[RJ_Daley]

I've been home a day or so now from the big fall Nebraska-Colo tour.  I have been pondering how to describe it.  Being absent from the homestead for a week, letting some stuff pile up, and yet skipping out on the home chores again today to play 27 more with great friends on another beautiful crystal clear fall day, didn't help me in my diliberations on offering a report on the Nebraska trip.  

Then, to complicate matters, I'm coming off of a great trip to Georgia the previous week to see Mike Young's wonderful achievement at Longshadow, again in the company of the honorable fellowship of GCA all-stars.  And, to show how we are moving in circles, I get to see Pete LaValle and his bride Janice, having also enjoyed his company just a week before at Longshadow, as they also wound up spending some of their "special" time at BallyNeal. What kind of coincidental kismet is that?  

So, here I am, completely on golf sensory overload, having had a few weeks of golf experiences that if I was to get really sentimental, I could mimic Jones's speech to St Andrews town ceremony where he said something like, 'if you took all of golf from my life except my time at St. Andrews, I'd still have had a rich golf life'.  Well I guess I could almost go that far and say similar about the last two weeks.  

Then I was just watching the Iron Chef, and seeing all these spoiled foodie snobs luxuriate over their culinary delights of the great chefs inorder to grade the five dishes prepared by the chef masters, and I thought, 'wow- and there with all the starvin pigmies in Africa and such.'  

So, I ask myself if I'm becoming too jaded to even think about somehow attempting to craft a post to say which sand hills course I now love better, SHGC, or BallyNeal.... now that I have had the joy of playing both multiple times.  Jaded is defined as, 'made dull by excess; sated".  That's me all right!  

But, I have even more experiences to set my head in a tailspin as the result of this fantastic sand hills sojourn.  That is the 'just plain lucky' part.  I and Adam Clayman (who has now become a real sand hills 'man about the region') were invited to be part of the "Believers Cup".  I was too embarrassed to ask what it was we were actually supposed to 'believe in'.  But, there I was in the midst of the real heros of golf in the sand hills - the club house staff, and maintenance crew and their supers - past and present, of SHGC.  And I was witness to the commraderie of SHGC's rival club at Dismal River, with their superintendent also participating in the big season ending bash of staffs.  It was a real boys weekend to blow off a lot of steam that must come from a season of serving the members of these fine golf clubs.

I was really impressed and moved at the spirit of colleagiality of the SHGC guys with Justin, the Dismal River guy.  I still haven't seen Dismal River, and regardless of these ratings and rankings,  I'm prepared to say that their super is a very dedicated, serious man who cares deeply about is work.  

There were a few other assorted Mullen characters as well, including a certain banker who claimed he was an 8, who plays regularly with some of the other attendees at Ron Farris's uncle Ernie's, Mullen GC.  That fellow played the best wind game I ever saw to shoot 75 in a 40mph cold and brutal gale!    

And, well sated we were through the hospitality of Cory Crandall, the first SHGC super whom I first met long before there even was a GCA.com.  Cory now runs a mom and pop course in Ogallala (West Winds) that visitors to the region should stop to play just for the local flavor and hospitality of the area.  Cory, offered up his course for the final round of the BC, and hosted the best damn steak fry and hold'em poker night you could imagine.  And, I observed the current supers and staff treat Cory with a great affection and respect he deserves, being a sort of "Dean" of the region's superintendents.  Now, Cory does it all from overseeing the maintenance on his course to folding the sweaters, cooking the grub, and keeping an eye on Adam.  

And, yes I've become capricious and whimsical as well, like saying who you loved best when it gets down to which beautiful woman you kissed last - is best.   Having played 27 at both Bayside and Wild Horse this trip, (both built by my favorites, Bunkerhill - Proctor and Axeland) I am glad I finished with Wild Horse so I can still without reservation say I love Wild Horse best because it is the best total 18 holes.   Those two courses were played in perfect windy clear and cool conditions and I struggle to not declare the front 9 at Bayside every bit as good as either side at Wild Horse!  A big thank you to owner Jason of Bayside for hosting the gang and giving the entire course over to the Believers Cup.  It is only the irratic nature of the backside at Bayside GC with 3.5 clinker holes that doesn't make it a totally unfathomable dilemma to judge which course is better and would thus be beyond my ken.  But, there I said it: WH is best; can I have another last kiss?

