The bad conditions continue
Played Palmer Cherry Hill and Laurel Valley last night. if this is supposed to be the Villages showcase course, it's sad.
First of all there is something that bothers me on almost every course I play in The Villages. Why is it that the practice greens are never the same as the greens on the golf course? Palmer has 30 greens. They should all be the same. Last night I went and spent twenty minutes on the practice green to get a feel for the speed. It was decent, moderately fast pace. I get on the first green and have about 25 feet for birdie and I leave it 5 feet short. I hit a good putt. It was simply that I had great feel for a green that was 2-3 feet faster than the greens on the golf course. I don't understand why this is so difficult for The Villages. This is the case on almost every course, both Executive and Regulation in TV. It's almost as if they do it on purpose.
Palmer was in decent shape, but not great as the premier golf course in The Villages should be. Greens were slow and bumpy. Again, many of them, like so many other greens in TV had bare spots or areas where the grass was very sparse.
On the second hole I missed the fairway by a couple of feet and instead of being in rough, I was in a hole in an area that had almost no grass.
The fairways and tees were in good shape, no complaints. I did notice a lot of areas around the greens that were worn down to bare dirt and many of the bunkers look like they hadn't been raked in days.
In many areas, the rough is the same height as the fairways. In those cases, the rough has very little or sometimes no grass. You don't have to let Bermuda rough get very tall, but there should be a noticeable difference between the rough and fairways.
There were some areas where if you missed a green, you were on almost hardpan or at least very tight lies which make it difficult to pitch from. If you chose to putt, you'd have to putt through the fringe which was higher than the rough.
I don't know what it's going to take to get The Villages to start getting these courses in decent shape. Maybe they never will.
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The Beatlemaniacs of The Villages meet every Friday 10:00am at the O'Dell Recreation Center.
"I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend." - Thomas Jefferson to William Hamilton, April 22, 1800.
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