Royal Ashburn, Ashburn, ON
In 1959 a couple of Canadian golf pros, Bill Ogle and Wilson Paterson, decided they’d like to build a spanking new golf club somewhere in Toronto to attract the masses, or at least the handfuls. In Durham Region, a lovely, meadowed area full of lush green pastures and picturesque farmland, they found 225 acres, told the cows to get lost, and went to work. Two years later Thunderbird Golf Club opened to the public, and the low grumbles produced by a slow trickle of golfers eventually became a steady stream of thunderous expletives, letting Ogle and Paterson know for certain they’d made it.
Periodic improvements over the years transformed the club into a true golf facility (today, golf “courses” are those that have yellow patches on their greens and pro shops that resemble lean-to’s; golf “facilities” host corporate banquets and sell hideous Jack Nicklaus-designed shirts for eighty bucks), and to celebrate the turn of the new millennium it adopted the name Royal Ashburn. It earned the “Royal” part in September 1999 when His Royal Highness Prince Andrew the Duke of York—aaand take a breath—attended the Grove Golf Tournament of Lakefield College School, where he was once a student.
Gazing down the track of the first hole, gently waggling my driver in front of me, I feel confident and serene. The air is warm and sweet, the sky is cloudless, the fairway looks a mile wide. The starter, wearing a kilt, has been kind enough to snap a pre-round shot of me and my playing partners for the day: Dan Kuzmarov, or Kuz, a good friend but irritatingly competent golfer (read more about him on my Caledon Woods post), Rob, one of my dearest pals since Halloween day 1984, when he threw me a perfect Nerf-football pass at recess, and Josh, Kuz’s brother-in-law, whose metrosexuality is on full display. Compared with my multi-pocket cargo shorts, his tailored pants look custom-made just for this round. I wonder how long it took him to get the angle of his shirt collar just right. I take off my sunglasses and check out my own collar in their reflection. Flat on one side, rumpled on the other. My shorts are like a little store unto themselves—I’ve got my wallet in one pocket, cell phone in another, keys in a third, scorecard and pencil in a fourth, ball marker plus ball repair tool in another. Sure, they’re threatening to succumb to gravity any moment, but there’s a good chance one of my drives won’t make the ladies’ tees anyway.
The fearsome foursome, ready to inflict damage on an unsuspecting course.
We ask the starter which tees we should play from. He suggests that, if we’re average players, the whites would be appropriate. I immediately look at Kuz, who realizes he’s in a spot. As the only truly competent golfer among us, he’s trying to figure out how he can get us to play from the blues without further damaging our already fragile golf egos. Coming up empty, he abandons subtlety and takes his chances: “Hey, guys, why don’t we play blues?” What a jerk.
To Kuz’s shock and delight, we say nothing in response to this ludicrous suggestion. What he didn’t count on was the Cumulative Embarrassment Effect, which causes all players other than the one who is decent to remain silent in the face of his suggestion. Even though Rob, Josh and I are all desperate to play the whites—especially since the first hole is a gargantuan, sweeping par-5—none of us is willing to be the one to demur, since doing so would be an admission of the true hopelessness of our game, and if golf is about anything, it’s about retaining false hope despite all evidence to the contrary. Kuz looks at each of us in surprise as we remain uniformly mum. In despair I put my 4-iron back in the bag and exchange it for my driver. “I’ll lead off,” I say, which translates directly to “Kuz, I hope you shoot 200.”
As I’m taking warm-up swings and already beginning to feel uncomfortable, I overhear Rob telling Josh about the new driver he can’t quite get a handle on. I ask to see it. He asks to see mine, also recently purchased, also on impulse, also troublesome. I ask if I can try his. No problem, he says. It slides into my grip more easily than my own. I put a nice swing on the ball, which lands in a fairway bunker on the right, but a fairway bunker a good distance away. I hand Rob’s driver back to him, and he promptly sends his ball over the trees and onto the next fairway. We agree on first-hole mulligans, and I offer him my driver, since his own obviously has it in for him. He drills the ball down the middle of the fairway. Rob and I look at each other in an unspoken language honed over the course of countless football, hockey and baseball games. We shake hands. Transaction complete—our drivers are traded.
My drive at the first. Note the stylish cargo shorts.