So, it was almost with tears in my eyes that I said goodbye to Adam there on the porch at Wild Horse.  Thankfully, a great day back here in Dairyland was a sufficient tonic to keep me from a deep depression that I won't be back in the Sand Hills for months.

So, I get back to my original question.  Can we become jaded, spoiled, capricious, and are we just plain lucky to play the courses we do?  How can we really attempt the exquisitly rediculous task - to rank and rate courses while under the jaded spell of getting to play so many great golf courses?  

Sand Hills or BallyNeal?  Bayside or Wild Horse?  A day with Cory and the sand hills posse, or a homecoming with my posse back in a fall color drenched good home golf course?  

Hell, I don't know... just get out there and enjoy it, we're just plain lucky and life is short.  

[JMorgan]

Dick, I think you've made your luck, so enjoy it!

[John Mayhugh]

Dick, I think most of us are some of each.  Never played any of the courses that you mentioned in your post, but I've had a few trips that left me feeling the same way.  Sometimes I finish a round and have that Lou Gehrig farewell speech echoing in my head.

[Brad Swanson]

I take it your back is better, otherwise, I anticipate after all of the driving and golf that you'll be in traction through the start of next season.  

Cheers,
Brad

P.S. The answer to your question is

E.  All of the above

[Dan Kelly]

"Exquisitely ridiculous" is right.

Kiss as many "beautiful women" as you can, and love them all.

[Adam Clayman]

I'll take exception with Jaded. Too many negative definitions.

Since Dick's road trip is my life, I prefer to view it as... Enlightened.

It was Dick's posts, back in the early days, that turned-on everyone here to the region. His statement about the ability to grow grass, as close to the Linksland as you could get, piqued my brain. That's why I invited Dick because he's the epitome of a Believer.

If this week taught me anything new it was a realization just how hard it is to grow turf grass in this region. The supers who cure here, can go anywhere, and have it easier.

[Peter Pallotta]

John M - nice. Here's a snippet from it:

"Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got.  But today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth."

My goodness, Lou Gehrig -- had over 160 RBIs one year, while following Ruth in the batting order!

RJ - yes, I'm almost sure that becoming jaded and spoiled can and does happen; but I am sure that it hasn't happened to you

Peter

[Kirk Gill]

Mr. Daley - your post doesn't sound jaded at all to me. You sound like a man who very much appreciates what he is able to enjoy, and doesn't take it for granted. I try to bring a little of the joy you're expressing into the everyday. Taking my boys to karate, or getting a chance to play golf.....anywhere! And then, when those really special events occur, even more of that joy is available...........thanks for the post.

[John Kavanaugh]

RJ plays where he is invited which makes both he and his hosts gracious.

[Tom Huckaby]

I'm with Kirk.  There ain't nothing jaded about that post - hell it damn near brought me to tears.  I've rarely read elsewhere an equal expression of how golf brings joy into ones life... and the importance of finding and embracing that joy....

So well done and good on you, Dick.  You are a lucky man.  But like JMorgan said, I think he made his own luck - and I mean that as a very very high compliment.


TH

[Evan Fleisher]

Extremely well said and expressed DD...we should all be so thankful for what we have and can enjoy.

[Bill_McBride]

Dick, I figure you are also still basking in the memory of watching me hack my way down the final hole at Longshadow, right?  

[RJ_Daley]

Gentlemen, Thanks for the nice comments.  

Adam touched on something that was a myth buster for me.  While spending so much time with the great superintendents of the sand hills, and hearing their shared commiseration after a long season, I was enlightened and re educated on my previous belief that the sand hills region is a no-brainer for turf establishment and continued growth-maintenance.  It isn't about the great sand medium but the weather extremes that keep these guys on pins and needles all year.  All of them said quite seriously that they'd rather grow turf in clay in Georgia or anywhere else like that, than try to keep the turf sward in top performance up there in Hooker Co.  That was a revelation to me.

