Explaining a man crush on a golf course architect

I first became aware of the name of Tom Doak in the early 1990s when I was living in Charlotte, North Carolina.  At that time, Charlotte had something of a golf course shortage, and playing a decent course usually meant a drive of about 30-45 minutes from where I lived in the suburb of Mint Hill.  That changed when the Charlotte GolfLinks opened just south of town, leaving me a drive of just about 15-20 minutes.  I was so pumped to play it that the day it opened I had the third tee time of the day.  I loved the way the course, despite being brand new, looked like it had been there forever.  Turns out that is the hallmark of most courses designed by Tom Doak.  He is a traditionalist and believes in simplicity in design.  He has become well-respected in the industry, and his most well-known design is Bandon Dunes in Oregon.  Doak is also an author, having written the Confidential Guide to Golf Courses, in which he critiques golf courses around the world.  Back in the mid-90s, I bought one on sale for about $20 or $30 at Jo-Beth Books.  They now sell on Ebay for hundreds of dollars at times.  I still have mine at home. 

When we first started planning this trip and decided to make New Zealand one of our first stops, I had hopes of playing Cape Kidnappers.  It’s a Tom Doak design on the North Island just south of Napier.  I knew we’d be going to Napier since the town features a great collection of Art Deco architecture as most of it was destroyed in a powerful earthquake in the 1930s and was rebuilt with one of the preeminent design styles of that time period.  Cape Kidnappers was built along spectacular fingers of land that jut out into the ocean and the fairways look like they are melting down the sides of the bluffs and cliffs.  

It also comes with a frightening price tag of over $400 for a non-New Zealand native.  Once we booked a cottage in Napier and I had a definitive set of dates for our stay there, I sent Cape Kidnappers an email.  I laid out the details of our trip, how I was a serious admirer of Tom Doak’s work, and how I was blogging about playing golf around the world.  With that, I also asked if there was any way I could get the local rate or any sort of price break.  During our stay in Napier, I never got a reply, so I figured my request had been ignored.  Turns out that wasn’t the case.  Once we had taken the ferry to the South Island, I got an email saying they could offer me a media rate of about half of what the non-New Zealander rate was.  That was a body blow, kind of like that cheap shot block Hines Ward laid on Keith Rivers a few years ago.  Despite my disappointment, I figured at the time that somehow, it would lead to a memorable experience down the road.

With Cape Kidnappers and New Zealand a memory, I played my first golf in Australia in Lorne.  It’s a town on the coast along the Great Ocean Road, about an hour or 90 minutes southeast of Melbourne.  Lorne Country Club is a nine hole track carved into a hillside with some nice ocean views.  The first view you get is from the first tee, looking back toward the ocean and the beachfront at Lorne. 

The second one you get is on the approach shot to the par-five first hole.

That view was the first time I pulled out the sacred BANGERT golf ball, the personalized Titleist NXT Tour ball I brought with me on the trip, with high hopes of making it all the way around the world and back home.  It was the first time Annie played golf on the trip and we enjoyed walking the simple, yet well cared for course.  Being built on the side of a hill, there were several holes where your tee shot had to be aimed at the higher part of the fairway, knowing the slope would bring it back toward the fairway.  A nearby course in Anglesea boasted of being home to several kangaroo, but we saw none of them at Lorne Country Club.  And I've seen what geese and their droppings can do to a golf course, I could only imagine the impact kangaroo hopping around would have.  

The only wildlife to speak of was a kookaburra bird we saw near the fourth tee.  It appeared that at one time or another there was some wildlife of the human variety as there was a small wooden structure at the fifth tee with a sign saying Maudie’s Bar. 

Maudie was nowhere to be found, and with nothing but our imaginations to toast her memory, I hit one of my best tee shots of the day on the hole, a downhill par 3 of about 110 meters or just over 121 yards, one of the prettier holes on the course. 

My rental clubs were a variety of off-brands, including a three-wood and five-wood, a 3,5,7 and 9 iron along with a sand wedge and a putter that looked like it had called a mini-golf course home at some point in its existence.  

I pured the 9 iron, and the BANGERT ball landed on the front of the 5^th green and spun back just onto the fringe.  It left me a putt of about 25 feet, and for some reason, I really wanted that putt and sure enough that desire managed to guide the ball into the hole for my first birdie on the trip. I judiciously used the BANGERT ball the rest of the round with no peril at any point along the way.

The final few holes were fairly unremarkable until we got to the eighth green.  The ninth hole was up the hill to the right of the eighth hole, and to the right of the 8^th green was a sign with two sets of directions to the 9^th tee.  One set pointed straight up the hill, while the other pointed to the left and had the words "tow rope" on it.

Channeling our inner Magellans, we had to explore this!  The 9^th tee was about 50 to 60 feet up a fairly steep hill and a tow rope had been installed to aid in making the ascent.  There was an on and off button and a sign with some instructions for using the rope.   

Annie went first with me right behind her and we were doing just fine until we got to the top and a water bottle that was in a compartment at the bottom of her golf bag got tangled up in the tow rope!  Sensing immediate disaster, I told her to hit the red off button, thinking it was within easy reach, which it wasn’t.  I tried to untangle the bottle from the still moving rope while trying not to lose any fingers or other larger appendages, and she managed to stretch out one of her long, elegant arms out and mash the red “off” button just in time to avoid permanent or at least temporary injury. 

The experience closed out what was a memorable round of golf, our first, but not our last, in Australia.  Little did we know we had some Tom Doak in our future.