We're in the muni

Looking for a decent track? Try picking Cranberry

Muni golf isn't dead. The good news is municipal golf courses aren't what they used to be. They're better. At least that's the case with America's newest muni, Cranberry Highlands in Cranberry Township, Pa. Which happens to be next door to Wexford, where I live.

Cranberry Highlands opened for play in late August and has instantly become the new model for muni golf in the 21st century. It features a fun, challenging-but-not-too-challenging layout and affordable golf with country-club conditions. Where muni courses typically fail is that they succumb to politics, either by employing county workers instead of golf business experts or by offering golf so cheap to keep senior citizens happy -- effectively a welfare program to create a country club for seniors -- that the course can't be maintained properly and it turns into a nice layout with cow pasture conditions. (North Park and South Park in Pittsburgh are two examples of great layouts kept up so poorly as to be public embarrassments.)

That's probably not going to happen at Cranberry Highlands because Jon Shuster, the PGA pro and manager of golf operations, is under orders to run this course as a business, not a political football. "Golf comes first here," Shuster said. That means the customer comes first. Tee times are 10 minutes apart, the better to make the experience more enjoyable. And it means the course will be maintained at a high level, because that's what attracts golfers. The superintendent is Dave Barber, who previously worked at the Pittsburgh Field Club, which ranks with Pittsburgh's best and best-kept tracks.

It's a rarity when a new municipal golf course opens. Cranberry Highlands has been a phenomenal success. Scant few tee times have gone unused. "Our biggest challenge has been to get a phone system good enough to handle all the tee time requests," Shuster said. "We're too popular. It's been a great problem to have. The other day, it was gray and drizzly and cold and miserable at 11 a.m. and my guys in the shop were still taking tee times for 4:30 that afternoon. People just want to come out and play. You can't believe how many people come out here to play for the first time and when they're done, they come in the shop to see if they can book another tee time."

I got a firsthand look last week, venturing out on a Thursday afternoon with Rick Stimmel, an area resident who played last summer on the Hooters tour and successfully Monday-qualified to play in the PGA Tour's John Deere Classic, and Sal Genilla, a former Pittsburgh University quarterback who hits the ball a mile and caddied for Stimmel at the John Deere. It was a Thursday afternoon in October and Cranberry Highlands was packed. "Doesn't anybody have a job anymore?" I asked Shuster later. He just laughed.

The best thing about Cranberry Highlands is that it's fairly wide open. Most of the holes are treeless, giving it a links-like feel and also making the holes, visually, difficult to remember. The holes aren't spectacular but there isn't one bad hole on the course, something most courses can't say. It's not long (6,403 yards from the back tees), but that's misleading. Par is 71, thanks to five par-3s and three par-5s and the 5s, all 549 or longer, are difficult to reach in two. So far, the course record is 65, set by Stimmel on a previous appearance. He shot 68 this day despite lipping out half a dozen putts. Sal and I played our better-ball against him, even up. This round was a tune-up before Stimmel went on to Myrtle Beach for additional practice as he prepared for the first round of the PGA tour's qualifying tournament next week at World Woods, northeast of Tampa, where 22 of 78 entrants will advance to the second stage.

On the par-5 second Sal predicted, "Rick's gonna be one-down in a minute." He had to hit it to 15 feet for birdie, I'd hit it to 5 feet and Rick, playing from an impossible lie next to the lip of a fairway bunker, had hit over the green and into deep, wiry grass. Sal's prediction looked good until Rick hit a Mickelson-esque flop shot. I could tell when it was in the air that it was going to be close. It landed six feet short and trickled down a slope and into the cup for a remarkable birdie. Sal missed his birdie try. I missed mine. We lost the hole.

