Orlando Golf Blogger

A local golf pro/instructor/blogger, etc… Brendon Elliot asked me to spread the word on this!  Take a look and support a good cause!  Also check out the little linksters link on the bottom of the post.  It looks pretty cool and I might be signing Orlando Golf Blogger Jr. up for it

“The Children’s Miracle Network® Golf Classic presented by Wal-Mart® at the WALT DISNEY WORLD® Resort tees off at Disney’s Palm and Magnolia Golf Courses November 6-9, 2008.

For more info click here

Support Brendon Elliott Golf and the development of our “Little Linksters” Junior Program by purchasing a Good Any One Day ticket. Proceeds from the ticket sales will go to Brendon Elliott Golf and the development of our “Little Linksters” Junior Program and local Children’s Miracle Network® hospitals including Arnold and Winnie Palmer Hospitals for Children in Orlando and Shands Children’s Hospital in Gainesville.

Good Any One Day tickets are $20 each and kids 17 and under get in free with a paid adult. New for 2008, complimentary parking is available.

To purchase tickets, call us at 386-532-9639 or visit us at www.BrendonElliottGolf.com

- Dave

I dunno about you guys, but I love killing time watching videos on youtube, well, atleast I did until it was firewalled at the office…. :)  Here’s a few you might enjoy.  For the first round of videos, click here.

Sorry I’ve been so aloof recently, been busy working on a couple other projects….  If only there were more hours in the day…

This is for all you Tiger haters…. eat it.

This one is just crazy, I have no idea how this is even possible….

Little Ben Hogan action for you.

Enjoy!

- Dave

Over the weekend, I made my way out to Falcon’s Fire, for an invigorating and at the same time, exhausting round of golf. I also gained some new insight into myself, and that is, I hate golfing alone. Thinking back, I can’t recall a single time I’ve ever golfed a full 18 holes solo. There’s been many occasions when I’ve gone solo to the course, but I have always been paired up with others prior to starting the round. Last Saturday, at the last minute my golf partner had to bail and I was forced to play the first few holes solo. It was miserable. I can’t explain why exactly, but I felt rushed, unfocused, aggravated and frustrated. I mean, the course was good and there was no one behind me, but I couldn’t get my mind focused on the game.

When I golf, I don’t consciously pit myself against other golfers, so it’s not the competition with others that drives my game nor would the lack of competition kill my game. I always figured a solo round of golf would be something meditative and therapeutic, guess I was wrong, perhaps I’m harboring some abandonment issues that manifest themselves while on the links….alone.. Thankfully, the guys in front of me allowed me to joined up with them on the 3rd hole, so Alex, Keith, thanks for saving my round!

But, I digress….

Back to the course.

Driving into Falcon’s Fire made me feel like one of those regular joes you see in the movies who somehow end up in a situation that has them driving up to a rich relatives mansion trying to take in all the amazing and unbelievable sights. It was an exciting experience to drive up to the valet parking, have the fellas unload my bag and park my car.

I arrived early so I could scope the place out. I ended up forgetting my golf glove and had to purchase another, which, almost cost as much as the round… Note to self… don’t ever do that again! Check-in went smooth enough, got to the starter who was very informative and ensured I was aware of the location of the restrooms and watering holes along the course and also told me the name of the cart lady who was driving around. The 90-degree rule was in effect, not surprising really, considering the amount of rain we’d gotten the previous week. Each cart is equipped with it’s own GPS unit and it’s accurate to the pin placement and not just to the center of the green, which I thought was pretty cool, and it also showed the distance to the golfers in front of you. I started out playing the whites, but when I partnered up with Alex & Keith, I switched to the blues… What can I say? A man and his ego…

Over the years, this course has won it’s share of awards and accolades, with it’s most recent being “Best Public Course in Florida” - Florida Monthly, 2006 and in this humble bloggers opinion, it’s pretty well deserved. The course holds it’s fair share of challenges with the blues boasting a slope of 132, a course rating of 71.7 and 6473 yards.

