Played Ike today with a 1:50 TeeOff.com “Deal” time. It was $78 but I had a 20% off promo code making it $62 or so. Note on the pro shop door saying everyone vaccinated or not needs to be wearing a ma... Continue »

Played Ike today with a 1:50 TeeOff.com “Deal” time. It was $78 but I had a 20% off promo code making it $62 or so. Note on the pro shop door saying everyone vaccinated or not needs to be wearing a mask to enter, but the first customer I saw didn’t have one on, so I’m not sure how much they’re enforcing it. Check in super easy. Starter out front then asked if he could slot me one group ahead, fine by me. Started around 1:38 with a twosome and pace was not good, but not awful. As expected, the 4th and 5th tees got stacked up with two groups ahead of us on each, but then things returned back to normal. Marshal came around at one point and basically just waved a white flag and said, “It’s gonna be slow so deal with it.” (Paraphrased.) Apparently there were two tournaments earlier in the day. Overall it wasn’t terrible, just a smidge over 5 hours on a beautiful afternoon. Holes 2, 14 and 17 were CPO, but I think that’s often the case out there, right?

For the most part, conditions are good. There are some oddities, though. Greens were good except for an abundance of unfixed ball marks and a big pile of dirt in the middle of the 4th green. WTF? Greens were about medium speed, mostly smooth but sometimes bumpy, medium firmness. I switched balls mid-round and the softer ball actually backed up a few times, while a harder ball would bounce before stopping. Fairways have good coverage and provided decent lies all day, although parts of the 4th fairway seemed wetter than the rest of the course. Rough is much more of a mixed bag with lots of various grasses. Some of the kikuyu around the greens is very tricky. Tee boxes were inconsistent; some really quite bad and others acceptable but not great. Also a couple blue tee boxes – 3 and 6 – were closed and looked like they’d just been re-sodded. I was in two greenside bunkers; one had sufficient sand and another didn’t. Fairway bunkers were good.

Overall a very enjoyable afternoon on the Ike even though it beat me up pretty good, even while striking the ball not too poorly. Hope I can get back out there again soon.