Renovated, more player friendly, White Horse

by Mike Seidl on May 9, 2012

Yesterday general manager Bruce Christy and architect John Harbottle made a presentation to the Northwest Golf Media Association regarding recent changes made to White Horse Golf Club.

It had been fairly generally agreed that the original design, by Cynthia Dye McGarey, was just too difficult for most golfers to have an “enjoyable” experience. With its elevated greens, which were also very hard and unreceptive to stopping iron shots, and bunkering that denied the option of running a shot up to the putting surface, the course left players few options other than a perfectly played shot. Anything less was severely penalized.

At John Harbottle’s direction, 63 of the approximately 140 original bunkers were removed, as well as approximately 200 trees. The net result is that about 5 to 6 points were taken off the slope, and the course is much more player friendly now.

And of course there is less maintenance required now. Harbottle spoke of the golf course design trend toward more sustainability, less turf, fewer maintained hazards, more strength and character, and thus more affordable and more playable courses.

Both Christy and Harbottle spoke glowingly of working with the Suquamish tribe, owners of this project. Following traditional Native American policies toward stewardship of the land, trees, and water, a working relationship was formed that creates a better golfing experience for the player while also minimizing the environmental impact of the golf course.

Mr. Christy pointed out that the number of rounds played at White Horse has increased by 23% in the last 2 years, while most courses have seen that number decrease.

White Horse joins a stellar field of public golf courses in Kitsap County, including Port Ludlow, both Gold Mountain courses, McCormick Woods, and Trophy Lake, and with the highly rated Salish Cliffs not far away, not to mention Chambers Bay and the Home Course. There is much great golf to be had in this area.

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more Mark Frost, from “The Greatest Game Ever Played”

by Mike Seidl on April 9, 2012

‘Just wanted to pass along three snippets from Mark Frost’s wonderful novel about Francis Ouimet’s unlikely win in the 1913 U.S. Open.

First, his description of the early Scottish professional golfers: “The earliest nineteenth-century photos from the Scottish links show us groups of men dressed like itinerant hobos, armed with primitive tools bearing enigmatic names like cleek or baffie, traversing ragged landscapes that resemble nothing the modern eye associates with golf. They don’t invite examination; grim, closed faces, fringed with shaggy Amish whiskers and a shiver of Old Testament fortitude, Ahabs in pursuit of some landlocked whale. Stoic, proud, self-reliant, long-suffering; now that, my friends, is a golfer.”

Next, Frost’s portrayal of Ouimet’s demeanor on the golf course: “People remember best about the young man a clarity of spirit and his straightforward manner, happy, courteous, good-humored, well-adjusted, and uncomplicated. A remarkable personality, considering it developed in the deep shadow of his tyrannical father. In all the photographs of Francis on a golf course, even in competition when the pictures aren’t posed – and this holds true from youth to old age – a striking detail emerges: He’s smiling at the conclusion of nearly every swing. Playing this game gave him sweet and simple joy. At this age, and throughout his life Francis projected a singular quality developed and almost scorned in today’s ironic mass media youth culture – plain, earnest goodness.”

And finally, Frost describes Ted Ray’s wild, aggressive swing and the frequent result: “Never has an ungainlier process produced a more magnificent result, but when he was off the mark, even by a fraction, Ted visited regions of golf courses never seen by mortal man. Ted himself described his wild driving this way: ‘Many roads lead to Rome, but some take us there more quickly than others. I often complete the journey to that fair city in solitary company, my route untrodden by previous travelers.’ One journalist indelicately wrote that Ted’s swing resembled the lurching charge of an enraged Cape buffalo.”

