Early Winter 2017
Trip: Houston/Cabo/California
In early 2014, we joined the International Seniors Amateur
Golf Society (“ISAGS”), a group of old farts like us, age 55 years and older
(we very easily qualified) from all over the world. ISAGS runs a couple of major events per year
and devoted readers of this blog will recall our trip to South Africa in April
2015. This year, the destination was set
as Cabo del Sol at the southern end of the Baja Peninsula in Mexico. I had been to Cabo twice before (November
2013 and April 2016) while conquering various fearsome buckets lists and had
played 4 courses there, three of which had been included on one or more World
100 lists (Cabo del Sol-Ocean by Jack Nicklaus, Diamante-Dunes by Davis Love
III, and Querencia by Tom Fazio).
The ISAGS event would take about 6 days and we quickly
decided to visit Houston on the way, and several places in California after our
visit to Cabo (as I writer this epic piece of literature, we are about half way
through the trip).
With plans for a 5:50am (Pat had the same
reaction that you just had) on Thursday 1/19, we decided to stay at a hotel
near Raleigh-Durham Airport to avoid having to wake up around 2:30am. The flight went well except it was fairly
bumpy as we approached Houston…a harbinger of the weather we would see for the
next 2 days. The plan was to stay with
our friends Linda and Saul P. for two days, and play golf with them at Shadow
Hawk GC on Thursday. However, a mere
5.5” of rain the day before seemed to have affected playing conditions at
Shadow Hawk and it ended up closing till at least Sunday. I would have liked to play Shadow Hawk again
(have played it about 5-6 times) but it was not to be. Instead, we caught up with our goings on and
I got dragged to the mall to walk around and not do much. Could have been worse, might have spend some
$$.
SHGC opened in 1999 and was designed by Rees Jones. While it has not appeared on any World or USA
Top 100, it did host the USGA’s Mid-Amateur Championship in 2011. Saul and Linda joined SHGC around 2000 just
before Saul retired from Exxon Chemical, where he was National Sales Manager
for polyethylene. In the late 1990’s I
purchased literally hundreds of tons of polyethylene from Exxon and very much
enjoyed hondling Saul out of a penny or two per pound. Bring bright, honest and fair, Saul was fun
to deal with; that said, I am smart enough not to enquire if those feelings
went two ways.
Thursday evening we had dinner with Linda & Saul and
Tara & David W. (you will of course remember David, who took me around to
Bluejack National, Barton Creek, and Briggs Ranch during my last trip to TX in
late October and early November 2016.
David had set up Wolf Point Ranch for this trip. Was great to meet his bride and provide proof
to Saul and Linda that I am not the only golf nut in the world. Me thinks they now understand!!
Wolf Point Ranch, Texas, January 20, 2016: David picked me up at 6:15 Friday morning and we headed west
to Port Lavaca, TX with Leigh E., another Golf Digest rater and qualified
nut. This was Leigh’s first trip to
WR…David has been out to it several times.
The drive took about 2:30; Port Lavaca lies near the Gulf of Mexico
coast about half way between Houston and San Antonio. The weather was very overcast and the
forecast called for rain starting in the early afternoon, so some good luck
would prove necessary.
As we neared the property, the landscape appeared to be very
uninteresting (to put it nicely). The
terrain was dead flat and covered with limited scruffy vegetation. The golf course occupies about 250 acres (102
acres of mowed fairways!) in the center
of a 1200 acre cattle ranch (think of the cattle ranch as a “bagel” surrounding
the course in the center). As you drive
into the ranch (thereby crossing the bagel) the scenery does not exactly remind
one of the some of the beautiful settings of some of the world’s great
tracks. Golf Digest’s ratings system
allocates 12.5% of the rating to “Aesthetics”…so as we drove thru the cattle
ranch I kiddingly asked Leigh and David what their Aesthetics rating would be. However, once one gets to the golf course
itself, its natural beauty becomes obvious…including the way the outer limits
of the course “blend” into the cattle ranch.
There is an unusual beauty to this place that is similar to the sense of
beauty at The Old Course in St. Andrews and Sand Hills GC in the Nebraska
Sandhills.
