I was invited to join a group of guys making their 3rd annual winter pilgrimage to American links-style golf’s holy land. Everything had already been arrange an entire year in advance. All I had to do was pay for my greens fees, my share of the lodging costs, and pay in $100 for the games. I had played against several of the guys in college, so I knew that these guys were going to be way better than me. The good news was that they had developed a handicap system for their Bandon invitational team event. Since there were a couple of legitimate scratch golfers, every player is given strokes based off of how they would fare in a match against those scratch players. In other words, the scratch golfers got zero strokes, while the rest of us hacks got some strokes to keep things competitive. Evidently the previous year the scratch golfer and his partner ran away with the title in spite of the handicap system. Perhaps because of that and because the organizers remembered how terrible a golf swing I had in college (and the fact that I had never been to Bandon) I was given a full 11 strokes. My buddy who is a teaching pro at the country club we worked at together was also given 11 strokes, so it seemed fair. The plan was to play all four championship courses in three days. Pacific Dunes, everyone’s runaway favorite, on Day 1 followed by Bandon Dunes & Bandon Trails on Day 2. Wide-open Old Macdonald would host the final birdie-fest that is the skins game on Day 3.
Bandon in January. I imagined gale-force winds and my face being pelted by half-frozen rain. The guys who had gone on the trip the last two years told me the horror stories of the winter golf trip to Bandon: “the weather is absolutely miserable- the worst you’ve ever played in.” Yet somehow those stories always ended with, “But you’ve gotta go! The golf is truly sublime.” I packed accordingly, my suitcase stuffed with every waterproof and insulating layer I could conceivably make a golf swing in. Other essentials included my wife’s knee compression sleeve, an entire bottle of ibuprofen, a flask, and a bottle of my new favorite alcohol: Pastis.
By some miracle, we were greeted by blue skies and warm sun on Day 1. It was 60 degrees and there was hardly a breath of wind. In short, the weather was spectacular. I didn’t even bother bringing my rain gear with me to the course. Before the round I was nervous. I was paired with the highest handicapper of the group, so I knew that I was going to have to come up with some good shots under pressure, as he was bound to lose a handful of balls every round. That being said, he’s an above-average putter and is usually a straight hitter off the tee. We started the morning at the driving range to get loosened up. There was a target flag about 50 yard out. I took out my 52-degree wedge and made a little half swing. The ball landed just shy of pin high, then it bounced forward. Then it bounced again. And again. The ball didn’t stop until it was some 30 feet over the back of the green. I couldn’t help but smile as I wiped the sand off of the face of the wedge and dragged another ball over. This is my kind of golf, I thought to myself.
Playing in firm conditions was the least of my worries. I was much more concerned about navigating the greens and driving the ball in play. My biggest worry was the state of my still tender left knee, which I had injured hiking a steep trail with my 30+ pound toddler on my shoulders less than two weeks earlier. I hadn’t planned on wearing the knee sleeve for the first round, but after the short climb up to the first tee box the knee started to feel a little achy. I strapped it on as the rather long-winded starter gave us all kinds of instructions. The only thing he said that I attended to was to not hit driver off the first tee. I teed up my 3-wood and hit a low little draw right down the middle leaving me about 50 yards in . As luck would have it, we were paired with last year’s champs. The scratch golfer drove the green. In fact, his drive ended up at the very back of the green (luckily for my partner and I, the pin was at the very front of the green). He had just driven it about 315 yards. I guess he should’ve listened to the starter and hit 3-wood. Unbelievable. It was like being back in college and getting my rear end handed to me by these freak athletes who could all fly the ball 30 to 50 yards past me. I reminded myself that I had 11 strokes on him and calmly hit that little punch gap wedge shot from the driving range to about 15 feet. I two-putted for par and we were instantly one down in the match.
I hit a good enough drive up the right side of the short uphill par 4 second hole, leaving only about 80 yards to the pin. Knowing that I would need a ton of spin to hold the elevated green, I elected to hit a 3/4 sand wedge. It came off perfectly. It took one big bounce forward and checked violently, stopping two and a half feet from the cup. A tap-in birdie and we had squared the match. Game on.
