Alaska Golf Blog

Us golfers were lucky in 2020. We got to play our sport when most all other sports were cancelled or marginalized. The forecast is for 2021 to be better for the other sports, so it might as well be better for us golfers as well.

Golf in Alaska is still at least four months away, but there is plenty to be excited about. We’ve got a pretty firmly established schedule of championships to keep the eager competitive golfer busy almost every week of June, July and August. Lots of opportunity awaits anyone who wants to show the world where he ranks among the Alaska greats.

Speaking of the rankings, I’ve cut them down to the top 10 in an effort to make things more meaningful and easier for myself to manage. Expanding the rankings in the past few years was a lot of fun, but the list took on a bit too much of a free-for-all party mode and I want to find a way to clarify for all readers who is truly the best in Alaska.

As always, if you believe you belong in the top 10, you can challenge anyone on the list to a match. If you win, you take their place. Matches must be 18 holes, but can be played on par-3 courses or nine-hole courses, as long as 18 holes are used. Matches can be played on any course in the world and competitors can use different tees if they can fairly negotiate such terms. I want the rankings to reflect who can golf their ball the best, not necessarily who can hit the farthest. The rankings are for men, women and children of all ages. If challenge matches aren’t your thing, simply play the best you can in major Alaska tournaments, and I’ll take notice and insert you into the rankings if you earn it.

As for my own plan/schedule, it will be more subdued than in years past. I’ll be watching everything closely from a distance, with very little effort given to tracking down interviews. My personal playing schedule will likely be light, so you may not see me around as many of the events, but I will be paying attention to all of them.

I will be playing as much as golf as I possibly can, but I anticipate real life to be busy and to limit my dedication to the game. Stay tuned between now and May, as I lay out more of what to expect from the Alaska Golf Blog.

Shadow Creek is ranked No. 81 by Golf Magazine in its 2020 list of the top 100 golf courses in the United States. That rank marked a slip of 20 spots from the previous year. Augusta National is ranked No. 6, Pebble Beach is No. 10.

When we finished playing Shadow Creek, Sean Walsh said if the course was on the ocean it would have been better than Pebble Beach. It’s an interesting comment that when he further explained meant that scenery counts for whole lot when ranking a golf course.

Shadow Creek was as perfectly manicured a golf course as anyone could find and it was lined with imported pine trees that made up the bulk of the scenery. I am partial to tree-lined golf courses, so that may explain why I rank Shadow Creek as the top course I’ve played. Granted, I haven’t played that many courses. Cherry Hills, where I worked part time one summer and got to play a handful of times as a perk, would rank second on my list. Cherry Hills, also a tree-lined course, is No. 100 in Golf Magazine’s top 100.

I learned, in playing Shadow Creek, that greens and fairways can only get so nice. There is a limit to the plushness of a golf course, so what has to exist to set a course apart from others has to be something else. For me, it comes down to the golf itself. What is it like to play the course?

Because Shadow Creek is such an exclusive venue, there are very few groups of golfers playing it on any given day. We didn’t see any other golfers on the course that day, until a twosome caught up to us on the last two holes. That meant the round went very fast for us, leaving little time to look around and soak it in. Chris Watson, who was part of our group that day, said he wished it would have lasted longer. He felt each hole went by so fast, the round was over too quickly.

I’d say that’s a great compliment to any golf course and I would wholeheartedly agree with him. It’s not that the pace of play was too fast, for there is no such problem in existence anywhere. It’s just that the course was that amazing, so amazing you wish you could linger as long as possible.

For me, personally, golf is a primarily visual game. I like to see a target, hit a target and keep walking. I feel like Shadow Creek allows you to have fun doing that and that is why I loved it so much. Throw in the secluded pine forest to walk within and the greenest grass you could dream of, Shadow Creek is pretty much a perfect golf course for me.

I’m getting close to running out of things I want to say about Shadow Creek, so that may be the last post I’ll offer on the subject, but it may not be. The year 2021 is beginning and it will be soon time to set the stage for another Alaskan golf season. The days are getting longer and spring will be here before we know it.

