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We are at the Stonehenge Golf Club in Fairfield Glade, TN where we  played our first practice round. The course was quite wet due to the downpour the night before. The storm had been so severe, that all power was out where we had parked: the gas stations, the hotel marquis, and even the stop lights were out, but only for minutes – total blackout!

Stonehenge GC hole #14

This Stonehenge course is Tennessee’s #1 ranked resort course designed by Joe Lee. Its tough design includes many sidehill lies, rollling terrain, and one very extremely memorable hole #14. It is a par-3 hole, only 148 yards, but drops off from tee to green I would say 100 feet. Not only is the landing area treacherous (hazard left, bunker right, a river behind it), the winding drive down the hill is a test to all driving skills! I would say the only other times I have played a similar major dropoff were #15 at the Palms Golf Club in the Mesquite, NV area (114 foot drop) and Green Mountain National GC in Killington, VT holes#2 and #7.

Fairfield Glade is a large golf community in higher elevation, where homeowners are members of the 5 golf courses, paying a small annual fee as well as cart fee at any of the championship courses. We have rented a beautiful townhome on a lake here in the community for the week, and the commute is 3 minutes rather than the 20 down the hill to the hotels.

Thanks for your interest in my career as teaching professional at University Park CC. Now for the next two months, we’ll be on the road competing in events in Tennessee, Michigan, and Massachusetts. In amongst the competition, we’ll stop off to see family and find ourselves in places we could not have imagined. Enjoy reading.

Prior to leaving Florida, we decided to stop off in the Orlando area to visit SeaWorld and enjoy our annual passes. If you have not been there in awhile, the Shamu show, the Dolphin/aerial acrobatics show, and the Clyde and Seamore shows are just fun and funny. The grounds and aquariums are so beautiful, and if you still like wild rides, the Kraken and the new Manta are fast and furious. We were able to stop in and see the night version of “Shamu Rocks”, where you watch the whales perform to selected songs with great beats.

Heading on to Downtown Disney, we sure liked just walking in and having dinner at the bar area in the Rain Forest Cafe – no wait time for this area! Wandering over to the Art of Disney, we purchased some Disney prints from artist David Doss, and found he was there on site from NC for a few days signing prints! We had met him about 5 years ago when he was starting with Disney, he was at the Flower and Garden show at Epcot, so it was a nice reunion of sorts. We made our final stop in Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge to look around and do a little shopping in their gift shop.

The next day we played golf at the Celebration Golf Club, a challenging Robert Trent Jones/ RTJ Jr. course. It is a great track and nice practice as we begin our trek to middle Tennessee for the TN Women’s Open.

Congrats to Eun Hee Ji for winning the U.S. Women’s Open. We followed it online in the car using live scoring, and we got the chance to see the 20 foot putt for par watching “Golf Channel” later on replay.

Happy birthday this week to Miff Griffin, Ben Ertl, Jeanne Weber, and Cath Dubault!