Road Trip, Part 3...

Following a good breakfast at Bob Evans, four of us: (Dave - right - fellow victim of the sloped fairways at Longaberger, Dave -- below - my former Command Sergeant Major who has been mentioned many times in these articles [remember L.O.S.T.], and Bob -- right/below -another retired army buddy who used to be our cook and was the HQ Company 1SG for a time) all headed off to Eagle Sticks Golf Course in South Zanesville.

As I said, having been to Longaberger the previous day, and

knowing Eagle Sticks was also in the top 100 golf courses in the USA per Golf Digest magazine, I was looking forward to another challenging, scenic and relaxing day of golf (I don't know how golf can be relaxing and challenging either, but it sounded like a good idea.).

I think this turned out to be a tale of two entities. The clubhouse underwhelmed me. I've certainly seen worse, but my expectations were pretty high for this one. Overall, I would have to say this was just another building. Also, I wasn't all that impressed with the pro shop people -- they were civil, but didn't go out of their way to make us feel welcome. The course, however, was another story. It was very pretty, well laid out and made extremely good use of the terrain features (you knew some Army terms would creep in at some point, didn't you). While the club house rated a C at best, the course was an A-. I think one thing that soured me on the staff was the three groups sitting at the 10th tee when we got there to make our turn. It seems someone decided that since they had leagues that evening and started them in a shotgun start (we're talking 11:00 turn) they would run everyone else from 10:00 on off the back!?! Local rules are fine, but that caused us to literally hit and run on the last hole (that's why I shot a 90 -- bogied the last hole -- really) because we were supposed to be some place at 1400 hrs.

Oh, well, two good courses and I really did shoot better on this one than the first (only 1 lost ball too).

Next year's trip will have to go some to top these two, but we're willing to take that risk!

Since bad shots come in groups of three, a fourth bad shot is actually the beginning of the next group of three.

Hooah

P.S. In case you didn't spot it, I want to point out something. I don't know how I managed to play golf to any level of respectability when I was with these three -- Dave M. and Bob are left-handed, and Dave B. is naturally left-handed but plays golf right-handed because his dad told him no golfer of any repute was ever left-handed. We probably could have used a therapist as a caddie.