Another adventure at the Voyager Village Par 3

I went golfing with my brother and my friend at Voyager Village's par 3 again.  I had lots of fun and so did my brother and my friend.  I purchased and played some Bridgestone E5 Golf Ball (2011 Model)(sorry I can't seem to get the Amazon ad off the side there) balls and some Precept Golf Ev Extra Spin Golf Balls (2011 Model, Pack of 15) balls.  Since I am getting better and more accurate with my iron play these balls actually helped my game.  The e5's felt really good and played better than my bargin bin balls,  They probably fit me the best so far, because they are more forgiving than the Precept balls.  The Precept balls seemed to have a lot more spin than the e5's but both stopped better than my Precept Laddies.  The Precept extra spin balls are made more for seniors, but they are good for anyone with a slow swing speed.  Overall though for me I would take the e5's due to the fact they are a little more forgiving if I have a bad swing yet still let you be more precise with your swings.

Now on to my game.  I did really good this time around with a few pars and only one hole did I do horribly on.  My brother on the other hand did not do so well thanks to his rough night from the night before.  I am really enjoying this par 3 Voyager has.  It is like my happy place for if I get beat up on a traditional 18, that I can just go back to and feel good about myself and my game.  It is also nicer walking, because you don't have to take all your clubs with you.  I didn't get in any sand traps on this round which is something to brag about.  I can also safely say I got the lowest score in the group.  So overally I felt good and did good, but I know if my brother was in real golfing shape he would have probably beat me.

I have been pretty disappointed with my lack of golfing this Summer, but there is not much I can do about it thanks to money issues.  So I apologize for not many blog posts about my golf experiences but sadly there has not been many.  Either way I got to golf a little and some is better than none.  Here's some pictures of golfing at Voyager this time.

The First Hole

The Geese again.  If you hit one do you get a birdie?

My friend and his sand shot.

My brother looking for his lost ball it was a theme for the day.

My brother still recovering from his rough night

Voyager Village Par 3 course

Two days ago I went to Voyager Village with a friend and golfed their par 3.  I love this place and this course.  I was there a lot last summer for a few reasons.  The first one is the price.  It is $10 for the par 3.  The second is it's fun.  With the longest hole being 186 yards every shot you take is going to have some excitement to it.  Voyager Village in itself is quite exciting.  You are driving down some random country roads and out of nowhere a community with a golf course, swimming pool, tennis courts, playground, theater, and airport shows up out of nowhere.  Anyway back to the course.  The par 3 is in really good shape.  Most courses that have a par 3 do not take good care of it, because it is not their main course.  Voyager makes sure the par 3 is just as well kept as their 18 hole course.  The majority of the holes for the par 3 are alongside a lake, so you get an amazing view the whole time you are golfing.
For how I did.  I felt like I did pretty well especially compared to last year.  Since my iron game is my strong point I was getting quite a few greens in regulation.  I even got 3 pars.  My putting suffered though, which should be an easy fix.  I did put the ball in the sand once which I had no trouble getting out of.  The bad thing though was I sent two balls into the lake with bad shots.  With that and my putting my friend and I ended up pretty even after 9 holes.
I would recommend this course to anyone who doesn't golf to much or is golfing with friends who don't golf to much.  Since the course is short and easy it is very fun for anyone to play and gives even bad golfers chances at getting pars and birdies.  Not to mention you can do other things besides golf at Voyager Village.  I think anyone from young to old would enjoy this place.  Here are some pictures.

View from the parking lot.  You can see some aircraft parked out there

The top floor of the clubhouse is a restaurant which I've been told serves good food.

Some people playing horseshoes and an airplane getting ready to take off.

look how close I got to a birdie on the first hole

some geese

the geese again

looking off of the 3rd tee

my friend getting ready to chip.  This hole is completely over water.

Grand Casino Hinkley's amazing golf deal

I just saw on my facebook news feed an amazing deal that involves golf.  The Grand National Golf Club, which is owned by the Grand Casino Hinkley has on every Wednesday in July for $18 you get 18 holes of golf, a gps enabled golf cart, and a bucket of range balls.  This may be the cheapest price I have seen for all those things.  I get done with work at noon today and am considering making the just over 1 hour trip to try it out.  You can not argue with a price like that.  I am still in amazement.  Anyway if you want to make a tee time call them up at 320-384-7427.  If this isn't cheap golf I don't know what is!

Butternut Hills Golf Course: Review, pictures, and my golf including using the mighty 1 iron

Course Review:
Three days ago my brother and I golfed at Butternut Hills Golf Course.  We went for their twilight rate which is $12 for unlimited golf walking after 5 pm.  My brother splurged and also rented a cart which I jumped on.  The course is in amazing shape especially for the price.  When we got on the course it was busy.  Busy enough where we had to start on the back 9 first, but still got be able to play without making a reservation first.  The course seems very short with many par 4's less than 350 yards.  The water hazzards for the course never really are in the way if you can hit the ball straight.  You can tell this course is designed to be more fun for the amature golfer, which is good.  You want to have fun while you golf and this course is one to do it on.  The course is kept up very well.  It is easily on par (no pun intended) with more expensive courses.  The thing that makes this course different than more expensive courses is how laid back it is.  You can tell everyone out there is there to enjoy themselves.  Even the employees encourage you to have fun out there.  The greens seem odd to me though.  Very few of them have any break to them even though it seems that they all should.  This makes the course much easier and more fun to play.  Again a good thing.  The only problem you might find on the course is a few people have way to much of a good time.  They are not much of a problem though and something you should expect paying a price this low.  This is my favorite every day course to play and I suggest it to anyone in the area.  Here are some pictures.

