After golf at the most excellent Oconee Course at Reynolds Plantation last week, a handful of Golf Road Warriors and friends headed for the Reynolds Golf Academy, the royal domain of Charlie King, who explained that while challenges like weight loss programs have before and after photos that provide their own rewards, golf instruction doesn’t.  Which is why he’s devised a skills test to give to players both before and after they complete a series of golf lessons with him– and after many of these classes, he offers prizes that people want, so that they’ll be willing to perform the tasks that make them improve, even if the tasks themselves hold out all the attraction of shoveling coal.  The Academy stages a series of Red Zone Challenges throughout the year where they might award prizes of $5,000.

King also points out that traditional high-tech instruction where a golfer’s swing is compared to a touring pro’s so as to point out the deficiencies, is more or less meaningless.  His notion is to teach players the true skills that directly affect the golf ball– how to impart top-spin or hit a draw, for example.  He explains that there really are no fundamentals in golf, just physics, and trying to teach players rigid methods just doesn’t work.

King condenses a few of  his teaching tenets into a very short classroom session and then waves us all outside into the Georgia sunshine to go through a shortened version of the Red Zone Challenge.  He also mentions there will be a prize, so I immediately like my chances despite the fact that my opponents included a teaching pro who’d just qualified for a national tournament, and a local club champion, in addition to my golf nemesis, Peter Kessler.

Our challenge for the afternoon is to hit two shots each at six different skills stations, with an opportunity to earn 30, 20, 0r 10 points for each shot depending on how close to the pin it ends up or– in the case of a 60-yard pitch– where it lands.

On the first shot, a short chip over the corner of a bunker to a downhill pin, three of us earn 20 points on our first shot.  I chunk my second into the sand and Kessler blades his over the green.

Next up is a low running chip of about 40 yards.  I hit two 20s (within six feet), some of the other competitors make two 10-pointers, and Kessler makes one for 10.  I’ve moved into the lead.  I don’t know what the prize is– it could be anything from a logo golf ball to a Maserati (though I figure the golf ball is somewhat more likely)– but I want it.

We move to the bunker itself next– and based on my recent bunker play out on the golf course over the past few days, I’m not surprised when I earn 0 points for barely getting each of my shots over the lip into the tall grass fringing the sand.  The pro and the club champion each score twice, closing the gap.

For the 60-yard downhill pitch over a hazard, Charlie King tells us that learning to control where the ball lands is really the key, as opposed to where it rolls out to.  Kessler and I both hit two into the circle for 40 points (you have to hole it to earn the full 30 points on a single shot), and everyone else hits one or two outside the circle but in 10-point range (10-12 feet).  I’ve staked my claim to a decent lead moving into the putting challenges.

On the long lag putt Kessler and I both score a 20 and a 10, leaving me with 130 points, Kessler with 110, and a couple of the real players with 90.  You may have noticed that I have not mentioned Brian McCallen’s performance, as a kindness and a favor to my good friend.

The final challenge is a six footer with about a foot and a half of break to it, and I get an advantage here by going fourth and watching the other players roll it.  I’m the only contestant to make both my putts– in fact, nobody else makes even one.  I am the Red Zone Champion!  I choose between the prizes of a Reynolds Golf Academy shirt and four Reynolds Plantation cabernet wine glasses– I go with the wine glasses as it’s always a good idea to bring home something the wife might like.  I also already have about 200 golf shirts, and if I bring home one more I may need to rent a storage unit for them.  And so yes, I beat the pro and club champ, but most importantly, I take down Kessler.

While we are right there in Charlie King’s domain, we also make a quick visit to TaylorMade Golf’s The Kingdom– which though I’m told was not named after Charlie King, or even TMAG president Mark King, perhaps it should have been.  Located in the same semi-private enclave as the Reynolds Golf Academy, The Kingdom consists of TaylorMade’s most sophisticated practice and fitting facilities, including a TOUR trailer where clubs that you’re fit for are built overnight so that you can play them the day after your fitting.  Everything about the experience will make you feel like a TOUR professional– at least until you step up and stick a drive in the shrubbery.

The facility encompasses TMAG’s MATT (Motion Analysis Technology by TaylorMade) laboratory consisting of a high-tech club-fitting tool, high speed cameras, launch monitors, and a computer smart enough to understand even your swing.  The system creates a sophisticated 3D computer-animated image of your swing that’s viewable from 360 degrees, including from underneath.  I have no idea why you would want to see your swing from underneath.  Fitters use the data to choose club specs specific to your swing, range of motion, and other personal factors.  Data is sent right out to the TOUR trailer, where TaylorMade techs build your set as if you really matter.  When combined with a stay at the close-by Ritz Carlton Hotel at Reynolds Plantation, there is no better reward for a golf geek than a three-day visit to The Kingdom and a new set of clubs.  And if said golf geek wants to play against me in the Red Zone Challenge, I’m ready to go.  Just let me finish this glass of cabernet first.

Next Stop: Crazyville. Photo by Joann Dost.

In an era when golf course architects seem to take great pride in their ability to make our game ever more difficult (thanks, Jack!), and to punish us in increasingly cruel and inventive ways for even slightly mis-hit shots, architect Jim Engh has taken the opposite tact.  And golfers should love him for it.  I’d give him a hug right now if he was in front of me.

Engh has figured out what nobody else in golf seems to understand: that scoring well– and even going unreprimanded for less than perfect shots– just makes golf more fun.  Engh’s brilliant Creek Club at Reynolds Plantation leaves no mediocre shot unrewarded and even truly terrible golfers can climb up to the clubhouse from the eighteenth green (or at least from one of them– Engh designed three final greens that are used on alternate days) feeling great about their round.  And I just can’t think of a single thing wrong with that.  There’s also nothing wrong with a really good player shooting a 68 or a 69.

When the Golf Road Warriors show up at this private club that persistent golfers can usually still find a way to get on (although you have to play in the company of a member), the starter tells us a bit about the course awaiting us: that no hazards lurk behind the greens, for example, and that we’ll find this layout just a little different from most courses we’ve ever played.  He says this with a kind of smirk, and in fact everyone we’ve met all week who plays here– including many members– says the course is “different” in the same way they’d describe a distant uncle who’s just not quite right in the head.  I can only say in response that not only don’t they have anything to apologize for, but they should be bragging haughtily about this rare jewel that they have almost entirely to themselves.  In closing, the starter also tells us not the pin position but the green position on number eighteen– it’s the middle one today.

In inventing a clever layout that tends to bump balls back toward fairways and nudge them away from hazards and kicks them in slow circles toward the pins up around the greens, Engh also created golf holes of intense visual beauty.  From the first look at the course and its Zoysia fairways from the first tee Creek Club impresses with a downhill shot across a creek and past two sentry trees that lend definition.  After a solid drive I hit two very mediocre shots (the first lands high and off line but rolls down another forty yards toward the hole, the next barely makes it back across the creek and touches down way short  and left of the green but kicks and rolls up toward the pin) on the 578-yard par five first hole, and yet find myself with a 15-foot birdie putt, and I am liking this already.  Looking up at the pin sheet on the approach I note that you don’t often see pin positions of minus 25 and minus 28 feet.

To Jim Engh: We LOVE you, man! Photo by Joann Dost.

After the second hole I’m still rusty but find that not having hit a good shot yet I’m still at even par for the starting pair– it’s just a great idea that’s so counter-intuitive to every overly difficult course I’ve ever played.  I revel in this balancing of golf karma that finally rewards bad shots whereas so many other courses tend to punish even good ones.  In a way Engh’s work here reminds me of David Kidd’s designs at The Castle Course in St. Andrews and Tetherow in Central Oregon, except in an opposite way– whereas Kidd’s earthworks tend to move the ball mostly away from your target unless you choose exactly the right hump or curl and hit in the precise way the design demands, Engh seems to have pre-figured virtually every off-line shot a golfer could hit and created features that usher such shots back into the most playable position possible.

Peter Kessler and I are playing the course in the company of golf professional Mike Davenport, who makes two birdies in the first four holes and must be starting to feel confident, as he actually hits his drive on number five onto the middle of a narrow bridge and we watch it bounce toward an alternate fairway– a brilliant maneuver that most pros wouldn’t even attempt.

By number six I recognize that not only are many of the greens bowl-shaped, but they contain multiple bowls that gather shots and circle them back toward the various cupping areas.  One of these is so steep and fast that Kessler– to our great amusement– is forced to chase after his cigar as it rolls down a hill.  It’s the quickest I’ve ever seen him move.

One shot demand that Engh does require is a high loft to many of the greens, which sit uphill behind various crazy humps and bumps.  But these are crafted so beautifully that each hole is an individual artwork of design elements– or several artworks, actually, as tee shots are framed beautifully by trees and creeks, and green complexes are photographic compositions of hummocks and bunkers (that mostly don’t even come into play) and rolling, curvy lines.

Number twelve is one of my favorites all day– a risk-reward shot where the risk is much less than the reward.  Golfers can choose between two fairways, but the more difficult one only requires a 210-yard carry to reach.  Streams, lakes, and pot bunkers converge in the center of the hole and the two fairways S-curve gracefully through and over and around them.  Possibly the craziest hole on the routing comes at thirteen– it’s a par three over water with a green that wraps 60 yards in the perfect shape of a croissant, where the pin could be hidden completely out of site at the back behind steep mounds.  Everything drains down from raised hills toward the green like in a watershed collecting rain from miles around.

Finishing Hole, Green #1. Photo by Joann Dost.

On sixteen– a short par four with the green perched way up above gumdrop mounding– I hit my best shot of the day, though Mike Davenport tells me I’m a bit long.  But when we get up to the green and I’m looking for my ball he points silently toward the hole.  We’ve been told that the Creek Club awards a surprising number of birdies, eagles, and holes-in-ones, and as promised, my own personal eagle has landed here.

An un-exemplary display of golf nets me an 81 for the day and a long-awaited victory over Kessler, who is nowhere near as lucky as I am.  He’s forced to hand over twenty dollars at the lunch table– it’s the first time we’ve played for money because I told him I needed greater motivation than simply a running tally of lifelong wins and losses to be at my most competitive.  It works as I knew it would, except Kessler borrows back ten bucks at the airport later in the day to tip the skycaps.

There’s at least one moment in everyone’s first round at Reynolds Plantation’s Great Waters Golf Course where you come off a hole that just played down to a lakeside green and then tee off away from the lake and by the time you get to the next green you’re at the lake again and you wonder: did I forget to take my medication this morning?  Such is the nature of Jack Nicklaus’s fine work here that it makes use of a collection of coves and inlets and peninsulas in, around, and beside Lake Oconee to route a layout that at times brings to mind Augusta with its tall pines, sculpted pine straw, blooming azalias, and finely manicured golf playing fields.  It’s as clever a routing as you’re likely to see anywhere, and viewed from above most of the back nine radiates out from a dry point in the middle of a peninsula jutting into the lake, with the holes spoking out toward and away from the water– sometimes at the same time.  This in addition to several holes– such as  the terrific par-three eleventh and the daunting 540-yard eighteenth– that play entirely along it.

Nine of the golf holes at Great Waters manage to play along Lake Oconee, and the ones that don’t still work to build anticipation for those that do.  This former home to the Andersen Consulting World Championship of Golf can make anyone who plays the course with a single golf ball feel like a champion.  Yet despite all the opportunities to hit into the water, the course is as difficult to the mind as it is seemingly dangerous to the Titleist.  The lake works as a hazard, a backdrop, and a psychological “nyaa nyaa” (thumb against nose, fingers wiggling).

You can tell from the very first tee that Great Waters will be all about angles and ball positions.  For playing partner Dave Gould, though, it was also all about new ways of uttering cliches.  In the middle of the initial fairway he told me to “hit it stone dead” and then pointed out his goal of uttering cliches from other cultures (this one from the British Isles) throughout the day.  On the green, when our other partner, Ryan Ripa, picked up Dave’s penny ball marker Gould promised to send him a 1099 after the round.

Ripa, a co-founder of Golf Road Warriors sponsor Grow the Game Golf, is particularly well-named, as he tended to “rippa the ball offa the tee.”  One of the drawbacks of playing with younger golfers is that you hate them immediately for their flexibility and the ease with which they execute swings that would land guys like Dave and me in the hopsital.  Ryan was difficult to hate despite his long-ball capacities, especially as he manned the phone app leaderboard for us and reported throughout the round how our various matches were going.  They were going well, in general– at least until we came to the 18th hole later in the day.  But more on that in a moment.

Number five was a particular favorite of mine on the front side– a left-dogging 422-yard par four that requires a draw smacked out through a chute of trees over a stream to set up an approach back over the stream to a green tucked scenically behind well-crafted rockworks.  Ripa faced a tough shot from the fringe here (Nicklaus’s signature swaley pitching areas surround many greens), and Gould described the shot as requiring you to “hit the gas and the brakes at the same time.”  Number nine also delivered great asthetic and golfetic challenges– the second shot demands a high, soft bomb over a huge slice of lake.  And speaking of slices, that describes my own approach quite accurately.

The entire back nine ratchets up the water-to-grass ratio and asks you to step up your game, as well– all but one of the holes provides the opportunity to utter the space-age phrase “splash down” in a lake or stream.

