Wooden Sticks, Uxbridge, ON
“Concept” movies often leave me underwhelmed. Concept books, too. But a concept golf course? Now, that’s intriguing—especially if the concept is a dozen separate famous golf holes sprinkled throughout one course. Wooden Sticks, located just north of Toronto in the township of Uxbridge, and designed by architect Ron Garl, opened at the turn of the new millennium and immediately drew golfers of every stripe who were curious to see a) just how well the famous holes were replicated, b) how many of the holes they’d recognize, and c) how many shots it would take them to stick on the island green imitating that of the 17th at TPC Sawgrass.
Today I’m playing Wooden Sticks for the first time with my friend Laurence and his colleague, Jeff, who works for one of Canada’s Big Five banks, which shall remain anonymous. (Hint: the initials are CIBC.) Laurence is a Vice President at Salomon Canada and a professional schmoozer. He could talk a pelt off a beaver. That’s why I accept whenever he asks me to do anything, because I know I’m going to say yes eventually. Greeting Laurence in the parking lot, I feel the wave of warmth you feel whenever you see one of your pick-up-where-you-left-off friends. We haven’t seen each other in a few years because he’s been working in Munich, but once back in each other’s company we don’t skip a beat.
Me and Laurence, moments before he hit me in the groin with the head of his driver.
It’s a pleasant early July afternoon. Our tee time is 5:00 pm, but that isn’t cause for worry. With sunset called for 9:02 (by Mother Nature), we’re confident we’ll get the round in despite the fact that the guidebook tells us it will take four hours and forty minutes. Golf is about blind confidence if nothing else, so off we go. The round will be followed by an abundant steak dinner. At Wooden Sticks the value proposition is the packaged experience, not just the golf. But let’s not kid ourselves: It’s about the golf. You can get a steak anywhere, but not a famous hole. “During your round,” the website informs me, “you will envision yourself playing off a road in Scotland, across a famous creek in Georgia, onto an island in Florida, and through pine forests in New Jersey.” While playing off roads or through forests is not new to me, doing so in Scotland and New Jersey in the same round would be, so my anticipation is high.
The guidebook also tells me that any player who scores a natural eagle on any hole automatically earns enshrinement into the Wooden Sticks Eagle Club, gets their name engraved on a special tee block, and gets invited to a season-sending tournament just for Eagle Club members. I’d better check my schedule to see what other season-ending elite-performance events I’ve been invited to before I decide whether to card any eagles.
The first hole, modeled after Oakmont’s church pew bunker, is stunning. The eponymous bunker is prominent in one’s view from the tee. The track sweeps directly down into a valley before swinging back up to the left, skirting the little grass-and-sand chapel. Before teeing off, I imagine the grass pews filled with people praying for me to hit a solid tee shot. This somehow fails to work. After my drive, Laurence correctly notes that I swing off my back foot while letting my front side fly open. “It’s funny,” he says. “In baseball you can do that, but not really in golf.” I thank him for the observation and tell him to shut his trap for the rest of the day if he wishes to stay friends. Not to mention that it’s bad to do that in baseball, too, except sometimes you get lucky and accidentally hit an opposite-field flare that drops in. In golf, opposite-field flares are not cause for celebration. I salvage a 6 on the hole, which isn’t bad when you consider that I’m a terrible golfer.
Laurence teeing off at #1, the church pew hole from Oakmont. The pews are visible are on the right. I’m offscreen praying for a decent tee shot.
The second hole, a non-replica, is nasty nonetheless, a short par-4 whose green is guarded by eight bunkers. I manage to navigate my way around them like an Arctic explorer trying to avoid massive ice floes and come away with a 5. Based on the trend of my first two holes, I expect to card an ace at the sixth.
A view of the fairway and green on #2. A million dollars to anyone who doesn’t end up in a bunker.
The par-3 third is Augusta’s 12th, a narrow green sitting 155 yards away with a big lake angling in front of it. In the guidebook the hole actually resembles a happy face, with two squarish bunkers the eyes above the green and a U-shaped bunker the smile below it. I’m not falling for it. The 12th at Augusta is part of Amen Corner—which only makes sense, since two holes earlier I was summoning prayer.
“This is a funny kind of par 3,” Laurence says. Funny, yes. Into the cross-breeze I thunk a five-iron that rolls toward the edge of the lake and then disappears—one of those agonizing shots where you hope desperately that it stopped on the downslope, which happens about a quarter-percent of the time. Laurence drills an iron that hits the far bank of the lake and bounces back into the water. Jeff, with a deliberate swing that reminds me of a toy soldier hitting a golf ball, sends his high and left and gets a lucky kick onto the green. Arriving at the edge of the lake, I naturally find that my ball has vanished. Taking a drop 15 feet from the far bank, I pull out my sand wedge and smack it right into what would be the lake’s breastbone if it were a person. Now lying 4, I find it in me to work a regular wedge to the green. Two putts give me a 7. So much for the imminent ace.
