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.