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Ballybunion, Enniscrone and Carne: Discuss
The 16th at Carne GC, in the remote west Ireland town of Bellmullet

Ballybunion, Enniscrone and Carne: Discuss

by Hal Phillips 1 Comment

 

The 16th at Carne GC, in the remote west Ireland town of Bellmullet. [photo courtesy of John and Jeannine Henebry]

About 50 minutes outside of Bellmullet, bearing down on Ballina, headed east so that we might eventually tack south to Castlebar, Galway, Limerick and Killarney, it registered with me that we were playing Ballybunion the next day. So I was thinking, “How many links golf courses are rated higher than Ballybunion, I mean, in the whole freakin’ world?” Now, ratings are nothing if not subjective, and, as a member of the GOLF Magazine panel since 1997, I am party to that subjectivity. Nevertheless, if you refer to the GOLF list, only the Old Course at St. Andrews, Muirfield, and Royal County Down, Royal Dornoch, Royal Portrush, Turnberry, and Pacific Dunes are more highly rated. Sand Hills? I just don’t think of that as a links.

This would normally be the fodder for yet another pedantic ratings discussion, and I have played Ballybunion before. But as we made our my way down the N56, it occurred to me that I’d be playing it this time having played 7 stellar links courses in the space of 5 days, including one that I’d have a hard time placing behind any links course we’ve mentioned here, so far.

Much as I enjoyed the two courses at Ballyliffin, the Sandy Hills course at Rosapenna, Narin & Portnoo and Donegal, they are simply not in Ballybunion’s class. But Enniscrone is, and it’s interesting to compare the two, having played them both in the space of 48 hours. Both routings spend considerable time NOT weaving their ways through the deep hollows of giant dunes corridors. This is to their credit. Links that spend all their time in there are too intense, too difficult, too funky. You need a break, and there’s nothing wrong with wrapping holes around the perimeter of a dunes complex, or routing an open fairway to a green that sits in a dunesy amphitheater. Both Enniscrone and Ballybunion serve up this sort of thing, in spades.

So, what does Ballybunion have that Enniscrone doesn’t? Or what is it about Enniscrone that keeps it from these lofty heights? Is it, as my colleague put it, simple inertia on the part of the scum-sucking media? It could be that. But here are some alternate theories.

1)    Ballybunion is older and more accessible, meaning that more people have played it over the course of more years. Enniscrone is way out there in County Sligo, hours from Galway and even further from Dublin, Limerick, Belfast or any sort of hub. It’s remote, and unless you’re course was designed by Ben Crenshaw, or developed by Mike Keiser, these types of remote courses don’t get the same sort of attention.

2)    Ballybunion is, I would say, 2.5 shots easier per side than Enniscrone. Now, this can depend a lot on conditions the day you play. But we played the two on very similar sun-splashed days in similar 15 mph winds, maximum. Enniscrone kicked my ass and kicked the ass of everyone in our group. Today, at Ballybunion, I shot 85, best score of the trip. Ditto for the others. Bottom line, it’s a feel good course. I don’t want to call it a “resort” course, where the design is intended to please first-time/only time players. It’s far more quirky and too flat out awesome for that. But the landings areas are more broad, the rough not so thick, the twists and turns not so confounding for visitors.

You know, I was going to just list these reasons one after another, as to why Ballybunion is ranked higher than Enniscrone, but I’ve run out of ammo at two. Beyond that, it’s sorta hard to make the argument. So I’ll stop.

Now, Carne is another matter. There are some who feel this is among the world’s great links, and I’ve decided they’ve got a point. It’s more raw than Enniscrone, not in the same sort of condition, and we played it in a dank mist. My feet were soaked by the third hole (too much walking around searching for balls in the heavy, wet rough) and I lost several golf balls. It’s hard to separate these factors from one’s perception, especially re. a one-time golf experience. Carne goes out into the dunes and never really ducks out for a breather, but I’ve just gone through the course again in my mind, on the card, in the par-saver book, in the pictures and videos we’ve gathered. It’s extremely tough, crazy penal in spots, but it’s the equal of Ballybunion, as well.

So there. I’ve said it.


Old Links vs. New Links: Viva la difference
The 17th at Donegal GC

Old Links vs. New Links: Viva la difference

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

 

The 17th, a broad and beautiful par-5, at Donegal Golf Club.

