This week is crazy with private club outings, but no complaints here! Today, I went out to The Crosby for an SCGA member outing. 9:00 shotgun start. I was randomly paired in a cart with GK member xDra... Continue »

This week is crazy with private club outings, but no complaints here! Today, I went out to The Crosby for an SCGA member outing. 9:00 shotgun start. I was randomly paired in a cart with GK member xDragon75x, who I previously met and played with at the Classic Club outing a few years ago. Small world! Our group started on the 15th hole. We moved along nicely for awhile, but ultimately caught a slower foursome just ahead of us and our back nine was a little slower. Still, around 4:30 total. Not bad for a full outing on a challenging course. The course conditions were good. I wouldn't say anywhere near pristine, but very good by today's SoCal standards with ideal playability. The tee boxes were generally excellent. The fairways had some small bad spots that were marked off as GUR, but generally the lies were perfect on nice fluffy bermuda turf. The rough was well-kept, but cut short and not much of a factor as the ball always sat up nicely on top. I was in a couple greenside bunkers, both of which had huge faces to clear. One was way too firm underneath to pull off the delicate shot I had to, but the other one was ideal and I put it close. The greens were very nice. I could see some evidence of repaired sections on a few greens, but overall the surfaces were fantastic. Very receptive and rolling true at medium/fast speeds. The slope and grain have such major effects on putts here. Anything above the hole was hard to stop. Anything below it had to be hit real firm to hold the line. Once your ball ran out of steam, putts would curl off at the last second, so anything not center-cut with some speed was not likely to go in. We were perplexed all day as we burned edge after edge. This is a really, really fun and challenging course co-designed by Fred Couples and Schmidt-Curley. The total yardage doesn't seem too long at just under 6300 yards from the blue tees, but it plays much longer with a lot of hilly terrain and predominant winds. Also, factor in it's only a par-70 with three par-5s and five par-3s, so that really skews the total yardage quite a bit. We started on the flattest section of the course, but then the changes in elevation kept getting more and more severe, so I found myself enjoying it more and more as we played (even though my ugly scorecard would tend to disagree). It fits right in the great class of Rancho Santa Fe courses, most comparable to Santaluz or The Farms. Such a hotbed of amazing private golf! Any chance to play any of these clubs should be taken advantage of, so it's easy to understand why these SCGA outings are so popular.