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Freddie and Me: Interview with Tripp Bowden

I’m convinced there are not enough golf books in this world. Millions of fantastic golf stories are untold because they were never journaled. Fortunately for the golf world, Tripp Bowden chronicled his experience as one of the first white caddies at Augusta National Golf Club. His book, Freddie and Me, takes the reader inside the grounds of Augusta National Golf Club and tells stories from the club with Freddie Bennett — the revered caddie master of 30+ years — as the focal point.

Freddie and Me touched on many of life’s greater observations. Tripp was kind enough to answer my follow up questions about Freddie, the course, and golf. Continue reading “Freddie and Me: Interview with Tripp Bowden”

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GolfRedefined Offer

Sometimes we hear about offers that would be of interest to our member base. Here is one that was brought to us by a new golf startup. We thought some of our members that play often and love equipment might be interested…

GolfRedefined.com, a new golfing membership site is looking for up to 50 testers of its new service. Members can choose the driver of their choice, play with it for as long as they want, send it back and then receive their next choice.

Membership means you can always play with the driver you want, swap it for another and repeat until you find the one that suits your game best. No purchase, no restrictions. Simple.

Interested golfers should email golfredefined@gmail.com with “MyScoreCard.com” in the subject line for a discount code and further instructions.

MyScorecard receives no payment if you sign up – we just thought a few of you might have some interest and wanted to share the discount. Happy trialing!

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Where do you stand?

The USGA just published a breakdown of handicaps for all Male US golfers.

We thought it would be fun to compare against our own member base, and so published both in graphical format below:

Breakdown of All Mens U.S. Handicaps

The graph shows the % of golfers that fall within each handicap number on an average course.* For example, about 2.5% of all golfers are ~24 handicaps. On average, golfers than maintain handicaps fall within the 13-14 range.

So now you know what the say when someone asks you “What is the average handicap?”. But note that this information is only for golfers that maintain a handicap. Many more do not, and so the average score for all golfers is about 100 (which might correspond closer to a 25 handicap).

The blue bars on the graph represent the USGA information, while the red bars represent the breakdown of handicaps on MyScorecard. Pretty close! We were hoping to tell you that our members are significantly better than the overall distribution, but on the flip side it’s nice to see that golfers of every skill level enjoying MyScorecard.com

Any questions, let us know.

*For golfers that maintain handicaps. Indexes are rounded, since handicaps are expressed to one decimal place. Or you can consider it as the course handicap on an average course (with slope of 113).

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Top 100 Courses: #92 Shoreacres

Shoreacres
Location: Lake Bluff, IL
Architect: Seth Raynor
Year Constructed: 1921
Played: October 4, 2010

Shoreacres is one of the courses that I was really looking forward to on the list. I didn’t know anything about it other than everyone who plays there seems to come away in love with the classic Seth Raynor design.

Located just north of Chicago in the town of Lake Bluff, Shoreacres has occupied its perch on the shore of Lake Michigan since 1916. While the clubhouse does have a water view I should point out that the golf course itself is completely inland with no views of the lake or coastal holes anywhere on the course. In scouring the internet for information on the club there is very, very little available. I usually like to learn a little bit of history about a club before visiting but the best I could find in this case was a very abbreviated take on the club’s 94 year history. The short story is that the club was founded in 1916 and the course designed by Raynor opened in 1921. After 70 years the course had lost many of its “Rayor-esque” qualities and Tom Doak’s firm Renaissance Golf was brought in to restore the design to its original glory. From what I hear they did a masterful job. In an interesting side note I did discover that the original clubhouse, built by David Adler, burned to the ground in 1983. A local Chicago architect by the name of Laurence Booth was commissioned to build the new clubhouse which is in use today and compliments the style and vibe of the club perfectly.

We decided to play from the “Raynor” tees which play to 6,309 yards and, as I understand it, are the course’s original tees. Sometime in the recent past there were back tees added to 8 holes which allow for the tips to stretch out to 6,530 yards . . . this does modernize the course a bit, but even the new tees are fairly short and very manageable for the average golfer when compared to many of today’s modern courses.

Raynor starts the course out fairly friendly on the 1st hole with a 478 yard par 5. The photo below was taken from the tee box and as illustrated is a fairly straight and flat hole.

Continue reading “Top 100 Courses: #92 Shoreacres”