Queenstown Harbor

Year Opened: 1991

Architect: Lindsay Ervin

Web: www.mdgolf.com

Phone: (800) 827-5257


It’s 5:30 in the morning in early February, the temperature gauge reads a cozy comfy 8 degrees (comfortable if you’re a bottle of vodka or …a cadaver) and I’m out here chipping away at a frosted glassy sheet of ice on my windshield. The defroster won’t kick-in until I’m halfway to work so I scrape and I chop with vigor while my neighbors slumber. A lone red fox surreptitiously crosses the street down a ways in search of a hen-house, not realizing this isn’t exactly hen-house country though there’s gotta be a KFC or a Peruvian chicken joint around somewhere. The feeble plastic scraper isn’t making much of a dent and I think of pulling my 6-iron out of the trunk, but that too is sealed-in by an even sturdier ice block. Gambling that there won’t be a lot of traffic on the Beltway I head back inside with the morning paper, which I jackhammered off the driveway, this while I wait for the defroster to loosen up the ice. It’s an old car and the fan barely works but the car won’t fit inside the microwave so I’m basically out of luck. I glance at the front page headlines and more dire economic news is forecast, so crawling back into bed and blowing off work probably isn’t the smart play. And if a red fox, which can hardly have any remotely promising leads in the quest for food and shelter, is out and about, then certainly I suppose I can venture out, as well. Sure, why not me.

I’m finally on the road and for once a gamble of mine pays off – there’s hardly anyone on the road, so I begin to daydream a bit while on autopilot to work. Thinking about the last time I played golf, which was after my boy’s wedding in Jersey and I’m wondering when next I’ll hit the links. I’m also thinking that the way things are going, a lot of local golf courses are going to be hurting big-time, especially the over-blown upscale ones that seemed to all open simultaneously when a) the dot-com boom was in full swing, b) Tiger Woods made golf seem cool, and c) the baby boomers were beginning to contemplate a leisure-filled recreational retirement (as if their entire lives weren’t already an all-you-can-eat buffet at the self-indulgent amusement trough). But to keep things in perspective, the Washington DC area was definitely in need of a golf course upgrade in the mid-to-late 90s – besides the local county and municipal courses, there were only a couple of high-end golfing destinations in the area: the resort at Lansdowne near Leesburg, Virginia and Queenstown Harbor on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay. Now there are close to fifty within an hour’s drive from DC (over a hundred within 2 hrs) and it’s unlikely there will be enough business to sustain all of them during this economic decline, though there are other factors which had already manifested themselves before the recession:

1. Besides being simply expensive, golf takes up a lot of time. A round of golf, between travel time, an hour of practice and warm-up before the round and the round itself takes about 8 hours out of your weekend. That doesn’t leave a lot of time for the kids, the spouse and the honey-do list.
   
2. Once the dot-com bubble blowed-up, a lot of disposable income simply disappeared, especially among the demographic that would be likely to spend a day at the golf course – the young moneyed professionals without kids. These days it's hard for me to imagine anyone without a golden parachute or a 6-figure severance package being able to talk themselves into spending $100 for a round of golf at one of the local upscale venues.
   
3. Golf is just a frustratingly difficult game to play well (or even not so well), end of story. The average weekend golfer shoots over 100, which is close to double-bogey golf, which is, well, not good. It would be like riding a bike or roller-blading and falling every 10 minutes. Or making 35% of your foul shots. Or double-faulting every other service point in tennis. And this while using equipment where every possible performance-enhancing alteration has been developed: from large-face cavity-back irons, graphite shafts, over-sized big-headed drivers, hybrid irons replacing the hard-to-hit low irons, hi-tech steroided golf balls that go straight and far and still...breaking a 100 is unattainable, even with mulligans, do-overs, giving yourself 5-foot putts, tickling in the rough, whatever...
4. The new golf courses are simply more difficult than the ones built in the 50s, 60s and 70s. This is partly due to recent environmental concerns, whereby a certain percentage of the land must remain an environmentally protected area - be it marshy wetlands, a scrubby ravine or a field of wildflowers. In the days of yore, these areas would have been simply bulldozed, filled-in, sodded-over and become part of the playing field. Now architects have incorporated these elements as potential hazards in their designs, forcing average golfers to now fly their shot over these areas; whereas in years past they could have just scuttled it along the ground on a mis-hit. So now they've lost their $4 Pro VI in the marsh and have to re-hit with a penalty stroke to add to their frustration. Also, in response to the new hi-tech gear, golf course developers were all caught up in providing the "ultimate test of golf", this while the average golfer could rarely consistently carry the ball off the tee 180 yards, which means more re-hits, which means more waiting, leading to longer rounds, which means...a lot of folks decided this ain't for me. And finally...
5. It turned out Tiger Woods wasn't all that cool. A DaVinci genius or Mozart-type prodigy, sure, but cool, no, not really. In fact, he's a bit of an aloof robotic prick among an amalgam of either prissy, whiny country club brats or the recent NASCAR-ization of the PGA Tour, where good ole boy aw-shucks rednecks are suddenly in vogue.
   

So yeah, the golf industry has to be seriously worried, though I have been wide of the mark before, even as recently as this morning (was that a fox or just a large orange cat?), this as my daydreaming is cut short by a sheet of ice smashing into my front grill. I think of giving the driver the what-for but remember that I’ve got a small iceberg on my own rooftop so I let it slide, plus he’s got an NRA bumper sticker and is probably packing.