I bogey the par-5 4th—the 13th at Augusta, completing the religious portion of the round—by narrowly avoiding the creek that skirts the length of the hole before snaking in front of and around the green.
Laurence teeing off at the par-5 fourth and displaying compact form that will annoy me all day long.
Me teeing off right after Laurence. Everyone knows the power in a golf swing comes from the back foot.
The fifth, a short but narrow par-4, is a hard dogleg left, and therefore tailor-made to my slice. Before I get into address Laurence says something about envisioning the ball boring through the air. I tell him to envision a knuckle sandwich boring through his teeth, then I hammer my Nike One around the corner, leaving me 80 yards to the green. It’s at this point I want to go home, since I know I have no chance of hitting a better shot for the rest of the round. As though to reinforce the thought, I get to my ball to find I have a downhill-sidehill lie, which would make even seasoned pros quake a little in their FootJoys. With a 9-iron I swing hard and down, trying to remember to aim right of the flag, keep my wrists firm and make a complete motion. Amazingly the ball ends up just off the green to the right. I chip on and two-putt for 5, which is acceptable if somewhat aggravating.
Laurence hitting out of the sand. This shot sailed the green by about 30 feet.
Co-endorsing Arnold Palmer’s lemonade.
Lining up an approach shot at the fifth. I’d like to say my feet are aligned well right of the green to account for the wind, but unfortunately there was none.
Watching the shot fly well right of the green. Inexplicable.
After our drives on the sixth, a long, non-replica par-4, Laurence mentions that, between the two out-of-bounds fescue-laden areas one can usually spot a small basketball court. Jeff suggests each golfer should get to try a three-point shot and, if he makes it, be rewarded with a stroke or two removed. I find this an extremely cool idea and get to wondering why more sports aren’t done in combination format. Threes as part of golf, slap shots in the middle of basketball games, field-goal attempts during seventh-inning stretches. This seems so obvious it’s scary. I card 5 by draining an accidental nine-footer, amazingly recording two bogeys in a row.
The approach on seven: hitting over a massive bunker to a green protected by a large ravine and several other, smaller traps. Could someone remind me why I play this sport?
After a double-bogey six on the seventh I hit an angry 4-iron about half the distance to the green of the 179-yard eighth. The hole is downhill and downwind, so it’s perfectly expected that I’d hit a wimptastic shot. Laurence catches a beautiful 5-iron that sails the green, hits a branch and kicks straight back 15 feet left of the pin. I tell him and Jeff I’m going to hole my next shot to earn entry into the Eagle Club. Laurence informs me the rule counts only for non-par-3s. Every one of my plans is being squashed today. The shot lands in a bunker short of the green. I chip on and two-putt for 5. One of these days God and I are going to have a serious heart-to-heart about why he hates me.
After closing out the front with a 7—finishing strong on each half is just one of my signature golf traits—we proceed to the tenth, one of the simplest yet most charming golf holes I’ve ever played. Inspired by the first hole at St. Andrews, ten shares its fairway with eighteen. The combined fairways form a giant expanse of immaculately trimmed meadow. Golf course design usually concerns itself with memorable object-images like fountains or bridges. This is refreshingly natural.
Laurence comments that if you don’t hit the fairway on this shot, you shouldn’t play golf. He’s right, since the fused fairways offer about 260 yards of unhampered green in which to land one’s ball. A small creek fronts the green, but that’s an issue for a few shots from now. I slice my drive and come within 30 yards of missing the fairway. Laurence, on his second shot from about 70 yards after a bullet drive, sends a divot that looks like a landing strip ten yards forward and the ball twenty. I catch my 3-wood on the sweet spot and get on in two, leaving me a 90-foot putt through some abandoned ant hills and over a swale. I go a little long on that putt and then miss the one on the way back for 5.
Surprisingly, I felt I had a good chance at sinking the putt. I’ve talked in previous posts about the fact that in each round, one of your clubs is going to be effective, but you never know which one, and sometimes it takes six holes to find out, by which point you’ve usually given away several strokes using other clubs in the bag. By contrast, at least two of your clubs are going to be hopelessly bad on a given day, but again, you never know which ones. It’s golf’s version of Russian roulette. Today, for some reason, my putter is the good club. Though my score isn’t anything to celebrate (it never is), I’ve made three different putts of 10 feet or longer over the first nine holes. You’d never know it, since my scorecards aren’t the type to suggest that strokes were actually saved anywhere, but the fact is my putter has turned two potential sixes into fives and one potential seven into a six. Like I said, nothing to celebrate, but mildly interesting.
