Fairway Adventures

When you live in Canada, you need to pounce on golf season as early as possible and stretch it out as late as you can. A round in April is an early gift; a round in October, a late one. So when I and my friends Kuz, Rob and Ross woke up to a dazzling October morning the day we were scheduled to play Copper Creek, we knew one or more of us must have done a very good deed in the very recent past.

One of the first lessons I teach new writers is to avoid hyperbole and use understatement – but damned if this day wasn’t as perfect as they come. The week before was cold; the week after, rainy. We lucked into the best gift the golfing gods can give. Okay, I suppose the best gift would be a decent golf game, but even gods have their limitations.

 

The entire round was picturesque despite our woeful golf swings and an oddly ubiquitous swarm of ladybugs, which seemed to surprise the staff at Copper Creek as much as they amused us. Also, I forgot my golf shoes and had to play instead in my ancient hole-in-one-toe sneakers, but it mattered little – the trees were ablaze with fall colors, the air was warm and lush, the company was tremendous, and I even managed to hit one or two decent shots that will get me back out the next time. Don’t miss Copper Creek.

  

Posing with cart girl Heather. Her smile translates to “Take the damn picture. These guys are creeping out.”

 

STARTING AND FINISHING HOLES

Copper Creek starts you off with a par-5 that requires two bombs just to get near the green and then a par-4 whose left-side bunkers lay in wait to snag your ball if you’re even slightly off the mark. The three-hole finish is challenging and impressive, including the longest par 4 on the course, seventeen, and a truly magnificent hole to take you home.

 

Rob’s par putt at the par-5 18th after Kuz bet him a beer he wouldn’t par the hole. Also, the average distance by which I missed three-foot putts during the round.

 

OVERALL AESTHETICS

Set amid the undulating hills and splendid foliage of the Humber River Valley, Copper Creek takes full advantage of its location. Different features are given prominence at various points, so that your overall visual experience of the course never feels predictable. Sriking tableaus are the rule here, not the exception.

The tee shot at seven. I’m actually wetting my pants while taking this picture.

 

REAR VIEWS

Copper Creek’s front and rear views complement each other to a tee (pun intended), providing diverse but equally pleasing perspectives. Speaking of views, check out the gorgeous terrace overlooking the valley. When the October colors are blazing the way they were for us that day, you feel lucky to be alive.

TRACK

Esteemed Canadian course architect Doug Carrick made all the right decisions in laying out Copper Creek. Pay attention to the seamless way you’re guided through the course and the manner in which you emerge pleasantly onto every hole. Its track is one of the main reasons Copper Creek has emerged at or near the top of so many course rankings in the Greater Toronto Area. The course also offers a unique “4½ Guarantee”: Excepting bad weather, play in four hours or less and you get $30 off your next round. On the other side of the coin, if the round takes you more than four and a half hours, you receive a voucher from $15-$80 depending on how many extra minutes were required.

Kuz executing his pre-shot routine. We’re about three minutes in.

 

“NICE HOLE” FACTOR

Big, sweeping holes are nice, but the best courses charm me with their par-3’s. Copper Creek’s short ones were delightful and diverse: six, eight, eleven – whose green is three club lengths from front to back, never mind the gorge you have to carry just to get there – and fourteen, which plays almost completely over water and plays slightly downwind. I also appreciated the spectacular elevation changes on the par-4 seventh and signature tenth.

 

 

 

 

 

DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY

Copper Creek is the kind of test you feel good just passing. Lots of clever collection areas, plenty of sneaky hole layouts, and a number of tempting but potentially treacherous shotmaking moments make the course a pleasurable mental roller coaster. By the way, if you happen to run into Rob, Kuz or Ross and you ask them what they shot, add at least 10 strokes to the number they give you. I believe it’s still illegal to take a mulligan every four holes.

  

 

“Where is it?” (In the same spot.)

“Screw it, I’ll take a drop.” (Good call.)

 

COURSE MARSHALS

The foursomes I play in usually get asked at least a couple of times per round to speed things up – usually a combined result of my erratic play and need to get my practice clip just right before addressing the ball. The marshals at Copper Creek were gracious, encouraging and kind. From the starter onward, the vibes at Copper Creek are happy and positive. That’s what I want out of a golf round. Because it ain’t my game that’s going to put a smile on my face.

When your score reaches a certain point, there’s only one option left.

 

PRO SHOP AND AMENITIES

Copper Creek boasts a large but elegant clubhouse, an outstanding, sufficiently spread-out practice area, and everything else you need for a day of golf. Before, during and after the round, you’re taken care of at this facility. Just be careful when you wander into the 3,000-square-foot pro shop; you might forget to show up on the first tee.