While there are many (well, less than many and more than a few), ok, while there are some courses that I wouldn’t miss all that much if they shut down, I would be really bummed if Queenstown Harbor was one of them. Before the proliferation of the upscale daily-fee concept the past 15 years, this was the preeminent golfing destination in this area. A quick jog through Kent Island after crossing the 8-mile Bay Bridge, the course is located opposite the Queenstown Outlet Mall along the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. I still recall my first drive into the golf course grounds - a fountain spraying off the clear, crisp lake; tall decorative grasses wafting in the bay breezes, flowery shrubs – no grand, majestic gate - just a simple and sublime drive past a few perfectly manicured golf holes, followed by a canopy of trees to the clubhouse. It reminds me for some reason of the scene in Hitchcock’s “Rebecca”, when Laurence Olivier is bringing his naïve, nervous new bride, Joan Fontaine, to his manor estate, Manderley, which reveals its splendor after a long tree-canopied drive in, except my eyes aren’t limpid and my lips aren’t quivering like Ms. Fontaine’s. At least not noticeably. Queenstown gets most of it just right, even the parking lot has reeds and grasses and a large magnolia to add to the ambience of the clubhouse area. Two old barns were renovated, brightly painted and now house the maintenance equipment and the golf carts.

Aerial view of Queenstown, with Chesapeake Bay in the distance

The low-key farmhouse clubhouse was renovated years ago, with vaulted ceilings and a bag-drop turnabout in front though it still retains its considerable charm. What do I remember from that initial visit? The fairways were so lush I wanted to immediately kick off my golf shoes and play barefoot. Even the sand traps had that fine-grained talc-like sand you seem to only find in Florida. We chose to walk the course (back then we always walked, before creaky knees and balky backs made that an ordeal), even if it was close to a 100-degrees out, though the breezes off the bay made it seem like oh, about 97. The first 18 holes we were OK, hot and bedraggled, sure, but it was the final 9 holes that just did me in – I felt like Frodo crossing Mordor on his way to Mt.Doom (yes, agreed, a strange reference coming from me, but maybe because of its recent advent in the pop-culture canon, more accessible than citing, say, “Lawrence of Arabia”.) There was this one wooden bridge across a marsh that had to be close to a half-mile long (and you get to cross it coming and going). I was ready to simply give up, toss my heavy clubs into the marsh, lie down in some soft moss under a tree and wait for MediVac assistance, or some truant kid on a skateboard, or a St. Bernard (more with the ice and less with the hot cocoa) …all I know is I was all done with the walking.

Back when we first came here there were the three 9-hole tracks: the Lakes, the River and I forget what, the Bay, the Marsh, maybe the Estuary (mayhap not); but now Queenstown boasts 2 eighteen-hole courses - the Lakes and the River - and the drive in has been diminished by the construction of some houses around the 2nd hole of the Lakes course, not exactly the most scenic sector of the property - with no views of the bay, no artificial pond, no majestic trees, nothing really; though it is within strolling distance of the outlet mall across heavily trafficked route 301, if that’s your thing, and why wouldn’t it be – getting last year’s rejects and factory seconds and irregulars (like pillow-cases with the opening sewn shut or shoes with mismatched laces or the leopard-motif plate set – hmm, that’s got to make my grilled gnu-steak a tad jumpy)

Again, I am probably not the most reliable arbiter of what passes for entertainment or recreation in our society. Because for me, spending time of any significance in a shopping mall is simply not an option. Even as teenager I didn’t care for it, well except for maybe going to Spencer’s Gifts and checking out the posters of Linda Carter or Marcia Brady or the gals from "Charlie’s Angels". Yeah I know, different time, before the Internet or 1-900 numbers or Girls Gone Wild videos…I mean, for us, there wasn’t anything hotter than "Summer of '42", the original cougar film. Or was she a MILF? No, she was definitely a cougar. I reckon now it would be about as titillating as “My Name is Earl”. Mall shopping is just wrong on so many levels – the homogenization factor (is there any noticeable difference between Old Navy, the Gap, and the Banana Republic? Actually, no, there isn’t; they’re all owned by the Gap, they’re just targeted to different market segments: business casual, preppy casual and slacker-stoner casual. But isn’t it all just Ts, hoodies, jeans and chinos? And Barnes & Noble and Borders are different how? Staples vs. Office Depot vs. Office Max vs.Dunder Mifflin? (just seeing if you’re paying attention. You might need a double tall Red Bull to get through this bit)); the shopping-as-entertainment phenomenon (the loud upbeat music, the flashing lights, the balloons and streamers - all you’re missing is the hot chick in the bikini dancing in a cage with the fog machine set on full-bore Golden Gate Bridge); the mediocrity of merchandise (it’s the contra-artisan movement, though you know the marketing boys will embrace this new buzzword, “our new artisan-made Air Jordans,” even if they’re still stitched by 11-yr old children in a Malaysian sweatshop. I guess 11-yr olds can be sneaker artisans; me, when I was eleven, I was trying to figure out how you could have two different Darrins on "Bewitched").

I’ve always steadfastly maintained that you don’t become a delinquent because of movies or images or TV shows or song lyrics (though reading “Tuned Out” in 6th grade didn’t help) but now…now I have to reconsider, what with “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” and “Confessions of a Shopaholic” raking it in at the box office. See, shopping is fun. And funny.

