Decided to take Friday off and will play Friday thru Monday. Kind of have a difficult situation at home right now and will not be taking any vacations this year so going to try to eat up as much vacation time around holidays to make long weekends and such. Weather looking a little sketchy but should be dry at least 3 of the 4 days in the early morning.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

Played in a scramble last Friday, and a normal round Sunday. Game getting better, but still having a few more WTF shots than I would like. Putting has been a letdown so far this spring. Not many 3-putts, but just can't make anything. Made a few putts for par saves Sunday, so maybe things will start to turn. Shot 75 (+5) with zero birdies, on a course that should manage 1 or 2 just because...

Have a teetime for Saturday afternoon for a course that looks a little harder than typical, so we'll see how it goes.

Nice shooting. The last few weeks I have been having a few WTF moments as well, typically early in my round. I'll have a double or two and then settle in and play well the rest of the way. Happens every year where I play well the first month and then struggle for a month and then things seem to get progressively better so hoping I'm on the upswing.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

That sucks, T-Bone. I hope things start improving soon. Things have been difficult in your house for a while.

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Starting to think that I must be the problem!

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

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have a couple rounds lined up for the weekend. Tomorrow night 4:18 at Sunset Valley, hopefully we get it all in before sundown. Monday morning 7:48 at Shepherd's Crook, always loved that course. And if the wind is blowing the right way on a hot day you can not only see the Bluffs of Zion, you can smell them.

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Interested to hear how Shepherds is, I haven’t played there in probably 3 years. They redid the putting green and it’s, uh, a little messed up. Fun for Putting contests but totally not functional as a practice green.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

Love the new putting/chipping green. They even threw in a bunker. But yea, it's very hilly and better suited for fun putting contests than getting ready for your round.


Course was a bear yesterday morning. 58 degrees with 25 MPH winds and no sun. Never warmed up during our round. And there were some very wet areas on some fairways. I was beyond awful. Trouble striking the ball. Fat shots, thin shots, skulled greenside chips. Even had a shank which usually requires me to seek mental health counselling. Usually a sign my back is pretty stiff. Drilled a 25 foot putt on 18 to save a 98 from the white tees. Not my best work out there.


85 Saturday night at Sunset Valley despite hitting 2 fairways all day.


6 rounds in and my index is a 12.8. Will try and get in at least one more round before my big French Lick golf trip June 6. Looks like I'll be getting some strokes on the golf trip so not too upset about yesterday's debacle.

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Played The Preserve at Oak Meadows in Addison on Saturday. Course was remodeled in 2017, with a lot of prairie areas and the wetlands/floodplain along the Salt Creek being reclaimed. I really liked the layout, and would recommend it to anyone that shoots 80's or better. Worse than that, and you might spend more time swearing over lost golf balls than enjoying the course. They do have 5 sets of tees (and a couple hybrid layouts), so if you're realistic about the tees you play, it's more manageable. Almost every tee shot requires some thought on how you want to play the hole. Many are setup with wide landing areas if you are willing to hit 4i, 5W, 3W, off the tee. Things tighten up/or fairway runs out with driver. On the 14 par 4/5's I hit driver 4 times.

haven't played it since the re-do, but heard good things.

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For anyone in the area with youngins, I highly recommend the family golf. Even if its a bit of a drive, for that rate its worth it to play. Cog #1 was in near perfect condition. As close to a country club as I have ever seen on a public course, and this was at 6pm after a busy Saturday on a holiday weekend. It was absolutely awesome. More than enough daylight for 9 holes...we actually played 11. My wife played her first round in about 5 years and while she had a couple duffs, she was able to move the ball 80-100yd more often than not. Once my little guy got the hang of things (one ball per hole, each person takes their turn on the green, drive up to shorter tee, etc) he had a blast. If he keeps at this game my guess is he will beat me by the time he is 10 or 12. They don't really have the family tees marked well. They are there, but its a small round marker next to the cart path in the grass so very easy to miss. We just went to 100 yards and they teed up there.

I played the regular tees, and holed out for Eagle on the par 5 sixth. My first time ever doing so on a full swing. Have done it MANY times on chips or pitches, but this was about 65yd uphill to the green so took a full swing with my 60° and the ball dropped in the hole just as it died out. I was pretty pumped. That closed out a stretch of three consecutive 3's (par, birdie, eagle) also something I had never done outside of a par 3 course. Had a rough start, but shot 38 which was very cool.