BANG FOR YOUR BUCK

Copper Creek will run you $170 at peak times and $120 after noon on weekends and holidays. People are going to be very selective about where they choose to spend $170 on golf, but if you’re going to spend it anywhere, I recommend spending it at Copper Creek. Going for the $120 after-12 deal is a great idea, too – you save fifty bucks and don’t have to sacrifice an iota of the overall experience.

It was King James I of England who climbed the high ground at Blackheath, just outside London, and introduced golf to the region just as the 16th century was about to make its turn. James had come from Scotland, where golf had already been played for some 150 years, and though the crowns of England and Scotland were now informally united, the Scots and the Englishmen still had plenty of loathing for each other, so the new king and his entourage were quite happy to have found so fine a spot for both pursuing the sport they loved and keeping the bloody English at arm’s length. The Royal Blackheath Golf Club, officially instituted in 1608, became the first golf club in the world.

That’s the story told around here, at least, and it’s a story unchallenged for nearly 200 years.

When I came to Royal Blackheath in 2009, the year after its 400^th anniversary, I learned quickly that the veracity of the story is less important than the spirit that the club, and its members, exude. As Blackheath’s website boasts, its greatest tradition is that of a club inclusive and welcoming to all. It proves itself to be that and much more. After taking the tube and the train to reach the town of Eltham, I arrived at the club to be greeted by a variety of wonderfully stout, cheery gents who all seemed to want to buy me a beer even though it was 8:00 in the morning. Their general lust for life was especially welcome since I had just come from a month in Paris, where the surroundings are unparalleled but the people, I’m sorry to say, are just as arrogant and condescending as they’ve always been. And I speak French.

Before teeing off I enjoyed a breakfast of scrambled eggs, sausages, fried mushrooms, grilled tomatoes and black pudding that I was fairly sure would kill me within the hour. The pint of orange juice I had with it must have supplied just enough nutrition to offset some of the artery-clogging power of the other bits, though it did force me into several pre-round trips to the gentlemen’s cloakroom.

 

I then spent a half-hour or so at the clubhouse bar taking in the banter. Though delivered in a different accent, it was connected by many of the same themes one hears at home. For example, from three gents talking about a rightie who’d broken his right arm: “You have to learn to do everything you normally do with your right hand with your left.” A pause, then shared juvenile laughter. Yes, men in the company of men are the same no matter where you go.

Here was another gem, from a different bloke at the bar, talking to one of his mates: “My friend’s son, he’s a charming lad but an inveterate chatterer. There’s a point where you’re thinking just bloody shut up.”

Mostly I hung on every sentence waiting for an instance of the word “stupid,” which here is pronounced styoopid. It’s truly amazing how often the word comes up, and you somehow never tire of the entertainment value it provides.

Before stepping onto the first tee, I noticed the sign on the pro shop window, which informed me that the day’s green speed was 10 according to the stimp meter. The knowledge wouldn’t do me any good, but I hoped other golfers will be able to use it. Chris, the delightfully helpful chap in the shop, asked me if was walking or would prefer to take a trolley. I had no idea what he’s actually asking, so I told him I was walking.

As the group ahead of me teed off, I inspected the first hole, a beautiful 463-yard runway. The breeze was coming directly at the tee, so it would take a good stroke just to reach the distant fairway. As I was picturing just how large a slice I’d be hitting, I was treated to more marvelous repartee, this from the foursome currently hitting, each a proudly substantial example of the average Blackheather. You haven’t really witnessed golf banter until you’ve heard a massively hefty guy with a deep English brogue say to his playing partner after an errant drive, “Follow that one to Upminster all day, eh, Petey?” I hadn’t a clue what he meant, but it nearly reduced the others in his group to tears.

The rest of the day proved a combination of brilliant golf and magnificent human spirit. Royal Blackheath is a lovely golf course and an excellent test of the skills, but mostly it’s a grand experience of the positive, both aesthetically and spiritually. 

And then there’s the museum. On its top floor, Blackheath houses an incomparable collection of golf artifacts that is justifiably protected with the kind of pride and caution usually reserved for gold reserves.

When current club captain Richard Williams admitted me to the room, he blocked me from seeing the entry code.  

Walking in, I understood why. This museum is a sight to behold, not because of flash or pomp but because of its contents, from drivers hundreds of years old to trophies exchanged across continents to golf odes written long before people in North America had even heard of the game. I spent my visit to the museum gape-mouthed at the assortment of relics and grateful for the depth of knowledge with which Richard proudly regaled me.

