SANTE FE, NM – Forget “release the hounds” or “release the gnats” (if you believe Yankee fans; they think that’s what happened against the Cleveland Indians this year). No Eddie Peck is telling his greenskeeper to release the Velociraptors. Normally the mildest-mannered guy ever, Peck loves laying out the nooses at his grassy gallows of a golf course. He once had a hole location cut off the green in the fringe.
Well to paraphrase Minnesotan Julie…err…I mean Robert Zimmerman, I’ll send you postcards from the hanging, I’m painting the passports brown, the beauty parlor’s filled with sailors, the circus is in town. (That’s from Bob Dylan’s Desolation Row for those of you scoring at home…)
That’s right, this week I help Eddie Peck, John Frew and Kevin Sniffen of the Hamilton Group host the golf media to see one of the public golf wonders of the world – Black Mesa Golf Club.
The analogy to Dylan’s dark rock-‘n-roll hit is appropriate. Black Mesa versus golf writers is more like Gilligan’s Island with dinosaurs, they will get eaten alive, the passports were painted brown or any other color than green for go (the weather and American Airlines caused everyone’s six hour trip to because an exhausting nineteen hour ordeal, but we’re all alive for the moveable feast), the beauty parlor’s filled with sailors (the writers, grizzled bunch that we are have invaded) and yes, the circus is in town.
I remember my last trip to Black Mesa. It was roughly the same season, just on the other side of the calendar. Instead of being ten weeks away from New Year’s, on that occasion we were a mere ten weeks past New Year’s. While now winter is starting, then we were hoping it had just ended. Sadly, March came in like a werewolf, snow howling, ice lashing and wind ripping. It snowed, was sunny, rained and howled wind all in the first nine holes. Then the bitter chill set in and the back was played between shivers.
For its part, Black Mesa is Jurassic Park, it eats the patrons alive. “Big course, big medicine, it will kick your butt” reads the warning in the clubhouse, but iut should say “Hic sunt leones” – here there are monsters. Any hole is a razor-sharp-taloned, teeth-gnashing monster, whether a Tyrannosaur of a par-5 like the infamous sixteenth or a smaller carnivorous man-eater of a par-3 like the fourth. Bogey golfers can bunt their way around clinging to their game built on spit, popsicle sticks and duct tape, but woe to any golfer who gets greedy.
So without any further ado, just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale a tale of a fateful trip…
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