Sadly, after my last posting, my month of May was more work than play.  My golfing "fast" was finally broken last weekend when I played a very early round of golf at the Los Robles golf course that I hadn't played in almost 15 years, which gave me a chance to deliver a much needed review update.

However, don't fret faithful followers, I've got a lot of golf coming in the next month that will add two new states to my collection and probably at least a handful of new courses to write about.  See you this summer!!

I took a trip with my two friends pictured here and we had a three-round weekend, which led to an improved review of Moorpark Country Club where I ended up with a strong finish on the Ridgeline nine that had previously kicked my butt.

I was able to re-vamp my reviews on Ojai Valley and La Purisima, two great golf courses where I have strong memories of my early golfing life.  The former was the first time I watched the pros (senior tour) and I remember walking around with my dad and the latter is where I played in my first scramble tournament with my dad and we won 4th place (not particularly noteworthy, but funny to even get a 4th place trophy).  This time around I didn't play so great at either place but I really enjoyed the day at both places and had fun times with unusual wagers, drinking and otherwise being foolish.

I just got a chance to head out and play some weekend golf at one of my favorite, reasonably priced public courses in Ventura County:  Sterling Hills (see updated review).  Growing up nearby, the day was reminiscent of so many afternoon rounds played in my youth with a sky of half clouds and half sun, mild temperatures and a steady 1-2 club breeze coming from the ocean.  I played really well and felt this was my first solid round of 2014.

With my recent round at Recreation Park "complete" I've now tried to play three golf courses in the city of Long Beach.  As much as it pains me to do so, I have to say that as a general rule, the public golf in this city is not good.  I was able to only get 17 holes in on this day and this was still 5.5 hour round that also started 30 minutes late (thanks to my "favorite" golf course management company).  This was also a round in which I lost two golf balls via somebody just picking them up.  The first one I saw and the individual didn't own up to it.  The second one, my buddy heard the shot come down and we still couldn't find it amongst the group of golfers nearby (I yelled "fore").  He also had a ball taken by a person in our group, who also picked up the balls of other golfers.  It was very surreal.  So, to the golfers of Long Beach I simply say "it is not okay to pick up golf balls that are not yours!!". If you need cheap golf balls, dive into a reclaimed water lake or find a discount store, but stop making a mockery of the game.

For those that are curious, I also attempted to play El Dorado, but walked off the course (I've walked off less than 5 courses in 30 years) after 13 holes due to the horrific shape it was in.  It's not even reviewed here.  The "crown jewel" of Long Beach is Skylinks and you can see how that is user ranked on this site.

Nothing says "I Love You" to my GolfTop18 Valentines like the gift of new AND improved reviews.  I played the Los Serranos South Course over a decade ago and I've always been ashamed of my picture-less review, but no longer.  I was able to get a couple of shots to give the reader a flavor when I was recently out there.  In addition, I've also now played the Los Serranos North course, which is shorter, but similar in feel, and its review is far more robust.

With this week's PGA Pebble Beach Pro-Am event being hosted at three courses I've had the honor of playing at some point in my golfing career, I wanted to highlight a personal story of my experience at Spyglass Hill, notoriously the most difficult of the rounds the pros will face this week.

I first learned of Spyglass though my father who had a colleague that owned a house on 17-mile drive and was a member at Monterey Peninsula Country Club, where I was able to play the great Dunes Course (my review is very old and I did not take pictures back in my high school days, but I remember liking it a lot).  The day before my round there, this member's son, who worked at Spyglass, said we could get out and play there for free late in the afternoon, which was great.  However, we got stuck behind a last minute group of 12 golfers and we were delayed by 1 hour in teeing off.  So, we were stuck and played really slow but I was absolutely blown away by the first 5 holes at Spyglass (we played the 7th in the dark and then walked in).  The amazing mix of trees, dunes and ocean was etched into my brain and those holes burrowed in my psyche for a decade until I finally got my first shot to play the entire course in 2004.

I remember begging my brother-in-law to come play golf at Spyglass with me (our wives came along).  He'd never spent anywhere near that amount on any round (I rarely had), and, as it turned out, it would be a long time before he would again.  After an amazing par/par start, I stepped onto the 3rd tee (pictured above) when my wife took what is now known as "the picture".  She snapped a shot (shortly after the one above) right in my downswing, which I clearly heard, and then pulled my short iron 30 yards left in the dunes and made double bogey.  As you can imagine, after 10 years of being frustrated about my previous shortened golfing experience, and 10 years of excitement built up to play these holes again, I was very agitated.  An older and wiser GolfTop18 author perhaps would have been able to recover, but the youthful golfer on that day was emotionally finished as I lost my temper and my swing, and proceeded to shoot 89 (my worst score in many years before or after that and approximately 12 shots over my handicap at that time) blaming my wife the whole way.  Suffice it to say, it was not a good experience for either of us.  My brother-in-law shot 108 (close to 20 strokes above his handicap) and was not pleased at spending a lot of money to get crushed either.