Queenstown could certainly do with a better driving range - it’s completely lacking in targets and visual appeal (plus you’re hitting off an Astroturf mat, not grass) – simply a big field with some flags stuck in the ground. The putting green is adequate and allows chipping. The gazebo behind the range doesn’t hurt a bit, but then I’m always OK with any gazebo, be it where it may. Any discussion of the range would be deficient without mentioning that we saw former Maryland Terrapin and NBA star Buck Williams taking a few swipes with the driver. Strong rebounder, not much of a golfer…

Set along the Chesapeake Bay, many of the holes on the River Course have wonderful views of the bay, sailboats and the majestic steel suspension bridge beyond. There are a number of lovely lakes and ponds, all kept in pristine condition with not a pesky goose in sight. Marshes meander through-out the course, with the cattails and reeds and grasses swaying innocently in the breeze, while herons and egrets stand one-legged in the shallows.

View of the Lakes course: #1 on the left, the 9th in the center
and the heavily bunkered #18 across the road

So besides the lovely views and the country-club conditioning, what else can you look forward to? Well, out of the 36 holes on the complex, 26 have some sort of lake, pond, marsh or swamp in play, often multiple times on the same hole. This being the case, Queenstown is a course that clearly needs to be attacked through the air to circumvent these various and sundry watery obstructions. So if there is a criticism of this first-rate facility, a lack of variety would be about the only one (besides the driving range). And it ties in with my observation about the increased difficulty of the post -modern golf course. In fact, Queenstown Harbor, while winning awards for its eco-centricity, is not for the faint of heart. These days when I arrive at Queenstown, sure, of course I’m still Joan Fontaine, but now I’m in “Suspicion”, another Hitchcock thriller, where the golf course is like Cary Grant – suave, dapper and charming, but you suspect some menace coming down the pike. Of the two courses, the Lakes is certainly no pushover but it's nowhere near as difficult or pretty as the River, which has to be one of the most challenging and scenic layouts in the area.

The Lakes starts out fairly benignly with two relatively straight-forward par fours, though there is a pond to the right of the first fairway and a narrow carry over a marsh on the tee shot of the second hole. It’s the fourth, a lovely classic cape hole wrapping itself around the lake on the right, which begins a maddening 3-hole stretch. The tee shot is visually daunting: you’ve got the lake in front of you and woods behind a seemingly narrow sliver of fairway which you can barely see beyond the lake. The water, oh, that you can see, all the way up to the green perched above the end of the lake. The tendency is to hit farther right than necessary on the tee shot because you’re somewhat concerned that you’ll knock it into the trees if you get a good piece. Ok, easy, cowboy. First off, the carry over the lake is not that big a deal, probably 180 yards. Second, there’s plenty of fairway before you hit the treeline. Third, it’s a par 5, and a fairly short one at that. Still, the tee shot here is one of those shots that seem to be made for the SkyCaddie, an electronic GPS gizmo which is supposed to give you distances to various trouble spots on the golf course, but mostly gives you green depth and that’s about it. Cool concept, lousy implementation. Well, Greg, if it’s such an easy hole, why have you never parred it? Hey, I’ll blame it on the mooks that yell “Fore” from route 301, just left of the teeing area. High-larious.

The next two holes are just pain-in the-ass scorecard-tarnishing difficult . At the fifth hole you get to cross the swamp twice while on the next one you need to cross the marshland off the tee, go past the trees on the right and then face a ridiculous approach to a peninsular green which juts out into another lake. You’ll be fortunate indeed to play the same golf ball through this trio of holes – they are that challenging.

The back nine of the Lakes is easier – besides the back-and-forth par 3s over the same pond, the lakes and ponds are all lateral hazards and really aren’t in play except for the most egregious misfires. As a bonus, you get a quaint covered bridge next to the pair of water-bound par 3s. Unfortunately, the closing hole of the Lakes course is a lackluster mundane offering, though one of the few legitimate chances for a birdie. The nicest hole on the back nine is the par 5 fifteenth, kind of reminiscent of a Pete Dye hole, with the lake on the right and a series of bunkers lining the sloped bank left of the fairway. All that’s missing is the trademark Dye waste bunker adjacent to the water. Pretty hole. I wish I had a photo. Oh well, my remarkably descriptive prose will have to suffice.

Between rounds, we grab a quick bite at the clubhouse, where you can get one of your better golf course hot dogs (or even a half-smoke, a local sausage/hot dog with some kick to it) – grilled until the skin is basically charred, the way it should be.

The River Course starts off with an attractive hole towards the bay with nary a bunker. For some reason the serpentine lake on the right gets a ton of action though there is plenty of room off the tee. A huge wide-crowned maple blocks the left side and there is OB up beyond, near the fence of the grand old farmhouse behind the oak. (Did I say maple before? Well it’s either that or an elm or a… well, it’s big and it has leaves) Up by the green you can see the bay right over the mounds. It was here that my buddy, Scott, holed out from the fairway with a 9-iron and without a hint of irony, asked Irish Denny if it was the right club. Gee, you think?

