The Golf Links could be compared to a painters canvas. It’s essentially my life’s work, and given how nature is constantly changing it, I will always have work to do, to finish the painting. Recently I’ve really taken a liking to it’s naturalism. Almost it’s simplicity on the land. In golf and landscape design, they might call it, a sense of place. I’ve gone through years where I thought it needed to be bolder, more theatric…but lately I enjoy it’s topographic subtleness.
When you are out there at sunrise or sunset, the shadows are long and it almost has the appearance that very little dirt was moved at all. Almost as if the designers simply mowed out the fairways, greens and tees. It makes for a great walk because you are experiencing the land as it originally existed. Let me take it one step further. You could say the best routed golf courses are like that, here is how I know we have a more natural than most around here.
If there was no course here… WOULD YOU experience this property by walking 400 yards straight north, then turning around and walking 380 straight south, then turning around and walking 500 yards straight north, then turning around and walking 340 straight south, so why do people route a course like that?
Now imagine if you arrived in our parking lot, but there was no course, just natural land. You start in the corner, and your eye wants to see the lake. After that, you want to see where the creek that leaves the lake goes. So you follow that. Then you want to climb the hill in the distance, in a quest for the highest point. You turn around to begin your journey back, but the cemetery peaks your interest, and what is the deal with the old silo that still stands? You immediately start going in that direction. Just when it’s time to head home, you want to explore the woods, so you circle the entire outside to get a glimpse of what might have been inside. What makes this course the perfect natural walk, is because it’s exactly how you might explore if there was no course at all. Just another way to look at it, but it takes a special person to see.
