In Search of Sand Greens

by Turk Pipkin

(This piece ran in Texas Monthly under the title, "Linksmanship".)

When I was a skinny kid growing up in San Angelo, there was still a raw spirit about the game of golf. I took my first lessons at age six, the exam being a tournament with kids twice my age. Not knowing the rules for an unplayable lie, I took 16 strokes getting the ball out of a thick patch of Johnson grass... and into a pond. I went on to shoot 127 and was awarded the last place trophy, a statue of a boxer, for fighting the course. I threw the statue into the pond.

In the years to come I learned to love golf in West Texas. A number of courses still had greens made of sand and, unlike today, you could clean a ball by licking it (without risking tongue rot). I caddied for hustlers – one now playing on the Senior Tour – and for ranchers who played in cowboy boots with spikes. Golf was a way of life: tote a heavy bag for 36 holes then get out my own clubs and play until it was too dark to find the ball. I didn't know it then but I was making a spiritual connection to the ancient traditions of the game that would stick with me for a long time.

In recent years golf has changed into a business of manicured real estate sporting motorized mini-bars, cellular phones and green fees akin to the national debt. But in small towns across Texas, there's still a game that's more about character than coin. The locals call it pasture pool. They play on nine hole courses, most of the which offer golf in its basic form. When you're in the rough, you know you're in the rough. When you're in the hole, you're darn glad.

Lest you think nine holes is only half the game, keep in mind that golf was played in Scotland for four hundred years before the standard number of holes became eighteen. Previously, courses varied from five to twenty-five holes. The famed Old Course at St. Andrews played for a century with twelve holes, was expanded to twenty-two, and finally reduced to eighteen which was then adapted as the norm. In America, even North Carolina's famed Pinehurst Country Club started with sand greens and nine holes.

One of the problems with eighteen hole golf is finding the time to play. Hitting practice balls, playing rounds that get slower every year, and settling the bets over a cold one is practically a full-time job. But playing nine holes can be like swimming laps or working out at the gym, especially if you play early or late when birds and animals abound but other golfers are few and far between. Best of all, you don't have to take out a home improvement loan to hit the links. Average green fees at Texas' 250 nine hole courses are about ten bucks (and some charge nothing at all).

Seven of my favorite courses are described below. Only one of them still has sand greens but each of them is a step back into an enchanted golden era of the game. Check 'em out before some fool adds a back nine.

The Lajitas Golf Course (915) 424-3471 White tees: 2,964 yards; blue tees: 3,248 yards. Green Fees: $12 weekdays, $15 weekends. Carts: $6 per nine holes.

A veritable oasis in the deserts of Big Bend, Lajitas Golf Course is located on the banks of the Rio Grande just below the Badlands Hotel, Restaurant, RV Park, and Laundromat. It may be a tourist trap, but it's a hell of a place for one. Dry barren mountains of rock rise on all quarters and the entrance to the course is protected by a fence of living ocotillo cactus.

But the desert stops there, for lush cottonwoods, tall palm trees and gnarled grapevines line the green fairways with occasional grape-covered arbors providing shady relief from the sun. A couple of holes are so close to the Rio Grande that it seems like a really bad shot might end up in Mexico (and a half-bad one in the Gulf of Mexico).

Like many nine hole layouts, two sets of tee markers make it possible to play two somewhat distinct nines, with longer tees on some holes making par 4's into par 5's. If there's no one behind you, you can even play two balls a hole – one from each tee marker – carding an eighteen hole score in just two hours. Of course it may take you ten hours in the car to do it.

When finished, you can wander over to the Lajitas Trading Post and share a longneck with Clay Henry, the beer drinking goat. The hotel has rooms overlooking the golf course with the bar and restaurant only steps away. Life should always be this good.

The Alpine Country Club (915) 424-3471 (white tees: 2,828 yards; blue tees 2,960 yards) Green Fees: $10 weekdays, $15 weekends, Carts: $6.50 per nine holes.

One way to avoid the long drive to Big Bend is to go to Alpine via Amtrak (8 hours and ninety bucks round-trip from San Antonio). From the train station to the Alpine Country Club (open to the public despite the name) is a matter of blocks. The course is located inside the city limits near Kokernut Field, a red sandstone and glass block architectural delight that housed a semi-pro baseball team in the '40s.

The golf course is equally inviting. A natural design dances in and around a wide golf ball-eating creekbed while the fast and true greens resemble Indian burial mounds, somewhat flattened but sloping away on all sides. You have to rap it hard to get the ball to the hole, but too hard and the ball accelerates down the opposite side. It's a little like putting on a bald guy's head.

On a recent visit, I joined up on the course and played a few holes with the assistant greens keeper – shades of Bill Murray's Caddyshack character flashing through my mind – but was disappointed when he failed to blow up even one of the pesky gofers tearing up the course. We did, however, enjoy watching the red-tailed hawks diving at the little rodents as they peeked from their burrows.