Then you come to just about the prettiest hole on the property, River #2 – an island-type par 3 surrounded and fronted by a collection of sand bunkers, with beautiful views of the bay. So why is the River course so friggin’ hard? I direct your attention to #4 – a dogleg right with not one, but two carries over water; #7 – a tree-lined par 5 with marshes affecting each shot to a wide green with tree limbs hanging over the opening; the 10th – a 440-yd monster typically into wind with a swamp jutting into the fairway just about where your second shot will land; #11 – a lake-lined par 5 with a nice approach over water to the tiered green; the scenic 14th with its views of the bay on the left, a lake on your right and a marshy estuary beyond the green and #16 – a peninsula par 3 over water from an elevated tee.

Your best chance for birdie is the wide-open shortish par 5 fifth, another hole with tremendous views of the bay from its lovely raised green complex.

And then we have the 18th – a great (and I mean great) par 5 with serious carries over marshes on your first two shots and featuring a lovely wildly undulating green tucked in a corner of the trees, with bunkers all around it. I have come to this tee, mentally and physically worn-out after 35 holes on two difficult golf courses, facing a long drive over the marsh and I have not exactly come up large. In fact, after dumping a couple of weak drives into the swamp I essentially turn into Johnny Fontane, blubbering that I can’t do it, I don’t know what to do. My boy slaps me like Don Corleone and says: You can act like a man! What’s the matter with you?

I end up dropping on the other side of the hazard after a few more feeble attempts because the groups behind us are becoming restless. The Don cuts me some slack when he deposits his 2nd shot into the next swampy ditch. Marshial law has been declared.

When it opened, Queenstown justified their higher prices by doing a great job spacing out tee times, meaning less foursomes per hour, which was definitely worth the extra few bucks - less waiting for the group ahead of you to clear and you didn't have the group behind you on your ass all day. But some bean counter realized that they could boost sales by squeezing in an extra 4-some per hour so it was golf per usual, with the typical waiting and hurrying along. Too bad, because it was a noticeable improvement in pace of play. It reminded me when basic cable first came out. Remember that? It was all going to be paid for by subscriber fees with no commercials. Hmm. Some suit said, "Well, what’re they gonna do, go back to rabbit ears and 4 channels? Eff em", and just like that, commercials we got.

The course has lost some cachet – partly by the arrival of grander competition – partly by subtle neglect. It’s not what it once was but it’s still really first-rate and a great way to while away 9-10 hours. Just don't expect to shoot a low score here because Queenstown will wear you down, even if you're in top form. Kudos to Lindsay Ervin for a thoughtful, attractive and challenging design.

River: 8
Lakes: 7

Twin Shields

Year Opened: 1969

Architects: Ray & Roy Shields

Web: www.twinshields.com

Phone: (410) 257-7800


It's the early 90s. Driving along the Beltway in post-rush hour traffic, I’m morose and maudlin (possibly a touch hung-over) after another attempt by my girl to serve me my walking papers, this after yet another alcohol-laced evening on my end, where I basically blew her off so I could get liquored up and watch a meaningless Monday Night Football game. I make another empty promise, something involving giving up the booze for good. To keep from being alone. There was some definite weeping and pleading, mixed-in with some beseeching and begging. Finally I pulled myself together and manned up with a box of Kleenex, some warmed-over quiche and a 90210 and Melrose Place mini-marathon. Somehow I’ve become the histrionic schoolgirl who gets all blubbery after finding out that her folks replaced her peanut butter & jelly with Nutella due to the latest peanut recall. Hey Nutella trumps peanut butter easy…it’s got that swanky nut…I forget what it is now, but it’s the swinging dick of nuts …right, got it now, the hazelnut. I suppose I should do up my hair in pigtails, just like when over-30 porn stars have to do those seduce-the-principal-during-detention scenes. I haven’t said a word as my boy maneuvers the Honda CRX along the Beltway, vying for a bit of lane space, veering across a couple lanes on our way to a round of golf. He’s nibbling at his vodka, a mix of Aerosmith, Prince and John Prine on the tape player. I’m knuckled down without a drink, annoyed at the music, the traffic, the whole damn scene. I just want to get to the golf course and get outta my effin’ head. And it’s still a l-o-o-n-g ways to go before we get to Twin Shields, out near Waldorf. I’m wondering if my saditude is from letting down my girl or not being able to drink in order to salvage said relationship. I mean, let's face it, she has moved on...that train has left the station, and I should accept this, but she does have that uncanny resemblance to seminal MTV VJ, Martha Quinn, dimples and all. See, the booze has pretty much always had my best interests in mind, and even though it will have me on my back on occasion, it will definitely have my back while I spend the next decade mourning and wondering where it all went to shit. And I have no idea who even played that Monday Night. But the girl still creeps occasionally into my dreams, either as a cautionary figure or a wraithlike wood nymph, lovely but unattainable. All things considered, getting drunk and watching a football game I don't remember (and probably couldn't care less about) seems like the right play, no?

I did not even consider that writing a blog is comparable to swinging a golf club, but it is, Blanche. Obviously I’d let the writing fester and stew over the holiday doldrums and after re-reading my last entry, oh it shows. Just like my golf game wobbles when I haven’t swung a golf club for a few months. That’s why I had to veto the golf trip next month to Kiawah and Hilton Head that my pals were planning for our respective 50th birthdays (with the economy in the tank we had to forego our original plan of the once-in-a-lifetime trip to Scotland). Golf is a hard enough game when you’re in mid-season form on your local muni; imagine standing on the first tee at Kiawah’s Ocean Course (allegedly the hardest course in the US, what with the forced carries, the lateral water hazards, Pete Dye’s typical pot-bunkered fiendish greens. and oh yeah, 25-30 mph winds off the ocean) after not having swung a club for four months. It would be like…oh I don’t know… providing background vocals for the latest family member’s Happy Birthday rendition, then trying to sing that Whitney Houston My Bodyguard song while that limey bastard l’enfant terrible, Simon Cowell, mocks you on national TV. Perhaps it's more akin to being a decent home cook and then competing on Iron Chef against some rock star uber chef with sea urchin as the mystery ingredient. Chef dude is making soufflés, grillades, risottos, etc. and I’m trying to figure out how to slice the sea urchin paper thin for a cold-cut sub.

