A Home Visit

My brother and I played the home course today, Countryside Gold Course in Roanoke, Virginia. The sun was golden and the pace was relaxed. With each shot and with each step, I was transported to a time when I was younger and would spend hours wandering the course chasing my ball or hunting for lost ones. I’ve never been a very good golfer, but I’ve always enjoyed the scenery that comes with searching for stray shots.

Each hole on the course has special places I seemingly always visit. The first hole allowed me to flirt with the tall grass by the old dead swimming pool. The apartments on number two are magnetic, and one of my golf balls was sucked into their vortex. The short third hole took me to the plum tree and gave up a startling surprise which I will share later.

On the fourth hole, I mimicked my oldest brother who used to accidently sport with the speedy cars on Interstate 581. The fifth hole gave me the woods on the right and the sixth- the marshy mess on the left. I did manage to almost hole in my chip shot. I communed with the creek a couple of times on the seventh while the eighth reintroduced me to the wilds beyond the old cart path on the right.

The ninth hole was special. I pegged the most amazing drive of my storied golf career. My ball landed dead center in the fairway beyond the dogleg. I quickly gave up and joined the sycamore tree beside the sand trap just short of the green on my second shot.

The back nine brought more special visitations. The tenth allowed me to monitor spring yard cleaning at the neighborhood on the right. I also enjoyed the sand trap on the left. On the eleventh, I channeled my older brother again and visited the tall weeds beyond the green on the left. The home hole, number 12-the one closest to the house I grew up in, always gives me fits, but today I mastered it, driving my ball past the right mound, then to the bottom, then onto the green with a short putt for a birdie. That’s when the green allowed me to experience its unique undulations.

The thirteenth took me to the tall grass where the old tree used to rest on the right. Not far from there a plane once crashed killing the two people onboard. Now a small plaque rests on the ground at that spot lovingly paying tribute to the mother and father who perished. Most golfers wouldn’t know the memorial is there.

The fourteenth relaxed today and let me pass unscathed. On the fifteenth, I enjoyed my stay in the fairway sand inn. At least I only spent one night, as opposed to my brother, who spent two.

The water hole tried its best to suck my ball into the murky depths, but it escaped and plugged in the usually tall grass on the back left of the green. Of course, the green then zipped my ball down toward the lake. Only a well-placed plop of goose poop kept the ball from sliding into the muddy water.

On the seventeenth, I explored new territory to the far right. Now, I’m usually one to lean far left, so this was an uncomfortable place for me to be. Enjoyably, I was able to play pinball with the pines on the left side of the eighteenth as we wrapped up our round.

As I mentioned 441 words ago, I made a shocking discovery on the third hole. As I was slowly strolling off the green, I happened to look up. There, above my head, strangled by the power lines that ran from a transformer on the frontage road to the Newbern Trane building behind the green, was a perfectly intact pitching wedge. Lodged in the wires thirty feet directly above the pin, it was poised like a water bucket atop a doorway waiting for the right moment to douse an unsuspecting visitor.

In the woods across the creek behind the thirteenth hole at my old golf course, Greene Hills Club in Stanardsville, there is a broken three wood lodged in the crotch of a tree. When I last saw the broken club over twelve years ago, it had been in that tree so long that the tree had grown around the shaft of the club. I wonder how long that pitching wedge will remain trapped in the power lines.