However, my wife did surprise me by scrapping together enough cash to buy me a membership to our local golf course, which happens to be the course where I learned to golf. The main perk of this membership is that I can play as much golf as I want, whenever I want. My dad also has his personal golf cart at the course, so I don't even have to spend money to ride.
I present Cottonwood Links Golf Course.
Cottonwood Links is a 9-hole course, so I'll usually zip around the course a few times before I'm tired. In fact, I played 27-holes last week in under 3-hours. Good luck doing that in the big city.
The course is typical of courses found along the Arkansas River in southeastern Colorado: prairie golf at its finest. The fairways are hard and fast, so 300-yard drives are not uncommon. The greens are small and unforgiving, which places a premium on accuracy.
Unlike Omaha golf courses, the hot and dry climate means that the golf courses must water the course to keep it alive. Since water is the life-blood of the farming community surrounding the course, tee-boxes and greens get first dibs on water and fairways are sprinkled enough to keep them a light green. Trees are few and far between and, as you can see from the picture of the golf course above, many fairways run parallel to each other, so errant shots are not as penalizing as they are on courses found on the Golf Digest Top 100 Course list. In between the fairways are areas of prairie grass, so at least if you miss a fairway, you aren't always greeted with a clean lie.
Some golf purists might turn their nose to Cottonwood Links if they saw it while they were driving down Colorado Highway-50, but I love it.
I love seeing groups of old-timers and local farmers rambling around the course during the week, playing for a nickle a hole after their morning chores have been done. I love that tee-times are unnecessary. I love heading out on Tuesday nights for Men's League where, for $2, anyone can show up for 9-holes of blind-draw scramble golf. I love that on weekdays, no one minds a group of five or six players chasing around a little white ball. I love that the driving range is only 150-yards deep, so no long-irons, woods, or drivers are swung until the first tee, and the range balls are a rag-tag group of reclaimed golf balls once lost on the course. I love that most people know the combination of everyone else's cart shed in case a cart breaks down mid-round or an extra cart is need for a spur of the moment round with a large group.
In short, I'm glad to get back to my golf roots this summer. I hope to get out there at least once a day this summer while my wife studies for her bar exam. I also hope to be able to get a round or two in at some of the other southeastern Colorado courses, which I'll be sure to show off on this here blog.
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