Meadow Brook Golf Course Review

If you expect golf courses to be green, lush expanses of grass, first off, that's wrong and you should feel bad.  Secondly, you may want to look elsewhere.  Meadow Brook, which is in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, is not the golf course for you.  The fairways are clearly not irrigated, so they're nice and brown.  Well, I say fairways, but what they are sort of recommended playing fields.  There's not much of a difference between fairway and rough, and when there is, the fairways are 20 yards wide at most.  Surprisingly, the greens are in very good condition.  I was at the Penn State golf course this summer, and the greens at the Blue Course, the supposed championship course, were in worse shape, and that was a month earlier in the summer.  Having lots of experience with greens in terrible shape, it is nice not to have any big gaping bare spots in the green.

The last hole, a short par 4

This isn't the most conventional golf course in the world.  It's a par 72, but it's under 6,300 yards.  The front is over 3,300 yards, which is fairly typical, but the back nine is under 3,000, which is not so typical.  Playing the course, I can understand why.  The property is not very big, and they really had to squeeze 18 holes onto it.  It shows, the 13th hole is a par 5 that doglegs 90 degrees after about 250 yards, and the fairway is crammed up against the property line along the first section of fairway, and the rest of the hole plays down a big hill right along a pond.  There's a 120 yard par 3 with an island green.  Somehow in this tiny place, there's a 615 yard par 5, though the tee wasn't all the way back when I played it.  Not that it needed to be harder, I made a double bogey playing from 540 yards.  There's a par 4 that said 340 yards on the scorecard, but it played right into the wind and felt closer to 440 yards.  The ninth hole drops about 100 feet on the tee shot, and the drive has to split two groups of trees somehow perfectly placed right where a good drive will land.  To make it even weirder, these trees are only about 30 yards apart.  The green climbs up almost as much as the fairway dropped down.  Okay, that's an lie, but it did slope pretty hard from back to front.  Not a green where you want to be above the hole.

The par 3 15th

What did I think of the place?  It was weird in places, and that 13th hole really did not work, but I liked it.  It was out there, and it wasn't afraid of it.  It's certainly an exercise in routing skill, it took nothing short of genius to get a full golf course in that area.  It wasn't that hard either, sure, I enjoy the occasional challenge, but having to work for bogey all the time gets tiresome.  It's nice to go to a place where you don't have to work too hard, but isn't so easy as to be boring.  As I said, it was never boring.  It was a very nice day while I played, late afternoon into evening, not too hot, nice and sunny, perfect golf weather.  Really, can't ask for more than that.
 

Update on My Blogs

I've decided that trying to keep three blogs updated is just not feasible anymore.  I could barely do that with all the free time I had, and now, I've got a new job starting this Monday.  So, much less free time.  What does that mean then?  Since this was the original blog, I'm just going to do everything here.  There will be less science and less golf related news overall, but they're not going away.  I still want to blog, but I have to be realistic here, I can't do three at once.  I'm aiming to do at least one post a day, maybe two if it's not a busy day.  I think I can manage that, at least.

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Central Pennsylvania Artsfest 2014

For the second year in a row, I was in State College for Artsfest, a big festival featuring...well, art.  All sorts of arts and crafts, from paintings to woodcarving to live music to handmade clothes, there are so many different things out there on the streets.  I remember I was not prepared for the sheer number of tents out there when I first saw it.  There are hundreds of people set up downtown and on campus, closing down several roads.  No big ones, but still, it's impressive.

More than 100,000 people attend Artsfest every year, and I can understand why.  Sure, a not inconsiderable number of those people are
college kids who just use it as an excuse to drink excessively.  But people do come here to buy things, and I'm sure a lot of people did plenty of business over the course of the event.  I can't say I'm much of a people person, but even I didn't mind being out there in the crowds, walking around looking at all the little stalls, stopping occasionally when I saw something that I liked.  Being unemployed and recently graduated, I had no money, but if I did, I would definitely buy myself some art, because I like art. 

You can't go far at Artsfest without hearing some live music.  It's good music too, tending towards jazz and folk, but I'm sure there's something for anybody with a good ear for music.  Just ignore the terrible college kids who use the music to blast their own terrible music, college kids are just terrible people.  I'd just like to drive that point home right now.  They're terrible.  All of them.  I was walking down, and there was just the worst music blaring from one of the nearby frat houses.  It wasn't just that the music was bad, but the sound quality was atrocious too.  It sounded like they'd worked the bass too hard on the stereo, because college kids love excessive bass, so it just came out so poor.

I got off topic there, didn't I?  Anyway, I only explored State College's Artsfest this year.  I didn't know until this weekend that Boalsburg, right next to State College, has its own Artsfest, featuring Pennsylvania-exclusive artists.  Guess I'll have to go back next year.  I just wish I had gotten a picture of the steak on a stick billboard.  Chicken on a stick, sure, but never seen steak on a stick before.  So yes, if you like art, or supporting local artists, Artsfest is great if you're in the region.

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