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 logoGolf 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. NiceNumber 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.
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