 

The assumption is that all the links courses here in northwest Ireland are “ancient”, but that’s not the case. Donegal Golf Club, also known as Murvagh, was built in the 1970s, though you’d never guess it.

We’ve played two even newer links on this trip, the Sandy Hill track at Rosapenna, and the Glashedy Links at Ballyliffin GC. Both courses are superb but severe, built amid the big dunes slightly inland from the older courses at both venues, on land Old Tom Morris (who did the original course at Rosapenna) would never have dreamed of using. I’ve written elsewhere that many of these new links suffer from agronomic issues: The rough is too thick, has not been burned off appropriately over the course of decades, and doesn’t generally have that wispy-penal-but-you’ll-find-it quality. But there’s more to it. Back in the day, Old Tom and his like didn’t have the technology to carve holes from terrain like this — so they wisely fashioned subtle holes amid the gentler topography closer to the ocean.

These new links are more dramatic but, as you might imagine, much tougher, too; the locals, who have the option to play either course at both Ballyliffin and Rosapenna, invariably choose the older courses, the staffs inform us. Sensible.

In any case, despite its relative youth, Murvagh has that ‘old course’ feel. The front nine circles around the perimeter of the property — an estuary dotted with dunes — while the back nine forms a separate central loop. Returning nines is perhaps a sign of its recent design, but what a golf course. Old Tom would have approved.

 

 

A Day in the Life: 36 more and a Warrior down
The 12th at Narin & Portnoo Golf Club

A Day in the Life: 36 more and a Warrior down

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

The 12th at Narin & Portnoo Golf Club [photo courtesy of John and Jeannine Henebry]

The day-to-day existence of The Golf Road Warrior might sound, well, sorta cushy when viewed from a distance. But trust me: The pace is unrelentingly, if purposely, grueling. Let me give you the blow by blow of our Saturday in County Donegal, using the 24-hour clock that pervades here:

01:15, Saturday, 23 July — To bed at the Rosapenna Golf Resort Hotel. We had arrived here for our 16:30 tee time the day before, whereupon we tackled the super striking, super difficult Sandy Hill Links, one of two golf courses here perched high on the North Atlantic coast. We finished at 21:00 or thereabouts, rushed over to the hotel for a lovely dinner, and set about blogging re. Friday’s events. My post was uploaded well after midnight and I was dead away the moment my head hit the pillow.

06:30 — Outta bed and upstairs for quick continental breakfast.

07:30 — On the road for Narin & Portnoo Golf Club, which sits in a remote village on the northwest coast — next stop to the west, Newfoundland. Thirty-seven kilometers of this trip from Rosapenna to Portnoo were logged on a road no wider than my driveway back home. Thankfully, unlike my driveway, it was paved, and there was little oncoming traffic. It is Saturday morning after all.

09:15 — Arrival at the club, and off the first tee 15 minutes later. Beforehand, however, I pop an 800 mg tablet of ibuprofen — a canny purchase I made in Cabo san Lucas the previous May. You can’t get that much ibuprofen in the U.S., not in a single serving and without a prescription. They’re bright orange and the size of a horse pill… Finian is our caddie. Like most we’ve retained here, he’s young and a very good player (he plays off 3).

10:30 — About four holes into this track, the thing takes off. Many of these links begin in flattish, gently duned, lowland areas, or maybe some sort of salt-water bog or estuary. This was the case at N&P. Yet as we made our way out to the beach, we could see a line of huge dunes rising to our left. At no. 5, we played a dogleg up into the breach of one and there we stayed for the next 13 holes, diving down off the dunes to seaside greens (no. 8), playing par-3s from promontory to promontory amid the dunes, and banking our way around the base of this stunning dunescape, right to left and left to right. This is a course you may never have heard of unless you book a Perry Golf tour or consult the Northwest Ireland web site. It’s superb, and if you’re doing 36 a day, it forms a nice link between the northern courses and Donegal GC.