Before I played Shadow Creek, I barely knew it existed. The whole thing was set up by Sean Walsh and when he told me where we were going to play, I said I had never heard of it. Then he reminded me it was the course Tiger and Phil played “The Match” on and where the PGA Tour had just held a full tournament two weeks before we were going to play it.

This reminder got my heart racing a little and prompted some mild research on the old internet, where I found a quote from one of the PGA Tour professionals claiming the greens at Shadow Creek were the best he’d ever played outside of Augusta. There it was, that comparison to Augusta.

Any serious golfer has spent time watching The Masters on TV and spent time day dreaming about playing Augusta National. You can’t do either of those things without trying to imagine the smooth, pristine greens the Masters participants get to play on. The Masters and Augusta are the pinnacle of golf, widely considered the best place in the world to play golf. This may or may not be true, but it is the widespread notion given to us by the powerful medium of TV.

So, when a golf pro who plays courses all around the world for millions of dollars per year says Shadow Creek has the best greens outside of Augusta, that has to mean something. When I read that, I thought I was in for an unimaginable experience.

Early during our round at Shadow, I asked our caddy if the pros played faster greens than us during the tournament just a couple of weeks before.

“Slower,” he said. “They played them at 11 or 12 and you are playing at 13 (on the Stimp meter.)”

Were the greens everything I could have hoped they were? Yes. Were they mind blowing beyond all comprehension of what I knew a green to be before hand? No.

I didn’t know what to expect from the greens, but my final assessment is that they were just greens. They were perfect in every way. The ball rolled smoothly across them and it was glorious to watch, but not unlike anything I had seen before. I wasn’t disappointed to find this out, but I was surprised there wasn’t more wow factor. If that’s the best there is outside Augusta, then Augusta can’t be that much better than any other really good greens you might play. While they were perfect, they weren’t game-changing.

Some of the other nice courses I’ve been lucky enough to play are: Cherry Hills, Wolf Creek, Sand Hollow, Pronghorn, Coyote Springs and TPC Summerlin and I wouldn’t say the greens at Shadow Creek were that much better than any of those courses. Still, the overall experience was better and in future posts I’ll continue to write about why.

While among some golfing friends recently, each golfer was asked to quickly name their favorite golf course. Names like Wolf Creek, Pebble Beach and Kingsbarns were tossed about. The conversation begged another question: how does one quickly determine the best golf course they’ve ever played?

Shadow Creek is currently my favorite golf course, but the reasons why are difficult to put into words. I’ll give it a shot, though, for the sake of any loyal readers who give a darn.

Shadow Creek is in Las Vegas, but when you are there, you don’t feel like you are anywhere in particular. You feel like you’ve been transported to a heavenly world. You have no sense of direction or space, such as a thought that downtown is that way or this way, or the such-and-such mountain is over there to the East. There is just you standing on a golf course and having fun. Is that why I loved it so much? In part, yes.

I also loved the feel of playing the course itself. It was difficult to score well, but not painfully difficult like some tough courses. There are treacherous courses out there that pump your heart full of defiant, challenge-seeking urges, but also make you feel like you can’t wait to get off of them. I could have been shooting 110 at Shadow Creek and still constantly wishing the round would never end.

I suppose if I analyze that feeling, it stems from the golf ball primarily always being in play. Even though making par from the spot it rests may be near impossible, you always have a chance to give it a go. The day I played Shadow, I played really well, but never felt a need to be perfectly precise over any particular shot. There was an absence of pressure that exists when meandering around some notoriously crippling courses.

By the time I finished playing the Tom Fazio design, I felt that when Steve Wynn envisioned the property, he envisioned transporting Augusta National to Las Vegas. From the clubhouse to the 18th green, I knew it was as close as I will ever get to playing Augusta. The course, however, never appears to be a copycat of Augusta in terms of hole design. It’s more of a subtle, or not so subtle, environmental vibe that is undeniably in the Augusta vein.

I will continue to discuss this wonderful golf course in future posts, as it warrants much more writing than I can fit in one or two blog posts.

I’m walking down the steps at the Paiute clubhouse, taking in the vistas that surround the enormous golf facility and an elder gent tells me I should be glad I wasn’t there the day before.

“It was awful,” he said. “50 mile per hour winds and freezing. This is nice today.”