So, when I told my wife I wanted another shot at Spyglass Hill, and that I wanted her to come along, the look of "You're Out of Your Mind" was clearly shown on her face, and she flatly refused.  However, after begging and trying to convince her that I was a changed man and that this time we'd fight "the demons" together, she finally relented, and in January of 2005, we went back to Spyglass and were greeted by sunny skies, mild temperatures and about 1 club of wind (in other words, rarely ideal conditions for Monterey, see picture of #7 above).  I had a brand new driver (well, it was used, but it was brand new to me) that hit the ball about 30 yards farther than my previous one, and it showed up on this day.  I proceeded to make 7 pars to go with 2 bogeys on each side.  My wife took amazing pictures, including many of the dozens of deer (there were more deer than people on the course by far) and none during my backswing.  To this day, I count that round of 76 from the Gold tees to be one of the top 10 of my golfing career, both for the score and for the great time I had with my wife.  The next time I go play Spyglass, it'll be the first time I'll do it without some sort of monkey on my back, and I look forward to that very much.

The first review of 2014 is on a course I've seen many times before but never played.  Unfortunately, it was also the site of either some hard-core course workers or very short-sighted course policy that would not allow a child of 5 years old to ride along and hit a couple of shots along the way without paying a full green fee.  Frankly, for a course who by all accounts is hurting for membership and thirsting for a better reputation, this was poorly handled, and they won't get any help here.  You can see my review of the Woodhaven course (as all reviews, based only on course merit, not these types of circumstances).  The upside was that I broke 80 here and don't feel the need to ever return.

My golfing 2013 ended with a flurry...of bad golf shots!  I wrapped up my efforts for this otherwise good year of golf with my worst scores at two courses i've played a decent amount of times.  However, I was able to add in a few more photos and update the reviews of Rustic Canyon (above) and Sea Cliff (below).  So, my pain is the reader's gain.

We look forward to adding more courses to the website in 2014 (plans include trips to Washington, Utah and Wyoming:  all states with zero courses played/reviewed by GolfTop18 as of now).

I played two new courses over the last month.  One course is actually very old and I have driven by it in my youth (actually, I was more accurately driven by it) many, many times, but never played it till now.  The short, but fun Meadowlark Golf Course in Huntington Beach has now been added to the GolfTop18 family of courses (#18 pictured above).

The second course is actually relatively new (built in the last decade I believe) and I had never seen it or heard of it more than one week before playing it with a buddy of mine.  So, please also enjoy the review (#4 pictured below) of the challenging Greg Norman designed Vellano Country Club.

I don't want to pretend this is a sob story, because it is not.  However, on paper, my birthday weekend this year seemed pretty good, but did not live up to expectations.  

First, I was able to search the web and find a good "free golf on your birthday week" type deal at Elkins Ranch Golf Course, where I had not played since 1997 (see picture below).  The deal was honored, but I also picked the first day this year where the dreaded Santa Ana winds blew strong: and they blew very strong.  The course is located in an agricultural area and has mature trees as well, so let's just say that there was a crazy amount of debris on the greens and dust in the air, making for a long day of golf.  The course itself was actually pretty solid, but my timing couldn't have been worse.

Then, on my actual birthday, I went out with my buddy and played the Desert Spring Palm Course in Palm Desert.  After a torrid start where we were a combined 3 under after two holes, we ran into a wall of humanity and our scores began to suffer.  I called the starter who told us the best course of action was to just start over after nine as the front was now "wide open".  This could not have been farther from the truth. After playing 1 through 5 again (waiting for a group a head of us) we hit the same wall again with different people.  So, we skipped ahead to #10 and then played a terribly slow back nine, skipping another hole along the way just to finish before our dinner reservation.  I actually quite like the course, so it was too bad that the management doesn't have better control over the flow of traffic out there.

Anyway, if this was an isolated incident, i wouldn't have written the post, but over the last 4 years, i've played 6 rounds during my birthday week, and 5 of the six have yielded bad scores with strong winds on half of them and me even getting injured once.  I'm beginning to wonder if I should spend my birthday weeks indoors!!