Nay to the Wind

Spring finally sprang, and I've been out on the course at least once a week for the past month and a half. Nothing particularly memorable has happened during this time (that I can write about anyway). My scoring has stayed in the 90s, my driving is not quite back up to big bopper status but getting there, and my putting has been mostly pitiful.

Yesterday, hubby and I played a private club course situated in a valley where the wind from four corners seemed to have a regular rendezvous. This wasn't a mild breeze, but a whipping, constant 25-mile-an-hour wind, with gusts strong enough to blow the securely strapped baseball cap off my head. The pro shop guys described it as "links" golf, a term usually meant to describe a treeless, windy course near the coast. While this private course was miles from the beach, it did have few trees and a lot of wind, so much wind that I felt sun-burned and weather-beaten after our relatively short three-and-a-half hour round. We walked with three-wheel push carts, which were on the heavy side for me. In the bright sun and relentless winds and undulating hills that had unnecessarily lengthy walks between greens to tees, there were times I felt like a nomad on caravan traveling to the next hole.

Hubby says there is a Scottish saying, "Nay wind, nay golf," which basically means without wind, you're not playing golf. But I say nay to the wind. I prefer the kind of golf where the course has lots of trees to block the wind and offer shade when it gets hot, gently sloped fairways that don't make you feel like you're climbing Everest, and lush, green grass that makes you want to have a picnic -- in short, the kind of course that makes you feel like you're in a park. Appropriately enough, the official term for this type of course is a "parkland" course.

After our round, we were so tired and ravenous we could barely make it out to a local barbecue joint to refuel. Occasionally, a links-style course might be fun to play. I mean, the wind does keep the bugs away, and you really feel deserving of your post-round pig-out. But for my regular weekly rounds, I prefer the parkland.