With that, our Paiute journey was off to an optimistic start. Every single one of the 36 holes, however, seemed to be into the wind that day. Bear in mind, we played 36 different holes that Wednesday, navigating our way around two of the three courses available. The wind may not have hit 50 mph, but it wasn’t too far short of that mark.

One would think such a display of Mother Nature would have made for a miserable experience, but it was quite the contrary. While the wind did lift our scores beyond a normal range, the course was a delight. Paiute was a real man’s golf course, with lots of long par-4s and lots of large, undulating greens. While no one hole was particularly memorable, the reason for that was they were all rather memorable.

Both courses we played were extremely similar, so I can’t say it matters which one you would play if you ever went. Just be prepared for stunning desert views from atop a golf course that fits naturally into its surroundings. The course is far enough away from Las Vegas that it provides a feeling of being out in the middle of nowhere, where they would have buried dead bodies in a mafia movie.

Our AGB Tour stableford golf tournament tightened up that day, with Sean Walsh making up ground on myself, the leader. I believe he was within four points of the lead, with Chris Watson a little further back. All this set the stage for Thursday’s final round at a course where the PGA Tour pros had recently done battle. You guessed it; we got to play Shadow Creek.

The second leg of the Vegas vacation took us to Royal Links, a course designed to include a variety of replicated British, Scottish or Irish golf holes from historically renowned courses like St. Andrews. For example the 10th hole at Royal Links was a replica of the Old Course’s Road Hole, while the 18th hole was replica of Royal something or other. Each hole came from a Prestwick or a Portrush or some other familiar sounding name from British Open telecasts. By the time I was done playing, I was convinced I needed to start telling people I hailed from Royal Moose Run.

Even the driving range gave one the feel of being in Europe and each golf hole was really cool to play. The visuals of the course were my favorite part. There were obvious detractors, such as the moments your eyes would wander away from the stone bridges to the horizon and see power lines mounted above a sandy, desert landscape. In those momentary lapses, you were reminded of where you really were. Then your eyes would wander back down to the pot bunkers and rolling mounds of green and you were in heaven again.

The course was soft the day we played it, not lending it to playing the proper bump-and-run style shots required from certain positions, but that’s about the only complaint that could be made.

One interesting side note: We witnessed one group play the wrong green, a mistake that was easily made on what really was a links course. They teed off on the ninth tee and weaved their way across to the 18th green, fully confident they were in the right place until the assistant pro from the clubhouse tried to take their carts and end their round.

Sadly, Royal Links is set to close for good in April of 2021, according to the staff who checked us in early that Tuesday morning. We were so broken up about it, we decided to play the course twice that day.

It was clear to me I would really like playing links golf if I get the chance someday. The variety of shots required to navigate the course was mentally stimulating and there was something fun about using the contours of the ground to shape your shots into proper position. Royal Links did the best job a Vegas course could do of replicating European golf, but it was an impossible task to complete to perfection, which may be why the course had to close down. As fun as it was to play, it couldn’t really deliver a full European coastal feel.

Our next adventure took us to Paiute, a monstrous golf facility in the desert that I know many Alaskans have played. Stay tuned for more from our 36-hole excursion on a windswept day.

Our first round of golf in Las Vegas was at Bali Hai, a golf course that prides itself on being on the Vegas strip. While this seems convenient, it also brings some unexpected characters into play.

We were standing on the putting green. Another group of golfers was teeing off on the first tee, about 100 yards away, when one of them started walking toward us.

I barely noticed the incoming stranger at first, but when it was clear he was heading straight for us I paid closer attention. As he neared our location, it was clear he wasn’t a golfer at all, nor had he seen a shower in at least a few weeks. His face was weathered beyond the usual golfer and his clothes were filthy. Was he a homeless vagrant? Who’s to say, but his arrival came with a question of his own.

“What came first, the smoke or the fire,” he asked, before asking if any of us could light his cigarette.

He went on to ask if the chicken or the egg arrived first, then the philosopher made his way toward some other golfers. When he started making his way toward the valet stand, a course manager came out of the pro shop, yelled at the philosopher and that was the end of that.

