Enterprise

Year Opened: 1976

Architect: Robert L. Elder*

Web: http://pgparks.com/places/sportsfac/golf.html#Enterprise

Phone: 301-249-2040


Phew. Man. I was glancing at the last entry, the one purportedly on Patuxent Greens, and even I’m confused and I wrote it. Chelloveck? Couldn’t I have just channeled “Swingers” and been all “you’re sooo money, baby” or “who’s the big winner?”or “it is so on”, though, truth be told, I don’t think that would have conveyed the mood I was striving for. Think something along the lines of “The Lost Weekend”, except longer and without the eerie violin bits.

Today’s segment will focus on Enterprise Golf Club, the so-called “Augusta of the North”, which has about as much in common with the real Augusta as I do with George Clooney. A pretty apt analogy, this, since while Enterprise is a golf course and I am ostensibly a man, both Augusta and Clooney take those basic concepts and kick it up a notch, well more than a notch really, but I’m kinda clueless as to what’s like bigger than a notch – kick it up a slash? kick it up a gash? Right? No good. But I bet George would know. Well, anyhoo, Enterprise stakes its claim on the numerous perennials and annuals (these would be like your technical terms for your various floral types) scattered about the property. Well, numerous might be an exaggeration and scattered seems a bit careless as a word choice – what I remember is this: some petunia-ish numbers planted around the back of the 18th green. There might be a flowering dogwood around somewhere. Oh yeah. You know what, there are the formal gardens of the imposing Newton White Mansion behind the 10th tee box, named after the first commanding officer of the U.S.S. Enterprise prior to WWII. I guess he wasn’t up to running the ship while Japs were flying around, he was more of your peacetime dry-dock type of commander. Hey, I’m with him – who needs a bunch of kamikazes nose-diving into the Ledo deck during afternoon calisthenics when you can hang in San Diego, washing down mojitos and canoodling with surfer-babes.

Enterprise has a very secluded and pastoral feeling considering its proximity to the Beltway and Rte. 50, with a horse farm next to the parking lot and not a house in sight - well, except for the mansion. A coiled metal sculpture depicting a golfer greets you by the large putting green. Most golf course artwork runs to a particular type (hilarious posters like the Three Stooges in golf get-ups, or two cartoon fish yukking it up at the pond bottom among a bunch of golf balls and broken clubs, or a cartoon of a guy nailing his monitor with a golf club with the thought-provoking slogan: Born to Golf, Forced to Work; or motivational posters portraying concepts like Frustration, Patience, Determination, and Risk with suitable photographs and appropriately pithy captions)…compared to these, this piece is like Rodin’s “The Thinker”.

Beyond the putting green you’re welcomed by the dark, low-slung clubhouse which sits on the highest part of the property and is nicely landscaped, this being the Augusta of the North and all. And since when is Prince George’s County in Maryland considered “the North”? Have you seen the PG cops in action? God help you if you happen to be pulled over for DWB (Driving while Black). Allegedly there’s a driving range located somewhere remotely off the parking lot but I can’t tell you one way or another since I’ve never been.

A strollable course, the first hole is down the path from the clubhouse a ways, past the mansion on your left to the starter’s gazebo. The hole itself isn’t much, a short right-veering four-par with a semi-blind tee shot and a huge green flanked by pines. You can get lucky cutting the corner off the tee as there’s but a few sparse trees on the right. Me, I got lucky. And then again when I grounded a 4-iron onto the green and bombed in a putt to start off one round at 1-under. That’s happened perhaps one other time. But I didn’t stay in red figures for long, about 3 minutes, in fact, this after losing a ball left into the trees with my tee-shot on the next hole.

There are really no great highlights on the front nine but no real dogs either. When you get to the 5th tee, you’ll see a sign not to hit until you hear a bell that the group in front of you is supposed to gong once they’re greenward-bound. So you wait. And wait. Knowing what I know about human nature, I’m always a bit suspicious that the bell-ringing might be over-looked. So wait we will….

So I suppose I would be remiss without confessing that I feel somewhat to blame for the recent economic “downturn”, the one where we dabbled in socialism by having the government take over certain “under-performing” industries and basically “punished” the corporate malfeants by essentially putting them in “time-out”. (OK. Cool. I just effin stomped my previous record of using quotation marks in a sentence, though even I have to throw the challenge flag on “time-out”) And I’m to blame how? After a year or so of trading in putters virtually every weekend, I have basically come to terms, however reluctantly, that my stubby center-shafted Never Compromise, while definitely short on looks, is perfectly suited for my contrarian semi-sidesaddle open-stanced set-up. Sure, my contribution to the overall GNP might seem a paltry sum, but I definitely kept the UPS trucks moving about. What can Brown do for me? Bring me a goddam putter that looks good and can make an occasional putt. How would that be?

