I played 54 holes of golf at Doral today.

[Warik]

The Doral Golf Resort in sunny South Florida, host of the 2007 CA Championship and host of PGA TOUR events for the past 40 years, was kind enough to open 3 of its 5 courses today to 100 lucky muni hackers like me for only $150. My day began at 7:00 AM and included 18 holes of golf at The Blue Monster (6281 / 70.4 / 126), The Great White (6085 / 68.7 / 117), and The Red Course (5540 / 66.2 / 119).

The Blue Monster was an absolute beauty. Such great shape. Fairways nice and green, bunkers all white and puffy, rough deep enough to completely cover your ball. Beats the hell out of the conditions I'm normally used to which are brownish fairways, concrete bunkers, and rough made out of the same kind of crappy grass that grows on a lawn. Greens were HUGE and hard to miss unless of course you were trying to hit out of one of those fluffy bunkers or try to dig your ball out of the deep stuff from 100 yards away. We started at 7:00 AM and ended up finishing around 11:15 due to a slow group in front of us. Had lunch and then it was off to the Red Course at noon.

Well... what can I say about the Red Course. I'm glad I got to play it and all that... and it has a real nice layout, but I'd describe it as a glorified muni. Upkeep was comparable to what I'm used to at my local par-31 executive course. I think I could justify shelling the normal $200 green fee to play the Blue Monster again, but I would never pay to play the Red Course. Still, lot of fun holes on this one especially #15 where my friend Tin Cup'ed himself to a 9 after putting a painful number of balls in the water. We finished up the red in 3 hrs 30 min, grabbed some free hot dogs and set out for the Great White at 4:15.

The Great White: WOW!!! I have NEVER played anything like this and I CANNOT BELIEVE this course's green fees are less than what they charge normally for the Blue Monster.

"The 7,171 yard, par 72 Great White, a Greg Norman Signature Course, is the only golf course of its kind in the Southeastern United States that utilizes coquina - crushed shells - as the primary design element on every hole. In creating the Great White, Norman blended strategically demanding fairways with hundreds of palm trees and sporadic Scottish-style bunkers."

This course basically has NO ROUGH. The fairways are wider, but surrounding them is this rock hard "coquina" which my friend and I cleverly dubbed "the desert crap." As if being in the "desert crap" with NO EXPERIENCE WHATSOEVER hitting out of that stuff wasn't bad enough, there are dozens of palm trees along every strip of this stuff and my ball found its way to them more often than not. Course was immaculate. I felt bad taking divots on the fairway because the grass was so perfect it looked artificial. I absolutely want to play this course again and would be willing to pay the $150 green fee to do it.

Hope you all enjoyed the trip report.