Tonight I feel a bit more fortunate to have played Cape Arundel dozens of times. In my heart of hearts, it is just another place where I and my similarly impecunious friends would assemble for the twilight rate and attempt to power through eighteen holes before complete darkness and a night on the town, and is therefore not differentiated from Webhannet, Willowdale, and the now-defunct Old Orchard Beach.
Nevertheless . . . Mike Sweeney came up to see me many years ago, and due to logistics we in fact partook of the twilight experience. His eyes popped out of his head when he crested the hill on the first hole and saw the green, the tree, and the river. He truly fell for Cape Arundel when we encountered a beflanneled octogenarian who was wheeling it in after six holes. On the ninth hole, under a massive, spectacular sunset, he began to tell me what a special location we were at, and I have to admit that it was interesting to finally see the course from the perspective of someone who was returning to Manhattan.
I was taken aback by the effusiveness of this review and its responses. Ran is one of the most sincerely curious people I have ever met, and my ears were sore after a long weekend. But at Cape Arundel, despite a near-constant stream of gamesmanship, bluster (to which he had earned the right) and court-holding, he was strangely quiet on the architecture and I wondered if we should have gone elsewhere. Perhaps a contemplative silence is the greatest praise.