Desert Willow - Palm Desert

Score: 94
www.desertwillow.com

Ouch - very difficult course. Desert Willow, Firecliff course. This course has more bunkers on it than any course I've seen. On many holes, bunkers lined both sides of the fairway from the driver landing zone, all the way down to, and around, the green. Luckily I was only in a few of those, but when I was, did not fare too well.

Driver was not working today - slicing almost everything. I was on vacation with the family (rented a house in Indian Springs Country Club, La Quinta) - played with 2 randoms: Jim (England) and Mike (UCSB chemistry research professor). Mike gave me a couple tips that with driver I'm spinning out left way in front of impact, so hands trailing the body, and leaving the clubface wide open. Also, decelerating on fairway approaches (especially after I chunked 2 in a row with a 52° wedge from 60, then 40 yards).

Anyway - Firecliff was a standard desert course, with lots of "waste" natural desert areas. I played a few shots from there. The GPS carts were the best I've seen, including a "lay up crosshair" where you can point to anywhere on the image using the arrow keys, and it will tell you the distance to that "lay up" spot.

Pretty good day to play - I show up without a tee time, slide into the twosome, get the $20 off rate and some free goodies (hat, neck cooler, 2 bottles of water) from their "Beat the Heat" promotion.

Quick calculations show that this score pushes me back up to 10.0 on the handicap, so I've got to start getting some low scores again to get back into the single digits...