Going into the eighteenth, our overall match between groups was tied, as was my daily match with Peter Kessler playing just ahead of us.  When we heard girly screaming from our opponents from out on the 18th fairway I first thought perhaps they were bluffing.  But upon coming up to the green ourselves a few minutes later we learned that Tom Berardo– husband of our most gracious hostess at Reynolds, a five handicapper, and even better than that at barbecuing salmon, steak, and porkchops– had dunked an eagle from 93 yards out.  Thank God it wasn’t Kessler, I thought.  Then discovered that he’d only managed to make a birdie, winning our match with his very last shot of the day.

Our hosts at Reynolds knew what they were doing when they scheduled our golf rounds, as each course thus far has represented a step up in quality, excitement, and just plain fun– a tough accomplishment, as we started at a high level to begin with.  And that just makes tomorrow’s final round at Jim Engh’s The Creek Club all the more enticing.

Golf Ball's View of Oconee #17 & #18.

This morning The Golf Road Warriors executed Callaway Hex Black sorties at Reynolds Plantation’s Oconee Golf Course on a cool, atmospheric, slightly overcast morning that gave way to a warm, sunny afternoon.  Designed by Rees Jones, Oconee is the more buttoned-down, conservative sibling to Tom Fazio’s Plantation Course– though whether that somehow makes Jones and Fazio related I can’t really say.

I played with fellow warrior Brian McCallen who was fresh off an emergency visit to the Reynolds Golf Academy in the middle of the night; entertaining golf professional Mark Lammi; and an old friend I’d never met before– Mark Barnes, of GRW sponsor and long-time supporter of freelance journalism everywhere, PerryGolf, one of the world’s great golf travel companies.  If Barnes can use his hands as powerfully and effectively in the office as he does on the grip end of a golf club he must always have an efficiently organized and perfectly executed workflow.  Except maybe with an occasional file flared accidentally via a slice into the coffee room– but from where he probably would be able to fire said file right back at his desk for whatever the office equivalent of a par might be.  Lammi, Vice President of Golf Operations for Reynolds, was obviously afraid that if he played to his ability his boss might think he’d actually golfed more than once or twice this year, so he hit a few balls purposely into the trees and various other places of great interest  while spinning a few stories and making every possible effort to avoid uttering any cliches, as I’d challenged him on the first tee.  He also offered one of the best comments I’ve heard on a golf course in a long time.  Our group of journalists tends to play a bit slowly given that we’re entertaining and interviewing clients and other dignitaries, taking notes for our stories, handling emergencies via phone, email, and text, and still trying to focus every once in a while on executing a decent golf shot.  At one point after we’d lost sight of the group in front of us by a full hole, Brian McCallen heard a strange call from the woods and asked what kind of bird it was.  Without hesitating, Lammi said, “Oh, that’s one of our pace-of-play crows.  They caw whenever a group starts falling behind.”

The Oconee Course plays along the shores of Lake Oconee and through scenic woodlands camouflaging some attractive lakeside “cottages” if cottages can exceed several thousand square feet of gorgeous craftsman-style architecture.  Reese himself said of the layout, “The topography is such that the green sites are natural, the finishing holes on both nines are spectacular.  Streams and various other features such as man-made lakes incorporate the challenge into the design . . . ”  Not the best grammar, necessarily, but very good golf architecture.

Oconee #16.

The Warriors found Oconee to be very solid and reliable in a slightly conservative way, like a well-dressed banker.  Many holes on the front side excelled with a sense of pure craftsmanship, like Stickley furniture.  The layout opens with a long par five of 579 yards in a scythe shape and playing toward directional bunkers before bending to the left toward a lakeside green.  Number five was a favorite on the front side, a 188-yard par three that corners over water and a strangely-shaped bunker, with brown pine straw and green pines as backdrop.  Number eight was an equally good one-shotter at 218 yards to a platform green begging to be approached via the bunt driver shot that I invented and have since honed to perfection, much to the derision of my usual playing partners, who often pay for that derision with ten dollars of “Nassau’s currency.”

On the back side, number twelve is the kind of short par four you want to play every single day– unless, of course, you play it the way I did by missing the green by a foot and rolling back into a rock-lined creek.  The creek bisects the hole in its entirety but there’s a bailout left where you can avoid trouble if you don’t care about getting anywhere close to the pin.  Thirteen presents another formidable long par three over a veritable riot of bunkers.  And just what is the real term for a collection of bunkers– we have a gaggle of geese, a murder of crows, a business of ferrets, a bale of turtles . . .  how about an ohshit of bunkers?

I went out in 39 today but began to erode on the back side.  On number sixteen I attempted a truly dumb approach from off in the pine straw over a creek about 180 yards and succeeded where I shouldn’t have– but it was a rare performance highlight on the nine, though there were plenty of design highlights.

Oconee Clubhouse, home to the Linger Longer Burger.

Brian McCallen uttered a wholly original phrase by calling Mark Barnes Daniel Boone after he hit out of the woods on seventeen and made a rather startling par, but then McCallen counteracted his achievement by actually saying out loud that even his bad golf game was better than a day in the office– possibly the worse offense possible when striving to play a cliche-free round.

The terrific series of finishing holes at Oconee was nearly equalled by the quality of the Angus burger in the Linger Longer steakhouse in the clubhouse, associated with the Ritz Carlton Hotel.  Click here to read about our afternoon at the Reynolds Golf Academy and The Kingdom . . . a golf Fantasyland of club fitting, skills challenges, instruction, and teacher Charlie King presiding over the whole thing like some benevolent golf dictator.

The day began with great excitement as Michaux stepped up to the tee box and ripped a huge drive, having seen the group ahead of us disappear up the cart path toward the vanishing point.  But they took an unexpected hard right and drove right under the flight path of Michaux’s tee missile– though when we rode up to the green a few moments later to apologize profusely they had no idea what we were talking about.  The opening hole worked on many levels– literally– dropping down toward water off the elevated tee and then climbing sinuously past bunkers en route to a terrific green that putted cleanly and well, as Hemingway might have said if he hadn’t been too macho for golf.

On the second hole I introduced my partners to my initiative to play cliche-free golf and not long after that Dave Gould muttered something about number two being a good driving hole– and then turned to us and said, “What does that even mean, anyway– ‘a good driving hole’?  I only said that because I hit a good drive.”  I told Dave he was already one over on the day in trying to play cliche free.  Which set his mind to seek out as many cliches as he could think of, figuring that if he uttered them with some irony perhaps they wouldn’t count.  Dave also, throughout the day, uttered a huge portfolio of endlessly strange sounds, including singing, humming, chanting, barking, sounds most often heard in barnyards or jungles, strategy tips to himself, and sometimes just complete nonsense syllables.  He also liked to talk during his own backswing.  It seemed to work just fine, as he tore up the front side.

Hole highlights on the Cove nine included number four, a 563-yard par five that requires two long, straight shots before turning more severely left than Rush Limbaugh thinks Obama headed, and climbing uphill over a creek, which inspired Gould to utter some frippery about “in golf, as in life . . . ”  And thus continued his round of cliches, though we innovated at that moment to decree that if a golfer somehow manages to utter something wholly original and never heard before on the golf course that it would act as a birdie against the bogey of speaking in “old chestnuts”.  The only problem  using today as an example was that most of the wholly original phrases uttered during our round aren’t really publishable anywhere other than on a porn site.

The National, Cove #4.

On that same stellar fourth hole, Scott Michaux hit one of the best golf shots ever seen since the great game was invented in Scotland (or China, or Holland, depending upon who you believe) 500 years ago, when he launched a high, pure wedge at the putting surface directly between two Canada geese flying overhead at that moment, which uttered squawks not unlike some of the sounds we heard emanating from the  general vicinity of Dave Gould.  It’s hard to say who was more surprised– Michaux or the geese.

Not to be outdone, though, on number seven Dave hit a miraculous shot over 600-ft-tall trees from something like 3,000 yards away (this on a par three) out of pine straw that was probably laced with land mines, to three feet, and then knocked in the putt for a par.  All geese seemed to fly en masse away from Gould’s general vicinity.

And then on number ten he undid much of his own fine work by saying that power corrupts and absolute power blah blah blah, to go about seventeen over on the cliche score for the round.

You may have noticed that I haven’t said much about my own front nine.  And I’d like to leave it at that.

I’m somewhat sheepish to admit that on number fifteen– also known as six on the Bluff Nine– I asked Dave if he was “in his pocket,” at which he just looked at me with disappointment.  It was as far as I’d gotten into a round without audibly communicating a shop-worn phrase– which is of course a shop-worn phrase in itself.  The hole wasn’t much better, as it struck me as the only weak creation in the whole lot– a rather awkward par five that requires a layup on the second shot somewhere to the right of a lake and bunkers, but exactly where was difficult to discern.

The National finished in the finest Fazio style with a muscular par three at seven (where the bunt driver displayed its efficacy on the 200-yard tee shot into the wind), and two finishing holes ribboned by creeks and waterfalls and lakes.  The final hole is a grand par four with the typically receptive fairway and then a daunting approach to a green fronted by a steep bunker with a lake to the right.

Today’s single unsolved golf mystery was this: how can a player hit all fourteen fairways, only three-putt once, lose just one ball, and still shoot a 96?  If you said: he can’t hit an iron or fairway wood or hybrid or even a wedge (especially not a sand wedge) to save his life, then you got the answer correct, but will be penalized one stroke for the cliche.

Reynolds Landing #15.

Your cup may runneth over at Bob Cupp’s The Landing Golf Course, at Reynolds Plantation.  But before we even talk about the golf, let me just point out that the Planatation has put three exclamation points on service!!!  Which is to say that when a server or assistant pro or bartender tells y’all to have a good day, they say it as if they actually mean it, which is a welcome respite from the robotic service we’ve experienced at so many other fine resorts.

The Landing, originally designed as the Fort Armour Golf Club, tends to win your affection in the long run like the girl who’s smart and funny and beautiful with glasses, rather than lighting a passionate flame from the beginning based on pure flash.  The course starts out modestly with a couple of doughty holes that get better looking the closer you get to the greens.  Number one sets a trend for the day by presenting a wide and somewhat bland fairway that plays to a green hidden by the slope and undulations in the long ramp leading up to it.  Bunkers stack up to the left of the invisible putting surface, and I had no trouble seeing those, especially as my ball splashed in the sand in the shade of a tall tree.  The second hole is also open off the tee then turns just to the right and runs downhill in such a way that you can’t see a water hazard that presses in from the right to cross in front of the putting surface– a recurring theme here that may disappoint first-time players until you remember that this is mostly a club course played by members who probably all fell for it the first time around.  Number three begins to suggest that drama awaits, with a distant view of Lake Oconee, which then provides the talent for the next couple of holes.  The fifth hole is a beautiful confusion– a short par four that makes you question your club off the tee.  Whatever you hit, you’ll have a difficult approach to a green guarded by bunkers and a steep slope to the right and acres of lake water to the left.  Everything runs down hard toward the lake, so you need to hit it the way videographer David Whyte did– flair it out forty yards right of the target and let the slope run it down to twelve feet from the pin.  Like so many of the holes here, this one will prove much better upon further acquaintance.

The Landing shows off a noticeable upgrade on the back nine with a long par four starter followed by one of the best holes you’ll encounter all day– a 201-yard uphill par three calling for a perfect bunt driver hit toward the rear of the green so that it will trickle back down toward the pin.  Twelve is also strong, though strong players risk hitting it through the fairway off the tee.  Gorgeous almond-shaped bunkers filled with red sand stairstep up short and left of the platform green.  Oddly, though, the hole features bunkers with both the wispy white sand prevalent on the front side and coarser red sand which looks better and is more satisfying to hit out of.

Despite the fact that my nemesis, Peter Kessler, finished par, birdie, the two closing holes ratchet up the drama and are to my mind among the best here.  Seventeen plays 183 scenic yards to a well-bunkered green set in the trees.  Eighteen is a mid-length par four with the second shot over water to a shallow green fronted by bunkers.

Overall, The Landing is not unlike Sybil, though it has slightly fewer personalities, but presents a challenging day of golf with some great shot demands, drama, hidden twists such as unseen hazards awaiting at the bottom of blind downhill tee shots, and no shortage of scenic beauty.

Reynolds Landing #4.

The Golf Road Warriors consider it a well-positioned “lay-up course” for the other five courses that await at Reynolds Plantation.

I’m sad to report that my effort to play a cliche-free round ended on the sixth hole, when I accidentally told fellow warrior Brian McCallen that there was still some meat left on the bone of one of his putts.  Stay tuned tomorrow for more on my campaign to eliminate cliches from golf.

Renowned Reynolds Plantation Instructor Charlie King is Most Definitely NOT Telling This Player to "Keep His Head Down".

