Unfortunately I'm back home in NJ after a great trip to Flagstaff. The Forest Highlands courses were wonderful, especially the Canyon Course.
It was great to meet Jim Sweeney, but too bad I had such a lousy first round on the Meadows course. A combination of first round nerves, poor putting and a lack of timing lead to a frustrating first day. My second round on the Canyon course was a lot more enjoyable. I was able to fire an even par 71, but came up two shots short of making match play.
Thanks to Tom Renli for coming out to watch and say hello. It's always a pleasure to meet fellow GCA'ers.
The Canyon course is very interesting for many reasons. The first being the routing. The course has 6 par 3's, 5 par 5's, and 7 par 4's. From the 4th hole to the 13th hole, you play a par 3 every other hole. The course is routed over some widely changing topography. Thankfully for the players & caddies, the USGA supplied shuttle service from green to tee a few places on the back nine. There are some stretches that would just be unwalkable between holes. The Canyon offers a great variety of strategic choices to the golfer, with many risk reward options. The greens are the real challenge and the biggest defense of the course. They are very difficult with some interesting contouring and falloffs toward the green edges. Adding some very tough hole locations by the USGA to the speed and contour of the greens made the Canyon Course quite a challenge. I thought the one hole location on the par 5, 5th hole that Tom mentioned above was a bit borderline. The hole was cut just on the very edge of a fallaway toward the front left of the green. For the tourney, it appeared as if the USGA has shaved the bank bewtween the green and the small pond guarding the green. I don't think it is always like that. From the type of grass, it appeared to me that that area usually has some higher cut grass. Any ball about 1-2 feet left of that hole would catch the falloff and run into the water. I'm positive that more than one player putted the ball into the water during the qualifying rounds.
Prior to this tournament, I had never played in such high altitiude. At 7000 ft, the ball just travels forever. Depending on the shot, you had to factor between 10-15% less yardage to account for the difference. This held true for the most part, so I really didn't make any mistakes with club selection.
Maybe James Sweeney will chime in later, but you guys would definitely be calling for rollbacks of epic proportions if everybody was hitting the ball like one of my playing partners. He hit it SOOOO FAR it was scary. I'm not short by any means, maybe 280-290, occasionally 300+ with the driver at sea level. This guy hit it 40-50 yards by me easily with the driver. He said his club head speed was around 125-130 during tournaments. There were several 600+ yard par 5's at Forest Highlands, and he reached nearly all of them with a 3-5 iron.
Here's a couple of pics from the Canyon Course:
The picturesque par 4, 9th hole, 466 yds. It's one of the most beautiful holes you'll see anywhere. The tree you see in the fairway really isn't in play for the guys playing in the Mid-Am. The tee shot to the fairway is quite a drop, then the 2nd is played over the edge of the pond guarding the green. Due to the altitude and the downhill, I hit a 2 iron from the tee over the tree to land between the fairway bunkers and then had a 6 iron approach.
Approach to the par 4, 16th hole, 411 yds
Approach to the par 5, 18th hole, 600 yds.
The par 3, 4th hole, 169 yds slightly uphill.
