Wednesday, October 11, 2017

How are Gil Gerard and golf related? They're probably not, but they made it into this post regardless.

After finding a good deal on Golf Now I decided to take the 90-minute drive to Galveston so I could play the course at Moody Gardens. I've been at the hotel/resort in the past for some gaming convention (where my wife got to chat with Gil Gerard for a bit, nice guy) but that was during the winter a few years back. This past Sunday it was warm, humid and as to be expected, quite breezy.

While the place didn't quite have that resort look to it the conditions were quite good. The course is pretty flat, which is to be expected considering it location, but there was plenty of water around. However, the main defense that this course has is the wind. Being a seaside (gulfside?) course the wind is just about always going to be a consideration and that was true during my round.

I took quite a few pictures, more than I normally do. I really did like quite a few of the holes. While most of them weren't overly exceptional I would say that the course as a whole could quite possibly be the best I've played in the Houston area so far. The tracks at Horseshoe Bay were nice but I'm not sure they are any better than Moody Gardens. Comparing the Hill Country to the Gulf Coast isn't really easy to do so I'll just leave it at that.

Without further ado, here are the pics that I took. We'll see if I can remember what is what :

The par-4 third hole
After pars on the first two holes, I came to this tee and have no idea what I should do. The hole measures 330 on the card but it was downwind. Out of bounds is right and the marsh is left, but even with a playing partner telling me about where to go I just never felt comfortable. I ended up snap-hooking a 3-wood into the junk. After a drop I wedged on and managed to salvage bogey. Now that I've seen the hole there is plenty of room straight on from the tee, just left of the fairway bunker. Next time I'm just gonna wail at it with a driver.

The par-3 fourth hole

The par-5 fifth hole

The 216-yard par-3 sixth

The approach on the tough par-4 eighth

The short but demanding par-3 ninth

A view from the tenth tee

The short but dangerous par-4 12th hole 

The long and windy par-3 13th hole

A look down the fairway of the par-4 16th hole

The short par-3 17th hole
I somehow forgot to get the 18th but I don't think I could really get a picture of that hole that would really give you the full picture anyway. Anyway, I started the back nine hitting the first three greens in regulation, though I had my only three-putt of the day on the par-5 11th. Still, Playing into that breeze coming off the water made these holes play fairly tough. Same can be said for the 13th as I needed 4-iron to try to reach a pin that was playing about 165 yards. I pulled it a little long and left, hit a good pitch from a collection area and drained a 15 footer to save par.

The wheels then briefly came off. After a good drive and a decent lay-up on the par-5 14th, I had a gap wedge to the green. I bladed that fucker, the ball skipping off the green and down into the marsh area behind the green. That led to a double bogey. The next hole, I found a fairway bunker but had a good lie. Again, I hit a gap wedge in the belly and that one flew about 20 yards over the green. At least I found that one and managed to score a bogey.

The wind was pretty strong by now, though mostly helping it was also pushing the ball a little right. .I missed the 16th green right but it stayed in play. A great up-and-down saved par there. I then hit a wedge on the 17th to about 12 feet but couldn't cash in for birdie. On the 18th, again I was a bit confused as to where to go and ended up hooking my drive left. I found it just a yard or so from a hazard. While I had only 150 yards to the hole, my lie was horrible. A forced carry over water meant I had to pitch nearly sideways back toward the fariway. From there I was able to save bogey and ended up with an 81 for the day. Considering the course played 6400 yards and had a decent rating (71.4/127) I'd say it wasn't awful by any stretch.

I didn't hit the ball terrific, though most of my drives were pretty solid if not always perfectly straight. Those bladed wedges (I had three as I did something similar on the first hole) wasn't cool. One thing I was very happy with was the putter. Even though I'm doing something with my stroke that feels a little awkward I was actually pretty comfortable over just about every putt I had, which ended up only being 28 of them. I only hit six greens but I was putting from the fringe on three others, so that wasn't my worst effort. Considering how the wind came up I guess I can't be too displeased.

Still, I need to do better with this swing plane thing. I need to trust the fact that I need to feel like I'm swinging outside when taking it back and allow momentum to bring the club back inside coming back down. The feeling it just so... weird. I've been the range already this week and today I just tried to let it happen regardless of where the ball ended up going. After a while I got a little rhythm going and hit some nice shots into a pretty strong headwind so there is hope for it yet.

This coming weekend I'm driving out to a place in Louisiana to play, combining play with work while doing it. Just seemed smart to combine the two and save both me and the company some cash. Since the weather looks good and there are no storms heading this way (yet?) I should actually get to play out there this time.

And as a parting shot, I leave you with this picture of my beautiful late wife, Maggie, posing with "Buck Rogers" after he recognized her as the woman that helped him raid a breakfast cart for cream and sugar on the 7th floor earlier that morning. Just because.

Room service cart raiders Maggie Perlini and Gil Gerard at Space City Con - Galveston in January 2014

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