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.