And now that the US banking and credit sectors are in freefall, I’ve got to rethink some of the Nigerian e-mail offers I’ve been deleting without compunction, you know, the ones that tell me that one of my ancestors has left me several million large; all I need to do is send a few grand to facilitate transfer of said funds. I suppose I could block these scammers, but now that the johnson-lengtheners and dick-hardeners have seemed to stop selling me their ointments and elixirs and salves (perhaps they have a window into my sexual ambiva…oh whatever), it would be pretty depressing opening my e-mail account and finding like 2 messages, one from GoogleAds and the other …something about online drugs, so at least the Nigerians fill up my inbox. The pertinent question is - what is it, this place Nigeria? Back in the day, I remember it was a country in the continent of Africa, but now that the Palintology revisionists have accorded Africa country status, what does that make Nigeria? A township? A province? Another thing. Why do they write so much? Don’t they realize I have the attention span of a drunk teenager texting and uploading a photo of her tits while driving 70 mph in rush-hour, trying to uncork a bottle of Shiraz and downloading a song from XM onto the iPod, this while rummaging through the Louis Vuitton bag for a lighter to fire up the one-hitter and calling LoveLine to ask Dr. Drew whether the curling iron jammed in her vulva might pose a health risk? I don’t need all the details of the demise of the late Ambassador Mboku Dioya, just give me the pertinent details: how much should I send and when can I expect my $5.3 million? I’m not no professional venture capitalist, but this Nigerian investment gambit seems to be a slam dunk, a win-win, a low-hanging fruit, a no-brainer…

Oh yeah, about those corporate crook CEOs. You know what? They can have their golden parachute. Really, no problemo. But here’s some caviar, I mean the caveat. We’ll give you a parachute, you can paint it gold I don’t give an ess, up onto the Gulfstream V you go and all that stuff you hijacked along the way comes with. Like the absurdly preposterous house you live in – not the whole thing, mind you, just the unnecessary crap. Like the Great Room. And the granite-topped kitchen island with the 8-burner Viking stove, the indoor grill and the built-in sink. Out that goes. You can keep the microwave because that you actually use. The 3-story entrance foyer. You're fuckin' kidding me, right? The six Jacuzzi-equipped marble-tiled bathrooms with plasma TVs, I think not. There’s just three of you and when’s the last time Junior took in a soak? The manicures, the spa treatments, the $350-a-head dinner tabs, the massages, and the $400 haircuts? Christ, you’re a friggin’ banker, not Louis Quatorze. The Terrain Rovers? You won’t be needing those anymore. The house in the Hamptons, oh, that goes, no question. The elephant in the room you’re always babbling about and the 800-lb gorilla – just for ballast, sure, why not.

What about your assorted lackeys and Blackberry-toting toadies and yes-men? Well, somebody’s gonna have to clean up the mess after we strap the loaded parachute onto your major-player plate-is-full take-no-prisoners envelope-pushing master-of-the-universe paradigm-shifting big-swinging-dick, set the altitude for 30,000 feet (so you can get a global view of your predicament), aim for the bull’s-eye on the box you’re always thinking outside of, and a quick shove out the door and off you go. Now let’s see you hit the ground running…

…Alright, we’re ready to hit, the bell has finally rung.

The strength of the course is holes 10-12. Keeping with the Augusta theme, this would be your Amen Corner. The tenth, a winding downhill then uphill par 5 past a large sycamore on the right of the fairway, is a fun hole, with a blind tiered green and a number of small church-pew bunkers up the left side awaiting errant second shots. #11 is a testy, tight tee shot over water that you have to shape right to left to get a good look at the narrow, bunkered green. Then you face a really tight tee shot out of a chute of trees with a creek in front of the fairway. The hole is short so anything over the creek and not in the woods on either side is fine, though left is a better angle on this short dogleg. My typical play is somewhere near the fence along the left side. The most difficult hole to par is the sixteenth, a long dogleg right par 4 with a creek and pond below the elevated tee, culminating with a large green on an upslope. It’s a wide-open tee shot but the tendency is to get a tad greedy and try and sneak it past the few large trees on the corner of the dogleg.

The round culminates with the pretty 18th, a short but sneaky-hard par 4. The tee box is set in a stand of pines and it’s difficult to pick a target line with all the trees around the teeing area and beyond the fairway. The approach shot is difficult considering its modest length as the green is very narrow, and any off-line shots either direction will end-up in a bunker, a mulchy flower-bed or trees - so if you’re gonna miss be short or right, since the land slopes down towards the green and you might get a lucky kick out from the trees. Going left is just plain no good.

The rest of the course is perfectly decent: a good mix of short par 3s, some blind tee shots and changing elevations, the aforementioned flowers and shrubbery and decent conditioning for the price.

A basic 5.5.

* Countless minutes of Internet research have not revealed whether Enterprise designer Robert L. Elder is one and the same as Robert Lee Elder, the first black golfer to compete in the Masters, held at Augusta (of the Deep South). Some facts suggest it may indeed be the same person: Lee Elder, though born in Texas, married a woman from Washington, D.C., however, he apparently resides in (or has been to) Pompano Beach (which was the Washington Senators spring training site before they moved to Texas, the state that happens to be where Mr. Lee Elder was born, see what I’m saying, it all ties in); Robert L. Elder’s golf designing credits are fairly limited and relatively local – a course in southern Pennsylvania is the furthest from DC, so it’s possible Lee Elder dabbled in golf course design while still playing a modest schedule on the Senior Tour. However, somewhere in Lee Elder’s bio you would think it would simply mention that he designed a few golf courses. It mentions parents dying while young, dropping out of high school, caddying, playing a match with boxer Joe Louis, hustling, changing his clothes in the parking lot because the club didn’t allow blacks into the clubhouse, winning his first tournament to gain entry into Masters (which generated a lot of hate mail, gee, I’m shocked), and becoming the first black golfer to make the U.S. Ryder Cup team. But nothing about designing golf courses.

