Caloundra Course

Yesterday we played at Caloundra. This is one of our unlimited courses. We have three on the Sunshine Coast that golfers can choose from. They are Mt. Coolum, Headlands and Caloundra. They are all 3 star courses and have pars of 72. Headlands is in the best shape this year with Caloundra having the best layout. Mt Coolum may be the more challenging.

Caloundra' rough lacks enough grass and the fairways are not as lush as one would want. The course is 5940 meters in length. The club house is good and the course is located near the centre of the city.

Caloundra is the south most location on the Sunshine Coast with good choice of beaches and a nice business center.

Playing there yesterday reminded me of something I wanted to rant about. Social golfers in Australia are believed to be ones that have not played too much, and play slowly. So to protect the tee boxes and speed up play a lot of courses have a set of yellow tees. They also have the traditional blue, white and red tees.

There is usually signs that say something like " visitors and social players must play from the yellow tees."

I don't have a problem with the concept but I do have a problem with the clubs charging full green fees for a shorter course and for making the assumption that if you are not a member then you must not know how to play or can not keep up.

We decided to play the yellow tees yesterday and found in a number of cases the tee boxes were not as well looked after and there were no yardage markers indicating the distance. Most cases you can pace of the distance from the nearest red marker but in a number of cases the yellow tees were stuck a long way from the others so you had to guess the distance. This of course matters on the par threes more than the other holes. Yellow tees should have signs like the blue, white, and red tees.

I have always played from the white tees as the blue tees here are mainly for the competitions. No one has ever said anything and they probably never will. So forget the yellow tees unless you want to play from there.

The more expensive courses like Twin Waters do not even put out yellow tees.

Caloundra staff feed the Lorikeets every day at 4pm. This brings in thousands of these very brightly coloured birds. There is a picture of two Lorikeets on the blog. You can also see these birds at feeding time at the Currumbin Wildlife Center on the Gold Coast.

Caloundra has some nice billabongs. They do not come into play much but they do attract plenty of bird life. We did spend a few minutes to stop and listen to their songs and calls and take some pictures. I got a good shot of a Kookaburra. These birds are the ones that sit in the trees and laugh at your golf shots.

It is getting close to departure time for the majority of you. If you are flying on airlines other than Singapore luggage weight becomes very important. Eliminate, eliminate the things you will never use.