Went out the Sunday at Silver Lake and did not do so hot. 49-46 for a 95. Started out with bogey on 7 of the first 8 holes which is fine. Then the wheels sort of fell off as I wasn't able to muster a par until the 14th hole. The beer was really getting to me but somehow I birdied 17, then whiffed on 18 Swallowed my pride and went to the drop zone, got up and down for a 5.

Cannot speak higher of the family golf at Cog. Simply a wonderful evening that we are going to try to repeat on Father's Day weekend.

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Glad you had a nice time Frank and congrats on the hole out. Cool moment to have with your whole family there to watch.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

Finally starting to play some solid golf, which feels good. Nothing worse than bogey this weekend for the first time in a while. Now if it would just dry out…..I have a work outing on the 10th and would like to play well for the scramble team on a nice track.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

Scramble at Grand Geneva today, should be interesting. Not sure what course we are playing but the weather looking good at least. Playing with three people from work so pretty sure we won’t be winning anything but hopefully make some birdies and have some fun for charity.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

Enjoy the course!

Playing Cog Hill #3 Thursday morning, then family golf back at Cog #1 again Saturday night for Father's Day festivities. Looking forward to it!

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Which course? Should be a beautiful day for it.

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Got back from my golf trip last night. Fantastic time. Unfortunately my back did not hold up and I couldn't finish the round at the best course we played and then struggled to play the next and final day of the trip. here is a breakdown:

Day 1: lunch at Shapiros. So good. If you are ever in Indy you must go there. Best corned beef and pastrami around, even better than any you can find in Chicago. Then we played The Fort. Very nice course to play on the travel day. Great way to get everyone's feet wet. I played pretty good considering I spent 3 hours in the car prior to the round. Shot an 88.

Dinner was at the famous St Elmo's steakhouse. It was good, but I would say it was average at best compared to fancy steakhouses in Chicago. Steak was great, but the sides and apps were not up to the standard I would expect at a fancy steakhouse.

Day 2: Drove to French Lick. Afternoon round at Donald Ross. Amazing course, some of the toughest greens you'll ever play. This was my 3rd time playing it so knew what to expect. 2 club wind most of the day. Played my best round of the weekend and finished with an 85, my first time breaking 90 at this course. Dinner was at Hagans in teh clubhouse. Great ribs.

Day 3: 18 hole scramble at Valley Links. Its' a 9 hole course next to hotel, but we played it twice. I played pretty good, had a great up and down for eagle where I hit a 190 yard hybrid to 40 feet and then drained the putt. Had lunnhc and then a 20 minute rest before heading to the famous Pete Dye course for 4:00 round. My back said "Fvck you" to me and decided to call it quits. Lots of throbbing pain in lower back and also sciatic pain going down leg. Game fell apart and when that does it always leads to uncontrolled hozzle shanks. Had about 8 of them before I finally called it quits on #17 tee box. I was tracking for 100+ and they gave me a 102 which was generous.

Dinner at Legendz sports bar, one of the only halfway decent places to eat in town.

Day 4: final round at Sultan's Run. Love this course. But, I gave myself a 30% chance of finishing. i was hapy that I was able to finish, but my back continued to be a mess and I had about 6 shanks. Several other fat shots because that is the only way I can recover from the shanks. Finished with a 96, but was just happy I finished.


A great trip, great bunch of guys. Only knew 2 of the guys going in, met the other 6 there and by day 2 we were all buddies. Already talks about next year's plans. Wish my back held up, but it is what it is. This is my 3rd trip to French Lick and the 2nd time my back stopped me from playing. Might have to axe French Lick from the rotation. Thinking maybe all the driving is leading to the quicker decline of my back as the weekend progresses.

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Ended up being The Brute and it lived up to its name. Weather was great and we had a nice time but the golf wasn’t too good. A 6 hour round is just tough to get any rhythm going. Also was interesting because the cicadas are crazy out there. I live 40 minutes East and I hadn’t seen or heard one all year.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

Sort of a Penske file day here so I added up a few stats from this year. 25 eighteen hole rounds and 3 nine holers thus far. I just track stats on the 18's.

