This was the seventh year for the old guys week long golf trip to the mountains. This year we found a house on the Watauga River in Elizabethton, Tennessee.

I won’t go into how many trout we caught, or the burned ribs affair; What happens in Elizabethton, stays in Elizabethton. I will cover the five courses we played, and see if I got any photos Ron will print.

Monday we stopped at Patriot Hills, which is an interesting $28 course east of Knoxville. It’s just past Art Hills River Islands, which is a better course, but we had all played it. In this group I am the low handicapper, and my annual objective is to win the daily low gross. I did that again this year, but on three of the five days I did it by one shot. I had 3 birdies at Patriot Hills, but my 79 was just one better than Baron’s 80.

Tuesday we played the Country Club of Bristol for $81. I’m the only one who liked it. It’s a 1956 design by Alex McKay that’s only 6500 from the tips. We played at 6000. Baron again stuck with me for nine, but then the trees got him. You know I like old trees. I had nothing worse than a bogie, and my 80 crushed them all. And you know the course. Small greens in great condition, large trees everywhere, and well placed sand and water. They’re now building a new clubhouse to replace the 50s era one that I just loved.

Wednesday we went over in Kingsport to play Cattails at Meadowview. The front side is open with lots of water, and the back side has many more trees and tighter fairways.This time it was Mike who challenged my supremacy, but he took a double on eighteen, and my 79 beat his 80. Cattails was a very nice $33 course.

Thursday we went back up to Kingsport to play Crockett Ridge. It used to be called Old Island Golf and Residential Community, but that was too long. And there was no island and very little community.

The seventh at Crockett Ridge

Crockett Ridge is a better name. It was the bargain of the trip at $25. The fairways had spotty grass in some areas, so we played lift, clean, and place in our own fairway. This time Joe was just 1 behind my 84.

13 at Crockett Ridge

Friday we drove a hundred miles in the wrong direction to play Laurel Ridge in Waynesboro, N.C. It’s $80 and “the mountain course by which all other mountain courses should be judged.” Laurel Ridge is a very tough course and my 85 won the day easily. Doug would love Laurel Ridge! Most of us played Laurel Ridge at 6500 yards, and I lost my first ball of the week.

Chandler, Arizona – 2007

We needed to visit my 95 year old aunt in Abilene, Texas and Joyce wanted to go to Chandler, Arizona to visit Elaine and I wanted to play the two new Art Hills courses at Hyatt resorts in Texas. Then we could pick up the 4 courses he designed in Arizona, so I put it all together and called it “Chandler, The Hard Way”.

If you haven’t heard of Chandler, you may have heard of Phoenix. But whether you say Scottsdale, Mesa, Tempe, Glendale, Peoria, Sun City, Goodyear, Phoenix, Gilbert, or Chandler, it’s all the same mass of humanity. 4 million people and growing in the desert with no water, and no water restrictions. Traffic smog with no traffic restrictions. It’s Los Angeles without the ocean, and it’s the latest place on Moe’s no visit list. I gave Elaine the ultimatum; move or never see me again. Of course she just chuckled, because if I didn’t have Joyce with me, she never wanted to see me to begin with! She may move however, because she’s a smart cookie and realizes that she’s living in the early stages of hell. We both realize that except for the crowd, it beats the hell out of the Ohio River Valley – who’d want to live there?

Enough with the editorials – let’s get to the golf courses. My friend Chris at Arthur Hills and Associates got us on at Hill Country in San Antonio for the $45 employee rate, and he got us comped at the new Wolf Dancer course he just completed at the Hyatt Lost Pines Resort just east of Austin, Texas. Let’s hear it for Chris!