13:30 — We finish the round literally one step ahead of the three women who pushed us the whole back nine, as we hit entirely too many balls in the junk, and spent entirely too much time looking for them. It was a big day at P&N, Lady Captains Day, where the leading ladies from clubs all over Ireland converge for their annual to-do. We grabbed a quick bite in the clubhouse, which was mobbed with some 60 women, all fresh off the golf course. Ran in to the threesome behind us outside; they had picked up a head cover we had dropped somewhere along the line. I took this opportunity to apologize for playing so slowly. They smiled and shot me a polite look that said, “Well, that’s all well and good but you should be ashamed for having played so slowly.” And so we skulked off to our green VW van, suitably admonished.

14:15 — In the parking lot we run into another group of three women, whom we had encountered prior to the round. They asked where we were headed next: Donegal Golf Club, also known a Murvagh (mer-vah). Well, that’s their home club. They advised us that Murvagh was several miles beyond Donegal Town and to “stay out of the rough.”

16:15 — Arrived at Donegal GC. We headed straight off the back, and the weather couldn’t be better: 70 degrees and 15 mph of wind. Fifth consecutive round in shorts. Second horse pill of the day, down the hatch.

17:45 — On the 8th, a lovely par-4 that plays off a dune down to a left-turning fairway, our fellow Road Warrior Peter Kessler was felled. We didn’t know it yet, but he ruptured a tendon in his left hip trying to hit a sand wedge a bit farther than perhaps was feasible. (I heard him say as much, to himself, before the swing.) This was serious: 5 rounds in 3 days had taken its toll, and Peter’s day was done. He couldn’t walk, so fellow Road Warrior Tom Harack packed it in after nine and brought him to the clinic in Donegal, from whence Peter was shipped north to Letterkenny Hospital for an x-ray, where the tendon-issue was confirmed. At this writing, Peter remains in hospital. We’ll pick him up tomorrow, with his crutches, and head to Enniscrone GC. At least, that’s the plan…

18:30 — And then there were two. Fellow Road Warrior Jeff Wallach and I headed out to play our final nine. Hey, we told ourselves, Tom has it handled — and he’d played the course before, whereas we had not, and Donegal GC is too good to simply walk away from.  I snagged Peter’s Adams Redline driver and hit the shit out of it. If he doesn’t play for a couple days, I’m appropriating it. If he rallies, we’ll share it.

20:30 — We holed out on 18, victimized by the Murvagh rough twice on the last two holes. In the clubhouse, Tom and Peter are nowhere to be seen, so we grab a Smithwicks and a bite to eat. They’re still sorting the patient, we’d soon learn from Brendan Reck, the affable club captain whom we met in the bar; I recognized him from his portrait hanging in the hallway. Tom arrived around 21:00 with all the details re. Peter’s condition. Nothing to do but find the hotel and start blogging.

22:00 — Saturday night in Donegal, and it’s quite a scene at The Abbey Hotel, where we’re kipping for the night. First-floor disco with a live band. The place is packed, and up and down the high street every bar and hotel is similarly equipped with live music, packed houses and dozens of folks on the street smoking butts. How does the Golf Road Warrior respond to such stimuli? “Um, excuse me: What’s the wireless password?” Thirty-six holes and two 90-minute drives have sapped us of all partying energy and initiative. Must post.

02:09, Sunday 23 July — The above is written, the photos/video are downloaded and posted. Looking to sleep in tomorrow, if only just. A 90-minute drive and a 16:30 tee time at Enniscrone await — that is, after we retrieve Peter from Letterkenny.

Thirty six holes in one day can be taxing. Thirty six with at least one 90-minute drive in between is more so. Thirty six on this sort of schedule three days in a row? Well, it has proved to be a bit more than at least one hip tendon ocan bear. Twenty-seven at Enniscrone tomorrow… I mean, today.

Ballyliffin: Old Links a Nearly Flawless Trip-Opener
The Old Links at Ballyliffin Golf Club

Ballyliffin: Old Links a Nearly Flawless Trip-Opener

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

 

The Old Links at Ballyliffin Golf Club

 

All you need to know about the Old Links at Ballyliffin is that, for the 4 hours we spent going round it, I never did consider laying down for a couple hours in the fescues. Not strongly anyway, for they were invitingly cushy and sunsplashed.

