My computer bookmark for Golf Club Atlas is right above the teenage sluts website, so I inadvertently logged in. But as long as I am here, there is no reason not to sit down and be counted.
Somewhere in a box canyon above I-85 lies Saratoga CC - a place so far removed from the radar screen of the GCA intelligentsia that I would be willing to bet that not even America's Guest (read: Huckster) has managed to weasel his way past its mysterious portals.
This hidden zirconium in the Santa Cruz mountains reminds me of an obscure sub-chapter of Pink Floyd's Atom Heart Mother - a composition so esoteric and unusual, Waters and Gilmour titled it "Funky Dung."
Nine holes, two sets of tees with a par of 68. Minimum six degree pitch on each green, usually rolling at speeds to make Green Hills look like Sharp Park (insider Nor Cal reference). The golf course - aside from the par-3's - is a series of dogleg-left par-4's, featuring fairways so narrow that a two club-length drop from the short grass guarantees a lie in deep rough or out of bounds.
Saratoga is an enormously entertaining match-play venue because there is risk reward on every hole. Sadly, it takes more discipline than I bring to the game to pull a five-iron out on the tee of three par-4's; the penalty for bravado is a snowman or worse. Shooting 83 on a golf course of less than 4600 yards can be embarrassing for my bulbous, Brobdingnagian ego.
That is a real word. Look it up.
Royal St. Saratoga also has that annoying quality of seeming harder the more times you play it. Like Sambo, you don't get dizzy and turn to butter right away, but by the fourth circuit through the gauntlet, the fairways get narrower, the greens more terrifying and birdies more impossible.
Finally, in the final round of their Invitational, with the Stimp meter shrieking past 13 and climbing in the afternoon sun, abject terror finally sets in. Inevitably, just as the booze and sedatives begin to wear off on the final nine, a two-footer horseshoes out of the hole, sleds off the green and doesn't stop rolling until it reaches downtown Los Gatos.
This explains finishing 2nd four years in a row. My partner finally fired me for being Steve DeBerg. I played just well enough to lose at the end . . . . In truth, it is a relief not to suffer through 36 holes of hyperventilation over tap-ins any more.
The strange thing is that so invisible is this nasty little snake, that the only evidence the club exists at all can be found in wedding testimonials from brides and their filthy rich mothers.
Thus, I nominate Saratoga CC (CA) for inclusion in the Godale's Funkdelic 30. Certainly, if anyone with too much time on their hands ever assembled a list of the strangest nine-holers, this could take its place as the American version of an Irish Pitch & Putt.
We now return to our regularly scheduled program, Hotties in Heat.
Here is a Google link to the golf course:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=21990+prospect+road,+saratoga,+ca&sll=33.448263,-112.073821&sspn=1.326874,2.719116&g=phoenix,+az&ie=UTF8&ll=37.28346,-122.053438&spn=0.004943,0.010622&t=h&z=17&iwloc=addr