I'm going to claim cowardice here because I selfishly waited to see what everybody else was going to post, so I could then post myself. I'm a bastard.
So here I go.
Yesterday I made a post to Jeff Brauer, going on aimlessly about a hole on a course that really introduced me to the word "strategy." I even went last night and captured and aerial of the course and of that paticular hole, had it all cropped and spruced-up to post, but then said to myself, "Nobody is ever going to understand what I'm posting here, they'll never be playing this course--EVER, and I'm not sure I want to admit it. It might just show how much of a golfing ghetto-slum that I'm from!"
Yet, if someone called me tonight and said they had a tee time for tomorrow, I would be there in nothing flat! (But more then likely would be ready for a wheel chair after four holes)
But quite obviously, there must be somethig out there that has a form of sprituality for me to want to go back. Unlike me to say this, but the course has more memories for me, from the times I have had there, instead of any assemblence of golf architecture to study. I think the place was an accident that happened, and it got really fun to play from there!
I can list a dozen-million memories on each hole on that course in the 20+ years I have played there. There was the time that Terry brought his neighbor on Saturday, who jokingly said, "Where is the first tee and what is the course record?" and then proceeded to the first tee where he pumped three out of bounds, into the houses.
There was the time Pat fired his tee shot on the 5th. It exploded off the tee, hit the white tee marker in front of it, and bounced back behind the tee box and into some rough just barely in front of the out of bounds. He proceeded try to blast his tee shot out of the thick grass--only got under it with so much spin, and it actually went backwards, again--this time, out of bounds!
There was the time we were on #15, and the lone neighboring house whose backyard abutted the right fairway had an unattractive hazard of two doberman pinchers that barked fiercely when every you got as close as twenty feet away. Imagine my surprize one day when I underestimated the safety of the backyard fence, and the dogs chased me down past the 17th hole.
This was the place where I learned to never say, I got it now! on a golf course.
The point being with all of this is that a golf course can dictate experience not just form the architecture, but the friends, family, aquaintences and even adversaries that also share the joys of this very personal game called Golf. It is from all of that, where the experiences become just more then passing memories--but more of an embodyment of Spirit, which of course is where Faith resides in the Soul.
I have been fortunate in my life to experience a lot of GREAT golf courses with Soul. But I would have never known what any of it was if I hadn't understood exactly what motivates it all. I may have found it on this obscure golf course in Corona, California, but I never knew just how much it really existed until I sat my first foot on the Old Course, St. Andrews, Fife, Scotland.
Anyone that thinks that there isn't any Soul in that should never even reply.