Review: Piney Apple Golf Course (Part 2)

See Part 1 here.

And we're back. The tenth hole is another member of the Piney Apple Par 4s that dogleg nearly 90 degrees club. There's a ridge in the background. That's pretty much it, but actually, the course is about to get slightly interesting!

The eleventh hole is definitely the hardest hole on the course. It's a par 4, and at 400 yards, is a pretty long one, at least as far as this course is concerned. The first thing you may notice, and it was certainly the first thing I noticed, is that this is a very narrow hole. This is the sort of tee shot you would normally want to pull out a long iron just to get the ball in play, and you can certainly do that, but it has the effect of turning this into a three shot hole. Unless you hit that long iron onto the very right side of the fairway, you won't have a shot at the green. The further you hit your drive, the better look you'll have with your second. I'll admit, it's not the most compelling strategy in the world, but it is strategy, and I can appreciate that, even if it does rely on dense trees.

The twelfth hole is without question the best hole on this course. At 440 yards, this is listed on the scorecard as a par 5, but I like it more as a really tough par 4, and that's how I approached the hole when I played it. The fairway initially doglegs sharply to the left, and there is a marshy area about 250 yards from the tee. Again, there's nothing stopping you from hitting a long iron, then laying up at the corner of the second part of the double dogleg. That's the safe way of doing it. It is far more fun to try and hit a big draw with a 3 wood as far around the corner as possible so you can attempt to fade a mid-iron around the pair of trees sitting very close to the direct route between the green and the tee. I don't imagine too many golfers who play here are capable of that combination of shots, but I had a lot of fun trying. It's not complicated, but it was very enjoyable.

The thirteenth hole is a hundred yard par 3 played to a very elevated green. It would be much better if it were surrounded by intimidating bunkers in the true Postage Stamp spirit, but at the same time, it would likely be too difficult for the sort of golfers who play here regularly. Moving on.

The fourteenth hole is a member of the class of hole I like to call "Oh crap, we're out of room but we only have 17 holes what do we do?" The green is actually about 50 or 60 yards away from the previous green, but the hole is 260 yards. Clearly, the solution was to make the golfer trek that entire way to a tee, then play back along that path. Yeah, this isn't an excessively walker-friendly golf course. Anyway, if you've got the length to go for this green with your tee shot (and I do), there's no reason not to. Get past 200 yards, and the hole is completely open.

The fifteenth hole is a 370 yard par 5. That's not a typo. It says it right on the scorecard. I had a sand wedge into the green. Of course, I proceeded to airmail the green into the pond behind, so I couldn't take advantage of the world's shortest par 5.

The sixteenth hole is a 300 yard par 4, and unless you have enough length to actually get to the green, laying up about a hundred yards back is the better option. It's a tough green to hit from 50 yards away, the pitch is uphill to a shallow green, and you have to fly it all the way there because of the front bunker.

The seventeenth hole is another big dogleg. The bunkers to the right and short of the green mean you want to be coming at this hole from the left side, but since it doglegs left, you'll probably want to be on the left side anyway, since it shortens the hole. A bunker at the corner of the dogleg would improve the hole.

The last hole is yet another big sweeping dogleg, but at least this one goes right. You can hit your drive up over the trees to shorten the hole, and while you can't see them in my pictures, there are bunkers left of the green. I guess this is better, at least the trees give you something to think about off the tee. They present a mild challenge.

This is not a golf course that's going to win any awards. I'm not going to pretend it is and say, "Gee, what a wonderful golf course, 10 out of 10." It's not that. It's a simple, understated course for non-serious golfers that you don't even need a collared shirt to play. It was $28 dollars for 18 holes and a cart, and that's not bad. The course in general was solidly maintained, considering the cost, it was very good. And since the course is only 5,500 yards, the round didn't take too long. Also, the twelfth hole was a genuinely fun hole, way beyond the general caliber of the course. I played with a friend, and we had a very good time, more so than if we'd played somewhere more serious. That's the kind of course this is, and the golfing world could use more courses like it. Simple, understated, and inexpensive.

Review: Piney Apple Golf Course (Part 1)

A part of me wants to save this review for November. It would be appropriate, November is apple cider season, and this golf course is not only in an area replete with apple orchards, it actually contains an apple orchard within its boundaries. But it's the middle of September already, and it's the only course I've got on tap. So, Piney Apple it is.