Bali Hai was enjoyable, especially the par 3 holes. The arrangement of bunkers and the sloping of the greens forced you to think about the type of shot you wanted to play, which made them memorable.

The rest of the holes weren’t especially memorable, but there was more than once I found myself choosing a Vegas monument as my target, which was kind of fun.

Bali Hai nearly shut down in this past year to become a parking lot for Raiders fans, according to the pro-shop clerk who checked us in. Somehow the course was spared, however, and will be around for the foreseeable future.

The same can’t be said for the course we played next.

The AGB Tour’s week in Las Vegas has come to an end. Chris Watson may not think he played very well, as he tends to be one to lean toward the self-deprecating style of humor, but he played well enough to move back onto the AGB rankings. If you want to see where he landed, you used to be able to click here and see, but I’ve since shrunk the rankings back to a vital top 10 list.

Sean Walsh set up a fantastic schedule of golf that took us from Bali Hai to Royal Links, Paiute, Las Vegas National and one more secret course that did turn out to be the best I’ve ever played.

The informal, four-day net stableford tournament set up by Walsh was close after the first day, with myself slowly pulling ahead over the next two rounds and then closing out a victory in the final round. More details on that event will follow, as time permits.

Keep checking back for detailed course reviews of the venues mentioned above. I can’t say I’ll be in any great hurry, as we a have all winter to write and read about the adventure.

As it was noted once in Golf Magazine, Alaskans have a golf community that is perhaps like no other. As much as we love our local golf scene, there comes a time when some of us must expand beyond the five primary courses we call home and spread what I loosely call the Alaska Golf Blog Tour beyond our northern borders.

For Sean Walsh, Chris Watson and myself, that time is upon us and we have chosen a destination many Alaskans are already familiar with. In Las Vegas, there are many golf courses to explore and we will get to explore five of them in the next week. This is part of a Walsh-organized safari to celebrate his 40th birthday.

Walsh has set up an informal Stableford formatted golf tournament for the three of us, one which will test the new handicap system with net scoring. Walsh carries an 8.9 index, Watson carries a 17.8 and mine is resting comfortably at 7.6.

Walsh is ranked No. 52 in the AGB rankings, but he beat me twice last summer in challenge matches, one of which I can still say may have been my best ball-striking round of the summer. Since then, I’ve climbed back to No. 20 in the rankings. There will be opportunity for a rematch at some point during our travels. Watson is unranked. Though he recently moved out of Alaska, he still flies for Alaska Airlines, so if he plays well enough this week, he may earn himself a spot in place of a less active player. I have taken to calling Watson “Good-miss Chris” over the years, because some of his best shots are his worst shots. Vegas could be just the place for him.

Bali Hai is our first venue. I believe many AGB Tour members have played there before. I’ll do my best to document how the round goes in a prompt fashion, but don’t hold me to that. I’ll reveal the other courses as the journey continues. There is at least one particular course you are definitely going to want to read about. It’s the gem of our itinerary and has a chance to be the best course I’ve played in my life.

Every course we play this week will be fresh and new to me. There is nothing quite like playing a golf course for the first time, so I hope my enthusiasm is registered to any readers choosing to follow along.

Moose Run delayed tee times this morning, because of snow. This prompted two people at least to question on Facebook whether this meant the end of the 2020 golf season. If you have to ask, then well it probably is.
There’s only one thing that goes by faster than an Alaskan golf season and that’s the off season. Just kidding; winter takes forever up here in Anchorage for a golfer. At first, a little break from the game seems nice, but by January the itch to play starts in. It gets really strong by March, but all we can do is shovel driveways to build up golfing muscles.
The good news is there will be plenty for us to dream about for 2021. Rob Nelson will be an amateur, which means he will automatically start shooting 85 every other round. If his game stays sharp, all the better. We’ll get to answer that long-awaited question: how would a pro do in the State Am?
Though Russell Marion drove away from Alaska this fall, perhaps never to return, we will likely still have the long-hitting Todd Millard around to fill the shoes of outsider. There always seems to be some new drifter with gobs of talent, starting five or so years ago with Jordan Miller.
There will be plenty of other unknown things to discover, no doubt, when the 2021 golf season finally reaches our frozen land. Hibernate well, Alaskan golfers.