Eleven is the famous Postage Stamp 8th at Royal Troon with the seemingly bottomless pot bunker in front. The guidebook tells me the prevailing winds on this hole are always right to left. I naturally overcompensate and go way right, ending up beyond the cart path. But on the way to the green we see a wild turkey family, which provides a nice temporary distraction from my inability to make a golf ball go anywhere near where it’s supposed to. Jeff carves out a bogey; Laurence and I card doubles.
The wild turkey family we encounter on eleven. The one in the middle told me to keep my front arm straighter.
The twelfth, inspired by Pine Valley, is the kind of hole that would be physically easy to play if one didn’t possess a brain to screw things up. Your standard 400-yard par-4, it would seem straightforward enough were it not for the massive bunker between the tee and the first cut of fairway. The more I look at it, the more this bunker looks the size of Texas, or at least Delaware. To carry it you need to hit the ball about 180 yards. Not that the difficulty ends there, according to the guidebook: “Use an extra club on your second shot as it’s all carry to the green. The bunkers in front are very tough to get out of.” My drive barely escapes the fairway bunker, but then I sizzle a 5-wood along the ground as though bowling on an inclined plane. I was in perfect position and messed it up. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it before, but I just adore doing that. After a nice high sand wedge that stops short of the green and settles on the rough ridge, I let my wrists go on a classic flub-chip and then two-putt for six. It could easily have been a par. I stink. Laurence makes par. “Attaboy,” I tell him while thinking about how to poison his drink later.
Though the rest of my round features two sevens and three sixes, my par at the seventeenth—TPC Sawgrass’ famed island green—makes it all worthwhile and somehow gives me bragging rights in the clubhouse despite finishing five strokes behind Jeff and sixteen behind Laurence. My 102 includes, as usual, an abundant variety of poor shots and a handful of decent ones, encapsulated by my performance on thirteen, which started with a drive off a tree and ended with my sinking a long putt well past the point of it making a difference. Still, that putt, along with the par at seventeen and the other few respectable shots, make me want to play another eighteen as soon as possible. That’s golf.
Seventeen, featuring TPC’s celebrated island green.
Jeff taking aim and firing away. If you listen closely, you can hear the splash.
Laurence giving the ball a severe lecture. It responds by going for a swim.
Testing soil levels in order to place my ball strategically. Somehow this results in a par.
STARTING AND FINISHING HOLES
The church pew hole snaps you instantly to attention. Not only is the hole physically beautiful and perfectly maintained, it also makes a charming statement about the experience to come. The latter half-dozen holes, featuring, among others, Hogan’s Alley at Carnoustie and The Road Hole from St. Andrews, are a treat for the senses. The eighteenth in particular—St. Andrews’ eighteenth, highlighted by the “valley of sin”—is worth absorbing for a couple of minutes before you tee off.
OVERALL AESTHETICS
No stone has been left unturned in making the Wooden Sticks experience a pleasurable one. My playing partners could have been better looking, but that isn’t the course’s fault.
REAR VIEWS
Back-facing sightlines throughout the course are as impressive as front-facing ones. That’s the sign of a coherently designed and marvelously executed course.
TRACK
Owing to its original concept, Wooden Sticks serves up a track that contains surprises at almost every turn. Even the more typical holes aren’t that typical. Holes are logically connected and well signed, allowing a player like me to focus not on getting around the course but instead on the much more important task of losing as many balls as possible.
“NICE HOLE” FACTOR
Wooden Sticks starts its Nice Hole tally right at the first and maintains a healthy rate throughout. Though most players will look forward to reaching seventeen, they shouldn’t let this anticipation blind them to the elegant challenge of several other holes, including 4, 6, 9, 11and 13.
DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY
I usually score in the area of 105. My 102 is therefore an accurate indication of the subtle trick played by Wooden Sticks: It allows you the experience of playing professionally inspired holes without making you feel inferior. The course’s highly intelligent design places you in the pros’ shoes while still letting you feel you’re a golfer of moderate skill. Then again, we played from the whites.
COURSE MARSHALS
Wooden Sticks has a friendly hands-off policy: Marshals intervene only when necessary. Our round was enjoyably unrushed.
PRO SHOP AND AMENITIES
Wooden Sticks’ operation is predicated on a positive overall experience. Your round includes snacks and drinks on the cart, a driving range plus putting and chipping greens, and two meals, one before the round and one after. Amenities are plentiful—including six on-site luxury cabins for those interested in “Stay & Play” packages.
BANG FOR YOUR BUCK
Green fees at Wooden Sticks run between $160 and $220 on weekdays and between $140 and $175 on weekends and holidays. For everything this cost includes, it’s a great price. However, if your desire is just to play an interesting round of golf and go home, it may seem steep.