 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Featuring golf packages and golf vacation information! Golf travel stories featuring golf courses around the US!
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Featured Golf Destinations |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
TEXAS 2006by Moe Miller I once said Woodlake Golf Course in Tazewell, Tennessee was the best $35 golf course I’d ever played. That’s no longer true. On this trip I played two courses under $35 with better design characteristics and both were in excellent condition. Stone Creek, www.stonecreekgolf.com is located 6 miles south of Carbondale, Illinois, and was $35. Not only that, but we arrived on a cloudy Thursday morning with rain in the forecast. The gentleman in the pro shop showed me the radar on his computer; pointed out the gap in the rain that was approaching; and suggested we suit up, play as many holes as we could before it rained, and then pay for what we played! Wow! That’s a nice guy!
"The Wife" at the fourth hole of Stone Creek We played the front nine in 1 ½ hours, and checked back with him. He said, “It may stay south of us, just keep on going” and we did. It sprinkled enough to get out the umbrellas but just doing that caused it to stop long enough for us to finish in 3 hours 20 minutes. But the best course I ever played for $35 or less is now Greystone Golf Club in Dickson, Tennessee, www.greystoneGC.com . It was only $28! Dickson is about 40 miles west of Nashville on I-40. This course is not built in an old quarry. It was built on the unused side of a working quarry! The only negatives I can mention about the course are they need vertical 150 yard markers for those of us that don’t have to know the distance to the exact yard and are too lazy to find a sprinkler heads, and occasionally a siren will sound to prepare you for a distant blast as they liberate more rock on the working side of the quarry.
Approaching the green at Greystone's first hole To be sure you understand; the positives were the smooth greens, lush Zoysia fairways, the bunkers were all raked, and in addition to sand and water, they also used large rocks (maybe boulders would give a better picture) to add problems. The course opened in 1998 and was designed by Mark McCumber. Most of his designs are in Florida, but I have played Timberton in Hattisburg, Mississippi and found it to be well done. I believe I can recommend Mark McCumber if you ever encounter one of his designs on your travels. If you play in Dickson then drive west, you can stop in Memphis and eat at one of our favorite restaurants. It’s called Erling Jenson, the restaurant. I know lots of you will go for the bar-b-que when in Memphis, but you’re missing a great French restaurant. On this trip we continued our tiny reparation payments to the American Indians for the horrible treatment they received at the hands of our European forefathers. We stopped in Philadelphia, Mississippi to stay at the casino operated by the Mississippi band of Choctaw Indians. We played both their courses designed by Tom Fazio and Jerry Pate. They are both great courses kept in great condition and worth the $75 tariff.
Oaks Course at Dancing Rabbit It was demo day for all the big club makers on the day we arrived and the place was so packed the parking lot was full. It made for a 4 ½ hour round which was better than I expected, but it was so crowded I didn’t even get to try any new clubs. I’d always vote to play golf rather than wait in line to practice. When we got to Dallas/Fort Worth we got to play my 68th Arthur Hills design. It was at The Trophy Club in Grapevine, Texas. They have two courses and the other one is the only course designed by Ben Hogan. We got to play at this private club for the $75 guest rate because during the winter I e-mailed the director of golf to plead my case. He was very nice about allowing us on and the lesson to be learned is that it never hurts to ask. All they can say is no. If you’re going to be somewhere and there is a private course you want to play, give it a shot. It’s worked for me at least three times. Next time I go to Texas I’ll probably be Ben Hogan’s biggest fan! If he only did one course, and I know where it is, how could I not want to check it out? Then I can say I have played every course Ben Hogan designed. In Euless, Texas which is between Dallas and Fort Worth, we played our 4th course designed by Keith Foster called Texas Star. www.texasstargolf.com . Keith did The Tennessean down near Kentucky Lake. Texas Star is a well done course on mostly level Texas land that is kept in excellent condition. We paid $52 on a Monday and had a 4 hour round on a nice sunny day. After golf that day we stayed in north Dallas, and had dinner at a wonderful restaurant called La Rendezvous. We had a good time just getting there. We had to go up 1 exit on I-35E then get off and drive 3 miles on Royal Street. Royal Street was straight and flat, 4 lanes wide, and all residential. It started out with regular homes. We commented that we’d hate to have to back out of those driveways onto Royal Street. Then the homes got nicer and had circle driveways. Then they got real nice and had gates and gatehouses, and then they got REAL nice, and each one took up a whole city block! By the time we got to the restaurant we had decided that if asked, we have a 50 acre estate in Kentucky. We’d just let them imagine that instead of a hayfield, we had the tennis courts, pool, and landscaping that they did. The restaurant was a nice French place, and we spent the evening trying to guess which of the other diners lived in those big houses. If you want to see how the top half of the other half lives, you now know where to go. You can also get out your map and find the town of South Fork in south central Colorado. That would be where those people from Royal Street hang out when it gets too hot in Dallas. On the way home I had to make a course adjustment, so we went north of Little Rock to replay Mountain Ranch at Fairfield Bay. www.linkscorp.com . Fairfield Bay is a large resort development north of Greens Ferry Lake. Mountain Ranch is a 1982 Ed Ault design with a few houses on it. The course is mostly cut out of the Arkansas piney woods. We were the only ones out in the woods on that Wednesday and had an enjoyable 3 hour 10 minute round.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Golf Kentucky Links! We golf to keep you informed! |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
