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Even if you watched this year\u2019s Accenture Match Play Championship at La Costa on television, you may have missed my exciting match against a Texas golf writer who hit the flagstick with a sculled chip shot as hard as anyone has ever hit a flagstick in the long, storied history of golf.\u00a0 Somehow the ball dropped into the hole for birdie.\u00a0 You didn\u2019t see this miraculous trick shot (the pros don\u2019t even attempt stuff like that) because the Texas writer\u2014 whom I\u2019ll call \u201cArt\u201d\u2014 and I weren\u2019t actually able to make it to La Costa for the tournament.\u00a0 We played our match several weeks later, when the crowds had already left.\u00a0 I won\u2019t give away the outcome, but let\u2019s just say that a dollar was supposed to change hands and it wasn’t supposed co come out of my wallet.\u00a0 So it wasn\u2019t the blue Wedgwood Walter Hagen Trophy (or the $1.3 million) that Geoff Ogilvy pocketed this year when he beat Davis Love in the Match Play finals 3 and 2.\u00a0 But sometimes squeezing a buck out of a tightwad can feel just as good.<\/p>\n
Okay, I\u2019m lying.\u00a0 But it was still better than losing a buck.<\/p>\n
Professional golfers have been teeing it up in tournaments at La Costa virtually since the toney resort opened in the rolling, coastal foothills 30 miles north of San Diego in 1965.\u00a0 Designed by Dick Wilson and Joe Lee (best known for their work at Doral), La Costa\u2019s golf courses have hosted events ranging from the Haig and Haig Scotch Mixed Tournament (1965-1967) to the Tournament of Champions (1969-1998).\u00a0 In the early days, names like Hope, Martin, and Crosby showed up regularly on the tee sheet at this resort that was the first in the U.S. to boast a full-service spa.<\/p>\n
La Costa added its second golf course\u2014 designed by Lee one-half at a time in 1973 and 1984\u2014 and eventually paired new nines and old nines to create the North and South Courses.\u00a0 The Accenture Match Play Championship, which was held here seven times (it will move to The Gallery, outside Tucson next year), took place on a composite course that is available to guests several times each year.\u00a0 It consists of the back nine of the South Course as the front nine, and North 1-3 and 13-18 as the back nine.\u00a0 La Costa\u2019s charming and efficient Director of Golf, Desi Howe, says, \u201cOur guests who play the composite course really enjoy playing and visualizing the same shots the tour professionals faced only a few weeks before.\u00a0 It\u2019s a great way to make a personal connection to the history and tradition La Costa has enjoyed with the best players in the world, dating back to the 1960s.\u201d\u00a0 And also with some of the worst players in the world, if you take Art and me into account.<\/p>\n
In addition to myself, winners at La Costa include names such as Love, Woods, Kite, Miller, Nicklaus, and Trevino.\u00a0 Nicklaus has said of the course, \u201cYou\u2019ve got to start out fast and hold on at the end.\u201d\u00a0 San Diego Magazine reported, \u201cThe players . . . think it is a fair course, challenging without bordering on ridiculously difficult.\u201d\u00a0 Nobody thought to quote me, perhaps for good reason.<\/p>\n
Both layouts feature Bermuda grass in the fairways and roughs, and Bent grass greens.\u00a0 They play through mature trees of seemingly infinite variety, with generous fairways, rounded grabby bunkers ingeniously placed, man-made lakes, and small, elevated putting surfaces.\u00a0 North plays a bit longer while South requires a little more accuracy.\u00a0 Wind is a factor throughout and you must have an aerial game to survive on either venue.<\/p>\n Art and I played our entire match on South, where he started aggressively by power fading into the topiary to the right of the first hole, an easy 357-yard opener where he meant to hit to the edge of water, leaving a short chip to the green.\u00a0 Speaking of water, his approach to the second green would have ended up in the pond behind it had he not slammed the pin and sucked down into the cup for an ill-conceived birdie.\u00a0 I assumed neighbors were dialing up 911 when they heard him cackling not far from where children played in grassy yards.<\/p>\n Number three is the toughest on La Costa\u2019s South Course, an uphill three-shot par four with five bunkers clustering around the green like Tony Soprano\u2019s cousins.\u00a0 Both of us avoided these dangers en route to bogies. The fifth hole presents a bit of trickery, which Art fell for.\u00a0 This 406-yard downhiller features wind blowing toward a ditch, where Art\u2019s ball likely still lies, and which led our playing companion to call him \u201cBaranca Obama.\u201d\u00a0 I overcompensated for my slice by yanking one far left, leaving an amusing lie that forced me to lay up, though I didn\u2019t know that until after striking the shot.