Well golf last Saturday was quite unusual. Having your friends giving you putts in a gentlemanly gesture as opposed to them getting out a tape measure and verifying that the "within the rubber rule" was not violated certainly was different. Even Joel failed to rise to his normal level of vocal activity and he failed to throw even 1 club. All of this niceness and camaraderie was quite a diversion from playing in the normal cut throat, trash talking group. I'll be back in the normal group in two weeks.
Stay tuned for pictures and stuff from Colorado.
THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT IS LOVE, JOY, PEACE, PATIENCE, KINDNESS, GOODNESS, FAITHFULNESS, GENTLENESS AND SELF-CONTROL. AGAINST SUCH THINGS THERE IS NO LAW. ( GALATIANS 5:22-23 )
Monday, June 27, 2011
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Today I played Bear Creek East with Joel, Higgy and a friend named Johnny Morrow. None of us played very well, but had fun. Joel had an 89 and I had a struggling 95. The course was in pretty good shape and it was breezy but not bad. I hit a lot of good shots, but had my share of bad golf luck.
I will be in Pagosa Springs next weekend with the family. I am playing the golf course up there while the others do a raft trip. We are also doing the Durango to Silverton train ride again. The kids havent done it before so they will have fun. This time we are taking a bus back instead returning on the train.
I will be in Pagosa Springs next weekend with the family. I am playing the golf course up there while the others do a raft trip. We are also doing the Durango to Silverton train ride again. The kids havent done it before so they will have fun. This time we are taking a bus back instead returning on the train.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Well I'm sitting in my easy chair watching the U.S. Open on Fathers Day. McIlroy is -17 on #10 and it is all but a formality that he will win and probably set the new record for under par for a major championship.
I had an invite to play tomorrow morning at Frisco Lakes, but I have to travel to Chicago this week. Russell and Ed are out this Saturday and it will likely be Joel and I and we'll see if we can get Higgy and Bob Tole.
I had a lesson with Troy Lewis at Fossil Creek on Friday. I have been making really poor contact the past three weeks and need to get straightened out. Troy's got me taking the club back a bit more to the inside as well as coming back to the ball more from the inside. Also have a bowed wrist which is leaving the face open at contact. Part of my problem is also that my back stiffens up after about 9 holes and makes it difficult to turn my lower body. I've got to keep working on that.
Happy Father's Day to you all.
I had an invite to play tomorrow morning at Frisco Lakes, but I have to travel to Chicago this week. Russell and Ed are out this Saturday and it will likely be Joel and I and we'll see if we can get Higgy and Bob Tole.
I had a lesson with Troy Lewis at Fossil Creek on Friday. I have been making really poor contact the past three weeks and need to get straightened out. Troy's got me taking the club back a bit more to the inside as well as coming back to the ball more from the inside. Also have a bowed wrist which is leaving the face open at contact. Part of my problem is also that my back stiffens up after about 9 holes and makes it difficult to turn my lower body. I've got to keep working on that.
Happy Father's Day to you all.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Well the Creeks was pretty fun. The course was in nice shape, but it was really busy, which made play a bit slow. I had a good nine and a lousy nine, but still had fun. Russell won with a 90 and I think everyone else was in the mid 90's. Russell, Ed and I had breakfast at IHOP on Trinity Mills before the round. I wouldn't mind playing the creeks again, but it's a bit of haul there and back. I think next week we are playing Waterchase.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Well I played my tournament round at Riverside today. I actually had a pretty good round going until the 18th !!!!!!!!!
I hate that hole. I was at 39 for the back 9 on the 18th tee, and took a SMOOTH 9. Coupled with my 42 on the front it gave me a 90. Oh well. Sherrill gave me $400 worth of lessons for fathers day. I really need these.
We are playing the Creeks course at Indian Creek on Saturday. I don't think I have played that course, so am looking forward to it. So far, it looks like we have 6 for our Cliff's outing. That will work out and we can play 2 threesomes if we don't get anyone else.
I hate that hole. I was at 39 for the back 9 on the 18th tee, and took a SMOOTH 9. Coupled with my 42 on the front it gave me a 90. Oh well. Sherrill gave me $400 worth of lessons for fathers day. I really need these.
We are playing the Creeks course at Indian Creek on Saturday. I don't think I have played that course, so am looking forward to it. So far, it looks like we have 6 for our Cliff's outing. That will work out and we can play 2 threesomes if we don't get anyone else.
