...
not!
... he knows it quite well you know ... and
aparently had a refresher course a couple of weeks a ago
so we will get around in a sub 4:30 round
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Vic Mid Amateur
Forums → Golf Talk | 73 posts
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Given that there a couple of guys on here who are over 30 and have a decent handicap, I was wondering if anyone was playing in the inaugural event? I have had a look and seems like a good idea, some thing different and maybe give a few amatuers some to strive for?
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The Vic Mid Amateur was on late last year. Are you talking about the Australian Mid Amateur?
Beware of cheap imitations - Especially from the US |
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Not too many West Aussies seem to have bothered to enter. Michael Dennis should to ok though.
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Only one familiar name - a bloke I met in pennant in the 70's.
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I'm in ... looking forward to the Ocean
Schanck
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You'll be right Neptune.
Is it worth you, Jerry, JJJ and I giving a course review of
Ocean Jack - are you playing? Who else from ISG? MM
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MM JJJ
could give a detailed review of the first bunker off the 1st
can give us the heads up in 30km winds
and you can shed some light on holding the followthrough for less
than 15 seconds Andrew Davis my pick ... club champion and knows the course like the palm (sorry ... back!) of his hand
Schanck
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I thought it was being played at Moonah Links. Hard to imagine they could go to an even worse venue.
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The 'venue' is great. The course presentation is very very good. It's design is poor. An interesting question though - if you had to play Moonah Links (Open) or National (Ocean) which would you choose? MM
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Firstly ... having to actually choose !!!!! Having played both at least a couple of times over the holiday period ... ... the Ocean ... ... has less bunkers planted in the middle of the fairways (not by many) ... the winds are going to be between 2-3 clubs so the small green complexes will be the difference between a good and a bad round
Schanck
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Make sure you say g'day to my mate Richard Talsma from QLD who's going down there. Tell him you saw the worst snap hook ever when you were officiating the Aus Tour School ;-) He's a chance of taking the title.
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I'm playing. Have only played the Ocean once, in perfect conditions! Forecast for the first 2 days is 37° and 39° - should be a bit of fun!!
Richard Talsma is a good player Blade, met him up at the Qld and
NSW mid-ams and played a few rounds with him. Non-drinker though,
which is a worry The 2 form players in Mid-Ams at the moment are Justin Shine from Qld and Adam Revai from NSW, both very good players. The locals should have a bit of an advantage with the conditions though - so I would suggest Andrew Davis, Jason Perry, Matt Oldham, would be big chances - with hopefully some hot competition from a bloke called Macafee. John Beveridge won the Vic Mid-Am a few months back and is playing well too. I'm playing a pracitice round Monday, but if there are any obvious bits of local knowledge from the National clan here, it would be handy to hear them.
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stay away from the trap on the first - I've heard some nasty stories about that one.
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or put alternatively, if you had to send someone to an eternity of golfing hell, which one would you send them too?
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Boonie,
Don't play safe off the 1st, one hopping 4 irons in there
provides entertainment for the masses for years I've
discovered. 1st and 2nd greens have big slopes front and right
which are best avoided. Don't even think about going at the
pin on 3. Take 1 or 2 clubs off what you need and aim short of
the left edge of the green. You can get it up and down for 3 from
there but if you actually go at the pin off the tee a) you
can't hold the green and 4 just ignore the quarry - the designers did. 5 will probably play downwind with those temps. Left edge of the green is safer than the middle, takes the false front out of it and the little shelf there helps hold the ball downwind. 6 is whatever leaves you about equal and 20m left of the bunker on the right off the tee. Hit anything more and you bring the crap on the left and the next bunker on the right into play as it collects into it. I'll leave KiteBoy or Jerry to finish - I find it too depressing. Oh, one last thing. Don't ever think that the bunkers are in anyway strategic (with the possible exception of the fairway bunker on 12) they are there to punish shots that are already in a bad position. Good Luck
JJ
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Cheers JJJ. I am having a practice round with Schanck in the morning which should be handy also.