While others pursue various conservative programs to make golf faster and more fun and thus attract scads of new players– programs such as Barney Adams’s Tee It Forward,  the PGA of America’s Golf 2.0 (wonder how many consultants were paid to come up with THAT name) or Play Golf America’s cringe-worthy  “Get Golf Ready”– I’ve created an initiative of my own that will make the game both faster and more enjoyable for everyone, but especially more enjoyable for cranky misanthropes like me.  I introduced this innovative concept on Peter Kessler’s radio show a few weeks ago to the notice of almost nobody other than Peter.  (And by the way– in this current golf climate, how can a guy like Peter Kessler not have a TV show when he’s the greatest broadcaster of the game to ever clip a mic to his blue blazer?  It’s just further evidence of the steep decline of our great pasttime.)  At any rate, I call my new program “Cliche it Forward.”

While some decent players I know set a goal for themselves of not making a double bogey in 18 holes of golf, I’ve set myself the far more difficult task of trying to play an entire round without uttering a single golf cliche.  Sometimes I am disappointed early when someone misses a four-foot putt six feet to the right and I mutter, “How did THAT not go in?”  Recently, I was playing with a group of perky older gentlemen and I made the tactical error of exclaiming out loud– as if they might not have heard it before– the quite exhausted line about ball positions and Brokeback Mountain.  It was as if I was floating above the golf course, watching myself speak the words but helpless to make them stop.  You know exactly what I am talking about, and you’ll be doing an invaluable service to all who enjoy the great game if you take up this challenge to help grow golf by making your own rounds cliche free.

While watching a soccer game on TV last week I was surprised to see the referee proffer a yellow card to a player who obviously should have been more careful in the choice of the words he issued to an opposing player whom he was helping to fall down painfully to the ground.  Can’t all of us who play golf agree that the rules of our sport should call for a one-stroke penalty to be assessed to any player who claims that any particular dog “will hunt” suggests that any golf ball “get legs” or “hit a house” (unless, in fact, it’s about to actually hit a house), or queries his opponent who just left a birdie putt short as to whether his wife plays golf, too?  Furthermore, any mention of the name “Alice” on the putting green in circumstances where nobody in the foursome is named or married to or dating or  planning to have dinner with someone named Alice anytime soon, should incur a penalty of stroke, distance, and a forged composite rap to the shin bone.

I hope you, dear reader, will not underestimate either the challenge involved in playing a cliche-free round of golf nor the importance of doing so to the survival of our great but increasingly maligned game.  Even just by giving this critical imperative your best effort you will, most certainly, at least in my book, be da man.

This week the Golf Road Warriors will attempt to play cliche free golf while visiting the six great courses at Reynolds Plantation.  Stay tuned for further information.  Operators are standing by.  Post no bills.  A bad day of golf is better than a good day at the office.  And so on.

And please feel free to leave your own golf cliche here for us to add to our upcoming book 10,000 Golf Cliches to Utter Before You Die.

Great Waters #5 at Reynolds Plantation.

It’s nearly game day and I’ve just taken a look at the opposition’s line-up.

Bob Cupp.  Jim Engh.  Rees Jones.  Jack Nicklaus.  Tom Fazio.  Those are the golf course architects I’ll be facing off against next week at the renowned Reynolds Plantation golf resort, an hour from Atlanta in Greensboro, Georgia.

It’s like pitching against the 1927 Yankees.

There are any number of ways to plan a sensible strategy: going through my clubs to figure out the best set for the specific types of challenges set by these architects, or having a variety of different golf balls for various kinds of shots; picking up an extra Trion Z bracelet to balance my magnetism and create game-enhancing negative irons; hitting the practice range all week.

But I believe my best strategy in fierce competition has to do with, well,  apparel.  I think I’ll try to choose an item of clothing that best matches up against each designer.  More specifically . . .

1)  I’ll wear my hometown Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club shirt, in black knit, to psyche out Cupp, who designed the course.  I’ve shot some of my best rounds out there and the shirt lends me confidence.

Oconee Course, #15.

2)  Something from an Arnold Palmer Course for playing the Nicklaus layout– maybe the green one from Latrobe Country Club, given to me by friend and colleague Chris Rodell, who has worked for Palmer.  It should serve as a reminder to Jack that he’s not the only golf icon on property.

3) I know exactly what to wear when I take on the Rees Jones Course– a navy blue windshirt with a logo from Robert Trent Jones II, his brother’s company.  The siblings give new meaning to the idea of rivalry.

4) For the Fazio course, a pair of Tommy Bahama shorts.  I have no idea why.  I just like the shorts.

5) Jim Engh is another tough one, like throwing a fastball to a lefty.  I don’t know what to expect, as this may actually be one of the first of his courses I’ve ever played.  Maybe the lucky socks from Kentwool that I was wearing last time I broke 80.  And yes I’ve washed them since then.

Photo by John and Jeannine Henebry.

The absolute perfect golf round would combine the camaraderie of a quietly entertaining friend like fellow Golf Road Warrior Jay Stuller with the steadying presence of a woman golf pro like Dede Cusimano (whose gorgeously smooth swing made Jay and me look positively vaudevillian in comparison), and the artistic perspective of one of the world’s great painters of golf courses (the charming Graeme Baxter), who just happens to be Scottish and speaks with a lilt as freshening as a sea breeze rippling over heather.  Such was our morning at La Quinta’s  Silver Rock—an Arnold Palmer design that’s one of the longest on the PGA Tour (at 7,578) but also long on fun when played from the “combo” tees at around 6,300.  In going around, Baxter taught us to “bluter” the ball—a Scottish term defined as “hit it as hard as you bloody well can”.  The painter– who essentially draws for a living– also worked the draw on holes that alternatively demanded a long drive on a par four that would be hard to reach without it, and a long drive on a hole short enough to tempt you to swing for the green off the tee.  Such as the fifth, where I dumbly swung out of my shoes while Cusimano crafted a fairway wood to end up, well, in the fairway– from where, incidentally, par seemed much easier than the bogey I made from my tee shot, two counties to the east.  Throughout the morning Dede served as our guide, spiritual leader, and entertaining host since she was the most local of us all– she teaches just down the road at Rancho La Quinta Country Club, and I would take a lesson from her any day after watching her play with breezy confidence.  And unlike a lot of golf pros, she actually seemed to enjoy herself– but maybe that was because Baxter was so fun to be around.

Part of the pleasure of playing Silver Rock is to scamper out into the desert and right up against the mountains without the intrusion of trophy homes or some guy in his bathrobe drinking coffee on his back deck as the frame to your tee shot.  And speaking of frames, I’d like to put a nice one around Graeme’s gorgeous portrait of Silver Rock’s tenth hole, shown here.  The artist also happens to be a bit of an escape artist, as he demonstrated in getting up and down from some unusual places: though I assumed he was rooting around beneath a large, overhanging tree because he was thinking about painting it, in actuality he was searching for an uncooperative ball.

To see more of Graeme’s artwork and to read about his golf exploits from Australia to Wales, visit his website here.

Photo by John and Jeannine Henebry. See more of their work at theAposition.com

If you’re the kind of golfer who’s lucky enough to play two rounds each week, it would take you more than a year to test-drive every course in the Palm Springs area.  Sure you can also ride the aerial tram, hike the Indian Canyons, or shop along chi-chi El Paseo.  But why would you, when more than 1oo golf courses of every mood, demeanor, style, and challenge await behind little stone gates and cute guard houses, up swishy driveways and beyond adobe walls?  In earlier days there was even a putting green at the airport, for Godsakes.

Photo by John and Jeannine Henebry.

And if you are what some folks might describe as overly-intense about golf– if you stalk the coffee pot each morning the way you’d line up a putt and clutch your breakfast silverware with an interlocking grip– then consider Palm Springs your just reward for good deeds performed and mulligans proffered to your friends.  Arguably one of the best golf resorts for serious golfers not just in Palm Springs, but in the known universe, La Quinta and affiliated PGA West offer play on five top-tier public venues that have hosted such well-watched events as the Legends of Golf, Diners Club Matches, Skins Game, and the Grand Slam of Golf.

I’ve written previously about The Golf Road Warriors’ Experience at La Quinta’s Mountain Course, which may have been my favorite of all the designs we played this week– until we played our last round of the trip at PGA West’s Stadium Course.  While fellow warrior John Strawn– who is the president of the prestigious golf architecture firm of Arthur Hills/Steve Forrest and Associates– claimed to hate the course, we must attribute his attitude, at least in part, to the fact that he lost yet another match to me on this very difficult track.  But I also understand why a well-educated golf afficianado could dislike the course for all the exact same reasons that I loved it.

This Pete Dye creation has earned the kind of prickly and mean-spirited reputation that some golfers love.  Charged with designing the most difficult golf venue ever, Dye took his inspiration from the Marquis de Sade.  When this 7,261-yard monster debuted for the 1987 Bob Hope Desert Classic, most TOUR players hoped to never have to walk the 151-sloped course again.

In his Insiders’ Guide to Palm Springs, award-winning author Ken Van Vechten calls The Stadium Course, “a torture chamber of 20-foot-deep bunkers, grass pits that could swallow a circus of elephants, a craters-of-the-moon complexion, pushed up greens that fall away to oblivion, and enough water to float the Pacific Fleet.”  Van Vechten recommends playing the course backwards– not literally, but looking at every hole from green to tee so that the best playing angles reveal themselves and you understand that much of the terror is more visual than actual.

The course opens with a stout 445-yard par four that reveals slivers of fairway laid down between bunkers and humps of brown rough.  It will teach you that missing the short grass is more than inconvenient– it sets up difficult approaches from a thick, grabby minimum-security sort of prison.  The real incarceration occurs in some of the bunkers, and the life-sentence of water hazards.

The first par-three comes at the fourth hole, called  not incidentally, “Sand Pit.”  The green is hugged by a large waste bunker to the right and smaller, humpy bunkers to the left.  It’s followed by “Double Trouble,” a short, brutish double-dogleg par five with water left and, oh yeah, also on the right.  Next up comes number six, a frightening 255-yard par three to a peninsula green that seems almost as far off as the extinguishing of our sun.

The back nine is no more unrelenting, continuing to demand precision off the tee and then precision around the greens.  Even slightly mis-hit shots may end up in punishing thick grass or on fun-house side-hill lies on mounds and hummocks, or in one of what can seem like millions of bunkers.  For an added level of entertainment, consider the names of some these holes, which include “Black Hole,” “Eternity,” and possibly, “@!#!!”.

The course finishes with a flurry of utter terror– number sixteen stretches 600 yards and features about 580 yards of bunkering.  Seventeen is the famous “Alcatraz”  with its island green.  I must confess to making one of the best bogies in golf history here to win my match with John Strawn.  After both hitting our tee shots in the water, I clubbed down and proceeded to hit my reload over the green, but it hit a rock in the pond, shot about eight miles into the air, and returned back to the bottom of the putting surface about thirty feet from the hole.  I jammed the putt in and watched all of the air leave my opponents body.

Despite the difficulty of The Stadium Course it is constantly demanding without ever really seeming unfair.  The shot requirements will bring out the best in many golfers who appreciate the high level of challenge and aren’t so concerned with setting a new scoring record.  Again, much of the trouble is as visual as it is physical, and while these features may call you out like a bully, if you respond strongly you’ll see some of Dye’s bravado shrinking back into the scenery.  Good shots are generally amply rewarded, though even slightly errant shots may seem punished beyond the degree of the miss.  Stadium may be one of the best match play courses in existence, and provides more opportunities for heroics than a Mission Impossible film.

Let’s also spend a moment considering a couple of La Quinta/PGA West’s lesser-known tracks, such as the  Nicklaus Tournament Course.  While the meek may inherit the earth, they’ll still do well to avoid this layout.  From the first hole, missed fairways or greens may result in fun-house sidehill lies, hysterically difficult pitches out of thick grass, or worse.  The landing areas and putting surfaces form carved platforms with steep sides and no sense of humor.

Number five is a fine example.  This 364-yard par four enigma features two fairways split by a smirking bunker; guess where you’ll land with a long, dead-center drive?  At number eight, a 172-yard sortie over water, even the drop area is penal, still requiring a water crossing and negotiation of a bunker protecting the green.  The ninth, a 461-yard par four, might call for hitting driver/wedge/eight iron unless you execute perfectly.  And the 572-yard, round-busting fifteenth could not possibly be more arduous; even an immaculate lay-up leaves a nearly-impossible flop shot over water and sand to the green.  The course ramps up to 7,204 yards, but seek professional help (and I don’t mean a golf pro) if you play from the tips.  It’s rating should exclude minors due to violence and adult language.

As an antidote to La Quinta/PGA’s more venomous layouts, try the 7,156-yard, eminently walkable Norman Course, which couldn’t look more different from most Palm Springs venues.  Flat fairways blend into gravelly waste areas that cant back toward the carpet.  Many landing zones narrow toward the hole as drives lengthen.  The many pot bunkers are also canted.  The course actually lies 40 feet below sea level, lending it an insular feel made even cozier by the surrounding cappuccino-colored mountains.  The toughest hole on the Norman might be the 481-yard par-four sixth, where bunkers converge from both sides at around 250 yards.  The fairway widens again only to make room for three pot bunkers guarding the green, which like most here is smallish and fair.

As good as La Quinta’s golf is, you’ll feel lucky to finish your round and return to the fine hotel, which has drawn constellations of Hollywood stars since opening in the 1920s.  Although offering some thousand rooms, the property achieves intimacy by gathering casitas around small courtyards of cactus gardens and petite swimming pools.  And don’t miss The Havana Club, described here in a previous post.