Josh and Kuz lay good wood (or graphite composite) off the tee, too, Josh landing just short of my bunker and Kuz in a different bunker on the left side of the fairway. I take my stance in the trap, not really sure whether I’m supposed to take a regular swing, a bunker swing, or something in between, to get this ball airborne. I settle on the in-between swing, which produces a dismal result: The ball pops out and rolls 10 feet ahead.
Kuz, initiating his stroke after a ten-minute pre-shot routine. The rest of us have stepped out for a bite.
The vise of anxiety inside me tightens. I start every golf round with utter hope that I will play well. Each poor shot pecks away at that hope until, eventually, the hope descends into a mix of equal parts joylessness and fury. Golf is murder on my psyche. God help me, I love it.
From an easy spot in the rough, I sizzle a 5-iron across the grass that nestles up to the red 100-yard stake. No problem, I tell myself, I’m playing for a bogey round, as always. Get on, two-putt and there you are. From 100 yards, facing 5 or 6 bunkers about halfway to the hole, I dump a 7-iron directly into the one at the center. The anxiety starts frothing more vigorously. I splash the buried ball, along with a beach’s worth of sand, over the lip and out.
Suddenly I experience the terrible but undeniable revelation every golfer dreads: At least for the moment, I have forgotten how to play. I’ve taken one decent shot followed by four poor ones. Every one who has ever picked up a club knows the feeling I now battle as I stand over the ball, lying five: I have literally no idea how to swing in a way that will produce a good shot. Every golfer responds similarly to this sinking epiphany. He searches his brain, he visualizes, he recites various mantras, he reminds himself all the good shots he’s hit before, he tries to focus on simple fundamental swing thoughts. But while telling himself all these things, he knows, deep down in the pit of his stomach, the awful truth: that it may be hours before he hits a good shot, if he hits any at all.
Kuz the Consistent in a rare trouble spot. Either that or he’s hitting my ball.
With two poor chips I finally reach the green, in seven. Though the first hole isn’t even complete, the others have already passed through the ribbing phase into one of merciful silence. Three putts later, I can hardly believe my own eyes as I scrawl a 10 on my scorecard. Not wanting to be the guy in the foursome who brings everyone down, I try to remain buoyant. “Well, that didn’t go the way I planned,” I say. The others clear their throats or pretend to adjust their club covers.
My hands getting so far ahead they become a blur. Maybe the cargo shorts weren’t such a smart call after all.
The second, a whopping par 4, features a left-sloping fairway, a section of the beautiful Lynde Creek curving across it 300 yards from the tee, and a pond fronting the hole. With my new driver I hit a shot that comes up just short of the swampy area on the left side of the fairway, making me believe I might be able to recapture the bit of golf skill I usually carry around somewhere in the bottom of my bag. Intimidated by the looming creek, I top my 3-wood, bouncing it 50 yards ahead.As this pattern continues throughout the front nine, I feel little parts of my brain imploding one by one. On the third hole, another par 5, I strike the ball well but it fades left of the narrow fairway and bounds happily off the cart path and into the trees. I march toward the spot where it entered, hoping ludicrously that providence might have allowed me a favorable kick—but no. When God was introducing the universe’s different elements to one another, he brought golf and luck together and said, “Golf, this is luck; luck, golf. You two will have nothing to do with each other.” The others walk jauntily toward their uniformly impressive drives while I take a drop and slash at the ball angrily. I can’t think of a single reason why I play this game. The fourth, a beautiful par 3 over water, promises a return to mediocrity. Past a stone turret and a cluster of tees one can see the next green immediately behind ours. The hole is playing 166 today, so I slide my 4-iron out of the bag, execute what feels like a correct swing, and watch as the ball plunges into the left side of the water. My chin drops as the others wonder whether euthanasia might be the noble choice.
To my credit, the course is playing tough, giving my playing partners particular challenges as well. Josh seems to be spending more time in sand than on grass, which is unfortunate since he looks more tentative swinging from a bunker than Urkel at a Hooters convention. Rob, hitting with a sniper’s accuracy until he gets to the greens, can’t seem to adjust to their speed and keeps skimming his putts left, right or past the hole. Kuz, though he gets into minor occasional trouble, is so consistent he completely deserves the collective loathing we silently communicate to him.
Josh attempting to escape yet another bunker as Rob, in the background, displays the utter lack of compassion shared by all golfers.
Josh hitting out from under a pine tree.