We arrived here on the northern most tip of Ireland pretty pooped, following a 4-hour drive north through Newry and Armagh and Cookstown and Londonderry, all the way from Dublin in other words. That drive (wherein I took the wheel) had been preceded by a 6-hour blogger-wrangling exercise at the airport, which had been preceded by the 5-hour flight from Boston to Dublin. I departed at 6:20 p.m. Boston time and landed at what would have been 11:20 p.m. my time, Boston time. There simply isn’t time to sleep, or for appropriate sleep-aids to take effect. So I didn’t, and they never did, and I’ve not slept yet.

It’s coming, and soon.

But first, Ballyliffin, which sports two courses, the Glashedy Links and the Old Links. With Glashedy Rock sitting like a monolith in the surf, a couple miles off shore, and Malin Head (that northernmost point) framing the view to the East, the Old Links — which aren’t THAT old; they were laid out in the 1940s, and renovated very subtly and deftly by Nick Faldo in 2009 — simply never serves up an ordinary golf hole. There aren’t the towering dunes we associate with some Irish links courses; indeed, the neighboring Glashedy, would appear to occupy that sort of ground.

Nope, the Old Links just fits the land like a glove, moves right and left, is impeccably bunkered, and sports the perfect combination of firm, fast, bouncy turf, the perfect combination of green and brown, never anything but a perfect lie in the fairway, and stern rough that punishes but rarely swallows the ball whole. It also features enough wind — in combination with holes that do, in fact, play markedly up and downhill — that 6,300 yards was plenty. One could go further back, to 6,937 yards. But why would four guys working on a sleep debt do that?

I’ve flown to the U.K. before, and it’s nearly always the same sort of drill: The first day is crazy. One gets off the plane and fights the jet lag by playing golf. Yet there’s something to be said for saving a day for the entire arrival ritual, for a long drive if you’ve got one in store, for a relaxing dinner overlooking the course you will play the next day. That’s the difference between an Irish linksfest organized by professionals, like those at Perry Golf, and those organized by a bunch of journalists cum bloggers.

We worked the Old Links at Ballyliffin in to the itinerary because one simply cannot come to this part of the world and not play it. Now we have. Glashedy tomorrow. But now, sleep.

Making room for new memories of Ireland

Making room for new memories of Ireland

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

The last time I visited Ireland, my brother and I chaperoned the old man around the Southwest, taking in the links at Doonbeg, Lahinch, Tralee and Ballybunion. That was nearly three years ago and our timing couldn’t have been better. I don’t want to go all Jim Dodson on you, but my dad has since been diagnosed with lymphoma. He’s hanging in there, but my brother and I are pretty damned glad we took him to Ireland when we did, because his days of walking 18 on consecutive days are in all likelihood behind him.

I’m turning these things, these most recent memories of Eire, over in my mind here in Dublin Airport, waiting on the rest of my party. A leaden gray sky hangs low over the modernist terminal I spy across the street, through massive picture windows. We have a mighty drive ahead of us, once we’ve all assembled — straight up to the island’s northernmost tip, skirting the new golf capital of the world, Northern Ireland, to the links at Ballyliffin. From there a veritable string of equally hallowed venues await.

There will be plenty to write about in the days to come, plenty of memories to be made. I and my comrades in Gortex will be diligent in relaying them to you via word, sound and image. But for now I’m loathe to shake the memories from last time.

I won’t bore you but one moment stands out: That first day we arrived, in Shannon, the three of us promptly headed straight for Lahinch on a beautiful sunlit morning. There is no better cure for jetlag than a round of golf, first thing, right off the plane. As one enters the tiny beach town of Lahinch, it’s not clear to the novice exactly where to find the golf club. We pulled over and asked directions of an older woman.

“Well, it’s right over there,” she said, gesturing to an intersection where we should’ve gone right. The course lay on the high ground just beyond. It proved pretty difficult to miss, but she didn’t press this point.

“Have you a game today? I see that you have. Well, you’ll love it. Absolutely love it. It’s a wonderful golf course and you’ve got a beautiful day for it. Where are you from?”

Boston.

“Well, I have several relatives living there. They’re not golfers, sad to say. But that won’t matter to you. Just take that right hand turn and the course is on your left. Can’t miss it. Lovely course, lovely weather. You’ll have wonderful day…”

We thanked her profusely, of course, and, duly bathed in the hospitality for which Ireland is rightly famous, we all turned to each other and smiled. We may have giggled. At which point my brother summed it up: “What a bitch.”

We laughed long and hard, then headed off into the dunes at Lahinch.

