San Felipe Golf
A lot of people just can't understand
golf. What's the attraction, they ask? Grown
men and women strolling about the countryside like alarm
clocks sounding off against a small white ball with their
aerospace clappers. Certainly doesn't look like
much exercise in it. And then these same people
will turn around and play 120 holes of cribbage.
Many people don't consider a large population
or a community a certifiable town or city until it can
show them a golf course. Never mind what the census report
says, unless there are 18 flagged holes with appropriate
par-structured fairways between them, the place is nothing
more than a whistle-stop. Well, San Felipe is about to
put itself on the map and announce its golfilic pedigree
with an 18 hole course under construction now at the El
Dorado development, eight miles north of town.
The golf course rumor has been like
a San Felipe ground hog for decades. Every once in a while
it would surface, catch a glimpse of its own shadow then
burrow underground(sand) again for a year or two. During
the eternal rumor stage, some golf fan(attics) banded
together and planted a handful of flags in the ground
at Pete's Camp. For years this has been their course,
replete with a unique collection of mesquite and ocotillo
hazards as well as a sand trap that knows no boundary.
It's all about to change.
El Dorado has begun work on the first
nine holes of a course it intends to call Faces of
Mexico. This first half of the course is to be opened
May/June of 2004, with Phase 2 to follow with the remaining
nine holes and the clubhouse. A great deal of planning
has gone into the project. A salt-resistant grass has
been chosen to toupé the fairways. A twenty acre
sod-ranch is in progress to grow the sod on site. Five
wells are being drilled to supply the course with water
for small artificial lakes and to irrigate the landscaping.
Until the Faces of Mexico is wholly completed,
it will be open to the public. But eventually the course
will become private, available only to residents of El
Dorado and their hotels. This may take quite some time
as it is an ambitious project and things generally move
slowly in Mexico.
The busy ground hog of the Rumor Mill
has surfaced recently with reports of two more golf courses
to be constructed in the area. One, allegedly to be PGA
Certified, will be developed at Playa Blanca. The other,
somewhere in the vicinity of the airport, slightly south
of Las Minitas. Nothing visually has appeared out of these
rumors. But the echoes of their reports continue to be
heard.
Coaxing a tonsure from the sand. |
Back to the game of golf. Why do
people play it? One possibility is that it is an allegory
for a spiritual quest. There is a bit of Zen-like mystique
about the sport, a meditative side to it. Probably who
so many doctors, who are filled with distractions and
mental motion by their jobs, take it up (and only incidentally
because they are the only ones who can afford the green
fees). In the allegory department, the ball would represent
the purest center of attention. The cup, of course, is
the goal of that attention, its focus. The wind, trees,
sand and water traps, dogleg fairways, etc. are the peripheral
distractions that try to waylay the attention from its
journey to its goal. Each stroke is a meditative session,
an attempt to drive one's attention in a single concerted
effort to the enveloping protection of its quest, the
cradle of the cup, over which hovers the angelic symbol
of a wing, like a colored tongue of flame.
On the other hand, there is a lot of
militaristic terminology in the game of golf, which makes
it something considerably less than spiritual. This may
be the reason why it has kept its popularity with the
arcade and computer gaming crowd. With a lexicon that
includes bogey, bunker, hazards, club, slice, stroke,
etc., it references both modern and medieval war-making.
Fun for the whole family.
So it would seem that on a subconscious
level at least, golf invites members from either side
of the human spectrum. Heaven and Hell. Can cribbage claim
the same appeal?
For the latest golf course progress
at El Dorado, check out their course
updates.
Click
Here for Robin Williams' hilarious take on golf.
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