I wish I had been able to play the course under more optimal conditions. There’s been so much rain lately that it deterred from the enjoyment that one should have playing Falcon’s Fire. Many of the holes were a bit soggy in the fairways and roughs, but thankfully the greens were in really nice shape. Now I’m not blaming the fine folks over at Falcon’s Fire for the sogginess, that’s something no man can control, well, at least no man I know about.

Above is a picture of the 5th hole, Alex was gracious enough to let me hit his cleveland driver 9.5 degree on this hole. I only bring this up because, as a left-handed golfer, it is a damned rare occurrence to actually play a round with a kindred-handed person, so whenever you do, it’s almost a requirement to sample the others clubs because, god only knows when the opportunity is going to arise again..

Falcon’s Fire has a fair amount of character, each hole has it’s own name (which I personally like) and I think my favorite, like many others is the 13th, adequately named “Bunker Hill.”

Let the record show that I had an amazing 260 yard drive that landed on the fairway in front of the 3rd bunker from the right. Let the record also show that this is one of my highest scoring holes because my short game was horrible for the remainder of the hole…, well everything except the amazing 1 putt I had..

My Falcon’s Fire arch-nemesis was the 14th “Falcon’s Lair,” it’s long, it’s strong, and it’s a ball eater… A whopping 550 yards of pure entertainment and delight… Avoid the right side of the hole and a note of caution, the water on the right side goes all the way up to within probably 10 yards of the green and if you manage to avoid the water, it’s a pretty steep uphill shot. My recommendation if your planning on avoiding the fairway (like most of us do) stay left.

Number 16 “Double Dip” is another fun hole to play, your playing against water hazards on both sides of the fairway.

Overall, it’s a really fun course and there’s a lot of coupons floating around out there, so I definitely recommend checking it out. I asked Alex and Keith if they thought the course was worth paying $90 and they both said yes. They’ve played it before when it wasn’t waterlogged. Oh, if you decide to grab a bite to eat after the round, the pulled pork sandwich with cheese is DYNOMITE!

Dave

Tried to play Dubsdread over the weekend but they were booked until 5:30pm on both Saturday & Sunday! I suppose it’s for the best, I contacted SkyCaddie about the new course layout to see if they had mapped it yet and they said there’s someone scheduled to map it but it hasn’t occurred yet.

So I went to ‘ol faithful Golfnow.com on Saturday night and booked a round for $27 bucks.

The course wasn’t too bad, it’s kind of a sleeper course, it starts out pretty average and starts to develop more character as you play through the course. There’s more than a few blind holes on this course most of them being an elevated fairway where you aren’t really sure what awaits you on the other side. be wary of the 6th, it’s a blind tee shot with a strategically placed bunker on the left side of the fairway right about 245 yards out.

Like I was saying before, this course has some character, a couple named holes like #5 “Devil’s Kitchen” which features a tee shot over water with a semi narrow fairway waiting on the other side and it severely punishes you if you go anywhere left of the fairway, which of course, is exactly where I went. Also, #9 affectionately called the “Train Wreck,” a painful dogleg left where the entire left side of the hole slopes down into the “Train Wreck” of rough, swamp, and water. I managed to avoid most of the damage until the turn where an errant pitch hit a tree branch and “wrecked.” It was not a very enjoyable hole for me…

Here’s an image of the train wreck

If you manage to survive this, on the back nine, holes 12 through 16 have been labeled “Crater junction” because they all dogleg around this huge natural crater. At first I was asking myself “what crater?” That was until I hit my ball into it… Then I was asking, what ball? #12 is a pretty straight forward 175ish par three no real affect of the crater is felt here, same goes for #13, but #14 on is where you know its there, stalking, waiting to eat some ionomer..

Here’s a picture of #12

Here’s the beast! #14, ball stealer. I hit a beautiful drive right into the shade of that huge oak tree on the left.

Here’s a picture, closer to the turn.

