The day was hot and humid, sticky if you will. The air shrieking with the sound of my phone, ringing off of it's cradle.
"Hello?"
"Tommy, I've got a time down at Tijeras Creek, come on lets go..."It was my old friend Doc, who had a pension for playing courses he didn't like--just like me, but suddenly it was if someone had taken a red hot ice pick and shoved it into one of my occular cavities, Tijeras was a Ted Robinson course.
"Doc, I don't do Ted Robinson....""Come on! I know you've played the course a bunch of times, well make the best of it, besides you know how many rave that this maybe the man's best work ever--all eight holes of it...."Doc was right though. Tijeras Creek may be the best work from OC's most commercially successful golf architect, designing and building a whole slew of Augusta National of the West Coast all along the Washington, Oregon and California borders.
Yeah, well what about the other 10 holes?, I asked Doc in a confrontational rage, thinking to myself, why couldn't he have dialed Arroyo Trabucco instead? But Obeying doctors orders, I went begrudgingly, knowing that for me playing Tijeras Creek was the equivalent of having one of those extreme rectal exams which have you saying out-loud,
screw this, I'll risk the cancer....It had been a long seven or eight years since I visted this monolith of Golf Architecture nonsense, but thinking about it now, and in hindsight that Tijeras indeed had some good and not so good holes. You just had to get by the trash of those first holes to really see that Ted may actually have a talent in routing a golf course in the same way a CSI unit has in outligning a dead body.
Then suddenly the dame walked into the room...this wasn't your ordinary dame because you had seen her before. (Hole #9) You knew her game and how she wanted to entice you. This chick had claws...
Be careful! You know the strategies, You know how to play her. What's wrong with you? Your not really weak at the knees, but you can see that Ted was really on to something here. She had the look of Ellen Barkin, but the demeanor of Kathleen Turner, all jazzed-up with that deep, hot voice, ready to talk you into something you wanted no part of...and you liked it....
And it would continue to get better hole by hole. Not perfect, not even close to perfect, but there was something about this dame and her getup that made me swoon like a dog in heat that was looking for the closest leg which to hump on... You could see the gaping errors of judgment, the plateau greens which would have afforded magnificent and deceptive false fronts. the containment mounds built into greensites that was about as natural as Paris Hilton's hair color.... The sand hazards looked like the least perfect place to bury a dead body.
And then came the 17th, a hole I was firmly convinced this was the girl that was going to bear my children. I was a sap and she was playing me for exactly who I was, "me."
It was at the 18th, she dropped her bombshell, as almost as if it was a scene ripped-off from
The Crying Game. the 18th was no golf hole, it was all a ruse to place my heart on the table and to have her take a cleever to it. This was no golf course, this was just another huge missed opportunity that tried to lure me in, did exactly that and then spat me out. I was a lead chump in a hall of chumpians....
My body laid there all weak and motionless. Is this a way to die? All alone here in the O.C.? Was it a plot which I was the lead goof? and then it hit me....
My good friend Doc! He betrayed me!. He led me to this and was in cahoots, or was he?
Suddenly I turned my head over saw that Doc laying motionless on the floor. We had both been had, played like pinballs in a pachinko machine....
That in my mind is Tijeras Creek.
The 2nd
The 4th and all it's Robinsonian allure...
Do I really need to explain the 5th?
The 8th at Sebonack (just joking Tom)
O.K. This hole is actually one of the tougher Robinson one-shotters you'll ever find. 200 yards, down hill, tough.
Suddenly things take a sudden and delightful turn. the 9th is a really good golf hole hilighted by less the perfect sand hazards and a stupid plateau in the approach of the green. Still, this is a really good golf hole.
The approach into the 9th
Just what one needs just after digesting a Brat at the turn. the 10th is pure Ted. But things change. the golf course becomes rather interesting after this point.
The par 5, 11th. In the hands of a better golf course architect--one that we like to promote here on GCA, I could see some excellent sand nazards placed into the face of this Cape. Instead Ted gives us a cart path, mounding and some so-so bunkering. The hole still works, but it could have been a lot better.
The short 12th. A roller coaster ride of Disneyland preportions. It's a good hole.
The 12th green
The 16th. Short story here. In 1998, I featured the hole after this in a story in Orange County Golf Magazine. (Mor eon that hole later) I had to contact Ted and get a quote or two from him, and he asked me what I thought of the 16th. I told him I thought the front right bunker which was nothing more then a flat, featureless Ted Robinson faux-pot bunker wasn't very good and that it ruined a beautiful, natural hole. He agreed with me.
Jump to 8 years later, and here we are yesterday, the first tiem I have been back to the course since that article. The right front bunker is now one of the better looking bunkers on the course. So, Ted was listening--I think...
You will see from the images that Ted does know how to rout a golf course--just don't have houses around it because he then gets into some sort of "I'm going to move mountains to protect you" mode, and ultimately it's what makes this golf course less then palatable for 10 holes. The ridiculous hazards and waterfalls are all a part of that.
By far the best hole on the course, if not in Ted Robinson's entire career the 17th. I didn't get a tee shot of this, but to describe, the hole gently turns left and from the tee you see wide open fairway and the sand hazard on the left. the back tee is an even more perplexing shot because it requires you to draw it off of the tee which would leave you about a wedge in. too far right and the tree on the right there guards a shot from getting on the green. You will be forced to lay-up, but if you decide to try to go over ther tree, you have that little Asshole bunker there defending it's putting surface, like a worker bee guards his queen.
The hole is for the most part a 10 for me. I think it works really good, and for those of you that have spent years putting up with my bashing of Ted, this hole is his one saving grace. It's that good.
Ted is known for his work with environmental agencies. He seems to get along prettygood with them and he has developed a reputation that he is excellent to work with. It's evident at the 17th that many architects aren't afforded to get as close to a creek as this--in an old school kind-of-way. It's interesting because this course, built in the early 90's, things have changed to some degree, but not that much. Holes 16 & 17, literally play in the creek. The birds and bees and flowers and trees love it, as well as deer and other native habitat. they've never left.
Here's to you Mr. Robinson for pulling that off.
