TomH:
You're darn right I want to play well when I go to a great golf course. Without even thinking about it that's got to be just instinctual at least it always has so far. Maybe that's changing a bit now though as I get older, the game starts slipping away and other interests such as architecture take over.
But basically I'm almost completely incapable of observing and appreciating architecture the first time I play a great place--any place really. It's always been that way with me no matter how hard I want to look at the architecture.
To really look at, appreciate and analyze architecture is about a 4-5 step process for me, probably over that many days.
Now for PVGC, I just love the place, been playing there for years and basically know the place in most all areas of it like the back of my hand--and I've had a lot of help in that from some of my friends down there.
But I'm confronting myself with this aweful dilemma right now. The Crump Cup is coming up in a few weeks. I've been playing that for maybe 15 years now through the mid-am division and now into the Senior's division every single year except for one year when a great great aunt of mine became a Saint (the canonization was a life inspiring trip that could not possibly be missed although the Catholic Church really pisses me off). They thought apparently that was a good enough excuse to give me a pass--or was that the Lesley Cup--memory's failing me! And another year (2001) when they gave the competitors the option of taking a pass due to 9/11 which had obviously just happened--a beautiful and compassionate option on their part, I might add. Basically you get the drift though--one does not pass even one time on the Crump for mundane reasons!
But I'm looking at the qualifying pairings right now and man there are some good players in the senior division and only 8 of them qualify out of 27. I'm definitely concerned about that. But a year ago, I think it was, I missed the seniors division (because it's so small) but qualified in the mid-am division (its so much larger). I believe they always give all seniors that option if they can pull it off. That explains too why they put all us old guys off the tips in the two day 36 hole qualifying with the younger guys!
I'll take my chances but I'm really thinking if I play well and certainly if I don't this has to be my last year in the tournament--I just ain't got that kind of game anymore or sure do feel like I don't. If you don't qualify for two years in a row your automatically out--no questions asked. At least one year I didn't qualify and you want to talk about stroke play pressure that next year in qualifying--that was as intense as I've basically ever experienced--knowing if you miss that day your career in that tourney is history.
Call it pride, I don't know, but I'd just rather call it a day on my own than be tossed out for missing twice in succession. I think I do have that much respect for that course, that club, that tournament and that field to think this way.
What a dilemma though--I just love that club, course and that tournament--it really is the ultimate in my book. But all good things must come to an end.
How would I feel if I got really lucky and made the mid-am division and drew somebody like Trip Kuehne in the 1st round? At a place like PVGC in something like the Crump and its super intense set-up that kind of thing can actually happen. It has to me before. Over the years I've run into the likes of Sigel, Holtgrieve, Hadden, Hirsch, Cowan and some other good ones I can't even recall now.
With my ultra short off the tee but straight game I never even got mentally intimidated either--except one time--against Sigel--that was different and I never took a drubbing like that before or since. Any of you out there could've got beat less bad than I did that day. But if I got lucky and drew Kuehne--I don't know--I think I'd rather just be a spectator watching him now not an opponent of his. I just saw his action over at the Walker Cup! Man alive--I'd rather just watch that than compete against it.
But anyway, after golfnooch's terrific post about his impressions of that great golf course, I thought why not give you my own too? I hope PVGC doesn't mind!
All good things must come to an end someday--and this should be it for me down there. But just like Bob Hope used to say; "Thanks for the memories". PVGC truly does deserve to be where it is now, in my book--#1 in the whole world!
Thank you Pine Valley--and thanks to the guy who made it all happen in the first place--George Crump.