Edgewood GC: Recalling a Course Blotted Out by Progress
The 16th at the TPC River Highlands in Cromwell, Conn. This par-3 is approached today over this pond. Back in the early 1980s, one approached it from the right, high on a hill. (Photo by Jim Rogash/Getty Images)

Edgewood GC: Recalling a Course Blotted Out by Progress

by Hal Phillips 2 Comments

The 16th at the TPC River Highlands in Cromwell, Conn. This par-3 is approached today over this pond. In the early 1980s, one approached this same green from the right, high on a hill.

A few years back I managed to hook up with a former college golf teammate of mine, Stuart Remensnyder, for a friendly reunion/grudge match at TPC River Highlands in Cromwell, Conn., site of this week’s PGA Tour stop, The Traveler’s Championship. Stuart and I spent a lot of time that day musing about the delightful scam that was Division III college golf (we had played for Wesleyan University, in neighboring Middletown). Golf wasn’t like other varsity sports, after all. “Practice” amounted to playing free, fully sanctioned golf three or four days a week.

In any case, Stuart and I were standing in the 1st fairway at River Highlands, musing over past conquests/humblings and waiting on the group in front of us, when I abruptly cut off our conversation and pointed with some urgency at a row of homes sitting high on a hill, deep in the right rough.

“You see those houses?” I ventured. “That’s the old 13th hole.”

“You mean the 13th at the old TPC?” Stuart asked.

“No, the old, OLD 13th — at Edgewood!”

Stalwart New England golf fans might recall that the Greater Hartford Open — today known as the Traveler’s Championship — moved in the mid-1980s, after years at Weathersfield CC, to an ill-fated facility called the TPC at Cromwell (it was, at times, also called the TPC of Connecticut). This Pete Dye design didn’t meet with the slavish approval associated with Dye’s work today. Indeed, the players didn’t like the TPC at Cromwell; the PGA Tour didn’t like it; for all I know, Dye’s late wife Alice wasn’t crazy about it either.

Long story short, architect Bobby Weed — himself a Dyesciple and the PGA Tour’s in-house architect back then — was brought in to renovate the place just a few years later. The joint was renamed the TPC at River Highlands, and everyone loved it.

What New England golf fans might NOT remember is this: The short-lived TPC at Cromwell was not a “new” golf course in the strict sense. It didn’t just materialize from scratch, springing fully formed from the brow of Deane Beman, there by the Connecticut River. No, the TPC at Cromwell resulted from a complete and utter renovation of an existing layout called Edgewood Golf Club, home course to the mighty Wesleyan Cardinals for years. Indeed, the University had owned the club for decades in the middle part of the century.

There were strong holes and weak holes at Edgewood, but during my first two years at Wesleyan, it was my “home” course. I enjoyed many a practice round there with teammates and took many a licking there at the hands of New England’s finest collegiate players. Stuart did, too. We all did.

Now it’s gone. Replaced not once but twice by completely new incarnations in the space of just a few years.

Golf courses do change, after all, for good and for ill — sometimes by design, at the hands of man; other times via naturally occurring phenomena like tree growth and erosion. Some alterations, like those undertaken annually at Augusta National, garner breathless headlines, while others are conceived and authored without a hint of public awareness or concern.

Changes are welcomed by some, reviled by others. Only one thing is universal: All of these evolutions take less time than one might ever imagine.

At Edgewood, the situation was unique because so far as the Wesleyan golf team was concerned, the transformation happened completely without warning. Toward the end of my freshman year, spring 1983, new golf holes started popping up like mushrooms betwixt and between the existing holes! Unbeknownst to us, Dye had already been retained and had begun radically reconfiguring the layout right before our eyes. We didn’t have a clue what was happening. When we asked inside the clubhouse, no one else seemed to have a clue either.

When we returned in the fall of 1983, more new holes had emerged. This was only a few years post-Sawgrass, and Dye’s now familiar mounding — quite mysterious and exotic back then — appeared to be bubbling to the surface. He didn’t just build new holes in former rough areas either. He completely reversed existing holes. He combined a few. Eliminated others. He fashioned new holes that played to existing greens from completely different directions. The entire routing was turned on its ear.

