Fifth Avenue Forum

Sht you played Laurel Valley? Super jealous. My dad's from Latrobe and that's his bucket list course. Matter of fact we're getting out at Latrobe tomorrow

Sht you played Laurel Valley? Super jealous. My dad's from Latrobe and that's his bucket list course. Matter of fact we're getting out at Latrobe tomorrow

Its one that never leaves your bucket list. I got a late call on a Tuesday afternoon to play Wednesday. My schedule was ridiculous that wednesday but that was a drop everything invite. Perfect 75 degree day with low humidity. We got there, had lunch, putted and chipped, hit balls at the range, stretched. I was more warmed up than I've ever been and played pretty well for me (shot 89, I'm about a 16 right now but probably a 25 or worse at the beginning of this year). The course is just... classic par 72 golf. We played the 3rd from the back tees which were "only" like 6700 yards. The backs are 7400 i think.

I was in 5 bunkers on the first 4 holes. My caddie joked that the first 5 are free and then its $5 each after that. I gave him a $50 out of my wallet and said "this should cover the front 9". I think I hit into 2 or 3 more the rest of the round. Good juju.

Thoughts on Chippewa? my dad likes playing there because it is cheapish, never in bad shape, and forgiving. its been a while since I played there, but one of the other nice things is that it doesn't have a lot of horsesht holes like many other courses.

My summer of reintroducing golf into my life continues, played my first non-schenley round, so that was helpful in getting a better idea of what I can actually do. Still a very easy course, Chippewa, so I shot a 99. front 46 then imploded on the back nine. Probably didn't help that I did all the drinking on the back. I have basically no issues on the tee with my driver, so outside of the par 3's and 2-3 par 4's, I was sitting either (a full) 9 or PW to the green, and I muffed them in one way or another every time, the only pars I got were a short 4 where my second shot was a chip, and par 5 where my third was chip. Schenley, you are so rarely hitting a full iron off anything but the tee, so I at least learned that I had lost all knowledge on how to hit an iron.

So, I watched a youtube video and realized that I was completely ignorant of basically everything irons. Went to the range and revamped the whole swing, I have completely different yardage for each club. The big miss was that I was striking the ball way too flat, like not even cognizant of where the club should be coming down. I also cut some length on my backswing so that I am hitting ball far shorter with each iron than before. I would sum it up, where I don't need to try and blast the 9 iron 150 just because I can, if I just do a controlled 7, it's going to go straight where I'm aiming 75% of the time where the full 9 iron swing is liable to go everywhere, or just nowhere, like for me at Chippewa.