Tying this piece neatly together, Elder won the Nigerian Open in 1971, the year the Washington Senators moved to the Lone Star State and became the Texas Rangers, confusing an 11-yr old boy that eventually became me. In 1989, current el Presidente George W. Bush bought the Rangers from a Bush family friend and oilman, Eddie Chiles, the year dad became President. Continued feeding at the Bush family friend trough will lead to the Texas governorship and eventually to a catastrophic mind-numbing historically ineffectual 2-term Presidency, the repercusions of which will be felt for a very long time, or at least until I get my check from Nigeria.

In 2008, Barack Obama became the first black elected President, in no small part because of Mr. Lee Elder, the Jackie Robinson of golf and possibly the designer of Enterprise Golf Course.

Patuxent Greens

Year Opened: 1970

Architect: Russell Roberts/Buddy Loving

Web: www.patuxentgolf.com

Phone: (301) 776-5533

O you should viddy me now, O my brothers, shamefully shivering and shaking and quaking after a fretful bezdoomny and not so refreshing blackout, a real frightful strakh of restless and dinful zvook-filled spatchka, delirium-stained and soiled bedcoverings coiled around my ailing self. This dire circumstance of unwellness, however, isn’t so unexpected, O my brothers, now is it, given that my drunken pyahnitsa has reached a fortnight’s duration. The tick-tocker is like hammering rabbity in the face of hawk-like doom, the talons ready to stamp my passport at death’s frontier, but even my half-hearted attempts at snuffing it seem real pathetic-like, I mean as snuffing-it goes - isn’t the point of doing-oneself-in proper to accept a brief moment of discomfort and then eternal peace like with no…pain; not a monthlong of terrible twitching and nasty and not insignificant pains in the gulliver and guttiwots. This was nothing like that horrorshow picture “Leaving Las Vegas”, which I viddied at the sinny, where this real despondent like chelloveck snuffs it with the old whiskey but not before having some of the old in-out in–out with a zoloto-hearted devotchka of the night, a real like sympathetic sort, not whatsoever resembling the cold-hearted cunny leaving gloopy messages on my phone recording apparatus, some talk of dinner dalliance in the offing.

However, today would be like rather differently lived, the start of a new way, this is what the malenky goloss in my head bespoketh. What then did this portend, this talk of a new way?

But the bolshy more powerful voice was gentle encouraging and prodding my poorly feeling self to pour another swig of stale sourish beer into the dry and slimy-yahzicked opening of my gaping rot. Unfortunately, the desperate diminished pilsner provisions (to wit: two mere cans remained, well now it was but one..) in the barren tundra of the ice box meant, O brothers, that your ailing taleteller must avail himself of some more libation, this to quell the harsh punishments and like grievous retribution of great God and All His Holy Angels and Saints, who were arranging for a real all-mighty comeuppance against your faithful droog and woedraggled writer.

And it was clear to me what needed to be done. Clear as an unmuddied lake, as an azure sky of deepest summer. And I dropped to my knees, O my brothers, not in humble supplication but to scrabble about for various dribni coins strewn about the brudniy dirty kilim. I must admit that thoughts of passing off cent-pieces as ten-centers crossed my distressed malnourished mind, but I also recall yesterday’s misadventure, a real weepy and like tragic part of the story, when your faithful droog and long-suffering narrator was tolchicked real spiteful-like by the liquor shop bruise boys after me having a go at this coin-switch ruse for a second day in a row. But the sumny and honest truth, O my brothers and sisters, was that only meagerly and miserly cent-pennies were of avail in my wanton and wretched flat, and I’m not much for shop-krasting or purse-snatching and possessed little of value that I could place as collateral at the pawn shop, so I busied myself with rolling the last of the cent-pieces into the dime wrappers and trudged down to my automobile. And O my faithful friends, I had like a moment of dulcet heaven-sent inspiration as I fumbled with the klooch on the car lock, (an inspiration, no error, like an artist's encouraging Muse or when some sumna and grievesome missus hears or sees the ghostly yet beneficent apparition of Mary the Virgin, Jesus' mum) for tis then that I remembered the rear storage compartment of the car and most especially the golf bag lying therein. So as varied and scowling and reproachful-looking chellovecks scraped and brushed the brittle snow off their cars on the way to their drudgesome robotas, I knelt grovelling real pitiful-like beside my car and started to toss it for the odd shiny silvery speck. In my desperate and hasty and hurried state (for the withdrawal forces were storming the beach and erelong they’d be laying siege to my already long-suffering and overtaxed tick-tock ticker), I floundered shivering sprawled in the damp snow, prompting one kindly sort to ask if I was alright. And alright I was, O my droogs, right as rain, as it were, as I triumphantly pocketed the coins I’d recovered from my vehicle, scrambling up the stairs, mokry and frost-gnawed, paying little mind to the znak posted on my front door informing me that the State policia will be tossing me and my unhockable belongings out on the street erelong, making me a bezdomny homeless car-dwelling chelloveck.

I was able to get a brief day’s supply of booze and cancers, enough to get me through until afterlunch, and I had to be like real coy and watchful while driving in such a state as was mine, wanting as I did to avoid the stripey hole with its leering criminals and drooling prestoopniks ready to have their way with a luscious young malchick such as myself. So I drank quickly and with purpose, knowing (hoping) I was nearing the end of my time. But snuff it I did not, for I would not be here to tell what I have told.