Notice where those carts are? The hole is left of those carts. Notice the houses on the course? Not your typical golf course housing, the entire course has houses like these on it. I dunno if they’re called economy houses, but this course is smack dab in the middle of a retirement community, so it wouldn’t surprise me at all…

Hmm.. oh, this course boasts a par 3 that’s longer than any par 3 on the PGA tour, it’s the 17th and 243 yards. It also has two drivable par 4’s (264 & 266) yards. The course is in good shape, the greens are pretty fast and spongy. There wasn’t much difference in ball speed on the greens even as the day warmed up.

It was a fun course to play, especially for the price! Not to mention how cool it feels to be playing golf on the set of Cocoon…..

I look forward to your comments!

Dave

It is a very exciting day today! Dubsdread Golf Course has re-opened its doors today July, 11th 2008 after being closed for what.. two years renovating the course?

It was originally opened in 1923 was the former site for the Orlando open and has hosted golf legends like Sam Snead, Ben Hogan and Claude Harmon.

I spoke to Erin Durning out there and she said that every hole has been renovated and the course layout has changed. The website doesn’t have the new layout posted up yet, but as soon as I find it, I’ll post it up.

I really hope to get out there and play this weekend so I can have a review posted up on Monday, but no promises!

Oh, you can sign up for their eClub and receive a free round on your birthday. Here’s the link.

Free birthday round

If you’ve played it let me know how it is!

Dave

There’s been a lot of buzz surrounding this golf ball recently and I was unable to resist being swept up in the hype.

Here’s the link

I went to the old Special-T Golf up the street to inquire about this ball and the salesman had never heard of it… don’t ya hate that? So we walked to the golf ball area and I was filling him in on all I had read about it, giving him the rundown so that he could have an educated response for the next customer who asked for it and we found the balls, right next to the other various D2 balls made by Top-Flite.

One of the reviews I read somewhere said it “hit like a Pro-V and cost 1/2 as much.” My first response was “OOOooooOOOOOoooo….” I had a corporate charity scramble coming up so I figured I’d give them a shot. By the way, we played Black Bear Golf Club out in Eustis and let me tell you, it was an awesome course. Everything about it seemed perfect, well, everything but the drive to get there, especially at 6am on a Saturday…

Those guys really know how to take care of a course. I was surprised at the course rating, I think from the whites it was 68.1, but it was a fairly challenging course, too challenging for a 68.1 in my opinion…

Hopefully I can get out there to do an un-official “official” review.

but, I digress..

So the Gamer ball, here’s a rundown of the specs.

Building upon the success of the Top-Flite D2® Golf Balls, Top-Flite has taken the benefits of proprietary Dimple in Dimple Aerodynamics and put it into a 3-piece performance golf ball that’s long, soft and generates more short-game spin for total control tee to green.

The thin cover is made of a soft ionomer, and when combined with a firm ionomer boundary layer and a highly resilient rubber core, it gives golfers a ball that performs like no other in the Top-Flite lineup. It’s your secret weapon, your “go-to” ball. It’s your Gamer.

Seamless Dimple in Dimple™ Aerodynamics - Unique aerodynamic surface maintains spin longer throughout flight, allowing the ball to hold its line and maintain lift longer without ballooning. It also increases aerodynamic efficiency by reducing drag, maximizing distance for a wide range of swing speeds.
Soft, Thin Ionomer Cover - Provides enhanced feel and better control around the greens with increased short-game spin.

Large, High-Resiliency Core - Provides outstanding distance while maintaining soft feel.

Firm Boundary Layer - Works with the core to increase ball speed and helps minimize spin off the driver for long distance.

I agree with everything above! The guy who played in the tournament looked like me, acted like me, but didn’t golf like me… This ball was phenomenal, I was in contention for the longest drive contest (on the 14th) and that’s never happened to me before. I didn’t win, sadly, was beat by 5 yards… that jerk… Coincidentally, he was hitting a pro-v… Out of 18 holes, didn’t lose a single ball.

