Many of us from time to time find ourselves playing courses that are probably more akin to those once played by Scottish shepherds than to those that Tour players trod each week. In short… I’m talking about golf pastures. These courses are the great-unwashed of the golf world – ill kept, underwatered… and dearly loved.
What’s to like about a sub-par course? Plenty.
Take this little central Ohio nine-holer that I play from time to time. It’s the kind of place that has more in common with a goat pasture than with Augusta National. The greens are rock hard, not by design, but due to years without aeration. The fairways are more brown than green most of the year, and feature dead patches as well as puddles and cart ruts in muddier seasons. The rough often provides a better lie than the fairways provided you stay out of the thistles and ground ivy. The water hazards harbor bullfrogs, mud turtles, and plenty of algae. In the heat of summer, you can smell them from a hole away. Five holes border a donkey pasture. OK, there’s only one donkey (I think) and a number of horses. But anyone hitting the ball long on #1 or #4, or hooking it on #5, might just take out Eeyore.
Still, there’s a lot to like about the “Grove.” (We’ll keep it a little mysterious so I don’t get kicked off next time I show up for the Pot Game. Though the names are changed, I’m sure the regulars will recognize the course in question.) Here are five reasons to put your pride aside from time to time and tee it up at a pasture.
Number Five: The Price is Right
If all things (and greens fees) were equal, we’d all be playing fairways with twin irrigation rows and greens with surfaces like pool tables. But the fact is, all of that upkeep costs. And those costs are naturally passed on to the membership of private clubs or the rack-rate paying public at daily-fee courses. Many of us love to play those premium courses when we can, but can’t or choose not to shell out the kind of money required to play them on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis.
The simple fact is a pasture is cheaper to play than a horticultural wonder. All that irrigation costs plenty. You can play and ride all nine holes and get change back from your $20 (you could last year, anyway).
At the Grove, like many other “locally designed” courses, your money buys a lot of quirkiness. The Grove features two-drivable par fours, a hole that finishes at a downslope so sharp that the perched green has a safety railing around it, and a blind par three where you hit over a creek and up a hill and you check to make sure the green is clear with a mirror mounted on a pole 20-feet above the tee. And that’s just on the “front” nine. The Grove has alternate tees for the “back” nine, which converts one short par four into a par three, makes another very reachable (if you can hit the perfect big fade around a tree), and makes #18 a short, exciting, par five. Simply said, it’s golf, no matter what you paid.
Another bonus on the cut-rate circuit is that you may be able to play some big name designer courses for the same you might spend playing some track designed by a farmer. Here in Columbus, the city owns two courses designed by Robert Trent Jones, as well as one by Arthur Hills. The upkeep on each leaves something to be desired, but if you squint your eyes just right, you can see a great course trying to get out.
Number Four: Sometimes a Bad Lie is Good
Poor courses will teach you more about bad lies than you’ll ever learn on the perfectly shorn courses we’d all play if the prices were equal. There’s nothing like hitting a beautiful drive into the middle of a fairway and have the ball find, not a divot that could happen anywhere, but a dead spot in the grass that’s become a hard dirt-bottomed ball magnet. It’s like hitting out of a fresh divot in asphalt.
During a typical round at the Grove, you’ll hit off a bare lie… on a tee box. You’ll play from the middle of a clover patch… in the fairway. In short, you’ll get everything but a good lie. And that’s not all bad.
Learning to play all these kinds of shots will only be good when you find yourself on one of those few unmanicured parts of your favorite upscale course. You can learn to play pretty much any shot in golf at the Grove. You just can’t always play the shot you want to play, because the lie just won’t let you.
Number Three: The Camaraderie
Unlike premium courses, a place like the Grove does not draw many out-of-town players. Lucky for me, several of my best friends are regulars at the Grove and so I’ve become a sometime player there, though it’s now a 30-minute drive for me during which I pass several “superior” courses.
Characters abound at the Grove. It’s a meeting place for people from its small town. I could say it’s a microcosm of life in a small town, but that wouldn’t really be accurate. For the most part, the doctor and lawyer types head for the country club. But there are still a few mixed in with the restaurant owners, construction workers, hourly factory laborers, retirees, and one marketeer from the ‘burbs… you never quite know who’ll turn up. Nicknames are used more than given names&: “Squeeze,” “Big Crusher,” “Little Crusher,” “MB,” “Bubba.”
The same folks show up for golf leagues year after year. And a core group of players gather daily at two in the afternoon for the Pot Game, a small-time money scramble. As a rule, a few dollars change hands, but stories abound of big wins in the $40-50 range. It’s a three-man scramble usually, sometimes four. To decide teams, all of the B players place a ball in a hat. The A players then draw a ball out in turn to determine the B player on the team. Then the process repeats for C players. Adjustments are occasionally made by the local forefathers (notably not the A players) when clear inequities arise. Sometimes, a team will get two weak players to another team’s single mediocre player. New players are generally paired with someone they know (kind of like a sponsor), so they won’t be uncomfortable. It’s a friendly, though competive game.
