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So bad they're ... bad Posted: Monday November 25, 2002 3:15 PM
Bad golf. Sometimes you're just in the mood for it, you know? A bad golf course can be a guilty pleasure, like watching the Three Stooges (OK, they're not that funny, but the sound effects are killer), Anna Nicole Smith or a daytime soap opera with amnesia, aliens, long-lost twins and slutty women. Or eating a bag of candy circus peanuts. If you get lucky, a bad course can be so bad it's good. The all-timer in that category is one of my favorite munis in America, the Links at Pacific Grove, just up the road from Pebble Beach. The back nine has a lighthouse, sand dunes, ice plant, a reachable par-5, views of the ocean and the feel of Scotland. The front nine starts with back-to-back par-3s, and has back-to-back par-5s and deer galore. It's fun, it's scruffy as hell and full of bare spots. If you can't break 80 there, you can't break 80. Another so-bad-it's-good track is Kinghorn, a par-65 layout in the town of Kinghorn, Scotland, somewhere south of St. Andrews. Crossing fairways, blind shots, a legitimate 200-yard par-4, a tee box in a crater and other oddities make this course something to sneer at if you're a native Scot but an absolute riot to play if you're a visiting Yank. Most of the time, though, bad golf is just bad. Farmers who try to build golf courses on their own usually (but not always) wind up with something baaaaad. I once wrote about a nine-hole course near Milwaukee -- Eagle Springs -- that was originally designed by baseball player A.G. Spalding and had a tree growing through the roof of the clubhouse office. The first hole was at the base of a substantial hill, a totally blind shot that required you to hit something with enough loft (not a driver) to reach the elevated green, one of the stupidest holes I think I've seen. The second hole was a par-3 to a gigantic beer-can-shaped green where, if you weren't a good chipper, you could spend all day chipping back and forth over the tiny, perched green. It wasn't bad golf (although the fairways were mowed only about as short as my front yard); since the course was an antique, it was merely quaint. The topic of bad golf came up in this column a few weeks ago, inspiring readers to submit their own tales of RBG -- Really Bad Golf. Here they are: Worst course: Dyker Beach, Brooklyn, N.Y. (before American Golf took it over). Rats would scamper out of the way of fairway mowers on the rare occasions they were used; a homeless guy lived in a small wooded patch behind the second green -- nobody disturbed him because he was armed; neighborhood kids liked to steal cars (not carts) off the street, drive them through the course fence, then set them on fire. One Sunday morning, we had three of these on the course, one in front of the 12th green but it didn't matter because we couldn't play holes 12-14 -- they were staked out as a crime scene after the first foursome of the day discovered a dead body on the 13th fairway. Local immigrants who had never seen golf before came through the aforementioned holes in the fences and set up picnics and volleyball nets on the 14th fairway every weekend. These same immigrants found the greens handy for chalking (thankfully) elaborate graphics espousing some cause (e.g., FREE SERBIA). The greens had no flags, just tree limbs; the flags had all been stolen and the city did not have the budget to replace them.
Attention, Worst Golf Course Judges: I believe we have a winner. While in the Navy, I played a course just outside of Dubai. The entire course was sand, with not a blade of grass to be seen. The greens were actually round patches of sand covered with oil to create a putting surface. The tee box was a small piece of Astroturf you picked up at the clubhouse and carried around with you. All for the low, low price of about $58 in 110-degree heat. I challenge anyone to come up with a worse golf course than that.
Sorry, E-Guy, ain't youse guys ever been to Brooklyn or nuttin'? The worst golf course I've ever played is Evergreen Golf Club in Schodack, N.Y. This is what total neglect looks like: No yardage markers. Tiny, slow greens with gasoline- and transmission-fluid-leak marks on the greens. Tall grass, no discernable fairways. Yardages on scorecard differed from that on hole markers -- and then the actual yardage turned out to be neither. It cost $14.
I'm going to steal your brilliant line, Himbo, someday, somewhere: "This is what total neglect looks like." Damn, that's good. Being from West Texas, I can tell you all about bad golf courses. We used to have a perfectly terrible track in Odessa called Golden Acres, which locals affectionately and appropriately referred to as Golden Stickers. That's what we call goatheads out here. In my humble opinion, the absolute worst golf course in West Texas these days is Lake Sweetwater Golf Course in Sweetwater. Let me tell you, there's nothing sweet about the water. As a matter of fact, because of a long drought, the lake is nothing more than a mudhole. Remember the driving range in Tin Cup? Well, Lake Sweetwater would be the 18-hole track that accompanies that very bad and dusty range. The first green has never really been a green -- maybe a yellow or a brown -- and it gets worse from there. But my buddies and I make a pilgrimage there every year for a couple of rounds and a few beers and cigars. Good times. We sit on a friend's dock in the evening, which is now a good 4-iron from the water, and tell bad jokes. Wouldn't trade it for the world.