The ball felt great off the tee, putting, chipping, well, everywhere…

Not to mention it looks cool and has an awesome name. Wonder if the developers own an Xbox?

The only thing I didn’t really like about it is after a few hits, the balls outer skin starts to scar and feather out. eh, bad explanation. Ok, imagine the balls external ionomer getting caught in the grooves of the club face and start to peel away upon impact. This was happening to me about every three holes. I would change out the ball when I saw that but I read that it didn’t appear to negatively affect the ball flight.

So all things considered, I’ve officially made the switch and am now a Gamer ball user.

If you’d like to pick some up at a 20% discount, check out GlobalGolf.com

Let me know your thoughts!

Dave

My thanks to Sara over at SkyGolf/SkyCaddie, who was kind enough to send me one of these to try out.

So far I’ve used this baby on two golf courses, Ridgewood Lakes and Black Bear Golf Club and I’ve found it to be very useful and a much needed accessory to any golfers arsenal.

Here’s a link to their website: SkyCaddie SG5

You can read the full list of features, specs, etc.. at their website, I’m going to highlight what I’ve found most useful here.

You and download up to 10 different golf courses to the unit at any given time. It comes with software that installs the drivers needed to connect the unit to your computer and I believe that it also has the 17,000 golf courses you can choose from on it. I guess it’s not that important, what is important is that they have over 17,000 courses for you to choose from. If for some reason your course is not available for download, the unit also has the ability to map out the course that you play so that it can be reused later. Now, I never had the opportunity to try that out, so I can’t speak to its accuracy or simplicity, but the capability is there.

The unit is real simple to use, once the course is loaded on to the unit, just go to your course, turn the unit on, select the course and your off.

I’ve got to say that the most valuable feature for me is the ball marking. Once your on the course, stand next to your ball, push the ball marking button, hit your ball, and when you get to your ball again, it will give you the distance of your shot.

This has been really helpful to me because I now realize that I’ve been over estimating my shots by 10-15 yards. My drives I’ve been over estimating by about 25 yards… And obviously, if you don’t have a solid, accurate understanding of your distances, it’s going to add a couple strokes per hole. Perfect example, I’m a big fan of hitting my sand wedge 50-100 yards out from the green, I love how the ball soars straight up into the air and lands with very little roll on the green. After using the GPS, I’ve worked out that the max distance I should use that club is 72 yards and once I realized that, I cut at least 4 strokes off my last score.

The unit also has a target feature, so you can see the distances to the various hazards on the course, like distance to the front, middle, and back of the left fairway bunker. This is a good feature of the unit, but in my experience, its not 100% reliable. The first course I played with it (Ridgewood) was very accurate and it included about 90% of the courses hazards, on the second course (Black Bear), it probably included more like 70% of the hazards. But, to their credit, they’re supporting over 17,000 courses, so given that load, anyone could overlook a thing or two.

Using the IntelliGreen feature allows you to see the distance to the front, middle, and back of the green as well as show you what the green looks like from your angle of approach. It’s pretty useful.

Overall, I really enjoy this unit, it boasts a 14 hours battery life with a rechargeable Lithium Ion battery so you can get a couple rounds in off a single charge.

This beast will run you $429.95 and you have to choose from three different membership plans.

Birdie - $29.95/yr, gives you unlimited courses in your state.

Eagle - $49.95/yr, gives you unlimited courses in your country

Double Eagle - $59.95/yr gives you unlimited courses world wide.

Enjoy!

Dave

I had the opportunity to head out to Ridgewood Lakes today, booked the tee-time through golfnow.com and it only cost me $20 bucks! T’was a very good deal!

Now, technically Ridgewood Lakes is located in Davenport but I still feel it’s close enough to fall under the Orlando umbrella. It has to be, it’s a part of the Orlando Golf Trail. For those of you who don’t know where Davenport is (myself included), it’s between Orlando & Tampa via SR 275.

I was also able to demo the Skycaddie SG 5 which I shall post about later, but man, what a sweet GPS!

