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.