By this time we’d learned of the Tour’s grand plans for old Edgewood. And for one fleeting moment — I can’t honestly remember how long it lasted: 10 minutes, a day, a couple weeks — we, the Wesleyan Golf Team, entertained fantastical thoughts of practicing and playing our matches at this completely retooled golf course, a resplendent-sounding place: The TPC at Cromwell. Home to a future PGA Tour stop for chrissakes!

That’s about when they booted us.

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Golf en Provence: C’est une bonne idée

Golf en Provence: C’est une bonne idée

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

The second green at Golf de Barbaroux

 

[This is Part II of a travel piece re. Golf en Provence. See here Part I.]

Golf en Provence is actually a very good idea, but it’s a bit like golf en honeymoon. There’s so much to do, and the region’s delights so brilliantly couples-oriented, the golf can seem a bit superfluous, n’est-ce pas?

That said, my wife and I didn’t honeymoon anywhere in the vicinity of the Four Seasons Resort Provence at Terre Blanche, just west of Aix in the Var region. With its 45 villas, this address combines Four Seasons luxury with 36 superb holes from English architect Dave Thomas, designer of The Belfry (don’t hold that against him; the courses here are excellent). Both tracks, Le Chateau and Le Riou, were cut from a mountainous pine forest — like something you’d find near Aspen.

For those who prefer their golf a la carte, the options are legion and easily parsed thanks to the Golf en Terre Mediterranee (http://www.golf-terre-mediterranee.fr), a Myrtle Beach-type program whereby travelers choose a package of courses for one reduced price. If your trip is based near Avignon — an ancient walled city on the Rhone, former home to the schism-era Popes — Pont Royal is a must play, followed closely by Grand Avignon and Golf de Servanes near St. Remy (where Van Gogh painted his Irises).

Should you concentrate on the Var, don’t miss Golf de Barbaroux, a compelling Pete & P.B. Dye creation carved from wild terrain. Neither should you miss a round at Dolce Frégate Golf Club, a sumptuous Golfplan-designed 18 in Saint-Cyr sur Mer. If your French is good enough, you’ll correctly infer that, in addition to 18 terrific holes, Frégate features extraordinary views of the Mediterranean. (If your French isn’t so good, don’t fret. These days, trips to France don’t require a deep familiarity with the language. Most folks — especially those in the golf, hotel and tourist trades — happily converse in English. Your 11th grade French teacher will be disappointed to hear this, but she doesn’t need to know.)

The south of France is, of course, one of the world’s great resort Meccas. Thus it’s hard to imagine where one can combine such good golf with such extraordinary intangibles: endless beaches (with water you can actually swim in; try that in Dornoch), Roman ruins, peerless cuisine (Marseille is the home of bouillabaise), gracious accommodations large and small, and clubhouse chefs going out of their way ensure you’re drinking the best wine possible.

What’s that? You don’t want to rely on gregarious third parties to recommend such things? Fair enough. It’s just about impossible to travel between points of interest in Provence without passing an award-winning vineyard. Stop in and sample their wares for yourself; tasting sessions (dégustations) are great fun, quite enlightening and most are offered free of charge… Excuse me? You haven’t picked up something for the wife? Oh, she’s accompanied you… How ‘bout your mother? Well, personally vetted wine selections are always nice. Or perhaps a bottle of the world’s finest virgin olive oil, or maybe an olive tapenade — two more world-class gourmet products for which the vineyards of Provence are justifiably famous.

Try snagging stylish gifts like these on the road to Cruden Bay.

Golf en Provence: ‘They ain’t drinkin’ this at Cruden Bay’

Golf en Provence: ‘They ain’t drinkin’ this at Cruden Bay’

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

Golf Pont Royal in Mallemort

While dining in the clubhouse at Pont Royal, one is obliged to meet the head chef, Thierry Candaele, a barrel-chested man with curly gray hair and an obvious gift for bonhomie. In traditional Gallic fashion he glides from table to table doling out multi-lingual pleasantries, accepting deserved compliments and making sure everything is just so. At our table, however, something is amiss. With a quick, playful scowl Candaele eyeballs our vin de pays, our table wine, and lets loose with a wave of apologies. He deftly snatches the bottle away, returns with an upgrade, and issues one last apology before moving to the next table of guests.

The wine he replaced? Only a Chateauneuf-du-Pape, one of the world’s most celebrated appellations.