Photo by John and Jeannine Henebry.

Well, the Callaway RAZR X clubs didn’t hurt, either.  The RAZR Fit driver hit a LOT of fairways.  The Jaws wedges led the charge on a lot of up-and-downs from around the greens.  But the shirts seem unbeatable. Today saw the Golf Road Warriors take on Shadow Ridge Golf Club in the morning, and the North Course at Terra Lago in the afternoon (actually, into the evening, as we finished the eighteenth hole in the dark). I went with AUR Apparel’s blue Carbocool shirt in the Aware line.  The fabric contains a blend of polyester and bamboo charcoal, lending the interior a grey tint.  The shirt wicks moisture and dries fast while offering both anti-odor properties and UV protection.  The only thing it didn’t do for me today was putt.

Photo by John and Jeannine Henebry.

The morning at Shadow Ridge was a sublime golf round begun with wind shirts and ending in vitamin D surplus from the perfect weather. Nick Faldo designed the course as a tribute to Australian sandbelt layouts such as Royal Melbourne and Kingston Heath, which is evident in the deep, shadowy bunkering and despite the gorgeous backdrop of the Santa Rosa Mountains.  Faldo said of the course, “I wanted to create a golf course that looks different and plays differently from all other courses in the desert.  I sought to design a course that not only tests a player’s skill, but also his imagination and character.  I wanted to take resort golf to another level.”  If you miss the big, slopey, ridged greens here, you’ll need both imagination and character to escape deep, steep-lipped bunkers or tightly-mowed collection areas that will take your ball to another level.  Shadow Ridge is one of the most distinctive and inventive courses in the neighborhood, speaking boldly with a British accent.

Challenges appear as early as number two, a 609-yard double-dog-legging par five with a green surrounded by round-edged sand pits and a lake farther to the right.  Water accompanies you in from 150 yards to a long green surrounded by sand.  Several bunkers appear to front the green but are really two to three clubs out, a trick Faldo executes well on several occasions.  His use of such subtle prestidigitation will make a second round here even more satisfying, as you can’t understand how the holes really play until you’ve seen them unfurl in their entirety.  But you’ll eagerly anticipate each new puzzle on this ab-fab design.

The rhythm of holes creates a delightful sort of music, blending short par fours and stout par threes and only three par fives, adding up to a total par of 71.  The fifth hole proffers a mid-length par four with a fairway bunker dividing the hole into two landing zones– one safe, one bunga bunga.  Fescue grasses decorate the rough and frame the holes beautifully.  On the back side, the eighteenth can’t help but bring another “Shadow”– Vegas’s renowned Shadow Creek– to mind with its rock-lined creek leading you along toward a difficult green 446 yards from the tee, but close to a clubhouse filled with crisp, professional service and a welcoming attitude.  Shadow Ridge also boasts The Nick Faldo Golf Institute and The Fitting Studio.

Following the morning round we headed for The Golf Club at Terra Lago, formerly known as Landmark Golf Club.  I played the course many years ago and remembered not liking it, but then again I also swear that I remember a dog my uncle once owned even though everyone in my family tells me that the dog was dead before I was born.  I’m sticking with the dog memory but changing my mind about Terra Lago, where we enjoyed a terrific afternoon of challenging golf that unfurled like a series of mysteries to be solved with club in hand.  The two courses here wind through the Chocolate Mountain foothills, making them seem even sweeter.

Before I tell you about the North Course at Terra Lago– one nine of which formerly hosted the Skins Game between 1999-2002– allow me to offer two suggestions to improve this long-famous made-for-TV event: 1) let the participants play for their own money– do a foursome of gazillionaires really care if they miss a $100,000 putt? or, 2) continue playing for the sponsor’s money, but let four players of average income and ability compete for the cash.  Someone, for instance, like me.  Wouldn’t it be more fun to watch competitors spray balls into the desert or yank two-footers when that money might really matter to them?

That said, anyone will enjoy a round on Terra Lago’s fine North Course even without playing for skins.  I say that because I enjoyed it completely while playing a $5 Nassau with John Strawn.  I won’t tell you who won, but I found John’s leather wallet quite attractive.  North’s holes are challenging and well-executed and work together nicely as a golf portfolio.  Architects Lee Schmidt and Brian Curley created a venue that was fun for the pros but also fun for the proles– namely, us.

Clusters of wildflowers decorate waste areas, and lines, clumps, and circles of elegant palms nuzzle the fairways.  On the 576-yard fifth, harvest a few limes for your apres-round gin and tonic before deciding which green-fronting bunker to carry.  The 183-yard fifteenth features an island green– beware Tom Hanks chatting with a volleyball.  Overall, the course boasts elevation changes, great views, fairways flowing over or beside the All-American canal, and more.  Zig-zagging will become second-nature here as the skillful and eye-catching bunkering presents one series of hazards to be carried or circumvented before offering up another set on the next shot.

After winning both rounds from Strawn today I considered sleeping in my AUR shirt to keep my mojo alive.  Then realized that I have a brand new one to wear tomorrow.

Once we spotted the barber pole in a shady back lot and went inside, we entered a world of rare, well,  manliness: leather club chairs, big-screen TV’s highlighting the day’s sporting events; bar service; a walk-in humidor; old-school barber’s chairs; and a soundtrack that reached backwards to the 1920s and leapt forward to more modern tunes, jazzy, a little brash, yet relaxing enough to make you forget that you were about to have a stranger hold a straight-edge razor pretty near to your throat.

Once drinks were ordered we leaned back in the barber’s chairs and let it all happen.  Having never been shaved by someone else before I felt an almost sensual pleasure as my barber applied the hot lather and hot towels in an effort to soften me up, and then heard the distinctive, soothing scrape of the razor taking out my beard like Sherman marching through the South.  But marching pleasantly.

The shave took half an hour, interrupted by applications of various lubricants and softeners, some neck and shoulder massaging, and inquiries as to whether I had additional drink orders to pass along.

When it was over, my beard had been scared so deep back into my skin that I figured I could go two weeks before shaving again.  Feeling the cool air against our faces, we ducked into the warmth of the walk-in humidor for a few moments to choose big honkin’ stogies to fire up on couches just outside in the shade as we watched The Golf Channel and had another round of drinks.  And so we smoked.  And drank.  And discussed manly issues as conference attendees ambled by with their name tags swinging.

The Invisible Man Awaits the Blade (actually, it's Peter Kessler).

The Davidoff Winston Churchill #10 was a fine choiuse– a 5 1/4 x 52 robusto with a somewhat delicate Ecuadorian wrapper and spicy, sophisticated Nicaraguan and Peruvian filler.  It was light and creamy and almost sweet with a hint of brown cinammon.

My compadre, Peter Kessler, chose a Zeno Honduran about the size of a small submarine and held court to fans who recognized him despite the smooth, youthful look he exuded following his close shave.  If I can just grow my beard fast enough, we’ll probably go back tomorrow.

The Golf Road Warriors played the course this morning from 6,300 yards– yards filled with triumph and mayhem, brilliant chip-ins and horror-show swings, and all the drama that four guys could want from one day.  Despite indifferent service throughout the morning, the golf course itself rose above the fray to deliver a rock anthem of great golf.  Dye is at his very best here, and uses the utter drama of the setting to perfect effect throughout the round.

The holes parallel and then crash through up into the mountains and canyons, head for greens teetering ominously on tiny platforms, play sharply around water hazards, and demand attention and at least some skill throughout the round.  It’s a player’s course, and on a good day you’ll be mostly rewarded for your heroic shots, but often not too severely punished for mishits– unless they carom off into the rocks or plunge into patches of thick rough.  Those with a deft short game– especially bunker-like shots hit from thick grass– will do especially well.

Today’s competition was a net game where the two top finishers would get to play in a twosome booked for us on PGA West’s starkly sadistic yet beloved Stadium Course two days hence.  We tracked our progress, as always, on Grow the Game Golf’s phone app.  Thanks to the help of my quick-drying purple AUR shirt I led the field from the very first hole, closed out Strawn for another $15, beat Kessler 5 & 4 to bring the lifetime match score to being down only two to one of the best 10 handicaps on the planet, and won one of the two spots on the Stadium Course.  But the Kessler/Strawn match had more drama than an episode of Glee, with the lead changing hands throughout the morning.

And then, late in the round, chaos ensued.  Consulting our phone app I reported that Strawn was ahead two strokes with four holes to play.  Kessler picked one up on fifteen to get within one.  On the sixteenth– a mid-length par three playing to a pear-shaped green surrounded by cruel rock– Kessler nuzzled one up toward the stem eight or ten feet from the hole while Strawn rocketed one into the quarry.  Peter picked up two strokes.  I reported that he was up one.  Strawn won seventeen with a double.  They were tied, with one hole to play– until I noticed that our app had not recorded the scores on two earlier holes, and once we scrambled to figure out what we each had on those holes, and I entered them into the system (which automatically awards handicap strokes where appropriate based on our entering handicaps before the round), it turned out that actually, Kessler was ahead one stroke.

I thought the news would undo Strawn but he ripped one of his best drives down the right side.  Kessler addressed his ball and smacked one right into the shrubbery– grass so deep we had to tie a line to Peter so as not to lose him when he went in to look.  And found it, beside several other balls that had been abandoned by equally embarrassed golfers.  Yet Kessler grabbed a seven iron and hacked back out close to the fairway, but still in deep grass.  Strawn striped a second shot.  Kessler knocked one more down the fairway to about 180 out.  Strawn hit the green and rolled just off the back.  Kessler roped a line drive that should have achieved the putting surface but a small hillock squeezed the juice out of it and left it a few feet short.  Strawn knocked it to four feet, Kessler missed his approach right, leaving a five-footer.  Strawn made it for par,  Kessler wrestled an unbelievable bogey.  Match tied.  Oy!

The boys decided on an eighteen-hole playoff tomorrow in the afternoon round at Terra Lago.  This evening, I learned that Al Geiberger, a friend of Peter’s, wrangled us two more tee times on the Stadium Course, rendering tomorrow’s competition unnecessary.

I’m wondering if I should let them know.

Built in the 1920s, the original construction included ornate rock bungalows with stained glass windows and interiors floored with planked oak and decorated with massive rock fireplaces.  Outside, hot mineral water gurgles beneath groves of palms and collects in a series of rock pools of varying temperatures.  Overnight guests can choose from fifty-two rooms and suites that offer close proximity to the baths, spa, dining room, grassy lawns, and other great places for escaping your troubles, whether they include FBI and IRS raids, or thoughts of a three-putt on the eighteenth green.

In recent years Two Bunch has begun attracting more actors than mobsters, but the likes of Jennifer Lopez, Matt Damon, and Barbara Streisand look no more assuming in the resort’s signature white robes than any other guests.  High rollers can hole up in the Capone Suite, which features an oak bar, large patio, verandah, and more.

Spa-sters can sample from an extensive menu including a variety of massages from foot to scalp, various forms of water therapy, well-being treatments, wraps, facials, and more.

The place exudes an esoteric, genuine, and laid-back feel that most modern spas fail to achieve despite piped tinkly music and burning sage and folks wandering around muttering “namaste”.  This is the California you’ve dreamed of but never quite seem to find.

No doubt you’re wondering why I’ve taken a photograph of this golf shirt in my shower at the JW Marriott Desert Springs.  As the purple shirt from this great company’s Active line awaits today’s high-pressure golf matches, I wanted to highlight the fact that the polyester double knit stretches like spandex and has a great feel, and is built to dry quickly and maintain it’s shape.  The yarns are treated with anti microbial and UV guard finishes.  And I expect the color to deliver a fine short game in today’s competition at the Mountain Course at La Quinta.

A big day at The Classic Club– possibly, with the exception of Ireland’s Tralee, the best Arnold Palmer-designed golf course ever created.  While the first hole was unremarkable in every way and established a low expectation, by the fourth any cogent golfer would stop in his own spike marks and think: there’s a LOT of golf course here.  Not just beautiful and challenging, but a course that reaches that deeper level of quality inherent in a track with design challenges that force both thought and execution, and a level of difficulty that is subtle as a smoky backdrop in a Bogart film, which is to say it creates the character without bringing attention to itself.

The fourth hole was the start of the real dazzlers, with a grassy arroyo runing the entire length of 525 yards like an alternative reality beside the actual hole– which I never even saw.  Number five, a 402-yard adventure requests a tee shot threaded between fairway bunkers then a short iron over a valley to a platform green pitted with more bunkers that must be approached as gently as a lullaby.  The sixth — a stout par three of 224 yards– also requires a long arroyo crossing.  And then there were holes like number nine, which could be played in about 200 different ways– though preferably not all at the same time.  Fourteen was one of my favorites on the increasingly difficult and perky back nine– a 511-yard romp that allows a bailout to the right, but then punishes it with a blind shot over bunkers to a difficult green.  A strong finish awaits, as well.  One of my fellow Warriors said the course reminded him very distincly of Vegas’s Shadow Creek, given all the water in play and running in beautiful streams every where you looked.