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Boonie, Don't bother keeping score or stats, Schanck provides a complete breakdown post game and rumour has it he has a printer stashed in the shoe pocket of his bag should you need a print out. JJ
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You'll get a huge heads-up from Schanck tomorrow Boonie. Great choice of playing partner. Hope you get a northerly, as it'll give you a good look at what you'll face midweek. JJ's words are wise. The course will test you. And I'm not just talking about routing bunker placement and aesthetics (we'll save them for the post-mortem!). You need to execute shots v.well to score as you'd like around Ocean. Generally, you get no benefit from attempting to go over traps off the tee. Many members take aim at them, and hope to be a club or so short. Drive bunkers on 7 are the most obvious exception I can think of. In a northerly, many will get home in 2, after pumping it over the right edge of those traps. Depending upon when you played the course last, there's some green which have been redone, and there's been some considerable gradient changes. I've often noticed (not always the case though) that putts back towards the clubhouse are faster than those going away from the clubhouse. Spin your approaches too much and you'll have unwelcome and dinky little chips back onto the greens. Short of the green on 3 is spot on. Chip and putt for your par. You'll face a few "lesser of 2 evils" choices through the round, Short of the fairway trap on 6. Don't go over the 10th green. Watch the sneaky blind small pot bunker back left of 13. The pin is likely to be on the higher tier, bringing that into play. One of the good things of a bg north wind will be 17 reachable in 2, and so too 18! Check if you can take rocks and pebbles out of the traps prior to playing bunker shots, as it has always been permitted under locals rules when members play the course. May be the same for the tourney. Looking fwd to hearing all about it. MM
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LOL JJJ Can you finish off the course description ? it would provide plenty of entertainment
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St Andrews, Just for you as their is nothing on TV.
7 - as KiteBoy said, downwind if you can carry the fairway bunker
you need to go over the RIGHT edge. That way you'll end up on
the LEFT edge of the fairway. Pause at the top of the hill to
admire the next bunker on the right set on the ledge. A work of
art comparable to the right hand green side bunker on RMW 17 with
the way it seamlessly melds into the scrub
8 - smack it over the traps on the right than just get it on the
correct tier. Pause to consider that the bottom tier was a late
addition prior to opening and consider how it would have played
without the left side. 9 - Until they changed the green and opened up a small gate at the front (evidently some wanted to do away with the front right hand bunker entirely but the designer felt that would make the hole too easy. So 200m uphill into the prevailing wind aiming for a 10 pace wide gap it is) you used to do the same as the 3rd - aim to miss short as there was no hope of holding the green however the changes mean you can have a go. Miss right is a good thing. 10 - Hard to get a line on the tee shot but left is dead and there is far more room right than it appears as the ball will feed back left. Rumour has it that one day in a cyclone KiteBoy put the spinaker up and had sandwedge in. I filed that one next to "yeti" in the Mitty Files. I've tried approaching that green from all sorts of angles and nothing seems to work. Evidently if you hit your second 80m left just in front of the 12th green it works OK. 11 - best of the par 3's. What you see is what you get and if the pin is on the back then long ain't the worst place to be. This was originally going to be a double green with 7 but they decided against it. 12 - the best hole on the course. Ignore the throat and get it as close to the right side and fairway bunker as you can to get the best line in. Not sure who put the bunker there but one theory is that there was a witch hunt afterwards along the lines of "OK - who was the idiot that put the bunker in the right place?". The green, particularly the back left has FAR more slope than it appears.
14 - Right side will hold, left may. Over the back is death. Path isn't a bad miss... 15 - Ok - see those bunkers on the right? Look closely and you'll see another set 30m after them. Now hit it away from them to the unprotected left side to get the perfect line in. If the pin is in the dip at the front run it in, as it all collects there anyway. Oh and if you get really bored with Schanck drop a ball over on the right and try and either see the green or hold it with the big slope in front. The bunkers are there to ensure people that have blind shots and no hope of getting close don't get off easy... 16 - Be interested if they use the tee high and to the right. Otherwise avoid the pot. Green feeds right to left. 17 - Ok there may be a pattern emerging here... See the bunker on the left? Well if you play away from it to the right you will be in position A. If you fly the trap chances are you'll be in the rough and need to reload. Downwind you can get home but there is 5 MCG's right of the green if you need it. 18 - Sorry I had to compose myself. Had a fit of the giggles. On a positive note it worked well as a driving range for a long drive comp one day when they put a tee up left of the clubhouse and you hit it over the green towards the tee. Off the tee there is a shelf about 260 out on the left side about 6ft square. Land it there or it drains back towards you and to the right just to make things easy. From the shelf you are left with an easy 190m shot into a crowned green. There is a LOT of slope on the front of the green. In the club champs a few years ago I was amazed to see the A Grade medalist hit 3 iron off the tee. When I asked why his response was simple. There is nowhere to land the driver, the shot in with anything more than wedge is near impossible and 3 iron took making 8 out of the equation. I look forward to seeing the stats via Schanck. JJ
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Thanks for the entertainment JJJ - much appreciated
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Simply outstanding How do you know it so well JJJ - do they MAKE you play the course?
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I thought I might have saw the man's name down on the draw
but then I noticed in his profile that he is now off 6, and the
cut off was 5.4!!!
I thought with some hard fairways down your way an old man like
you Jack might have been getting a bit more roll on your tee
shots you might have been able to get a few decent scores on the
board.
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I dont need any roll mate.
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