Star Ranch Golf History and Overview

This coming Sunday, Sept 16, I will play my first tournament round since May after my collarbone injury. The Austin Golf Association will host a tournament at the Star Ranch Golf Course in Hutto, Texas, just east of Austin, Texas. I have played this course perhaps five or six times and have always done well here.

My all-time personal best of 89 occurred on Star Ranch at a charity tournament perhaps 12 years ago. What was memorable about that round was it was a shotgun start and part way through the round I scored one over par through 9 holes with a birdie, two bogies, and six pars. It was my best ever 9-hole performance sandwiched between the usual triple-bogey-plus blow-up holes to get to the 89. It was perhaps two months after that great round that I quit golf for several years after scoring over 120 with excruciating foot pain at the Lions Muni golf course.

Interestingly, my return to golf occurred at Star Ranch. A friend of mine informed me that one of our friends had to drop out of a charity scramble and asked if I would be interested in taking his place. I had been thinking about playing again and I accepted her offer, dusted off my clubs, and had so much fun I’ve been golfing ever since. My slice had returned with a vengeance, but I had cured it before and did so again.

The last time I played Star Ranch was a year ago on another AGA tournament where I scored a pleasant 96. Reviewing the round on Game Golf found only one blow-up hole but it was a 5-over par where I got my ESZ check but then fatted a chip into a bunker then took two to get out of the bunker and so on.

The course itself is built on “Blackland Prairie” which consists of lightly rolling hills with elm and oaks in the creek bottoms. The course is mostly open with few trees and the challenge is from strategic bunker placement and some water on a few holes. Overall, I have always felt comfortable on this course.

Overall Strategy - Scoring Method and go-to clubs.

From the white tees Star Ranch plays almost 5700 yards at slope/rating of 67.4/110. This is almost as long as my home course Avery Ranch, but with a much easier slope rating because there is less trouble around the wide fairways.

I recently scored a pleasing 92 on Avery Ranch from the forward green tees. This was an iron-only round using the 7-iron as my go-to club on most holes. For the tournament round which is 1000 yards longer I feel like this 7-iron strategy would leave too much on the table so I am choosing to selectively hit the 3-hybrid on a few holes where I may gain an advantage. I have hit 8 of 10 with the 3-hybrid to 40 yard wide target between 150 and 175 yards distance. I hit the 7-iron the last two days 19 of 20 to 30 yard wide target to (downhill) distances between 126 and 150 yards off tee and grass. I finished the range today with a 5 ball 3-hybrid test and hit all 5 into my fairway target with a nice 3/4 easy swing.

The first hole is a 339 yard downhill dogleg right. Someone who can bomb a driver only needs 230 yards to clear the bunkers for an easy wedge to the green. However, I’m not a bomber. Going by Will Robins’ “Start off in first gear” key to scoring, I plan to take advantage of my recent success with the 7-iron to get off to a stress-free start. Two easy swinging 7-irons puts me at 50 yards to the center of the green, and lately I’be been hitting my 50 yard half swing sand wedge to less than 10 feet of the target.  That puts par into play and the desired SM bogey should be easy to obtain.

The next two holes are about 370 yards each. For these I feel comfortable bringing the 3-hybrid into play because the landing zone for the 3-hybrid on both holes are over 45 yards wide which is plenty of room to work with. On each I will hit 3-hybrid followed by the 7 or 8-iron leaving 50 yard wedge to the green. If I went 7-iron, 7-iron I would be left with just over 100 yards to the green. I’m choosing the riskier 3-hybrid strategy here because I believe the wide fairways combined with my 50 yard SW accuracy makes the reward of bringing par into play worth the risk.

All the par-3’s are reachable on this course and I’ll take one extra club and swing easy on all of them. The first of the three par-5’s is long for me so I’ll play 3H, 7I, 7I, wedge. The other two are reachable in three with 3H off the tee. Two of the par 4’s are reachable with the 7-iron off the tee and one is reachable with a 3H, 7I combination. Otherwise, for the rest of the par-4’s I will target 3-hybrid or 7-iron off the tee with the goal of leaving a 50 or 75 yard wedge to the green for the 3rd shot. In total, I plan to hit five tee shots with irons and 6 hybrids off the par-4 tees. Every 3-hybrid par 4 has a fairway target wider than 40 yards, which is what I test on. Even better, most are 50 yards wide which means there’s no need to stress out on the swing.

The 11th hole at Star Ranch is a hole I plan the 7-iron, 7-iron route because it helps me take the water out of play. My miss with the 3-hybrid tends to be a push/fade. My miss with the 7-iron tends to be a pull/pull-hook. The latter is safer so I’ll take the water out of play with the choice of irons off the tee.

Planning expectations, meet execution.

I enjoy planning my rounds in this way. Using Google Earth (GE) helps visualize how to realistically attack the course with the tools I have in my bag. However, the flat nature of the satellite view from above leaves out the reality of elevations. Even though GE has elevation tools, they don’t compare to the vividness of seeing the real thing. Interestingly, when I look at the holes I played last time around with Game Golf, I can recall the visuals of the elevations, like the down hill nature of the first hole, or how far above the tee box the green is on 18 and how far one has to climb to get there.

According to my plan there is the potential to achieve GIR on 8 holes. I average 3 per round and it would be nice to hit 5 GIR here. The big thing for me to get to my sub-90 round is to keep the ball in play. I’m playing an iron off the tee on 9 of the 18 holes and all the 3-hybrid holes have very wide fairways to hit into. Conceptually, sub-90 is achievable with the game and swing I have now. What I’ve learned from the scoring method is that I am more than capable of achieving that goal even without a 3-wood or driver in hand on any hole. So Sunday it will be time to execute the plan with easy swings and low stress and see if I can get expectations and reality to coincide!