Then it was back outside for another pint, this time of the golden kind, and more conviviality from the throng of members and guests having finished their own rounds. An especially plump and seriously drunk gent offered me a ride back, but I graciously declined and hailed a cab back to the train station instead. I’d had myself a superb day at Royal Blackheath, as doubtless every visitor does. King James would be proud indeed. 

 

STARTING AND FINISHING HOLES

Wonderful. The first tee, situated right beside the pro shop, is both quaint and majestic. The last holes finish as strongly as a good English ale.

  

OVERALL AESTHETICS

The Royal Blackheath experience is a sensual treat, from the marvelous clubhouse, built in 1664, to the immaculate grounds highlighted by variously aged trees of silver birch, oak, pine and fir that lend the course its stately-but-intimate feel. The club’s members are as proud of their course as any I’ve ever played, and it shows. The only thing nicer than the tee areas is the fairways. The only thing nicer than the fairways is the aprons. The only thing nicer than the aprons is the artistically ridged greens.

 

REAR VIEWS

The back-facing views at Blackheath are gorgeous, featuring the aforementioned trees of different ages and sizes, spaced out nicely to produce the feeling of a course that really breathes. In fact, this is the rare type of course in which the rear views are similar to the front views – a good thing.

 

TRACK

Though relatively straight, Blackheath does feature some lovely turns and sweeps to keep you on your toes. The course is well signed and sensibly arranged, so that you aren’t spending your time wondering where the next tee is. Instead, at least in my case, you get to focus on where your tee shot went.
 
 

“NICE HOLE” FACTOR

Several of Blackheath’s holes are memorable, and for the right reasons: beauty and coherence, as opposed to glaze or gimmickry. My favorite sequences were 8-9 and 17-18. The par-3 eighth, more intimate than the other holes and more tucked in, is guarded around almost its entire circumference by bunkers, and is slightly elevated. On the day I played, it featured a tricky little cross-breeze to boot. (I’m not saying I played it well; I’m saying I liked it.) The ninth is a beautiful curving dogleg to an elegantly sloped green. The isolated plateau of the elevated green on seventeen offers a wonderful moment of reflection before finishing, and the sweet dogleg over the hedgerow coming home is a joy.

  

DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY

I shot 101 at Blackheath, a few strokes better than usual, due largely to its modest length – just over 6,100 yards. There are only two par-5’s, so scoring well here is an absolute possibility for skilled players. There are a few creeks and one pond, but lots of sand – and do try to stay away from all those hardy English trees.

  

 

COURSE MARSHALS

I was bothered not an iota by the marshalls at Blackheath. It’s no exaggeration to say that everyone there went out of their way not to make sure I hurried but to make sure I had myself a lovely time. Which I did.
  

 

PRO SHOP AND AMENITIES

The pro shop at Blackheath is small by North American standards, and inviting for the same reason. Today’s pro shops are often disproporionately large; they feel like department stores. Blackheath’s pro shop is what a pro shop should be: a small, friendly place to pay your green’s fees, pick up some balls and tees if you need to, or perhaps a glove and shirt as well, and then be on your merry way.

 

Piper’s Heath is a relative youngster among Greater Toronto golf courses, but its charm is decidedly old-school. Renowned architect Graham Cooke designed the course antithetically to the superficial postcard-type courses one now finds everywhere, and the results are, in a word, lovely. Dave, Rob, Andrew and I played the course on a gorgeous June morning, and it won us over from the opening hole not by artifice or pretense but via the seductive combination of simple beauty, an interesting layout, and a deferential nod to nature that plays much better than an architect’s stamp urgently announcing itself on every hole. Even the fact that my new putter cost me countless extra strokes wasn’t enough to dampen my mood.
  
A number of designers have recently tried to find ways to design links-style courses here in the North American landscape. Developed out of a big piece of flat Ontario farmland, Piper’s gets it completely right, both in look and feel. Cooke didn’t cut down the four-hundred-year-old ancient oaks that stood like sentinels on the land, he designed the course around them. These, along with numerous other elements, like the New Zealand black swans, deep pot bunkers, fescue-covered mounds, grassy hollows and undulating fairways—not to mention the, ahem, challenging breezes that greet you at every turn—help the course achieve something elusive on this side of the pond: the feeling that you’re playing not on the Canadian Shield but somewhere in the Scottish Highlands. It was no small effort; Cooke and his team moved nearly a million cubic meters of earth to create wave-like mounds throughout the course that help conjure the feeling of St. Andrews and its ilk. I find myself often comparing the allure of a golf course to the allure of women. To me, courses whose main features are their picturesque fountains, gleaming clubhouses and lightning-fast greens can make powerful momentary impressions, not unlike a woman made up to the nines, but give me an interesting course whose surprising charms I discover along the way, and I’m hooked.

