Lake revisited

lMon 28th

The canadian couple I played with in Casablanca have sent me some photos they took of the cart in the lake. I have updated my post for that day.

http://gracewing11.blogspot.com/2011/03/24-balls-in-lake.htm

Augusta Pines

Sun 27th

I hadn't heard about getting a game at Walden so after a brief chat with Tony and Lisa this morning I headed off. I did the GPS, got to Point of interest and selected golf clubs and one of the ones listed was Augusta Pines less than 3 miles away. I headed there and was able to get a tee time about an hour after I arrived.

This gave me plenty of time to do some putting and hit a lot of balls on the driving range. I played with a couple both members of Gleanloch and as such they have playing rites at Augusta Pines.

I was hitting the ball well again today but managed to limit my 3 putting to only a few holes and these were when I was a long way from the hole.

Once again I hardly got any medium length putts and I would have had 5 or so that missed by inches.

A number of these were reasonably birdie chances and I finally got about a 4 footer for a birdie on a par 5.

Augusta Pines is loosely based on the Augusta where the master is played. It was built by the same company that did the Tour 18 I played the week before. Apparently there was a bit of a stink from some golf courses and so they did a few things differently this time. The "Amen corner" holes are in reverse order and the par 5 is a mirror image of the original. they are also holes 2-4 instead of 11-13.

I had parred the first hole and was on for 2 on the par 5 but 3 putted for another pat. Unfortunately the next 2 were bogey and double. I did still have 44 on the front and 43 on the back. The later included an 8 on the 11th, so the other 8 were quite consistent. I parred the last 2 which both have island greens.

The course has some spectacular holes and is again very scenic. There is a huge lake between the 10th, 17th and 18th holes and in font of the clubhouse.

On 11 of the 18 holes, there is water in play but I managed to keep my ball losses to a couple and I found 3 or 4 others.

 It was quite humid today and so, although it was overcast it wasn't very pleasant. I was still in my long trousers from yesterday and seriously considered buying some shorts or a skort before the game. However they had a small range and none in my size.

Player at the Woodlands

Sat 26th

It was another busy week at work. After getting the new laptop up to speed I worked on finishing the requests from the previous week. On Thursday Brandon and I spent all day in the conference room, knocking of a long list of mostly small fixes to tweak the interface and fix the odd minor bug.

Friday was spent in meetings. The morning was with the senior engineers just working through the complex interactions of swivels, reaming, centralisers and rollers. I found and fixed a few bugs where some cases slipped through the net and we eventually got everything doing the right thing. This was a critical piece of programming and one which we hadn't managed to do via emails or phone calls.

In the afternoon we met with 2 Schlumberger guys to discuss modelling of Dual Gradient Drilling. This is the latest deep water drilling technique and at the cutting edge of technology. Our modelling fixes will be a lot easier than the actual engineering.

On Saturday Tony and Lisa had me as a guest on the Player course. We teed off just after 2 so I had 5 hours from when I got up and I seemed to just fritter the time away. I did eventually get my washing done and spent the rest of the time going through my photos from the last few years to get a set for the screen saver slide show. Fun but not overly productive. I was quite impressed with my new camera, used for these photos. I knew it had a GPS but was quite surprised when a display came up telling me I was at the player course at the Woodlands.

This was the 4th time I've played it and I still didn't do well.   I was hitting the ball well enough but the greens were very fast and I just couldn't get a handle on them I had a lot of 3 putts and I think only putted out once. All my medium putts missed but inches or a foot or so. Lisa had her best 9 ever 50 and I only beat her by one, although she was a couple of tees shrter than me. A slightly better score on the second 9 had me under 100 but not by much.

They invited me back for tea and after several cocktails I decide to take up the offer of a bed for the night. Lisa even put my clothes through the washer and they were dry and waiting when I got up about 9 on Sunday.

