As all of my golf buddies know, maybe my favorite course within an hour of the Milwaukee area is ThunderHawk, located within minutes of the Wisconsin/Illinois border in Beach Park.

It seems like every time I have the opportunity to play ThunderHawk, it is either early Spring or late Fall, so being a little earlier in Fall this time I was able to refresh the pictures on my original review. Make sure to check it out here:

With a nice forecast in the works for this past Monday, one of my friends and I took the day off to head down to Beach Park, finding the course in awesome shape. The weather was perfect, but we had one complaint: They recently aerated their greens. Probably 90% or more of Midwest courses have aerated by now, so it’s not like it’s unusual, but it would obviously be better putting on smooth surfaces.

Because of the recent aeration, we played with a two-putt maximum. Initially, that was kind of a bummer, but we then realized that there is probably no better way to condition yourself to really go after putts than to feel like it doesn’t matter if you roll it a few feet by. One of the biggest issues I have in my short game is leaving putts short and not being aggressive enough – it was nice to use the day to turn those tables.

Surprisingly, I don’t think either of us had more than one hole that would have been three-putted, even with the aeration marks kicking putts around like Plinko. Lesson learned.