The third hole should be Cranberry Highland's signature hole. It is as spectacular as it is unexpected. The hole drops 80 to 100 feet from the tee to a green guarded by water that curls from the front left side all the way around to the back. It played 194 yards from the back but Rick and Sal agreed that the elevation was a two-club difference. They hit eight- and nine-irons and got on the front portion of a massive green. I hit six-iron eight feet past the dangerous back pin placement. I missed that birdie putt, too, but we won the hole because Rick three-putted from a different area code. It is a very cool hole, a great place to whip out a pocket camera for a group shot. The foursome behind us, playing the course for the first time, marveled at the view from the tee box. This is one of the few negatives about Cranberry Highlands, by the way. On a Thursday afternoon in October, it took a full five hours to get around a par-71 course with only two water hazards. Part of the problem is that carts are allowed on the cart paths only because the fairways are still new. The other part of the problem is that affordable golf on a good course attracts seniors, some of whom play slowly, and players who are just barely past being beginners. On adjacent holes, I witnessed players whiffing and dribbling shots 30 feet. It's almost impossible for high handicappers to play at a decent pace. It took an hour for us to play the first three holes.

The backup on the fifth tee gave us time to grill Rick about the side money the pros get. Well, the money he'll get when it makes it to the PGA tour or Buy.com tour next year. "TaylorMade is paying $3,000 to use their driver and another $1,200 to use their putter," Rick said. "So basically you've already got your expenses covered. I hear Callaway is paying guys $3,100 to use their new driver, just to tick off TaylorMade."

It doesn't matter what driver he uses, Rick is long. He came within 20 yards of driving the opening hole, a 344-yard par-4. He reached the par-5 seventh hole with a nice fairway wood, two-putting for an easy birdie, and nearly reached the 573-yard 18th even though it played into a breeze by hitting what looked like a laser beam off the fairway with his 5-degree driver. A scary thought occured to me after watching Rick -- this is how good you have to be just to rank among the better players on the Hooters tour? Wow.

After the third hole, the front nine holes mostly parallel each other. An unsightly row of power lines runs down the left side of the seventh and the holes are separated by rows of small mounds, which are planted with fescue, and occasional fairway bunkers. No trees, though, so it's pretty wide open. Which brings us to the only other drawback to this place. In a five-hour round, well, you need bathrooms. No woods are available. As we putted on the 7th green, I noticed one senior in the group ahead of us urinating into the fescue just three steps away from the tee marker on the 8th, right out in the open. "Bladder control is definitely a problem for this course's clientele," Rick noted.

The 11th is a straight-ahead 322-yard par-4, guarded by five bunkers around the green and another right of the fairway. "Look at those bunkers on the left, you could take two of them out and nobody would notice," I said. "And that one on the right, who's that in play for?" Me, it turned out, after I fanned a three-wood to the right. Rick went for the green and caught one of the bunkers on the left, Sal laid up with a four-iron and joined me in the bunker on the right. Mike Reimer, who lives nearby, had called Sal on his cell phone, found out where we were and joined us on the 9th hole, hit into a fairway bunker on the left. Four drives, four bunkers. That thing I said about there being too many bunkers at the 11th? Never mind.

The 12th is 331 yards, with a fairway that curls right around a lake. Rick had driven it before and tried to do so again but hit one way left. I ranked it the second most impressive hole on the course until we reached the 15th, a 218-yard par-3 across a ravine to a green guarded by -- what? -- no bunkers. It doesn't need any bunkers. This could be the most underrated hole on the course. With the tee markers all the way back and the pin stuck on the right side, we faced a 218-yard shot into a breeze with an overhanging tree kind of in the way, forcing us to hit a low fade to get anywhere near the pin. I looked in my bag but that shot wasn't there. I tried to slide ahead on a four-wood but hit a straight bullet through the green. Sal cut an iron in there nicely but was still left with a dicey putt. Great hole.

Sal and I were 1-down to Rick going to the 18th, where the pin was cut on a back tier that was much deeper than we thought. We left ourselves long birdie putts, didn't make them and came up short with our bestball 69 to Rick's 68, which could've been 63 in an eyeblink if he'd gotten any breaks on the greens.