Keeping the doctor away

Wed 23rd

On Monday my Dell laptop was misbehaving so badly I gave up. After rebooting multiple times I decided that I wasn't going to be very productive unless I did something and that something was to get a new computer.

Fortunately I had already started thinking along those lines and after talking to Mark last week decided I might as well get an Apple Macbook Pro. As I have always been a PC user this was a decided change in outlook.

I was originally looking at the 15" model but wanted the higher resolution screen. These are not usually kept on stock and this was going to be a buy today and get it running. At best buy they had the 17" version and after making sure it fitted into my laptop case I decide to go with that. However they did not have a full version of Windows 7 (only updates) so I had to got to the nearby Office Max to get one. I just went for the pro version rather than the Ultimate on my Dell.

I then went back, bought the Mac, a connector for a VGA screen and a case to put my dell hard drive in just in case that was the only way to read it.

The setting up of the Windows partition was fairly painless and it now boots by default to Windows, but with the option of booting to the Mac OS as well.

I also had to reinstall all my software and of course all my installation disks were at home. Howver Mark had the full set required for getting back up for TAD development which was the critical requirement and they were all in file form rather than on disk. He put them on their ftp site so I could download them. I still had all my serial numbers and licence codes.


By the end of the day I had got Delphi and all the add ons installed, debug the library settings etc and was back doing some work. I had also set up email, etc


Ironically, one of the guys I play golf with in China was encouraging me to lease a Mac and develop some iphone apps. Perhaps I will do that later.


Of course I still had to get all my other files etc over. The TAD stuff I did using a thumb drive but that would have been a terribly slow process for the full set of files. Tony offered me a usb hard disk yesterday but I didn't take it.

I lookup some info on the net and it implied I could connect my 2 PCs with an Ethernet cable and copy from the Dell to the Mac. I did this for 1 folder but then found I couldn't copy it to the PC drive. My third call to the Apple help confirmed this problem - the PC disk was read only from the Mac OS.


I hadn't had dinner so I headed to the office to see if I could get in and get Tony's hard drive. Fortunately some one was there as I didn't have a key, although my swipe car was working. After I got back I move some more folders from Dell to Mac using it.


Then I noticed I could see the Mac disk from the Windows screen and lo and behold could copy files.

I then rebooted to Mac and started copying the folder sto the Mac hard disk. This was very quick for smaller ones and I went to bed with it copying music and pictures, so it was all there this morning. I then rebooted to Windows and drag them to the PC disk. Now This PC is more or less fully loaded.

Other things have started turning up at last. My golf rangefinder and my new camera arrived yesterday. The rangefinder is a direct replacement of the old one which was only 8 months old and IMHO better than the ones available in the shops. The camera is a later version in the same series as the one that was damaged.

Needless to say all this is unexpected expense and my credit cards are taking a hammering, in addition to the anticipated car rentals, meals and soon enough hotel bills.

Tour 18

Sun 20th

Today's golf was at the Tour 18 golf course and since I recharged my camera overnight there are lots of photos. Unfortunately it was overcast early and they didn't all come out as clearly as I would have liked.

This course consists of copies of holes from different courses used for the PGA competitions. Each hole has the name of the course and the hole on the course that is copied and usually a little story about some particular professional who won or lost a tournament on that hole.

There were a lot of holes from courses that I didn't recognise but there are 3 holes that duplicate Amen corner from Augusta and they seemed quite familiar.

I had booked to play at 10:20 and after about a 40 minute drive arrived around 9:45. When I checked in I was told I'd been moved to an earlier time slot, if that was OK. I joined a pair of Indian guys who were brothers in law. Both were in IT in the finances area.

Unfortunately my record of parring the first hole came to an end today. Despite a decent drive that finished on the fairway and a second shot that was also on the fairway but short I couldn't finish off and I had a double bogey.

The next hole is a spectacular left hand curve around a lake (Bay Hill #6) and I had a bogey after having to chip sideways from the rough and then had another double next hole for 3 6's in a row.