This all took place a long time ago, almost a decade has passed, in fact, since I’d holed up in Laurel, MD to give the drinking life another shot. When I finally got myself taken to the ER, I asked the doc after he gave me the stethoscopal once-over, “what didst thou, on thy mind, have?” so he scribbled something on his clipboard and told me to quit drinking, like forever. So like clockwork (not orange), I began the lengthy road back to resurgence and recovery, a road that has had a few off-track mishaps but I’ve somehow been able to steer back (a bit wobbly, sure) to this new way.

It would be nice to mislead you and tell you that I chose Laurel because of its diversity (mostly it’s just plain old poor) or even that I’d taken an interest in following the ponies at historic Laurel Racetrack and would lose like a 100 lbs and fulfill my dreams of someday being a jockey and winning the Freakness or Angus Steaks or whatever, but the sad pathetic truth was that I’d fallen under the spell of a woman - a driven, type-A Julia Roberts look-alike with a profound streak of meanness and Me-ness. And so part of my recovery process has entailed avoiding all Julia Roberts movies, which really wasn't at all difficult, come to think of it.

What’s odd is that up until that time I’d had pretty pleasant memories of Laurel – some from computer classes I’d taken at one of those vocational IT institutes, but mostly at Patuxent Greens, which me and my boy discovered while we were still residing in Takoma Park. This golf course had a few things to recommend it back then: it was distinctly unlike anything else in our regular rotation: a flat, walkable piece of land with a bunch of ponds and lagoons. Also, it was close enough to Takoma Park to make it an easy jaunt, and not too burdensome on the wallet.

The club seems to be part of a small development but the housing is non-intrusive to the golfing experience. The white siding clubhouse is reminiscent of a yacht club, at least that’s what I, in my mind, imagine an inland yacht club might look like, knowing little as I do about boating in general and less so about the specific yacht club segment of the boating industry. So let's just stay with yacht club – perhaps its location overlooking the lagoon surrounding the 18th green helps foster this impression.

No need to arrive early since there’s no practice range but the bar/restaurant is a perfectly agreeable room with the requisite amenities, much as you’d expect at your typical yacht club, except without the brass-buttoned blue blazer with epaulets docksider set.

The first hole is a fairly scruffy S-shaped par 5, with nothing particularly to recommend it other than the challenging final approach to a small mounded green protected by a pair of bunkers fronting the putting surface. Patuxent Greens plays like a basic parkland layout until the various lagoons come into play – the 3rd hole is the first of many such holes: a short par 4 with water all the way up the right side and trees encroaching from the left. The sixth hole features a 75-yard deep waste bunker with a smattering of reeds jutting out, followed by probably the most attractive hole on the property – a lily-pond fronting the 150-yard par 3 with large tree limbs hanging over left of the green and a pair of bunkers in front of the single most dramatically sloping green. Things keep going strong on the dogleg right par 5 8th with a large tree getting in the way on your 2nd shot and then the front side closes nicely with the right-turning 9th, where you need to fit your tee shot in between the lagoons.

The key shots on the backside: the all-carry over agua par 3 eleventh, the lagoon which cuts across 50 yards short of the green on the otherwise non-descript par 5 14th and the club selection on the longish par 3 16th, which brings up some water issues long and right. And then we come to the 17th, by far the hardest hole on the course and also one of the least attractive. The tee shot is daunting – over a pond with marshy OB left and then a pond right of the green, which is tucked into a mucky lowland a bit left of the fairway. On a course which doesn’t get high marks for conditioning (the flat land and abundance of water give the whole place a swampy demeanor) the area in front of the 17th green is better suited for rice farming or mosquito breeding than it is for chipping.

The round ends with a fun shorty par 4, featuring a green with a few wispy birchsome trees jutting out into the lagoon (the green does the jutting, the trees - not so much) , so you’d better be on point with your approach or you’ll be hitting again.

Patuxent Greens was my first foray into the Myrtle Beach or Florida style of golf – very flat landscape with water as the primary obstacle and it’s a look I like when done well (Caledonia in North Myrtle or obviously Doral in Miami come to mind, but let’s be real, these are top-100 in-the-U.S.-type courses while Patuxent Greens is, well, not). That being said, it is still a pleasant place to play, even if the conditions are a little hinky. I have to think it’s about a 5.5.

1-3 Pretty Darn Poor. Bad layout, poor conditioning, few redeeming factors, crowded
4-5 Mediocre. Some redeeming qualities, a few decent holes
6-7 Decent A fun, challenging course that doesn’t awe or wow you
8-9 First-Rate Among the best in the region
10 Perfect The best golf experience imaginable

Obvious acknowledgments must be made to Anthony Burgess, who wrote "A Clockwork Orange" in 1963 and from whom I borrowed freely in spirit and context.

Pohick Bay

Year Opened: 1982

Architect: George Cobb

Web: www.nvrpa.org/parks/pohickbaygolf/?pg=golfcourse.html

Phone: (703) 339-8585


I first ventured here with the Dawgs, my boy’s old golfing crew, back in my formative golf years. They reminisced and joked around while I sat quietly and pensively over on a picnic bench, trying to level out after getting my drink on the night before. One dude, who had a country club background growing up, had a sweet smooth swing, clearly polished by substantial time spent with his club pro. What he didn’t have is a complete set of clubs. I don’t remember the details, if he’d come in out of town or what; what I do remember is that as a fellow southpaw he used my clubs – and lemme tell you, they were a little off-put being hit in the sweet spot so often. So mostly I remember kinda being this dude’s caddie.