The last golf course review I did was Atlantic City Country Club. That golf course had over 100 years of history, featured work by some of the greatest golf course architects of all time, a harborside location overlooking Atlantic City, and a position at the top of Golf Magazines Best Public Golf Courses in New Jersey list, not to mention coming in at number 74 in their top 100 Courses You Can Play list. Piney Apple Golf Course...has none of those things. This is golf in a far more basic state. I've played courses with fewer bells and whistles, certainly, but this is not a fancy place. You don't even need a collared shirt, which is very nice. It's cheap to play, and the scenery is quite nice. And frankly, I could not have asked for a better day to play golf, it was bright and sunny, and the temperature was in the low 70s. Perfect golf weather. Anyway, let's get to business!

The first hole is a steeply downhill par 4, and is technically the longest par 4 on the course. You'll see why I say technically when I cover the back nine. You can sort of see the green from the tee, but you can't really see the fairway. There's not much to this hole, but the view off the tee is a good one. Probably the best view on the course.

The second hole is a very short par 4, and I can imagine this hole making me irritated were I to play here on a regular basis. 260 yards. That's all it is from the back tees. However, I don't imagine this green gets hit in 1 very often. For one thing, the back tee is offset, making this hole a dogleg to the right. That means you either have to get your drive high enough to clear the pine on the corner of the dogleg, or fade it around. And if you're short, you have a pitch up the hill to an extremely shallow green. Getting it to stop is tough unless you really get the ball up in the air. This is not as easy a hole as you might think.

The third hole is a mid-length par 3 that plays slightly uphill. Not much else to it.

The fourth hole is downhill like the first and plays the same general direction as the first. I like this hole more though. For one, I like the aesthetics of the tee shot, it has an almost alpine feel to it. This course is definitely not misnamed. As for the second shot, it's a drop-shot wedge down the hill with an appealing background. The picture I took of the approach is almost identical to the picture the course put on the scorecard. The only big difference is the flag, it's yellow and on the middle of the green on the scorecard, and red and on the front here.

The fifth hole is a short par 3. We've had the piney part of Piney Apple, now comes the apple part. South Central Pennsylvania is a big apple growing area. I know this, I've seen plenty of apple orchards, but the sheer concentration of them in this area, caught me off guard. I guess there's a reason Adams County produces 70% of the apples in a state that produces a lot of apples. Anyway, the golf. It's a simple hole, not much in the way of strategy here. This may be the easiest hole on the course.

The sixth hole is a par 4 with a big dogleg to the left. This is actually something you don't see too often, holes that bend this much, but this course features quite a few holes like this. If you don't cut the dogleg with your drive, you'll definitely want a long iron off the tee. I didn't quite know what the hole was doing, used a driver, went through the fairway and was extremely lucky to have not gone in the pond by the seventh green. The second shot is pretty straightforward, but the green does have a fair amount of size and slope to it, so putting can be tricky.

The seventh hole is the longest par 3 on the course at 190 yards. There's a pond front right that you can't really see, but interestingly, if you had to pick a place to miss, that's the place to be. Bailing out left leaves you with a much tougher chip shot, potentially over bunkers to a green sloping away from you. Missing right, provided you don't go in the water, leaves a very simple chip back up the hill, and as you can see from the picture, the day I played you would have much more green to work with.

The eighth hole is the longest hole on the course at 500 yards, the only par 5 on the front nine, and arguably, the only real par 5 on the course. The tee shot is normal enough, but the second shot is strange. The green is small and nestled among a bunch of trees and the fairway all but disappears. If you hit a drive up the right side, you won't be able to go at the green in two. I'm not sure, of course, but I don't think this is the original green. There's an unused green about 75 yards right of the one you see below, and what seems to be a more appropriate playing corridor in front of it. This one's a mystery.

The ninth hole is...not very interesting. Dead straight, no bunkers or hazards of any kind. The tilt of the green favors a shot from the right, but there's not enough on the hole to make that any more than a vague suggestion. A bunker short left of the green or right of the fairway in the driving area would make the hole a bit better.

That's it for the front nine, you can find the review for the back nine here!

