MMXXI - FEBRUARY

Feb 26 - Lebo 9

I snuck out and caught nine by myself before it got too dark. It was one of those afternoon’s where I had two internal voices arguing with each other. One said: just chill, it’s cold out, it’ll be too late by the time Jackie gets home, you are going out tomorrow anyways. The other said: it might rain tomorrow, you always let your lazy brain win, just gear up and go, you always regret when you don’t.

Usually my lazy brain wins, but I rallied. I put my winter golf gear in anticipation, still not fully believing that I would force myself to go out. I called Frosty Valley to see if they were still letting people on, and the kid said I had until 3:30. That wouldn’t cut it, Jackie was not going to make it back in time and we share a car. But they would be open the next day at 10:00 am.

I called Lebo. I love Lebo, and I would have no problem playing there every day, but I am also trying to knock as many courses off my Pittsburgh golf course list as possible. I checked in with Ben to see if he could skip out of work and pick me up, but no dice. He’s in the city and the drive is too far, the timing just out of reach. Lebo works. I love Lebo.

Jackie got home, I asked if she was cool with me sneaking out and I dipped.

When I arrived, the club house worker said I was the last one to play the course after the big winter snowstorms Pittsburgh had, an achievement that I was pretty proud of. He asked me my name again, I said Richter, and he said, “yep, here you are, last round in January.” They are slowly getting to know me. 

On the way in a guy smoking a cigar gave me a big grin and held the door for me. I love the smell of cigars, but I’ve never truly enjoyed smoking one. I spit too much from the heat, and I’m a former cigarette smoker, and I still smoke weed, so chewing on the smoke and not inhaling it is a challenge. I have tried to get into cigars in the past, getting them for my Dad and Brother at Christmastime, even though we would rarely get the opportunity to smoke them together. Often I would just chew on them. I even got Ben a pipe and some tobacco, a starter kit, thinking that maybe we would be pipe gentlemen… but honestly in my life the last thing that I need is another unhealthy addiction. Let it be golf.

I’ve been playing two balls when I go out alone or when it’s just Ben and I, as long as it doesn’t hold anyone up, which in the winter hasn’t been an issue. On this time out, very often when I hit a second ball it was only 10 yards away from the first ball. Consistency is great, but I don’t play a second ball if the first shot is good, so, yeah. I like to play a matte yellow ball, but I’ll play a different color for a second shot. Either a trash white ball that I found, or a different color altogether. 

Turning around to tee off on 3 I made eye contact with a guy chipping balls in his backyard. His yard butts up against the golf course. We exchanged hello’s and he asked how I was. I raised my arms to the sky and said, “Great now!” He said something about feeling lighter. “It’s like all that weight has been lifted,” I think, or something like that. 

I had the best Lebo hole of my life on 5. I tee’d off with a 7-iron, and could have given it more swing, but it left me with a chance for par if I could land the downhill twenty yard chip shot somewhere near the pin. I chipped with a nice follow through and the ball rolled right in. I had been talk texting a play-by-play to Ben, and was sure to let him know. When I looked at the messages I sent him after you would think I was speaking a different language for how garbled they were. My hands were too cold to type; he had no trouble translating the insanity.

There was a pair finishing up on 9 when I got there and then I saw another pair teeing off on 2 when I was coming back around on 3, which made me a little nervy as I didn’t want them to catch up to me, but that never happened and I don’t know if they even finished. The best thing about winter golf is that feeling that you have that you have the whole place to yourself.

What stands out the most about this round of golf was how freaking beautiful out it was. There was still some snow on the course, but mostly in the bunkers and the edges of the fairway. Considering I only hit straight bombs, didn’t have to worry that much about it. (Jokes!) At one point coming down the long fairway on the 4th, a maintenance worker and I crossed on the cart path. He told me I would need a shovel to putt in, and he was right. The green was completely covered in snow, but that was the lowest elevated hole on the course, with the least amount of natural light.

