- Restaurants |
- Nightlife |
- Shopping |
- Movies |
- All
Pine Forest Golf Club
- Good for Kids:
- Yes
1 review for Pine Forest Golf Club
A long drive for a little golf and short trek for a journey way back in time.
Golf = Two Stars. I've experienced better, even at this course.
Nostalgia = Four Stars.
So I haven't played the course in over seven, maybe eight years. Just playing here holds a little nostalgia of it's own. Of course it was in better condition then. Numerous floods and economic deprivation from competing courses (first Colo Vista and now Wolfdancer) have really taken its toll here. But nostalgia has a funny way of building things up in your memory to a size and shape they never quite are or were in reality. So maybe my fondness makes this course stronger in memory. We played many a long summer round of 18 here, mostly early mornings but occasionally afternoons too. Always too hot but the heat takes a distant second to the humidity. Buggy as hell too. It's right on the river after all. I distinctly remember my first time playing Blind Wolf, not knowing the rules, declaring "Blind Wolf" on the tabletop par 3, 3rd Hole and subsequently stealing the game right there. The downhill/uphill 4th hole where you don't want to shank one short and right because the guy living there lets his dog out as soon as you do. Always curious to me why Golf Haters live on golf courses. I remember heavy mist in the early mornings hanging over all the trees; feeling like I needed to whisper. I remember a winter round. We were a twosome. The only other souls were eight guys there for an obligatory bachelor party outing -- a miserable forced march for all of them and not just the groom-to-be. A lightning two hour and forty minute round for the two of us. I hit a couple shots that not only stung every extremity but rung the tuning fork in my solar plexus that 31 degree day but we shot some lights out numbers on the score card.
And today my buddy declares on the 4th that in his estimation this hole hearkens back to one of the most memorable single holes of golf ever; a Tin Cup, rapid firing of five balls into the tree line, shirt ripped off, one minute melt down for me that still has people rolling with laughter. Oh, the Hollywood Sweat. Thank my buddy for bringing Tecate and limes even though coolers are verboten. I was able to regain my composure and march on for the other 14 holes that day.
That's as far back as my buddy's time machine would go. His six year old son putting a mile post on his own chronological chart today, perhaps only the hot dog will survive in his memory although it might survive in his colon for at least a few years. My nostalgia kept traversing back even further though. The smell of a pine forest taking me back to my Army days in the Carolinas. The smell of gasoline exhaust from golf carts and the high rev on engines with no governors taking me back to my teen years sitting in the caddy shack waiting to get out for the day. The squishy sound of saturated ground beneath my heals and the odor of mucky river detritus taking me pretty much as far back as I can remember to the cottage by the lake where the family would take fishing trips in the summer.
And then there's the fact that this is so far back off the highway that you quickly forget all of the modern expansion you've just passed through in the middle of Bastrop. You pass over roads so old and sun-baked the asphalt has caramelized. All the street names are Hawaiian. Perhaps because Hawaii was very cool and trendy back in the 70's. I distinctly remember a lot of out-of-focus slide shows featuring Honolulu at my great aunt's house from that era and she was a traveling hipster back then. These woods are a shrine to A-Frame architecture. The inhabitants deserve government grants for either sweltering through the summers or paying their four figure cooling bills in the spirit of keeping these triangular monoliths in tact instead of doing the logical thing by tearing them down and replacing them with something more energy efficient. And much like the houses, all the same trees still stand but they guard the greens from so many of my approach shots and hopefully they always will.
One Hundred Eleven degrees, Eleven holes and Thirty Seven Years back in time was about the limit today.
On the roller-coaster ride back out to the highway there was some vintage Pretenders and Eagles playing as if the FM radio had traveled through time with me.
I got a thorough fix -- not of golf but of nostalgia. For golf I will play a better course much closer to home. For nostalgia, well, I probably won't need to go back for another four or five years now.