First Round of 2017 : Seven Hills Golf Club

Seven Hills Golf Club is about 30 minutes from me in a place called Hemet, California. This was a typical residential community course that winds through houses in a over-55 neighborhood. It reminded me a bit of Royal Oaks Golf Club in Ocala, Florida. This course isn't as good or as fun as Royal Oaks could be but for $21 on GolfNow I figured it was worth taking the new sticks out for their maiden voyage.

The sticks did just fine, the operator had issues with a snap hook on the range and to my dismay I carried it to the course for the first two holes, going bogey/double on two fairly easy looking holes. Fortunately I found a way to straighten it out for most of the day, though it crept back on me late in the round. The best thing I took away from the day were the three 7-irons I hit on the back nine that gave me reason to think I'm doing something right.

The first two came on the par three holes. The first one was 154 to the pin, but with a slight tailwind. I  made what felt like a nice swing and saw the ball fly the pin by about 6-8 yards, a solid poke for me with a 7. Two putts gave me par and I was on my way. The next par three was at 155 and no wind, but from what I could see from the tee being short was better than long so again I hacked at it with the 7. Again, the ball landed about 6 yards deep and settled at the back of the green.

The last was on the 18th. I hooked my drive so I had to punch out down the fairway on this par 5 and left myself with 152 yards to the pin according to ye olde rangefinder. The ball was sitting down just a little so I figured we'd try the 7-iron again since the pin was in the back and had plenty of room short in case it came out low. Nope, I caught it pretty clean and flew the green, about 5 yards past the pin. All three had a nice little draw also, starting just right of the flag and crossing over just left of it.

Those three swings were solid and in pretty calm conditions. I hit a few other solid iron shots but with shorter clubs, I hit my gap wedge about 105 a couple of times, which was about 5 yards longer than I'd have expected. Of course, I had a bunch of other swings that were not so good so they were tough to judge for correct distance. I hit a 6-iron about 165 but I hooked it, another 7-iron I had felt a little heavy. Overall, it sure felt like the irons were giving me something more than the old ones were.

The driver, when I wasn't yanking it left, was also nice and solid. I hit it a little higher than I had on the range but it felt better than the old King Cobra did overall. I never had a chance to try either of the fairway metals though, I'll have to wait until next time to see if I get a spot to try them. The new putter worked out well, I think I had 28 putts for the round, making a couple of knee-knocking short par putts and drained a 25 footer for birdie on the seventh. I'm thinking the heavier putter could be to my liking.

Oh, my score? I recovered from the bad start to shoot 78 (39-39), though the course was only rated at 69.7/118 and was just over 6300 yards. Again, my bad shots didn't find a lot of trouble except on the second hole and my indifferent ones that missed the green gave me some fairly simple chips and pitches (which the new 60-degree wedge performed beautifully with). Naturally I was pretty happy about it.

I still have a lot of work to do on the swing though, I need to be able to repeat what I did on those three 7-irons more consistently with all of the clubs more often. I also need to figure out the right combination of ball position and tee height on the driver. I won't be playing forgiving courses every time and a few of these wayward shots would have cost me a bit more somewhere else.

Hopefully the weather holds up next week so I can try again, with rain in the forecast I'm not sure I can get any practice in during my lunch in the coming week. For now, I'll close this out and finish watching the National Championship Game. I'll root for Clemson though I feel Alabama might be the eventual winner. We'll see!