Golf and Country Clubs

Owl Creek in Louisville, Kentucky

My family was not rich but both my parents played golf and my father was, and would always be, a golf addict. This meant that we almost always belonged to a country club. But never the popular, conveniently located clubs. The ones we belonged to were always miles out of town; and once we moved West they were always in areas known for nearly constant, gale force wind. Playing golf in the wind is hell. I started learning to play when I was six and eventually I would either play with my parents or else caddy. But in the early days I would be left behind at the swimming pool.

The pool was next to the clay tennis courts (where none of us played). It was a nice enough pool once they fished the snakes out every morning. Cottonmouth water moccasins were the snakes we dreaded. Legend had it they formed nest balls on bodies of water and these nests were the stuff of nightmare. A quick search tells me they don't actually nest on water but I didn't know that when I was a child.

Mostly we kids would play in and around the pool all day building shelters (out of deck furniture and towels) where we would hide from the sun between dips into the pool and runs to get ice cream sandwiches from the snack bar -- at the time ice cream sandwiches were my favorite thing.

Broomfield Country Club

In Colorado we joined a country club in Broomfield mid-way between Boulder and Denver. Boulder sits in a rift valley at the base of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains (known here as the “Flatirons” because of a spectacular array of huge, flattish, red rocks tilted up on the side of the hills facing the plains).

Flatirons with a CU building in the foreground.

The toll road, on the way to Denver, rose up out of this valley to the higher level of the Great Plains around Denver. On this higher ground, where it could receive the full brunt of the wind that almost always blew out of the mountains, was Broomfield and its fairly bleak (compared to lush Kentucky) country club.

Antelope Valley Country Club

In SoCal we found a country club we could afford way out on the high desert near Edwards Air Force Base. The Antelope Valley Country Club was even windier than Broomfield. The wind was constant and hot. And fishing golf balls out of Joshua Trees is no joke.

Our proximity to Edwards was more than just a curiosity. At the time the Air Force was testing the prototypes of the B-70 supersonic bomber at Edwards.

Sometimes, when you are putting, the ball will hang-up balancing on the side of the cup. At Antelope Valley, the wind might be holding it back or a gust might put the ball in, so you hesitate to add another stroke by tapping it in. But during these years you hesitated even longer because if the B-70 roared over, as it did regularly, it could generate a double sonic boom (it could fly at Mach 3) that could send any ball rolling.

Arizona

In Arizona we didn’t immediately join a country club at least in part because there was a very nice municipal course near us. My dad would eventually belong to a variety of country clubs in Scottsdale where he continued to be either club champion or in competition for champion until his health failed him, but the last golf I played was at this municipal course. Partly I stopped because I was a teen who wished to move away from his father. Partly it was because my persistent slice of years duration, suddenly changed into a just as frustrating hook. Golf is a game that requires concentration and dedication and desire, I usually had something else on my mind. So I quit and never looked back.