At Hyatt Hill Country they added nines holes to make it a 27 hole facility. And they worked the new nine holes into the existing 18 holes, so you couldn’t find them without inside information. I gave the 18 holes I played ( the Lakes nine, and the Creeks nine) 8 excellent and 10 good holes, with 4 of the excellent holes on the new nine. It’s a really nice course, and it’s especially nice in April with the bluebonnets blooming. By the way,or I should type BTW to show I’m still “with it? I thought they named it Hill Country for my man Art. I guess I’m not really with it – the whole area north and west of San Antonio is called Texas Hill Country. I think they call it that because (picture Sam Kinison) IT”S THE ONLY HILLS THEY GOT !

The Hyatt Regency Lost Pines Resort and Spa is way above my raisin’. If any rich guy reads this go on down. We got to play the course, which was mostly deserted on a Thursday, and we had the mandatory caddie named Shane. The course is beautiful, and pretty hard for a resort course. I gave it 4 excellent and 14 good holes. It has lots of fairways next to the woods...the kind where you don’t find your ball. I only lost one to counter two birdies, so I didn’t embarrass myself too much in front of Shane. It was Joyce’s first experience with a caddy so she was more nervous. The caddies can all tell who’s not used to spa treatment.

I had to have help to know that caddying 18 holes without carrying any bags was worth $50! When I caddied back in the 1950s at Standard Country Club, we got $5 for carrying two bags 18 holes and that included the tip!

The surprise of the trip was The South Course at Black Horse. It was a last minute substitute course located north of Houston, Texas. It was designed in 2000 by the Jacobson/Hardy Group, and is a very nice layout in great condition for $64. I gave the course 8 excellent and 10 good holes which puts the Jacobson/Hardy Group on my radar as designers. The second nine was 7 of 9 holes rated excellent.

We intended to replay Ken Dye’s Pa-Ko Ridge north of Albuquerque, New Mexico, but the wind was over 30 knots that day, so we just drove on down the road.

The next day we did play a slightly older and more desert oriented course in New Mexico called Pinion Hills. They were doing aeration maintenance on the course, but I still gave it 5 excellent and 13 good holes.

Later this trip we played a muni north of El Paso, Texas, called Painted Dunes. This was an early (1991) Ken Dye effort that I gave 2 excellent and 16 good holes for design. It was a good course for $25, and we played behind a big company outing with some real nice beer cart girls who supplied me with Bud Light all day, in apology for the terrible golfers at their company.

While we were in that Phoenix/Scottsdale/Goodyear/ etc megapolis, we played 4 older courses designed by Arthur Hills. Camelback (Art Hills 2000) is an upscale resort course in great condition for which we paid $115. I gave it 5 excellent and 13 good holes for design. Palm Valley (AH 1993) is older, built on very flat ground, and barely worth the $44 we paid. I gave it 1 excellent 16 good and 1 OK hole. $44 is very cheap for the Phoenix area, so it was priced right.

Heritage Highlands (AH 1997) is an “active retirement community” between Phoenix and Tucson. The old people play every day so the course was crowded on Tuesday. It cost $94 and was a nice desert course with 3 excellent and 15 good holes.

San Ignacio (AH 1989) is in Green Valley, Arizona, south of Tucson. It was $74, and I gave it 4 excellent and 14 good holes. We played there with “Henry”, an 80 year old American Indian member of the club, and “Bob”, a dreadlocked hippie from Haight -Ashberry in San Francisco. It was a slow round, but we heard some great stories.

I shot in the eighties at all 4 courses, and I doubt if I’ll ever return to Phoenix.

We might however return to Flagstaff in Northern Arizona, which is the home of Moe’s favorite restaurant in America. It’s called The Cottage Place and our 2nd visit this trip was even better than the initial stop in 2000. If you’re ever in Flagstaff, you can mention my name for special treatment because I left them a copy of “Moe’s Dining Guide”, and once they saw they were numero ono, I’m sure they like me.

Our final round of the trip was in Waterloo, Illinois at Annbriar. That is a very nice 1993 Michael Hurdzan design just south-east of St Louis. It was only $38 and I gave it 4 excellent and 14 good holes for design. That’s a bargain and my 15th Hurdzan course played.