Pete Dye, Evil Genius
This afternoon, in stifling Texas heat and humidity, I played a 4-man scramble charity tournament at the Pete Dye course at Stonebridge Ranch. We shot +2 from the blue tees. (The winners shot -14). 😮 The course is long, 6829 yds, rating 73.5 and slope 137, from the blues. This is the toughest course I’ve ever played. The course was set up with extremely challenging pin positions. The greens were the fastest I’d ever played, though very soft from frequent watering needed to keep bentgrass alive during this heat wave. The condition of the course was immaculate, although a few greens had been punched, probably last week.
We started off with a shotgun start on the 4th hole, which we promptly bogeyed. We had 3 bogeys and 1 birdie; the rest were pars. My contribution to the team was 3 or 4 excellent tee shots using the Sasquatch driver, a 191 yd tee shot using the Halo hybrid pin-high, but just off the green on a par 3, a couple of very good mid-iron approach shots, a couple of nice lob wedges from around the green and a few long par putts. I also had quite a few stinkers thrown in as well, including three balls dumped in the water and another lost in the deep grass.
Very fun day, although we did get run off the course by a thunderstorm just as we reached the last hole of the day. At that point, the rain felt very refreshing.