Reply To: World Am course selection/elimination process

[Louie Phipps]

Scott, in case you are not familiar with it, there is a web site titled “Myrtle Beach Golf Talk Forum”. It is run by Brian Noblin, a golf trip director that I have used for many years. The web address is http://www.myrtlebeachgolftalk.com Click on the “forum” tab and you can always find reports from a number of golfers about courses they just played. They are very good at giving frank, honest opinions about what they experienced. You might want to assign one of your staff to monitor that site for a couple of weeks prior to making your course assignments. Once I received my course assignments I immediately went to the site to see if there were any reports on my courses. The only course of mine that had any reports was Indigo Creek and several people really trashed it, saying the fairways had not been cut in “weeks”. I found that hard to believe and since I hadn’t played it in a while I decided to play it as one of my 2 practice round courses. I played on Friday before the Monday start and guess what…2 inch long grass in the fairways. I couldn’t believe it. On several occasions I actually had to search a couple of minutes to find my ball IN THE FAIRWAY..!! They wound up cutting the fairways before Monday’s opening but they were not cut close by any means. When I played it on Tuesday I was in an 8:09 group and we had a very heavy dew that morning so when I reached my first drive I found it covered in mud and 1 inch long grass clippings. And the pro had told us before we teed off that “the course is in great condition and you’ll be playing the ball down”. Scott, we had SIX players shoot a NET score in the 70’s. Everyone else was in the NET 80’s and 90’s. We should have never played Indigo Creek, even if they had allowed lift, clean and place, there was no where to place the ball. Hope the Golf Talk Forum site is beneficial to you. I’ll still see you next year for my 24th time.