The terrain of the golf course is not anything like the
surrounding property. A 12-13 acre lake
was created which impacts play on holes 1, 9, and 10. And the earth moved to create the lake was
used to create three rises on the property (the tallest of which is about 20’
high and is where the owner (Al S.) built his home right next to the 1st
tee…high enough to provide more than sufficient elevation to deal with a 100
year storm surge…and this is hurricane country). This course is as close to The Old Course in
many ways as any I have ever seen. Al S.
wanted a course he could play with his buddies every day and never get bored,
rarely lose a ball and the course he had built has the following attributes:
·
the fairways range from about 50 to 100 yards in
width;
·
there are 60 bunkers…of which only 7 are
“greenside” and more than half of the 60 are located within the fairways
(similar to The Old Course and RI’s Shelter Harbor from more recent times);
·
the greens are generally protected by “angles”
and “slopes”...come in at the wrong angle for that day’s pin position and you
will face a guarding upslope and/or run off downslope that will make it almost
impossible to stop your approach shot on the green, much less near the pin;
·
the greens cant to the left, right , back, and
front…and several have mounds (see photo of double green #8 and #18) and
crevasses that are hard to believe…deep and narrow to the point where they almost cannot be mowed;
 |
| Wolf Point 8-18 double green. Dew early in morning and our footsteps. Clearly Not a professional photographer!! |
·
the course was designed to be as fast and firm
as the true links courses of GB&I, even though the turf has no sand (sand was brought in from one of Al S.’s other properties);
·
a single winding creek (and its tributary) is
wonderfully utilized and affects play on 7 holes;
·
there are no “tee boxes”…just a series of
relatively small flat areas with no marking stones or tee markers (in fact,
there are no yardages on sprinkler heads or anyplace else…even the
scorecard)…you simply decide how you wish to play a hole and tee it up from the
appropriate spot
·
the capital cost (excluding land which already
belonged to Al S.) was about $3 million including architectural fees, drainage,
sprinkler system, etc.) and the annual maintenance budget is about $500,000;
·
the architect, Mike Nuzzo was fairly unknown
when he was selected for this job by Al S.; he is better known today but still
relatively unheralded; and
·
the fairways have bumps and rolls covering
almost very square inch (except for a few flat spots protected by
bunkering)…all “manufactured” by Nuzzo and his shapers…but all of which somehow
look natural even with the dead flat surrounding property.
We ended up playing 32 holes (2nd 18 cut short by
a strong burst of rain…which was followed by thunderstorms all the way back to
Houston). Before leaving we spent about
45 minutes with Don Mahaffey, who managed the construction process at WP and
has since served as Greenskeeper. To put
in simply, Don “gets it.” He truly
understands and is dedicated to the “firm/fast” philosophy as well as what a
golf club (although WP is not a club…it has always had one owner…first Al S.
and now Al’s widow Dianna) needs and does not need to operate efficiently as a
golf club.
Sadly, on July 30, 2016, Al S. passed away after suffering
injuries from a fall (while trimming a tree near his house on the property at
the age of 79). After a celebration of
Al S.’s life with a memorial tournament held shortly after his passing, the
course was temporarily closed to play while his widow sorted out how to go
forward. When we played it on January
20, 2017, we were the first to play it since early August…almost 6 months. Maintenance had been cut back to a bare
minimum, the course was not its usual fast and firm, and weeds were starting to
grow in the bunkers. However, there was
no doubt that it can (and will) be brought back to its normal condition in
short order. At that point, I hope to
return to enjoy it as it was intended to be.
WP plays to about 6600 yards from the back...but as with
golf in GB&I, it is the wind that determines play. It has never been on anyone’s top
100…especially since it is estimated that less than 1000 golfers have had the
chance to play it. I feel honored to
have joined that exclusive club. To
paraphrase what Bandon Dunes says, this is “Golf as it was meant to be”.
This was course #895 for me...and it is now Monday evening January 30....so I stand at 897. Next post will be about Cabo...and our 9 day stay.
