Posts Tagged Mission Hills
Island Green Birdie @ Mission Hills, China
It was a rough day. Two back to back quadruple bogeys meant that this was not a good round. Nevertheless, on the signature hole of the Faldo Course at Mission Hills, China, the magic finally arrived. This Par 3 island green with the flag at the front showed 102 yards on the rangefinder. The caddy said 95. With a slight wind against us, we took out the trusty 52° and went for the pin. Bang! Pin high…just five feet from the hole. A simple putt to at least record a birdie for the round.
110607 Mission Hills, Faldo 16 (Par 3)
Birdie on 502 yard Par 5 – Mission Hills, China
The 502 yard Par 5 on the 7th hole on the Duval Course at Mission Hills, China was one testing hole. The long downhill drive meant we could probably clear the bunkers on the right, but a sharp dogleg right turn meant that the landing area was too narrow for comfort. Nevertheless, a good whack with the driver got us half way there, 250 yards to the hole. As the green is further downhill, we tried to kill a 5-wood to get me close to (or even on) the green. From where we were, it looked like we missed by just a few yards, but we were in fact about 40 yards from the front pin. We tried to be too cute with the chip shot and duffed it. Damn. Now we’re still not on the putting surface and lying three. But a miraculous chip caught the sharp break right and rolled right in the bottom of the hole. Very sweet.
101125 Mission Hills - Duval 7 (Par 5)
Birdie at Olazabal Course in Mission Hills, China
On the Par 5 3rd hole of the bunker infested Olazabal Course at Mission Hills, China, a solid 250 yard drive cleared me from all the fairway bunkers. A lay up in front of the stream left us with an uphill 100 yards. The trusty pitching wedge got me to within 15 inches of the hole. The right to left putt tracked nicely to the bottom of the cup. A good start to our round.
100707 Mission Hills, China - Olazabal, Hole #3 (Par 5)
Birdie – Pete Dye Course, Mission Hills, China
This was Pete Dye’s first course in China and only Chartered Diamond (highest level) members of the Mission Hills Golf Club are entitled to play here. Of course it helps to know a Chartered Diamond member too. We’ve played all the original 10 courses and this is our first time on this course. We heard that it was difficult, but this was stupid difficult. The greens are severely undulating and the holes cut in the most unreasonable places. Can you believe putting uphill and stopping hole high two inches from the cup and have the ball roll back to where you started from, or even further? CRAZY.
Anyway, we managed to squeeze in a birdie on hole 12. This 387 yard (from the blues) dogleg left Par 4 had long and wide fairway bunkers on the left, begging for me to get into. And luckily I avoided them, but instead managed to get into one of the small right hand side ones…R didn’t seem to be very happy though. Nevertheless, we were on a clean flat lie with about 150 yards to the front hole location. A nice clean hit with a 6 iron landed just on the front part of the green, leaving a 15 footer uphill. The greens were much faster than the 8.2 Stimpmeter reading that was recorded. But fortunately after several holes, we managed to get a hold of the speed and after a good read and stroke, in I went.
100525 Mission Hills - Pete Dye, Hole 12 (Par 4)
100525 Mission Hills - Pete Dye, Hole 12 (Par 4)
