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From GolfBlogger’s 2011 trip to play in the Crowne Plaza Invitational:

For the Crowne Plaza Invitational Pro Am at the Colonial, our group started on the back nine. Thus, the tenth was our first. It’s a 408 yard par 4.

I came to the first tee full of negative waves. There had been discussion at the pairings party the previous night about how the par four tenth was a much more difficult hole to begin than the downhill par 5 first. The main threat was a water hazard directly in front of the tee. Although even an average golfer could negotiate that water with a short iron, rumor had it that someone in every group would—through first tee jitters—manage to plunk it into the drink.

I really didn’t want to be that guy.

Our group gathered around the tee box and Del Ross, IHG VP for US Sales and Marketing handed all of us very nice Crowne Plaza Invitational belt buckles (sans belts). Stuart Appleby got one, too, and dryly remarked that his waist wasn’t quite that small. After posing for a couple of photos, we stood aside as Stuart teed up at the rear of the ground. The Starter made his introductions and our pro laced a shot over the trees on the left to what I presumed was a safe spot he had picked earlier.

We then moved forward to the amateur tees, where the starter introduced Del. He hit a good shot down the middle and my nervousness grew. Ft. Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief was next, and he, too, pounded the ball up the fairway. Now there were only two of us left to put the ball into the water.

I was third. Big Dog in hand, I stepped to the box as the Starter introduced me to the crowd. That was an absolutely amazing feeling; for just one wonderful moment I was Mr. GolfBlogger, Pro Golfer.

Then the evil thoughts returned. What if I put the ball in the water? Worse, what if I whiffed? Stuart Appleby surely would do an inward groan at having to endure a round with such an insufferable hacker. The nice people at Crowne Plaza who invited me would realize that they’d wasted their money.

In short, I was a wreck.

I tried to put all of that out of my mind; to concentrate on routine and a smooth easy swing. It worked. I made one of the better tee shots of my life, sending the ball straight down the fairway on a low, rolling trajectory.

Big sigh of relief. I was walking on clouds.

Our fourth, veteran Robert Leonard, also managed to avoid the water hazard curse.

My second shot was a nine wood to the right of the elevated green. A pitch over the trip left me with a long putt. Stuart Appleby lined it up for me and I drained it for a par. In fact, we all made par on that opening hole.

While exploring the clubhouse at the Colonial during my visit to the 2010 Crowne Plaza Invitational, I discovered several Ben Hogan shrines.

Just outside the clubhouse, of course, is the famous Hogan statue:

Then, on the first floor, just off the pro shop is a replica of his office.

The other, on the second floor, is a sort of mini museum, with trophies, and other memorabilia. Two video tours (not mine) of that room follow:

Adjacent to the first tee at the Colonial is the Wall of Champions. It’s pretty impressive looking.

From my 2010 trip to play in the Crowne Plaza Invitational at Colonial Pro-Am.

I hate to say I told you so, but it is looking as though the Courts could be the final arbiter of the whole anchored putting fiasco.

At the Colonial this week, Tim Clark told reporters:

“If there really was a ‘comment period,’ we all know it was all smoke and mirrors. Their minds were made up.

We do have legal counsel. We’re going to explore our options. We’re not going to just roll over and accept this.”

This is exactly what I feared with this ruling. From their statement earlier today, it’s pretty clear to me that golf’s ruling bodies have their backs up and their blinders on. They are adamant that anchoring is a threat to golf as we know it, and that other considerations are trivial or nonexistent. At the same time, however, they continue to deny what any public golfer knows—that bifurcation already exists.

So now we may go to the courts. Clark is just waiting to see if the PGA TOUR follows the lead of the USGA and R&A in playing their cards.

I don’t know why the PGA TOUR can’t have its own rules. NFL football rules are different from NCAA. Major League Baseball has variants in rules between the National and American leagues. No one argues about the purity of football rules. And aside from a few crackpots, people have largely accepted the DH.

