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October 26, 2005 |
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Castle Pines. It’s the Front Range’s golfing Valhalla, home to the International Colorado’s lone PGA tournament and supposedly our Mile High States most exclusive golfing enclave. And I was going to golf Castle Pines. It was a hacker’s dream come true. Jamie Hamilton had been rained out of the International pro-am back in August. As a make-up, he was awarded a free pass for a foursome to play Castle Pines before it closed for winter. The season was scheduled to end last week, Jamie couldn’t make it and gave me his tee time allowing Jan and I along with friends Sal and Greg Schaefer to experience golf’s Rocky Mountain Taj Mahal. Imagine, me hacking away tee to green on the same turf where Tiger and company earned their daily bread. I was as nervous as Bill Clinton at a Promise Keepers rally. Pulling up to the bag drop with no attendant in sight, I opened the tailgate on our mini-van. Out of the blue he appeared, “May I help?” “Sure” I replied, “Where do you want us to park?” “Uhh” he mumbled staring wide-eyed inside our geezer mobile at the Jed and Ellie May Clampett like assemblage of golf clubs, suitcases and a cooler that housed refreshments on the drive from Grand Junction, “Are you sure you’re at the right place?” After some discussion, he was convinced we weren’t actually scheduled at the Franktown Putt-Putt. Again I asked where the car should go. “Oh I’ll get that” was the reply. “Well” I said, “The car is yours as soon as I change shoes.” “No worries” assured the attendant, “use the locker room.” “Now he tells me”, ran through my cranium while standing helplessly wearing one street and one golf shoe. “Just a second” I assured the attendant and proceeded to change the other shoe while parked in the middle of the main drive at Castle Pines like it was Adobe Creek at 7 a.m. on a Saturday, while some guy in a Mercedes; he’d pulled in behind, stared in dis-belief at the scene in front of his bumper. Finally we were underway. At Castle Pines every foursome is assigned a forecaddy. Ours was Brian. His role was to tell us where to hit our drives to achieve optimum effectiveness for the second shot. Then, we waited to tee off while Brian ran a couple of hundred yards down the fairway. When he stopped, we whaled away. Those swings were followed by Brian running into the woods to find the ball, which never stopped anywhere close to the suggested location. What a wonderful caddy. Brian always found our ball no matter how deep in the forest it flew and it was always sitting where we had an open shot. Amazing! Only once had I experienced golf with a caddy. Back East for a wedding, the father of the bride invited me to play the Westchester Country Club. There, a Jamaican fellow was on my bag. Again being nervous and not playing well, every time I swung the club the caddy would mournfully intone, “Oh dot so sod man, so very, very, sod.” Hearing “dot so sod” after every swing eventually erodes your confidence after the first one hundred or so shots. At least it did mine. But Brian was terrific, giving us distances to the hole, keeping clubs clean, reading greens and toweling off our golf balls before putts. Golfing with a caddy was so cool. I suggested to Jan she monitor Brian and caddy for me at Bookcliff. She gave me “the look” while saying, “Dot’s so sod mon, dot’s so very, very sod.” |
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