Dave McCollum
Age: 61
Job: Owner/operator Canyon Springs GC, public 18-holer in Twin Falls, Idaho
Family: Married, but live in houses 90 miles apart (good for golf); 2 kids
Hobby: see job, otherwise note I am posting here
Handicap: see age, otherwise 10-12
Education: Harvard ‘71
Found CGA: Researching a trip to Scotland in ’05-06; signed up 2/08
Reason for sticking around: The chance to listen to 1,500 of the most passionate, educated, enlightened, opinionated, dedicated, and sometimes entertaining golfers on the planet. In other words, total golf whack-jobs.
That’s it. The usual long-winded BS follows. I recommend you skip the rest. If you choose to go on, pardon the typos; I’m an old guy.
But first, a little business: Carl Nichols—I read the old bios too. I read them all in one sitting until I was cross-eyed and begging for whisky.
I can’t remember what I said to Ran to be included in the DG, but I keep expecting a digital tap on the shoulder telling me I’m being kicked out of the tree house because I post so rarely. Usually, by the time I get around to reading a thread, there isn’t much left to be said. I’ve been a bit more active this winter, Ran, so chill out, please.
The first time I posted, I got trashed for an off-hand comment. It was some OT thread about slow play as I recall. I said when I play as a two-some and run into a packed course ahead, we drop another ball, double the bet, and solve the problem by doing what we love best—play more golf. Still seems reasonable to me. I chose not to argue on. Everyone has one…a**hole or opinion.
Mostly, I generally only comment here from the perspective of the average Joe golfer, a creature I know well and one, I am sorry to say, doesn’t know or much care about architecture. However, in my own way, I’m a closet fanatic without anybody to talk to about my addiction. Like the rest of you lunatics, I have a few yards of well thumbed books, do read this site and many others fairly regularly, and try to play interesting courses when I travel.
I won’t bore you with a list of courses played. It would be unimpressive in this crowd or just the usual suspects in Scotland and the West. Ireland is always on the wish list, but I haven’t got there yet. I don’t get East much.
I discovered golf late in life, despite having a course in the family. (I’ll do a profile on my course later.) I’ve always been something of a sportsman. I played every sport as a kid and even a little football in college at Harvard (insert joke here). I helped my father a bit with this course after college. The second time I ever played golf a couple of weeks before this course opened, I had to take some academic freeloader on a tour and made a hole-in-one. Made a 13 on the next because I was laughing so hard. Basically, I played the annual round of golf for the next 25 years. Sure, it was fun. Frankly, I concluded that if I got into golf, given my competitive nature, I’d want to get good at it. I looked around and quickly realized that good golfers play a lot of golf. I didn’t think I had that kind of free time to devote to the game.
Spent the next 20-some years based in LA making print ads and TV commercials, having kids, and such nonsense. We did location work, which meant working all over the world. During one break in the action, for example, I examined my passport and discovered I had worked in 55 countries during a 5 year span. Another life, but probably explains why I don’t travel much now.
My interest in architecture evolved as intellectual rationalization for my addiction to this silly game. Even though I waited to start playing some golf until I thought I was too old to ever be any good, and therefore wouldn’t blow 20 hours a week trying to get good, it didn’t work. Hopelessly hooked from the start, although I got the first part right: I stink.
The more I read about good architecture and looked at good golf courses, the more I realized what a good site we have here at Canyon Springs. This got me thinking about what we could do to improve it. I call it the insane George Crump fantasy. Take a perfectly good, affordable little golf course, blow the family fortune, suck money out of all the investors you can round up, build something wonderful, and then probably shoot myself like good old George.
No, I’m just a tad more practical than that. I’ve got Scottish blood in my cheapskate veins. The simple fact of the matter is that golf courses have to be maintained and they age like the rest of us. Out here in the arid West, that means when your irrigation system gets so old that it costs more to fix it than it would to make payments on an upgrade, you either fix it or shoot yourself anyway. So it follows logically that if you are going to have to dig up your golf course, what better time to blow a lot more dough and add some really cool features?
That is the long form version of how I became a minimalist. Sorry.
Oh, one last thing for all the new kids on this site: I know a minor cyber celebrity who loves golf, my youngest son. He stinks too. But while he was in college he got together with some of his pals and designed a website. They called it Facebook. Don’t have to worry too much about him these days.
Still waiting for the next hole-in-one.