Funny story. I was checking out my blogcounter (which basically let’s me see who’s checking out my blog - so far mostly family and friends with the occasional hit from Smolensk or Djibouti – and how they came across my site). One chap got to the blog by doing a Yahoo search for “dick hardeners” (a phrase I used in a recent blog). I have a feeling my blog is not exactly a panacea for erectile dysfunction, but hey, who am I to question how one gets aroused?

Finally, we turn into the Twin Shields drive, marked with an attractive emblem sign-gate deal. An oddity in the age of corporate golf management and star architect design firms, this course was designed by twin brothers Roy and Ray Shields, two self-made rakish hustler-types (at least that’s the image conveyed by their photos on the Twin Shields website) who worked at Hain’s Point in the the late 1930’s and 1940’s, and later moved to Annapolis to work at and then purchase the 9-hole Annapolis Roads Club. After WWII, they returned to Annapolis and brought the long-neglected course back to respectability. Then in the 50s they leased the 9-hole White Flint golf course and later in the decade they purchased the afore-reviewed Glenn Dale golf course and helped renovate it to its present layout and semi-stature. In 1968 they purchased 300-acres of tobacco farmland (no wonder cigarettes keep going up in price – the old supply and demand conundrum. Hold on there, cowboy, what conundrum? There’s no real demand except from me and a handful of other mostly disgruntled service industry workers so I guess the closing of one tobacco farm probably doesn’t have much to do with pricing or really much of anything at all, now that the only place you can legally smoke is…your car, unless you’re in Virginny or the Carolinas, where the non-smoker workers huddle outside in the cold during breaks. That is until this week, when Virginia caved.

Once you get to the Twin Shields parking lot you realize this ain’t Barack Obama country. Lots o pick-up trucks and Joe the Plumber types milling around the putting green with corduroy camo hunting vests, and fishing poles wedged into their golf bags instead of a 3-iron, which, based on my spotty success with that club, isn't that bad a play. But how often do you get an octagonal snack stand/bar? The pro shop is housed in a shack resembling an old Western general store, with a railing in front for hitching up your steed.

There are a lot of things I like about this low-brow family-run course, including the 8-sided snack stand perched above the attractive be-fountained lake with a pleasant arboreal island accessible by a wooden bridge, and the striking stone Twin Shields logo tucked in the hillside behind the lake.

View of the 9th fairway with lake, island and logo

Golf wise, you’ve got three par 3s over water, some blind tee shots, a virtually drivable par four (the uphill 90-degree left 16th hole) and some tough par 4s where the lake definitely plays a prominent penal role.

So one resolution I made this past New Years Day was that I would expand my social circle. This shouldn’t be too difficult since it’s not even a circle now, really more of a social dot. So expansion to like one of those small circles certain people use to dot their i’s seems doable. I doubt my boy and me will be sharing some tapas and an indie film with Clem and Luke after our round is done, so ok, here we go, alright... first, I’ll actually respond to the e-mails sent occasionally by my few remaining friends, let's say, within a week's time, no later. So let's see, my social circle is now like a deuce cubed. Else what? Join a writer’s group? A golf league? No, veto. Between work, lunch at the local Chinese buffet and 6 hours a day watching “Law & Order” re-runs or NBA doubleheaders, I don’t see how I can possibly manage a real friendship. But a virtual friendship, oh that I can handle. Rattle off some e-mails during commercial breaks and sit back and watch the emotional payoff kick-in.

I mean, my girl told me her bizarre cousin joined Facebook and has…oh...I don’t know…like 700 friends. But somehow she eats dinner alone every night. She doesn’t actually see any of these friends, apparently they just type at each other endlessly. And if you luck out and somehow a friend of a friend thrice removed sees Lindsay Lohan at a club during one of her jags, you get to call her entire network your friends. Wow, hey, now I’m pals with Shannon Doherty, crazy lopsided eye and all. Apparently, still plowing the Bill Simmons field, even though it’s been tilled and reaped to almost Dust Bowl conditions. If I really want to get down with it, I’ll add the Twitter feature so I can know exactly what you 700 cats are up to at any given moment. Hey Stavros, you’re getting your oil changed? ‘Scool, dude. Mimi’s getting a haircut, that little scamp. Me, oh nothing much, just checking out plumprumps.want.

So some random thoughts about the Inauguration, which was a pretty big deal here in the DC Metro area…loved seeing that arrogant condescending prick Cheney in his wheelchair, looking all Dr. Strangelove on his way to Argentina to see if any old-time Nazis are still kicking it old school in some underground bunker, though truth be told, our boy doesn't really need to fly to another continent for the companionship of some simpatico fascista.

