Tour Announcement - Black Mesa and the Rawls Course in early March

Well the team will shortly be off to Texas and New mexico for a few days to review two of the highest reecommended excellent public golf values, Tom Doak's The Rawls Course at Texas Tech in Lubbock and Black Mesa in N.M. The usually minimalist Doak did Rawls right after finishign Bandon Dunes and wrote that"we had to go back to square one." They moved 800,000 yards of earth on a flat sight to create what is supposedly a realistic windspept site, then deisnged holes over it. I will play my tround there with the son of the TTU fotballk coach, himself former head coach at Arizona - along with two rock stars form the band The Feds.

Baxter Spann said that Black Mesa “has opportunities for eagles on a couple par fives and a couple par fours, but those holes are also fraught with the possibility of “other” scores. Black Mesa is a fantastic match play course for that reason. Each shot requires a strategic decision involving line, distance, wind, trajectory, and how the shot will react once it lands on the sloping, firm surfaces.” I'll be playing there with Bowling for Soup musicians Chris Burney and Gary Wiseman and a decorated and excellent New Mexico criminal defense lawyer, John Klein-Robbenhaar. (Hi Klein.)

On that note, I'll soon hit 250 public courses played that were ranked in the top 100 either now or at one time. (This excludes the private number, which happily is growing as quickly.) To celebrate, we're having a contest. Whoever comes closest to guessing where the 250th course is played, wins a free round with me. We did the same thing for my 200th course. The winner was Red Bull Music Director Greg Hammer who guessed Shenacossett in northeast, CT. He came really close as I hit number 200 at The Captain's Club (port course) in Cape Cod. The only thing I'll say is while I am forming a trip to Hilton Head, SC, I don't know whether I'll hit 250 by then or not, but there will not be 10 courses played on that particular trip. The question is whether the weather holds and I can pick off a couple rounds before leaving for that trip. In the interest of clarity, I have no clue or plans where 250 will be hit - where it comes, it comes. If it's Whistling Straits, great, if its something way off the radar screen, great too.

Time for a couple other folks to take a bow and have you take a look at their work. Props to my buddy the Media Guru (hooked on golf website) on using my theme song to pimp his cool looking trip. Don't worry everybody, he paid me a licensing fee;);) Props also to him teaming up with Rich from Eat Golf. have a great time guys. Tony, we will play this year, I can feel it.

Next, congratulations to Tom Kirkendall at Houston's Clear Thinkers. I was swinging on a vine in the Golf Observer treehouse and it came across my desk they linked to his touching Dick Harmon funeral story. Congrats Tom, you run a world class site and the more people that can take advantage, the better.

Finally, just wanna tell everybody that the more you also read Bogey Lounge and Brand Lounge, Rob Thompson, golf.about.com, and golf punk, the better your day will be.