Anyway, I digress… On to the review!

Ridgewood Lakes Golf & Country Club

Playing this course was a real pleasure (well, the course was, the weather on the other hand, was not!).

It’s voted top 30 courses in Florida, not really sure why it’s not a bit more specific, but hey, it allows you to decide where you want to rank the course, as long as you keep it in the top 30..

It’s also voted Best New Golf Course in USA by Golf Digest.

A Ted McAnlis design, built in 1994.

Here’s the course information

The course was a bit soggy (due to all the rain) but in really good shape, The only real blemish I saw was on the 5th green which had quite a few patches of what I call “wasteland” and yes, the term is patent pending. See below.

The course has water on all 18 holes, which in retrospect, makes perfect sense, I did lose a few more balls than usual today… For the most part the water serves as nothing more than an unforgiving OB marker, but there are a few holes where it’s a factor. My worst hole of the day was one of them, lucky #13 has three different bodies of water, with the most irritating being a little stream about 78 yards from the pin (where my beautiful fairway wood shot landed, giving me my 2nd OB of the hole…)

The other most notable was #15. a nifty par 3 with an elevated tee box and a shot over the water, has kind a pseudo Sawgrass feel to it. I believe this is their signature hole, see the picture below.

Yep, this is their signature hole not to mention the most photographed hole on their course (and I thought I had discovered a diamond in the rough, now I feel like I’m touring the tower of London following one of those beefeaters). See this quote from their site.

Hole 15 Par-3 – “Signature Hole.”

Ah, I almost forgot! #9 is a crazy dogleg left which I’m going to label as a blind hole because you can’t really see the fairway from the tee box, you get an idea but nothing conclusive enough to feel comfortable taking the shot. I’m going to make it easy on you, my lovely readers, because I care about your well being and mental health, so here’s what you’ve got to do. There’s a palm tree thats taller than the rest with an extra bushy fronds and furthest on the right almost a straight line from the tee box. Your shot, should you choose to accept it, is to hit to the right of that palm tree. It will land you in the fairway and give you a great lie for your next shot. Do not, I repeat, do not hit to the left at all, it’s no mans land and not a very fun place. See the below picture (sorry I don’t have any photo editing software, but the tree thats directly below the ed in edit is the one to hit at).

I think #7 deserves the tricky hole award. Like a moron I didn’t take a picture, but it’s a very narrow tee shot and theres quite a few oaks on either side of the fairway and their branches hang over the fairway making it almost like launching your ball out of a tunnel. One of the guys I was playing with, hit it perfectly, I on the other hand, enjoy a challenge so I took the path less traveled and hit a tree…

#16 is also worthy of note, definitely keep the driver in the bag on this one, anything over 225 off the tee is going to land you either a healthy dose of H20 or Sawgrass. You know, actually, if you decide to play this course, just leave the driver at home! Looking back, 3 wood off the tee would’ve saved me probably 5-10 strokes. Here’s #16.

It’s funny, I mentioned to the guys that I was with that I felt like this grass had fingers because it kept grabbing my club head and one of them laughed and said that his boss asked him if he had ever tried playing golf in his front yard because “that’s Ridgewood!”

I don’t really know how you would combat the grabby grass, perhaps some Crisco, Spray PAM or WD40?

Overall, I really liked the course, it was pretty challenging for me, had plenty of good and bad shots, but this is definitely the course to play if you want to work on your accuracy, it’ll definitely punish you for errant shots. The staff was very friendly and accommodating and I’ll definitely be making the hour drive to play again!

With my un-official ranking system, I give this course 4 out of 5 stars.

Let me know your thoughts!
Dave

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The cool folks over at the Caesar Golf Company sent me some of these Caesar Featherie golf balls to review.

Played a round yesterday at Hunter’s Creek and tried them out. I know your probably asking why I went back there and my answer is a universal truth that we all can appreciate, “It was free!” Remember, when I reviewed the course the first time, they were aerating the greens so they gave a free round if you played, I cashed it in yesterday.

