Improvisation necessary when designing wilderness golf course
When I was six years old my parents bought me a set of plastic golf clubs to take along on a camping trip to Rollins Pond.
The set, complete with three whiffle golf balls, was perfect for a boy my age.
Following the trip they got stored in the garage and didn’t get much use.
But on one particularly warm summer afternoon I spied them stuck in the corner of the garage and was inspired to create my own 9 hole Adirondack golf course.
My goal was to make a challenging course the likes of what nobody else had ever seen.
It would include holes that I dug myself and hole flags made of cut up pieces of burlap tied to stripped Maple branches.
The tee to par-30 hole one began on our side yard. The path to the hole weaved its way up the creek and stretched through a pretty thick wooded area.Hole two followed an old log road that tracked back in and up Seventh Lake Mountain.
A few par-40 holes and one par-12 built on top of a large glacial rock followed.
Then I decided to make a loop that would end on the small circular lawn in the middle of our driveway.
The course was laid out very carefully along deer trails, streams, and old logging roads.
Once all the holes were dug and the flags were in place an hour or two of daylight remained.
So I decided to test the course out for myself.
I used an old pack basket for a golf bag and added extra balls and some tools that I thought would help me to play better.
Into the basket went a buck saw, a canteen, an old army shovel (which doubled as a pitching wedge) and a slingshot for those really difficult holes.
I thought the 522 I shot in my first round was pretty good considering I spent 20 minutes trying t to find my ball in a large fern bed.
I supposed my version of Adirondack golf would not have appealed to most.
But it certainly was loved by my dog Mutt who scrambled along to sniff out each spot where my ball landed.
In the midst of my second round I had to suspend play as it became too dark to find the balls.
I’m sure the gallery of animal spectators were shocked to see this new game rambling through their back yards.
After four or five rounds of golf, my clubs were bent, broken and falling apart.
For the rest of the summer I improvised by using a hockey stick and a baseball bat as clubs in playing my backwoods game of golf.
Mitch Lee, Adirondack native & storyteller, lives at Big Moose Lake. ltmitch3rdny@aol.com
