My holiday weekend grew by an extra day when I received a last minute invitation from my friend to join a foursome at Hazeltine National yesterday. After a “Hazelburger” and fries for lunch, we teed off on the back side first. I learned right away that U.S. Open length rough is nothing to mess around with. My tee shot on ten cleared the bunkers at the dogleg and was only three feet from the fairway, but was buried in grass about 7 inches long. I don’t know how the pros do it, but I could barely advance the ball at all–let alone in the right direction. Double bogey to open.

The par 5 eleventh hole started out better: decent tee shot to the left side of the fairway. My 5-iron layup shot was well struck, but rolled a few feet into the second cut. After another feeble attempt to advance the ball to the green, I decided it was best to just get back on the fairway–even if it meant going sideways. Another double bogey. (more…)

Sunday was one hot day to pick for 36 holes of golf. The temperature hit 97 degrees and the wind was howling out of the south. My regular Saturday morning golf buddy grew up in Hayfield, Minnesota, and I wanted to get down there and play the course where he worked during school. I had visited both The Oaks and Maple Valley during the Golden Links days, but this was the first time playing both.

The Oaks is not what I anticipated at all. Based on the few holes I had photographed near the clubhouse, it looked like your typical wide-open Minnesota farm course. The reality was a course with several narrow, tree-lined holes, a meandering stream that comes into play on multiple holes and small, severely sloped greens that, when combined with the constantly blowing wind, made for a challenging start to the day. Despite the double bogey on one and triple bogey on two, I managed to string together a number of pars and shot an 89.

After a great lunch at the Miller ranch, we drove from Hayfield to Maple Valley–located just south of Rochester. Designed and built by Wayne Idso in 1964, Maple Valley is a shorter course that sits in the Root River valley. The course has craggy rock cliffs, large elevation changes and beautiful views of the Root River itself. It has a very low rating (67.2/106), but I find it hard to believe that the average high handicap golfer would find the course that easy. There are way too many places to get in trouble if you aren’t hitting the ball straight…DK

It amazes me that there are so many online communities that I’ve never heard of before. Today I came across the Live Music Archive and found a huge source of free, legal music downloads by a number of artists I like. It’s important to read through the audio FAQ to figure out the format issues, but I was impressed with what I’ve found so far:

• G. Love and Special Sauce
• Kristin Hersh
• Mike Doughty
• Soul Coughing
• Tenacious D
• Tom Tom Club
• Ween
• Warren Zevon

I’m sure this is all old news to the music traders out there, but I was very happy today…DK

Limited Edition Disneyland Enchanted Tiki Room Figurines…DK

On Sunday evening we took the family to the 5pm performance of Pippi Longstocking at the Children’s Theater in Minneapolis. This was the last of our season ticket package for the 2005-06 season, which included 4-ISH and Sleeping Beauty. There a number of good shows coming up next season, but we haven’t decided to renew yet.

Pippi was a fun show and the kids enjoyed it. Reed Sigmund has appeared in many of the shows we’ve seen over the years and he just knows how to make children laugh–very, very talented. Jessie Shelton was energetic in the title role and her style suited the role well.

The only disappointing thing about the night was CTC’s policy of not letting parents take pictures of their kids in their seats before the show and during intermission. It’s a public theater with no copyright issues during non-performance periods–how about some relief from the threatening P.A. warnings? Better yet, make it more fun for the kids by allowing pictures with the cast afterwards…DK

We played The Summit Golf Club in Cannon Falls yesterday for the first time this year. It’s been one of my favorites the past few years, as there are a number of interesting holes, no houses on the course and all bentgrass tees, fairways and greens. It’s usually not very crowded and that was the case yesterday on an otherwise beautiful Saturday morning.

The first thing we noticed was the newly paved entry road and parking lot. There were also several new cement cart paths and they were starting to build a deck off the back of the small clubhouse. I joked with the manager at the desk that green fees must be going up this year. He said they had sold two more 1% ownership shares (now $50,000 each) and they put all of the money back into the course as capital improvements.

Originally priced at $40,000 per share, buyers received a 1% ownership share and 150 passes each year that could be used however you wanted. You could play all 150 rounds yourself, give them away, us them for business or sell them. The course, which was named Best New Affordable Public Course in Minnesota by Golf Digest in 2002, was built on land costing about $3500 per acre. Asking price of land for sale now next to the course: $40,000 per acre. Not a bad return for the original investors, eh?

As for the round, I played well on the front nine, but tired out quickly on the hilly back nine and closed with three triple-bogeys in a row–something I haven’t done in a long, long time. The trees along holes 1, 6 and 10 are maturing nicely and will really change the nature of those holes in a few more years. The greens were really fast and the closing holes still have my number. I need to get back there again soon to get my revenge on those holes…DK

The weather has been nice and new things keep appearing on the deck…DK