The somber tone of Obama’s speech seemed about right, especially on how we need to all sacrifice and pitch in. First thing I noticed when the event ended was how much trash there was all over the Mall. I mean, people, c’mon now. OK, I’ll begin doing my part…starting…right... NOW. That evening I was working a hotel gig in Virginia for the Inauguration and while hanging out in a room next to the hotel ballroom, I couldn’t say for sure, but I could swear the DJ was playing the “Electric Slide”. Nah, no way, that was so 1989, and went back to working on my crossword. Finally I walked into the ballroom and no mistake, oh it be, the Electric Fucking Slide and there they were - a handful of people dancing the requisite line dance. How can this be happening? I mean, this has been going on for over 20 years. Why won’t it die? This dance groove is beyond a cat with nine lives or the regenerating hydra from Hercules, it’s bordering on being like something Undead, harder to kill than...uh...hmmm...I'm terrible at these analogies. Harder to kill than Rasputin is the obvious go-to move but it's not remotely entertaining. Harder to kill than, uh...god, my head hurts.

The sad truth is that the folks on the dance floor honestly seem to be enjoying themselves while me, I grimace and condescend from the sidelines. What am I so afraid of? That I might actually get pleasure from the comforting conforming shimmy and shake? Maybe in some strange final irony I would find true joy by embracing the conventional – I’d be able to, at long last, appreciate the subtle restrained nuances of a Will Ferrell performance, I could get a dog and stop strangers and discuss the charms of little Puddles straining at his leash while sharing a cathartic conversation about the weather, the price of gasoline or last night’s Dancing with the Stars; later maybe I’d actually join some co-workers for a good-time lunch at some local chain restaurant, be it TGI Fridays, Ruby Tuesdays, Bennigans or Applebees (really, is there any difference here?), hell, maybe you’ll even find me at the local big box church on some Sunday morning, praising and warbling and extolling the mysterious virtues of the Creator. I mean, let's be real, it’s not like I’m a real rebel – I drive a Corolla, smoke Marlboro Lights, drink Starbucks coffee and used to knock off Budweiser by the case – so clearly somehow I feel a need to fit in. But the Electric Slide? Does my reconnecting with my fellow humans have to involve the Electric Slide? Isn't it really just a gateway drug to the next dance fad – the Cha Cha Slide, the Lambada, the Macarena, god forbid, a Conga Line?

In the words of Dennis Miller, “Man, I’m at the edge of the precipice here, I think I’ll just pivot and jete back to Coolsville”.

No need to get to Twin Shields early – there’s no driving range and the putting green is pretty lame, just a big round flat circle with some holes. Though sure, you always have the octagonal bar.

The octagonal snack bar next to the putting green

Now that we’re here, I half-heartedly hit some putts, thinking the whole time I wouldn’t mind a cold beer at yonder octabar. I know, I know…I promised my girl. But I’m kinda annoyed and I’m kinda thirsty. Hey, she knew I drank when we first got together, when I’d bring home sacks of groceries and bottles of wine, cases of beer and we would laugh and dance, play some ping-pong, watch the Red Sox; though maybe, just maybe it bugged her that after she’d go off to bed, I’d stay up for hours, listening to my depressing break-up music (the Smiths, Janis, Leonard Cohen, the Cure, the Call) while lighting cigs off the one flickering candle. Occasionally a glass would break. Sometimes I would fall. Or knock over a bookshelf. I guess I see her point. This time, as I order the first one of the day, will be different. Praise god I’m cured.

Once you get going, the first hole, a straight-ahead downhiller, has nothing much going for it besides the flock of pines short and right of the green. On your way around the course, you’re not going to get much in the way of fairway bunkers though the greens are well-protected by a combination of bunkering and water hazards. The hardest hole (and the funkiest) is the 4th – a quirky dogleg left with a second shot over a watery gully to a skinny opening between the trees that reveal the green off in the distance. The tee shot is tough – the fairway seems to get tighter the farther you hit it, and even if you put it in a reasonable position, there are over-hanging tree limbs if you’re a wee bit off on your approach to the green, which also has a big drop-off if you miss to the right.

The next hole might be the prettiest, a shortish par 3 over water from an eye-catching elevated tee.

The par 3 fifth hole. Nice

Other than that, no great shakes on the front, though the 8th is a decent uphill par 4 shorty that actually has a fairway bunker or two to navigate. The ninth is a serious golf hole, gently curving left around the lake, with yet another pond on the right if you try to bail too much on your approach (or lay-up). More pines overlook the vast putting surface. Tough par. Easy triple.

Number 10 is a fine way to start the back side, with the lake and its accompanying island and wooden access bridge on the left and more water lurking further along on the right. The green sits up high, slightly to the left, flanked by pine trees and an old barn.

The backside features the almost-drivable uphill sixteenth but any misses left will leave you a tough pitch amongst trees to a shallow green. The smart play is a lay-up to the right side of the fairway, leaving a short shot in.

The closing hole requires an accurate right to left drive over a small creek with a lake in play if you don’t work your ball left. Try to cut the corner and trees will knock your ball into the creek.

A nice once-in-a-while break from the upscale experience. It’s a pleasant little track with some quirky holes. For what it is, it’s quite decent, though not particularly noteworthy, plus it’s a pretty fair hike out here.

I give it a 5. I'd probably ponder this rating a bit longer but I'm running late for my Electric Slide dance class. I'll betcha I'll make all kinds of new lifelong friends there; maybe this spring we'll even take in a ballgame and do The Wave...

Good times.

