Yesterday, my golfer son and I joined Cleef for a round of golf at Guavaberry CC in Juan Dolio. We were received by Chris Hale the Director of Golf.
It is a beautiful installation and well worth playing, and if you have the moola, it would be a great place to have a house for retirement or for long, cold winters....
The course itself was designed by Gary Player's design team, and shows a lot of professional touches. While the prime motivation was to take this piece of "worthless" real estate and sell home sites and build houses for the "chosen Few", the promoters were very astute in that they spent the money to get a fine golf course built for those few. Different from Metro, this is a golf course!
First off, there was lots of consideration taken for the ecology and it was clearly not a slash-and-rebuild-it-the-way-I-want-it-to-be project. Rather, it was cut out of the native flora, with many Guasima, small palms and other tropical dry forest vegitation left untouched, and enhanced with class-act horticulture....this is a beautiful, visually pleasing course.
Second, the use of the coralline (coraldine?) stones that made up most of the property has turned some of the holes into what can only be described as "Don't go there!!" Sort of places....Real scary for golfers...some huge waste bunkers, but they are playable, and the sand traps are excellently well done....No kidding.
The signature 13th hole is very pretty and the recirculating waterfall is a welcome visual and audio relief.. I also really liked the 6th hole, a fairly short dog-leg to the left, daunting visual from the Blacks, but user-friendly from the Blues or Whites.
This seems to be the trend all around the course. If you are foolishly proud of your golf game, the Blacks (so-called Championship tees), will soon humble you.
Any mis-hit on the course will cost you money, but a good caddie can re-coup. (What this means is that if you don't hit it right, your ball goes into a very difficult rough, but your caddie will probably find another one for you!!)
Another thing, the rough is vicious!! The palm trees have spines and so do their leaves. Soon the Bougainvilla will be thicker, and as the course matures, I am sure that they will post signs:
" Leave your ball in the rough!"
The greens, while young and fairly hard, do roll true and putting can be fun. Like most good courses in the States or Canada, or England or Spain, you should always try and stay under the hole...
Finally, course knowledge is essential, since the visuals can be very deceiving. You think something is there, play away from it , only to find that you could have gone straight, and made par!...
The scorecards are not a help, since they don't show you anything about the course beyond yardages.
This course is the site of the next National Ranking Tournament in three weeks. Over the Corpus Christi weekend in June 19-22, the National Tournament will be played there.
All told, a fun golf day, as Cleef is a good guy to play golf with, and although neither he nor I had any "game" , we did have fun.
My son played from the black, Cleef from the blue and ol' me from the white. (82, 105, 104) In a very heavy wind that was brutal on some holes...
A golf funny. Cleef was battling a big cut or slice all day, so he decided on the 18th, that he would play from the Blacks, what the heck. He aligned himself up on the left side of the tee, allowing for his cut or slice, took a nice swing and hit the most beautiful draw of 260+ years.......O.B.!!
I could only laugh.....we all did....No one ever said golf was fair....After all, it is called 'golf' only because all the other four letter words were taken!!
Good day was finished off by a visit to MommC and Tony's place, after we dropped Cleef off at the hotel.. MommC and Tony and their friends are truly gracious people. We had a beer and coke, shared some finger food (really good) and conversed. My son commented later that these people "knew how to talk...." ie.: Good conversation. We missed out on a beautiful pork leg and some awesome pasta...Sorry folks...
Unfortunately, we did have to haul a$$ back to Santiago, after picking up my son's wife in SDQ. MommC and her friend said that they could find a sleeping gown for me to spend the night, but I told them that the problem was not a sleeping gown, but rather "who" was in it!!!.. HB did not have permission to stay out....We made excellent time in moderate traffic and were home by 7:20....
HB
It is a beautiful installation and well worth playing, and if you have the moola, it would be a great place to have a house for retirement or for long, cold winters....
The course itself was designed by Gary Player's design team, and shows a lot of professional touches. While the prime motivation was to take this piece of "worthless" real estate and sell home sites and build houses for the "chosen Few", the promoters were very astute in that they spent the money to get a fine golf course built for those few. Different from Metro, this is a golf course!
First off, there was lots of consideration taken for the ecology and it was clearly not a slash-and-rebuild-it-the-way-I-want-it-to-be project. Rather, it was cut out of the native flora, with many Guasima, small palms and other tropical dry forest vegitation left untouched, and enhanced with class-act horticulture....this is a beautiful, visually pleasing course.
Second, the use of the coralline (coraldine?) stones that made up most of the property has turned some of the holes into what can only be described as "Don't go there!!" Sort of places....Real scary for golfers...some huge waste bunkers, but they are playable, and the sand traps are excellently well done....No kidding.
The signature 13th hole is very pretty and the recirculating waterfall is a welcome visual and audio relief.. I also really liked the 6th hole, a fairly short dog-leg to the left, daunting visual from the Blacks, but user-friendly from the Blues or Whites.
This seems to be the trend all around the course. If you are foolishly proud of your golf game, the Blacks (so-called Championship tees), will soon humble you.
Any mis-hit on the course will cost you money, but a good caddie can re-coup. (What this means is that if you don't hit it right, your ball goes into a very difficult rough, but your caddie will probably find another one for you!!)
Another thing, the rough is vicious!! The palm trees have spines and so do their leaves. Soon the Bougainvilla will be thicker, and as the course matures, I am sure that they will post signs:
" Leave your ball in the rough!"
The greens, while young and fairly hard, do roll true and putting can be fun. Like most good courses in the States or Canada, or England or Spain, you should always try and stay under the hole...
Finally, course knowledge is essential, since the visuals can be very deceiving. You think something is there, play away from it , only to find that you could have gone straight, and made par!...
The scorecards are not a help, since they don't show you anything about the course beyond yardages.
This course is the site of the next National Ranking Tournament in three weeks. Over the Corpus Christi weekend in June 19-22, the National Tournament will be played there.
All told, a fun golf day, as Cleef is a good guy to play golf with, and although neither he nor I had any "game" , we did have fun.
My son played from the black, Cleef from the blue and ol' me from the white. (82, 105, 104) In a very heavy wind that was brutal on some holes...
A golf funny. Cleef was battling a big cut or slice all day, so he decided on the 18th, that he would play from the Blacks, what the heck. He aligned himself up on the left side of the tee, allowing for his cut or slice, took a nice swing and hit the most beautiful draw of 260+ years.......O.B.!!
I could only laugh.....we all did....No one ever said golf was fair....After all, it is called 'golf' only because all the other four letter words were taken!!
Good day was finished off by a visit to MommC and Tony's place, after we dropped Cleef off at the hotel.. MommC and Tony and their friends are truly gracious people. We had a beer and coke, shared some finger food (really good) and conversed. My son commented later that these people "knew how to talk...." ie.: Good conversation. We missed out on a beautiful pork leg and some awesome pasta...Sorry folks...
Unfortunately, we did have to haul a$$ back to Santiago, after picking up my son's wife in SDQ. MommC and her friend said that they could find a sleeping gown for me to spend the night, but I told them that the problem was not a sleeping gown, but rather "who" was in it!!!.. HB did not have permission to stay out....We made excellent time in moderate traffic and were home by 7:20....
HB
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