Today my half of the Golf Road Warriors (myself and Jay Stuller) hosted long-time Palm Springs Desert Sun golf writer Larry Bohannan, and Reuben Padilla, with Grow the Game Golf, our official real-time leaderboard scoring sponsor.  Reuben did the heavy lifting with the phone app by entering our scores.  Larry did some lifting of his own by making pars from a variety of unlikely but entertaining locations.  You can see the results from both our foursomes in the final screenshot from Grow the Game Golf.  Note: since this is my story, I get to choose between individual and team net and gross scores to display, and it won’t be difficult to figure why I chose this one . . .  While I barely laid eyes on Dr. Barry Lotz, my partner who was playing in the group behind me, we managed to take down the other three twosomes in the net best ball match set up by our friends and sponsors at Grow The Game Golf.  Way to go, Barry!

Bohannan, pictured here,  is the kind of old-school newspaper guy who shortly won’t exist any more (not Larry himself, but guys with his position, that is).  He’s been at the Desert Sun for 26 years, coverd just as may Bob Hope/Humana Challenges and Craft/Nabiscos, but also everything from Q School to high school sports.  He watched players like Anthony Kim and Justin Allred move from local Palm Springs junior championships to the big show.  Larry wrote his first book two years ago– Fifty Years of Hope– describing the tournament that put Palm Springs on the map.

And the guy can play, though not in any obvious way– he can make a par from almost anywhere.  After one such miracle on number six, which required some strange artistry he remarked, “And I thought covering Clinton was tough.”  At number ten he confessed that he could come into that particular hole eight under on a perfect day and still screw it up– and then proceeded to make par from so close to a tree that he had to buy it a drink before addressing his ball.  The same understated manner was in evidence when he claimed that he won this year’s Distinguished Media Award from the California Golf Writer’s Association, “based solely on longevity.”  If his craftsmanship with a pen is anything like what he’s capable of with a wedge in his hand, you’ll want to make sure to follow his work at www.mydesertsun.com.

In other important golf news from today’s matches I racked up another “Jackson” from John Strawn, who went to sleep on the back nine today, claiming that it was because the phone app wasn’t behaving itself properly, thus causing him great stress and distraction (John has had similar difficulties in trying to use his phone as a phone, locating his room key, etc.), and sought to blame his performance on Reuben, who was innocently representing what the rest of us have already found to be a successful and entertaining scoring system.  I’ll also note that while John claimed that the app wasn’t working at all when he tried to set it up on the practice range, and also claimed that it crashed his computer, Iphone, and toaster oven, Reuben had the device working perfectly for our game and also predicting the future of the stock market, all in about thirty seconds.

And while John hinted that a phone app might have caused his poor back-nine performance, I’d like to state for the record that on its very first outing of any kind, my snazzy white-and-blue-patterned shirt from AUR– made from recycled plastic bottles– scored it’s first Golf Road Warriors match victory in its debut outing.  It also tied in a simultaneous match with the ever crafty Peter Kessler, who was also in the group behind me today.

Rather than put in time at the practice range this afternoon to guarantee tomorrow’s victory, I’ve chosen a lovely purple solid shirt to match with my khaki shorts for our competitions on La Quinta’s Mountain Course, where I fully intend to increase my growing bankroll from Strawn, and bring the lifetime match with Kessler to within two games.

Such was my day with fellow Golf Road Warrior John Strawn, and in the fine and entertaining company of John Faulk, Director of Golf at the JW Marriott Desert Springs Resort– as amicable and good-natured a playing partner as two journalists could hope to be paired with.  The DOG seemed amused by our antics while he calmly strung together pars from any number of bunkers and other unlikely locations and watched us roar over triumphant bogies in our Warrior vs. Warrior match.

And for the record, Callaway Golf’s new RAZR Fit driver (well, mine, anyway) hit the first six fairways with long, gorgeous draws off the tee.  I’m still dialing in the distance on the irons and hybrids, but hitting OVER the greens is a pretty decent problem to have.  Tomorrow we’ll hone the numbers and I fully expect to add to my bankroll from Strawn.

For proof of today’s results, check out the screen shot from Grow The Game Golf’s phone app above, which is the official leaderboard scoring app of the Golf Road Warriors.  Sure John Faulk beat us both, but he’s a golf pro.  He’s supposed to beat guys like us even though he claims to have played approximately three holes of golf in the past two decades (okay, I’m exaggerating).  What matters is that Strawn opened his wallet, though my tax accountant recommends that I not refer to any specific dollar figures (let’s just say that President Jackson also witnessed the transaction).

The Ted Robinson-designed Palms layout  at the Marriott provided the perfect warm-up for the upcoming week of desert golf– generous off the tee, though troublesome with bunkers and fairway moundings and tiers on the greens.  Perfectly coiffed and manicured to floral perfection, Palms is one of two ideal Marriott resort layouts full of waterfalls and rocky cascades at a hotel where you can take a gondola ride to dinner or park yourself at the atrium sushi bar, shop, lounge poolside, or enjoy any number of other activities of not last, but first, resort.

The day ended with a fine dinner at Tommy Bahama’s Restaurant on El Paseo– a bit of a coincidence since I was wearing Tommy’s shorts that afternoon during my round.  The ahi tuna entree was as sublime as my bunker play, and the company of Mark Graves and Joyce Kiehl of the Palm Springs Visitors Association– as well as the first full gathering of all the Palm Springs Golf Road Warriors, including Peter Kessler (who made fast work of a 20-oz ribeye in preparation for tomorrow’s radio show and golf match), Bay-area writer Jay Stuller, videographer Jamie McWilliams, and our CEO, Bob Senoff– promises further good times ahead.  And reminds me that every dinner really cries out for the presence of a CEO.

Okay, gotta hit that king-size bed here in my fourth floor room at the Marriott– breakfast will be arriving in a few hours, and there’s a lot of golf out there to be played.

As if this weren’t enough already, the shirt boasts the following additional features:

Moisture Management

Anti-Odor

Fast Drying

Added UV Protection

Easy Care

Now let’s see if it can go out and win a golf match.

But the real star is the first real-time leaderboard scoring app, Grow the Game Golf.

The Golf Road Warriors will be packing Grow The Game Golf’s updated app on this week’s trip to Palm Springs.

Marketing materials tell me that the balls feature a host of new and proprietary technologies that differentiate this dimpled white sphere from every other one in the game.

For the tekkies among you, these innovations include a dual-core construction, exceptionally durable cover material, and revolutionary HEX Aerodynamics, all working in tandem like Santa’s elves crafting a brilliant new toy that will deliver a five-piece golf ball with better spin separation and all-around performance.

Callaway promises distance-enhancing low spin off the tee but the superior control that comes from generating more spin around the greens– what has long been considered the “holy grail” of golf ball design.  The ball’s I-Core dual core construction maximizes the compression difference between the inner and outer core layers.  The extremely soft inner core helps reduce spin off the tee for more distance, while the high compression outer core creates higher spin closer to the green for more control with irons and wedges.  Both inner and outer mantles are comprised of ionomer blends in different ratios to affect the hardness and resilience of each mantle layer.Callaway calls this remarkable accomplishment “Spin Separation.”  And if it works I’ll call it whatever they like as long as it helps me to separate my opponents from their money.

Whereas traditional round dimple patterns typically cover only 88% of the surface of a golf ball, Callaway’s HEX aerodynamics deliver 100% surface area coverage.  The highly engineered pattern has a more consistent finish and optimized performance, reducing drag and promoting a stable, penetrating ball flight in all types of playing conditions– even the perfect, warm, sunny conditions we’re likely to encounter in Palm Springs.

When the Golf Road Warriors hit Scottsdale back in December I felt a bit like James Bond, outfitted with an ingenious weapon for use against my rivals.  Just as the beloved “Q” provided Bond with deadly umbrellas and toxic fountain pens, Tim Buckman, Callaway’s Senior Director of Global Communications, fitted me out with the company’s deadly-accurate new RAZR Fit driver months before it actually became available to golfers who weren’t also M1 spies.  I kept it in my golf bag with an unassuming head cover and slipped it into play on the second day of our week-long adventure.  And began hitting fairways with a regularity that amused me and confounded my opponents.

Callaway’s OptiFit Hosel system allows golfers to adjust the club’s face angle to three address positions– Open, Square and Closed– by shifting the “cog”, a rotatable element of the hosel that changes the angle of the shaft axis relative to the head. Rotating the cog enables you to choose a preferred look at address while also minimizing the ever-unpopular slice or hook generated by your, um, possibly imperfect delivery of club to ball. Because the shaft doesn’t rotate with the cog, shaft graphics and grip reminders remain consistent– which is to say look and feel remain the same even when you adjust the face angle.   The club also allows you to shift two OptiFit weights in the clubhead to promote a draw or neutral shot shape.  The clubhead itself is composed of a forged composite material lighter than titanium that puts more than 7 million carbon fibers in the crown, resulting in an optimal center of gravity and high Moment of Inertia.  The aerodynamic contouring doesn’t just make the club look deadly; it also reduces energy loss from drag, resulting in higher impact speed and thus more distance.

The bad news is that despite the success I enjoyed with a club that nobody else had access to, Callaway Golf nonetheless went ahead with their nefarious plan to make the RAZR Fit available to everyone.  In fact, Callaway has provided the club to all the Golf Road Warriors visiting Palm Springs this month, which means that now my opponents will be hitting fairways as reliably as golf writers showing up on time for a buffet, and thus the competition will likely come down to short game efficiency and putting– and more on that shortly.

The RAZR Fit is the best driver Callaway has produced, and pairs well with seven varieties of their RAZR Fit irons.  They’re sharp.  And they’ll shave strokes off your game.  But please don’t tell anyone.  In the meantime, I’ve asked Callaway’s Tim Buckman to see whether he can come up with a putter that also works as a flame thrower.

Here are two videos– one from GearEffectGolf.com, and one from Callaway Golf, describing the RAZR Fit driver.

So this week, while preparing for the upcoming Golf Road Warriors trip to Palm Springs, I started looking through the terrific Insiders’ Guide (note the position of the apostrophe, by the way) to Palm Springs that somebody had sent to me in the mail– most likely the Visitors Bureau that is hosting us.  After perusing the golf section I began to admire the writing, not just the obvious mastery of subject matter that the author conveys but also the breezy, irreverent tone– only to discover that the guide book was written by friend and fellow A Position member Ken Van Vechten.  Who when I called to tell him of the coincidence reminded me that we’d talked about this weeks ago and he’d told me on the phone that he was sending the book.

I’ll probably be quoting from Ken’s guidebook when I’m on the road next week, but here’s a great piece of golf writing to whet your appetite– Van Vechten’s description of Pete Dye’s Stadium Course at PGA West, a notoriously difficult venue that I can’t wait to play.

KVV his own self.

“During high season players with Furyk-meets-Freddy Kruger swings have stood 12 deep on the first tee, having willingly forked over nearly $300 for the honor.  They lost sleeve after sleeve of four-dollar-each Titleists, put so many Xs on scorecards that it looked like a fund-raising tourney for former porn stars, and needed an assist from two CPAs and an MIT grad in the locker room just to add it all up.  And they loved it.”

Read more from Ken Van Vechten here.

Putting aside for a moment the ice cream honor bar (which I’ll come back to here, but not as often as I went back to the one at Martis Camp), which may be the single best idea at a destination that I’ve ever encountered, the entire grounds of the 2,177-acre property (set amidst additional national forest land) have been created to deliver  moments of suddenly-realized happiness.  I really cannot think of any place I’ve ever traveled to that I more wanted to bring a large group of my friends for a weekend of brutal gaming rivalry, occasional trash talking, and other equally competitive cameraderie.

The lodgings themselves– houses and cabins which are required by covenants to reflect “mountain architecture,” whether that’s the Tyrolian Mountains or the Rockies, whether old-school big-timber log homes or sleek modern adaptations full of glass and slate– set a naturalistic feel to even the largest homes.  And there are some large ones.  Complexes, really, some consisting of several houses neatly attached or standing side by side so that visiting relatives or friends might enjoy their own private enclaves within the private enclaves.  There’ll be a maximum of 653 homes on the massively extensive property, including acre-plus estate homesites and cabins of up to 3,250 sq ft.  And though not normally available to non-journalists, a morning’s tour of five or six of the houses, which were mostly designed by named architects from the Bay Area, revealed that even the largest second homes can be designed with museum-quality artistry that still manages to feel warmly encompassing.  A favorite detail of mine was the Zen-like house with a yoga room hanging like a treehouse from an upper level and the flooring of small stones that deliver pressure point massage to the bottom of your feet as you walk down one hall.  All manner of modern media rooms, including one that was actually a mini-theater designed with a Moroccan motif, compete with wine cellars and great rooms and really really great rooms to provide the ultimate in luxurious living.

None of which really has anything to do with the games waiting to be played.  Although visiting Martis Camp with my wife, I envisioned a trip of my men friends who would run out of time in the day before they found all the different activities at which we could compete– and that’s without considering drinking cold beer or an icy Sonoma Chardonnay on a warm porch in the evening as a sport.

