Editorial
Front Page - Friday, May 28, 2010
Are We There Yet?
Welcome back old friend
Jay Edwards
- Jean and Bud Edwards with their two-year old future hacker, enjoying an Easter Egg Hunt at North Hills Country Club in April of 1959. The 84-year old Sherwood course officially reopens to the public tomorrow.
The past is not dead. In fact, it’s not even past.
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On a hot day at the Red Apple Inn golf course last Saturday, I asked my brother-in-law Dennis Althoff about the status of North Hills Country Club in Sherwood (now known as Greens at North Hills). He smiled and said he’d played it a few days before.
“How was it?” I asked.
“Pretty good,” Dennis said. “The greens are great. The fairways need to fill in some in spots, but overall, it’s in good shape.”
The greens Dennis referred to, once some of the nicest and fastest bent grass surfaces in Arkansas, are now Championship Bermuda, which can be cut and rolled to be as heart stopping as any others.
Another change is that most of the bunkers, which once fiercely guarded each of those small greens, are no more. Dennis said they did leave five or six.
Also, the pool is now gone (removing a major hazard from the opening tee shot), making the new North Hills all about the golf, which in my mind it always was anyway.
I remember the first round I ever played there, back in the early ’80s. I’ve never been so miserable in my life. It was the last time I failed to break 100. Missed doing it by four shots. How did that happen? Well, it reminds me of the old story where the guy was telling one of his buddies about making a nine on a certain hole.
“How in the world did you manage to make a nine?” asked the friend.
“I made a ten-foot putt, that’s how,” came the reply.
Seven or eight years after shooting that 103, when I’d been a member for a few years and was managing to sneak out and play three or four times a week, I improved that personal worst day by 33 strokes, still my best round at North Hills. While for me that was one of those miracle days, the thing I remember most about it was that three of our fivesome birdied the tough 13th.
Those were the days when golf was an addiction for me; I just couldn’t get enough. And it wasn’t only the maddening, impossible game that had me hooked, but also the little track in Sherwood, so wonderfully redesigned by the great Robert Trent Jones.
Another time there, Bill Hooper (another brother-in-law) and I were playing in the club four-ball. Before we teed off, Bill bought a couple of sleeves of Titleist Tour Balata 100s. The first hole is a par five, and Bill hit a pretty good shot down the left side, but close to the trees. When we arrived, the ball was nowhere to be found. We were about to abandon the search when a ball dropped at Bill’s feet. It was his Titleist, but the soft balata was now mangled, from teeth marks that belonged to the squirrel staring down at us from above. He had stopped at the rubber bands. Another reason to buy surlyn, I guess.
That may have been the same tournament where my pal Randy Morley, today of the Argenta courts, made his first ever hole in one. It was on number 11, and when it happened, Randy and I had been playing golf together about 30 years, without one ace between us. He came and found me after the round to tell of the feat. The only problem was, of the five par threes on the course, number 11 was the only one that day without a nice prize for a hole-in-one. Randy did get to buy all his friends, and everyone else, a drink that day, though.
It was sad when I heard North Hills had shut down a few years back, and I’m just as glad knowing that it’s reopening. Golf courses and their wonderful green spaces should never die (please imagine War Memorial). There is something spiritual about them all. (Why do you think so many congregate there on Sunday mornings?)
The memories at North Hills are good ones for my friends and me. And any time you get another day to go back to a place like it, to create some more, that’s a good thing.
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