My father was a baseball player and has pleasant memories of one year in which he played catch every month in Iowa. Such an effort may seem trivial to those of you in warmer climates but there is something magical in his face as he describes playing catch on the moderately warm January days with a bit of snowmelt in the yard. For me, escaping the shackles of the seasons still carries magic.
I do not believe I have played golf every month of any single year. I plan to rectify that situation in 2012. In this thread, I will continue my 2011 thread by sharing a course of the month. Hopefully I will provide some entertainment and serve as an information source for your travel plans.
My January destination in 2012 was Hilton Head. My wife Claire had a couple of days of meetings and asked me to come along. My “job” was to attend social events in the evening and play golf during the day. Given the destination and my primary criteria for a golf partner (someone who is entertaining and has a pulse) I immediately sought out Joel Zuckerman.
If you are not sure whether or not you have met Joel, you have not met him. Joel is a tenacious individual, whether it relates to writing and marketing his books, interrogating a four year old at a restaurant, challenging a bartender to a pushup contest, or playing golf. I learned that Joel is also a tenacious host. He not only met me to play golf, but also drove 400 miles back from the PGA show in Orlando to do so, gave me a tour of his house and took my wife and me to a lovely dinner in Savannah.
If I were a better person, I would have started this trip with goals of enjoying camaraderie, nice weather and good golf courses. But I am not a better person. My attitude on this trip can be summed up in two words – “Beat Zuckerman!” I had never played golf with the guy but my instincts told me that he was someone I would really like to whip in a match.
Joel took me to two courses – Deer Creek on Skidaway Island (
http://course.bluegolf.com/bluegolf/course/course/landingscdeercreek/index.htm) and May River. Deer Creek is a pleasant and beautiful Fazio course with generous fairways, difficult green complexes and stately trees hiding the nearby housing.
May River is a fantastic retreat. For the traveler, it is an expensive proposition requiring a hotel stay and a hefty green fee. Nonetheless, it is a high quality course in a beautiful location between two turns of the May River.
From a player’s standpoint, two features stand out – centerline bunkers and push up greens surrounded by short grass. Five holes feature centerline bunkers and nearly every hole require decisions with regard to both club and line to set up the best approach. This aerial tour presents a pretty accurate picture of the course tee to green because the land is relatively flat, with just some gentle hills towards rivers and creeks:
http://course.bluegolf.com/bluegolf/course/course/mayrivergolf/aerial.htm As with most Nicklaus courses, I have played, May River presents difficult demands on iron play. Many of the greens are perched well above their surrounds and a miss usually leaves a recovery shot off of tight grass, up a slope with little margin for error once on the green. Paspalum grass means that anything from a putter to a lob wedge is a reasonable option for such shots. However, because of the severe slopes, I found bunker shots less of a challenge to my rusty short game. Ran’s profile does a good job of showing some of these challenges:
http://www.golfclubatlas.com/courses-by-country/usa/may-river-golf-club/ May River is a worthy winner of my inaugural course of the month. The months of February and March promise to be interesting with the Dominican Republic and the San Francisco Bay area on the itinerary.
As for beating Zuckerman – I can only report that it is really irritating to lose to him.