PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

What a name — “The Bally Bandon Sheep Ranch?”

What is it?  Well, it is a golf course cut out of the beach grasses on the Southern Oregon coast that, for a golfer, is unlike anything else you might have played.

I was reminded of all this when I read an on-line story from Links Magazine under the headline, “What’s Next for the Bally Bandon Sheep Ranch?”

I’ll reprint excerpts of the story below because I could not do justice to the report on my own.

But, before that, I will recount a treasured personal memory.

A few of us got access to the Sheep Ranch about 10 years ago or so when our excellent home course superintendent, Bill Swancutt, used his connections to get us a “tee time.” That phrase – “tee time” might be stretching it a bit.

Four of us got into one car for the four-and-one-half hour drive south from Salem to the Bandon area. Rather than going straight to the Bandon Dunes Resort, we took a turn – only Swanny would know where that turn was – into the “Sheep Ranch.”

There were four of us, but I only remember three – Swanny, my late friend Dick Rowell, and me. [The late Dick Rowell was one of my best friends, a linkage – pardon the play on words — which we forged on the golf course at our home track, Illahe Hills, in Salem. Sadly, Dick suffered from chronic depression and, while many of us tried to help him, we failed in the end when he took his own life. Our trip to the Sheep Ranch is one among many great memories of Dick.]

Back to my story.

At the Sheep Ranch, we parked our vehicle near the Sheep Ranch (there was no parking lot) and we entered through a make-shift gate. Before long, as he came out from behind a hill, we met the “superintendent” of the course. He may have been the same one as is mentioned in the Links Magazine story — Greg Harless, most commonly referred to as the course’s “caretaker.”

We introduced ourselves, said how happy we were to be playing “his course,” and asked for his summary of what to expect and how to play course.

Before he said much, he offered this comment, with tongue firmly planted in cheek – “I have one of the best jobs in the world. I am a golf course superintendent without many golfers on my track.”

Yet, here we were, ready for a unusual, but great, round of golf and, as they would say at Bandon Dunes, play “golf as it was meant to be played.”

The super stood with us on a promontory overlooking about a quarter-mile of land before the Pacific Ocean. Pointing West, he said, “there, that’s the course.”

We looked in that direction and, with concentration, could make out, even with just a bit of fog, 18 pins with red flags on what looked, from afar, like 18 greens.

He pulled out a piece of scratch paper and scrawled out, with his own hand, a routing for about 12 or 13 holes. Then said, follow that if you want, but if not, make up your own itinerary. Plus, he said, we’d have to do so anyway to get in the last five or six holes.

After playing one hole, “just find a piece of flat found near a green, and flail away from there toward what you want to be the next hole.”

Distance markers? No. Tee boxes? No. Manicured grass? No.

Just golf “as it was meant to be.”

The super left us and we headed out, traversing in all directions for 18 holes, seemingly without a care in the world.

Here are a few excerpts from the Links Magazine article:

• It has become decreasingly mysterious with every passing article—and there have been many—but the Sheep Ranch still possesses sufficient intrigue and anonymity to ensure the golfer recounting his experiences of the place speaks mostly to a hushed audience. Images and stories have been filtering through for nearly two decades, and its 200 or so rugged, cliff-top acres are clearly visible on Google Earth. But he who is lucky enough to have walked his own undefined route across this stretch of links-land has a story few of his friends can ever match.
• Bally Bandon Sheep Ranch appeared in 2001 about the time Tom Doak was putting the finishing touches to Pacific Dunes, the second course at Mike Keiser’s implausible, yet hugely successful, Bandon Dunes Golf Resort on the Oregon coast.
• The land on which it sits, site of a former wind farm, came up for sale shortly after the resort opened in 1999. Phil Friedmann, co-creator of the greetings card company that made him and Keiser wealthy, had decided against becoming a partner in Bandon Dunes, thinking Keiser’s plan unlikely to succeed, but did go in with him on this new parcel splitting the $4 million asking price down the middle.
• To be one of the 50-100 golfers per month who take advantage of the opportunity to explore this Shangri-La, you need to speak with Greg Harless, the superintendent but most commonly referred to as the course’s “caretaker.” Harless cuts the greens fairly regularly and keeps the fairways in check (because there is only basic irrigation surrounding the greens, the course closes in summer when the fairways become excessively dry), but that’s about as far as the maintenance operation goes.
• You can play A to B to C to and so on, but the routing is merely a suggestion. Some like to string the F, J, E, C, B, and M greens together to create a stirring sequence of cliff-top holes. The massive E green, covering 20,000 square feet of ground at the course’s western-most point, is the most fortuitously-positioned.

It took us about five hours to make our way around “our 18 holes.” It was great fun – because of the lay of the land, because of the commitment to feel the uneven ground on your feet, because of the makeshift character of finding an 18-hole routing, and because of the personal bonds between and among friends that will last a lifetime.