So let’s start with the Family Barn which is, well, a really really big red barn– 18,000 sq ft of giddy childishness.  Out back are swimming pools and all the assorted chlorinated fun that goes along with them.  You could stage a water basketball game there, or swim laps, or simply sip a milkshake in the shade.  Or unwind in the cool mountain air in the jetted tub.  Inside there’s an old-fashioned soda fountain and also a restaurant  serving casual food all day– like burgers.  And wild boar risotto.  Downstairs is the bowling alley.  On the main floor await video games like Pacman, pinball, pool tables, shuffleboard (the bar kind, not the Miami Beach kind), and then, through a giant sliding barn door that’s open to the lounge area, is the Camp Hall with half-court hoops and floor hockey.  In summer, other barn doors on the opposite side transform this room into an outdoor stage facing the terraced outdoor amphitheater, where folks like Lyle Lovett and Jose Feliciano stop by to play informal concerts.  Upstairs is home to the Art Loft where you can take drawing and painting classes, although it is difficult to wager with your friends on these.  The 44-seat theater is located next door. Of course, you could also go back to your house or cabin for further game playing– ours was stacked with  Scrabble and cribbage and jigsaw puzzles, and I envisioned hours devoted to these pursuits among the high ceilings, dark wood, and sweet-scented fire.

As a break from gaming you could walk 26 miles of paths and trails, say, along a creek that disappears into a wilderness area, or winds past the fishing lake; or head to the Craftsman-style Lost Library hidden in the woods with a cairn garden and espresso machine and the New York Times.  It’s right near the community garden, which has its own naturalist.  But on your way to these you might pass the park pavillion, with its mini soccer field, outdoor basketball court, bocce, grand croquet lawn and lawn bowling court, sand volleyball, labyrinth, barbeque grill, and more.  And okay, tennis.  And the previously mentioned ice cream honor bar which I would appreciate it if you would not tell anyone that I visited, or how often.  And alright, a 60,000-sq-ft. bentgrass golf putting park of perfect turf winding amidst aspens, lakes, and streams.  It may be the only putting course where you could actually lose a ball.  And not care.

To stop at this point in the day, even if you’re tired, would be like playing all of these other games and suddenly remembering about the Tom Fazio Golf Course, for godsakes, with a slope of 141 from the back tees and beautiful retro square tee boxes.  I found it to be the rare course that may actually play easier from farther back, as the longer set renders many of the hazards irrelevant.  I shot 92 on the first day there, landing in many bunkers.  Then followed with an 82 from the longer tees because I couldn’t reach those bunkers.  Even the flagsticks here are special, artily crafted of wood and metal.  The course opens with a very forgiving hole with room to miss right and two round humps in the green.  Number two is a less forviging hole of 442 yards from the blue tees with a green-edge reached over a rock outcropping that drops off into never never land– meaning never never go there.  Number four may be the best on the course, 515 reachable yards (remember you’re at altitude here) that begins from an elevated tee box.  Though trees block the view to the left, the hole is actually open and parklike.

By the eleventh, you may tire a little of the shape of holes that dogleg left and require a draw over or around a bunker at the corner, but by the twelfth you’ll hear the faint music of a stream in the woods as the course drops down into a wetland and becomes more interesting and secluded.  The seventeenth delivers the best view of distant mountains all day, and eighteen provides a great finish just below the towers and great rock work and the notion of repose in The Lodge– the ginormous center of high-comfort, good-eating, high-life that Martis Camp is built around.  It’s set on a rock promontory overlooking the Sierras and has every facility you’ve ever hoped to find in a golf clubhouse.

I haven’t even mentioned Martis Camp’s private ski hill and lodge, and access to Northstar at Tahoe.  That’s for another story.

The only bad news?  Martis Camp is private, so befriend a member or buy your own home here.  www.martiscamp.com.

Our first round of golf in Scottsdale had us on the renowned Troon North Monument Course, the highlight of which was calling my shot on the 544-yard  par-five third hole, where a red sandstone monolith right out of 2001 A Space Odyssey except for the monkeys divides the fairway where the hole doglegs off to the right.  I discussed the shot with my playing partners– Brett Brooks , the manager of marketing communications for Troon golf; fellow Golf Road Warrior Terry Moore; and PR wizard Jerry Rose, of Communication Links.  They seemed to take pleasure in my indecision as I tried to guess whether I was going to hit a low-running draw that would skirt the rock on the left, or a cut shot that would track toward the rock and then swerve in the direction of the hole just before impact.

Deep down, I figured  that whichever shot I decided upon I’d probably hit the monolith and end up with an unplayable lie at the base anyway.  But I muttered something about going with the fade and stepped up and hit about the best tee shot I’ve launched since Sputnik.  It left me with 230 to the green and perhaps for the first time since the invention of the cell phone I hit my second shot OVER the green on a par five, chipped close, and walked away with a clean, easy birdie.

None of which has anything to do with cigars, but did you expect me NOT to tell that story?  My front nine score of 40 inspired me to pull a stogie out of the bag.  I opted for Certifresh’s  Oliva Series V Torpedo, singly packaged with a photo of the Monument Course.  It’s a rich, deep, mahogany beauty from Nicaragua dressed in a Habano sun-grown wrapper, oily and nutty, with a clean, cedary freshness to it and hints of coffee, chocolate, and other delicious flavors.  The shapely torpedo exudes an air of power even before you fire it up, and mine burned like a champ, retaining its ash even after I set it down on tee blocks and greens to hit a few more no-less suprisingly good shots.

While I got a bit of a nicotine lift early on it leveled out and proved a calming cigar that accompanied me like a good caddie, not speaking much but there when I needed it.  A strong cigar can sometimes send my short game and putting packing, but the Oliva was a steadying influence.  Was it a good match for the day– a crispish sunny afternoon with a nip of Arizona winter in the air?  Well, I shot 40 on the back nine with a double on 18 that I can’t blame on my devoted Nicaraguan friend.

For me, it’s easier to picture dinosaurs roaming the earth than to imagine that just 25 years ago, even seasoned travelers actually lugged wheel-less suitcases through airports.  But just as  sea-dwelling creatures eventually evolved onto land, so too did luggage develop wheels.  Say happy 25th birthday to Travelpro’s Rollaboard, the suitcase that marked a Darwinian leap forward for travelers across the planet.

It began with Northwest Airlines pilot Robert Plath, who first changed the physical orientation of luggage from horizontal to vertical, added wheels and an extension handle, and brought man forward and out into the light.

Plath eventually began piloting the new company know as Travelpro and providing Rollaboard pieces to airline flight crews and pilots.  The early adaptors took to the product with such fierce dedication that Travelpro launched the product commerically through retail stores in the mid 1990s.  Inc. Magazine recently ranked the Rollaboard as one of the top innovations in modern history.

Plath didn’t invent the wheel: he just figured out one of the best possible ways to use it.  And just like a good pilot, the product took off from there.

This in the parking lot of We Ko Pa Golf Club, one of the best courses we played on the recent Golf Road Warriors (GRW) trip to Scottsdale.  I’m posing with my 28-inch T-Pro Bold Expandable Rollaboard, which is ready for action as I head for Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport directly from the golf course parking lot.

We Ko Pa was a perfect last hurrah as Peter Kessler and GRW videographer Jamie McWilliams joined me on a crisp morning with fog rising off the golf holes when we arrived just before nine.  The others left early providing me with the first peace and quiet I’d had during an over-stuffed trip full of great golf, terrific lodgings, belt-tightening meals, superior cigars, and more.  I played the last three holes alone in the warming afternoon, enjoying the spaciousness of the surrounding desert and views of the Verde and Salt River Valleys and the Superstition Mountains, communing with a few saguaros and an inquisitive coyote who watched one of my tee shots in amazement, as if to ask: you actually hit one straight now that nobody’s watching?

The Cholla Course at We Ko Pa, designed by Scott Miller, plays out into a desert wilderness that stirs the spirit and challenges the golf senses with a series of thre- four- and five-shot puzzles that require concise decision making: when to attempt a carry over the desert, and how much to bite off; whether to lay up in front of well-protected greens or to carry a few hazards in an attempt to arrive earlier.  The holes are all well-considered and challenging without being cruel.  The rhythm of holes is well-balanced and the scenery pristine, with no housing to mar the backcountry experience– just a cozy clubhouse  inspired by local Yavapai Native culture and built with sloped entry walls and a wood-beam entryway to create a natural, embracing, canyon-like feel.

The elves asked us to tell you that Santa never liked your cookies, anyway.

Actually, the problem extends to many pro shops, which are happy to stock a humidor on the counter but not always as happy to remember to put water in it to keep the cigars fresh.

Enter our friends from Certifresh, who have begun packaging some of the best smokes available anywhere in sealed little cigar condos complete with mini humidifiers.  The cigars stay cozy and moist for up to a year, so if you buy a dozen and stash them in your golf bag, your office, you car, your gym bag, or wherever, as long as you come back to them within a year they’ll still be in perfect smoking shape.

And if you’re a golf pro or a tournament organizer, Certifresh can package each stick– or a pack of four– with a logo, photo, card, or other branding.  In fact, they don’t generally sell directly to the public unless you’re hosting a large golf event, so make sure to ask your local pro to begin stocking them.

We’ve been smoking Certifreshes all of this week in Scottsdale.  Pictured above is beloved beer and golf writer Tom Bedell on our outing this morning with Desert Wolf Tours, who allowed us to drive crazy off-road vehicles on a remote desert trail that crossed streambeds and climbed mesas and took us past ancient ruins and a turquoise mine.  More on this adventure coming in another post.

The cigar smoker’s highlight of the tour was watching Bedell seize an unusual opportunity: our guides were preparing a piece of strawberry cactus for us to taste, and to get it ready they had to burn the spines off.  The moment a flame appeared, so did Bedell, with Certifresh in hand.

We recommend against trying this at home.

While we’re on the subject of cigar-smoking golf journalists, here’s a shot of Peter Kessler and myself enjoying a Certifresh stogie at the Boulders Resort’s south course this afternoon.

Today during an afternoon round at The Boulders South Course, playing a nine-hole skins game which he failed to win with a four-footer worth $32, we discovered they’d already named a golf hole after “the voice of golf.”

Front nine leaderboard at Troon North Monument Course. Check out El Jefe (but ignore 9th hole)!

I am not a golfer who thinks that rangefinders are a good idea, or who enters my greens-in- regulations and putts-per-hole into a phone application.  In fact, I usually leave my phone in the car during golf rounds.

But this week, during the epic Golf Road Warriors siege of Scottsdale, we agreed to use a scoring app provided by Grow the Game Golf, which recently debuted real-time leaderboard scoring and other features.

Today we took on Troon North’s highly regarded Monument Course, a Tom Weiskopf design that includes several enticing driveable par fours, great short holes, a few carries over desert flora and fauna, and an overall aesthetic that defined great desert golf when it was first built.

We had two foursomes, and one player in each group entered all scores on the app.  As the day progressed, we were able to track our progress against the other group in a one-best-ball competition, and I was able to keep a close eye on my golf nemesis, Peter Kessler, in the match we were playing, despite the fact that we were in different foursomes.  The Grow the Game Golf app allowed for gross and net leaderboard watching of all players and teams in our little group.  And I took great pleasure in knowing that each time I made a par, Kessler, in the group behind me, was watching my score on his phone and cursing his luck and generally wondering how I was able to post an 80 on such a difficult course.  The beauty of the app is that it lets the golf do the talking for you, if you’re playing well, and you can enjoy the fact that everyone else in your party– whether there’s ten or one hundred– will know when you eagle #15 as my partner Terry Moore did today, or you knock down four 4s in a row, as I did to start the back nine this afternoon.

The app also keeps track of all players’ net and gross scores in addition to specific games you might be playing.  Future versions may even allow you to trash talk to the group behind you when they look at their phones to see how you’re doing.  And what, really, could be better than that?

I took the class this afternoon with fellow Golf Road Warrior Tom Bedell, who grunted his way through the poses in a way that led me to keep my Iphone close at hand in case we needed to call 911.

Having taken my share of yoga classes in the past I was impressed by Dodie’s ability to lead us through traditional poses such as standing pigeon, warrior, plank, and others, and explain concisely which golf muscles they stretched and how those muscles are engaged in the the complex motion we know as the golf swing.

And she managed to do it in a relaxed, non-pressured environment that pushed us just enough to understand how much we could improve our range of motion, without causing much any more pain than you might feel after shanking a pitch shot.  With a personality as easy and fluid as her poses, Mazzuca makes a strong case for combining strength and flexibility to improve your game.

I can only wonder how much better I might have played if I’d taken the class before golfing Troon North’s Monument Course this afternoon.  We’re hoping Dodie is going to join the warriors later this week for a round of golf and we look forward to her company.  In the meantime, we’ll be practicing a little downward dog and child’s pose in the hopes of hitting a few more fairways and draining a few more putts.

Here’s a quick view of a few things that awaited the warriors upon arrival . . .

Pillow Treat, Golf Road Warriors Style.

Nightcap courtesy of our friends at the Four Seasons . . .

Just getting started: socks, underwear, shorts, golf shirts.