Pohick Bay’s terrain is heavily forested (it’s in a regional park along the Potomac River near Lorton) and fairly hilly. Play moves along in a reasonable manner once you get going since there are no fairway bunkers at all and no water hazards until late on the back nine.

George Cobb, a fairly prolific course designer in the Southeast US, has a pretty cool accomplishment on his epitaph – he teamed with Clifford Roberts (co-founder of Augusta National with Bobby Jones) to build the charming par-3 course in 1959, site of the well-known par 3 tourney the Wednesday before the Masters. And how do I know it’s charming? Well, actually, truth be told, because I played it. Now you wouldn’t think , what little you know of me, that I’d be the sort of fellow who hobnobs with corporate honchos or the United States power elite (though I do know someone who recently saw Jane Curtin on the streets of NY), and back in the early 80s I attached a lapel microphone to Loni Anderson’s dress strap (that was a bit of a show) and I was once in the urinal adjacent to Dean Martin, who was slurring “Everybody Loves Somebody Sometimes”…oh yeah, and Dennis Eckersley once gave me the snub at an airport car rental joint. I thought as a fellow recovering alcoholic we’d find more of a connection, maybe share our thoughts on the 2nd Step. What a dick. I should’ve done the Kirk Gibson one-handed limp-off home-run imitation off Eckersley in the car rental lobby - that would’ve showed him. So I had to be honest with myself, I didn’t move in the social circles of Augusta-types. I smoked a lot so maybe I could work that admittedly distant connection with the Southern plantation Big Tobacco tycoons but I couldn’t quite visualize the way from buying cigarettes at 7-11 to garnering a seat at the Philip Morris boardroom. So let’s see, I’d never broken 85 so I probably wasn’t going to play my way into Augusta. And I didn’t(don't) know anyone. Augusta doesn’t allow women so I couldn’t even use the Ukrainian gigolo kept-man angle as an unrealistic possibility (I can only imagine the nightmarish dames that would go to Augusta if they could – think Anne Coulter or the Julia Roberts character in “Charlie Wilson’s War” (to quote Anthony Lane, film critic from The New Yorker: “the pro-Pakistani Texan hostess (how many of those do you know?)”), or the Donald in drag, sporting a sundress). Plus I’m not exactly gigolo material – I haven’t done more than a couple dozen sit-ups in a decade’s time (I'm more of a Chairmaster work-out devotee), I’m bald and sort of scowly-jowly, not into navy blue blazers at all, I don’t make a great whiskey sour and I most certainly can’t quote Scripture. So it looked like I’d have to go the servile routine – put all that humiliating hotel experience to use. Alright then. I could caddy, no? Wrong again. The Southern crackers that run Augusta use only black caddies – “Boy, hand me the 5-iron and hold dis here ceegar” “Yessum, boss”. Else what could I do? Bingo. I would master the art of the pimento- cheese sandwich and that would be my ticket into Augusta. Bam! And you know what? They didn’t take long to master. I loaded up my pimento cheese mix, a jar of mayo, a few loaves of white bread and I started the long trek to Augusta, Georgia. Outside the club I set-up shop, putting to work all my marketing acumen: I opened up the rear of the hatchback, put on some Charlie Daniels CDs with the Confederate flag fluttering haughtily off the radio antenna, and made up a cardboard sign, “Klan Special: Hoods Bleached & Ironed with Purchase of 3 Sandwiches”. Guess what? I didn’t get even a nibble. Oh, the New Tolerant South. Former Masters champion Fuzzy Zoeller, in his trademark aviator shades, did slow down as he passed, merrily whistling "Dixie".

OK, ok, so I never played the par-3 course. But I read somewhere that it’s quite charming.

So not surprisingly, Pohick features a strong set of par 3s, especially the long uphill fifth and the lakeside downhill 15th. While the tee shots are fairly straightforward, Pohick gets some marks for its greens, which are decidedly more interesting than the run-of-mill fare you find at other munis, with lots of contouring, swales and distinct tiers. About half of the holes here are doglegs so even though the tee shots don’t have much going on, you’ll need to at least reach the corner of the dogleg so you’ll have a clear look at the well-bunkered putting surfaces.

Even though they are out of character with the rest of the course, the 13th through 15th, which wrap around and over a central lake, offer the most thrills (and possibilities for some big scores), especially the par 5 thirteenth, where the lake needs to be carried on your second shot to have a short approach to the tricky uphill angled green. The 14th is a semi-blind lay-up short of the water, followed by a short-iron approach over the lake to a green tucked into the hillside.

As I made my way around with the country club dude, I found out that the 3-iron (which I had heretofore used pretty much exclusively as a punch out club from under tree limbs) could indeed be hit properly with a real golf swing. In fact all of my clubs could be hit with a real golf swing. And here I thought it was the clubs. I guess it was the old golf adage, it’s not the arrows, it’s the Indian. I mean Native American. No, hell with it, I'm sticking with Indian. What, no good? Ok, fine, how about it's not the chopsticks, it's the Chinaman? Also no good? Damn. Well, I'm kinda stuck here, I've gotta tell you. Anyhoo, as far as the 3-iron goes, it and its long-iron kinfolk were on the verge of extinction - thankfully the boys in the lab were hunkered down and drawing up the plans for the prototype hybrid-iron, 21st century panacea of the weekend golfer.

