Fairway Adventures

“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.

Two years ago, my parents bid a joint adios to the rat race. This year, mom finally allowed dad to fulfil his long-held desire to spend three months of the Canadian winter in Florida. Turns out to have been a wise call: Toronto has been blasted with more snow this year than in any year since the Depression, mom’s joints feel lubricated and supple, and dad’s face is like that of a Cheshire cat in a grizzly bear’s body.

Personally, I love the hip-high snowdrifts, the sound of the snow crunching under your boots, and the feeling of zooming down the hill on a toboggan followed by hot chocolate and marshmallows by the fire. But try to tell that to dad, who grew up in Ottawa. Winter in Ottawa makes Toronto seem like Honolulu. In other words, he’s earned the right to spend a quarter of the year lazing by the pool, accompanying mom to lectures at the local university, and playing a little golf.

Today, he and I are playing a round together for the first time. Baseball was our shared game growing up. I didn’t embrace the links until well into my teens, and his interest in the grand old game surfaced even later. I’m in the midst of my annual West Palm Beach pilgrimage and today have abandoned my wife and our three children to play Colony West — an agreeable course in the Fort Lauderdale area, at one point ranked the fourth-hardest public course in the country — with dad, my Uncle Sid, and a few of his Florida contemporaries. Uncle Sid, despite not actually being my uncle, has always been a favorite of mine, and not just because he ran a successful ice cream company and therefore regularly stocked our basement freezer with an endless inventory of rockets, Creamsicles, fudgsicles and every other variety under the sun, summer after summer. Okay, he could’ve been a creep and I still probably would have adored him, but the fact is he’s actually a lovely human being.  

Father and son — and, offscreen, some guy with a clipboard writing, “Prediction: Two highest scores today.”

 

  Dad and Uncle Sid, enjoying the happiness while it lasts.

From the inside, you’d hardly know Colony West is a golf facility. It feels more like a Pittsburgh shrine. The club was founded by Pitt native Ed Rack, carried on by his son, Norman, and carried on again by Norman’s son, Craig. All three are still involved in running the club, and, to put it mildly, still moderately proud of their heritage at the town at the confluence of the Allengheny and the Monongahela. Framed photos of Lynn Swann to Mario Lemieux and everyone in between line virtually every inch of the inner walls, from the pro shop to the bar to the front edge of the bathroom. Take a random Pittsburgh teenage boy’s bedroom walls and expand it twentyfold, and you’ve got the inner walls of Colony West.

 

 Colony West: Golf course on the outside, Pittsburgh shrine on the inside

Today is notable also for the fact that I’ll be using hybrids for the first time. I’m borrowing Uncle Sid’s son Alan’s clubs, a set of Aliens (not to be confused with alien wedges; Alien is a make). Even during my warmup swings they feel glorious.

A quick inspection of the course from the front of the clubhouse reveals what seems like a typical Florida track: flat, semi-inspired, lots of water and, especially, sand, to make up for lack of undulation. But I’m not going to be fooled — I happen to know that, when the Championship Course was originally designed for the Jackie Gleason Classic (which became the Honda Classic), the Golden Bear said the course was too tough for the event, and the tournament committee agreed. I also happen to know Jack took a seven on the then-third hole, now twelve.

The course’s vegetation appears somewhat sparse — a result of having been ravaged by Hurricane Wilma of 2005, like so many other courses in the region. To reach the first hole, in fact, one must guide the cart along a roped-off path of gravel and wood chips where work is still being done. Another glance upward and I see that two-thirds of the trees lining the first part of the fairway are cut off at the stumps.

As we approach the first, a short par four, Harry Kaplan (Cappy) jokes to Harry Shapiro (Shappy) that he’s going to drive the green. The starter, who looks like Moses in khakis and a golf shirt, says, “What are you smoking?” This is me and my friends four decades from now.

Ron Ganetsky (Rube), leading off, smacks a drive 150 yards down the middle of the fairway. The others have all agreed to play from the whites, and since I don’t want to disrespect my elders, I don’t argue. Dad, like a walrus holding a toothpick, steps to the tee and pokes his ball 100 feet directly upward. Then he hits his mulligan off the toe and straight out of bounds. I’m fascinated to observe that he’s rushing his hands on every swing, the very evil I try so desperately to avoid. What a revelation: My golf defects are hereditary.