I won’t go into too much detail, but the course is looking better but still needs a lot of work and they REALLY need to adjust their sprinklers because it was about 9am and they were still going and the freaking 16th green was waterlogged and i could’ve gone swimming in bunkers surrounding the green! Bleh, needless to say I was a bit peeved because I happened to strategically hit my ball into one of these lake traps…

Back to the ball!

Here’s their website. The Caesar Golf Company

To summarize the selling points… This ball eliminates slices and hooks, improves accuracy, better roll on the greens due to the lack of dimples, great for short par 3 & par 4 courses, made for the golfer who needs better accuracy.

Hitting this ball was a very interesting experience. Pretty cool and strange at the same time. I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to explain the flight of this ball and I don’t think I’ve found it yet, but hopefully I’ll get the point across. Try to visualize what your ball flight would look like if every bit of spin you put on the ball was all converted to a forward spin. The ball takes off, reaches the pinnacle of its flight and then dive bombs down to the turf. It’s really pretty cool to watch.

I took a buddy of mine with me, he’s a beginner who has a pretty nasty slice and has a very open stance with his lead foot about 7 inches back and away from his rear foot. I let him try the ball out and it completely removed his slice! I mean, I was pretty stunned at the results, and so was he.. He was still however, susceptible to shanks and duffs…. But the ball improved his tee shots and he kept most of them in the fairway.

The trade-off is straighter shots but with a substantial loss of distance. I hit this ball with my driver on a couple holes and traveled about 180-200 yards. Typically my drives carry the ball between 260-300 yards.

Putting with the ball was pretty awesome though, the ball wasn’t really affected by any breaks it encountered, it plowed through them.

The ball would be a good fit for the golfer who has a lot of variations to his/her swing, who doesn’t necessarily want to kill the ball, and who wants to play a round without having to spend 1/2 the hole looking for their ball.

I can see how it would be useful to have some of these handy for those really tight holes with very little forgiveness for errant shots or if your playing a short par 4 course or an exec par 3, these would be a good fit as well.

I read on their site they’re developing a ball called the Caesar Millie which will be for the better players. I guess we’ll stay tuned for that.

Leave me your comments!

Dave

I had the opportunity to play at Celebration Golf Club yesterday. It’s the 2nd course I’ve played out of the Orlando Golf Trail courses. The Orlando Golf Trail is a group of 10 disney area golf courses located within short driving distance of Orlando, Florida.

Let me preface this post by saying sorry for the quality of the pictures. I brought the camera, brought the battery, but forgot the stupid memory card! I guess in todays world that the equivalent of bringing your camera but forgetting the film (for all of you oldies but goodies). So after about five minutes of cursing the gods, my buddy Spence suggested using my phone camera. Brilliant! Thank you technology!!!

So the pictures you see are those taken with a 1.2 mega pixel phone camera. A little funny side note, because of this experience, I learned that I can store all of my phone photos online free of charge. Whenever I take a photo it always asks “Do you want to send this to my album?” and my mental response is always “why the **** would I take a photo if I didn’t want to save it!?” What the amazing little creature was inquiring was if I wanted to post it online for everyones viewing pleasure… If your wondering, that is NOT me wearing pink stilettos about to tee off…..

On with the show!

Celebration was quite a treat!

Designed by father & son Jones. Here’s a link that discusses the design

Robert T. Jones Sr & Jr

We tee’d off at 8am, the starter Mike was very informative and gave us a solid rundown of the course. A couple of cool points about the area.

The movie “The Truman Show” was filmed in Celebration.

Celebration, FL was designed based off Walt Disney’s original idea behind Epcot. But I suppose a creepy, cookie cutter community wouldn’t really appeal to tourists.. I guess a better term than creepy would be crazy expensive…

So the course was great. Very challenging, overall in really great shape. The only qualms i had with it were many of the greens had brown patches, they really didn’t interfere with the balls roll, it’s just an aesthetics thing. I’m not really sure if the greens keeper can prevent these blemishes, I think the combination of excessive sun and watering causes them, and many of the courses I’ve seen recently have been sporting these blights. So it might just be a seasonal thing, but one would expect more when spending $85 for a round.