As far as Pohick Bay goes, it’s a perfectly adequate municipal track, but its location for us Maryland golfers (you had to deal with the absurd traffic from the 8-year Mixing Bowl project in Springfield) makes it a less than desirable destination. In fact, I have returned here exactly once – it was definitely a casualty of the proliferation of course-building in the mid-to-late 90s.

I’ll give it a solid 5.5.

Penderbrook

Year Opened: 1980

Architect: Ed Ault

Web: www.penderbrookgolf.com

Phone: (703) -385-3700

Penderbrook, off Rte. 50 in Fair Oaks, Virginia, was my first experience with the golf/housing development concept and my first foray into the Commonwealth. Houses and condos galore line the drive in, with the clubhouse located below a respectable stand of trees. The houses lining the fairway are by far the most prominent design feature – certainly that doesn’t bode well, now does it? So what in the world can I, staunch defender of all that embodies conformity and homogeneity in our society, find wrong with the bland banal community before me? Hmmm. Staunch defender indeed. It’s bad enough I have to live in a vinyl-sided suburban enclave; when I go out for some recreation, I certainly don’t need to be reminded of this unfortunate predicament.

I can sort of understand the golf course community model in a retirement setting in, let’s say, Florida or Scottsdale, where the residents should probably avoid driving as much as possible. Hey, I’m seeing this with my own father, who used to be a great driver but now seems to drive about half the suggested speed limit. Maybe he’s recalling his European heritage and is using Kilometers Per Hour to gauge his speed – where 65 kph would be 40mph, maybe that’s what’s going on – all I know is this, if he’s driving us to see a movie in Bethesda, we have to leave about an hour and 15 minutes ahead of time from Gaithersburg to avoid sitting in the front row. But Penderbrook is not a retirement destination – though given the fiasco on Wall St. the past week, it just may become one, though I’ll take my chances that this blog will actually lead to some unforeseen financial windfall and I’ll be able to properly retire in the Ciutat Vella (Old City) of Barcelona, although I might have to re-think that since I can’t imagine my insomnia improving with age (why else would I be posting blogs at 5:30 in the morning after hitting the hay around 3am?) and those god-forsaken church bells with their incessant eternal gonging were troublesome a year ago, imagine 20 years from now, when the chickens come home to roost from my decades of daily many-multiple venti French roast coffees, though on the plus side my hearing has deteriorated (that damn rock n roll) to where I need to watch DVDs with the English sub-title feature activated so maybe the gonging will seem like a slight ping on the triangle, which naturally can’t help but evoke fond memories of Martin Short as Ed Grimley …. well ok, then, hello Penderbrook, here we come.

The distinguishing feature here? Obviously, the ubiquitous condos and houses. The first time I played here I sliced a 3-wood into a child’s playpen in the backyard of the condos lining the left side of the 4th hole. Luckily the child was not in the playpen. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a great lie, right up against the Mr. Potato-Head. The layout is quite claustrophobic (the houses abutting the fairways certainly contribute to this sensation), with a number of ponds and lakes which are undeniably in play. The conditions are lackluster and it’s crowded, even when the prices shot up when the Palmer group took over. Did I mention that it’s overpriced? (Well, it most certainly was back when I came out here some years back, though I’ve noticed that the prices are now back in line with what you would expect from this track) And let’s not forget that horrible feeling as you descend the clubhouse steps and see 6 groups lined up at the first tee. Still, there are some decent golf holes here, some of which are damn challenging.

There’s no rush to get here before your tee-time since there’s no driving range – just a practice net. Might as well go to one of those indoor places and hit into a screen showing a blurry photo of Pebble Beach. There is, however, a small putting green next to a pretty pond below the clubhouse, the emphasis on small.

The first hole hardly distinguishes itself with one of the uglier tee shots around to a scruffy, muddy landing area and an uphill approach to a green with a large sloppy bunker in front. As an opening experience, it’s pretty dismal. Too long to wait, too much activity around the tee, a sloppy tee-box leading to a shoddy hole. #2 isn’t a bad short par 4 and the next one is a decent pond-fronted par 3 if you don’t mind a road and guard-rail as the scenic backdrop. The eighth hole is a perfectly pleasant short downhill par 4 with water in play left of the fairway off the tee and then again on an all-carry approach to a shallowish green. Shouldn’t be an issue but I’ve dumped my share of balls in the water.

The same lake needs to be carried on the closing hole of the front nine and then the fun begins, the queue at #10, one of the hardest par 3s in the area. It’s an all-carry shot over a lake with no bail-out (a heroic shot, if you define heroic by diving onto a hand grenade, because it’s gonna blow-up your scorecard in a similar fashion) and there’s a snack shop which helps pass the time for the unavoidable wait as you watch the preceding groups flail away in vain. But I’ve gotta tell you, you’d better relish your hot dog and chips because you’re in for a long break. Truth be told, they’d be better off putting in a multi-course French restaurant, and depending on the skill level of the golfers, you might want to leave some room for the cheese plate, factor in the obligatory sneery laissez-faire flair of the French waiters, the ones that come to your table about as often as Halley’s Comet, and then the tee box should be all clear by the time the petit-fours arrive. The 12th, with its 175 yard approach over water to a green bound by a railway-tie retaining wall was also on the short list of hardest par 4s but I hear #12 has been redone (they moved the green back to this side of the water – I guess not many weekend golfers have a high, soft 175 yard shot off a tight, patchy fairway) but I have no idea what the new configuration plays like and doubt I ever will, capiche?)

