Messing around at Mesa Verde

S.J. CAHN

I’m a sucker for pyramids of range balls. There’s something solid and

aesthetically pleasing about them, but at the same time there’s a

lack of security that a bucket or metal holder provides. At any

second, if you pull out the wrong ball, it could topple.

OK, maybe I’m over-thinking it, which, as anyone who plays golf

regularly knows, is a definite no-no.

On Monday, I can promise you, there were four golfers who clearly

weren’t over-thinking their games: Jim Glidewell, George Dahl,

Richard Mulhauser and Toby Bogand. The quartet combined in a

tournament for the Orange Coast College Foundation, held at Mesa

Verde Country Club, and scored 132 in a two-ball “shamble.”

For those keeping score, that’s 10-under par.

And they weren’t alone in taking care of a course that offered

hostile, narrow fairways and thick roughs in the midst of being

reseeded.

Second place went to the team of Marc Harper; his son Brandon

Harper; Joe Yezbak and Justin Gray. They shot a 134, foundation

secretary Julie Clevenger told me.

The third-place team might raise an eyebrow or two. It included

Mark Thissel, Ken Ortiz, Paul Lussman and a man by the name of Gene

Farrell. He just happens to be OCC’s president. With a combined 135,

at least they didn’t win -- that might have been unseemly.

The tournament, which included about 86 golfers, raised close to

the foundation’s goal of $30,000, foundation director Doug Bennett

said. (Bennett spent Monday manning various stands and driving around

the golf course, for those worried he’d taken the day off actually to

play.)

The playing he left up to the rest of us -- a group that, through

a few machinations, included me.

It’s always easy to tee up a ball for a charitable cause. In my

case, the task Monday was that much more simpler because it stood as

my first round on one of Newport-Mesa’s country club courses.

And like I said, I’m a sucker for pyramids of range balls. So when

the day started with an untouched symmetrical pile, I was -- and I

probably shouldn’t admit it -- in some sort of upper-crust heaven.

Happily, my game didn’t bring me back to earth, though my

partners, Publisher Tom Johnson and auto sales representative Ned

Bondie, would likely quarrel with that. Sure, I saw a bit of the

thick rough and skirted the edges of the tight fairways with the

precision that only comes with a high handicap, but I hit some good

approach shots, bounced a chip off the pin and drained a handful of

tough putts.

There are plenty of tough putts to be made, too. Everyone who’s

played the course is familiar with the treacherous 2nd green, but the

5th, 11th, 17th and 18th all ended with a challenge as nasty as they

come.

Or maybe it was just the shots I hit on those holes.

But I doubt I’d be alone in praising the difficulty of the course.

And what, for my money -- OK, when you’re playing in a charity event,

that’s not the right phrase -- is the beauty of the Mesa Verde course

is that it’s hard in a subtle, traditional way. There are no gaping

gullies you have to fly. There’s no tee shot over the ocean or a

desert gorge. It’s a contained patch of green, a limited canvas to

create a challenging course.

The landscape, in other words, isn’t the draw -- not that there’s

a thing wrong with those beautiful, and for someone with my slice

deadly, sculpted courses. But when you stand before a tee shot,

perched above the crashing surf, you know what treachery lies ahead.

At Mesa Verde and similar courses, the treachery is subtle. It’s a

solitary palm tree lined up in your sights. It’s the wide, greenside

bunker. It’s the blind second shot on a long par-5.

These courses are more subtle, and in that they are -- for those

who like the King James Version of the Bible, Genesis 3:1 -- like the

serpent: “Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field

which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath

God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?”

There’s a joke in there somewhere about God being a golfer and

wanting to keep wives off the course, I just can’t quite put my

finger on it.

Nevertheless, I’m about as wide of my point as my drives were of

the fairways Monday. But that didn’t wash the smile from my face, one

of those smiles you get when playing a new course, always waiting to

see what it’ll bring next.