Bill, it was not so much basking as kringing.  You've had the best of me too often, and after your excellent shot on the 17th, I felt it was another goner for me in what is becoming too long of a list.  We need another match where the fickle finger doesn't prevail and good golf wins.  

JK, I do play where I'm invited on the private side.  I even accept invitations from those I didn't previously know, who sound sincere and offer with such a kind word or gesture.  I guess I'm a bit jaded or 'dull from excess' that I actually believe there are nice guys out there who enjoy sharing nice things they have.  You'd think an old cop would not be gullible and fall for a McConk.  (Perhaps that is what we should call it from now on - when a phoney invites a stranger to a fictitious offering)  

But, then there have been real people like Ted S. Of YH, and Ken H., of BM, that actually did invite me sight unseen.  I guess for every several real guys with good hearts there is going to be putz and phoney like the McConk.  

Gracious is as gracious does, I reckon.

[RJ_Daley]

BTW, on the public side, we have a couple of excellent courses anyone can play, as we know in Wild Horse, and Bayside.  West Winds is a hoot that is more about nice folk and getting into the culture of the region.  

But, long range, the sand hills holds out even more hope that someday there may be sister courses to the great clubs like Bally and even Dismal, and possibly the yet to be built Prairie Club, where sister public courses are contemplated to be designed side by side.  That may be a long way off, but you younger GCA chaps or us older GCAers kids may yet see that come about.  And even if the sister publics aren't quite up to the standards of the parent originals, they would offer a taste of the exciting sand hills golf to all.  That is a good thing, as Martha would say.  

So, maybe one thing we invitees can do when we are so favored as to be hosted at one of the big 3, is to make sure you tell the management how you'd love to be able to come back if and when a public sister course is built by them.  They have to know from us that you would make the trek, so that the idea is viable in their own minds as to a potential market.  Should a place like Bally have a sister course that is open to the public, it isn't hard to imagine there is enough land out there to make a good one, and there would be synergy for the maintenance to double up and share the maintenance budget to gain some advantage of cost over just trying to maintain one course, one would think.  

So, in my own way of thinking, it is one's duty to accept the invitations to these places, so one can make the desire to return to a public offering known to the developers who put up a great risk.  

[Bob_Huntley]

Don't tell me the Marine wasn't there.

Bob

[John Kavanaugh]

Why does it matter if more courses are built considering any one course is good enough to play?  I think Sand Hills has already been diluted by the addition of other exclusive privates.  If St. Louis built another Arch it would be McDonalds.

[Adam Clayman]

Bob, Steve was here last year. Getting others to follow our folly is not only hard pressed but restricting.

Added;

One serious gentleman thought Ballyneal should go public.

[Jay Flemma]

I've been home a day or so now from the big fall Nebraska-Colo tour.  I have been pondering how to describe it.  Being absent from the homestead for a week, letting some stuff pile up, and yet skipping out on the home chores again today to play 27 more with great friends on another beautiful crystal clear fall day, didn't help me in my diliberations on offering a report on the Nebraska trip.  

Then, to complicate matters, I'm coming off of a great trip to Georgia the previous week to see Mike Young's wonderful achievement at Longshadow, again in the company of the honorable fellowship of GCA all-stars.  And, to show how we are moving in circles, I get to see Pete LaValle and his bride Janice, having also enjoyed his company just a week before at Longshadow, as they also wound up spending some of their "special" time at BallyNeal. What kind of coincidental kismet is that?  

So, here I am, completely on golf sensory overload, having had a few weeks of golf experiences that if I was to get really sentimental, I could mimic Jones's speech to St Andrews town ceremony where he said something like, 'if you took all of golf from my life except my time at St. Andrews, I'd still have had a rich golf life'.  Well I guess I could almost go that far and say similar about the last two weeks.  

Then I was just watching the Iron Chef, and seeing all these spoiled foodie snobs luxuriate over their culinary delights of the great chefs inorder to grade the five dishes prepared by the chef masters, and I thought, 'wow- and there with all the starvin pigmies in Africa and such.'  