As a professional travel writer I’m supposed to be cat-like in my stealthiness, moving through the world with nothing bigger than a Ziplock bag to hold a week’s worth of clothing, toiletries, electronics, reading material, and enough Ibuprofen to numb a pack horse.  But the fact is– as I’ve learned from my many trips to Bandon Dunes for warrior-like golf outings– that the guy who’s most prepared for a trip, usually performs best on the golf course.  So at Bandon, carrying three separate rain suits, as well as a variety of under-layers, golf shirts, and fleeces, has always paid off.

Packing for a week of golf in Scottsdale would appear simple until you check the weather forecast and discover that hot, sunny days await, but so do crisp winter nights.  Temps are expected to swing from mid-seventies in the afternoons to mid-forties after dark.  And since we’re already paying the airlines for the privilege of actually taking belongings with us on trips these days, we might as well push those bags to their weight limits.

I start with the essentials of my itinerary: six days, eight rounds of golf, three formal dinners, a moonlight bike ride, yoga and fitness classes, massages, some crazy desert adventure involving driving SUVs and shooting firearms.

So, three pairs of shorts each to be worn twice each, plus an extra pair that doubles as a bathing suit.  And the rain pants I chose for this trip have unzippable legs that turns them into another pair of shorts.  Six golf shirts– one for each day.  Three with stripes, three solid, to be mixed and matched with shorts.  A casual ox blood belt that looks great with any color or pattern.  Six pairs golf socks.  Dark hat (from Ballyliffin Golf Club), light hat (from Bandon Dunes).  Funky old-school cap from Puerto Rico’s Royal Isabella.  Seven pairs underwear, because you never know (one pair goes in carry-on bag).

Two wind shirts that double as sweaters in the evenings, and one fleece, plus two sets of Smartwool under-layers and one pair of long underwear for cold mornings and/or biking and yoga.

Two pairs shoes, one brown, one black.  And a pair of Keen’s for wearing with shorts, biking, desert wildness, etc.  Another belt for evenings.

Jeans and sport coat for plane, making up-grade more likely due to respectability factor.  Three slacks for evenings, one more casual pair for golf on cold day.

Three dress shirts, two short-sleeve shirts to go under wind shirt/sweaters for evenings.

No friggin’ tie!  We’re not going to be dining at the Royal and Ancient clubhouse.

Sleeping outfit.

And then all the electronic paraphernalia, from Iphone and accompanying chargers and cords; digital camera; laptop; notebook and pens; reading materials.  Crucial documents.  Stack of business cards.  That sort of stuff.

Toiletries– with enough varieties of drugs to fight anything from scurvy to anthrax, earplugs in case screaming kids (or adults) live next door.

Squeeze it all into two of Travelpro’s newest and best suitcases– one for checking, one for carrying on, and I’m good to go.

I’m comforted to know that most hotels will have a toothbrush at the front desk.

I start with golf shoes  (two pair, one white, one black); golf towel (I’m going with a brand new Sunriver towel in a rich blue that matches my golf bag); a dozen golf balls (Callaway); two fabulous Herzl golf gloves; my new Callaway Razr X set with Odyssey putter; tee bag from Castle Stewart (a nice plaid); cigar carrier and cutter and lighter to use on the box of sticks waiting for me at The Four Seasons Scottsdale care of our friends at Certifresh cigars; band-aids, allergy pills, marking pen; rain gear (Nike’s Storm Fit tops and bottoms and a Goretex bucket hat from Chambers Bay Golf Course).  I think that’s about it

I’ll pack it all in my Club Glove golf travel cover with the towel wrapped around the heads, headcovers on, and rain-cover employed, as well.  The best part of taking the golf travel bag– despite the $25 fee for an additional bag– is that I can fill it with laundry, gifts, and other items on the way home.

One word: Scottsdale. Which the Robb Report once called the best place to live in the US for golf. I’ll fly business class and begin my trip with a warm-up round on the Kierland Golf Club just because it’s fun, then make my way to a Kiva suite (outdoor shower, fireplace, plunge pool) at the Four Seasons Resort, where I’ll walk the two terrific Troon North courses at least twice or until I’m out of golf balls. I’ll eat pillow mints to make the money last longer and begin checking world-class courses off my list: We-Ko-Pa (the Saguaro course is shown above), Grayhawk, The Boulders, TPC Scottsdale, and every course with the word “desert” actually in it, including Desert Canyon, Desert Forest, Desert Highlands, and Desert Mountain. When I’ve tried all the dinner entrees at the Four Seasons’ Talavera Restaurant I’ll move to the beloved Fairmont Scottsdale Princess and squander the rest of my funds at the Willow Stream Spa. I won’t leave until my pockets are empty and security escorts me to the outer gate with a stern warning.

Excerpted from the December “A List,” available at The A Position.com.  See how more than a dozen other writers at The A Position answered the burning question of how they’d spend $10,000 on golf.  And don’t expect to see my name on live us open golf scores listing.  It won’t be there no matter how much I spend.

Here’s an ironic fact: the players who can successfully pull off these shots are also the least likely to need them.  Sure, I can bury an approach in the sand, trickle my tee shot into a shallow creek, or spray a long iron into dense shrubbery.  But once I get there, I’m the guy who might slash at the ball three times before using the Johnny Unitas wedge– which is to say throwing my ball back onto the grass.  That’s why I’ve consulted some of the West’s best golf instructors, who offer the following advice on how to hit a few of these seemingly impossible shots.

The only thing worse than having your mile-high wedge shot fall two feet short of the green and plug in a bunker (the well-known “fried egg” lie) may be to have it sail over the green and plug in the back bunker—on a downslope.  For a good visual of a golfer hitting an impossible bunker shot, consider Ernie Els’s nearly mystical escape from a bunker beside the 13th green in the final round of the 2002 British Open at Muirfield.

For guidance on how to hit a plugged, downhill bunker shot I turned to Tim Mahoney, Director of Education for Troon Golf and an instructor at Talking Stick Golf Club in Scottsdale, Arizona.  Mahoney, who is a GOLF Magazine Top 100 Teacher, offers some general advice before getting to the specifics.

“First and foremost, never hit two shots in a row from a bad lie,” he advises.  “Get back to the grass.

“Second, never attempt a miracle shot after you’ve hit a bad shot.  Take your medicine and get back in the game.

“To hit this shot you need to understand how a sand wedge works.  It’s built like a shovel, and is the only club that has bounce.  The worse a lie is the more sand you want to take with your shot.  Here, to take a lot of sand, tilt the club up by closing the face at address or leaning the shaft forward, toward your target.

“Then position your body to swing along the slope by setting your shoulders parallel to the slope.  On a downhill lie, lean left and put more weight on your lower foot.

“Finally, trust your shot.  The golf ball will fly in the direction of the slope.  And remember that there’s no rule that says you have to fire at the flag.  You can always go sideways or backward.”

Mahoney adds that this is really an easy shot—but that’s why he’s Troon Golf’s Director of Education and I’m the one who buried it downhill in the bunker to begin with.

Doug Hammer, Director of Instruction at Troon North, says, “Out here in the desert the greens are firm and fast and often elevated.  They also have false fronts with hazards and heavy bunkering to hit over, so you need to know how to hit the high, soft shot.”

When trying to launch shots likely to be approved by NASA, Hammer recommends a full swing with the ball positioned forward in your stance.  “Keep your lower body quiet.  If you slide you’ll catch the ball on an upswing.  Try to pinch the ball between the club and the turf and keep the clubface from closing, like on a cut shot.  Inside of 100 yards, take less than a full swing with a slightly weaker grip and an open stance. You want to slip the club under the ball and above the turf.  Try not to take a divot, and just brush or sweep the grass.”

The high-flier may prove especially helpful on Troon North’s Pinnacle course, where the front nine features holes with forced carries over arroyos; or on the second hole of the Monument Course, a par three of approximately 150 yards that plays to a very elevated green with bunkers positioned short and right and a big false front.  If you’re short, the ball will roll back down to where you can’t even see the hole.  Which, at least, will give you another opportunity to practice the short high shot again.

A lot of resorts– particularly those built back in the boom of the 1980s– have grown tired enough to be forced into retirement, especially with all the great new boutique properties popping up  full of eco-engineering, flat-screens t.v.s as thin as the 600-thread cotton sheets, and animatronic deer walking past your room on cue (okay, I’m making that up).

Which is what makes a visit to The Boulders Resort, north of Scottsdale, so refreshing (I mean, in addition to 36 great holes of golf, a Golden Door Spa, Four-Diamond Restaurant, and newly renovated private casitas).  Few places on this planet are just inexplicably magical.  That said, The Boulders— not coincidentally located in the town of ‘Carefree’ outside Phoenix– is the destination you hardly dared dream of.  The resort and golf courses have collected scads of awards, including the coveted Platinum Resort designation from GOLF magazine.  It is the rare property that just keeps getting better with age.

Of course, the sublime setting on 1300 acres of Sonoran desert foothills has not changed much since, well, the Mesozoic era, and it still provides the perfect atmosphere to see The Stones play– no not those stones: I’m talking about Fred and Wilma, Barney and Betty, who would have appreciated the surroundings.  While geology provides the backdrop, comfortology is the operative word in the public rooms and casitas, which blend native American crafts, the scent of mesquite from ubiquitous fireplaces positioned perfectly around the resort, and the enticing perfume of the Southwest-accented New American cuisine being created by new chef Stephen Jones at Latilla, the AAA Four-Diamond restaurant– one of six eateries on property.  Start with the grilled romaine salad with Spanish white anchovies, cotija cheese, piquillo pepper marmalade, Kalamata olives, croutons, and Mexican crema dressing.  Follow this with the venison short loin in fire-roasted poblano butter and encourage your dinner companion to order the sea scallops with roasted cauliflower, Japanese eggplant, pistachio pudding, and several other incongruously brilliant flavors, so you can steal tastes of that, as well.

After which you might want– as our host at Latilla suggested– to enjoy dessert and a glass of ice wine back at your casita while leaning back in the big leather club chairs by your own fireplace, with the patio doors open to the occasional yips of coyotes asking whether you are finished with that gingersnap crumble, and might they help?  The 160 sand-colored low-rise casitas boast 550 sq ft decorated with hand hewn wood beamed ceilings, wood burning fireplaces, decks, earth tone furnishings, glazed tile, and fresh, original artwork.  They’ve just been upgraded with new finishes  in browns, beiges, and subtle desert hues, and received technology enhancements at the same time– something I am awaiting for myself.

My advice to you is do not let the coyotes in your room, as they have a reputation for refusing to go back out to the desert once they taste the interior luxuries.  They will be unimpressed by the fact that the casitas have won the Urban Land Institute’s environmental award of excellence.  In my own experience, they’ll be far more interested in borrowing your key to the mini-bar.

While celebrating The Boulders let us not forget the 36 holes of Jay Morrish-designed golf comprising the far under-descriptive “North” and “South” courses– which might have benefitted from more fitting names such as “Rock Garden” and “Oh, My God,” for example–and which artfully curve through pure desert with tough penalties, an occasional pulse-quickening carry, and views of the granite boulder formations all around you.  Playing well here honors the architect, yet you’ll be intoxicated enough by the terrain that you’re unlikely to really care about your score.  Both courses weigh in at just under 7,000 yards from the tips, but there’s no reason to play from back there, as you may recall that golf is supposed to be fun.

Highlights include the first  hole on the North Course, which proffers a double dogleg of 513 yards with a forced carry on the second shot.  The south course features back-to-back par threes of 151 and 198 yards at the fifteenth and sixteenth holes—possibly to make up for the impossibly long 601-yard eleventh.  Keep an eye out for wild javelinas—and don’t embarrass them by flubbing a drive.  The so-called signagure hole is South #5, a narrowing par five with dramatic rock outcroppings sheltering the green.

Equally well camougflaged as some of the putting surfaces is a world-class Golf Academy commanded by top-100 teacher Donald Crawley, which offers a variety of clinics including a “scoring zone” school and lessons for beginners, women, and other constituencies, ranging from one hour to three days.

Following golf you’ll also want to consider rock climbing, biking, horseback riding, hot air ballooning, hiking, or just a stroll through the organic garden.  Or not.  Perhaps lying by the pool and listening to the plash of a waterfall dropping through a crevice in the rock will have exhausted you to the point where only a visit to the 33,000 sq ft Golden Door spa will revive you.  The spa is an oasis within the oasis of the property itself, quiet, private, with a labyrinth, tipi, and views of Black Mountain in the distance in addition to private pools and treatment rooms featuring services like an underwater Watsu treatment or a Native American turquoise wrap.

Ahhh. The Golden Door.

Gearhart Golf Links.

During the same month that Oregon, my home state, has garnered the honor of being home to the #1 golf resort in the US (according to the recent listing in Golf Digest that would be Bandon Dunes), there’s other good news for Beaver State golfers as well (though being the Beaver State, in the first place, isn’t such good news).  The Oregon Golf Association (OGA) just announced a spanking new deal called the ExploreOregonGolf VIP Card.  We agree that’s a lot of words to string together via capital letters, but it’s also the best deal on golf we’ve seen since the days when we played our college golf course for fifty cents for all the holes you could squeeze in during a single day (and the answer to that question is 63 if you attended your early Irish Literature class and still wanted to make it to dinner in the evening).

