Watching the British open it brings back great memories of playing the Old Course with my son Quinn.\u00a0 He talked me into it and we left Edinburg promptly on the 5:45 train to get to St. Andrews and arrived at sunup.\u00a0 Taxi to the Old Course and finding the Caddy Master straight on was in our favor.\u00a0 Having a caddy that had caddied for some of the greats was nothing but the best.\u00a0 Life time experience concluding at the champions bar was unforgettable.\u00a0 The after golf stories that the caddies told were priceless.\u00a0 (The Guinness was pretty awesome too)<\/p>\n
The reason we were there (besides a family vacation) was to study golf and golf design. Readying ourselves to build our second golf course was the focus of our trip.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0The Caddies aided a lot in my thinking.\u00a0 See, golf is different in Scotland; I am still not sure how to describe it but it is more about beating the opponent (match play is normal), and not so much about besting one\u2019s score.\u00a0 See, in America, or at least in my corner of the Indiana golf world it seems like it is all about besting one\u2019s score.\u00a0 I think there is too much emphasis on scorecard golf in America.\u00a0 People seem to seek out the easy, open less interesting golf courses because they can score well and say \u201cI shot a bazillion strokes under par today\u201d.\u00a0 Then if they cannot do it better tomorrow (regardless of the course, the course setup or the conditions) then it was a bad day at golf?\u00a0 Golf ability and golf course conditions vary every day of the year.\u00a0 I find that people are most happy when they score better, which I know is quite normal but it is always disappointing to me that golfers only remember the score not the enjoyment of conquering a course.\u00a0 A course near us is very easy, few\u00a0trees little water and flat. Yes, you still have to get the ball in the hole, but people flock to it because they can score on it.\u00a0 Just this week in one scramble, 6 people were hit with golf balls.\u00a0 It is actually quite dangerous to play there in a scramble but people can shoot really low scramble scores so the scrambles tend to play there.<\/p>\n
Back to the British open, it brings back the best golf memories and also a sad one for me. \u00a0While playing at the Old Course it was pure enjoyment.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Fortunately I did not get into any of the bunkers but my son did.\u00a0 He struggled to get out of it and after a \u201cfew\u201d tries he made it.\u00a0 Our caddies were less than patient and moved on seemingly without us.\u00a0 Anyway the course was an experience and a challenge even though I was playing quite well for myself.\u00a0\u00a0 The disappointment that lingers from the experience is pinned to the early days here at Walnut Creek.\u00a0 See, I knew a fellow quite well, Mr. Sauder from Scotland and he was a grounds manager for a time at St. Andrews.\u00a0 He instructed me on the building of sod faced bunkers.\u00a0 He was very knowledgeable and taught classes at Purdue for several years.\u00a0 Really a nice chap.\u00a0 Anyway, when we built our first 8 bunkers at Walnut Creek we had sod faces on them.\u00a0 WELL\u2026. the reception to sod face bunkers in Grant County Indiana was not what I expected.\u00a0 Seemingly every day we had people complain that they could not get out of the bunker if they tried to advance the ball to the hole.\u00a0 If they were up against the face they could not accept that they had to hit sideways to get out of the bunker.\u00a0 After 3 or 4 years of complaints I finely caved in and filled sand up to the top of the sod wall.\u00a0 Guess we here in my part of America were not yet willing to grasp the sod wall bunker design.\u00a0 This was the most disappointing thing of my 45 years of golf course management.<\/p>\n
We all have our memories of golf and certainly of a particular golf course. \u00a0I just want Walnut Creek and Club Run to be one of those memories that linger in the mind of golfers as they reminisce over a Guinness (or bud lite)!.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Watching the British open it brings back great memories of playing the Old Course with my son Quinn.\u00a0 He talked me into it and we left Edinburg promptly on the 5:45 train to get to St. Andrews and arrived at…
Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[11],"class_list":["post-155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-view-from-above","tag-golf-course-decisions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/golfcourseownership.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/golfcourseownership.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/golfcourseownership.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golfcourseownership.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golfcourseownership.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=155"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/golfcourseownership.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":163,"href":"https:\/\/golfcourseownership.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155\/revisions\/163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/golfcourseownership.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golfcourseownership.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golfcourseownership.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}