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Mark Frost’s description of Cypress Point #16, from “The Match”

by Mike Seidl on March 28, 2012

“Two hundred and twenty-two impossible yards across turbulent open water, the green rests above the craggy, bleached, sheer face of a forbidding cliff rising straight from the sea. An elevated, rocky promontory – perfected by geologic chance, surrounded by ocean on three sides, linked to the land by a narrow spit of ground to the left, where a long cypress splits a swath of fairway – the green, broad, squarish, and flat, looks the size of a dinner plate from the tee, surrounded by five bunkers that compound its inspired and terrifying prospect.

The most spectacular hole in golf, the sixteenth at Cypress, deserves its reputation but, more than any other part of the course, wouldn’t have fulfilled the severity of its convictions without the direct intervention of the club’s original founder, former U.S. Women’s Amateur champion Marion Hollins. She had singled out this spectacular location for a three par during her earliest interest in the site, but her first architect, Seth Raynor, had tried to dissuade Hollins that the carry could ever be mastered; players might be struck dumb by its savage beauty, but would only fire one wasted bullet after another into the unforgiving sea. Hollins promptly teed up three balls in a row in the rocky ground and drove them all to the middle of the green she envisioned across the cove. Case closed.

…They walked in weighted silence around the cove and out along the promontory to the sixteenth green. The weakened winter sun had now slipped below its apex to the south, toward the shadowy headlands of Big Sur. Sea mist filtered the air with a pearlescent sheen, dazzling light dancing off foamy white blue waves as they sounded off the rocks. The emotional state typically induced by the immersion in nature and ravishing vistas at sixteen comes close to reverence; they all felt it along that walk and knew that today the feeling added up to more than the sum of the weather and scenery. The crowd stopped short of the green, sensing the mood between them somehow as well, as if to follow them any farther would intrude on a private moment.”

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more from THE BOOK

by Mike Seidl on March 28, 2012

More entries from the book on which I am working, as described in an earlier post.

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Courses I Love: Wine Valley

by Mike Seidl on March 7, 2012

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Houses I Love 5

by Mike Seidl on March 7, 2012

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Golf and our Wounded Warriors

by Mike Seidl on February 16, 2012

This past Friday, at the Seattle Golf Show,  I sat in on a presentation by Jim Sims of the Friends of the American Lake Veterans Golf Course. He was speaking to the Northwest Golf Media Association, of which I am a member. I have been aware of the ALVGC for a few years now, and have felt this nagging sense that I should see if there is anything I can do to help them, through my photography. Mr. Sims was very inspiring, and the story he tells of veterans, and particularly wounded vets, some of whom are missing limbs, and the rehabilitative effects of golf, is something I wish everyone could listen to and think about.

Anyway, yesterday I had the good fortune to visit the course, which is located next to American Lake near Tacoma, Washington, and to speak with some of the volunteers who make the course work. Wow!

The nine hole course was originally built shortly after World War II next to American Lake Veterans Hospital. In 1995, funding from the VA for the golf course was eliminated, and so in 2004 the Friends of the American Lake Golf Course was founded with the idea of keeping the course alive, and even of improving the facilities. The course provides free golf for VA hospital in-patients, free clinics for physically disabled and blind golfers, free loaner club, mobilized golf carts for mobility impaired golfers, free balls, tees, and divot repair tools.  All this is done with no government funding, no paid employees, and a staff of 200 volunteers.

As their brochure says, “the all volunteer operated organization is helping veterans find physical, emotional, and recreational renewal through golf.”

Recently Jack Nicklaus’ golf design company donated the design for a back nine on property adjacent to the existing nine, and so funds are being raised to build it. Approximately $5,000,000. is needed to build the new nine and renovate the existing nine. For anyone who loves golf and appreciates what veterans have done for all of us, think about donating something to make this happen.

Much has actually been done already. Approximately 2.6 million has already been raised and spent to improve the facilities, including a barbeque kitchen and eating area, a covered driving range, equipment purchases, and so on.

Jack Nicklaus: “We all have an opportunity to say thank you to the men and women who have given so much for our country, in many ways sacrificing life and limb for the freedoms we enjoy every day and too often take for granted … I was moved to see the amazing efforts at American Lake Veterans Golf Course where our wounded warriors learn to play golf with an incredible army of volunteers.”