Number Two: Humor
Sure, most golf courses are places of humor. There’s the usual competitive trash talk, the joke telling, the incredibly bad or good result that you just can’t help but laugh at. But at a place like the Grove, the laughs are completely unrestrained. Just about everyone knows everyone and just about everyone has a story about everyone else. Plus, stuff happens on a course like the Grove that just doesn’t happen at $100 rack-rate course.
One of my favorite stories took place during the Pot Game, of course. This guy called “Squeeze” was a regular in the Pot Game and a repeat offender of odd deeds during a round (he was called Squeeze because he always clenched and unclenched his hands repeatedly on the putter grip before rolling a putt). He was an E player at best, playing as a C in the Pot Game one week when he hit a great shot. It landed 20-feet short of the green, ran up on, and finished about five feet short of the pin. It was high fives all around and the A player told him he’d better mark it. So Squeeze trundled up to the green and then commenced to spend an inordinate amount of time marking the ball. He finally cleared out of the way, and the B and A players hit their shots into the green with only mediocre results. Still, they knew they had Squeeze’s birdie putt so it wasn’t a big deal. But when they got to where the mark should have been, there was no marker on the green.
“Where’s the mark?” they asked Zephyr.
“Huh, it must not have been dead,” he said.
“What must not have been dead?” they asked.
“The Japanese beetle I marked the ball with.” I bashed his head into the ground, but I guess I just stunned him.
They placed the ball where Squeeze’s mark should have been and holed the putt. Needless to say, their tie for first in that afternoon’s Pot Game is still a matter of some contention among regulars.
Number One: Golf is a Game for Everyone
Anyone can play golf at a place like the Grove. You’ll see folks let their young grandchildren putt on the greens and hit an occasional shot during their rounds. It really won’t slow things down at the Grove, almost everyone who plays there knows how to get around the course in reasonable time (though not necessarily in a reasonable score). And the regulars know who the usual logjams are, and they’ll go start on #3 or whereever they need to go to keep moving. Gridlock is not generally a problem at the Grove.
And the Grove is not just for hacks. There are several good golfers who regularly play there. When I play in the Pot Game, my 8-handicap has landed me in the B group sometimes. There’s also an LPGA caddie, and scratch golfer, who used to tee it up there regularly. Of course, for him several greens were drivable that most of us would ever even consider trying to reach.
The Grove is still going strong. Though it was sold by its longtime owners a few years back, and it’s undergone a few management changes since. The upkeep seems to have improved, but there are still enough rough edges to make it the Grove.
Don’t judge a course solely on how green the grass is. Sometimes there are other strengths to consider.
Posts like this are why I read your site religiously…posts for the normal Joe golfer that you don’t see in Golf Digest.
I wish that GD would feature a local 9 hole or track once a month, nothing spectacular as far as courses go, but they could interview the ‘locals’ and it would make for great writing with the right author.
Well done George!
These are an excellent top 5 for why to play ‘dog tracks,’ and describes my club to a tee (no pun intended).
Priceless.
Most of last year, i used to play a muni which had so much character than the course that I am an annual member of now. I love the place.
God, I wish I could write like you.
Great article. Makes me want to play a few courses around me again!
😆 The story about the beetle is classic.
The “superior” courses do play like the lies come from the clouds of heaven and the balls stop like aircraft landing on naval carriers. The bargan courses make good ball striking very important and the player’s swing speed less of a factor in scoring. Though, I believe the greens on economy courses are sometimes very disapointing. The cheapest course I go to moved the nineth “green” (regularly cut grass) area into the “fairway” (weeds, clay, and onions). You can’t putt more than two feet (61cm) without hitting a sprout!
One common detractor to the affordable courses that has not been mentioned is the rock hard tee boxes. The last time I went to the above mentioned course, I seriously considered bringing a small hammer to help with planting my tee.
😉 All for all, $5 for nine holes and $8 for all day is more worth it for playing to me than $105 for a maximum four hour 18 at the deluxe course. If nine holes took me two hours, I could play 42 hours at the $5 nine hole rate, but only four hours at the deluxe rate. It would cost me approximately $1,155 to play 42 hours at the deluxe course.
I love hearing about other public tracks. It takes me back to my high school days where we were the only school in the league who didn’t have a CC as a home course. We sponsored the sectionals my senior year, and the guys from the other schools were horrified to be playing such a junkie track. Ha, at the time the 5th green was under repair. To finish the hole, you had to chip into a circle in the front of the green and add two strokes. Those guys were mortified. We also played winter rules all the time on that course. I remember the smell of the frogs, turtles, and the muck too. I’m heading back there this year.
Rick Reilly’s “Missing Links” is a book that will make any Muni lover laugh.