Encinitas Ranch.

This week I decided to head west and played Encinitas Ranch Golf Course, which is located among some coastal bluffs just a couple of miles off of the Pacific Ocean. The course was in nice shape and the location was pretty cool. The course itself wasn't overly difficult either though there are a few spots where water or canyons come into play.

I took advantage and shot 77, my best score yet. I still don't quite have it yet, though. I hit quite a number of irons thin, in fact I would call a couple of them bladed since they ended up going through the green. I still seem to be hitting the ball with more a glancing blow than a true squared-up strike, but obviously it was better than it has been. I'm trying to use my body more instead of relying on my hands so much and it has been more consistent. I still need to work on the path, I hit the club on the toe sometimes.

The course itself was really nice. Its not going to win awards or anything but I can see where it would make a few lists of courses to play in the area. It wasn't cheap ($98) but I came away feeling it was worth it. Most everything was in good shape and the huge greens rolled well. There were a couple of quirky short par fours on the front, but since I like quirky holes it didn't bother me.

Above this paragraph is the first quirky hole, the 5th. The hole was only about 300 yards from the tee I played. As you can (hopefully) see, the fairway was quite a bit lower than both the tee and the green. I hit 4-iron off the tee, leaving me a wedge back up the hill to a back hole location. From my position I was able to see the flag and most of the green. One of the guys I was paired up with hit driver and ended up about a quarter of the way up the hill to the green. However, he had NO view of anything, no flag, no green, not even the bunker. He had no idea where to even aim.

And here is the view to the 7th green. This was another short par four, but had a blind tee shot up a hill to the landing area. There was a target pole about 165 yards from the tee, so I hit 4-iron again since we were told you just needed to get past that pole as the fairway sloped down from there. Left was a canyon. Too far was another canyon. The approach shot, as you can see, was quite a bit downhill to the green. The same playing partner that drove too far on the 5th hole was short on this tee shot and again he had absolutely no view of anything. He hit his second shot in the canyon to the right, which is just right of the trees you see in the picture.

Here is the 10th hole, a downhill par four with a view of the Pacific. I'm not sure if it can be seen too well in the photo but it was pretty cool to look at while I was there. This was one of the tougher holes on the course as it was over 400 yards into a coastal breeze.

This is the best of the par 3s on the course, #17. All of them were playing in the 160-170 range as this one had a back right pin location. It also played back into the breeze a bit. The green was massive, the guy I was playing with hit it more than a little fat and he still managed to hit the front left of the green.

And one last attempt to get a shot of the ocean, this one was from the 18th green looking back down the fairway. The closing hole was an uphill par five and I'm sad to say I had to only 6 on my scorecard here. I hit another wedge thin and went over the green and couldn't get it up and down for par. In my defense, our cart was running out of juice and we were having to semi-push it up the hill in order to get back to the clubhouse. I'll use that as my excuse.

Despite that little problem, the pace was good. We rarely had to wait, though some of that was due to the fact that out of our foursome wasn't doing too well and it slowed us down enough. The weather was perfect, I'm not sure it ever reached 70 degrees but it felt warmer than that to me once I got warmed up. I had one birdie (on the par-3 2nd) and just the six bogeys, no big blow up holes. I only had one really poor shot, I pull-hooked my approach on #10 but nearly got it up and down from way over there, that would have been a nice par save had I made the 10-footer. Even those bladed shots didn't end up too bad, they were mostly on line, just over the green. I hit ten fairway and eight greens, plus a couple on the fringe. Not too shabby overall.

Next week is the little trip to Las Vegas. I'm going to play twice at the least, maybe more if the elbow holds up. After that I'm not quite sure. My employer has asked me to come back to Houston so I only have until about mid-May to play here in SoCal, then its off to Hawaii for Memorial Day and then we immediately pack up and head out. I didn't play any golf in Houston while I was there (well, I went out once but I didn't keep score) so it'll all be new to me there as well. We'll have to explore those options in the future.