Laid off golf for a year. Played The Canyons at Park City. A tale of 2 sides.

Went to visit the family ranch in Utah to herd cattle in to haul a couple hundred miles north. Water in their area this year has been non-existent and the fields, which usually are full and tall, are hardly anything, so we lease land to graze them on and hope to get more rain.

While there I played The Canyons Resort. First, they don't have a driving range. They have a pad of fake grass and a net. At least the warm up balls are free. It's a tight course. True target golf. Extremely unforgiving. Deep ravines, gopher holes and mountain brush is right off the tight fairways with hardly any 'rough cut' off the fairway as 'the rough is natural mountain.

But playing the blues on the front I finished with a 4 over 39. I was playing waaay over my head and using rented Calloway clubs that were pretty decent and they had a variety of shaft options for the Rogue LS Max driver. I set it to a 10.5 degree loft and a neutral bias in a senior flex. It was a hard nine and I got a couple of lucky breaks. Didn't lose a single ball.

But then, the back nine was like the front nine. A monster. But this was a monster on steroids. The wind blowing around at 12-17 mph doesn't help when your tee shot on the 10th hole, a 520 yard par 5, is 297' above the fairway. Looks beautiful. Awe-inspiring, even. The air was thin at 7000' elevation. The ball carried forever on one of the purest drives I ever hit on the 10th hole. It sailed to within 40 yards of the green. Right into a rocky, brush covered ravine. From that point on, it all fell apart. Extreme target golf. Absolutely unforgiving in every way imaginable. I lost seven balls and blew up to shoot a 56 on the back nine. I trudged myself onto the 18th green. One of the foursome ran out of balls on the 15th hole, and another quit after 17, saying he'd had enough and would never come back.

If I were a regular player and had a single digit handicap I would probably have loved the views (which I did) AND the challenge, but at age 70, I doubt I'll never work myself down to that, again, as little as I play, and so even though I go up there a half dozen times a year, I can confidently state that I will never play there again. The Mountain Course at the Wasatch State Park is much more my style.