Myself and a group of mates usually play a round of golf every weekend, and there’s been constant mutterings amongst us about joining a club. During the summer months, we’d mostly play at Woolooware Golf Club as it was relatively easy to get an early tee time so we’d have our round finished before the day got too hot. However, once autumn arrived and the days started getting shorter, it became much tougher to get on the course before noon, so we’d end up migrating between a few different courses depending on which one was available on a given weekend.

Over the two months we finally got our act together, looked seriously into joining a club. We weren’t interested in joining somewhere full of corporate types who were members for resume-enhancement purposes and while playing in the odd competition might be fun, it wasn’t particularly important. We were mainly interested in being able to get a good tee time on a good course, and taking the piss out of each other as we played.

Once we started looking into it, the costs associated with joining a club were relatively inexpensive. Leaving aside the one-off joining fee, if we were playing only half the weekends in a year it was more affordable to be a member than not. In the end we decided to join Eastlakes as it’s reasonably priced and a pretty down-to-earth setup. It’s a tricky course already, and they’re investing money with a view to bringing it up to championship standard, so it’s likely to challenge us for a long time to come.

Myself and Gerard went down this evening and signed up, and Simon, Clyde and Hilton are also signing up shortly so there’ll be a good group of us there. Now all I need to do is play five competition games so I can earn an official handicap, though apparently, just for initial handicap purposes, you can’t score worse than a double bogey. That might not work to well in my favour as I tend to score OK on most holes and have one or two blowouts to ruin my round. Still, there’s only one way to find out.

I finally got around to buying myself a driver, figuring that since I’m hitting my hybrids reasonably well, and have hit some crackers with mates’ drivers, it’s about time I got my own and learned how to hit it consistently.

With the price of new brand-name drivers being north of $500 locally nowadays, I first looked at importing from the US, before opting to hit Australian eBay stores. I also decided to aim for a 2008 model rather than the latest ‘09 version, in the end managing to score a Cobra L4V F/9.0 for $269 which I was pretty happy with.

The obligatory pre-purchase WBR (web-based research) revealed that this driver scored highly on the annual reviews of both the major US golf mags, and user opinions around the web suggest that it’s easy to smash the ball super-long. All I need to do now is ensure the ball lands on my fairway and not ones on either side!

I’ve been playing a regular Sunday golf game with Danny, Simon and the Kiwi boys for the last couple of weeks, and have been playing pretty badly really. I’d managed to shoot a couple of sub-100 rounds before I left Canada, which was a breakthrough for me so I was hoping to continue in that vein. However, playing at Woolooware, I’d shot 103, 109, 111, 111 since coming back and it was pissing me off.

While in Canberra to visit John we had a game at Yowani Country Club and I managed a 99, and since then things have been on the up. Last Thursday I went out to Woolooware with Danny, Simon and Nathan and shot a 93, with 6 pars, eclipsing my previous best ever round by three shots, and on Sunday followed that up with another 99, so hopefully I can now expect to regularly shoot under 100 and can focus on getting under 95 regularly, with a view to cracking 90. If I can just stay out of the trees on the first few holes of the back 9, I should be sweet.

Myself, Nathan and Brett went up to Whistler on Saturday morning for our round at Nicklaus North, leaving Vancouver in the pouring rain. Thankfully it wasn’t actually raining when we arrived and it remained dry for the whole round, which was a relief as I didn’t want to get soaked.

Playing at a Jack Nicklaus signature course is a whole different ball game (pardon the pun) from what we’re used to. You pull of to the door and someone gets your clubs out of the boot, takes them out back and sets up a cart for you. If you want to hit a few warm-up balls, you’re driven down to the range, where there’s balls waiting for you, then picked up in time to start your round. At the first tee, two ladies hand you divot repairers, a yardage book and explain today’s pin placements, and when you’re finished your round, a guy takes your clubs off to be cleaned while you retire to the bar! I could get used to this ;-)

Seeing as how Brett can actually play golf, we made him play off the championship tees, whereas myself and Nath played off the whites as usual. I stepped up an fired my first shot out of bounds left, then my tee shot of the second went in to water, but I settled down a bit after that and turned at 50, which is about normal for me. Nath got off to a great start, parring the first three holes, and of course Brett was in a different league.

I fared a bit better on the back nine, hitting some nice shots, but I still managed to find any water available from the tee box! My chipping was pretty good, as was my putting, so that saved me. I came back in 49, to give me a total of 99, which is the first time I’ve beaten 100, though with 6 penalties there’s plenty of room for improvement. After turning in 44, Nath had a shocker on the back 9, finishing in 103, and Brett was on course for par before dropping a shot on the final hole, to record a two-over 73! In the end, he managed to beat us by almost 30 shots, despite playing almost 1000 extra yards. I guess that’s why he’s a PGA Pro and we’re weekend hackers.

The verdict? It’s a nice course, and the setting is spectacular, nestled below Whistler and Blackcomb, fringed by Green Lake. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. The fairways are reasonably generous, but if you miss them by much your ball is gone and you’re a shot down. Also, the bunkers are deeper than I’m used to, and, with wet, heavy sand at this time of year, it was hard to get the ball out on occasion. Finally, one or two of the par 3s were long, particularly the 17th at 188yds, though I did hit a nice tee shot which landed in the greenside bunker. Had it landed about 3 yards right it would almost certainly have bounced on to the green and ended up with a decent chance at a birdie, so it was about 3 yards from being awesome.

At $165 for a round it’s a bit steep for regular play, but well worth a one off visit. Although Brett’s far too modest to claim that he’s anything special, for me, getting a chance to play with a pro and see up close how it’s supposed to be done was a treat too, so it was a good day all ’round.