After a decent drive, I pull out the 3-hybrid and hit a nice sizzler that turns left. Then I catch a 5-iron that feels tremendous off the clubface, which makes it little surprise that the ball finds the one outlying branch hanging from the one tree of any kind in my way, and kicks straight back down. This is the first of several such branches minding their own business that my balls will find today. From 50 yards, I hit an accidentally beautiful wedge — if only I knew what I did on that swing so I could do it again at some point — to within a few feet, allowing me to save a six.

 

 Here I am drilling an iron off the tee. Note the way I’m falling over on my right instep. Textbook.

At the 350-yard second, one must hit over a river that continues up the left side of the fairway, a dogleg left. I tee off with the 3-hybrid, swing off my back foot and hit a thin one that fades too far and splashes into the edge of river. The day’s first bit of rage flares inside me, then subsides.

My composure (I know to enjoy it while it lasts) enables me to then hit a monster 3-wood that bends around the dogleg. But my pleasure is quickly doused by my discovery of the main problem playing with older men: No one can ever see where anyone else’s ball landed.

The third is a mirror-image of the second: severe dogleg right and a lake running up one side of the fairway that remains harmless if one can just manage to keep the ball somewhere within an imaginary 50-yard corridor off the tee. With my 4-hybrid, I hit it thin but straight, then, facing another 170 yards to the green — a fairly clear shot over a couple of minor swales — thunk a 5-iron into the first of them. Then, from 80 yards, I manage another beautiful wedge that kicks off a mound and rolls to within six feet of the hole.

With guarded enthusiasm I privately speculate whether the One Club Law is at work on my wedge today. It’s a phenomenon every amateur golfer knows well: No matter how dismal your game, in every round one club in your bag will prove cooperative from the first to the eighteenth. The problem with this law is twofold: first, it’s rarely the same club from one round to the next, and second, it’s impossible to predict which club will step up, so one usually has to undergo the pains of trial and error for a few holes before finding out.

For example, if I had to lay money, I’d never in a hundred rounds bet on my wedge. But in three holes I’ve now hit two good shots with it, compared with two good shots for all my other clubs combined. I don’t want to get too excited, because the flipside of the rule is to make a premature determination about a certain club based on a few early shots only to find out after several disastrous ones that it is not, in fact, the club being smiled upon, and that the one holding the magic that day has sat in your bag for thirteen holes.

At the fourth, an easy-looking 300-yard dogleg right with another lake lining the fairway — this time running along its left edge — I select my 4-hybrid and rip my drive off a tree and into a backyard of one of the condos abutting this section of the course. A rail-thin kid throws it back to me with a snicker. Selecting my 7-iron instead, I let my front arm go slack at impact, causing the clubface to open and the ball to roll far left. I’m an expert at lengthening holes this way.

Now facing a 240-yard shot that must skirt the lake, I keep my head down and my arms stiff, laying good metal on a 3-hybrid. Anticipating a nice soft landing on, or at least near, the green, I begin to smile … until I see the splash. Ah, the hidden tongue of lake cutting into the fairway too far ahead to see — just one of the many course nuances that can victimize the weekend golfer. And it isn’t even the weekend.

In addition to dad’s rushing his hands forward, he, again like me, has an abridged backswing. I can only attribute this, again, to genes, since we’ve never played together, meaning neither one of our backswings could be responsible for the incompleteness of the other’s. His is somehow even shorter than mine, and I thought there wasn’t a golfer on the planet whose backswing was shorter than mine. Because of dad’s overall size, he has a hard time getting his body out of the way of his swing in the first place, leading to more hazardous consequences as a result of the truncated backswing. I just hope one of us, during our lifetimes, finds the lost parts.

  

Dad swinging at an imaginary ball. I think that’s it behind him.

At the fifth, a 140-yard par three, I hit a respectable 6-iron into the breeze, but it lands right of the green. Then I pull the chip, too, which strains to make it over a ridge and onto the green but runs out of gas and instead rolls right off it. Attempting again to chip on, I let my wrists go slack. The ball creeps up to the edge of the green and stops, mocking me with complete and utter justification. I two-putt to salvage a contemptible 5.

Over the next few holes I mentally force myself to move on from constant private lamentations about how deficient my golf game is to more or less unadulterated enjoyment of being out on the links with dad — who, to his credit, is clearly bottling his own frustration for my sake. Cappy, who introduced himself to me twice at the beginning of the day due to failing eyesight, hits a wild one off the tee at the par-3 eighth, prompting Uncle Sid to say, “You know how many directions that went in?” Uncle Sid, who has the long, slow backswing followed by hellacious forward swing like a wind-up toy gone haywire characteristic of many recreational golfers, follows Cappy, unleashing a wild one himself that would surely have made Cappy grin if he’d seen it.

 

 Cappy, 30-percent sure he hit the ball

Returning to my 5-iron just in case it’s today’s mystery club, I skid one left off the tee. It bounces softly off the base of a maple. Hitting a provisional, I stick with the 5-iron but let the face open and pop it up to the right. The ball hits a different tree and caroms back toward me. I choose to play the first ball, switch to my 7-iron — maybe it’s the one — and hit another pop-up, which rolls into a trap fronting the green. These are the kinds of shot sequences that cause me to tap aimlessly at the ground with my club while saying “Wow” — as in, “Wow, I can’t believe how much I want to jump in that lake and drown.”

At the ninth, a 349-yard par-4, I overcompensate for slice by aligning my feet too far to the right and nail yet another tree — amazingly, my fifth of the day —right in the heart of the trunk. My ball kicks back and to the right. Now sitting off the fairway and peering through a thick row of trees, I mash a 3-wood, miss the first row, and find a tree in the hidden second row. The ball kicks back again, even further than the first shot. Sometimes I forget how poor I am at golf; moments like these remind me. I’m almost behind the original tees now. I throw a mini-tantrum, muttering a few words to the effect of, “Aw, gee whiz,” and Dad says, “Cool it, cool it.” I feel like I’m in peewee baseball again trying not to throw my bat into the other team’s dugout after striking out.

 

 Dad taking a minute after a poor shot so his son doesn’t see him go insane.

After nine, my scorecard shows mostly 6’s and 7’s. My only two good shots were the two wedge approaches. Colony West is playing more like Penal Colony West.

 

 Rube falls asleep in mid-swing.

On the tenth, yet another good wedge sets me up for a 7-foot par putt. Uncle Sid tells me, “When in doubt, Florida putts are straight.” But I’m sure I see a slight break, so I aim an inch right of the cup – and that’s exactly where the ball goes, passing the hole by two feet. Uncle Sid doesn’t say a thing.

Throughout the back nine Uncle Sid completely unravels, spraying his ball with astonishing waywardness, just as Dad begins to gain a microcosmic measure of consistency.

 

 Rube hitting, Uncle Sid providing close watch. Maybe he should have parked the cart right on top of his ball instead.

Uncle Sid loves the term “leaking,” especially to describe various shots of mine. (“That ended up pretty straight, but you’re still leaking a bit.” “That one leaked.” “Faded back into the fairway, even though it leaked a bit.”) Each one of these comments is accurate, which ticks me off.

 

 Uncle Sid’s unorthodox putting style. Another word for it is “ridiculous.”

On the par-5 fourteenth, having run off a string of particularly ugly sevens to start the back nine, I poke a sweet drive down the left side of the fairway, then a decent 3-wood to a bunker 80 yards shy of the green. Then I hit that one into another bunker 30 yards left of the green. From that one, I sail the green, then get back on and two-putt. Another seven. I think I’ll change my name to Seven Schecter.

 

 The charming par-4 sixteenth, which will end up a lot less charming after I find the trees twice, followed by water.

Over the last several holes I manage plenty of shots that would make golf instructors wince, featuring three-putts, back-foot finishes and slackened wrists leading to what Uncle Sid would describe as repeated leaking. I finish with a 106, squarely in my usual pitiful range. But it’s been a goo day. I was playing golf, after all.

 

 My shadow trying to separate itself from me. It pulls this trick every time I play golf.

 

 Big slice coming. Note how my weight is completely forward already. Textbook again.

 

 The egret to whom I offered $20 to help look for my ball on seventeen. He declined.

STARTING AND FINISHING HOLES

Colony West kicks off and winds down unremarkably but pleasantly enough. Eighteen is a nice dogleg right that skips over some water toward the hole.

OVERALL AESTHETICS

The hurricane dealt Colony West a significant blow, but ownership has worked hard to restore it. This is a lovely course that resembles a person who wouldn’t turn heads but whom you’d never describe as unattractive, either. It wins extra points for egret and salamander. 

REAR VIEWS

I judge courses not just from the way holes look tee to green but also how they look from the green back to the tee. If a hole can still impress me after I’ve just three-putted for seven, it deserves accolades. Colony West achieved this several times, and not just because I carded so many sevens. It’s a course in harmony with the land surrounding it.

TRACK

Colony West offers just enough variety to keep things interesting. A few doglegs left, a few right, some water, and a sufficient amount of pleasant scenery. The playing conditions are so good, Colony West is appointed host of the Florida Greenskeepers Annual Golf Tournament.

“NICE HOLE” FACTOR

While none of Colony West’s holes will take your breath away, few will make you comment in the other direction, either. The signature hole is twelve, a par-4 guarded by trees and water on the left, trees and out of bounds on the right, and the completely unfair requirements of both an accurate drive to get into position and a second accurate shot in a row to reach the green, itself protected by a bunker on the left and water on the right. That is one annoying hole.
 

DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY

Colony West doesn’t tip its hand as a tricky course, but it is — the Florida State Golf Association rated it the longest and toughest par 71 in the state with good reason. The trickery is subtle. I only realized it the sixth time I hit a tree, for instance. The course has five sets of tees, allowing golfers like me to play poorly from a variety of distances.

COURSE MARSHALS

Barely a presence. My kind of course.

PRO SHOP AND AMENITIES

The vibe at Colony West is more beach party than golf course. There’s always an enjoyably raucous crowd at Sand Trap, the open restaurant outside the clubhouse, a buzz inside, and ample smiles to go around.

BANG FOR YOUR BUCK

Colony West is a great buy at any time. With greens fees ranging from as high as $50 to as low as $15 after 5:30 pm (you have to love Florida), you’ll never feel you didn’t get your money’s worth.

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.

There are, as far as I can tell, several dozen parts to my golf swing. I imagine there should be three or four, all working in sweet accord, synched as finely as the watches in a Hollywood-choreographed heist caper.

My swing unfortunately works in the opposite manner, so that, like the proverbial house of cards, if one part is slightly off, the rest collapse immediately, leaving me with a physical act similar to what someone might look like if attempting to swing a club while undergoing electroshock therapy.

First, there’s the issue of address. One could argue that technically this isn’t part of the actual swing—but to my thinking the experience of the swing begins the moment you stand over the ball. That’s when the latent potential of the swing is activated, along with the fantastic sense of panic that accompanies the act of preparing to hit a golf ball. The ostensible calmness with which the clubhead rests on the ground is in inverse proportion to the dread that begins to melt over the person holding the club. If the recreational golfer standing over the ball were captured in art, the name of the overt portrait might be something like “Serenity and the Ball.” Change that portrait to an EKG printout and the title becomes “Terror at Address.”

Posture, too, counts as part of the swing, insofar as it has a direct influence on the result. A good golf stance is essentially one in which the golfer looks as though he has started to very carefully sit down on a toilet and stopped one third of the way. Knee bend, in other words, is crucial. Hip position is, too. Weight distribution is a third important component, position of hands relative to the groin a fourth. One also mustn’t forget shoulder plane or spine angle, nor should he swing heedless of head tilt or grip pressure. If you disagree that these are all parts of the swing, try ignoring one of them and see how many skins you earn.

Once my swing is, against all psychological resistance, triggered, a number of other elements come into play, all fighting against one another in a chaotic and misguided battle for supremacy. If my swing were a corporation and its components the staff, each of them would be called in by the HR manager to be told they needed to become better team players. Actually, they’d be told they needed to learn how to better leverage potential synergies across multiple touchpoints.

As far as my particular swing is concerned, no factor is more vital than clubface angle. For years the faces of my clubs have arrived at the ball as though they’ve only traveled there by accident, so that by the time they do reach the destination, instead of squaring up to the ball they start to turn away, fearful of something I still can’t understand. Now you may be saying to yourself that the angle of the clubface at impact probably has more to do with the way I swing than any form of metaphysical fear. This is a highly logical assertion, and probably true. But I still don’t get why my clubs are so afraid.

Front-arm stiffness, as any golfer knows, also plays a decisive role in guiding the swing along its proper path. My front elbow exhibits a strong desire to bend at all points in the swing despite my frequently irate objections. So I’m dealing with a phobic clubface and a slack elbow. No wonder I can’t break 100.

Beyond these impediments, there is the hip turn, or more specifically, the need to create resistance against yourself by twisting one half of your body away from the target while keeping the other half completely in the dark. Though this kind of move is best left to cartoon characters, the experts continue to fool a good part of the population into thinking it’s the best way to swing. Thankfully the new stack-and-tilt proponents are endorsing a lazier style that doesn’t involving wrenching multiple vertebrae out of place.

The hip turn can itself be divided into sub-components, since it must work with the rest of the torso on the initial backwards twist but then take the lead on the way back, opening a fraction of a second before the knee, heel, chest and arms get involved—“leading” them through, that is. It’s an enormous responsibility, but one the hips must live with. I can’t imagine the guilt they must feel every time they forget to alert the other parts before opening. (Wait, we forgot to tell the knees! THE KNEES!)

Many of golf’s swing elements make a scrap of sense on their own, but instructors for some reason insist on making us aware of both a swing element and its direct opposite, then insisting we integrate both into our technique. We’re led to believe that we must remember within the space of a few seconds to swing down on the ball and come up through the ball; pronate the wrists while not forgetting to release; grip the club like it’s an egg but swing like you mean it; keep the club low but end with a nice high finish, so that our playing partners will keep their eyes fixed on our elegant pose rather than the fact that our ball has just dented a tree 20 yards off the fairway. I attribute all these paradoxes to the fact that even golf pros don’t have a clue what they’re doing. Not that this stops me from paying them.

A few times per round, of course, something glorious happens: All the parts of my swing somehow fall into alignment, and the ball, after soaring through the sky for what seems like hours, lands in just the right spot, making me smile with as much wonder as pleasure. It’s this instant of harmony that every golfer is perpetually trying to capture—making even golfers like me, who capture it no more than a handful of times among dozens of awful shots, continue to pursue it enthusiastically for the same reason a man will invest months of effort for the prospect of seeing a pair of breasts even once. That moment makes everything that has come before it worthwhile, just as a great drive on eighteen makes the seventeen errant drives preceding it seem suddenly acceptable. Yes, when all the parts of the swing agree to put aside their differences and work in concert, the feeling is sublime. I use the sexual analogy because no man, having seen a pair of breasts, can ever again pretend he hasn’t. Ask any of your playing partners about a great shot you remember them hitting, and watch the light come into their eyes. Watch as they get misty while describing it (and, in all likelihood, acting it out with an imaginary club). Why are they so emotional? Because you never know when one part might get crossed up with another, and it can take an excruciatingly long period to get the whole mess untangled again.

Today I’d like to review Caledon Woods Golf Club, located not surprisingly in the vicinity of Caledon, which, a sign informs me as I approach, is “the greenest town in Ontario.” Indeed, driving along Highway 50 past the town of Bolton on the way to the course, I see foliage everywhere, a refreshing change from the pale yellow front lawn that greets me every morning as a reminder of just how horticulturally useless I am.

It’s a lovely summer day, and the sun’s rays are just starting to lay a beautiful warm sheet over our little section of Earth. Seeing 23 degrees Celsius predicted by The Weather Channel this morning, and with an 8:33 a.m. tee time, I engaged in the shorts-vs.-khakis debate with myself in the shower before deciding, in the end, on khakis. They make me feel more professional as a golfer, even if my swing dispels that illusion by the end of the first hole.

I arrive to find Dave waiting in the parking lot, also in khakis – a surprise, since he tends not to even entertain the debate unless the temperature is in single digits.

Dave is a superb athlete and all-around good guy with whom I have for years maintained a friendly competitiveness underlied by deep respect. In other words, we rib each other relentlessly on the golf course while feigning mutual encouragement. One of my regular golf compadres since I first started playing, Dave possesses plenty of latent potential and a frequently decent-looking swing, but, like most recreational players, he gives away shots like Halloween candies. Dave also maintains the hilarious habit of performing exactly five clubhead waggles before every shot, besides putts.