Monday, June 13, 2011
Sunday, June 12, 2011
I got the report on Saturday's round from Russell. As usual, he posted a really good number with an 82 at Riverside. Joel had a bit of a rough round with a 92. Higgy shot 106 and Russell's son in law put up a 117, but he doesn't play very often. I was glad to hear the course is in good shape since I will be playing my tournament round there on Thursday with Wayne Cieslik, an old friend from work.
Next week I have set up a round at Indian Creek for the Creeks course. It's supposed to be in good shape and I'm looking forward to playing a different course.
Next week I have set up a round at Indian Creek for the Creeks course. It's supposed to be in good shape and I'm looking forward to playing a different course.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Well, I had the injection yesterday in South Lake. It can take a few days for the full effect, but I slept better last night. At least I can go back to taking my arthritis meds now. I'm not going to write anything more about my back here because this is starting to sound like a "Dr. Phil" column for geriatric patients.
Russell, Joel, Higgy and Russell's son in law are playing Riverside today. I'm going to see if I can pick up a game on Thursday at Riverside to get my tournament round in.
Russell, Joel, Higgy and Russell's son in law are playing Riverside today. I'm going to see if I can pick up a game on Thursday at Riverside to get my tournament round in.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
A Little History about Falconhead and Mr. Waco Turner
Well, this year's CATFISH golf tournament was a great success as usual. We had 28 this year so we wound up with 7 teams. The winning score was 15 under. It was plenty hot in Ardmore, but a bit of a breeze and that made it bearable. I won the long drive contest with a 289 yard shot on hole 14, which is a 544 yars par 5. Here's Coach driving the cart. It's Jack Gibson, past football coach of the LD Bell Blue Raiders.
This statue has been at Falconhead for as long as we've been going there. I don't know who it is.
Here's a shot of some of the guys at lunch.
Here's a shot of some of the guys at lunch.
According to legend, Waco Turner would drive one of his Cadillacs until it got dirty or ran out of gas. Then he would abandon it under a tree on his golf course. Well, almost. "He never traded in his cars," says Buddy Reisen, a retired newspaperman who knew the Oklahoma oilman in the '50s and '60s. "He'd just put 'em up on blocks." When Turner was in a generous mood, he followed the example of Elvis and gave his friends and employees Cadillacs of their own. New ones.
There are other Turner stories. One has it that contestants in the Opie Turner Open, an LPGA event of the late '50s, shuttled around the course in junked cars pulled by a tow truck. Never happened, according to Thomas (Mutt) Hays, Turner's right-hand man at the Opie and later at a professional men's event, the Waco Turner Open. Hays says that he personally chauffeured the pros between nines in a station wagon, the caddies standing on the back bumper.
Fortunately, for every Waco Turner story that is apocryphal, there's one that is pure, 24-karat lore. Turner did carry a cash-filled potato sack at his tournaments and pay bonuses whenever he saw a pro hit a great shot. Turner did lure a retired Byron Nelson with the gift of a pretty horse, only to stick the golfing great with a crazy palomino. Several people remember Turner, while giving the cast of Bonanza a tour of his private course, driving his Cadillac onto the 16th green. Someone said, "Mr. Turner, you're on the green." He said, "By god, it's my green. I'll drive on it if I want to.' "
"He was quite a character," says Hays. "A lot like what's-his-name, Howard Hughes." And nothing like what's-his-name, Bobby Jones, although there are parallels. Jones, the greatest golfer of his time, founded an exclusive club in a small Southern town to host an invitational tournament that would serve as his legacy. Turner, an occasional golfer, started an even more exclusive club (it had only one member, himself) in an even smaller Southern town (Burneyville, Okla.) to host an invitational tournament that would serve as his legacy. The only difference was that the Masters became the epitome of prestige and refinement, while the Waco Turner, dubbed the Poor Boy Open by an Oklahoma newspaperman, was more of a taunt, a dust-and-dungarees poke at the Establishment.
The Masters has azaleas? The Poor Boy had wild onions growing on its greens. The Masters gives out crystal for eagles and low rounds? The Poor Boy would pay $500 cash for an eagle and $2,500 for a hole in one. The Masters has a champions' dinner? The Poor Boy had a cookout every night for all the players, featuring huge T-bone steaks.