So, I ask myself if I'm becoming too jaded to even think about somehow attempting to craft a post to say which sand hills course I now love better, SHGC, or BallyNeal.... now that I have had the joy of playing both multiple times.  Jaded is defined as, 'made dull by excess; sated".  That's me all right!  

But, I have even more experiences to set my head in a tailspin as the result of this fantastic sand hills sojourn.  That is the 'just plain lucky' part.  I and Adam Clayman (who has now become a real sand hills 'man about the region') were invited to be part of the "Believers Cup".  I was too embarrassed to ask what it was we were actually supposed to 'believe in'.  But, there I was in the midst of the real heros of golf in the sand hills - the club house staff, and maintenance crew and their supers - past and present, of SHGC.  And I was witness to the commraderie of SHGC's rival club at Dismal River, with their superintendent also participating in the big season ending bash of staffs.  It was a real boys weekend to blow off a lot of steam that must come from a season of serving the members of these fine golf clubs.

I was really impressed and moved at the spirit of colleagiality of the SHGC guys with Justin, the Dismal River guy.  I still haven't seen Dismal River, and regardless of these ratings and rankings,  I'm prepared to say that their super is a very dedicated, serious man who cares deeply about is work.  

There were a few other assorted Mullen characters as well, including a certain banker who claimed he was an 8, who plays regularly with some of the other attendees at Ron Farris's uncle Ernie's, Mullen GC.  That fellow played the best wind game I ever saw to shoot 75 in a 40mph cold and brutal gale!    

And, well sated we were through the hospitality of Cory Crandall, the first SHGC super whom I first met long before there even was a GCA.com.  Cory now runs a mom and pop course in Ogallala (West Winds) that visitors to the region should stop to play just for the local flavor and hospitality of the area.  Cory, offered up his course for the final round of the BC, and hosted the best damn steak fry and hold'em poker night you could imagine.  And, I observed the current supers and staff treat Cory with a great affection and respect he deserves, being a sort of "Dean" of the region's superintendents.  Now, Cory does it all from overseeing the maintenance on his course to folding the sweaters, cooking the grub, and keeping an eye on Adam.  

And, yes I've become capricious and whimsical as well, like saying who you loved best when it gets down to which beautiful woman you kissed last - is best.   Having played 27 at both Bayside and Wild Horse this trip, (both built by my favorites, Bunkerhill - Proctor and Axeland) I am glad I finished with Wild Horse so I can still without reservation say I love Wild Horse best because it is the best total 18 holes.   Those two courses were played in perfect windy clear and cool conditions and I struggle to not declare the front 9 at Bayside every bit as good as either side at Wild Horse!  A big thank you to owner Jason of Bayside for hosting the gang and giving the entire course over to the Believers Cup.  It is only the irratic nature of the backside at Bayside GC with 3.5 clinker holes that doesn't make it a totally unfathomable dilemma to judge which course is better and would thus be beyond my ken.  But, there I said it: WH is best; can I have another last kiss?

So, it was almost with tears in my eyes that I said goodbye to Adam there on the porch at Wild Horse.  Thankfully, a great day back here in Dairyland was a sufficient tonic to keep me from a deep depression that I won't be back in the Sand Hills for months.

So, I get back to my original question.  Can we become jaded, spoiled, capricious, and are we just plain lucky to play the courses we do?  How can we really attempt the exquisitly rediculous task - to rank and rate courses while under the jaded spell of getting to play so many great golf courses?  

Sand Hills or BallyNeal?  Bayside or Wild Horse?  A day with Cory and the sand hills posse, or a homecoming with my posse back in a fall color drenched good home golf course?  

Hell, I don't know... just get out there and enjoy it, we're just plain lucky and life is short.  

Brother William!

Well I see someone wore out quite a few styluses in the scriptorium recently!  Nice to hear Brother Adam is doing well as abbot of the region out there in the golf equivalent of the Forest of Languedoc.  

I loved your manuscript, truly illuminating.  Yes, god has given us a noble task...for the monk, prayer is work and for the golf monk reverence of all things and their natural beauty is our happy task, God be Praised.