From right to left, me, Dave, Rob and Andrew, ready to tear up the course—literally.  The ball retriever Rob is holding will prove the most important tool of the day.

Dave assessing a challenging sand lie at the fourth.

Dave taking a practice swing and trying to convince himself he has an angle to the hole.

Dave measuring how close his ball is to the lip.

I don’t remember exactly what Andrew was saying here, but I believe it translated to “Doesn’t matter what you try, it’s hopeless.”

Dave finally hitting out. Andrew was right; it was hopeless.

Dave hitting out of another trap two holes later. If he doesn’t see sand again in his lifetime, he’ll be thrilled.

Andrew lining up his second shot at the sixth out of high grass…

 

…and hitting tentatively out. This was a good shot; it got him back to within three miles of the proper fairway.

Dave looking for his ball among the fescue on eight.

 

Me looking for my ball among the fescue on nine. Did I mention I hate fescue? 

Cart girl extraordinaire Brittany. No, really, she’s one of the special ones.

Rob felt it would be amusing to take this picture. I’m trying to remember why I’m friends with these guys.

 

The divot that resulted from my attempted 5-iron at the eleventh. The ball went about as far as I could throw an anvil.

 

Dave and Rob, amused with themselves after loosening the straps on my bag and making it fall off the cart for the umpteenth time in the round. Like I said, I’m still trying to figure out why I’m friends with these guys.

 

Rob showing off the swing that would make any lumberjack proud.

 

Me teeing off at thirteen. There is no possible way to describe just how severely I sliced this ball.

 

Dave teeing off at fourteen. Even his shadow has nicer form than mine. I despise him.

 

The pot bunker in the middle of the sixteenth fairway. Yes, my ball found it.

STARTING AND FINISHING HOLES
The first at Piper’s Heath, a 407-yard par 4 from the blues, lets you know immediately you’re in for both a treat and a challenge. Get past the large lake running nearly half the distance of the hole up the right side and you still might find the lurking fairway bunkers. It’s no accident that three out of the four of us carded 8’s. The second hole, deceptive and snake-like, conveys something equally meaningful: you aren’t often going to encounter consecutive holes that feel the same.

The finishing run is pleasurable and keeps you working for your score until the last putt is sunk. Sixteen is a reachable par-3 and rated the easiest hole on the course, but get lazy or overconfident and you’re going to be punished. It must be said that my foursome is made up of putrid golfers in general, but still. The 17th is a short but tricky par-4 in the same vein as 16. Consider your shots a little longer than you think you need to. Eighteen, a slender monster at over 500 yards, brings you back home the same way you left—soaking in a course that has a little touch of magic.

OVERALL AESTHETICS
Piper’s Heath is a true aesthetic treat, but akin to the way an accomplished still life stirs you, as opposed to the more shallower and more fleeting satisfaction of a paint-by-numbers done well.  The course’s various features mix gracefully and harmoniously, hearkening to the elements that make links courses so seductive: fairways that rise and fall, hollows ringing the greens, bunkers hiding in unsuspecting corners, wide corridors, plateaued greens, and plenty of grasses happy to eat your ball when you aren’t looking—or, sometimes, even when you are.

REAR VIEWS
The course’s rear views offer the best testimony to its diverse design. Back-facing scenes change on almost every hole.

TRACK
This is a highly walkable, subtly dramatic, distinctly crafted course. Some courses feel jumpy or jarring, with moments of consistent rhythm interrupted by those when you feel you’ve lost the thread. The best-designed courses, like the best-written books, catch you up in their flow from the first instance and keep you there until it’s over. Piper’s Heath is a shining example of the latter. There’s a decent chance even my dad wouldn’t find anything to complain about here.

“NICE HOLE” FACTOR
While the impression of Piper’s Heath is more an overall one than that cast by individual holes, there are plenty of memorable moments, in particular the three-hole stretch in the middle of the back nine: the par-3 thirteenth that demands you carry a valley (I didn’t), the par-4 fourteenth requiring you to avoid a wide bunker off an elevated tee and then execute a perfect long iron to reach the plateaued green (nope), and the Goliath fifteenth, a 585-yard dogleg featuring the kind of wetlands that prompt a critical decision should your ball land in them: accept the penalty stroke or drench my new FootJoys.

DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY
The type of golf course I most admire is the type that challenges but doesn’t demoralize. Piper’s Heath achieves this delicate balance and caters to games of varying levels, with tee blocks ranging from 5,000 to 7,000 yards. It also pleasantly avoids the driver-followed-by-mid-iron repetitiveness of many modern courses, in which most par 4’s feel interchangeable. At Piper’s you’re going to need to employ your fairway woods (if you can hit them), your pitch-and-run (if you can perform one), your course management (if that means anything to you), and your green-reading skills (if they exist).

The most prevalent factor, and the one that will play the biggest role in your club selection, is the wind. Don’t try to plan your round for a calm day, because a calm day wherever you’re coming from probably isn’t a calm day at Piper’s. The wind was present from the moment we teed off at the first—one of the chief reasons I started the round 8-7-8, which tends not to set things up for an impressive score. Not that my score didn’t make an impression. Just, you know, the wrong kind of impression. Course designer Cooke estimates that the wind can alter shots by as much as seven clubs on certain holes. I said he’s a talented designer, not a kind one.

COURSE MARSHALS
The entire staff at Piper’s Heath, from the girls at the front desk to the men roaming the course in their carts, have the right conception of customer service. They’re there to help you have an enjoyable day, contrasting pleasantly with other courses whose marshals see themselves as Louis Gossett Jr.’s character in An Officer and a Gentleman.

PRO SHOP AND AMENITIES
Piper’s Heath is a first-class facility. There’s a 20-acre double-ended practice academy with a two-tiered tee deck, a smaller teeing area for lessons and larger clinics with a series of target greens and traps, a chipping green, a practice bunker, and a putting area the size of Australia. An attractive clubhouse, service with a smile, clean-as-a-whistle bathrooms. A day at Piper’s is a great day.

BANG FOR YOUR BUCK
The Gruehl family, long-time landowners and residential developers in Milton since its urban expansion, made it their mission to provide quality golf at an affordable price when they opened Piper’s Heath. At $89 per round, they’ve done a lot to achieve this end. If you want to get a taste of links-style golf without putting too big a dent in the wallet, Piper’s is your best bet in or around Toronto. By contrast, Eagles Nest, approximately the same quality and in the same general vicinity, will run you $185. Enough said.

It’s been a few months since I’ve swung a golf club (outside my living room), and it will be a few weeks before I’m in Florida seeking out some new courses while at the same time trying not to be devoured by gators.

Normally this hiatus would have me in the kind of funk experienced by all northern-latitude golfers between November and April. But the usual symptoms aren’t affecting me this year, for three reasons:

1) Winter in Toronto this year has been just the kind of winter one hopes for: great heaps of snow since early December with temperatures just south of zero degrees – in other words, cold enough to make you remember why a perfect winter day is better than any other day in any other season, but not so cold that you can’t take the kids tobogganing for fear that they’ll come back with their features permanently set.

2) The NHL season has been nothing short of outstanding thus far, making it much easier to endure the golf interruption. I can’t understand why Americans have never taken to hockey. It demands unquestionably the most complex skill set of any professional team sport, harnessed at higher speeds (unless you count downhill skiing a professional team sport – which you shouldn’t). It is the only sport that combines the balletic grace of basketball with the elemental, and undeniably gripping, violence of football. The athleticism, passion and resilience of its players rival that of any other sport’s competitors. (Don’t believe me? Play a 48-minute basketball game, a 60-minute football game and a 60-minute hockey game, and then tell me which leaves you more wrecked.) The best hockey plays are just as jaw-dropping as the best highlight-reel dunk or Hail Mary pass. (Here’s evidence: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQOmJ09Pg58.) Like I said, I just don’t get it. NASCAR has zillions of devotees, but hockey can’t buy a viewer? It’s beyond me.

3) My new golf bag. I’ve been using the same bag for…ever, and last season, during a dawn photo shoot I was doing for Golf Canada in which I somehow agreed to wade waist-deep into a water hazard, the old nylon Wilson got quite muddied, turning its pervious faded-ivory to a tone best described as Gray Extra Dull.

I took that as the sign that I deserved a new golf bag, or at least that I should tip off my wife that it would make a great birthday present. (I’m pretty sure I also deserve new clubs, but I can’t come up with a reason why.) The big day came, the ice cream cake was brought out (that’s one point for the wife), the sports channel was put on (that’s two), and then, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted it: something wrapped in the unmistakable form of a golf bag, or maybe a Chinese contortionist pretending to be one. My sons helped me tear off the paper, and though I believe they were disappointed a four-foot-high transformer wasn’t revealed, my eyes lit up at the Datrek Iron Cart Bag before me.

