By Bradford Bixby, For The Mountain Times
Welcome back, dear reader, from our annual winter hibernation. While dwelling in my cave I had a lot of time to think and I came up with a few observations about this game we love so much. For instance, golf is an easy game: it’s just hard to play. No matter how badly you play it’s always possible to play worse. Golf can be defined as an endless series of tragedies obscured by an occasional miracle. Golfers have no math skills: they shoot six, yell fore and write five. In golf you can hit a two acre fairway ten percent of the time and a two inch branch ninety percent of the time. Most golfers aren’t bad putters, they just can’t catch a break. And finally golf was once a rich man’s sport, but now has millions of poor players.
All right, enough of this malarkey, let’s get down to business. Last year literally two days after I submitted my last column for the season our beloved Clair Jones hit a hole-in-one on Thistle number five. Belated congratulations to you sir. The month of April will have two cool events for us all. First the Mount Hood Sasquatch Festival is happening at the Resort from Friday April 11th through Sunday April 13th. The hours are 4pm to 9pm Friday, 9am to 7pm Saturday and 9am to 3pm Sunday. There will be vendors, speakers, presentations and activities for the kids. There’s something to entertain everyone, so come on out. You may not know this, dear reader, but Squatch and I have something in common: we can both predict a cold winter, because in the fall our back hair grows in extra thick.
The second April event is the Spring Into Golf Tournament scheduled for Saturday April 26th. It’s a nine hole four-man scramble that is open to the public. We will have an open house in the pro shop at 9am followed by a 10am tournament start. It’s a great way for members and non-members to enjoy our game together. So call the pro shop and sign up.
And finally I want to give kudos and high fives to our grounds crew. Under the supervision of JD Clorizlo our course has made a phenomenal recovery and is now in amazing shape. The crew has worked long and hard the past couple years and it really shows. The traps are weedless and trimmed, the greens are in great shape and will be stellar after plugging in the late spring. In fact, the whole place is looking like a destination resort course we can all be proud of. They even opened the Foxglove for play in late February; I’ve never seen it open before June. I just point out that JD comes up from southern Oregon periodically to give the staff instruction and training, trusting our hard working crew to make sure it gets done – as they have done admirably. I’m telling ya the place is being groomed top to bottom like a Kardashian on spa day. The pride is back so let’s spread the word.
That’s enough for this month so get out and play. Just remember to “Hit Em Straight”