My Florida Golf Vacation

[golfmajic]

I just returned from Daytona Florida where I played 25 rounds of golf. It was a wonderful vacation with only one rain morning and all but 3 days I was able to wear shorts.
I was introduced to a wonderful Family run golf course in Ormond Beach Florida called the Riviera Country Club (http://www.rivcc.com/). The owners Charlotte and Eric Meyers are ever present, very helpful and friendly. The entire staff is exactly the same, the best most welcome service I have received in a long time.
The lunch menu and daily specials are all very good; it would be hard to beat the pitcher beers price of $6. The service in the bar area was first class, the girls got to know us and our drink order was on the way as soon as they saw our group coming.

The course allowed me to purchase a one month membership for $400. This allowed me to play unlimited golf as well as walk the course.
A unique feature of this course was no Tee Times, just show up and place your name on the starters list. I quickly learned that it was good to show up, add your name to the list and head inside for a coffee or breakfast.
If you did not feel like doing this they have a very nice practice area. The practice area consists of a putting surface which was very representative of the actual greens, a 200 yard driving range and a chipping/sand trap practice area where there were practice balls often laying around.
The course itself plays a par 71, slope of 122 from the blues, about 6250 yards (according to the card).
For the most part the course is flat with most of the greens being elevated and well protected by traps. This is not a particularly pretty golf course but is always challenging with what seemed to be the ever present variable winds. I also found out that sea level golf for me means hit one more club than at home.
All par 3’s are difficult ranging in distances from about 180 yards to 220 yards, a number of the par 4’s are in excess of 400 yards and all par 5’s are reachable in regulation.
Every Friday the club held a Pro Am tournament made up of a 4 man team. It was best total 2 man score for the team using handicaps. The real neat part is that there are some actual Pro’s on some but not all teams. It is real nice to play with a 0 or plus handicap. As for the amateurs you play to 80% of your handicap. I was amazed to find real Pro’s around the course, one from the Scarborough golf club and one from Laval in addition to a number of American Pro’s. One of the Pro’s was a young lady from the US getting ready to play the Futures tour.
If you happened to be lucky enough to win or place in one of these Pro Am’s, as an amateur you were given a Pro Shop credit while the Pro’s were able to collect cash, great system. I really enjoyed my entire experience around this golf club and plan to return.

While in the area I also played the St John’s Golf and Country Club. This is a very nice well polished golf course, very pretty with fairways lined buy very expensive homes. It was a nice day spent away form what was my home Florida course. In addition we played the Royal St Augustine Golf and Country Club. This is a very narrow difficult club, it seemed like all fairways were doomed and your ball was destine for the rough or out of bounds. It was inexpensive to play ($26 including cart, hotdog, chip and coke lunch), not very busy and I understand why, the type of course you play once just to see it. I understand that it is being redesigned to improve play.
Here is one more Florida golf finding. The USGA Handicap system differs from the RCGA system. When I started playing in Florida I was getting skinned by what I thought were the same handicap golfers as me. I attributed this to the change in grass, winds and altitude. I later discovered that for a handicap of 10 to 19 the USGA allow its members to submit up to a 7 for any given hole including par 3’s. Those handicaps of 9 or less can submit up to a double bogey. This is significantly different from the RCGA which really makes differences in handicap and index when playing with our American friends,
Just a heads up on this little issue.

I also managed to do a number of other things in the afternoons while in Florida which included visiting the World Golf Hall of Fame, taking in the Dog Races, taking in a Nextel NASCAR Race at the Daytona Motorsport Raceway all things that were lots of fun.

Right now the plan is to spend a month in Florida next year doing just what I did this year.

[larry]

I don't seem to be able to get the link to work (stupid computers) I am headed down there in 2 week and might give it a try. Any idea what the green fees are? How busy is it in the afternoon. We will be in New Smyrna and don't want to drive all the way up there if we can't be sure of getting on. Thanks.

[Timothy.Reeve]

Unfortunately, the first link has an additional parenthesis at the end. Try this one:

http://www.rivcc.com

Cheers,
Tim