The OGA is only selling 1,000 of the cards, for $125 for OGA members, $200 otherwise.  It buys you a round of golf at 55 different courses throughout the state for $30 or less, including a golf cart.  And there are some great courses on the list, including Bandon Crossings, Black Butte, Eagle Crest, Sunriver, The Reserve, and more.  But don’t try to play them all in one day, since you have the entirety of 2012 to cover all 990 holes (and to save up to $2,500).

Because the OGA is a non-profit, a portion of the proceeds will go to allied association and charitable organizations who help to grow the game.  For more info or to cash in on the card before they run out, visit vip.exploreoregongolf.com

All photos are post-renovation.  I’ll write an update of my more recent visit in the next few weeks.

Even if you watched this year’s Accenture Match Play Championship at La Costa on television, you may have missed my exciting match against a Texas golf writer who hit the flagstick with a sculled chip shot as hard as anyone has ever hit a flagstick in the long, storied history of golf.  Somehow the ball dropped into the hole for birdie.  You didn’t see this miraculous trick shot (the pros don’t even attempt stuff like that) because the Texas writer— whom I’ll call “Art”— and I weren’t actually able to make it to La Costa for the tournament.  We played our match several weeks later, when the crowds had already left.  I won’t give away the outcome, but let’s just say that a dollar was supposed to change hands and it wasn’t supposed co come out of my wallet.  So it wasn’t the blue Wedgwood Walter Hagen Trophy (or the $1.3 million) that Geoff Ogilvy pocketed this year when he beat Davis Love in the Match Play finals 3 and 2.  But sometimes squeezing a buck out of a tightwad can feel just as good.

Okay, I’m lying.  But it was still better than losing a buck.

Professional golfers have been teeing it up in tournaments at La Costa virtually since the toney resort opened in the rolling, coastal foothills 30 miles north of San Diego in 1965.  Designed by Dick Wilson and Joe Lee (best known for their work at Doral), La Costa’s golf courses have hosted events ranging from the Haig and Haig Scotch Mixed Tournament (1965-1967) to the Tournament of Champions (1969-1998).  In the early days, names like Hope, Martin, and Crosby showed up regularly on the tee sheet at this resort that was the first in the U.S. to boast a full-service spa.

La Costa added its second golf course— designed by Lee one-half at a time in 1973 and 1984— and eventually paired new nines and old nines to create the North and South Courses.  The Accenture Match Play Championship, which was held here seven times (it will move to The Gallery, outside Tucson next year), took place on a composite course that is available to guests several times each year.  It consists of the back nine of the South Course as the front nine, and North 1-3 and 13-18 as the back nine.  La Costa’s charming and efficient Director of Golf, Desi Howe, says, “Our guests who play the composite course really enjoy playing and visualizing the same shots the tour professionals faced only a few weeks before.  It’s a great way to make a personal connection to the history and tradition La Costa has enjoyed with the best players in the world, dating back to the 1960s.”  And also with some of the worst players in the world, if you take Art and me into account.

In addition to myself, winners at La Costa include names such as Love, Woods, Kite, Miller, Nicklaus, and Trevino.  Nicklaus has said of the course, “You’ve got to start out fast and hold on at the end.”  San Diego Magazine reported, “The players . . . think it is a fair course, challenging without bordering on ridiculously difficult.”  Nobody thought to quote me, perhaps for good reason.

Both layouts feature Bermuda grass in the fairways and roughs, and Bent grass greens.  They play through mature trees of seemingly infinite variety, with generous fairways, rounded grabby bunkers ingeniously placed, man-made lakes, and small, elevated putting surfaces.  North plays a bit longer while South requires a little more accuracy.  Wind is a factor throughout and you must have an aerial game to survive on either venue.

Art and I played our entire match on South, where he started aggressively by power fading into the topiary to the right of the first hole, an easy 357-yard opener where he meant to hit to the edge of water, leaving a short chip to the green.  Speaking of water, his approach to the second green would have ended up in the pond behind it had he not slammed the pin and sucked down into the cup for an ill-conceived birdie.  I assumed neighbors were dialing up 911 when they heard him cackling not far from where children played in grassy yards.

Number three is the toughest on La Costa’s South Course, an uphill three-shot par four with five bunkers clustering around the green like Tony Soprano’s cousins.  Both of us avoided these dangers en route to bogies. The fifth hole presents a bit of trickery, which Art fell for.  This 406-yard downhiller features wind blowing toward a ditch, where Art’s ball likely still lies, and which led our playing companion to call him “Baranca Obama.”  I overcompensated for my slice by yanking one far left, leaving an amusing lie that forced me to lay up, though I didn’t know that until after striking the shot.  Following my three putt, our droll third told me I was “no Two-Putt Shakur.”  But I still won the hole.  And told him to shut up.

After that, my wheels spun off for a couple of holes that I will not describe to you except to say that the widest part of number six is the hot dog shack beyond the green, which I hit easily.  Number eight presents a fine par three with a swampy waste area to the right, and though Art hit to 12 feet and I was in a bunker we both made pars, which deflated him faster than a parade float.  Art then shook hands with the snowman on the ninth hole to leave me one up for the front side.

On the back I began to realize just how diabolically La Costa’s bunkers are placed, and thought about tracking down Joe Lee if he’s still alive.  I also learned—twice—that five wood isn’t always the best way to escape said bunkers, especially when you’ve still got 200 yards to a green protected by trees, lake, and other bunkers and you need a perfect angle and an air drop to end up in the same area code as the pin.  I hit into another bunker on eleven to add to my collection.  Fourteen, an excellent uphill par three with elevated green and four deep bunkers, cries out for loft, which I delivered.  I guess I never heard it cry out for accuracy, as well.  I missed a short putt for bogie, but my opponent’s growing portfolio of flubs conspired to award me the hole.

Nobody knows better than me and Art why they call the last four holes of the South Course “The Longest Mile” (it plays 1847 yards into the wind).  Art made it seem even longer by dropping an 18-footer for birdie on fifteen and executing a dance step the likes of which I can only hope to never witness again.  On sixteen and seventeen we took turns hitting into water, leaving our match even going into eighteen—which the fans would have loved if there had been any fans.  Even our cynical companion could barely stand to watch us any more.

La Costa South’s par-four closing hole plays 460 LONG yards uphill into the wind, with water fronting the green and an excellent restaurant lying in wait behind it.  After swinging harder than men our age should ever swing anything without a chiropractor close at hand, I lay 150 yards from the pin in the middle of the fairway while Art was about 225 out in the rough.  Most guys wouldn’t have laid up into the fairway bunker from there, but Art is not most guys.  If his plan from that point was to hit his wood 75 yards short of the green, he executed perfectly.  I won the hole—and the match—unprettily with a bogie.

I soon discovered that beyond the two golf courses lies a resort as beloved by guests as the courses are by tour players, local sticks, and many others who are not Art.  Coming off a $140 million renovation, the property boasts 474 remodeled guest rooms; a new clubhouse and 8,000 sq ft fitness center staffed by dieticians and exercise physiologists; two new restaurants (BlueFire Bar and Grill and Legends Bistro); and a 28,000 sq ft spa designed in the Spanish colonial style with feng shui features, 42 treatment rooms, and a roman waterfall pounding massage.   La Costa is also home to the Chopra Center, an additional full service spa the goal of which is to align body and spirit.  That was the last place I saw Art.

Flexible Flyers

There’s always been a huge gap between two schools of instructional thought– the technocrats, who believe that technical mechanics are the key to playing great golf, and the mystocrats, who believe that great golf is all in the mind and you need only access your inner-scratch-player to succeed.

At La Costa, PGA member and certified yoga instructor Roger Fredericks is now playing the music that will bring the two together.   The magical theme song with the power to conjoin them is flexibility, something that both sides are talking about without really saying it.  Mechanical instruction peddles it when touting shoulder turn, hip rotation, and arm extension; new age instruction addresses flexibility of the mind in terms of opening up to new ways of thinking.  Fredericks, who employs knowledge and techniques from physiology, biomechanics, kinesiology, yoga, swing videotape, and other sources, has used it in his work with such luminaries as Nicklaus, Palmer, Player, and more than 60 other touring pros.

Traditional golf instruction often tells players to do things that they are physically not capable of because their shoulders are too tight, their hips don’t flex in the way that Tiger’s or John Daly’s do, and their general range of motion is limited.  Most golf students are entirely unfit (literally) to execute the things they’re being told will make them better golfers.  The only thing traditional golf instruction stretches is credibility.  On the other side of the dance hall, the mystics encourage golfers to let go, to stop thinking, to BE the ball, for godsakes.  But how can you act in a certain way if the metaphor of your body is tightness, stress, tension– in a word, inflexibility, whether to new ideas or the kind involved in bending over to tie your golf shoes?

Fredericks’s approach– which is both simple and so obvious that it hurts (yes, literally)– may be the real key to not only bringing together technocrats and mystocrats, but also to improving the performance of golfers on the course and in their lives in general.  Flexibility promises to deliver many of the things that technical instruction and mystical new-age chanting have promised in terms of golf performance, but it may also complete the missing piece in a puzzle in which golf and life really are parallel.  Because being more flexible in your body also translates to being more flexible in life.

The farther I can get from the obvious trophy courses when visiting Scotland, the more authentic my visits always prove to be (and the less likely it will take more than 3.5 hours to play). I hesitate to mention 120-year-old Brora Golf Club in northern Scotland, and only do so because you are unlikely to venture 52 miles north of Inverness, past Dornoch, to play a 6,156-yard course that isn’t particularly famous. But Brora is the sublimest of Scottish links, shaped by the genius hand of James Braid and cut by the Clynelish burn, which runs past the fine whisky distillery of the same name. Brora’s greens are mined with deep, revetted bunkers and surrounded by electric fences to keep out grazing sheep and cattle, and golfers must step carefully over these fences to reach the putting surfaces, thus adding a dimension of potential danger that golf usually lacks. Around the corner lies the rock-solid Royal Marine Hotel, where the manager once presented me with a blue-striped Brora Golf Club tie that I still cherish and wear with pride on special occasions.

From the first tee golfers begin to interact with the landscape and history– a stone wall left of the green is like a doorway to what lies ahead.  The second tee shot– at least in my case– caromed off a similar wall because I mis-judged the line toward the hole 588 yards away and ending on the edge of a peninsula jutting into breaking waves, with a round stone tower beyond and the ruins of a castle further beyond in the distance.  To the right cliffs dropped down to the water.  The third hole is a wonderful par three that plays as long as 194 yards: anything short kicks off an invisible slope toward a pot bunker that you barely notice while setting up the shot.

While I am never a fan of reading hole-by-hole descriptions of golf courses, it’s almost too difficult to just pick a couple at Tralee to showcase.  I’ll skip a few and tell you that the 157-yard seventh offers another distracting castle view and three lovely pot bunkers lurking to the right of the green.  Anything left can be considered an offering to Poseidon.  But wait, I have to also mention number eight, a 399-yarder that my notes say– with exclamation points!!!– may be one of the worlds best par fours, with ruins visible in the left corner, beach all to the left, and wind coming in off the water, challenging you to choose the best shot at the best angle.  A narrow neck between dunes and cliffs is right about where you’d hope to hit a drive.

Your humble scribe.

On the back nine the eleventh finds golfers wandering along curling fairways carved into high dunes, wheat-colored on top, daunting from ground level, and no place to leave a golf ball.  The thirteenth must clearly rank with the best par threes in the entire world, which would be fine to write if I hadn’t already said that about a couple on the front nine.  Let’s just say that you’ll need a rope and harness to find anything hit short, which will disappear into an abyss so deep and dark there may well be a dragon and a wizard down there.

The 13th. Do NOT go in there!

The closing holes here are among the most fun you could find anywhere, and they actually relent a bit in length and difficulty, providing for a strong finish, which all golfers love.  The 300-yard 15th requires a bunt driver lay-up to a platform between dunes and bunkers and then a possibly-blind, perfect high-lofted pitch to a small green.  And no, I didn’t only love it because I made birdie here.  It’s followed by a solid par three set against the Atlantic, a mid-range par four, and a reachable par-five at the final hole where the drive must be hit boldly between bunkers angling into the fairway from both the right and the left.

While we enjoyed a Guinness in the clubhouse, as required by Irish law, I happened to look out the window at a man being rolled onto the putting green in a wheelchair.  We were told that the noble gentlemen, who played off a nine handicap and traversed the links at Tralee about five times a week– as would anyone with any sense who was lucky enough to live nearby– had recently suffered an aneurism and for a while wasn’t expected to live.  We were witness to his triumphant return to the course to hit his first putts since his injury, and I was very moved by his bravery and fortitude, and reminded of what golf means and has meant to people.  My father was one such person, and his recovery from cancer was driven by his unrelenting desire to play golf again.  Years after this, when my dad realized he would not be able to play any more, I believe he decided that he’d reached an acceptable end.

A genuine, true-to-life hero, about to knock down some putts.

And so the Golf Road Warriors wish this gent great success in putting, chipping, and all other golf related endeavors and will offer a few prayers that he’ll enjoy further birdies in a successful future.