A quick update for Easter in March, related to a golf round I played in the middle of last year at Los Lagos in Orange County, California. Enjoy this special day!!
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One of the better memories I have with my father later in his life was golfing with him on one of my favorite courses on the planet, Hokuala Ocean Course on Kauai. He was in his mid 50s with failing health and probably only played about 10 rounds a year at that point. At the time, I remember being very agitated (my wife will attest) at my golf score, but it ultimately ended up a great thing as my terrible play combined with my father's last truly great round of his life, and we tied on the day, both shooting 84. Looking back, I don't really remember any of the bad shots I hit, but I remember adding up the score, in disbelief. Of course, I didn't know it would be my dad's last good golf round, but I'm pleased that is my lasting memory from the course at that time.
So, fast forward nearly two decades from that golf round, and a recent trip allowed me to take my son out for a round on this course, and we ended up with a stunning afternoon for golf. I'm pleased to say I played much better, even all these years later, but I'm even MORE pleased that my son tied me on the back nine, which is the first time he has ever done that for nine holes. We both hit our "goals" with me breaking 80 and he breaking 90. The review is updated, as are the memories, but I am reserving any updates to the official golftop18 lists until I get through more of my stale reviews from 2023 so I can do one large update sometime later this year in that regard. One last time, I want to apologize for my lackluster effort in 2023, but that is behind me now and I'm more motivated (at least for now) to get many of the long overdue golf course reviews into the website in 2024. However, to start, I'm going to not go back into the "vault" but make my first review of 2024 based on a round I played on Kauai in late December. Here are my many thoughts on this:
1 - Poipu Bay golf course is one of the original GolfTop18 holes that both inspired me to start taking pictures and tracking my rankings, and was originally a top 18 course for me (when I had played about 50 only in my life). The span of time between my last review and this one was 21 years and there are pictures here that span 25 years of playing the golf course. 2 - Rating golf courses is tough. I have a 5 point scale, but with half points, so it's really 10 points. It's hard to parse out, for example, the euphoric feeling one usually has when on vacation in Hawaii, from the pure strength of the golf course, compared to ones in the middle of, for example, Los Angeles County, where I lived for 20 years. I don't think I try to fully divorce those concepts in the rating but do find it hard to balance. Thus, ironically, the rating of this golf course did not change even though the "experience" I had playing with my son during a great day on vacation probably exceeded the pure rating. 3 - Finally, there are three more golf course reviews coming from this tropical paradise, including a new golf course to the website. I'm also going to take a step back and see how my reviews of all Hawaiian golf courses shake out when I'm done with these, including some of the very high rankings some of them hold. Honestly, in many ways, 2023 was not my best year. Included in that has got to be the amount of golf reviews I have sitting in my queue unpublished. This is probably my third update about my lazy reviewing ways this year, but I still am having a hard time focusing on the updates. In that vein, I'm going to take the easy way out and give an updated review on Rustic Canyon, which used to be my most played golf course on an annual basis, but, since my move down to Orange County prior to CoVID, this is only my second time playing it since then. It is still a a great course, the value is not quite as good as it used to be (but what is these days). I didn't even have the presence of mind to photograph any additional holes, just have some updated photos. Sorry to all my avid readers (LOL) but I hope to be better in 2024.
I have a lot of golf rounds to catch up on; 2023 has probably been the year where I've played the least amount of new golf courses since I started tracking these things around the year 2000. So, here is the first of many "catch-up" golf course reviews, this one being at Terra Lago North, which I hadn't reviewed since 2019, but played this summer with my kids (in ridiculously humid weather). I was able to add a couple of new golf holes and update the golf course review with a few more thoughts.
The phrase "off my game" means a lot of things. On a recent round at Tustin Ranch, it meant a few things. First, I had not played this golf course in 18 years and I didn't remember much or review my website before playing. Second, I had recently purchased irons but had not played in about a month, did not warm up, and hurt my foot the morning of play, so I did not show up very ready to play.
This combination led to me being off my game from a golfing perspective. For clarity, I have not shot in the 90s since before the year 2000 and after 12 holes at Tustin Ranch, I was 14 over. Fortunately, I was able to "right the ship" and stay in the mid-80s, but I really didn't have much (and I plan to return these irons, as they do not seem to work really well after 3 rounds). Secondly, combining bad play with no research in advance and a general lack of caring, I was unable to take more than two pictures of this golf course, which is sad, given my previous review have very few. My trip to Ireland ended about a year ago, and I said goodbye with one last golf round there, at the Sandy Hills Links at Rosapenna. Now, with this final golf course review and blog, my walk down Irish memory lane also comes to a close. It took me awhile, partially as I wanted to enjoy re-living these golf moments from what is close to my favorite place on earth, especially being able to have shared those golf memories with my family.
But, fear not, many more golf course reviews are sitting in my queue and now, with no active golf trips to new places planned for the rest of this year, I can begin to get through the backlog. Yet another blog title with double meaning. First, the golf course itself is Tom Doak's new St. Patrick's Links at Rosapenna. That golf course, which is now reviewed, plays along Sheephaven Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, giving the player a few of, at least in one section, the end of Ireland.
The other part for the avid reader who has been following the Ireland series, will now note that there is only one more part coming, which will be the last golf course I played on the trip, hence the end of the Ireland series will finally be wrapped up next month, almost exactly 1 year after it was completed. The good news, I guess, is that I'm still behind on more recent updates/ golf courses and have quite a few new golf courses to share over the remainder of 2023, even though I don't have any major new golf trips planned to play new golf courses for the next 5 months. Clearly one of the most influential and historically golf designers is Old Tom Morris. Of course, back when he was designing golf courses, a lot of them were nine holes and/or were much shorter by today's standards. However, the concepts of visual deception, thoughtful bunkering and green slopes and other features have been embraced my many of golf's architects over the years. Thus, when one has an opportunity to play an Old Tom Morris designed golf course, I suggest you take the chance.
This one is the Old Tom Morris Links as the Rosapenna golf resort, which has two other golf courses that will be reviewed soon. As is often the case, Tom only designed 9 golf holes (the back nine) and those have been somewhat modernized here and there, but the quirky and thoughtful design lives on. The front nine was designed was Pat Ruddy, the Irish golf architect who also designed The European Club. All in all, the golf course plays much harder than it's slope would suggest and is a good test of golf. It is tight but not overly penal, with par being a hard score on most holes but bogey being relatively accessible. In an effort to take a break from the ongoing "Ireland Series" of posts, I am updating my reviews of both the Babe Golf Course and the Ike Golf Course at Industry Hills. I had not played either in well over a decade but played 36 golf holes in one day and have been able to refresh my golf course reviews. In both cases, the golf courses were much as a remembered them, with Babe being tighter and Ike being longer as the main distinguishing factor, with Ike getting a slight edge as the better golf course.
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