Wintergreen

Dec. 10, 2009

Dear Pat,

A shiny new set of golf clubs leaned against a wall in my family's living room on the Christmas morning of my 12th year. The clubs from Sears gleamed like gems in their black leather bag. Waiting to try them out seemed impossible, but winter begets the miracles of spring on its own schedule. From the public library I checked out a book by Arnold Palmer and practiced his knock-kneed putting style on our living room's hardwood floor. Anticipation was the game.

Months later, finally stepping onto the Cape Jaycee Municipal Golf Course for the first time was like exploring a foreign country. The hills, the lakes, the trees were not mere backdrop for this game. They were as fundamental as knowing how to hold a club.

But newness is fleeting. Over the years the golf course has become a landscape as familiar as my own face. Familiarity numbs us, the Irish writer John O'Donohue says. "We reduce the wildness and mystery of person and landscape to the external, familiar image."

These days the golf course is the greenest place in Cape Girardeau. A renovation project that closed the course all summer has replaced the old Bermuda greens that turned brown every winter and needed nights to become warm before they truly revived. Now the brown fairways lead to bentgrass greens that will remain emerald-colored year-round.

My friend Chuck Heady is intimately familiar with the changes that have been made. A few weeks ago he gave me a guided tour.

On the first nine holes the changes are primarily in the size of the greens, all of them at least a third larger than before. A number of the greens throughout the course have been lowered. Previously many sat up high, sloughing off golf balls like castles repelled invaders. Bigger, lower greens sound like the course will be easier to play, but many new undulations have been built into the greens. They look like waves rolling through the land. Surfing them will be challenging.

The stand of pine trees that lined the left side of the fourth hole is gone. Chuck said the golf course architect who designed the renovation didn't think the trees served a purpose since any reasonable golfer played to the right side of the fairway and avoided the trees. Those of us plagued by a left-bending shot called a duck-hook are now mighty grateful to him, but I'll miss those trees. Beneath them was the coolest place on the golf course on hot days.

Chuck and I began touring the back nine roles at the 18th green and rode our cart through the holes in backward order. This place so familiar to me was now disorienting. In places back here longtime players of the course are likely to feel at first as if they've wandered onto an entirely new golf course.

What was is gone, like Brigadoon. But instead of unsettling the differences make you look at the landscape in a new way. Whether it's land or people, looking at them in a new way helps reclaim the mystery.

For instance, hole No. 11 used to turn left 90 degrees. Now the hole is much longer and turns right to a new green nestled beside a lake as if it always was there.

My old playing buddy John Ramey nicknamed the old No. 14 "the Hole from Hell" for its formidable length and its nearly unapproachable green hidden high in the woods. The Hole from Hell has been tamed, but the nickname suits the following hole, now longer and more difficult.

Fences surround certain greens to keep deer from trampling the fresh growth. The golf course must be treated tenderly at first. It will be June before golfers are allowed to walk these new greens.

For the many who feel attached to this golf course it's like that Christmas all over again. We can't wait to get out there and play.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a former reporter for the Southeast Missourian.