Farewell to Cassini

Today, after 13 years orbiting Saturn, Cassini will burn up in the planet's atmosphere. This is being done to prevent Cassini from crashing into one of Saturn's moons, most notably Titan or Enceladus, to prevent any alien organisms from being exposed to any foreign objects from Earth, living or otherwise.

Credit: NASA/JPL

It's no secret that Cassini has had an incredibly rich and successful mission. It's done more than even the people behind it would have thought possible when they started. And with its demise, there's not a whole lot of representation in the outer solar system. There's Juno orbiting Jupiter, New Horizons somewhere out beyond Pluto, and that's it. And there are no immediate plans to send anything beyond Jupiter either. But there is certainly plenty of reason to go back to Saturn. Cassini has discovered so much. And so, to memorialize Cassini, let's take a look back at just what Cassini has added to the halls of science.

Discovered 7 new moons: Methone, Pallene, Polydeuces, Daphnis, Anthe, Aegaeon, S/2009 S 1 (Hey, it takes a while to name these things)

Landed the Huygens probe on the surface of Titan. This remains the only time we have landed anything in the outer solar system.

The confirmation of methane lakes on the surface of Titan. We were pretty sure they were there, it made sense, but now, thanks to Cassini, we know for sure. They're not quite big wide oceans like what we have on Earth, and Titan's lakes are confined to the polar regions, but they're there, and the biggest, Kraken Mare, is even bigger than the Caspian Sea on Earth.

The discovery of a subsurface ocean on Enceladus. Of all the things Cassini has done, and it's a lot, I haven't mentioned quite a bit, this is the biggest. I don't think anyone saw this coming. When the Voyagers passed by, they saw an icy little moon, surprisingly smooth and very bright (Enceladus is the most reflective body in the Solar System), but otherwise it was assumed that this was just another dead ball of ice, like most of Saturn's moons. Understandably, it was Titan that captured the imagination.

But when Cassini arrived, things began to change. First, Cassini found the "tiger stripes", a series of fractures in the southern polar region that could be less than a thousand years old. The entire region seemed to be less than a million years old. Then, geysers were discovered erupting from the same place. These geysers are actually the source of material for Saturn's E Ring. This is a dead giveaway, there was definitely a liquid water ocean underneath the surface, and while it was initially believed to be limited to the southern polar region, it's now accepted that the ocean covers the entire moon, and is likely a couple dozen kilometers deep. It's a miniature Europa, and without Cassini, we never would have known about it. It might even be easier to explore Enceladus than Europa, despite being twice as far away, because unlike Europa, Enceladus isn't bathed in lethal amounts of radiation.

Like I said, Cassini has done far more than what I've mentioned, but I think those are the big highlights. It's hard to argue with the accomplishments of Voyager, Hubble, or Spirit and Opportunity, but Cassini certainly isn't far behind in the annals of NASA's most successful missions. It's lived a good life, and a spectacular death dive into Saturn's atmosphere is a pretty good way to go out.

A New Idea For Exploring Venus

Venus is not a nice place. The atmosphere is basically all carbon dioxide, it rains acid, and the surface temperature is about 900 degrees Fahrenheit. Despite being closer than Mars, no space probe has touched down on Venus since the mid 1980s. Why would we bother? Your typical spacecraft would last a few hours at most before succumbing to the extreme conditions. To explore the Venusian surface, we'd have to bring something very atypical.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Enter the Automaton Rover for Extreme Environments. This isn't a copy of the rovers currently trundling around Mars. This would basically be a tank. No, seriously, it even looks like a WWI-era tank. But the big thing is that most of it would be mechanical, not electronic. Electronics are too fragile for Venus, unless they're buried deep inside, away from the heat. The rover would mostly rely on wind for power, and would communicate with an overhead orbiter using, essentially, Morse code. The people behind the concept believe they could get nearly a year of research out of the rover before the Venusian environment proves too much. Not a huge amount of time, but definitely better than a couple of hours.

I really hope this particular concept becomes a reality. I don't know, I just think there's something really cool about it. It's very outside the box. We think of space travel as the cutting edge of technology, but in the case of Venus, the environment is so relentlessly terrible that you have to think in the opposite direction. Don't get fancy, get simple. Don't send a delicate, spindly little thing, send a tank.