Lorne Rubenstein | |
Having a Ball at the 'Brush
November 21, 2005
Now that the PGA Tour season has ended—not that discussion about its television negotiations and its new and questionable FedEx Cup will stop—maybe it's time to consider something that seems almost radical.
Here it comes.
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The first hole at Devil's Paintbrush is a short 371 yard par-4. |
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The notion is that golf is a game for the recreational golfers, far more than for tour pros and their spectators.
It's more about play than about TV ratings, more about teeing it up with friends than caring about what Tiger Woods or Vijay Singh or Mike Weir or Annika Sörenstam or even Michelle Wie did, is doing, or will do.
Golf's a participant sport, folks. It's been that way for hundreds of years and it will be that way no matter what happens in the various pro tours of the world.
Sure, golf's also a spectator sport, but it's for the participants far more than for the pros or for the people who watch them.
This being the case, I'm going to write about golf as play, and about what courses should be. Pure fun, that is.
I've no interest today in the latest, greatest, most dazzling abomination of a 7,600-yard course that you can't walk and that has all the charm of a freeway compared to a country road.
I want my golf rugged and I want it adventurous and I want it full of feeling and full of shot options and full of views and full of sensation.
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On the Par-4 293-yard Third hole you might as well hit drive and take your chances with the various pot bunkers. |
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Luckily, such courses exist, still.
The older I get, the more I find myself gravitating to the rough and tumble courses where the golf's unpredictable.
My favourite course around Toronto, where I live, is the Devil's Paintbrush.
Chris Haney and Scott Abbott, the guys who invented the mega-popular board game Trivial Pursuit, got this place going about 15 years ago after its sister course down the road, the more lavish but also excellent Devil's Pulpit course. I like the Pulpit enough but I love the Paintbrush, or, as its members call it, the 'Brush.
The 'Brush is golf as adventure. The guys who run the place invite me out a few times a year, and every visit's a privilege and a treat. I played there eight times this year and found I had more energy after the round than before. That's one way to gauge a course: Does it give you energy or withdraw it?
The odd thing is, I feel more tired after playing a course when I have to take a cart than when I walk it, as I do the 'Brush.
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The par-3 fourth hole may only be 191 yards from the tip, but it is a hole not to be triffled with. |
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I usually play with my pal Irv Warsh, who's 80 years old. He regularly shoots his age and last year shot 72. Irv has the coolest swing, in that it appears he's using a licorice shaft, the way the thing moves around on his backswing. But he swings with rhythm and he gets the clubface on the ball every time, and he knows how to use the ground.
Ah, the ground. That's one thing the 'Brush has, and allows the golfer to use, that most every course in North America has taken from the game.
The fescue fairways feel firm for most of the season. The architects Michael Hurdzan and his associate Dana Fry had it in mind to build a wild course that sprawls across a heaving landscape, and they came through.
Pot bunkers as deep as a well and as small as a teaspoon. Other sod-walled bunkers as wide as a football field but still as deep as a well.
The sixth green with a back section so raised one needs an elevator rather than a putter to get back there. Double greens, one with a tree in the middle. Stone walls throughout the property. A small clubhouse that has the feel of an Irish pub. Uneven lies on just about every shot. Angles to holes that invite one to pick and choose one line among many. Decisions, decisions, decisions.
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The par-5 eighth hole has the look of golf with no boundaries. |
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But the easiest decision on a fine summer's day is to get out there, throw a half-set of clubs in a bag, and play the course.
And I do mean play. During my rounds at the 'Brush this past season I drilled a low 3-iron into the 172-yard par-three fourth hole, hooking it in to the green with some run on the ball.
I picked a cloud out of the sky and aimed toward it for my approach on the fifth to the blind green.
On and on. I punched a 110-yard 7-iron up the hill to the 10th green. I intentionally sliced a 5-iron to ride a left to right wind to the 12th green. The ball must have curved 60 yards.
I then hit a low, burning driver—with a half-swing—into the wind at the 206-yard par-three 13th hole.
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Some call the 12th hole the best hole on the course, even though the drive is blind. |
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On more than one round I found the pot bunker in the middle of the 17th hole off my drive.
You want fun, the 'Brush is all about fun.
"When asked which is their favourite golf course, most golf course architects dodge the question by saying, 'That is like asking me to say which is my favourite child,'" Hurdzan says in his handsome coffee-table book Selected Golf Courses. "Well, I don't dodge the question. Devil's Paintbrush is my favorite child, and my favorite course to play. It's as close to a true links golf course as can be built on inland land."
That's the way I feel when I'm out there. The place is a moonscape, and on a clear day the skyline of Toronto is visible some 35 miles to the southwest. But the 'Brush is all about getting out of the city. It's about getaway golf in what feels like a remote setting.
Come on along. We'll round a curve on a country road in Caledon East, Ontario, and suddenly the course is there.
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The par-4 15th hole has trouble with bunkers for those that hit their drive too short and a pond for those that go a bit too far. |
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The first bit we'll see is a gigantic hill that tumbles down to a fairway. We're looking at the par-five 11th hole, the one that incorporates the tree into the green it shares with the 14th hole. From there you, or at least I, can't wait to drive up the unpaved road to the unpaved parking lots.
The course doesn't have paved cart paths, either, by the way. You can ride, but why would you if you can walk?
As you can tell, I rather like the 'Brush. I'd be a member if I lived closer to the place; it's an hour from my home.
I can't imagine a more appealing two-course club in Canada or the U.S.
Who knows, maybe I'll get a tent and pitch it near the course, join up and spend a summer there. It would feel positive Dornochian for me. Yeah, as you know if you've read some of my work, I'm also a major enthusiast for Royal Dornoch in the Scottish Highlands.
Here's Hurdzan again: "On those days when intense concentration on golf is not on the agenda, the Paintbrush can fill your mind with changing patterns of color, texture and light, and provide visual images that stir some ancient hardwired sense of peace and tranquility. It is a magical place, where you can play a special brand of golf, and feel like every discretionary minute invested there was a wise choice."
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If you get into one of the nasty bunkers on the home hole best not to be a hero. |
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Right on. The only problem is that the 'Brush is closed now until the spring, which can't come fast enough for me.
I'll be back with my buddy Irv Warsh at the 'Brush as soon as I can, investing my discretionary minutes.
And I haven't even mentioned the par-threes. I can't think of a more interesting set than the fourth, seventh, thirteenth and sixteenth.
But that's another story. The 'Brush offers many stories, and I plan to keep playing it and writing about it for as long as possible.
Here's to Trivial Pursuit, its inventors and course owners Chris Haney and Scott Abbott, and to Hurdzan and Fry. Thanks for the 'Brush. It's some course, and some experience.
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