Washington Golf Alert

Field Notes: Prince William

Prince William Golf Course in Nokesville, Va. is one of the cheapest 18-hole regulation golf courses around here for a reason, but if you're not too finicky there's some fine golf to be had.

Cheap in Greater Washington means $44 for 18 holes with a cart on the weekend.

Some people will find Prince William a bit short (6,016 yards from the whites, 6,367 from the back), even for a par 70/72. But the true cliche is that looks can be deceiving. Even from the back tees the flat, straight and open par-4 first is only 330 yards. But it has a tiny sloped green with tricky sidehill putts if you find it and bunkers strangling the right and left if you don't.

Bad news first: Conditioning on the fairways. It's just too uneven, at least as of this date, as it has been for years. Some of them are fine, others not so much, maybe the worst case being the first third of the par 4 15th. The fairway rolls up and down a couple times, which is fine, but a straight short- or medium-length drive ends up on hardpan. One or two other fairways have a similar problem--only in sections, but that doesn't help you when you've done your job and the golf course lets you down.

They're working on it, though, having laid in some irrigation. We'll see.

There are also two greens canted to the point of being unfair when their speed isn't closely attended to by the groundskeeper--the par 3 4th and the par four 16th. The latter is actually one of my favorite holes and at least where I'm landing, has one of the best fairways, a gentle right curve with lost-ball oblivion to the right and a relatively small green, like many at this old-style course. When Prince William lets these greens go too fast, however, you'll be steaming along with Payne Stewart as a ball hit directly uphill loses momemtum and rolls back. For awhile.

And yet I go there often. As you might guess, the atmosphere is more relaxed here, the staff friendly (at least to me--maybe you have issues), the holes varied. This is a much more well-rounded golf experience than say Algonkian, which is in better shape but kind of the poster child for a monotonous front nine. In Nokesville, outside Manassas, the holes are wedged between Vint Hill Road, some small number of houses,  and sometimes other holes, but this is not a claustrophobic place to play. One of the more interesting challenges is the par 4 third, which requires a straight shot for a good angle to the green off to the right over a pond. Short and to the right puts a tree in your way. Pull left and you can see the green but on a downhill lie. Another example: Prince William gulls you into a false sense of security with short par 3s on the front, then asks you to play 208 yards from the whites on the par 3-11th. With a gully in front of the green. Some may be better off laying up here--but how many of us will lay up on a par 3? Other than Billy Casper?

My outing last week was better than most, despite fleeing the approaching thunderstorm monsoons on the last couple of holes (the photo now accompanying this post is looking across the 17th's green from an unlikely angle). It's amazing how much fun you can have if you just land on a few damn greens.

Score taken from my data at FairwayFiles.com

Tell Us How You Really Feel, Boswell

But of course I'm right on the same page as he writes An Improper Send-Off:

Golf is the game of sportsmanship and proper manners, the sport that exemplifies respect for others. We even use it to teach values to kids, to instill the idea that conscience defines character.

So this is a week for golf -- at least the crass, ungrateful, traveling-circus PGA Tour version -- to hang its head in shame.

It's no accident that all of the world's four major championships are run by organizations other than the PGA Tour. The tour keeps pumping its own Players Championship to join the elite. But it'll never happen -- not as long as the tour humiliates itself, shows its true colors and drives itself down the scale of social respectability with disasters such as the one it is perpetrating in Washington this week.

I should just bold the entire column, really. I don't know what it is about greater Washington and sports sometimes--I mean it only took us forty years or so to get the Senators back Nationals in town. And here we have Lobbying Central USA, where you'd think there'd be an automatic connection between networking and the PGA, but Tim Finchem picked up where Bud Selig left off.

Not that every PGA golfer is distinguishing himself:

Sergio Garcia, the defending champion of the Booz Allen Classic, did not come back to Avenel yesterday even though his picture is the only one on the cover of the tournament program. The first rule of decent behavior (and marketing) in pro golf is that the defender comes back, even if he has to play nine holes from a litter before withdrawing. If you take the big check one year, you show up the next. You don't claim the classic dubious excuse -- a bad back -- when you played in the U.S. Open the previous week. Of course, Sergio's back will be healed when the U.S. Open returns to Congressional in 2011.

But Garcia's absence is the rule this week, not the exception. Nobody's showing up for the Booz. The '04 champion, Adam Scott, also withdrew. Even modest drawing cards such as Chris DiMarco, Aaron Baddeley and Geoff Ogilvy pulled out, even though their names had been used to advertise the tournament.

Hey, Garcia's the Anna Kournikova of golf, so what the hell.  We have some stand-up guys nevertheless, including Paddy Harrington and Tom Kite, the latter explicitly shaking his head in disbelief that the Tour is kissing us off with a lame date in the fall that, amazingly, hasn't generated much sponsorship. Boswell accurately describes the new season-ending travesty, wherever it ends up being played, as a "four-event, end-of-season tour gimmick."  Hello, LPGA.

Thank You, Tom Kite

And thanks for nothing, Tim Finchem.

I'm a little late to this show today, but no, I wasn't at the Booz-Allen. I've been to enough funerals lately.

Leonard Shapiro in the Washington Post:

Tom Kite won the first Kemper Open when it moved from Congressional to TPC Avenel in 1987, and Kite is in the field again for the final Booz Allen Classic starting this morning at the same venue. He said yesterday he was outraged that Washington may lose its annual place on the PGA Tour schedule.

"I think it would go way beyond surprised. I think it would be shocked," he said of his initial reaction when he heard the Washington event was in jeopardy. "I think it's a travesty. How can you not have a tournament in the nation's capital, especially a tournament that has been good throughout the years?"

Shapiro relates PGA chief Finchem's implausible non-explanations about the imminent demise of this championship, though with another extended deadline they're still looking for sponsors of a contest after the end of the real PGA season, in the middle of the Washington Redskin's schedule, to be televised on The Golf Channel.

Who wouldn't want to sponsor that?

Field Notes: Bristow Manor

Bristow Manor in Bristow, Va. is kind of an inland links course, unusual for this area and not a bad place to warm up for some of those Outer Banks tracks some of you may be planning for. But forget about warming up; it's a terrific layout in its own right and a welcome change from the typical Washington area facility.

The photo is all wrong. It's looking from the sixth hole back to the 5th green, but most of the time you're not going to feel like holes are running into each other (and these two are separated enough so that isn't a factor even here). It doesn't convey the dominant atmosphere, which is rolling open links with some moguls thrown in to terrify you a bit more. But it's kind of a pretty picture, so there you go. At least it shows what kind of shape it was in when I played it June 20, which is to say excellent. Fast but fair greens--devilish greens quite often, with many fascinating options for torture available to the groundskeeper. The zoysia fairways were superb, some of the best I've played around here (later in the year I'm sure they'll show more abuse). I guess zoysia is unusual around here, but I love it. Up close and healthy, I swear it almost looks like astroturf. It has a nice cruncy snap on a full swing, and does quite well, it you don't get freaked out by its serious brown color, during the many winter months when Washingtonians can play.

Below the fold I have a shot of the finishing half of the 18th, taken from a hill up on the 10th. The 18th is a par four and the toughest on the back. The second shot threatens water on the left and lost-ball oblivion on the right. It's a fair test at the end of the round, and a fine example of golf sadism.

Water appears on a number of holes, and I'm counting at least seven divided fairways (front landing zones and then forced- or semi-forced carries over creeks or rough). But this is not a crazy-difficult course; from the wimpy "middle" tees I played, the slope is 126 and total yardage is a mere 6313. Championship tees rate 133 at 7102 yards). Regardless of all the numbers, I find this a much less grueling course than, for example, Forest Greens in Triangle, Va. which has a lower slope from middling tees but has so many sharp elevation changes you'll be looking for an elevator. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

And cheers to the designer, who decided the first hole should be an easy, short par 4, the least challenging hole on the front nine. Get those damn golfers on their way in a quick happy mood.

Photo of the 18th below; click on "continued."

Will The Last Star Please Turn Out The Lights

This is a good day not to be promotions director of the Booz-Allen Classic, as we learn from Garcia Won't Play at Avenel:

An already star-starved Booz Allen Classic field took another hit yesterday when defending champion Sergio Garcia withdrew, citing a back injury.

Officials had banked on the 26-year-old Garcia to be one of the main draws in the tournament, which will start Thursday at the TPC Avenel....

Chris DiMarco, a member of the 2004 Ryder Cup team, also pulled out yesterday....

The way things are going, the most interesting storyline's going to be Big Break winner Justin Peters qualifying his way in.

Big Break Winner Qualifies Into Avenel

I followed little of The Golf Channel's first Big Break series, so the name Justin Peters didn't mean much when I read this account in the Washington Post of a Booz-Allen qualifier at Little Bennett:

Last year, Justin Peters bogeyed the final hole in his qualifying round and missed by one stroke a playoff that might have landed him in the Booz Allen Classic. Determined to avoid a repeat yesterday, Peters shot a course record-tying 7-under-par 65 at Little Bennett in Clarksburg to win medalist honors....

Little Bennett is a superb but daunting mountain course, starting with an elevated first tee that shoots you over a startling forced carry onto a fairway pointing sideways. I had no business playing there about eight years ago, early in my hacker career. I should go back now and lower my course average of about 140.

Back to Peters,if you think only Phil Mickleson has amazing golf adventures, you're wrong:

Early on, the record did not appear to be within Peters's reach. At No. 5, a 516-yard par 5, Peters pushed his tee shot to the right and behind some trees. With no opening, he punched out backward, only to have his ball land in a fairway bunker 300 yards from the green. From the sand trap, Peters hit a 9-iron to 130 yards and was able to get up and down from there by hitting to 15 feet and making his par putt to cap an adventurous but ultimately benign hole.

Tell you what, this is more amazing, taken from The Golf Channel's bio of Peters:

Justin is a risk taker. He had enough of a dead-end job in telemarketing septic tank products and decided to charge a $17,500 entry fee on his credit card for a golf tour in Florida, hoping to play well enough to pay off the debt with winnings. Having battled adversity with the loss of his father to suicide, Justin and his daughter live with his mother (his hero) to get by....Justin lives by the motto of the late basketball coach, Jim Valvano, "Don’t give up, don’t ever give up."

Insanity at Winged Foot

Colin Montgomeries' failure to win the U.S. Open is more demoralizing--to him--because he won't have as many chances again as Phil and it was damn amazing he had this one. This is the first time I've messed up, he said about his weak 7 iron to the 18th green and all the other majors he's lost, when outstanding play simply bested his own steady efforts. This is the first time I've messed up, which is okay. You're entitlted to a couple of mess-ups along the way. Right you are, Monty, and I'll be pulling for you again.

Phil Mickelson on the other hand never spoke truer words: I'm such an idiot. Yes, you are. Unlike past thrilling adventures, however, this time you know it and told the world you know it, which means you'll be fine. I think.

The Washington Post's Thomas Boswell puts it well today:

Finally, by the 18th hole, Mickelson had completely lost his golf senses. He hit four of the most poorly judged, badly executed and disastrous shots that any great player has ever inflicted on himself one right after the other.

Boswell believes Phil succumed to some kind of golf insanity because of the enthusiastic crowds cheering him on. No matter the reason, there was a return to the crazy Phil of yesteryear--not only the cut he tried on the 18th from the hardpan--and Boswell has this exactly right, it was a "Tin Cup" moment--but a freakin' 4 wood 140 yards from the 15th green out of deep fluffy rough. No. Try something with a higher percentage, like a comprehensive Middle East peace treaty.

Phil has two majors and tens of millions of dollars that you don't, so don't cry too hard. If you're not sitting right in front of the Mickelsons, laugh.

Tiger Likely To Miss The Cut

First time he's missed one in a major. Kudos to Tiger for facing the media after another 76-shot debacle at the U.S. Open. Listened to him on XM Radio just now, and he thinks the next time he'll play will be at the Western Open July 6-9.

Champions Are Different

Thomas Boswell in the Washington Post writes about how you and me are not Tiger and Jack:

In a different way, Woods defined, once again, how far he stands from any definition of "normal" behavior and how close he stands to the legends to whom he can be compared. Jack Nicklaus, for example, sometimes seemed not to have been present when he hit his worst shots; somebody else must have done it. Once, he topped a drive less than 100 yards at the World Series of Golf. Afterward, he described the hole as "driver, 3-wood, up and down for par." Pressed by eyewitnesses, he maintained, straight-faced, that he hadn't hit an especially bad drive. Yeah, only 200 yards shorter than normal...

When others might have felt sad, demoralized or any other emotion that might seem familiar to the rest of us in a moment of sharp disappointment just six weeks after the death of a parent, Woods said, with conviction, that he had only one emotion: "Frustration."

At a time when thousands in the gallery here thought they finally "understood how Tiger feels," they absolutely didn't. If anything, they were further from understanding him than ever...

That sounds about right. Elsewhere in this column, Boswell quotes Tiger saying he knows fans are looking for him to be more emotional after the death of his father. There's something understandable but not entirely attractive about the public wanting to see this guy break down and cry. Maybe later; not in the hunt.

I Love Johnny Miller

Though in a manly, platonic, respectful and extremely only platonic way.

Miller just now on NBC after a golfer muffed a shot at the U.S. Open:

That's a wipe. A wipe is when--at the last second, you know when you square up the club? A wipe is when you keep it open all the way. A lot of you out there have that down to an art form.