Welcome to Provence, where the good life is so pervasive it’s basically taken for granted. I won’t bore you with smug references to Candaele’s choice of replacement wine (a cheery yet robust Reserve from the Mas de la Dame vineyard just up the road). The larger point is plain: They ain’t drinking Chateauneuf-du-Pape in the clubhouse at Prestwick or Cruden Bay — and the head chef sure as hell ain’t replacing it, unbidden, with something even better.

Only in the south of France does one come to expect this sort of finer touch, proving once again (to those with the good sense to listen) that sometimes, oftentimes, there’s more to an exotic golfing adventure than the golf alone. Witness the Provence region, a Mediterranean wonderland extending north from coastal hubs Marseille, Toulon and Nice. With so much hallowed ground to cover in Scotland and Ireland, we recognize that a case must be made for golf in France, what with its puny reputation, its obstinate foreign policies and, well, that whole Jerry Lewis thing. But you may be surprised to learn that the south of France just happens to include more than a dozen superb golfing venues, all in relatively close proximity to one another.

Pont Royal, for starters, is a first-rate parkland design situated in Mallemort, equal distances from both Avignon and Aix-en-Provence. Designed by the late, great Seve Ballesteros, Pont Royal gallops over lush, dramatic terrain, skirting water hazards and topiary gardens by turn. The layout at Pont Royal is but part of a unique, eponymous resort development designed to look and feel like a typical rural hill town Provençale, complete with pink-washed stone walls, terracotta roof tiles, narrow walking streets and small shops selling local wines, breads and cheeses. Of course, there are modern niceties, as well: several enormous pool complexes; Seve’s 18 holes; the lovely Hotel du Golf, overlooking the 9th and 15th greens; and a clubhouse whose stunning fare, thanks to Candaele, would put most American bistros to shame. What’s true for wine goes double for food. One simply cannot compare the vittles in French clubhouses to those in Britain, Ireland or the States. Not a fair fight.

[Read Part II of this story here.]
Desert Golf Safari Conjures Memories of Bob Labbance

Desert Golf Safari Conjures Memories of Bob Labbance

by Hal Phillips 2 Comments

So I’ve been thinking a lot about Bob Labbance lately. Bob was a good friend, a golf writer and historian, a counter-culturist after a fashion, and, as my grandfather would have described him, one of nature’s gentlemen. Note the tense. Bob suffered a traumatic fall and paralysis in 2007. He fought back to regain a great deal of motion and a large measure of his life, only to contract Lou Gehrig’s disease, degenerate quite quickly and pass away in Aug. 2008, at the tender age of 56.

You learn a lot about a guy when horrible shit befalls him. You talk more deeply and seriously about things with that person. You learn more about the man — more than you ever would have if, as we do with most acquaintances, both parties were to skate together through life largely unaffected by tragedy.

Bob loved the desert, and I thought of him as my family and I toured the American Southwest last week and played a fine Johnny Miller design in St. George, Utah: Entrada Golf Club at Snow Canyon. Bob grew up in Fairfield County, Connecticut, went to school in Maine, and lived much of his adult life in Vermont. He was a New Englander through and through, and he was what I like to call an unreconstructed hippie. But he loved golf, and the counter-culturist in him allowed an appreciation of desert golf — something a lot of golf design nerds reflexively disdain.

I first met Bob in about 1994, and only later in his all-too-short life did I learn that he fancied the idea of retiring to Flagstaff, Arizona. I got the impression his family wasn’t as keen on this particular idea, and in that way his untimely death mooted the issue. I thought of him as we passed through Flagstaff twice last week. We were there to play some disc golf but found far more than an excellent track tucked beside the athletic complex at Northern Arizona University. More than a mile high, surrounded by open chaparral and sitting in the shadow of the 10,000-foot San Francisco Peaks, Flagstaff is physically gorgeous and a pleasing college vibe pervades. Many towns in the north of Arizona — hell, in all of Arizona and much of the West — are striking (to a New Englander especially) for just how new or post-modern they feel. Flagstaff has some of that, but it also has a proper, turn-of-the-19th-century downtown where today funky galleries and a wide variety of non-chain, quite excellent restaurants abound.