On the third hole, a Viejo searching the creekbed with a homemade ball scoop made from a long cottonwood branch and a tin can, sold me four good balls for a dollar. "Gracias," and "Buena suerte," accompanied our brief improvement on the Free Trade Agreement.

Back at the clubhouse, General Manager Bob Pettegrew was quick to point out the financial constraints of running a nine hole course.

"If this place was forty miles from Midland or Ft. Worth," he said. "We'd have a lot more money to work with. We only spend $4,000 a year on seed, fertilizer and all our chemicals." The generally excellent condition of the course just goes to show that natural course maintenance does work, something the high-dollar eighteen hole courses are just beginning to re-discover after a twenty year love affair with the chemical industry.

Marfa Municipal Golf Course (915) 729-4043 Two sets of tees: 6550 yards and 5000 feet high. Green Fees: $6 weekdays, $10 weekends. Carts: $8.

The third and final golf course in the Big Bend region is about as natural as it gets. Marfa Municipal is the highest and windiest course in Texas; when the wind howls here, you'll be challenging the elements to an extent that the pros rarely face on the tour.

The mounded bent grass greens are about the size of a Honduran postage stamp and on a windy day a missed putt of any length may be followed by a chip back towards the hole. Tumbleweeds hop the surrounding fences and any shot hit over ten yards high is apt to join them and abruptly leave the golf course. I once played 36 holes in a cold driving rain at Scotland's famed Turnberry Links and it was like a trip to Club Med compared to Marfa on a windy day.

But chances are you'll hit beautiful weather, play 27 holes and knock off in time to drive nine miles east of town to check out the only thing in Texas more mysterious than a perfect golf swing, the Marfa Lights.

Sonora Golf Club (915) 387-3680 Green Fees: $10 weekdays, $12 weekends. Carts: $6 per nine holes.

Making an all night drive from Los Angeles to Austin, I took a break at dawn and played the nine hole course in Sonora, Texas; teeing off at first light with a trail of foot prints marking my way in the heavy dew. I don't remember my score but I'll never forget the two wild turkey gobblers that flew down from their roost in a giant live oak next to the third green. The first rays of morning sun glinted off their iridescent backs just as it did off my tee shot as it soared up into the sun before plummeting into the shadowed fat of the green. Every once in a while, be it through grace, skill, friendship, or just plain luck, golf turns suddenly transcendent; something you'll find in few other games.

If you play early in Sonora, the proshop may not be open so just walk nine holes and pay when you're finished. A block from the golf course you'll find the Sutton County Motel and the Sutton County Steakhouse, a great place to eat breakfast and talk with the locals about oil, gas, screw worms or metal drivers.

Archer City Country Club (817) 574-4322 Blue tees: 2,855 yards. Green Fees: $6.50 weekdays, $7.50 weekends. Carts: $10.

They may have seen their Last Picture Show in Archer City but golf plays on. In Scotland, the term links originally described the gorse and sand covered land that links firmer ground to the sea. But the Archer City Country Club, like many nine hole courses in Texas, was built on land that links the town to the country. The course literally defines the outskirts of town, with horses in the fields beyond the mesquite lined fairways and rusted iron ladders strategically placed on the barbed wire fences that surround the course so that golfers can fetch their errant golf balls without tearing their sans-a-belts or jeans.

The occasional cart paths are cracked asphalt. Tee boxes are baked so hard that the locals don't just offer you a tee, but a hammer as well. And the Bermuda fairways are sun-dried and wind-blown to a hardwood sheen. I reached the 500 yard sixth hole with a three wood and a seven iron, but it didn't make me feel like John Daly showing off his cheeseburger muscles; it made me feel like Ben Hogan showing off his Texas style.

One thing to remember is that a little local knowledge is good as gold, especially if you're playing a friendly neighborhood game like a five dollar Nassau with sandies, greenies, and automatic presses. On the seventh hole a red metal disk that looked for all the world like a hundred yard marker had been picked up and replaced thirty yards from the green. Portable yardage markers do not bode well for out-of-towners. On the other hand – win or lose – all things tend to balance out in the new Archer City clubhouse where a cold beer goes for a buck and a quarter and the winner is expected to say, "I'm buying."

The old Archer City clubhouse is a beautiful 1920's mansion, now the local residence of favorite son Larry McMurtry. As you leave the eighteenth green you can peek over the fence and through the window of his beautiful library (no Bobby Jones or Walter Hagen golf books in sight, I'm sorry to say).

McLean (muh-clane´) Lions Golf Association 2,800 yards. No phone, no green fees, no carts. Take old Pampa Highway three blocks north of McLean, Texas.

