World Am Tournament Recap

@Tom Saguto and all Saguto golfers below is a quick recap of my experience in playing in the World Am tournament in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

This is a very well run tournament. There were more than 3200 golfers. The flights are based on age and handicaps. You can Google it for more details.

I played a warm up round on Sunday. Shot 75 with one birdie. So, l had high hopes for doing well the next four rounds. Unfortunately the weather turned rainy and the courses were soaked. My flight played the Blackmoor course. It was cart path only and we played lift clean and place. It rained for about six holes and made a wet course even wetter. I shot a sloppy 82. And the round took almost six hours.

I had coordinated with Tom to meet him at his favorite pub for a beer about 2 pm. The slow round ended about 1:40 pm. I put the name of the pub in Waze and it said I was five minutes away. I raced over there but Tom wasn’t there. Turns out there are two locations and I picked the closest one to the course and that was the wrong one.

Tom and I emailed each other and figured out what happened. Tom was very gracious and agreed to meet me on Wednesday.

Tuesday my flight played World Tour golf course. I has replica holes of famous holes from various course around the world. It to was cart path only and lift clean and place in your own fairway. I shot 91. Not one of my finer rounds. It rained off and on and the play was slow again. I butchered four of the holes and didn’t have a birdie all day.

Wednesday we played The Pearl Golf Course. It was in better condition due to missing most of the rain. I shot 82 with no birdies. I had two three putts. I had a lot of looks at birdie but my first putts wouldn’t find the hole. The greens were faster than the previous two rounds and I had a lot of four and five foot comeback putts. I made a lot of them but eventually that kind of putting bites you in the butt and I missed two of them toward the end of the round.

As mentioned Tom agreed to meet me at 4 pm. This worked out great. Since I finished the round about 1:30 I had time to go back to the hotel and freshen up. This also allowed me to bring along the wife.

We met Tom and had a great couple of hours talking golf instruction, and our respective histories. Tom was just as personable as he appears in his videos. My wife thought he was cute, too!

Thursday we played The Hackler course. Cart path only on 7 holes. All fairways were soft and the grass height was longer than usual because they hadn’t been able to cut the fairways. I shot 78 with two birdie. Both were from draining about a 20 foot putt from the fringe. I forgot to mention there was an optional Skins game each day. You paid $100 before the first round to be in gross skins. Since the flight was limited to a handicap range of .5 to 7.5, we didn’t play a net skins game. There were four total skins. One of my birdies held up for a skin and it paid $685.

Overall, this was a great experience. The wet courses played havoc with my scoring. After playing in Texas and Oklahoma for the last 19 years I have honed a low running draw with the driver. Not an appropriate flight path for plush wet fairways. While all of the courses were just under 6000 yards from the tees we played, I was losing 30 to 40 yards from the tee on the par 4 and 5 Holes. That’s like adding about 400 yards to the course yardage. Instead of throwing darts at the pins with my short irons I was hitting long irons into a lot of the greens.

I recommend this tournament for all the Saguto golfers. It is a great opportunity to test your S&T swing against the shift and lifters with a handicap close to your own. Also a chance to play some great golf courses.

Cheers!