The Course

This is the first time I’ve played River Pines. I was really impressed with the quality. For being early spring, I expected the course to still be a bit brown, but they took great care to overseed and the course looked fantastic. Fairways and rough were lush and well maintained as were the tee boxes. For some reason, I always look at the tee boxes first as a way to gauge the course. The tee box is where you start every hole, and if they are marked up, patchy, and dead, it sets the tone for the hole. These boxes were excellent, especially the Par 3’s where a lot of irons are played off the tee. The greens had just been aerated the week prior, but they were still rolling pretty true.

The course itself was interesting. This is a course where you really need to think your way around. Many holes present opportunities to take or leave driver in the bag. Par 5s are reachable with good drives, but they are definitely risk-reward. The course is mostly in the woods with very few homes around so its nice and secluded. I’m looking forward to playing again when the course is in perfect late spring/early summer condition.

My Round

It was an interesting round. This is the first time i’ve played since taking time off to rehab my back. 3 months without playing so my expectations were low. The round didn’t start off great, on the range, I snapped the head of my 7i clean off. That’s never happened to me before so it took me about 3 holes to settle down. I managed to ricochet a shot off the trees (from the trees) and land it in the cart trapped between my bag and the bag stand. I couldn’t do that again with a thousands balls.

My driver wasn’t great. No surprise, I practice it the least. I had some decent drives, but mostly it was off. I even managed to top two tee shots in a row, I haven’t done that in probably a year. I need to spend time with the driver and my fairway woods.

My iron game was pretty good. I hit a knockdown 6i (cause I didn’t have a 7) from 169 on a sidehill lie to about 15 feet on the first hole. Hit an 8i about 160 downhill from pinestraw to 10 feet on #10, and had other iron shots that were flushed as well. There is nothing like the feel of a flushed iron shot flying at the flag. I have confidence with my any iron > 6i, and I need to continue to work on my 4 and 5. Nice shots with the 5i today, but not as pure. Errant shots, penalties and putts were an issue.

My putting was terrible. I put a new putter in the bag, which I really like, but haven’t used and that resulted in zero confidence. 39 putts. I 3-putted the first 4 holes. I was going for the record. Need to keep working here.

I gave up on a couple holes. I had a chance to turn around my round on the back and I did with 4 pars. But there were a couple holes where I gave up. All in all, it was a good first round back. The most important thing is that my back felt great the next day, felt great during the round, and all the work I’ve been doing is paying off.

Scorecard

Other Photos