This is a tremendous golf bag, one sure to transform my game. On the label is an animated picture of a musclebound, striated golfer having completed a beautiful follow-through. He looks nothing like me, but that shouldn’t matter. Just check out these features:

• Integrated Putter Sleeve
• 14 Individual Divider System
• New Ball Drop Design
• Insulated Cooler Pocket

I know, it shouldn’t even be legal. And I’m not finished. It’s got all this, too:

• New Dual Slope 14-Way IDS Top Design
• Individual Full Length Dividers
• 11 Convenient Pockets
• Vibrant Tone-on-Tone Colorways
• Integrated Cart Strap Pass Thru

You can’t compete with a bag like this. I’m looking forward to the expressions on my playing partners’ faces when I break it out for that first round of the season a few months from now. Will the gawk-worthy moment happen in the parking lot, me slowly lifting the bag out of the trunk, their faces blanching with envy? Will it happen in the clubhouse, them having arrived first, me casually entering, the bag slung jauntily over my shoulder? On the practice range, me the early arrival, them noticing the bag after a few minutes but unable to say anything, me grinning in smug satisfaction? I’m busting.

There is, of course, the matter of my game, which remains, in a word, superbad. But I just can’t see myself playing poorly with a bag like this. Now, I know what you’re thinking: IJ, the quality of your golf bag has nothing to do with how you play. And I’ll be honest: I just don’t even know how to answer that.

Sometimes the best way to enjoy Las Vegas is to get away from Las Vegas — Vegas proper, at least. Listen, I’m no snob; I appreciate that The Strip is required pilgrimage for certain types of people, including those who:

• maintain an inexplicable affection for Wayne Newton
• have seen a dozen Cirque de Soleil shows and are still happy to see another
• want to see if Roy will get mauled by one of the Siberian tigers again
• can’t get enough of second-hand smoke, stale air or casinos whose exits and bathrooms are equally impossible to locate
• enjoy sitting on the same stool for eight consecutive hours while feeding coins from the same plastic bucket into the same slot machine in order to come out seventy-five cents ahead at the end of the night.

Still, it’s too bad more visitors to Sin City don’t broaden their sights, because just a stone’s throw away from the flashing lights and endlessly whirring machines there are some remarkable sights to take in. Today, for instance, I’m standing at the first tee of Reflection Bay Golf Club — part of Lake Las Vegas, a self-contained, 3,600-acre resort surrounding a privately owned lake — and taking a moment before teeing off to drink in the gorgeous scenery. Reflection Bay was designed by The Golden Bear and has been named one of the “Top 100 Best Courses You Can Play” by Golf Magazine. They’d probably feel differently if they saw me play, but I’m still glad to be here.

The grass under my feet is spongy, like the perfect combination of the resiliency you get from Florida grass and the silkiness you get from Toronto grass. This sensation might be a function of my playing in sneakers today — forgot my golf shoes at home — but I don’t think so, since the sneakers lost all their elasticity about three years ago, which was about four years after I bought them.

The clubhouse at Reflection Bay. Scenic pleasures and lost balls await.

“Greens are true,” says the starter, Hal, possibly as a way of asking if I’m ever going to hit. “Not necessarily towards the water. And there is water — on nine different holes.” Hal has succeeded in confusing and terrifying me all at once.

Hal the starter, looking deceptively innocent. 

As I focus in and assess the 379-yard first hole, I see three bunkers on the left side of the fairway configured like a smiling funhouse clown. My heart rate goes up several notches. The natural splendor of the course actually benefits my game, allowing me to be just distracted enough not to overthink. By the time I get to the first green, whose emerald color looks like it was shipped from Oz, I realize I’ve taken only four shots. I manage a bogey, which is reason enough to buy myself a medal after the round. On the second, a short, tricky par-4, I reach the green in three, making me think I should pack it in for the day, since I’ve obviously peaked. I’m right — I three-putt. Still, it’s another bogey. That makes two medals.

On the par-5 fifth, a 519-yard mega-monster with half a dozen fairway bunkers, I haul off and hit possibly my longest drive ever which actually stayed in play. I’ve hit lots of 270-yard drives before, but thanks to my celebrated leftie slice, most of them go 150 yards straight and 120 yards left. This one actually lands in the fairway. I’m stunned. When my fairway wood then flies another 200 yards to just under a tree behind the bunker in front of the green, I not only want to stop for the day, I want to stop forever. I somehow chip on and two-putt for par. I darken the number on my scorecard so much my pencil nearly tears through the paper. The light breeze coming off the lake feels like God saying “You keep making pars, I’ll keep making ideal golf conditions.”