Glenn Dale

Year Opened: 1958

Architect: George Cobb

Web: www.glenndalegolfclub.com

Phone: (301) 262-1166

If you have happened to wander onto this page, you can basically surmise, not incorrectly, that booze has featured prominently in my existence and you would not be remiss in gleaning that the back-end hitting-bottom revolving-door detox days weren’t even vaguely a stroll in the park. But trust me; I wouldn’t have done it for as long as I did if there hadn’t been some serious big-time soul-enhancing mind-expanding payback of just pure plain mad-cap devil-may-care fun. I might be insane but I’m not crazy. And let me tell you, rambling off to Glenn Dale in the old bomb-ass Buick Regal with my boy and stopping off at Tic-Toc Liquors to pick up some adult beverages for the ride to the course was one of those times. Another time was that night’s Letterman. Another time was next morning. Then there was the night my boy got this trivia board game, something to do with guessing when famous people died. We peeked at the rules, decided to ignore them, and made up our own game, adding up the total years we were off from the actual year of a person’s death. We were pretty much even-up until my boy got dealt people like JFK, Hitler, John Lennon and Roberto Clemente; while I got Mozart, Hannibal, St. Francis of Assisi, Shakespeare and Nostradamus. Nostradamus? Are fucking kidding me? I’d be lucky to guess the year of his death to within half a millenium. So my boy jumped to such a big lead that he would have had to pick like…I don’t know…Noah or Sun Tzu or Aristophanes or something and I would have to be dealt Martin Luther King, Janis Joplin, Marilyn Monroe or somebody else I could nail within a year or two. When I was dealt Nostradamus my boy lost it, literally falling out of his chair (though that could have been the 2nd fifth of Absolut doing its thing). There’s no way you do this if you’re not drinking, right? I suppose you could play a board game when sober, but what’s the point? I mean you can read or check out your Tivo for any “The Office” reruns, or Google Jessica Alba websites or....take a nap whilst “reading”. Another drinking highlight back near the tail end of my semi-enjoyable drinking days was the annual Fantasy Baseball draft in Jersey but that gets its own blog entry.

Theoretically it wasn’t a long drive out to Glenn Dale, not like we needed a cooler or nothing to keep our drinks in order, just enough to take the edge off the previous evening’s proceedings (wait,we’d already taken care of that bit of business a mere few hours earlier) but the drive took longer than it should have -we had difficulty finding the place (this is the pre-Mapquest 1990s) and our somewhat befuddled state didn’t help, because either we couldn’t understand our back of an envelope scribbling or we were more fucked-up than we imagined. OK, now I understand what the folks were saying about the whole not drinking and driving deal – Christ, I hit a pot hole, and my drink went all over the front seat (the Regal circa 1983 did not come with cup-holders).

Something about this place conjures up memories of inebriation. You think? Maybe it’s the afternoon we spent sitting in the clubhouse bar, watching people making their approaches onto hole #9. It had to be the booze because it doesn’t sound even remotely captivating, and I was there.

As far as practice facilities go, umm, well, there is a bar. I’ve never tried putting in it. There is some elevation change between the bar and the restroom, which is downstairs. There you have it: concise and loaded with information. One of the tenets of my personal mythology…er…mixology…

Lately there’s been a bunch of nasty terror business in the Indian city of Mumbai. Very disturbing, obviously, but not nearly so much as my not knowing that Bombay had changed its name. And not just in the past month, but about a decade ago. Yikes. I know I’ve been out of touch with the world but wow, man, that just mumbed me out. Remembering a globe as a kid in the 60s – foreign, far-off strange-named wondrous places like Peiping, Tanganyika, Ceylon, and the Congo of Stanley and Livingstone, running my small fingers along the raised globe’s ridges of the Himalayans and the long length of the Andes, hearing my parents talk of their homeland, Ukraine, and something about the Austro-Hungarian Empire but the globe didn’t back-up their take, sure there was an Austria and a Hungary and a Ukrainian S.S.R. but no empire. I tried to find Victoria Falls, seeing it finally in an oddly named White Rhodesia (what did that mean, I mean sure, I’d seen Tarzan movies and Africa was pretty much lions, crocs, some quirky monkeys, Tarzan, Jane and a bunch of wide-eyed dancing grass-wearing face-painted darkies that were pretty much always boiling water in a cauldron to cook-up Tarzan or some other valiant white-skinned folk) so sure it made me wonder but not very much. Perhaps it was nothing more or less than a color like the Red or Black Sea or the Yellow River or the Blue Nile but still, it raised some doubts, but not enough to keep me from listening to the Gap Band’s “You Dropped a Mumb on Me”. And the globe kept changing - Peiping became Peking then Beijing. East Pakistan: Bangladesh. That was some bad karma there. And so on.

And you wonder why I didn’t turn to the bottle earlier? Fascinated by a…globe?

It’s a good thing Bush/Cheney didn’t stay in office another term or the globe would have to be reworked yet again: Iraq would become, oh I don’t know, East Virginia with a capital city of Bushdad. Now that I’m all growed up I understand the conceit behind the White Rhodesia/Black Rhodesia deal. It’s racial. Just like that holiday chestnut, "White Christmas". I imagine some folks here wouldn’t mind something along these lines, like you’d have White Georgia, which would be basically all of Georgia except Atlanta and the caddyshack at Augusta National.