Then I got my act together and parred the next 4 which included the 3 Amen corner holes. Another double followed then on the 9th (Sawgrass 17) I hit the Island green with a 9 iron and was unlucky not to birdie when my putt hit the back of the hole and just jumped out a few inches.

I finished with a 43 just under my target for the 9. I played the blue tees which actually had a ladies rating of 77.8 and a slope of 137 making 87 my target again.

The second 9 was nowhere near as good, with balls in lakes and too many bad shots out of bunkers. The latter was mpartly due to the bunkers having very little sand and I kept over over shooting the green. I managed only 2 pars.

It was nonetheless an enjoyable game with pleasant company who also had their fair share of bad holes as well as some good ones.

The concept for the course is interesting and it seems as though they have carried it off well enough. However it was a slow round - about 5 hours - and we seemed to be waiting nearly every hole.

Panorama shots - 2nd, Amen corner x 2, and the lake that borders #9, #16 and #18 and the club house

Cypresswood

Sat 19th

The working week has been pretty busy. One of the objectives of this visit is to interact with a local software company that is being considered to take over the maintenance of TAD when I retire. While this is hopefully many years off, the clients are looking ahead just in case it is sooner. Their programmer, Mark, came to our office on Wed and on Friday I went to theirs. It was almost 90 minutes to drive there and the same back again, so it was a long day.

The other 3 days I was discussing and implementing upgrades to the program. Quite often I was in the office to 6 or later.

I was also invited to dinner with Tony and Lisa a couple of times. It was good to catch up and the food was fantastic.

Unfortunately my laptop has been playing up since Tuesday - locking up and occasionally just restarting. Very frustrating.

Today I played at Cypresswood. I played this 2 years ago and it is pretty good for a public course. They have a lot of PGA qualifiers there. I arrived about and hour before my tee time so I could go to the driving range which is at the main clubhouse and the Cypress course. I then made the 5 minute drive to the other clubhouse and the Tradition course.

I played with a pair, One guy was in software but from what he said it's almost as if he is running a private TV network. His friend was a supervisor in a transit company. Unfortunately the second guy had a shocker of day.

I played pretty well myself. I played the blue tees again and extrapolating the women's ratings on the red and white tees worked out that an 87 would be about my handicap. I started with a par, which means 6 games in a row that I have done that. I had one other Par on the front and a couple of double bogeys for a 45. One the back 9 I had 3 pars and a birdie for 41 so I just beat my target. The birdie was on a short par 4 (281yards) where I drove the green. One on hole, I sliced my second into a creek and although I didn't find my ball, I did pick up a dozen others while looking for it.

Unfortunately, my camera battery went flat after only a couple of shots so no photos today.

On the way back I stopped at a golf warehouse when I bought a pair of golf shoes for under $30 plus some gloves at $10 each.

Then I went to the  Woodlands Mall where, surprise, surprise, I spent some time in the Apple store. Mark is actually running Windows on a Mac and using that to run his copy of Delphi and compiling TAD on it. They have found that the hardware is very good, especially compared with Dells. They had 15 that had a lot of hardware problems.

I haven't made any decision yet but it could happen.

My rangefinder was supposed to arrive on Friday but didn't turn up, but hopefully it will be here well before next weekend. I have ordered a replacement camera, the latest Panasonic TZ model to replace the TZ3 that was ruined in the water. Still haven't worked out what to get for my replacement phone. I won't need it till I get back to Australia but will want it ASAP once I do.

Palmer at Woodlands

Sun 13th

Daylight saving started today so I had an extra hour to lie in. it was after 10 before I was up and about and I headed to the super market for a bit of shopping, including some soup for lunch and a combo to reheat for dinner.

My friend Tony arranged for the 2 of us and his wife Lisa to play at the Palmer, one of the 3 courses that are part of the Woodlands country club. I had played this course 2 years ago but it has 3 sets of 9 holes and one of them was new to me.