But when I got to the 7th hole, the wide open valley that you tee off into, the sun started to set and the sky was magic. I kept stopping to take pictures, and this is the time that I wish I had my actual camera and not just my phone, but oh well.

As I was preparing to reach the green from my tee shot on the 8th hole, I stopped to breathe it all in and noticed a sound. An alien, low and constant whooooshing. I realized that it was the melted snow draining out of the fairway, pulled by gravity toward the valley on the 7th fairway. It was eerie and beautiful.

I’m excited for Spring to come, but I am going to miss the quiet of these Winter months when the sun keeps you warm enough to walk nine in February.

Feb 27 - Frosty Valley

Started at 1p with Ben on a cloudy day that stayed warmish and the rain never came. Sun came out on the second spin of these 9 holes. This was the first time that we went out and it was busy. 

We played match play. Ben is very generous with me with the scoring; he still won the first nine by 2x holes. 

The late winter/early spring weather had the course pretty swampy and the 6th green was unplayable on the first nine, but by the time we got back to it it had mostly cleared up.

There were animal carcasses all over the course. Feathers left behind from an explosive attack, rib bones licked clean like we were at a state fair, even a rabbit leg with the fur still on it. It’s easy to forget that golf is played in nature, and nature is incredibly violent.

There was a hokey looking Cadillac cart that we wrongly assumed belonged to some Rodney Dangerfield aspiring club rat. Then we saw young kids riding it.

There was a mansion overlooking the course. Ben pondered, if you have the money to build a mansion like that, why would you put it over Frosty Valley? I said that is precisely the kind of thing that I would do. The idea being that you are still in a semi-normal community for your kids, with a good school district and the mall and high school sporting events… all the normal things that we hated growing up but I am yearning to have access to now that I have two little boys that are the prism in which I see all of my imaginings through. Anyway, I can see why that would be the opposite of what Ben daydreams about since he has no kids and can work from home… Either way, the thing that we agree on is that the dream is to live close enough to a course that you can walk on to, that you don’t have to angle for tee times or plan weeks, maybe months in advance. You could be sitting on your couch one minute, then have a thought pop out of the ether… and 20 minutes later you are teeing off.

I paid for the second 9, really only because I was hoping that there would be more beer for purchase at the clubhouse, which there was not. We easily could have just played another 9 holes, but I’m not a rule breaker and I’m happy to reinvest in the course. Cody, the young man working the pro shop could not have been nicer. I had talked with him the day before on the phone checking to see if I could get on the course and had accidentally hung up on him. It was one of those calls where as I am taking the phone away from my ear and hitting the red button to end the call I can hear him say, “well good luck out there and let me know…” I almost called back, but I realize my over-niceness can be annoying. I got my chance to apologize in person though, so all is right with the world.

The second time around there was a single in front of us, a young man named Ian who looked like a future country club pro. I was worried that, with Ian in front of us, and a group of 3x highschoolers who were fucking around (appropriately, albeit) in front of him, we were going to get jammed up. We were jammed up on the first 9 holes with 4x old guys in front of us, and 2x young kids behind us, one of which was really skilled.

But the highschoolers practically ran to their tee shots, and Ian was in a cart, so we rarely waited to tee off after getting going. 

Interestingly, everyone was riding. Well, not everyone, but most everyone. It’s such a small parcel of land to jigsaw 9 holes on, it is kind of wild to ride a cart on. I don’t have a cart stance, walking is pure, any of that. I kind of just follow Ben’s lead. If he wants to drive, we drive, if he wants to walk, we walk; i’m good either way. But it did stand out to me seeing all of these carts pulling around this couple of acres. 

There are some fun holes, some water hazards that make for interesting strategy, and two of the holes are divided off by a private railroad that I am curious how often a train comes through. I imagine not that frequently as it would be incredibly dangerous. And a train delay could really mess up your day if you got caught on either side of it.

Also, we came up with a tattoo bet. First ACE gets to pick the other ones’ tattoo. So Ben is definitely going to have to tattoo the word “Yinz” on him at some point, cause I’m going to catch that first.