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 to 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 my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as 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.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

My most recent on-line issue of Links Magazine got me thinking about a subject that might not have crossed my mind, save for the magazine.

This:  Opening tee shots on a golf course.

One of my favorite golf writers, George Peper (he wrote the great book, Two Years in St. Andrews), comes up with this lead for his story:

“The first hole of a golf course is rarely memorable, but it never fails to arouse emotion.

“Can you think of a patch of ground — on the golf course or anywhere else — that consistently boils up such a complex cauldron of emotions as does the 1^st tee?

“Hope and trepidation, determination and doubt, impatience and paranoia, excitement, and tension.

“For many of us, it’s a case of dueling desires:  We can’t wait to hit that first tee shot and we can’t wait to get it over with.  As an aside, I’ve always wondered why The First Tee, a program dedicated to making the game inviting to kids, would name itself after the single most intimidating place on the course.

“Endlessly fascinating, the first tee is, to paraphrase Forrest Gump, like a box of chocolates—you never know what you’re gonna get.  We bound to the blocks brimming with optimism yet ever-mindful that the carnival could end in seconds when the curtain rises on a four-hour drama fraught with agony as well as joy.”

With Peper’s article in mind, I thought of the 1^st tee at Illahe Hills Golf and Country Club in Salem Oregon where I play most of my golf and have done so for more than 30 years.

I tell my friends that I never get tired of playing onthe course, given the various situations you’ll face on one of the best tracks in the state.

But, the first hole?

It is “pretty” routine. 

Note the word “pretty.”  I mean to say that, while the 1^st hole is a short par 4, there are several penalty areas beckoning – two bunkers on either side of the hole in what would be the landing area for a solid drive, water to the right on the drive, and a green that slopes, as many do at Illahe, steeply from back to front.  And there are greenside bunkers, too.

So, I have found that a par on the 1^st hole is a solid score.

Further, when you hit your tee shot on the 1^st you are only about 50 feet or so in front of the ground floor pro shop (with its windows) and the next floor where windows front the restaurant.  So, everyone there can see your tee shot.

Are they looking?  Probably not.  But the fact that they could be looking adds to the nerves.

Here are selected excerpts from Peper’s story:

• Mind you, in most cases all this turmoil (on the 1^st tee) is largely of our own doing.  Rarely does the first hole present a particularly formidable challenge or even an arresting moment.  Consider that in GOLF Magazine’s The World’s 500 Greatest Golf Holes only 12 of those holes are openers. Indeed, some magnificent courses — Pebble Beach, Turnberry, Teeth of the Dog, Crooked Stick, Medinah No. 3, Fishers Island — start with par fours that could be described most kindly as unremarkable.
• If the designers of those and so many other courses were alive, they’d likely point to the long-held dictum that a good golf course begins with a “friendly handshake,” a straightforward assignment with no heavy lifting.  And I can’t argue that it’s wise marketing to keep us dogged victims happy for at least the first few minutes of play. Nevertheless, first holes are rarely first rate.
• Another reason for this is that the first tee is usually hard by the clubhouse, on a piece of land that was chosen, not because it was the best golf terrain, but because it was the best place to put that building.  Often the role of the first hole is to get the heck away from that place, to do whatever’s necessary to escape the parking lot, tennis courts, and swimming pool and reach some proper ground for golf.

All that being said, Peper adds, “there are a few rare courses where the first tee (actually the entire first hole) lives up to its turbulence, either by presenting an assignment in nerve-jangling terror or through the sheer glory of its setting and vista.”

One he cites is Machrihanish in Scotland.

On one of my trips to Scotland with my wife, Nancy, along as tour guide and much more, I had the privilege of playing Machrihanish.  It has an intimidating 1^st tee shot and 17 great holes after that.

Incredibly, you have you have hit your drive over part of the ocean.  Plus, you have to carry it more than 225 yards to clear the water and reach the fairway.

On the day I played, we had a tee time, but Nancy and I arrived at the course just as three foursomes were getting ready to tee off.  With normal Scottish courtesy, they let us go ahead.

So, with a gallery of at least 12, I prepared for my tee shot.  In the spirit of full disclosure, I hit it well, cleared the water (barely) and went on to the thrill of golf on one of Scotland’s storied links.  With Nancy by my side, we had great, memorable four or five hours walking around in her parents’ homeland.

First hole jitters, there and back home?  Of course.  But, yes, worth it – at Machrinihanish in Scotland, or at Illahe Hills in Salem.