Yes, you can get your kicks on Route 66, and your golf licks too, because America's most famous highway passes within shouting distance of the last sand greens in the state. Grass greens require an enormous amount of water and an expensive irrigation system; one alternative is to pack in greens of sand and spray them once a year with a light coat of oil to keep them from blowing away. The Environmental Protection Agency, because of regulations on the open use of oil, recently closed down a North Dakota course with sand greens so you'd better hurry if you want to play the sand greens of the McLean Lions Golf Course.

Finding the course is no problem. Go to McLean, 100 miles east of Amarillo on I-40, head north to the edge of town and there it is in all its minor glories. No clubhouse, no green fees: just a wide expanse of sloping farmland with fairways mowed fifty yards wide through a rolling wheat field.

There's also a good chance that you'll be the only golfer or golfers on the course. If you get the chance, I highly recommend that you play it alone or with one friend. Sure, it's great to go out with the regular foursome and beat each other's brains out for a fifty cent skin, but that's a separate pleasure than walking an empty course alone with your finest swing (or finest friend) serenaded all the while by the songs of unknown birds.

Fallen to the ground by the first tee is a hand-painted sign that says: "#1 – par 4 – 320 yards." Hit a sweet shot, then pick up your bag and start down the rough-hewn fairway and you'll feel as if you've gone back to the raw beginnings of something grand, as if you were the first golfer in Texas.

Putting on these sand greens is all in knowing the ropes – literally. The sand is uneven and footprinted, with a single smooth track crossing the hole. Attached to the bottom of the pin is a long rope. Rather than drag your own track on every green with the heavy iron pipe rake lying nearby, use the rope to measure the distance from the hole to your ball, then replace the ball at the same distance in the already smooth track. It's less work and you can see the faint trails of others who've putted before you, giving you a distinct advantage in reading the break. Still, these are the most difficult putts you'll ever know. Even the holes are smaller than regulation with homemade cups that look as if they were welded by an oil-field roughneck.

You don't need iron stairs to get over the fence on this course; the fence is already on the ground. But the rusted iron steps are there anyway, testimony to how long this field has been mowed and signs hand-lettered, cups welded and sand dragged so that the locals can get a little exercise and enjoy golf in the age old spirit of the game.

Take extra balls and don't forget to scout out the location of the par 3 eighth green; there's a sucker's pile of sand about forty yards in front of the real putting surface so hit plenty of club.

On my last visit, the clouds of an approaching cold front were blazing red in the west as I pulled the pin on the ninth green. Just before putting, I glanced towards the hole and saw the full moon climbing huge and golden over the hills to the east. It took my breath away and covered me in goose bumps normally reserved for holes-in-one. I knocked my putt dead in the cup for a two over par 39, and – thanks to a nine hole course – I shot my age.

Pedernales Country Club (512) 264-1489 Blue tees: 3330 yards, white tees: 3205 yards. Green Fees: $12.50 weekdays (includes cart), $18.00 weekends (includes cart). 35 miles northwest of Austin off Highway 71.

Willie Nelson's Pedernales Golf Club is one of the best Texas nine hole courses, if for no other reasons than its central location and friendly clientele. Willie, once again the owner with all that IRS nastiness behind him, has shaped this course philosophically like no other. The rules state: "No more than twelve in your foursome." Such large groups are called a gang-some. Beer drinkers are referred to as float-sam. Maybe that's why the scorecard admonishes you to "please leave the course in the condition you'd like to be found."

There are other variations on the standard game. The rule from the first tee is "Hit till your happy." The course is always open to the public ("Come on out!" says resident pro Larry Trader) and newcomers are often shown the "Pedernales Stroll." Facing an unplayable lie, you just pick up the ball and stroll to a spot you like better. It may not be legal on your USGA handicap but it beats ruining a club on the rocks.

And the company is tops. I've played more than a few rounds with Willie (who putts one-handed and sometimes sings as he jogs from shot to shot), taken chipping lessons from Lee Trevino, driving lessons from Darrell Royal and gambling lessons from Trader (the lesson on gambling with Trader is "Don't!"). Willie even let me in on what he calls the true secret of golf. "Swing hard," he says with a sly smile. "You might hit it!"

Non-golfers frequently ask what the big deal is about golf. I've given up trying to explain the haunting feel of a perfect shot: the magical flight of the ball as it defies gravity, wind and all things physical in search of the tiniest of goals. Instead I tell them that golf is a great excuse to get outdoors.

And while most of man's athletic competitions imitate war, golf imitates life, each player pitting their own skills against the hazards of the way. At your basic nine holer, as in days of old, it's golfer against the lay of the land; and if bad breaks conspire against you, they only serve as a demonstration of your ability to overcome them. Golfers wouldn't have it any other way,