Cranberry Highlands is in the right place at the right time. There is a lot of public golf on Pittsburgh's north side but most of it is available on mom-and-pop courses with minimal maintenance. The only public course better than the Highlands on the north-northwest side is Olde Stonewall and that's pricey at $135-plus. The fees at Cranberry Highlands are $48 on weekends and $42 daily for non-residents; $42 and $35 for residents and $30 Monday through Friday for seniors. All fees include riding carts. The course was designed by Bill Love and there is talk of building a driving range on an adjacent parcel of land. It's great that muni golf is alive and well. Cranberry Highlands gets an A. If you're in the area, check it out. But call a week in advance for a tee time.

Let's go to the Mailbag, where the sexist pigs once again reign supreme:

Annika Sorenstam likely wouldn't be able to qualify, much less make the cut at the men's U.S. Open. But even making allowances for her lack of power/distance, she doesn't have anything resembling the short game of a Corey Pavin to compensate. I mean really, she'd be hitting fairway woods into the par-3s and, if she could reach the fairways, long irons or fairway woods into nearly every par-4 into firm greens that stimp at about 12-13. There'd be no easy birdies for her on the par-5s -- three shots into every one. And what's she gonna do when she does hit it in the rough? You can't be serious. Lay off the crack pipe.
—Mark Earnest, Tracy's Landing, Md.

Like, wow, man, were you, like, talking or something?

You believe that Annika Sorenstam could qualify for the U.S. Open and potentially finish in the top 20? Let's start with the distance difference. LPGA courses are set up in the 6,100-6,300 yard range. U.S. Open courses are 7,200 yards. That's 50 yards a hole. That difference is enormous. She is playing courses where her distance takes much of the trouble out of play. There aren't many men on tour whom she can keep up with in terms of distance. For brevity, I'll only also mention the difficulty of the greens. The LPGA tournaments that I have watched are all set up for scoring. The pins are, by and large, in the middle of the greens or in the openings in front. They don't tuck pins. They can't; the precision level isn't there and they don't want to embarrass the women. I would love to see Annika give it a go in a real PGA tournament. I would love to believe that she can compete at that level, but I don't see it. I don't believe that she could come close to qualifying at the U.S. Open. She might get through local qualifying but I think she would be weeded out at the sectional level. I really hope we get a chance to find out.
—Jud Spencer, Auburn, Calif.

My comments might have been a reach, Spence, but at least it drew a reaction. It's a question that won't be answered until Annika or some other top female player tees it up with the guys. I agree, I hope we get to find out.

I definitely agree with your assessment of Annika's lack of media coverage. However, I'd take it even further and say that women's golf in general doesn't get it. It doesn't have to be about sexuality or the LPGA finding and promoting their version of Anna Kournikova but personality and entertainment play a huge factor. The LPGA has some incredible talent but as talented as those players are, sometimes they are not fun to watch, for various reasons. This is going to sound extremely chauvinistic, but I think the women of the LPGA tour are looking less like women and more like male female bodybuilders in some cases, and in other cases some women have put on so much weight that they are not pleasant to watch. I know that sounds crass, but the fact is you won't find any overweight golfers (men or women) gracing the cover of golf magazines or calendars. I know what you're thinking: here comes the homophobic statement about the lesbian factor. Hardly. I personally don't think that has any affect on this discussion. Do you think Serena Williams' popularity and exposure is directly the result of her being a great tennis player? Sadly, it's not. She's an attractive woman in addition to being a great tennis player. Look no further than her sibling Venus to see the vast difference in their own media exposure (and type of coverage). I also think Andre Agassi had it partially right: Image is everything, only when combined with great talent.
—Dale Chavez, Colorado Springs

Golf is entertainment. We want to be entertained much more than we want to watch players hit balls with sticks. And since the golf spectating audience remains largely male -- gee, could that be the LPGA's biggest problem? -- the attractiveness factor is hardly surprising.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Gary Van Sickle writes for the magazine's Golf Plus section and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com. Click here to send him a question or comment.

 

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