The 10th tee

The clubhouse which has a full bar and food

The 18th green

Some golfers

Every herd of a greenside cemetary?

The par 3 15th hole

Looking off the tee of the 6th hole

looking towards the tee of the 6th hole

The par 3 8th hole

My brother right after teeing off on the second hole

Looking at the second hole from the green

My Golf:
My golf was still not at the level it was last summer, but it is slightly improving. This time I was able to do about as well as my brother, which last time he was beating me at golf like no other.  If I didn't pay attention to my swing I would finish on my back foot and slice a lot.  I still have a slice 70 percent of the time on my fairway metals, but it is improving, and I hope I will be able to fix it.  We golfed until it got dark which ended up being about 26 holes which is quite a workout especially since we were fishing for 3 hours before that.  I made 3 pars and 4 greens in regulation.  I found that very satisfying and showing that I am improving in my longer shots.  There could be another reason why I got those gir's though, and that is coming up next.

The Almighty 1 Iron:
I decided to do something fun and different.  A few months ago now I purchased a Tommy Armour 1 iron on Ebay for only a few bucks.  This purchase happened after I spent countless hours just looking up as much golf information as I could online and came across some stories of the 1 iron.  In case no one knows anyone about the 1 iron just like I did before I did some heavy searching; it is a club that used to be very popular, but died off at the end of the 90's as easier to hit clubs were invented such as the hybrid.  The 1 iron is considered the hardest golf club to hit.  John Daly even have a 0 iron for a while.  There seems to be a very small dedicated group of people who refuse to let the 1 iron go.  They quote reasons such as: "why drive a driver 280 yards in the rough when you can drive 240 in the fairway with the 1 iron," "it is the perfect club if you need a low boring shot that goes far."  I discovered these all to be true for me.  The drive tended to be low straight and boring.  The ball would also roll for a very long ways after hitting the ground.  This surprised me quite a bit.  When the ball would hit short of where I wanted I would get disappointed then watch the ball roll uphill to exactly where I wanted it to go.  Also as I found online the ball tends to go straight.  A lot straighter than with a driver or fairway metal.  The one problem is the club is really really hard to hit.  I've been practicing with it for a while and finally got good enough where I could hit it well 70 percent of the time.  I did not hit my driver the whole time on the course I would just hit the 1 iron and was satisfied with all the shots.  I was able to be much more accurate with my shots and put where I want the second and third shots were much easier.  I know why this club died though.  With it's difficulty to hit compared to other clubs which go the same distance I know why it died.  I wish it didn't though I would love to try out some 1 irons with new technology.  I really think the 1 iron helped my golf game greatly.  I am sure I will be using it a decent amount until I get a new driver and can hit it straight.

My 1 iron and if you look in the distance you will see where I put the ball on the 197 uphill par 3.

Anyway that is my long 3 into one blog post about my day of golfing I hope you enjoyed it.

Spooner driving range

I was at the Spooner Golf Course and dangit I couldn't stop slicing.  I was doing horrible finishing making mistakes such as finising with weight on my back foot.  I'm disappointed in myself because of it.  I have a lot I need to work on before I go golfing with my brother tomorrow.  Also my horrible steel driver is finally falling apart.  It lasted decently long.  I guess I will have to maybe start looking for a driver soon.  So far my summer golf has been nothing like I have planned, with bad weather and lack of excess funds has severely frustrated and hampered my summer golfing.  Hopefully I will have more golf stuff for everyone soon.

Short trip to North Dakota

Well I took a short two day trip back to Grand Forks and spent some of my time putting around at Ray Richards Golf Course.  I was slightly surprised.  The greens look to be in much better shape and the course seemed a little more playable, but you could still see some overly soaked parts on the course.  It was still better than before though.  Here's some pictures I took.

Something sort of exciting for me

Something kind of exciting happened to me recently.  My brother who quit golf the same time I did when we were kids has picked up golf again starting last week.  He purchased a beginner set and is practicing a lot.  I wish I knew what set of clubs he purchased.  I haven't seen him play or practice yet, but since my brother is one of the athletic types I'm sure he is doing fine with it.  He was hoping I would come home last week to go golfing with him which excites me more.  I may have someone to go golfing with em over the Summer consistently.  The weather hasn't been good since I've been in Wisconsin so no golfing for me yet.  Hopefully that will change soon and I will have some more things to type about on here.  Until then no new golf news involving me.

But in PGA news it looks like John Daly made the cut this week.  I and I'm sure many other people wish to see John Daly in contention again, and making the cut is a good start.