I didn’t start playing disc golf until after Bob had passed away, and playing in Arizona made me wonder what he’d have thought of it. Hardcore golfers tend to look askance at this golfing cousin, and while Bob was in many ways a counter-culturist — he lived in a commune after college on the shores of Sabbathday Lake, for chrissakes — he was something of purist when it came to golf. He revered the old course designs, soaked up the game’s rich history, and collected old clubs and books… But when he wrote books on course design, his subjects were Wayne Stiles and Walter Travis, not Donald Ross and Alistair Mackenzie. Bob also organized an annual Cayman tournament at his place in Vermont, where competitors holed out by chipping the ball either against a car tire (1 stroke) or into said tire (no stroke).

I’m betting Bob would have liked disc golf, recognizing that between the ears it’s essentially the same game — minus the status-seeking, the collared shirts, and the reliance on expensive, ever-upgradeable equipment. I’m also betting that as an eminently practical unreconstructed hippie, Bob would have recognized that to love one game doesn’t prevent the love of another.

New Links, New Rough, New Sleeve: Doonbeg Could Use Some Old-Time Greenkeeping

New Links, New Rough, New Sleeve: Doonbeg Could Use Some Old-Time Greenkeeping

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

It’s been a couple years since I played Doonbeg Golf Club, Greg Norman’s “new” Irish links in the southwest of the country. I’ve thought about it quite a bit since because, well, a lot folks have played it too — it’s just south of Lahinch and just across the Shannon River from Ballybunion and Tralee — and we’re headed back to the Emerald Isle next week. Doonbeg GC is also coupled with one of the finest on-site golf hotels anywhere in the world. So it’s natural to stay at Doonbeg and play the course at least once during a weeklong tour of this stupendous golfing corner of Ireland.

That’s pretty fast company to keep, and Doonbeg is a new course, not even 10 years old, so perhaps it’s not surprising that it tends to suffer by comparison. I don’t see it frankly. I found the terrain, the routing and the greens to be of a very high quality, design-wise. Doonbeg is, as its critics contend, very difficult to play. Too difficult, one could argue, but I’ve decided this judgment has very little to do with the design.

Agronomics are important to the maximizing of any course design, but maintenance of the outlying areas on a links course is particularly crucial. We saw what an overzealous fertilization program could do to the best players in the world during the famous train-wreck at Carnoustie in 1999, and this is the nub of the issue at Doonbeg. The dunes through which the fairways quite masterfully weave here are covered with a thick matting of ball-eating, deep-green fescues. My opening drive at Doonbeg landed in the fairway and bounced some 5 yards into the rough, never to be found. I’ve heard tell that Norman himself lost 10 balls during his inaugural round. That’s nuts, and one begins to understand why even those players far better than I tend not to leave Doonbeg with that warm fuzzy feeling we expect following a round on the coast of Ireland.

I had played Lahinch the day before. As is my custom, I drove the ball all over the map. But the outlying areas at Lahinch were quite different, featuring as much brown matter as green. The fescues were high but sorta wispy. I found a dozen of my wayward balls in there and nearly always had a swing, albeit a recovery swing, at most every one. That’s what more than a hundred years of expertly burning off the rough can produce: The perfect balance of playability and penalty. Doonbeg is simply not there yet.

Will it get there? A murkier question, that. Despite the fact there had once been an ancient links on the site, Doonbeg’s modern development came with caveats. The club rightly touts what is a heavy emphasis on organic maintenance practices, but I’ve heard from several people in the know that Doonbeg isn’t free to do everything it would like in caring for these rough areas. I doubt very much the crews are fertilizing them, at all, but I’d bet they’re not allowed to burn them off as often as they’d like. Like I said, I played there two years ago and I’d wager they had never been burned off.

You gotta figure that today not every British course superintendent who graduates from turf school, or leaves his various course apprenticeships, with a working knowledge of how to properly burn off the rough on a links course. Not any more (and, of course, not every course in Britain is a links; most are not). Methinks the crazy-thick rough at a place like Doonbeg, or at Sand Golf Club (a fabulous Steve Forrest-designed “faux” links, which I played in Sweden the week before Doonbeg) is more the result of agronomic stricture, or a lack of ancient know-how in our modern age, than design intent. Here’s hoping it’s the latter, and it is ultimately overcome, because Doonbeg (and Sand) are both awesome tracks in need of, well, a trim.