hyrbid from 195. Ball fades a bit much and am left on the lower shelf. Have to putt through the fringe, which throws me off, and end up 3-putting for bogey.

#18: Close out with yet another fairway hit. Have 153 back up the hill to a dead-front pin position. Hit a nice 7 iron that comes up just short of the green, but make an easy chip 4 feet by and make the putt. Book-end the start and finish with pars.

Holes 1-5: +3
Holes 6-11: +15
Holes 12-18: +6
Total: +24, par 71 = 95

Some notes:

I didn't lose a ball. I hit the fairway on 7 of 11 par 4s and was rewarded by getting to hit 4/3/5/2/3/2/7 iron in to the greens (hitting none of them). I only hit my pitching wedge on the driving range, and only hit one 9 iron (a bump and run).

Yarg. What a rough middle of the round... In general it's tough to see how I would score a lot better here. I can obviously replace the quads with bogeys, but I don't see a ton more pars out there: I can't expect to reach the green on many of these par 4s in regulation (I'm not that accurate with a 3-iron), so at best I can make decent chips and try for bogey-option-par. I could realistically birdie #7 and #13 (par 5s), maybe #3, maybe #1, but that's about it.

The blog is dead, long live the blog

For a variety of reasons, I'm done with the old blog about random stuff going on in my life. But I have decided to blog about golf, because I love golf and writing about golf. Sorry if that isn't your cup of tee. (HA! Tee! or Tea!)

Duke

Long story short: blog has been silent for the past two weeks because I didn't have the InterWebs at home. Now I do. Regular blogging to resume shortly. In the meantime, I managed to score a ticket to the 1st round NCAA games yesterday. Saw Duke barely beat Belmont. Here's the thing: the crowd was so anti-Duke they booed the cheerleaders.

Read that again: they BOOED THE CHEERLEADERS. Who does that? Sure, Belmont is a great story. Boo our basketball players. But our cheerleaders? Jeez...

Day 4 Photos

A little out of order, but here's what happened between Columbia, MO and Charleston, WV.

Ozarkland. We didn't go in, but it was the most interesting thing to take a photo of while filling up with gas. That and I didn't think that the Ozarks actually came that far north.

The Arch. I was surprised that the park is actually called "Jefferson National Expansion Museum." The brand "arch" and "gateway" aren't anywhere in the name. Go figure. Anyways, this thing is really cool, especially as you read about the history of the design (1947) and construction (not until 1960). Saarinen didn't know how to build it, and by the time they figured it out he had passed away.



Not much going on in southern Indiana, so we made a 7 mile side trip to Santa Claus, IN. They've got this and a huge wooden roller coaster. And farmland.

The profile of the Kentucky State Capitol from a hill way up above the heart of Frankfort. The Capitol building is nice, but the governor's mansion is off the hook.

4,238

Fairfax Station, VA

And... we're done. Or, a week ago today, we were done. There was something refreshing about waking up to a "short" drive of only 350 miles or so, but it was also sad to be heading into familiar territory. Once I crossed into Virginia there wasn't a stretch of road in front of me that I hadn't driven at least once before. That was true for the first time since I drove south of Salem, OR.


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We tried to end the trip the way we started: looking for a giant hole in the ground. Turns out there is something called the Grand Canyon of the South in Virginia, but sadly it was way further south than we were going. After reading a terrible review of basically all of the BBQ places in Charlottesville we decided to make a break from smoky pork products and go after more traditional country food. Lunch was at the Southern Kitchen (surprisingly, no website) which probably has the best imitation of my Grandmother's food ever. The tea was similar, the green beans were very similar, the potato salad was very similar... the fried chicken was a little different, but not by much.

After lunch we drove to Middletown, VA, home of Route 11 potato chips. It's a surprisingly small little building where they make small batch potato chips. They are unafraid to use the word "chip" as a verb, and are very proud about their deals with Cracker Barrel and someone else (can't remember). The best part about the "tour" was getting a hot chip, which is a surprisingly pleasant treat.

With that we hopped on I-66 and made the familiar 50 mile trek home. The trip was over. We could stand up and walk around and not get back in a car. Fantastic.

To close, pictures from Day 4:

The WVa state capitol:

Home Sweet Home!

Charleston, WV

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Details to come tomorrow. Highlights:

• Stopped to see the Gateway Arch in a frigid St. Louis. Pretty cool stuff, especially from an engineering perspective.
• Didn't find a Starbucks to start the morning, which was a big disappointment.
• Took a side trip to Santa Claus, IN.
  
• Saw another State Capitol (Frankfort, KY)
• Ended up in our last State Capitol (Charleston, WV)