New course!

Over the past week since landing in Atlanta I’ve done a bit of exploring, checked out my winter home course, found a close by range to hit balls and played an awesome round at the Golf Club of Georgia thanks to a new friend, Ted Pappas.

On Tuesday Peter Lasser (producer of the webisodes) and I went up to Cartersville Georgia to check out the Cartersville Country Club:

This is the course where I plan on spending most of my days while in Atlanta.  From a precursory view of the course it looks like a perfect place to practice and play.  There’s a nice grass range, a couple of putting greens and an area to chip to/from.  What else could one ask for?  The fairways are Bermuda grass, so I’ll get to practice from that for the first time, too.

I honestly do not know all of the details about the course yet, but will learn them along the way.  I do know that from the tips the course plays about 7,100 yards and there are a few great golfers who call the course home.  Jason Bohn and Steven Bowditch are two of them, both on the PGA Tour.  They also have a great two bay teaching area with a SAM Puttlab and an Accelerized swing analysis machine.

Here’s a shot of the first hole:

Looks good!  Even with the dormant Bermuda it looks like an awesome course.  Can’t wait to get out there and tee it up next week.

Yesterday, a guy I met while attending the 2011 PGA Championship, Ted Pappas, invited me to play the Golf Club of Georgia along with the Director of Instruction Rob Stocke and another Rob, Rob Pritts.  That was a blast.  It was the first time I played a round with a full set of clubs and what a course to start on!  We played Lakeside and nobody shot great, but we all had a good time.  There are some incredible holes out there. Here’s number 12:

Still haven’t broken 80 for a round and not sure if this will happen before New Years as there are only a couple of days left where rounds are scheduled.  But, I’m not too disappointed as this is something that will happen in due time.  If there’s one thing I’ve learned in golf it is that you can’t force things to happen quicker than they want to happen.  If 2011 (four months of which I actually played rounds of golf) was not the year for breaking 80 then it will have to be 2012.  In order for that to happen the driver needs to get a bit more under control and I need to learn my distances with all of the new clubs.

Heading out tomorrow to take my father golfing for the first time in his life.  It’s his birthday and I thought it would be a good idea to introduce him to the world of golf.  He has played tennis his entire life as well as billiards, so hand-eye coordination and aiming should be fundamentally solid.  It will be interesting to see how he performs with zero experience.