Our other playing partner, Dan Kuzmarov, or Kuz (rhymes with “blues,” as opposed to “fuzz”), calls me in a subdued panic to say he has somehow missed the ramp for Highway 427 and is now backtracking, putting him in serious jeopardy of missing our tee time. I don’t bother reminding him he advised Dave and me yesterday to build in extra time given construction on the 401. For one thing, the joke is too easy. Also, he sounds like he’s considering speeding down the shoulder while making ambulance sounds. I assure him that Sandra and Kendall at the pro shop desk have told us there are no tee times for a full half-hour after ours. Kuz relaxes a bit at this news, but in my mind I can still see him flooring it.

Sandra and Kendall make the Caledon Woods experience pleasurable no matter how embarrassing your score.

Kuz somehow pulls into the course 18 minutes later, putting his average driving speed since his call to me, Dave and I figure, at approximately 150 kilometers an hour. His bright plaid shorts are positively foppish compared to the classic inmate look Dave and I sport from the waist down.

A formidable threesome. You can tell this is the pre-round photo because we’re all still smiling.

 

Caledon Woods, formerly the 27-hole Bolton Golf Club, opened in 2003 after a complete overhaul by designer Paul Takahashi. Takahashi apparently used as his model older courses known for moderate length but strategic thinking. The first part bodes well for me; the second, not so much. “You have to read every hole from tee to green,” says the website. That’s too bad – I prefer courses that allow me just to whale away illiterately.

 

Leading things off at the 414-yard par-4 first, I opt for a 4-iron off the tee. We haven’t hit a pail or even performed any of those fake partial stretches so many recreational golfers do, so I’d rather just establish a nice, sound swing over the first couple of holes before breaking out the heavy lumber.

 

Letting my arms slacken, I muff the swing, trickling my ball just past the ladies’ tees. Kuz insists on my taking a mulligan, so I take a 3-iron instead . . . and put it in approximately the same spot. Dave, after five waggles, takes a swing that I swear is similar to mine (unless you count the fact that he takes a full backswing, whereas my clubs are for some reason scared of the world beyond shoulder-level) and hits a decent, fading drive that finds the left rough.

 

Kuz is an enjoyable playing partner partly because he plays well, partly because he’s a sweet guy, and partly because he’s a willing and constant student of the game, but mostly for his amusing pre-shot routine and swing, in which he picks out a target from a few feet behind the ball, gets into address, makes sure his feet are shoulder-width apart, holds the club above his head as though trying to channel the golfing gods, slowly lowers his club into place, even more slowly takes it back while monitoring the swing arc the entire way, then torques forward as though someone has fired a pistol. The thing is, he almost always hits the ball straight. I’d like to be able to hate him for this.

 

He scalds one down the middle of the fairway. “Way to smoke it, Kuz,” I say. Internally this translates to, “I am going to crush you and everything you love.”

 

After a semi-decent 3-wood, two half-okay irons, a mostly-poor pitch and two not-horrendous putts, I come away with 7 on the hole, pulling my mood slightly downward, though not terribly. There is somehow an enormous difference between 7s and 8s on a scorecard. Given typical first-hole jitters, 7 on an opening par-4 is acceptable, whereas an 8 makes me want to take a buzzsaw to the course. Dave and Kuz manage sixes, meaning I still count them as friends.

 

 

Kuz, trying to summon divine intervention.

The second is a short, tricky par-4, only 320 yards but veering toward a green protected by a cluster of bunkers that seem immensely serious about snagging at least one of our balls, if not more. Unable to shake these bunkers from my mind – are they actually moving, or is it me? – I hook my 5-iron off the tee, and it ends up under the thick canopy of a large maple sure to minimize my already deficient backswing. From there I punch a 7-iron that wants to see the green but decides first to check out what’s happening in the bunkers. Dave and Kuz, after both smacking wonderful drives, skull their second shots and find the sand, too, Kuz joining me, Dave in the one behind. Because of the three other bunkers looming in front of him, Dave is forced to pitch out, back into the fairway. From there he skids his ball past the green and to the base of the forest behind it. I take three shots to escape my bunker. From the forest Dave rips his ball back over the front edge of the green, onto the fairway. Now as tentative as Adam Sandler in Happy Gilmore, he manages to find the green and two-putts his way to an 8.

Dave, showing off his home run swing – from the sand trap.

On the 6th, a gorgeous 407-yard par 4, my graceless swing – I’m using a driver now – produces a solid clout to the middle of the fairway. To make the green, I still have to carry, about 200 yards away, a ribbon of the Humber River, which curls attractively in and out of the course. I remind myself to slow down, then, with my 3-wood, turn so hard on my heels that the ball zips across the fairway into the bushes on the right.