The Poor Boy (1961-64), so called because it was for Tour players who had not won a PGA event in the previous year, was held in the same week in May as the Tournament of Champions in Las Vegas, where the previous year's winners played for big bucks. Despite this handicap, the Poor Boy always had a decent field. Jack Nicklaus played at Burneyville in his rookie season, 1962, and finished third. Five weeks later he won the U.S. Open at Oakmont.
The LPGA event, the Opie Turner Open (1958-59), was named for Waco's wife and business partner. That tournament attracted the best women golfers of the time, including Betsy Rawls, Louise Suggs and Mickey Wright. Turner brought in his oil riggers to caddie, and they carried the unfamiliar golf bags by the handles or under their arms. There were local rules, too. "They let us pull the weeds before putting," says LPGA cofounder Shirley Spork.
To play at Turner Lodge and Golf Course was to experience tournament golf through a glass, darkly. Waco and Opie were often drunk by nightfall, and the Lodge staff provided, or withheld, services at the owners' whim. ( Waco ordered the switchboard shut down one evening, causing an irate Tony Lema to run from his room complaining, "You cut me off while I was settling a paternity case!") When the sun was up, Waco patrolled the course in his Cadillac, a rifle and a shotgun on the backseat floorboards in case he decided to stop and shoot turtles. Sometimes he took off from his private airstrip in his Cessna 310 and had his pilot buzz the golfers. "You'd be over a putt," says Chi Chi Rodriguez, "and he'd fly right by your head, scare the daylights out of you."
The course was eccentric too. The front nine, on Walnut Creek bottomland, was as flat as a floor, while the hilly back nine roller-coastered through dense woodland before ending with an uphill, 250-yard par-3. The greens were rock hard, the fairways shaggy and the bounces unpredictable. "The thing I remember most about the course," says three-time U.S. Women's Open champ Susie Maxwell Berning, "was hitting my ball into the rough and having it land behind a watermelon."
Today's Tour events are monitored by a posse of officials, but the Turner tournaments had one rules man—Turner. He told players where to drop a ball if a raccoon ran off with it. He ordered his secretaries to drive tractors and his tractor drivers to fry catfish. If some poor soul showed up in a foreign car, an angry Turner ran him off. "He was his own man," Nicklaus says. "If he wanted a hole to be a par-12, it was a par-12."
There are other Turner stories. One has it that contestants in the Opie Turner Open, an LPGA event of the late '50s, shuttled around the course in junked cars pulled by a tow truck. Never happened, according to Thomas (Mutt) Hays, Turner's right-hand man at the Opie and later at a professional men's event, the Waco Turner Open. Hays says that he personally chauffeured the pros between nines in a station wagon, the caddies standing on the back bumper.
Fortunately, for every Waco Turner story that is apocryphal, there's one that is pure, 24-karat lore. Turner did carry a cash-filled potato sack at his tournaments and pay bonuses whenever he saw a pro hit a great shot. Turner did lure a retired Byron Nelson with the gift of a pretty horse, only to stick the golfing great with a crazy palomino. Several people remember Turner, while giving the cast of Bonanza a tour of his private course, driving his Cadillac onto the 16th green. Someone said, "Mr. Turner, you're on the green." He said, "By god, it's my green. I'll drive on it if I want to.' "
"He was quite a character," says Hays. "A lot like what's-his-name, Howard Hughes." And nothing like what's-his-name, Bobby Jones, although there are parallels. Jones, the greatest golfer of his time, founded an exclusive club in a small Southern town to host an invitational tournament that would serve as his legacy. Turner, an occasional golfer, started an even more exclusive club (it had only one member, himself) in an even smaller Southern town (Burneyville, Okla.) to host an invitational tournament that would serve as his legacy. The only difference was that the Masters became the epitome of prestige and refinement, while the Waco Turner, dubbed the Poor Boy Open by an Oklahoma newspaperman, was more of a taunt, a dust-and-dungarees poke at the Establishment.
The Masters has azaleas? The Poor Boy had wild onions growing on its greens. The Masters gives out crystal for eagles and low rounds? The Poor Boy would pay $500 cash for an eagle and $2,500 for a hole in one. The Masters has a champions' dinner? The Poor Boy had a cookout every night for all the players, featuring huge T-bone steaks.
