Poipu Bay - Home of the Grand Slam of Golf

A few weeks back, Prashant and I played a round at Poipu Bay, home of the Grand Slam of Golf. The Grand Slam is a 4 person tournament where the winners of the PGA Major Championship’s (Masters, American and British Open, PGA Championship) square off against each other for bragging rights.

The tournament has been staged since 1979 with a couple of short breaks. It is a 2 day, 36-hole stroke play competition. Initially the PGA Grand Slam of Golf was played at a different golf course each year, but since 1994, the Poipu Bay Golf Course in Koloa, Hawaii on the island of Kauai has been the tournament's permanent home. With the tournament taking place in Hawaii, it allowed the event to be televised in prime-time television with live coverage because of the time difference.

Who do you think has won 7 of the last 9 Grand Slam’s, including 5 in a row? If you said Tiger Woods, give your neighbor a high-five. If you are alone, a ferocious fist-pump will suffice. That’s right, Tiger not only wins all of the tournaments on the mainland, he also wins the ones where he is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The man was put on this earth to do two things, play golf and win.

http://www.pga.com/grandslam/2006/history/past_winners.html

To speak of Tiger Wood’s golf prowess and then to transition to the pathetic game that Prashant and I are accustomed to might seem sacrilegious but then again, we did play on the exact same links. Yes, we did play from the white’s but hey, who do you think we are, Tiger Woods?

It was an absolutely gorgeous day and we got paired up with a pretty cool father-son combo. For some reason (hint: the golf gods hate me), I can not play well on a resort course, especially in front of strangers. This has been the case for as long as I can remember and the streak certainly continues on this case. Prashant played pretty well considering the fact that this was his first golfing experience on the islands and he even landed a jaw-dropping 50 foot putt for birdie. That was about as close as we came to playing like a tiger.

The front 9 was pretty nice but the back 9 was stunning. The last 4 holes were right along the ocean and the views were breathtaking. In addition to being distracted by picturesque scenery, the wind coming off of the ocean made our shots that much more challenging.

Our highlights on the back were both of us losing balls at an alarming rate, me getting 2 straight pars to finish the round and Prashant destroying his 8-iron by smashing it into a branch on his follow through. PGA Tour, here we come.