Just keep Salvatore at arm's length, watch out for El Diablo, come to gnaw on your animus, illegitum non carborundum and pass the cheese in batter.

Adso

[JC Jones]

Bob, Steve was here last year. Getting others to follow our folly is not only hard pressed but restricting.

Added;

One serious gentleman thought Ballyneal should go public.

This guy agrees.  In fact SH should go public too, so that all may enjoy these great american treats!!  its worked out ok for st andrews and the great courses of GB&I.

[RJ_Daley]

John, no doubt that there is a saturation point for anything marketable.  All I know is that saturation may not be in play for great public sand hills golf.  I was told by someone in the know, after I expressed worry that the gas prices may have restricted folks from making the drive to WH, that they had their best year yet.  On the other side, I was dismayed that despite one of those golden beautiful fall days at Bayside, that we were essentially the only ones out there, and that they are slipping into the hibernation season seemingly quite early.  So, that might speak to dilution as well.  

ONe can't ignore what a great risk it is to go forward out there with yet another s.h. style course.  I know I was quite serious about throwing everything I had into a perfect 800 acre piece land in a better market setting than all of them.  I'm lucky I didn't get carried away because at my age I couldn't afford the bust.  It would take a deep pocket developer or another municipal or community intra-state share offering and smaller shared risk set-up by many to get it done, IMHO.  

But, those of us who have been there, talk about it, and talk about it, ad infinitum, declaring how pure of a golf experience it is.  So, there is the fine line of determining if there is a viable market or just a diluted and dillusional one based solely on our own bias.  Go figure...

[RJ_Daley]

Bob, Steve was present yesterday on a spectacular chilly fall day to welcome me home and play 27.  He carried while I pushed a speed cart.  He is on a pull-up kick lately to go with his upside-down hanging from the rafters crunches.  He has gained about 15 - 20 yards in his 76th year.  With all the guys you have known, I wonder if you knew Jack Lallane also?  If so, then you knew two such physical fitness fanatics.  Boy, are Steve and I a mutt and jeff team to look at!  

[Adam Clayman]

Dick,
 All is not lost. When my reason for being here is asked and answered, I sense it's a new concept to many regular folk. After taking a few of my local friends out to Ballyneal, most seem to have a deeper appreciation for some of the finer points, afterwards. To the point now where you can really see the twinkle in their eye and hear the excitment in their voice. They knew we were down in G-burg Tuesday and commented to me how they were hitting shots and one guy said on three separate occasions "Adam would've loved that shot".

BTW, received a call yesterday from a guy who works with a friend. They needed a fourth at Bayside. So I went out yesterday and there was a sign on the door that read. Grab a cart and go play. Stop back in when you're done with nine or 18. It was another perfect day 75 degrees. Maybe 10 carts went out.

[RJ_Daley]

Adam, after our conversation and wonderment of how the early golfers living in the burgs of Gothen, N.P., Oga, etc., would find a flat piece of bottom land along the river and build their boring golfindrum courses there; I am now convinced you are on a mission from godt, like a solo blues bros.   You have been put on this earth to be in the vanguard, to lead the goy from their flat land, golfindrum into the light and hillocky sand hills of their suburban settings.  Is your middle name Moses?  

But, "Adam would've loved that shot", sounds too ominous and in reference to a dearly departed.    I'd rather hear, "gee, I wish Adam would have come with us today, to see that one".  

Of course, you may be wearing out your welcome there in cattle trail town at the 'hold'em table" and might be better entertained with shootin fish in a barrel.  

Where else in U.S. golf would a guy see a sign like that one?  

[Mike Wagner]

We are lucky for a couple reasons: 1) that we have had the fortunate experience to play such exquisite places and 2) that we can share the experiences and talk abou them.  Isn't that what it's all about?

[Jason Hines]

Dick,

Sorry I am a little behind on my reading, have been stuck in too many airports lately for work.  Great story and reminder to me of all the friends and memories I get to go back and see every year.

I give credit and thanks to the Nebraskans that took a chance and started it all. WH, SH etc.  It is a spiritual place.

I hate to bring this up, but does anyone have any Prairie Club news?

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