The grass was very spongy and the ball had literally no roll. I struck a solid 203 yard three wood that landed on the green and by all accounts should’ve rolled off the back of the green, it bounced once and ended up about an inch behind my ball mark. It was crazy, but hey, I wasn’t complaining, I’d much rather have that than the expected result

It’s not a terribly long course, only 6257 yards from the golds, but because of the lack of roll, it plays long. There’s some pretty tough holes, for me 4, 9, 12, 18 were the toughest.

The 4th hole was a bad one for me because we had an audience. Don’t you hate when the jerks in front of you end up being courteous golfers and they let your two some play through? Well, I do, especially when it’s a par 5 over water and you totally duff your tee short and the guys watching are kind enough to count your ball skips across the water…. For the record, I had 9! Though flustered, I still managed to squeeze a bogey out of that one.

The 9th featured a slightly blind tee shot and the out of bounds stick is really really close to the right side of the green. My approach shot landed about a foot away from the green on the right and I was out of bounds… stupid red stick cost me my par!

The 12th is a totally blind tee shot that I’m going to try my best to explain and illustrate with pictures So you go under a bridge and then over a bridge and at that point, you need to stop to examine the fairway, because when you get to the tees it’s a dogleg left and you cant see the pin. The best approach is slightly left of the fairway bunker about 225 yards out.

Here’s the bridge you go under

Here’s a shot of the fairway, right after you cross the wooden bridge and turn left, stop and examine the hole, it’ll help you plan out your approach.

To the left of the Tee box about 30 feet down is an evil tree with baseball gloves for leaves, be very wary of this creature.. The perfect shots flight path would be right out of reach of these treacherous limbs and set you up for a great second shot, but my shot ended up nicking a branch and killing my shot at par.

Above is the 16th, a 211 yard par 3…

The 18th was my favorite hole, a loooooooong 566 yard Par 5, after hitting my drive and 3 wood, I was still 111 yards away….. But it was fun!

Well, if you couldn’t tell by my extra long post, this is a very memorable course and one I highly recommend.

Two disappointing notes.. The carts GPS, while very accurate when available, was very unreliable, I think at least 1/2 the holes, the GPS was down. Now, I’m not saying that one needs GPS in order for the round to be a success, but hey, if it’s there and supposed to be functioning, kind of irritating when it doesn’t.

The other disappointment was a lack of ice cold spearmint towels… A friend of mine who had played the course before was raving at how they have a guy in a cart who’s sole purpose in life is to make sure you are refreshed. So this mythical man comes to your cart, takes a fresh clean towel, dips it in a cooler filled with ice and spearmint water and hands it to you to break the sunstroke your likely to encounter playing Orlando during summer. So, finally my day came to experience this phenomenon and the only thing we encountered was an extremely pleasant cart girl who pluralized the word sweetie. Hey sweeties…. I didn’t think it was possible…

Oh! One last cool point! There’s tons of hawks on the course. Ok, I’m a Floridian by birth, and I saw two things on the course I’ve never seen before, first off, I saw a field mouse, or at least something that resembles a field mouse <hope he wasn’t related to mickey> and then I saw a hawk swoop down and snatch a field mouse! Picture yours truly cowering in terror screaming like a little girl trying to avoid the hitchcockian moment thats about to occur only to see the hawk fly overhead and take down the fabled field mouse! It was awesome!

When the round was over, the cart guy asked “you guys heading to the club house for a drink? and we responded “naah, gotta get on home.” He then produced a couple of free drink vouchers and we quickly changed our tune

So needless to say, I’m giving Celebration 4 1/2 stars.

Really need to check this one out.

Click here to book a tee time at a discounted rate

Let me know your thoughts on the course!

Dave

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