Ken Still (Jack Nicklaus’ Ryder Cup partner in 1969 and one of the Directors of the board): “This thing is far and above any of my career accomplishments. To see the smiles on their faces after they hit a good golf shot, to greet them, to let them know that they’re really welcome when they come over from the hospital, it’s not only satisfying for me, it’s really satisfying for them.”

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Courses I Love: Rope Rider

by Mike Seidl on January 31, 2012

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Dan Jenkins and his Scottish caddy

by Mike Seidl on January 30, 2012

From his story “You’ll not do that here, Laddie.”

“One finds in Scotland, however, that if the botany doesn’t confuse you, the scorekeeping will. I drove well at the ninth, which means safely onto the close-cropped fescue grass which comprises all Scottish fairways. I reached the small green with one of my rare unshanked four-irons, and I stole a putt of about twenty feet for a three. Then the trouble began.

‘Is this a par-four hole?’ I asked the caddie

‘No sir,’ he said. ‘It plays to a bogey five.’

‘Then I made an eagle,’ I said.

‘It ca’na be an eagle, sir,’ he said.

‘Well, what’s par for the course?’

He said, ‘Bogey today is about seventy-six.’

‘But level fours is seventy-two.’ I said. ‘Shouldn’t that be what I would call par?’

He thought a minute and said, ‘I reckon par to be about seventy-four today.’

‘What was it yesterday, for instance?’ I asked.

‘Oh, in that wind yesterday, par must have been seventy-seven or so.’

I said ‘Well, I think I just made an eagle.’

‘You did’na make an eagle, sir,’ he said.

‘A birdie?’

‘Not exactly a birdie with the helpin’ wind, sir.’

‘A par?’

‘Oh, much better than a par it was,’ he said.’

‘So what the hell was it?’

He said, ‘It was a very good score, sir. Your first of the round.’ “

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on Golf and Literature

by Mike Seidl on January 22, 2012

A few years ago a friend recommended to me that I read “Final Rounds”, by James Dodson. It’s a wonderful story of a father and son taking the golf trip to Scotland they had long put off, while the son (James Dodson) reminisces about the lifelong lessons he learned from his father, from golf, from life. It was probably the first piece of golf literature I had ever read, which is surprising considering that I have been a lifelong golfer and reader, and was a literature major in college. But it opened up a whole new world for me — the world of golf literature, and all the superb writing that the game of golf has generated. Perhaps the next great piece of golf literature I read was “Golf in the Kingdom,” by Michael Murphy, a book that had a profound effect on me as well as countless others. Reading that book pointed me in the direction of the Shivas Irons Society. If you love golf, literature, great conversation, and big ideas, then explore the Society’s website and consider becoming a member.

And so I decided to try to read all of the great golf literature I can put my hands on. Now and then I hope to share with you some of the nuggets I encounter.

One of the true greats of golf writing, in my opinion and many others, is P.G. Wodehouse, the English humorist and master of English prose. Many of his golf stories depict men whose love for the game of golf, and complete lack of skill at the game, lead to comical situations. In the story “A Mixed Threesome” the character “The Oldest Member,” who makes frequent appearances in Wodehouse’s stories, is describing Mortimer Sturgis’s early attempts to take up the game. His teacher says to him: “Your stance was wrong, and your grip was wrong, and you moved your head, and swayed your body, and took your eye off the ball, and pressed, and forgot to use your wrists, and swung back too fast, and let the hands get ahead of the club, and lost your balance, and omitted to pivot on the ball of the left foot, and bent your right knee.

He was silent for a moment.

“There is more in this pastime,” he said, “than the casual observer would suspect.”

Have truer words about the game ever been spoken?

If you, dear reader, have any suggestions of books that should be on my list, please add a comment to the blog and let me know what you like.

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