It wouldn’t do at all not to mention that I witnessed that golf rarity - a double eagle. And I do mean rare, like drawing a royal flush (remember that, Scott?) or Bill O’Reilly not starting a sentence by “what say you…Wichita?” or OJ finding Nicole’s killer or Britney Spears wearing panties while hitting the clubs, or me not leaving a rambling pathetically desperate voice mail message, a la “Swingers”…I refer you to the end of the second paragraph above and that is but a half-haiku to the Homerian epic you can expect should I ever leave you a phone message…

So, anyways, about that double eagle, well, it occurred on the 17th hole, a short rolling par 5. The guy I was playing with spent a good 5-10 minutes looking around the green for his ball since we didn’t see his second shot land beyond the knoll in front of us. I mean, we knew he hit it pretty good, we just didn’t know how good. Finally I decided to look at the hole (why not?) and there it was. Wow. Dude was trembling, big-time. Of course I had to have a drink with him and listen to his double-eagle story for the next half-hour or so. Hey pal, remember, I was there.

The back side alternates between hard and easy holes, though there are some testy shots over water and marsh. I always liked the short par five 14th, with a boo-hoo willow jutting alongside a marsh that meanders all the way up to the left of the green. It also might be the one hole where the condos are not really a visual factor. Well, actually, that’s not possible here, but if you squint and look real hard from a particular angle, you might think you were in…Patuxent Greens in Laurel, Md.

After sitting and waiting for the better part of 6 hours, the last few holes become irrelevant. Upon seeing a few groups lined up on the 18th tee box, I have quickly veered to the parking lot, dumped the clubs in the trunk and gotten the hell outta there.

Weird. I have played here many times over the years. When I really sucked, it was an OK place to lose some balls, occasionally pull off a shot over one of the many ponds, and it wasn’t too pricey. Then the Palmer Management Group took over running the place in the early 2000s and it became absurdly overpriced, like double what it should have been. Perhaps they were trying to discourage excessive play by raising prices. Whatever. They sure discouraged me, and I won’t be back, even if the prices have since come down. And so I discourage you, unless you really enjoy eating a bunch of hot dogs at the turn.

5 is the number I’m thinking of between 4 and 6.

Falls Road

Year Opened: 1961

Architect: Ed Ault

Web: www.montgomerycountygolf.com/FR_home.html

Phone: (301) 299-5156

Considering its setting in the midst of some of the wealthiest folks in the country, there used to be an almost in-your-face lowbrow feel to this course: the corrugated roof “pro shop”, the muddy path heading to the equipment shed, the vacant snack bar attached to the pro shop. We would come here quite a bit in the early 90s, mostly because…I guess we were masochists – certainly not because the golf course was hard (it most definitely wasn’t) but due to the aggravatingly slow pace of play. Our spirits (never exactly in a state of grace) would plummet when we’d find ourselves behind a gaggle of visor-wearing soccer moms (perhaps they were moms of soccer moms or wanna-be soccer moms or soccer momdom had passed them by – all I know is they drove mini-vans, thought Reagan was a genial populist bloke and spent more time comparing foyers and granite counter-tops than actually playing golf). Sometimes we’d really get lucky and the bratty kids would join mom in the fun. Yikes. It reminded me of an Ionesco play – repetitive, absurd and too fucking long. They’d hit off the tee and then all four would slowly saunter to the first ball, gather round, maybe balance their checkbook or participate in a ten-minute panel discussion on that week's episode of "Desperate Housewives", watch their partner hit a 20 yard grounder, spend a minute or two consoling her and then off the four would go to the next ball, though a mulligan per hole was certainly an almost mandatory part of the drill.

This used to be a mediocre offering. A big hilly field with some tees, some trees and some flags. Too many hacks, too slow, very little to look forward to, though admittedly there were a few holes on the backside that warranted a look-see.

Now then, fast forward 15 years. I’d heard that there had been significant upgrades in the course and despite my better judgment, I decided to check it out. And you know what, improvements had been made. The clubhouse is sunny, airy and pleasant and they even offer micro-brewed beer – great, where was that gimmick back when me and my boy would be detoxing while waiting to get off?

The entire front side has been re-routed and decorative wheat grasses have been planted, and while the changes have definitely enhanced the playability and aesthetics, pace of play remains a problem. When I returned, there was a dearth of soccer moms (I guess the Container Store was running a sale) but you still had the hack factor and the grasses lining the first and second holes were prime searching-for-lost-balls real estate. Oh, and they will search, like clueless kids at a scavenger hunt. The original Ed Ault routing started off where the current driving range is located and at least had a respectable green site at the top of the hill, followed by a featureless par 5 and then back to back drive-and-pitch 285-yard par 4s on the northern edge of the property. Ault’s son’s firm, Ault & Clark, did a respectable job of altering the routing – blowing up the two weak par 4 shorties and replacing them with an OK 3-par (#3) and the best hole on the front side – the serpentine par 5 fourth, which utilizes the rolling topography adeptly and features a large oak tree which poses some problems for the big boppers who decide to have a go at the green in two. The rest of us can pop it over a gully to the fairway right of the tree, leaving a pretty testy approach to the recessed green well below the fairway. Mostly what Ed’s boy has done is bring some fairway bunkering into the mix, a concept the old man just wasn’t comfortable with.