But that’s not really the issue. For me, I worry that golf’s ruling bodies have just further separated themselves from the masses they purport to represent. I just don’t see how this is “For The Good Of The Game.” It will instead just foster more disregard for the rules and further the bifurcation process that already is underway. Denying that something exists does not make it go away.

The Gailes
Oscoda, Michigan

Grade: B+
Teacher’s Comments: Icing without the cake.

The Gailes gets a lot of national press for its faux links design, but I’m going to take the contrarian stance and say that I wasn’t that impressed. My thought as I played was that someone had a checklist of links design cliches and just checked them off building proceeded. Double green? Check. Pot bunkers? Check Redan? Check. Putting approaches from the fairway? Check.

Then there the lack of a significant body of water. Cedar Lake is a thousand feet or so away; it is all of a mile or more to the shores of Lake Huron. The course also is surrounded by scrub forest, so I felt no lake breezes to account for. On the day I played, the air was entirely still. After the round, I drove to the shore for some photo-hunting, and noted that there were indeed breezes on that day. They just hadn’t made it to the course.

The result for me was something less than honest. I’ve not played a Scottish or Irish links, but somehow this didn’t feel right. I’ve never been to Morocco either, but I know the Morocco exhibit at Epcot Center isn’t authentic.

In my not-so-humble opinion, inland courses should drop the links pretense and instead embrace their own climate and geography. A wide open, grassy, treeless stretch of land in the interior of the United States is a “prairie.” Designers and course owners should embrace the prairie and make it as much a badge of golf honor as a links. Don’t say that your course is in the style of the great Scottish links; boast instead of unique prairie design. “Up North” golf in Michigan has its own brand cachet.  So too should prairie golf.

The Gailes was built in 1992 from a design by Kevin Aldredge.

“So aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?”

My skepticism about the links experience aside, the Gailes does offer challenging and often thoughtful golf. At the Gailes, golfers will find amoeba-like fairways that don’t always offer an evident line to the hole. In choosing from the many possible lines, golfers need to be acutely aware of the position of bunkers, many of which are in the middle of the fairways or blocking a direct line to the green.

On holes that are set up for the bump-and-run approach golfers must be able to anticipate the twists and turns of the mounding. Bunkers on other holes prevent that approach entirely.

The sometimes enormous greens offer another challenge. On the second hole, for example, I was unsure which flag on the double green I was supposed to target. The double 11th/14th green is so large that club selection is difficult. There’s probably a two club difference between front and back. Other greens are tiny, crowned things made more difficult by bunkering.

From the back tees, the Gailes extends to 6,954 yards and plays to a 74.0 / 138. The middle tees are at 6,073 and a 70/122. As usual, I recommend that the bogey golfer tee it forward to have fun.

Play on the day I visited was exceptionally slow. It is a difficult course, and too many are playing from the wrong tees. Finding a ball in the shaggy rough can be time consuming. Enormous, mounded greens slow down play as golfers take too much time plumb-bobbing putts that they aren’t going to make anyway.

I honestly don’t know how to rate the conditions. The rough was brown, scrubby and irregularly grown; the fairways and greens were less than lush and somewhat hard. Was that a deliberate move on management’s part to make it more “links-like”? Was it a particularly hard summer? Or was it just lack of care? I want to believe that the conditions were deliberate. However, since I spotted a number of dead or absolutely bare areas in the fairways, I am not entirely sure. It does occur to me, however, that maintaining “links” conditions in a non-links climate must be a delicate task with little margin for error. That’s especially true when the course tries to mow closely enough to allow players to use the links style strategy of running a ball to the hole from the fairway, especially with a putter.

The Gailes always seems to make the list of ten best public courses in Michigan. I have played most of the others that regularly make that list, and think the Gailes is a notch down from that elite company.

I think that there are two reasons the Gailes gets so many rave reviews. First, it is unusual, and the course does make as best an effort as it can to simulate links. Second, Lakewood Shores caters to buddy trips and outings. The resort has three courses, and lodging on site. I know two groups of 30+ who take trips to Lakewood Shores on an annual basis. They all swear that the courses there are the best in the state.

I suppose that if they’re having that much fun, who am I to argue?

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