If you get tired of fishing and water skiing at Smith Mountain Lake, there’s always golf, and there are a couple nice courses open to the public. Mariner’s Landing, for example, is an 18-hole layout designed by Robert Trent Jones. It’s a semi-private course with practice facilities and a nice grill on site. Another opportunity exists at the Westlake Golf & Country Club. I had the … [Read more...]

  Somehow, I managed to squeeze in a couple rounds of golf in the past two weeks, dodging the ever-present rain and intermittent cold. I played Old Trail, then Spring Creek. Both courses were in amazing shape, considering, but were they ever wet! I could see my partner’s golf shoes kicking up a spray of water with every step. A high iron to the green would on occasion bury the ball … [Read more...]

On occasion I’ll hit a decent drive on a short par 4, followed by an iron that is just right in distance, but a little left of the green. Like many average golfers, I tend to pull short irons. The problem I now find myself in is being within sniffing distance of the pin but looking into the bowels of the nastiest sand trap this side of the Sahara. Even worse, the green is sloping away, and I only … [Read more...]

It’s a little chilly right now to be teeing it up, but it’s never too early to dream about next spring – The Masters, you know. Can Tiger win another major? And certainly next year is when you’ll finally start sinking those 20-foot downhill putts and keep your booming drives in the short grass. We can always dream, can’t we? But now is definitely the time to order your VSGA VIP Card, so when … [Read more...]

On most years, golf course superintendents pray for a summer of rain. Well, this year, someone did a heck of a prayer job because we had rain, rain and more rain, and now the same superintendents are praying for a lot less rain next year. Kevin Mann and I played Meadowcreek Golf Course a couple weeks back and the greens were a disaster. They were bald and muddy in many spots. There was so much … [Read more...]

The last time I played a round with my brother, Charlie, we discussed Par 5 holes and my difficulty with them. Since they are long to begin with, I feel like I have to swing extra hard, which is a guaranteed formula of failure for duffers like me. But Charlie said he had read someplace that a teaching pro advised his high handicap students to play a 3-6-9 combination. Use a 3-wood off the tee, hit … [Read more...]

My brother Charlie and I were able to slip in a round of golf at Ingleside last Saturday. It was Charlie’s first ever round at Ingleside and it was my first time on the course this year, begging the question: Why don’t you play this course more often? For starters, it’s a beautiful setting, particularly the back nine where all you see are trees and mountains. It’s also a most reasonable course … [Read more...]

Lots of pros teach good “golf course management” when playing a round of golf, but Kevin Mann and I practiced good golf cart management during our last round at Lake Monticello. It had rained who knows how much a few days before we played. That and the fact that it has rained more this summer than anytime since Noah went for his boat ride and the course was like a sponge. Number 12 was roped off … [Read more...]

Every golfer is aware of the hundreds of courses and opportunities to swing a club at Myrtle Beach. But closer to home and with weather almost as nice as the Grand Strand is Nags Head and the Outer Banks. There are some very nice courses available. The Pointe, for example, is just north of the Wright Memorial Beach along US Hwy 158 crossing onto the Outer Banks. Another 10 miles up the … [Read more...]

Most golf course suffer from a lack of rain in the summer resulting in burned out greens and tee boxes. Tanyard, in Louisa, had the opposite problem – too much rain in a short period of time. About two weeks ago, it rained cats and dogs in Louisa. It rained so much on the golf course that water actually boiled up beneath the greens and dislodged many tender shoots of grass. We had played … [Read more...]