We hit off  a bit before 2 so it was a similar time (by the sun) as Friday and like Friday it was starting to get dark when we finished a bit before 6-30.
However we had a very good run. We didn't wait all day and apart from a single we let play through we were hardly pushed from behind either and not at all on the second 9.

Neither if the others had played a full 18 for some time and both were walking. However they both finished although Lisa didn't play all the holes.

The golf course is different again from the others I've played on this trip. Here the course are created by the developers, more to sell golf course frontage blocks than for the golfers per se.

Hence virtually every hole has houses on both sides and the course winds itself through the suburbs in a loop.

We are just coming out of winter here and the fairways are starting to green up the the close rough is still a bit brown. The ground under the trees is mostly bare so you are not overpunished if you stray a bit.

I played fairly ordinary golf on the first 9 - the Deacon although I did par the first. This is in fact the 5 round in a row that I have done that. That was however the only par for the 9 and I wiped 3 holes with lost balls, out of bounds or once just a bad score.

My shot of the day was on the 7th of the front 9. After a good drive my chip was short and rolled into the water hazard. The ball was about half above the water and there was a dry place to stand so I decided to play it. I put on my waterproofs and played it like a bunker bunker shot. The ball shot up in the air and finished about 12 ft from the hole. I would have got covered in muddy water if I hadn't put on the water proofs. It would have been a better ending if I'd dropped the putt for the par, but in fact I 3 putted.

The second 9 on the King was much better with a 40, pretty much on my handicap. I had 5 pars and finished with my only birdie.

Back to work tomorrow.

Play again Sam ? - Casablanca

Sat 11th

I've successfully driven back to Las Vegas, returned my rental and caught the shuttle to the airport.

The Casablanca resort has a nice lake and waterfall in the front and a swimming pool in the back. I looked at the latter last night but haven't been tempted to use it. The weather has been great for golf but not warm enough for swimming.
I didn't get to play the rest of Casablanca golf course. It wasn't possible to play the back 9 at all and after Sand Hollow and Wolf Creek, re-playing the front 9 would have been an anti-climax.

Security wasn't too long and I then caught the tram to the D terminal. I still have an hour to go, so it is great that they provide free Wi-Fi. My first class ticket doesn't get me to the lounge.

I managed to avoid gambling altogether but they have slot machines in the airport for one last fling before you go, for those who came here for that purpose.

The flight was uneventful and I watched a movie. The limo driver was waiting in the baggage area when I got off the plane  and after a while both bags arrived. It was about an hour after we landed that i got to the hotel.

My clients had left a package with some food, drinks, phone and the rental car keys. The car is a weird looking thing called a Cheverolet HHR. ITs a small retro crossover a bit like the PT cruiser.


There was a Mensa games night and I decided to go along. Last year I hardly went anywhere so I've decided to get out more. It was however a 50 minute drive each way down to the South East of Houston. Nevertheless it was a fun night and we played several games, none of which I'd seen before. Still it was well after 1am by the time I got to sleep.

Conestoga

Fri 11th

This morning I sorted out statements with the security people and reported my losses to the police. The latter weren't really interested but took a brief statement and gave me an incident number for insurance if required.

I played at Conestoga which would have got a very good review had I not played Wolf Creek yesterday. It was sort of a "baby" Wolf Creek and had similar canyon layouts but without the spectacular elevations changes. I was playing the Twilights rate which is much cheaper and applied after 1pm which was our tee time. We finished about 5.30 and only just got in before the shadows covered the course.

The course was in very good condition and was interesting enough and still very scenic. There were some elevation changes with the 4th being the most dramatic - 50ft drop between the first and second parts of the fairway.

I played with a couple of members who had retired here from California and a friend of theirs on holiday. The have a house near the 11th tee which we saw on the way.