The hardest hole is unquestionably the twelfth, a narrow long par 4 with a substantially raised green sloping from a mound on the right. As you stand on the tee, on your left you see some seriously hooked-up property, with swimming pools, tennis courts, gazebos, like that. 13 through the retooled 18th are the strength of the course, but again, by this time you’ve been out there 5 hours, tired of yet again looking at the visored crew reloading on the tee after a weak slice grounder into the woods. There’s a lake on the short par 5 sixteenth which requires a minimal carry of the tee with some new fairway bunkers planted into the hillside left but beyond that there isn’t much to say, though the completely new finishing hole utilizes fairway cross- bunkering in a strategic thoughtful manner, something unseen back in Ed Ault’s day – well, it was seen, just not by him or his obvious mentoring influence, Robert Trent Jones.

It used to be a 2.5 but after the renovations it’s about like Needwood – a 4.5.

Poolesville

Year Opened: 1959

Architect: Edmund B. Ault

Phone: (301) 428-8143

Web: www.montgomerycountygolf.com/PV_home.html

Me and my boy had ourselves an off day so he suggested a mini-road trip out to Poolesville. I could see by his packing a cooler with some cold ones and the remnants of last night’s Absolut (c’mon, there’s like a jigger or two left – let’s just kill that and stop off for another fifth) that he wasn’t kidding around about the distance out there. This course is off in the western lands of Montgomery County, about 45 minutes from the Beltway, closer to Leesburg, Virginia than it is to Rockville. The drive down River Road is pleasant enough -- past vaunted Congressional Country Club and the much-panned TPC at Avenel (to the point that they’re basically blowing it up and rebuilding it) and the mansions of Potomac and then the area becomes distinctly rural as you approach Poolesville. When I come out here I get the sense of a club, not exactly deal-making corporate-raider captain-of-industry Macallan single-malt scotch and Cohiba Cubans but pick-up truck huntin’ ‘n’ fishin’ git ‘er done BBQ and beer. It always amazes me that not even an hour outside the Nation’s Capital you feel like you could be in Appalachia: old washing machines, rusted car-casses and heaps of old tires strewn about on the dusty front lawn, all kinds of dilapidated sheds and ragamuffin kids and three-legged hound dawgs scrabbling about on the property. It’s eerie. To me, anyway. But Poolesville itself has a decent salt-of-the-earth feel, kind of a “Cheers” golf course, with lots of regulars, like a neighborhood bar. My boy, back in the bad old days, used to come here because of the full-service bar; in fact it wasn’t a problem waiting for the first tee because you could get yourself liquored-up but quick at the friendly, though obviously rednecky clubhouse bar.

What practice? Gimme an Absolut and a Bud and a dog and it’s all good. Of course we haven’t been back since we got the booze monkey of our backs; it might just be a good idea to stay away.

What I remember from this course, and I must have played it about ten times or so back in the early 90’s, is that it played long. Of course when you ground it off the tee, miniature golf seems long. The land is flat and there are some trees lining the fairways, but sparsely. There’s lots of action playing from neighboring fairways. Back in the days of the Concorde, about 3 pm or so, you could check out (and hear) this space-age plane landing across the river at Dulles Airport. Other than that, it’s a pretty laid-back place.

After spending an hour in the clubhouse bar getting loose and limber, as it were, the idea of teeing off in front of a line of carts can be humbling. Heck, just standing without weaving and wobbling was a trick. The first hole is a dogleg right over a small creek and a stand of trees on the right. You can go over the trees without a problem with a big left to right ball. This is a wide-open hole on a wide-open course.

Hardest hole: the second hole is a real 600-yard par 5, straight –ahead, no-nonsense, though the green has a bit of bunkering. After that it’s all a bit blurry. There is a decent-length par 3 over water, hole #8, that used to create all kinds of difficulties for me. Then hole 11 was a nice dogleg right par 5 with a pond on the right (which is definitely in play, especially if you try to cut the corner on the dogleg), a bucolic stand of trees beyond the pond and then a creek crossing in front of a nice uphill green. Hole 16 is a rolling par 4 with a cornfield left and the pond right, which needs to be avoided from tee to green. It’s a pretty hole. It helps that the pond has a natural look and is tree-lined and filled with geese sauntering in the water. I’m perfectly fine with geese in the water (no really, I am), it’s when they take their business out on the golf course that we’ve got some problems. I thought we had a deal with the geese – we don’t go in the water and they don’t shit on the greens, though I sort of violated that unspoken pact when I flung some recalcitrant club into the lake, definitely the first time I’d worked that particular cliché of golf frustration.

I guess I must’ve been really out of sorts when I wrote the Northwest Park review because in retrospect it’s hard to imagine I didn’t mention the name of the architect, Ed Ault, the John Grisham of local golf course architects (sure you’ll turn the page but it won’t exactly nourish your soul), whose bland, monotonous handiwork is visible throughout the DC area. Anyways, he designed this one, too. You can always tell you’re playing an Ed Ault course when you step on the tee and find exactly nothing exhilarating about the experience. His greens are typically large without a hint of undulation, protected by a bunker left and a bunker right. Fortunately, his son, Brian Ault, teamed with Tom Clark, has created some rather enjoyable thought-provoking courses over the last dozen years or so.

Like I’ve said, I haven’t been back here in years, and with the recent golf course development in Maryland, I doubt I will return. It’s too far out of the way with too little to intrigue. And if I’m going to fall off the wagon, I’d rather it be somewhere other than Poolesville. Still, it has its place. If nothing else, the folks that live out there seem to enjoy it quite a bit and that’s fine by me. Another 4.