Monday, July 12, 2004

Eruption - Golf at Kuki'o

Leslie's cousin Holly is married to Casey.

While that alone is an interesting post, I'll continue. Casey is the director of golf at Kuki'o, a private course on the big island of Hawai'i and I was really looking forward to playing there. Casey's 9 year old son Mack (quite the golfer himself), Casey and I headed out this afternoon for a round there and it was quite remarkable! First, the course is beautiful, ambling up and down the hillsides just north of Kona with fantastic ocean views and daunting lava rock formations bordering most of the holes. There is usually some space when you miss the fairway, but if you go into what would usually be the longer grass or trees, you can kiss your ball goodbye (unless Pele is in a good mood -- and she wasn't).

I should mention that the last time I played with Casey, it was about a little under a year after I started playing golf. He was working at Rancho San Marcos near Ojai, CA and I played, perhaps my worst 9 holes ever. When we arrived at the range today, I couldn't hit anything. 80% of my shots was fat, or shanked or topped. Hmmm... We headed to the first tee, and I hit a nice drive down the middle and ended up getting a par on the first hole. Phew! The second hole was a par 5 and I chipped up pretty close to the hole on my 4th shot and ended up getting my second par. Wow!

I should have stopped there.

On the third hole, I hit into a greenside bunker and it took me two shots to get out. I ended up with a triple. Yick. On the next hole, my tee shot hooked into the lava rocks. At the Waikoloa course, lava rocks were lateral and I could go drop up where it went out, but it seems that Kuki'o treats them as OB so I had to hit another one. Another two shots from a bunker and I had a quad.

The day continued more like the second two holes than the first two. Hitting way too many shots into bunkers and even more shots not getting out of them. Also, losing too many balls into the lava. The net score was 110 which is my worst score in well over a year. My putting was pretty good, though with several one putts and only one three putt.
I suspect I would have done better if I had played from one of the shorter tee boxes. There are 5 sets of tees, Mamao -- or really freakin' long -- and I through IV. We played from the I tees and I had a ton of long shots into greens and when I missed them in any direction, I got into big trouble. The course was beautiful, though, and in great condition and I really appreciate Casey letting me play there!

2 comments:

Leslie Irish Evans said...

Just for the record, Mack is nine. And he just won his first tournament yesterday. ;-)

Anonymous said...

AND, Pele is a woman. FEAR THE FIRE!!!!!!
-Holly :)