[Chip Gaskins]

I am so bummed.  I have to be in Kearney, Nebraska for work in a few weeks and my local contact has informed that Dismal, Sand Hills and (she thinks) Wild Horse will all still be closed....bummer!  What are the chances I end up in central Nebraska for work again   I assumed all three would be open my mid April.

Are there any other prairie/dunes courses in Central Nebraska I should check out that might be open in mid-April?

[John Kavanaugh]

Here is a link to the Nebraska Golf Association that should help.  I played somewhere out there last April but the name escapes me.  http://www.nebgolf.org/clubdirectory.html

[John Kavanaugh]

I just called Wild Horse and they are open so you are in luck.  Here is a link to their information: http://www.nebgolf.org/club%20directories/wildhorse.html

[Brad Klein]

Chip,

before/while there, read the recent novel by Richard Powers, "The Echo Maker," set in Kearney, Neb. and evocative of Willa Cather's fictive work on the natural beauty and power of the Nebraska landscape.

[Jason Hines]

Chip,

I went to high school in Kearney, If you are stuck in Kearney, Meadowlark Hills is not bad for $20.

A group built 9 holes several years ago south on highway 10 that has since gone under, it was built in the sand dunes.  The links at Craneview or something like that, I don't remember the designer.  Would be interesting to see what has become of the course.

[Chip Gaskins]

I just called Wild Horse and they are open so you are in luck.  Here is a link to their information: http://www.nebgolf.org/club%20directories/wildhorse.html

thanks john, i will plan on taking my clubs and checking out Wild Horse (and any others folks suggest). 

the pics of Wild Horse look pretty awesome.

[Chip Gaskins]

Chip,

before/while there, read the recent novel by Richard Powers, "The Echo Maker," set in Kearney, Neb. and evocative of Willa Cather's fictive work on the natural beauty and power of the Nebraska landscape.

Brad-

Thanks, I will order the book off Amazon today.  I will actually have to put your book, Rough Mediations, down to read the new one though 

Edit:  I just looked at the The Echo Maker on Amazon...a little too fiction for me, I will stick to my golf architecture history books.

[Tony_Chapman]

It's been way too long since I've been on here, but I hope you have fun Chip. I live in Grand Island and work down in Hastings. The "Muni" in Grand Island, might be the best $13 a guy could spend on the weekday.

But, of course, do Wild Horse first. Where else will your travels take you?

[Brad Klein]

Chip,

there's a famous line about an academic when asked if he had read a certain book.

"Read it? I own it!."

Good enough for me.

[Peter Pallotta]

Brad - nice call on Willa Cather.  I'm no expert, but if there is a finer American writer, especially one so relatively obscure, I don't know him/her. This will sound silly, but I always feel like a better and deeper person after reading Willa Cather.

Chip - apologies for the sidebar.

Peter

[Brad Klein]

By the way, Dick Youngscap, founder of Sand Hills, is a big Willa Cather fan and appreciates her relevance to what he created out there.

[Mark Bourgeois]

Didn't Willa Cather make a distinction between "wilderness" and "park?" I recall reading that in reference to Olmstead's work, how he pioneered the intelligent design of "wilderness" in his parks.  Willa Cather got dragged into that -- or somehow was held up as the first person to make the distinction.

I read an essay last year by Jeff Matey* on his massive library.  He wrote that whenever a visitor asked incredulously, "Have you read all these books?" his stock reply was, "Some of them even twice."

Mark

*Actual name forgotten.

[Tom_Doak]

Chip:

Sand Hills usually doesn't open until the weekend before Memorial Day.  There are plenty of golf days before then, but you can't predict when they'll be.

I don't know when Ballyneal officially opens, but Rupert is out there playing whenever it warms up, even if the greens haven't been mowed for a while.

[Peter Pallotta]

By the way, Dick Youngscap, founder of Sand Hills, is a big Willa Cather fan and appreciates her relevance to what he created out there.

Brad - that's one of the coolest bits of information I've ever read here; thanks much for sharing it. The quietness and I'd say even humbleness of the work that C&C do is very appealing to me...and sure enough the same lack of flash and understated simplicity in Willa Cather's work is too me what marks her as a great writer (more like Joyce's short stories than his Ulysses)...and of course her love of -- no, her "awareness" of nature -- is the same

Mark - I wish I knew more; that's another very neat tie-in 

Peter

[Brad Klein]

When you read Cather you become aware of the land as an active participant and as a central character in a dry, windswept, devastating struggle for existence. Until relatively recently, with the conquest of water and the opening of the Ogallala aquifer, it was generally considered impossible to farm, much less have golf, west of the 100th Meridian. That's all changed now -- a history you can read in "Cadillac Desert." Without that, no Sand Hills, Wild Horse, Dismal River or Ballyneal.

[Chip Gaskins]

When you read Cather you become aware of the land as an active participant and as a central character in a dry, windswept, devastating struggle for existence. Until relatively recently, with the conquest of water and the opening of the Ogallala aquifer, it was generally considered impossible to farm, much less have golf, west of the 100th Meridian. That's all changed now -- a history you can read in "Cadillac Desert." Without that, no Sand Hills, Wild Horse, Dismal River or Ballyneal.

OK, I will read the book now....

[Daryl David]

I don't know when Ballyneal officially opens, but Rupert is out there playing whenever it warms up, even if the greens haven't been mowed for a while.

Official opening at Ballyneal is May 1.

[Jim Nugent]

I don't know when Ballyneal officially opens, but Rupert is out there playing whenever it warms up, even if the greens haven't been mowed for a while.

Official opening at Ballyneal is May 1.

Does that mean no one other than course owners like Rupert can play until then, or do they allow some access to outsiders?

[Tony_Chapman]

One of my favorite Willa Cather's, which always reminds me of the life west of Kearney:

"Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky."

[Peter Pallotta]

Thanks, Tony. Lovely, isn't it? Here's another one, from "My Antonia", set in Nebraska:

"I wanted to walk straight on through the red grass and over the edge of the world, which could not be very far away. The light air about me told me that the world ended here: only the ground and sun and sky were left, and if one went a little farther there would be only sun and sky, and one would float off into them, like the tawny hawks which sailed over our heads making slow shadows on the grass."

Peter

[Tony_Chapman]

Great stuff. Willa considered home in Red Cloud about 45 minutes south of where I work in Hastings. She had a knack for putting words together didn't she?

[Tony_Chapman]

Anywho, I thought I saw Adam Clayman on here talking about just being out there and the native grass being burned. I dug this picture up from a few years ago:



This is a shot of the back nine.

[Josh_Mahar]

Chip, that picture of Tony's is what Wild Horse will look like in mid april when you come out as we have a burn scheduled for the back nine sometime the first part of April.  Hope you come out and enjoy a round at Wild Horse.

[Chip Gaskins]

Yep, I plan to take my sticks and give it a go.

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