Stroke average is exactly 78. I suspect that will trend downwards now that the weather is a bit better, and the swing is getting grooved a bit

42.2% of fairways. Would really like to see this get up to 50%. I've been switching between two drivers all season and one doesn't go particularly straighter than the other but one goes further and also allows me to work the ball left to right when I need to, so I have been favoring that one.

44% of greens. Again, I would really like to see this number closer to 55% but easier said than done

30.48 putts a round and averaging 1 three putt per. Sort of a misleading stat as it's very dependent on how many greens one hits

56% scramble percentage around the greens. Would like to get up and down more than 60% of the time

24% sand saves. Last year I was above 50% which was the best I'd ever done. Certainly feel like 33% or higher would be ok.

1.64 birdies per round. Would love to get over 2 per round but that is going to take some better all-around play. Broken par on 4 nines this year but 73 has been my best round 3x

I'm about 5 rounds ahead of last year's pace as the weather has been good this year, and really no rainouts on the weekends. About 4 rounds behind my all time pace but I still have quite a bit of vacation to burn up so I should be able to start playing once during the week before work a bit more often.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

Me and a rag-tag team won the tourney portion of a 3-day golf trip to Nowheresville, Wisc. two weeks ago, my first time ever playing an "event" like that. First day was "handicapping", then the next 2 days were scramble format with standard skills prizes and lowest score day/overall prizes. The teams were shuffled into either foursomes of A, B, C, D rated players from the previous day, or a threesome of A, C, D players with a rotating mulligan (hole or shot-based, team's choice), and we went out and shot a 72-69 in partially windy/rainy conditions to win the second day and overall at -3. To top it off on the second day I won the closest to the pin on the back 9 and the longest drive for a few extra bucks, so ended up walking away with a decent chunk of change.

It was my first time ever really playing for money like that, and to be honest the format had me forgetting that I had put down any money at all, so I was swinging anxiety-free and was pleasantly surprised splitting up the cash with teammates after the second round. I know the score in scramble format is nothing to write home about, and probably neither is the money, so this isn't a brag, just a facet of golfing travel I've never experienced before, and 10/10 would do again. I think what was nice was that I drove there in my car, so none of this being on an airport oasis stuff you get traveling to ritzier digs.

Funny side note: I kept our score on my watch as a backup just in case (I will exempt the scores from my stats), but it was funny to see that 2 really good rounds of golf played on a majority of my shots lowered my handicap from the mid-10's to like a 4.9. Which I guess just goes to show I don't and never will understand the handicapping system.

Nice. Where did you play?

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My pitching and chipping has gone to hell. Normally a strong suit of my game. It sucks because I am hitting the ball pretty well. Shot 80-81 over the weekend and the only times I got up-and-down were out of the bunker. Not once from just off the green. I need to spend a half hour just chipping to see if I can find it again.

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Where'd you play?

I think you're putting in your numbers wrong lol, don't see how 2 rounds could ever lower a handicap from mid 10s to 4.9. I'm no math guy, but that seems mathematically impossible. if your mid 10s you're shooting rounds in the mid 80s to mid to late 90s pretty consistently. Plus doesn't handicap throw out your 2 best and 2 worst rounds out of your last 20? either way, a guy in the mid 10s would probably need at least 8 rounds in the mid 70s to make a jump like that.

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It's also dependent on what tees you are playing from. If any kind of mistake like that is made it can skew the numbers significantly.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

He may have gotten flagged for an exceptional score. It happened to me at the start of this year. All my rounds got adjusted and my handicap lowered significantly.

It's a new part of handicaps I think.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Actual photo of me playing this weekend;

The courses were in great shape, but it is tough to have fun when your shanking almost everything that isn't driver or putter. My game is just horrible right now, so taking a couple weeks off. My kid played great for his second time out.


No respectable single digit handicapper is using refinished golf balls.

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Frank, how old is your kid now?

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

5, turning 6 in early September. If I can get him to chip and putt better there is no reason he can't break 50 on a par 3 course.

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That is awesome man. Enjoy every minute. I know everyone tells you that time flies and it will be over soon, but it really is true.

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."