Now I have about 160 yards to clear the ravine. Using a 5-iron, I try to come back across. Though I make it over, the thick grass causes my clubface to open, directing my ball into the woods. Penalty stroke. Taking a drop, I try a bump-and-run, but come up short on the bump. By the time I chip onto the green I’m lying 7. Amazingly, I save the 8 by sinking a 14-foot putt, a feat as rare as fishing around in your pocket and actually finding the scoring pencil instead of a tee. Dave cards an 8 on this hole, too, prompting a lengthy sequence of angry muttering that doesn’t quite fall into the category of self-motivation.

Kuz, to my aggravation – sorry, admiration – doesn’t flub many shots. He hits the occasional worm-burner but doesn’t give strokes away with the creative flair that Dave and I do. For this reason he usually shoots in the high 80s or low 90s. His accessories are better, too.

After the 9th – I’ve shot a severely unimpressive 52 that could have easily been higher – a cart appears as though by magic. While trying to be cool yet seductively witty for the cart girl, Andrea – who no doubt hears the same yawningly predictable banter from every foursome, every day, all summer – we learn of an ingenious new competition being sponsored by Score Golf: the Ultimate Cart Girl. Andrea will be the proud owner of a new flat-screen TV, she tells us, if she wins. We promise to vote for her, then, after every poor shot for the rest of the round, say to the person who swung, “Still thinking about the cart girl?”

Andrea, cart girl extraordinaire. Vote for her at scoregolf.ca/cartgirl.

Ten, a monster at 531 yards, features another band of the Humber about 400 yards out. A big drive and big fairway wood might get you over. I hit a respectable drive to the front of the deep fairway, but my only choice is to lay up. Trying to take an easy swing with my 7-iron, I hook the ball again, which scoots across the fairway and comes to rest under a large tree. Now I have 100 yards to the hazard and another 50 to clear it. Cursing four times at address and three more times on the backswing, I rip at the MaxFli Noodle with my 5-wood, just sneaking over. This doesn’t stop me from carding 8 on the hole, however, because after the successful 5-wood I take a 6-iron, inadvertently open the face, lift my head and introduce the ball to some thick undergrowth, which I then machete down into with a sand wedge, miraculously popping the ball out but still little closer to the green. I get there in 6, two-putt, and resume my cursing while strolling toward the next hole.

 

The author hitting out from under a tree on the par-5 tenth. That the ball has not moved may become an issue.

The 176-yard 11th is an open shot apart from a small section of foliage-covered river poking into the swale between tee and green. It’s the kind of hazard that seems almost impossible to find yet messes up your mind so thoroughly that after standing there for a few seconds you can’t imagine any scenario other than finding it. I get into address, put it completely out of my mind, and hit directly into it. At about the same time, one of the gents in the foursome behind us bellows, “How about turning up the jets!” I consider starting a rumble, since, given my state of mind, I’m pretty sure I could take them all, Tasmanian-Devil style. Then I then think better of it, knowing Andrea wouldn’t approve.

Arriving at the next hole in his cart, one of the pair of the foursome says, “It was them, not us,” gesturing toward the other cart coming up behind theirs, implying that the member of his foursome who hollered at us is slightly unbalanced – that is, just as big a jerkface as we assumed. The jerkface – in a windbreaker; of course, they always are – arrives and accuses us of cutting in at the 10th. Kuz calmly explains the illogic of this, since between 9 and 10 all we did was devour sandwiches, which took about 10 seconds. Immediately the guy turns into a teddy bear, apologizing profusely. I still feel like starting a rumble.

At 12, another giant at 540 yards, we must clear a massive section of thickly lined Humber off the tee. I give myself a four percent chance of making it. Miraculously, after both Kuz and Dave scorch their drives, easily clearing the trees, I sneak my ball over the last leaf of the last branch with a swing like an out-of-control gyroscope. Though all my shots between this one and the green are as ugly as they are ill-considered, I end up with a 6 thanks to another accidentally successful long putt of maybe 30 feet.

 

Dave lining up his tee shot at the par-5 twelfth, forgetting golf’s cardinal rule: It’s almost always better to swing with both hands.