I played really well today especially the front 9. I played with the men on the silver tees which are the middle of the 5, while lois played from the shortest tees. I was unlucky on the par 3 second when a great tee shot that was on the flag all the way finished just over the back in a creek bed and I finished with a double bogey.  I bogeyed one otehr par 3 and birdied one hole to be only 2 over.

I was driving very well with my drive on the 3rd again being over 300 yards. I had quite afew birdie chances but only got the one. My putting was very good with no 3 putts but I just couldn't drop the medium and long ones.

The back 9 wasn't as good scorewise with a 46 for a total of 84. Before I started, I worked out 84 would be playing to my handicap, so I was quite pleased.

I bought another souvenir shirt after the match but but the time I'd done this and put my clubs away my partners had disappeared. I think the bar was closed anyway.

I went to the free comedy show at this resort. The host magician and the warm up act were really only OK. A few funny jokes but a lot that fell flat. The head-liner was pretty good though.

I play the best course ever - Wolf Creek

Thu 10th

Today I played Wolf Creek and it was the best golf course I have ever played. The scenery was again stunning and the course itself was a challenge. The fairways and greens were  in very good condition although some bunkers had only a thin layer of sand. It is usually ranked about 50 in lists of courses to play in the US.

I arrived about 30 minutes before my slot but in the end we hit off about 20 minutes late, so there was plenty of time to go to the driving range and putting green. The driving range is short so only irons are allowed - a bit like at home.

The first thing you notice when you pull up and a cart is driven out to your car is that the car is petrol driven, rather than the more common electric version. Once you get out on the course the reason is obvious. A lot of the paths are too steep for an electric cart.

One of the characterising features of this course are the huge changes in elevation with deep gorges to hit over. There is also several creeks that run through the course with a multitude of waterfalls.

I played with a nurse from Florida, Greg, who plays off 4 and had a 77 today and a uni student and his Dad from Canada. I joined the boys playing off the blue tees, which are not in fact rated for women at all. In fact there's another set of men's tee (white) before the longer of the 2 women's tees (yellow, then red).

When we got to the starter we were all given a yardage booklet showing distances to bunkers, lakes etc from each tee and distances back from the green for each hole.  We were also given 2 water bottles and there was a small esky on the cart which was fill with ice.

The weather was fantastic - clear blue skies and warm enough to were just a short sleeved shirt.

The local rule effectively treats the desert as a lateral water hazard. ie drop out for 1 penalty. They don't even want you going on there to get you ball unless it is right on the edge, although I did venture down one hillside because I wasn't sure which of the many balls were mine.

I did lose a few balls today, although a lot of those were ones I'd picked up in the first place.

As well as the desert there were a number of actual water hazards.

I was pretty happy with my game in general with a 93. Given the yardage was 1300 over the longer of the ladies tees, I didn't thinks this was too bad. I had a couple of really bad holes and a few instances of very bad shots that cost me a couple of strokes on some other holes. Only 5 pars today, including one which included a penalty drop.

My playing partners were again good company so it was a great day. Greg was on the same package as me and had played the same 2 courses the last 2 days but at earlier times and has already played the course I'm playing tomorrow.

The other 2 seem to be staying at Wolf creek and this was their 3rd game.

After we finished, I bought a shirt in the pro shop and had a couple of beers with Greg. When we returned the cart we were given a 2 for 1 voucher on tap beer and soda. I had a couple of Blue Moons, a sort of orange flavoured beer. It looked like a Fanta with froth but tasted fine.

On the way back to the hotel I found and called in at the golf shop. I tried to find it the first day without success, although it would have been closed at that time.

By chance, there was a titleist demo going on, with some nibbles, beer and soft drink. I also got 2 each of Pro VI and Pro VIx balls. There was a raffle with a dozen balls, a Vokey wedge and some caps given away - no luck there.

I looked a a range finder while I was there but not sure whether to but it or wait till later.