The 150-yard fourth is noted as the second easiest hole on the course. Did the people doing the ratings not notice the deep bunkers trying to squeeze the green on both sides like a giant ribcage they’re trying to crush? I land in one of them, of course — why wouldn’t I — and then, so as not to make one of them feel jealous, I sail my ball across the green into the other. “Triple-bogey” — which is what I get — and “bogey” have only one word separating them, so it’s amusing that one makes me feel jubilant and the other like committing hara-kiri with my sand wedge.

On five, another biggie at 494 yards, the breeze picks up about three percent. Unfortunately, this uptick is enough to cause my game to unravel completely. My drive ends up in the deep gulch running along the right side of the fairway.

My view of the fifth hole, including the long, deep gully running along the right edge of the fairway …

… where my drive landed.

My 4-iron back across ends up among a cluster of the ubiquitous deer grass, which looks like a bunch of shaggy-haired muppets sticking their heads just above the ground. There I have to hit out from among dozens of ants whose deep maroon color makes your standard fire ant look like Florence Nightingale. Something’s up with the mutant insects I’m seeing around here. Last night at dinner I was watched over by a midnight-blue bumblebee that resembled Evander Holyfield. Maybe over in Area 51 they genetically engineer military-strength insects and release the rejects into town.

Not a bunch of muppets trying to break the surface but the ever-present, ball-hungry deer grass. 

After a wimpy punch-out, an imprecise approach and two chips that would make most instructors throw their hands up, I finally reach the green, where I three-putt for a merciful nine. I’m not sure there’s a golfer anywhere as skilled as I am at turning a decent round into a poor one in the space of a single hole.

Like a blackjack dealer giving me 21 to keep me in the game, I glance at the scorecard to see that six is ranked the easiest hole at Reflection Bay. I understand why when I arrive at the tee blocks and the breeze that’s been in my face or across me for the first five holes is suddenly, satisfyingly at my back. I kill my drive and then hit a perfect-weight 7-iron that unfortunately finds the greenside bunker. Perfect weight unfortunately counts for little when you have no accuracy. From there, as though running a clinic on how to spite oneself on the golf course, I skull my ball across the green and into the gully on the other side. The thorn in my side, the number 7, has reared its ugly head again.

The result of my drive on seven. That Titleist stuck in the clay wall? Mine. Still having some consistency issues off the tee.

As the breeze graduates into wind, I start giving away golf balls like they’re Christmas candies. My slice adds 20 yards to itself. My fairway woods desert me. The water’s magnetic pull somehow quadruples. I close out the front 9-7-7-5-7. In case you’re not a student of golf, that’s bad.

I pull myself together enough to start the back nine the same way I did the front, with two bogeys, so my previous murderous rage has now settled into a slightly more manageable simmering anger.

 
The tee shot at ten, over a big tongue of Lake Las Vegas, and, today, directly into a ticked-off wind. I’m so guaranteed to put this in the drink it isn’t even funny.

By the time I get to fourteen, I’m still playing bogey golf on the back nine. Though the hole is listed as the course’s second hardest, it appears, at first blush, pretty tame. Quickly I find out how it earns its rating: a deceptive narrowing toward the green that one only notices, in this case, when his second shot gets caught up in the chute and bounces directly into a fairway bunker. Always nice to be retroactively informed. I slash-and-burn my way to the green in four, two-putt for six, and get the hell out of there while still precariously balanced on the psychological tipping point for most recreational golfers: No matter how many sixes you card, they somehow remain tolerable. Whereas one seven makes you want to douse yourself in battery acid.

I struggle admirably through the next few holes like a boxer trying to stay on his feet after a steady thrashing. The bright spot in this slog occurs when, on fifteen, a very small, very trim Japanese fellow asks me in broken English if I’d like to play through. I tell him I’m enjoying the sunshine and in no rush. As we chat, I learn that he is, in fact, Tokyo-born Hide Haginomori, a member of the Canadian Tour. I know he’s telling the truth because he’s able to talk about having played in such places as Calgary. Most Tokyo natives wouldn’t know Calgary from the underside of a blowfish. Hide and his family are here on vacation. His brother and parents are all as small, trim and polite as he is. After five minutes I want to adopt them all just because they can’t seem to stop smiling.