The next several holes, consisting mostly of highly manageable par-4s, prove a major hindrance for me. Every duffer has at least one Bad Run per round, an unavoidable sequence in which his game completely unravels. He simply hopes it doesn’t last long, and that some semblance of a reasonable game will emerge when it’s over. On two consecutive doglegs left – tailor-made for my slice, normally – I don’t get the ball far enough out before the slice takes over, and suddenly I’m collecting penalty strokes as though they’re silver dollars. I crouch, holding the club over my head, praying lightning will find it. Remarkably I sink yet another long putt on 16, to save a 6. Dave and Kuz look up at me strangely. I know what they’re thinking – “How can he play so bad yet hit so many big putts?” – because I’m thinking it, too.

My Bad Run mercifully ends at 18, and I’m able to put one more decent number on the scorecard. I finish at 102. Dave shoots 99, Kuz 90. Despite many more poor shots than good ones, it’s been a perfect day. I’m golfing, after all.

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STARTING AND FINISHING HOLES

Attractive top to bottom, Caledon Woods starts and ends with holes as handsome as they are engaging. Eighteen, in particular, is impressive, with three bunkers evenly spaced along both sides of the fairway and corresponding ridges that produce an interesting optical effect, leading you to think you may be on opium.

OVERALL AESTHETICS

Rather than breathtaking, Caledon Woods is like a long, pleasant exhale – lovely throughout, with frequent moments of inspired beauty. It is, of course, extremely green, with attractive, diverse holes, well-cared-for greens and fairways, and attractive surrounding land. Playing this course is like watching a Tom Hanks performance: It might not blow your mind, but you’ll have a hard time finding flaws.

REAR VIEWS

Many golf reviewers judge holes strictly on how they look from the tee. I judge them equally on their rear views – looking back from green to tee. This perspective often allows a better appreciation of the hole’s design, since, while you’re playing the hole, you’re thinking less about the design than about why you can’t hit a 3-iron to save your life. The rear views at Caledon Woods are often stunning, highlighting the creative thinking that went into them.

TRACK

Though better signage is required throughout the course – there are at least two long walks between holes that aren’t clearly marked – its track keeps one’s interest throughout. Takahashi has done wonderful work with the natural contours of the land and the Humber River ribboning through it.

“NICE HOLE” FACTOR

The status of a course can be determined in part by how often it makes you stop and say, “Now that is a nice hole.” Caledon’s “Nice Hole” factor is on par (pun intended) with most Tier 1A courses: It may not be Pebble Beach, but it’s a heck of a lot nicer than your backyard.

DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY

Don’t be fooled by the three short par-4s on the front nine – they’re the kind that still require shotmaking. These, balanced with a healthy dose of longer par-4s, three very tough par-5s and at least a couple of coronary-inducing tee shots, make for a great mix of challenge and playability.

COURSE MARSHALS

Course marshals with God complexes can ruin otherwise pleasant rounds. You know the type: As soon as you fall four seconds behind pace, they’re on top of you like you’ve just become the prime suspect in a CSI episode but they don’t yet have enough evidence to book you. Caledon Woods, thankfully, has the other kind of course marshal – the kind who, even when you’re behind, is casual and gracious, never making you feel worse about your already appalling game. On two instances, marshals drove up alongside us. The first merely asked us how our day was going; the second mentioned, with a smile, that we were maybe a few minutes behind and and if we could pick it up a tick, that’d be great. As opposed to marshals who treat you with about as much respect as Louis Gossett Jr. showed Richard Gere.

PRO SHOP AND AMENITIES

With a fully stocked clubhouse and clean washrooms, the only drawback here is that the ninth hole doesn’t run to the clubhouse, so the only food available is from a cart. Andrea helps get over this, but she can’t be there all the time.

BANG FOR YOUR BUCK

At $77.50 during prime hours, Caledon is appropriately priced, offering, ironically, between 75 and 80 dollars’ worth of enjoyment – though this can be skewed depending on how many times you three-putt.

OVERALL RATING

Caledon Woods was a genuine delight. Pleasantly secluded, intelligently designed and conscientiously maintained, the course contributes admirably to the diverse palette of Ontario golf.

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Thanks for reading, everyone; it’s been a slice. Tune in a couple of weeks from now for my thoughts on the numerous parts of a golf swing and why they can never be controlled at the same time. In the meantime, feel free to get in touch by visiting www.ijschecter.com or e-mailing me at ij@ijschecter.com.