Josh … well, you get the idea.
The fifth is a 390-yard dogleg left over a three-tongued lake the size of Wisconsin. Rob sails another drive left and says, “I’d have a better chance being an NFL lineman than a professional golfer.” Josh, after a wayward drive, contributes one of the most common irrationalities one hears on a golf course: “I had the right club, just took the wrong swing.”
After another solid drive down the middle with Rob’s former club, I let my wrists go on a 5-iron, hitting it thin. The result is my signature shot, an intended pitch-and-run that comes out as a bounce-and-roll, this time directly into the front of the creek fronting the green. I remind myself that I have a wife who loves me, two beautiful sons and my health, if you don’t count the wicked blister starting to form on my left palm. This thought stops me, just barely, from pounding myself into the earth with my 5-iron. Counting the Noodle 3 I just lost plus the Callaway 1 and Top Flite Soft Spin I lost in the last 20 minutes, I’m now on my fourth ball of the day on the fifth hole.
On the sixth hole a ranger stops to tell us we’re a hole behind—or at least that’s the report I get from Josh after emerging from the woods and thrashing around in a fruitless search for my ball. On the seventh, the same ranger stops to tell us we’re two holes behind. I raise my hand like a basketball player acknowledging the foul.
My first truly good swing of the day comes on the eighth. After another agreeable drive—at least the trade was a good decision—I hit a beautiful, high, soft 4-iron that is high and soft for one reason and one reason only: I remembered to swing slowly. Why in the name of Ian Baker Finch can I not remember to do this more often? Why haven’t I remembered to do it a single time in the previous seven holes? Why am I such an unadulterated idiot?
Two more good shots occur in succession on the par-4 ninth. I ring a drive down the middle of the fairway and then, with a solid iron, reach the fringe in two. It’s an easy chip to the hole. But I decelerate on the way down, let the club face open, and scoot the ball to the far left side of the green, leaving myself the same type of putt I’ve been leaving myself all morning, meaning one in which I require a high-powered telescope to see the hole. Amazingly, after putting out, I find I’ve carded only 56 on the front. It could have been a lot worse. Josh is at 51, Rob 46, and Kuz the Consistent (also acceptable: Kuz the Assface), 44.
Rob and Josh calling in their food orders at the turn. If only we could swing the club with as much conviction.
As I make short work of a smoked turkey wrap—it’s delicious, accentuated by cranberry or something I might have been able to identify if I’d allowed myself more than 90 seconds to consume it—Scott Patterson, Director of Golf at Royal Ashburn and my host for the round, charitably mentions that the pins on the front nine are still those from Canadian Q-school held at the course over the previous four days. So that’s why I’ve been so stymied today. It’s the damn pins.
Taking a moment with Candace the cart girl – temporary solace in a sea of despair.
The 8-9 I open with on the back nine reminds me it isn’t the pins. Later, listening to my Dictaphone notes recorded during the round, I’ll become frightened of the voice that reports the 8, even though I know it’s my own. If I were listening with someone else and didn’t know it was me, I’d say, “That guy sounds like he’s about to go postal.” When the voice then reports the 9 following the 8, well, if the guy sounded like he was about to go postal before, now he sounds like a cross between Bobcat Goldthwait, John Rambo and the dying ton-ton in Star Wars.Throughout the back nine, which proves to be even worse somehow than my front nine, Josh, after observing several of my disastrous swings, repeatedly says, “You take beautiful practice swings, and then when you actually hit the ball they turn into baseball cuts.” In response to this observation I have the internal response of every golfer receiving sound advice, which is to kill Josh, drag him into the woods and tell the others I don’t know what happened to him. Over the course of the final several holes I hear Josh saying, with genuine sympathy, “There—beautiful practice swing! Now just do the same thing,” then, walking sadly away with a subtle shake of the head, “Baseball.” How come no one ever tells me my baseball swing turns into a golf swing at the end? Most recreational golfers are like pitchers who never have all of their pitches going at the same time. They hope to have one or two or them under control and be disciplined enough to leave the others aside. The golfer may have command of the mid-irons but not the driver or the putter. Perhaps the woods are going okay but the irons aren’t pulling their weight. I’ve been dropped into the nightmare scenario that makes these look like paradise: Not a single one of my weapons is working today. Ironically, the only club that hasn’t been a complete disaster is my driver, usually the ultimate instrument of masochism. In turn, Rob has fallen hard for my old driver, punishing ball after ball with increasing authority. His putting touch is still on vacation, but he’s piecing together an impressive score nonetheless. Josh, having spent too much time in sand and amid pine, will end up in the triple-digits along with me. Kuz the Consistent has a chance at breaking 90. On one hand, I’d be pleased for him. On the other, it would be sad to have to end the friendship.