 
Me and Canadian Tour player Hide Haginomori. I’m the one about to duff his next shot.

The tee shot at sixteen. Um, yeah, you do have to hit over that arroyo to reach the fairway. Arroyo pronounced “Uh-oh.”

I pause for a moment at the dazzling seventeenth to admire the scenery, and also because I’m not looking forward to hitting. Seventeen isn’t tough just because of the island green, the wicked cross-breeze or the huge bunker to the left of the green, but because, should your ball find the drink, there’s no clemency — the drop area is twenty feet to the right of the tee. As it turns out, I don’t exactly hit the green, but I don’t hit the water either. My ball lands in the sandy waste area beyond the trap to the left of the green. I chip on to 12 feet and, remarkably, sink the putt.

The partial island green at seventeen. Water back and right. Bunker left. Big swale in front. Pools of sweat on my forehead.

I par the par-5, 502-yard eighteenth, too, making it three pars on the day. Unfortunately, my front half is marred by those three 7’s and the one particularly ugly 9. So the good news is I removed eleven strokes between the front nine and the back. The bad news is, if you’ve got room to take eleven strokes off between the front and back and your best nine is still only 47, you aren’t a very good golfer. Nonetheless, I’m happy. My 105 is in line with my usual performance, it’s been a splendid day of golf, and I made a new friend from Tokyo (I think). It was a true Vegas round: Even though the house came out ahead, I had enough small victories to stay plenty addicted.

STARTING AND FINISHING HOLES
Reflection Bay is like a Vegas showgirl — so inviting-looking you hardly care about anything else. The course’s opening and closing holes both make beautiful pictographic statements that reflect the overall experience. The moment you start, you’ll know you’ve made a great choice, and the moment you finish, you’ll want to play the course again.

OVERALL AESTHETICS
Reflection Bay offers a truly eclectic sensory experience, from the glittering lake to the dusty arroyos, the beautifully manicured greens to the variety of flora referred to as “enhanced desert” — including native Creosote and Burr Sage, Encelia Farinosa, Acacia Redolens, Vitex, Mexican Bird of Paradise, and Mesquite trees.

REAR VIEWS
Well-designed courses always reveal themselves best not only through the views from tee to green but also from green to tee. Reflection Bay scores brilliantly on this measure, with a number of rear views that had me awarding a private thumbs-up.

TRACK
The pleasure of Nicklaus’ design starts well before the first hole. Your cart drive from the clubhouse follows a cascading stream with waterfalls to the first tee, where the stream opens into the four-acre private lake. Then, in true Vegas style, a pleasant trick is performed, with each nine following the same pattern: early holes ascending along natural canyons and then sloping back down with dramatic downhill views before reaching a crescendo along Lake Las Vegas’ 10-mile shoreline. Though Jack designed the course, he made optimal use of his silent partner, Mother Nature. “NICE HOLE” FACTOR
Each hole at Reflection Bay presents something distinct, and numerous memorable features are sprinkled throughout the course, like the bridge made of large sun-baked stones one uses to walk to the green at the fifth. In particular, the two par 3’s that border the lake, 8 and 17, are breathtaking pieces of golf architecture.

DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY
From the whites, I shot 105, which is just about what I usually shoot. Reflection Bay is a challenging, fair golf course — it victimized me in plenty of ways but didn’t feel gimmicky or over-designed. You’ll need your whole bag here — and, in my case, about a dozen extra balls.

COURSE MARSHALS
The stewards at Reflection Bay couldn’t have been a more amiable group. Three times marshals addressed me during my round — twice to ask how my day was going, once to offer help looking for my ball. That’s what you call no-pressure marshaling, which I only wish every course would implement.

PRO SHOP AND AMENITIES
There isn’t anywhere in the world that does customer service quite like Vegas. Reflection Bay is more than a golf course. It’s also home to the renowned Golf Institute at Lake Las Vegas, a 32,000-square-foot clubhouse and beach area, including MiraLago, the waterside restaurant, a fully stocked golf shop, a bar and lounge, an outdoor snack bar and nicely appointed locker rooms. In other words, you’ll be taken care of. In case you aren’t convinced, over the eighteen holes I played I saw about two dozen workers attending to various parts of the course. And the carts were the most nicely upholstered I’ve ever seen, with a fabric strip down the middle of both seats. Nice touch.

BANG FOR YOUR BUCK
A single round at Reflection Bay will run you anywhere from $150 to $250 depending on the day and time. If you’re staying at the resort, however, golf can be baked into the overall package. Either way, this baby’s worth it.