Does Sweetwater have an airport, Hurt Man? I might stop in for a quick 18 the next time I'm on my way to ... uh ... er ... the Yucatan Peninsula. As a denizen of one of the more demographically golf-poor areas of the country (315th, I believe, according to Golf Magazine), I'm more than familiar with bad golf courses. We've got a doozy of a place called Pleasant Hills/Cypress Greens; Pleasant Hills is a regulation 18, Cypress Greens is an 18-hole par-3. How bad is it? You can lose your ball in the middle of the fairway in the middle of summer because the fairway is basically overblown ground cover. Seriously, if you pull up sections of it, all you'll find is hardpan. Most days you have a better chance of finding your ball in the rough (except in the fall when they don't clean the deciduated foliage -- you're screwed at that point). The greens and greenside rough are marginally better -- crabgrass is remarkably easy to putt on, all things considered. Most tee boxes don't have grass. If you attempt to play from the back tees you won't be able to put a tee into the ground because the grass is so grown out. Of four ponds that are in play, only one has water; the good news is it always has crappie and bluegill if you want to bring along a fishing rod. Don't even try the food. And the best part: You're out $30 for prime-time fees, $15 for twilight, $15 for a diesel-powered golf cart (seriously), and all the seniors, beginners and cheapos eat it up. God, I loved learning how to play golf at that place. Finally, thanks for a great column. Between you, David Feherty and John Garrity, my quest for golfing literature is always enjoyable and informative.
Thanks, Room with a Vu, but watch the sucking-up. We're more comfortable with the letters that start, "Dear Moron..." How about Echo Hills in Wichita, Kan.? I played my first junior golf there. It runs right next to I-35 (a bad hook on the 18th could take out a windshield), and all the holes are straight and pretty much run parallel to each other. Surprisingly, it's not totally flat. The back nine has a hill -- one hole goes up it, the next hole goes down it. All the greens are flat, no bunkers that I can remember, and maybe one water hazard. The practice range is a big net. Pretty neat, huh? I don't recall being able to tell the difference between the fairway, rough or tee boxes (other than that the tees were raised up a little). The greens were the same kind of grass, just cut shorter.
Another nominee, here in Tulsa: Deer Run. Talk about the ultimate goat ranch! The opening hole is a par-4 that plays just over 300 yards, with a pond in front of the green and a tree in the middle of the fairway that you must either hit over or under. The finishing hole is a 90-degree-dogleg-left par-5 that plays around the practice range. Of course, there are no trees, so you can just cut off half the fairway and get home in two with a driver and an 8- or 9-iron. It's another course that uses the same grass for fairways and greens, just cut shorter. Here's the best part: The owners have enough nerve that they are adding nine more holes! More bad is more better, right? Worst golf course, hands-down, is Haines Point in Washington, D.C. Flat, unkempt, a few decent-sized trees, wind off the river and jets flying over from nearby Reagan International Airport.
Even worse, Spud, when you're done, you're still in D.C. While Lincoln has some really good golf courses, it also has one that could qualify as the worst in the country. At many golf courses you can enjoy a beer, but Hidden Valley is a beer joint where you can hit a golf ball.
Stop it, Hed Shot, you're making me thirsty. Rancho San Joaquin in Irvine, Calif. Someone forgot to tell the super that the course is in a desert. The fairways always play like slop from overwatering. The greens have elephants buried in them. And to top it off, it costs $75 on the weekend, and on a very easy walking course you are required to take a cart, insuring 6 1/2-hour rounds.
Only thing you can do in that case, Hawk-eye, is play 36. Sunset Hill in Brookfield, Conn., is a nine-holer with approximately five fairways (shared fairways on at least four holes) and 16 trees. You hit off of what was once a range mat on three separate tees. There is a backstop behind the fifth green, so you can actually play it off the wall. Full body armor is recommended.
What's with this Fenway Park infatuation? You Bostonians just gotta play everything off the wall? 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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