Unfortunately, that was the only good wedge shot I would hit that day. I had the exact same yardage into the next hole and I hit it too hard, bouncing it well over the green. A couple of bad lies in the dunes later, I made my first triple-bogey of the trip. Fortunately, my partner and I both stuffed close (my shot actually caromed off the flagstick) on the next hole , a spectacular and severely difficult par-4 with the Pacific Ocean lining the entire right side of the hole, and we were even once again. After that, things got really sloppy for me and my partner. We took a best-ball double bogey on the short par 3, then I had to make an all-world up-and-down on the next hole just to keep from losing another hole. We were being outplayed, but the putts just weren’t falling for our opponents. I was not playing well. I wasn’t in command of my driver, and my short game wasn’t sharp. But the weather was spectacular, the course was in amazing shape, and the golf was, indeed, sublime. Furthermore, we were still in the match in spite of my spotty play.
What I didn’t expect was how good the back nine was going to be. There are no bad holes on
the back 9 at Pacific. 10 and 11 are both gorgeous par 3s. I was the only player in our group to hit the green on 10 after puring a 6-iron. A deft lag putt and a violent lip out of our opponent’s par putt helped us steal one. We traded rather unspectacular pars on the next several spectacular holes- the signature par-3 11th with the Pacific Ocean lining the left side of the hole and the risk-reward par-5 12th with its green tucked between dunes. That’s when things got really interesting. My partner hit it onto the beach that lines the left side of the par-4 13th. I hit a decent drive up the right side. Both of our opponents were just off of the green with their second shots. I hit a low duck hook that somehow stopped on a bare patch sand inches from the hazard line. Despite my good fortune, it wasn’t looking good for us. The patch of sand that my ball was on was surrounded by clumps of grass. I had no chance of chipping it and it was downhill to the hole. I elected to purposely blade my sand wedge. The ball barely made it onto the green and started trickling down the hole toward the hole. It stopped inches from the hole for an unlikely tap-in par. Still in shock, my opponent hit an iffy putt from just off the green, leaving a 6-footer down the hill. If he misses, they lose the hole. He rammed it in the back of the hole then stuffed it to 5 feet on the par-3 14th. My partner and I each hit it to about 25 feet, his ball half a step farther from the hole than mine. He hit a beautiful lag putt to ensure our par, but that hardly mattered with our opponent in so tight. With nothing to lose, I decided to take a little bit of the break out and ram it in the hole, just like our opponent had done on the last hole. I couldn’t help but give a little fist pump as the ball rattled in. Our opponent slammed in his 5-footer, and we were on our way to a spectacular finish. The next hole is a reachable par-5. We seemed to catch a break when the long-hitting scratch golfer hooked his drive into the dunes. But he found his ball and hit a Nicklaus-like long iron to the middle green. The pressure was on. I had about 220 in and hit a low, piercing hybrid that climbed up onto the back shelf of the green, some 15 feet from the hole. The next thing I know, I have a putt to all but end the match. But it was a slippery downhiller that I had to be careful with, as our opponents were already in with birdie. I played for it to die into the high side. It crept down the hill and started to take the break. Somehow, it stopped a fraction of an inch outside of the cup on the high side. It looked like we were going to go down to the wire after I took another triple-bogey on the next hole. Our only hope was the 25-foot par (net birdie) putt my partner had to win the hole and end the match. He hadn’t made a putt since the 4th hole, but he hit it right in the heart. It was a hell of a match. We had beaten the defending champs. To celebrate, I knocked in my 4th birdie of the day at the par-3 17th and wound up shooting 75. The scratch golfer in our group shot 72. I was in golfing heaven.
Indeed, Pacific Dunes is by far the best all-around course that I’ve ever played. The holes along the coastline have million-dollar views. The bunkering is so beautiful. The layout is just right- every hole feels natural. There is some sort of feature on every hole that frames the hole perfectly. The conditions were firm and fast, but not overly so (I played Chambers Bay the week before the US Am. in 2010 and it was like playing on concrete). The greens were the perfect speed and consistent. If you missed the fairway, you were either in a bunker or you were at the mercy of the lie. It was such a fair course, both in terms of difficulty and beauty.
