I got a guided tour of the upcoming Crook Point Golf Course this morning from Grant Hornbeak, project manager for what is destined to become the most beautiful and most-fun-to-play golf course in the western half of the United States. Due to open in the summer of 2011, I think it will surpass Bandon Dunes, 40 miles to the north, and Pebble Beach, south of San Francisco, which are Oregon and California’s best coastal courses. Pebble Beach will host this year’s U.S. Open.

I was invited to tour this new course because of my involvement with youth golf, specifically the Gold Beach Youth Golf Team which Backwoods Home Magazine sponsors.  In fact, the whole golf team was invited, along with the two high school coaches, Mark Hockema and Toby Stanley.

Thirteen of us spent a couple of hours in the occasional drizzle walking the rugged terrain, being careful not to fall off the several cliffs that overlook the Pacific Ocean. The sky alternately brightened and darkened and it rained for the second hour, but I got a few decent photos as you can see.

What a wonderful place this will be. It will become the “home course” for the Gold Beach High School team, so the Crook family, which has owned the land as part of the 4,000-acre Crook family ranch since 1857, thought we needed to have a look. In addition to the main course, which will be a major challenge to a rank amateur like me, they will build a special nine-hole short course that kids will be able to play free.

The main course features several tee boxes perched on cliff outcrops. The greens are four and five hundred yards away over canyons that lead hundreds of feet down to the ocean. Talk about heart pounding excitement! I think it will be hard to keep your mind on the tee shot, what with a cliff straight down behind your back and the pounding of waves against sea stacks between you and the green. Whales also migrate by here on a regular basis, and fishing boats dot the horizon, attracted by waters made productive by the deep unwelling of cold water from the close-in continental shelf. You’d have to stop play just to take a photo of everything else that’s going on.

The Crook family has hired Dye Designs, which has designed championship courses around the world. Plans call for five holes along the water’s edge, another five high enough to afford panoramic ocean views, and eight winding through a spruce forest containing several streams. Ocean-front cottages will be available for rent by vacationers, and of course there will be a clubhouse and restaurant. Arcadia Vacation Homes will handle the cottage rentals. Seven are already built and available for rent now.

The course will cost about $135 to play, which is half the price of Bandon Dunes. This area could use a golf resort like this. It will bring both jobs and tourist dollars to our battered economy.

Yesterday, while taking advantage of suddenly sunny weather after a few days of downpour, I was about to hit a five-iron across the creek on the 9th hole at Salmon Run Golf Course in Brookings, Oregon. Bad golfer that I am, I realized I should hit a six-iron instead to give me a chance to get over some trees in front of the creek. So I ran back to my cart over the rain-soaked fairway, then slipped and took a backwards swan dive into a big puddle of water and mud.

I was so wet I could hardly walk. Nevertheless I went back to my ball and promptly wacked it into a tree, from where it dropped into the creek.

Fortunately, I had an extra pair of pants and shirt in my truck, so was able to change in the club’s locker room. I also retrieved my cleated golf shoes, which I had neglected to put on for the first nine holes, then played five more holes before it got dark.

On the way home I stopped at Fred Meyer and bought a bag of 75 golf balls for $28. I had lost 20 balls on the course, and the retarded state of my game necessitates I buy balls that cost thirty seven cents each.

Today I’m going back to Salmon Run to see what hilarities lay in wait for me. If you ever play golf there, or at Cedar Bend in Gold Beach, and find a cheap ball marked with the letters “DUF,” you’ll know a very funny guy lost it.

Matt and Robby use indoor golf range they helped build at the BHM office out of a discarded fishing gill net. They are using a video system to record and playback their swings so they can analyze them.

We’ve finished deadline for the Jan/Feb issue so I’m back to the Gold Beach Youth Golf Team. We meet at my office, which has been converted to the golf club, this afternoon to discuss the winter schedule. Right now it’s raining most days and it gets dark about 5 pm, so it doesn’t leave a lot of room for golf outside. The kids built an indoor range out of an old discarded ocean fishing gill net in one of the BHM storerooms, so we have a rainy-day place to practice. Through donations the club purchased a used video system so we can record, then analyze the kids’ swings.

Two people have taken me up on my appeal for donations of golf clubs in my Oct. 15 post.  If anyone else has clubs they no longer use, we’ll put them to good use. I’ll pay the Fed-Ex charges. Just e-mail me (dave at backwoodshome.com) with your mailing address and I’ll ship you a pre-paid mailing label so you can FedEx the items to us. If they are real good clubs, we’ll even pay you for them, but we can’t afford much.

Lisa with prepaid FedEx ticket. We'll send you one if you have golf equipment to donate.

You can also help out the youth team by buying a golf shirt I designed. I talk about it in my upcoming editorial in the Jan/Feb issue. It costs $30, but it’s high quality — 65 percent poly and 35 percent cotton that would sell for about $35 at a golf pro shop. I’ll not only send you the shirt, but I’ll also send you a free, autographed copy of my book, Can America Be Saved from Stupid People, and our little U.S. Constitution book. The offer isn’t online yet (I’ll have the webmaster do so soon) so you’ll just have to call the office at 1-800-835-2418 to order. Here’s what the shirt looks like:

The golf shirt has the Backwoods Home logo (embroidered) on the left breast.

Robby and Matt, two members of the Backwoods Home Magazine Youth Golf Team, chip balls into a horse trough while I control an extra large burn pile in the background. These are our two best players.

I’ve been trying to think of an easier way to raise funds for the youth golf club, and it occurred to me that a lot of people probably have old, but good, golf clubs stuffed away in their attic. I do — or did — until I brought them into the team room, which is part of the BHM office building. If some of you have golf clubs you no longer use, we would put them to good use.

A pertinent story: A high school freshman member of our team loves to Tee-off with my TaylorMade R7, L-flex driver. He, like me, has a fairly slow swing (he because he is young and I because I am old) so the L-flex suits his swing. I’ve been letting him work a few hours here and there at the magazine stacking boxes and sweeping floors so he can save up and buy the club, which probably costs $75-$100 at a golf shop because the club is a couple of years old.

But it occurred to me that once he gets that club, he’s going to realize that now he needs some good wedges, maybe a good 3-wood he can hit. The proper clubs are important to an aspiring young golfer. Crummy clubs often lead to crummy performance and a loss of interest in the game. So I thought I’d solicit clubs, beginning here.

An abundance of clubs would serve two purposes:

(1) The kids could try the various clubs every Wednesday when we play at the local course and see which ones fit their swing.
(2) We could sell some of the clubs to raise funds, probably taking other clubs in on trade and resell them.

We’d make the kids pay for the clubs they like, giving them a steep discount and letting them work at the magazine or a couple of other businesses in town that have decided this youth golf club is a good idea. Simply giving free stuff to kids does not foster self-reliance.

Anyway, if you’ve got clubs, I’ll take them and I’ll pay the freight. If they’re real good clubs, you could probably talk me into giving you a free subscription or renewal to the magazine. I’m easy!