better living | golf

At home on
the range ...

By JEFF KEATING

FINALLY, a golf course ideally suited to my game.

And I only had to travel 1,200 miles to find it! My sister-in-law graduated in May from the University of North Texas in Denton, a city of more than 100,000 souls located about 30 miles northwest of Dallas. The four of us – my wife and two kids – flew back to attend the graduation and take about a week’s vacation.

Denton – just to tangent here for a bit — was the birthplace of actress Ann Sheridan, former NBA player Mario Bennett, and former Miss America and CBS Sports reporter Phyllis George.

It’s also home to Texas Woman’s University, the largest state-supported university for women in the United States.

(And yes, it’s “Woman’s,” singular. I don’t know if the school only teaches one female at a time, or what, but that’s the name.) TWU has an 18-hole golf course that’s open to the public, and I knew it was for me the minute I saw it.

The clubhouse was a trailer set up while a new clubhouse was being built. Even better, a recent fire had destroyed the course’s cart shed, and I could see the metal frames of maybe a dozen carts blackened and bent amid the destruction.

So there we were, my sister-in-law’s husband and me, hauling pull carts behind us, a humid Texas wind riffling our shirts and shorts as we made our way to the first tee after shelling out a whopping $17 each for 18 holes.

“Yes!” I thought. “This is my kind of course. These are my people."

I was even more right than I thought.

In addition to all the pressure being off because the course was so cheap – who minds a lousy round when it’s less expensive than lunch? – the course was flat, wide and dry. That’s perfect for my game, which involves a lot of what my father used to call “punch and run."

Here’s an example: We played a par 4 of about 300 yards that was a slight dogleg right. I hit my usual brand of tee shot, “usual” meaning “I have no idea where this is going."

It traveled about 260 yards, ending up about 20 feet left of the fairway in some not-quite-hardpan grass and dirt, about 35 yards from the flag. But instead of my sand wedge – with which I am as wildly inconsistent as my woods – I cracked out my 7-iron.

A good punch and run shot for me involves three things: fairly dry and flat conditions, my 7-iron, and “the triangle.” “The triangle” is the space bordered by my arms and body, the same space created anytime you hold a club. Preserving it is critical. You want it intact for your backswing and all the way into follow-through, as you’re trying to lift the ball off the ground, fly it low for a short distance, then make it run for awhile.

Keeping my shoulders stiff, I thwacked the ball cleanly and followed through, preserving the triangle.

The ball did just what I wanted, bouncing along the fairway and rolling nicely onto the green about five feet left of the flagstick ... then well beyond, rolling off the back. (That grass was even drier than I’d thought.) I ended up chipping back on and two-putting.

I’ll settle for bogey golf anytime, but I actually did a bit better than that on that day in Denton. The triangle was my friend, helping me to five pars and (gasp!) a birdie on the way to an 85 par was 71).

I haven’t found an Inland Empire course quite like that one in Denton, at least not yet.

And the truth of the matter is, I should practice my wedge and short iron shots more to build consistency and confidence in them, so I don’t lean on punch and run so much.

But it was a treat to play an entire course where my favorite strategy was utterly appropriate.

Now, if I could just figure out a way to meet Phyllis George ...

- Jeff Keating is executive director of public affairs at Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona.