Photobucket has decided to not display our pictures as we use them for 3rd party storage. I have converted this tour to
flickr Taking a page from Anthony Gray's (remember him?) playbook, I decided to post a thread on the course I learned to play the game on, as he did quite a long time ago.
It has probably been at least 10 years since I have been back to play the course I learned to play on in high school. At that time they were using a cow skull as their emblem with tee markers fashioned from the shape of the skull. This was not necessarily a choice consistent with the name of the course, which is Jawbone Creek Country Club. This year when I played the course again, I was pleased to see their adoption of an emblem that reflected the name. The first place you see this emblem is on the gate fence on the way to the club house from the parking lot.
Another place you see it is as a sign on top of the hill where the ninth tee resides that can be seen from the road to the airport. Since this is a small Montana town the road to the airport is a gravel road leading to an airport used by private propeller driven planes.
Searching GCA.com I was surprised to find an architectural attribution for the course at
http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,58599.msg1376232.html#msg1376232The course is in Harlowton, MT, county seat of Wheatland County where the wind blows a lot, so much so that they gave up maintaining the windows on the windward side of the court house and boarded them over.
As a testament to the wind, this much zoomed in picture is what you can see from the clubhouse parking lot.
On my previous visit, I quickly stopped by early in the morning on my way home from a visit to my brothers place in Billings, MT. I played the course alone and when I was leaving people began to arrive in droves to play. This time I was told that the locals don't like to play much in the morning, as the wind blows too much then. Playing in the morning comes naturally to me there, as when I was in high school, I would rather play golf in morning, and swim at the local pool in the afternoon with the teenage girls.
This time I played the Harlowton High School alumni scramble tournament on July 3, and then played early in the morning of the 4th, when I took all the pictures of an empty course.