The Poor Boy (1961-64), so called because it was for Tour players who had not won a PGA event in the previous year, was held in the same week in May as the Tournament of Champions in Las Vegas, where the previous year's winners played for big bucks. Despite this handicap, the Poor Boy always had a decent field. Jack Nicklaus played at Burneyville in his rookie season, 1962, and finished third. Five weeks later he won the U.S. Open at Oakmont.
The LPGA event, the Opie Turner Open (1958-59), was named for Waco's wife and business partner. That tournament attracted the best women golfers of the time, including Betsy Rawls, Louise Suggs and Mickey Wright. Turner brought in his oil riggers to caddie, and they carried the unfamiliar golf bags by the handles or under their arms. There were local rules, too. "They let us pull the weeds before putting," says LPGA cofounder Shirley Spork.
To play at Turner Lodge and Golf Course was to experience tournament golf through a glass, darkly. Waco and Opie were often drunk by nightfall, and the Lodge staff provided, or withheld, services at the owners' whim. ( Waco ordered the switchboard shut down one evening, causing an irate Tony Lema to run from his room complaining, "You cut me off while I was settling a paternity case!") When the sun was up, Waco patrolled the course in his Cadillac, a rifle and a shotgun on the backseat floorboards in case he decided to stop and shoot turtles. Sometimes he took off from his private airstrip in his Cessna 310 and had his pilot buzz the golfers. "You'd be over a putt," says Chi Chi Rodriguez, "and he'd fly right by your head, scare the daylights out of you."
The course was eccentric too. The front nine, on Walnut Creek bottomland, was as flat as a floor, while the hilly back nine roller-coastered through dense woodland before ending with an uphill, 250-yard par-3. The greens were rock hard, the fairways shaggy and the bounces unpredictable. "The thing I remember most about the course," says three-time U.S. Women's Open champ Susie Maxwell Berning, "was hitting my ball into the rough and having it land behind a watermelon."
Today's Tour events are monitored by a posse of officials, but the Turner tournaments had one rules man—Turner. He told players where to drop a ball if a raccoon ran off with it. He ordered his secretaries to drive tractors and his tractor drivers to fry catfish. If some poor soul showed up in a foreign car, an angry Turner ran him off. "He was his own man," Nicklaus says. "If he wanted a hole to be a par-12, it was a par-12."
Another Option
Here is another option to look at. They have specials at The Cliffs at Possum Kingdom resort for $190 per person that includes 1 night lodging and 2 rounds of golf on a course rated 4.5 stars.
The Cliffs Resort
The Cliffs Resort
Friday, June 3, 2011
Outing to Round Rock
OK guys,
Check out the links below. I wanted to float this option for a shorter outing this year. We could play Forest Creek in Round Rock, which is a really nice course. Currently the weekend rate is around $50. The other place is Star Ranch in Hutto, which is 12 minutes East of Forest Creek. Star Ranch has a play rate of $67 which includes replays and food. My thought was we drive to Hutto EARLY on Saturday morning and play 2 rounds there. We can Stay in Round Rock Saturday night, play Forest Creek on Sunday morning and drive home after the round. As an alternate, we could drive up early Friday morning, play Star Ranch and play Forest Creek on Saturday. That would be my choice because I don't like to miss church on Sunday morning. I am looking at either mid July or early August right now. This is really preliminary and if you have an idea, please respond and let me know.
Check out the links below. I wanted to float this option for a shorter outing this year. We could play Forest Creek in Round Rock, which is a really nice course. Currently the weekend rate is around $50. The other place is Star Ranch in Hutto, which is 12 minutes East of Forest Creek. Star Ranch has a play rate of $67 which includes replays and food. My thought was we drive to Hutto EARLY on Saturday morning and play 2 rounds there. We can Stay in Round Rock Saturday night, play Forest Creek on Sunday morning and drive home after the round. As an alternate, we could drive up early Friday morning, play Star Ranch and play Forest Creek on Saturday. That would be my choice because I don't like to miss church on Sunday morning. I am looking at either mid July or early August right now. This is really preliminary and if you have an idea, please respond and let me know.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Ed and I played Fossil Creek today. It was REALLY windy and playing the blues added to the difficulty. Ed shot an 89 and I had a 91, but only 30 puts. My short game is coming around slowly but surely. The course was in VERY nice shape and the greens were putting true. This Sunday morning we are playing the "Catfish" tournament in Ardmore and the weather should be really nice there.
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