Links Wifh
И
Viem
Golf if i the North Carolina mountains can often he glorious,
but it most definitely has its 'ups and downs. '
By Tucker Mitchell
A view from the tee of the par-3 seventh hole at Linvillc
Ridge vividly illustrates the challenge of mountain golf.
There are few certain things in
golf, a difficult game played
with, as the avid-but-inept
British linkstcr Winston
Churchill once noted, ■imple¬
ments ill-suited for the task."
But if ever there was a certainty
we saw it that «lay on the Hound
Ears Golf Course near Boone. Our
carts chugged 'round a winding
path and stopped just behind the
tee for the 15th hole, which the
scorecard noted was a 1 10-yard,
par- 3. Now. that is not long as golf
holes go. not even for par-3s. which
arc the shortest of all goll holes.
But this 1 10-yarder was shorter
than most, for there, perhaps a
mile below the
!«*«•
(or s«>
seemed), sat the green.
Descending topography short¬
ens a hole or shot because, gener¬
allyspeaking (and given the nature
of golfers and the awesome variety
of shots that issue, “general" is
about the best you can do), golf
shots travel along a parabola. The
downward flight is not straigh
down but at an angle so that as the ball
descends it continues to gain ground.
The fui diet it can fall, the further it will
go. Hence, you can hit a ball further
downhill than up or even on level
ground.
Anyway, there we were. 1 10 vertical
yanls from tin* hole. Theie was a creek
in front, rhododendrons everywhere
and a couple of pretty sand traps behind
the green. But none of that mattered
because from where we were it appeared
as though even the most incompetent of
boobs could throw one on the green.
That proved to be not just a figurative
fallacy bin a literal one. But at the
moment we didn't know this. No one in
the group had ever played the course
before and this one looked like a cinch.
A gimme. A gift from the fickle gods of
the fickle game.
Player No. 1 confidently stepped to
the tee. waggled a 9-iron behind the IkiII.
swung and set his ball on a majestic
parabola. Down, down, down it went.
Down some more and then it disap-
pcarcrl with the distinctive crackle you
hear anytime a golf ball lands in bushes
that arc more than three feet high.
Our best estimates put the ball
roughly a mile over the green.
Everyone returned to the carts to
get a new club and then the second
player up t«»»k his turn, now wield¬
ing a sand wedge, the shortest club
in the bag. I le swung and produced
another soaring parabola which
sailed and sailed, though not quite
as far ; is the first. We saw it land. 20
yards behind the green, and
bounce into the towering "rhodos."
Player No. 3. obviously disturbed,
gave his sand wedge an almost im¬
perceptible Hick and sent his sphere
over tin- edge.
Overcompensation. It caromed
off an omnipresent
ин к
and land¬
ed in the fronting creek.
My turn. Having learned from the
re*st. I carefully took a three-quar¬
ters swijH- at the ball and produced
a nice high shot that soared high
al>ovc the green, then plummeted,
accelerating at the rate of 9.8 feet
per second (I remembered this
from physics clavs) as it fell By the
time it reached the sand trap behind the
green, it had enough velocity to escape
Earth orbit and consequently buried
itself deep into a silicon grave.
After staring at the still blank green l«>r
a few minutes, we all rettu ne«l to the < at l
for a new ball and began heaving them
at the green with our bare hands. But. as
mentioned, that is not so easy as one
might think. You can't throw a golf ball
half as far as you might imagine. All four
wound up in the creek, and we left the
tee knowing what we should have known
all along, namely that the only sure thing
Hew iwn> I* M.jS Unn
The Statr/Junc IW
21