Back to yesteryear’s news…

On Black Friday there was a bit of unpleasantness around the nation: an employee crushed in a stampede at Walmart and a double shooting at Toys R US ( when they typed up the police report I wonder if they used backwards Rs for “murder”?) There’s only one reason you can even remotely have a stampede at a Walmart. And that’s if Natalie Portman and Marisa Tomei are in the employee lounge, making out in see-through teddies. Wait, I doubt Walmart even has an employee lounge. I’m seeing a pattern here and I’m gonna have to lay off reading ESPN.com’s Bill Simmons, a very funny writer whose references typically veer to either a) silly television like 90210 or The Real World b) Internet porn c) his college apartment-living days and d) The Shawshank Redemption. Though once in a great while he’ll surprise you with a David Foster Wallace reference. Why Black Friday? Is that supposed to be a good type of Black vs. Black Monday, which I think was kind of a bad scene back in the late 80s, though it didn’t affect me even a little bit, as lowly leveraged as I was? Shouldn’t Good Friday really be the true Black Friday? And shouldn’t Black Friday be called what it is – The Friday After Thanksgiving. If you choose to use your hard-earned off day to set an alarm to traipse in a mall to dig up a Christmas present for Uncle Bucky, well, I feel for you. Everyone knows the only true day suitable for Christmas shopping. It’s called Christmas Eve. Setting an alarm on your day off? To go shopping? I’d rather go to work. In a coal mine. Well lemme think that through. Punch-in vs. driving in traffic? Punch-in in a TKO, easy. Descending down tram into mineshaft vs. circling mall endlessly for parking. This one’s a tougher call but yep, mineshaft it is. OK, chop, chop, chop vs. shop, shop, shop. Another tough call. On one hand you’re in the dark, the claustrophobia element, you can’t breathe and you’re basically mind-numbingly chopping at rock all day until lunchtime, which is a pickled egg and a mayonnaise sandwich.. On the other you’re being jostled by people and strollers, you’re looking at crappy merchandise, chicks are spraying you with the new Calvin Klein cologne, Apathy, all while listening to “Granma got Run over by a Reindeer”. But let’s be real, mining has to just plain suck, though you can probably kinda stay in your own head. The not-breathing part’s a pretty big negative, I guess. But it’s real close. I suppose with shopping you can always leave, if you can remember where you parked your car.

After one particular round at Glenn Dale, we had a few hours to kill before heading off for our respective evening plans so we perched above the ninth hole and watched the groups approaching the green while knocking back a few cocktails and smoking some cigs. We made a pact that we’d leave as soon as someone reached the green in regulation. 4 and a half hours later we stumbled out. No one even came close to hitting the green. I guess after playing the hole (an uphill 400-yarder) it was pretty obvious that the odds of anyone hitting the green in two were pretty slim. If we wanted to drink ourselves into a twisted state (and we did) we should’ve just gone ahead and got to it but then again, we liked making up silly “games” while we were drinking. One of my favorites was: I’m only going to drink on weekends, or…no more than a 12-pack on working nights..or…no drinking before noon on weekends or…no drinking while actually at work but I was always able to tweak the rules in my favor so basically I would head for blackout every chance I had. What a juicehead. Naturally my beat-up old Buick wouldn’t start and I called out from a job I’d stopped going to a month ago. This is who? Man, ish Greg and my car won’t shtart so I cain come in shuday. OK. Duly noted. But you haven’t been here for a month. Please don’t call here anymore.

In between the inebriated excursion out and drinking the heart out of a fine fall afternoon there is a decent golf course with some quirky holes, a few true tough ones and the rest - a whole lot of je ne sais I could care less.

The first hole tee box, next to the historic Georgian manor house, is one of your better ones, with a dramatic downhill tee shot off the high plateau of the teeing area. Avoid the strand of trees on the left and try to put a smooth swing on it since there is a tendency to want to crush one from the high perch above the fairway. You don’t need to crush a drive (that should be saved for the brutal third hole) but given the setting and the situation I have seen some vigorous, quick and mostly ineffective swipes at the ball. It just makes you want to kill it.

After the short second with its funky-contoured green we get to the third, one of the most difficult par fours in the area, where water definitely comes into the mix. Number 3 has always given me difficulties because I don’t nail my drive, leaving me an awkward distance to go for the green just on the other side of the lake. Hit a decent drive and you will have about 150 to carry the lake. The same lake comes into play on the next hole, a left bender around the water. The rest of the nine is pretty much ho-hum until hole # 9, a long dogleg right par 4 with a really tough green and a fairway bunker that dissuades you from trying to cut too much off the right side. I like this hole. You par this and you’re doing alright. Sure it probably cost me a dozen brain cells but let’s face it, those brain cells were doomed one way or another when the sun came up that morning.

After the rolling straight-forward uphill-approach tenth, you get a breather with the downhill dogleg left 11th. The hardest hole on the inward nine is the 13th, which is a very tight uphill par 4 with a lake to contend with (well, hopefully not really, but it gives you something to mull over)' not much fairway and a contentious uphill approach to a largish back-to-front sloping green. The last two holes are short dogleg lefts which are a bit gimmicky but basically OK. From the back tees, 18, which is a par 5, comes out of a narrow chute. If you can manage that you can hack your way up to the green in two. There are some challenging shots on the course and it can be an enjoyable though not exactly inspiring place to while away an afternoon. And while it away we did.

A step below Enterprise – I guess it’s a 4.5

And now off I go to an AA meeting, wistfully thinking about a Mumbai Sapphire martini.