Rob putting a charge into one. I tried to hope it over the green, but it ended up two feet from the hole instead. Just not my day.
On eighteen I stroke another inspiring drive that starts slightly right before curving gorgeously back into the middle of the fairway. Thanks to this shot I finish with a six, which allows me at least to avoid the ignominy of eclipsing 120. Kuz gets his 89 (it was a good relationship while it lasted) Rob shoots 92, his best score in years, and Josh 104. The round was like a showcase of every single deficiency of my game. If a good round is catching lightning in a bottle, I was gathering scorpions in a jar.Sadly, I loved it. It was golf, after all.
STARTING AND FINISHING HOLES
I like courses that deviate from the typical pattern of opening with a par-4, sprinkling in a couple of par-3s per nine, and finishing with a monster hole running up to the clubhouse. Royal Ashburn provides a nice early shiver as you realize on the first tee that you’ve been dropped into an opening par-5 (496 from the whites, 523 from the blues. Thanks a million, Kuz.) By the time you come to the second par-5 on only the third hole, you’re befuddled. Like I said, I applaud that kind of thinking. Too many courses follow the same blueprint and depend on gimmickry to distinguish themselves. Ashburn changes it up just enough—eighteen is a dogleg, another twist (so to speak) that I enjoyed—while still achieving balance. OVERALL AESTHETICS
Cushiony fairways and pristine greens let you know how well this course is cared for. When the small details on a golf course are missed, you notice it; when they’re looked after, you don’t. At Royal Ashburn, you don’t notice the details, making the physical experience all the more enjoyable.REAR VIEWS
Largely owing to its skilful placement of water and sand, Royal Ashburn’s rear views are delightful and diverse, even if half the time these views do feature ponds or creeks where your balls have gone to die.TRACK
Even through the burning despair of my incompetence I was able to appreciate Ashburn’s extremely pleasant diversity, which, as you would know if you’d seen my round, says everything. The design keeps you on your toes—a dogleg here, a big sweeper there, a par-5 when you don’t expect it, a deceivingly short par-3—without dizzying you unnecessarily. One test of a golf course is whether you’d enjoy walking the course even if you weren’t playing. A walk through Royal Ashburn would be a pleasure.
“NICE HOLE” FACTOR
Many golfers prefer the broad, scenic par 5’s; I tend to have a soft spot for beautiful par 3s, maybe because they allow me greater hope. Royal Ashburn has several noteworthy holes of both lengths. My “nice hole” meter registered at least four times during the round: on the par-3 fourth with the undulating (and, I suspect, lacquered) green, the par-4 fifth that makes you cross water about a dozen times, the par-3 thirteenth with Lynde Creek circling the green like a hungry eel, and the par-3 sixteenth that I enjoyed even though it made me go to the bathroom in my pants.
DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY
Okay, nobody should shoot 119 unless they’re playing with half a dozen cracked ribs and a blindfold, but this is still a tough course. You know how you can tell a course is hard? Even the holes designated as the easiest ones on the scorecard give you little knee tremors as you approach them. Ashburn has several of these. To score well, you’ll need both distance and accuracy, often at the same time. Shot selection is of tremendous importance as well. Finally, try not to start with a 10.
COURSE MARSHALS
Present but not ubiquitous, Ashburn’s marshals do their jobs like good umpires—they’re there to keep everything moving along, but you don’t really sense it. I received multiple pleasant greetings from marshals over the course of the day, and even a couple of valuable tips which I then failed to put into practice.
PRO SHOP AND AMENITIES
The Ash features a massive practice area, full range, putting green, practice bunker, short-game area, excellent pro shop and clean-as-a-whistle bathrooms. Full marks.
BANG FOR YOUR BUCK
At $70 during the week and $80 on the weekend, Royal Ashburn delivers a strong above-value return. There is little chance you’ll have as positive an impression from other courses charging the same rates. I’d pay $100.