\u00a0 Following my three putt, our droll third told me I was \u201cno Two-Putt Shakur.\u201d\u00a0 But I still won the hole.\u00a0 And told him to shut up.<\/p>\n After that, my wheels spun off for a couple of holes that I will not describe to you except to say that the widest part of number six is the hot dog shack beyond the green, which I hit easily.\u00a0 Number eight presents a fine par three with a swampy waste area to the right, and though Art hit to 12 feet and I was in a bunker we both made pars, which deflated him faster than a parade float.\u00a0 Art then shook hands with the snowman on the ninth hole to leave me one up for the front side.<\/p>\n On the back I began to realize just how diabolically La Costa\u2019s bunkers are placed, and thought about tracking down Joe Lee if he\u2019s still alive.\u00a0 I also learned\u2014twice\u2014that five wood isn\u2019t always the best way to escape said bunkers, especially when you\u2019ve still got 200 yards to a green protected by trees, lake, and other bunkers and you need a perfect angle and an air drop to end up in the same area code as the pin.\u00a0 I hit into another bunker on eleven to add to my collection.\u00a0 Fourteen, an excellent uphill par three with elevated green and four deep bunkers, cries out for loft, which I delivered.\u00a0 I guess I never heard it cry out for accuracy, as well.\u00a0 I missed a short putt for bogie, but my opponent\u2019s growing portfolio of flubs conspired to award me the hole.<\/p>\n Nobody knows better than me and Art why they call the last four holes of the South Course \u201cThe Longest Mile\u201d (it plays 1847 yards into the wind).\u00a0 Art made it seem even longer by dropping an 18-footer for birdie on fifteen and executing a dance step the likes of which I can only hope to never witness again.\u00a0 On sixteen and seventeen we took turns hitting into water, leaving our match even going into eighteen\u2014which the fans would have loved if there had been any fans.\u00a0 Even our cynical companion could barely stand to watch us any more.<\/p>\n La Costa South\u2019s par-four closing hole plays 460 LONG yards uphill into the wind, with water fronting the green and an excellent restaurant lying in wait behind it.\u00a0 After swinging harder than men our age should ever swing anything without a chiropractor close at hand, I lay 150 yards from the pin in the middle of the fairway while Art was about 225 out in the rough.\u00a0 Most guys wouldn\u2019t have laid up into the fairway bunker from there, but Art is not most guys.\u00a0 If his plan from that point was to hit his wood 75 yards short of the green, he executed perfectly.\u00a0 I won the hole\u2014and the match\u2014unprettily with a bogie.<\/p>\n I soon discovered that beyond the two golf courses lies a resort as beloved by guests as the courses are by tour players, local sticks, and many others who are not Art.\u00a0 Coming off a $140 million renovation, the property boasts 474 remodeled guest rooms; a new clubhouse and 8,000 sq ft fitness center staffed by dieticians and exercise physiologists; two new restaurants (BlueFire Bar and Grill and Legends Bistro); and a 28,000 sq ft spa designed in the Spanish colonial style with feng shui features, 42 treatment rooms, and a roman waterfall pounding massage.\u00a0\u00a0 La Costa is also home to the Chopra Center, an additional full service spa the goal of which is to align body and spirit.\u00a0 That was the last place I saw Art.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Flexible Flyers<\/p>\n There’s always been a huge gap between two schools of instructional thought– the technocrats, who believe that technical mechanics are the key to playing great golf, and the mystocrats, who believe that great golf is all in the mind and you need only access your inner-scratch-player to succeed.<\/p>\n At La Costa, PGA member and certified yoga instructor Roger Fredericks is now playing the music that will bring the two together.\u00a0\u00a0 The magical theme song with the power to conjoin them is flexibility, something that both sides are talking about without really saying it.\u00a0 Mechanical instruction peddles it when touting shoulder turn, hip rotation, and arm extension; new age instruction addresses flexibility of the mind in terms of opening up to new ways of thinking.\u00a0 Fredericks, who employs knowledge and techniques from physiology, biomechanics, kinesiology, yoga, swing videotape, and other sources, has used it in his work with such luminaries as Nicklaus, Palmer, Player, and more than 60 other touring pros.<\/p>\n Traditional golf instruction often tells players to do things that they are physically not capable of because their shoulders are too tight, their hips don’t flex in the way that Tiger’s or John Daly’s do, and their general range of motion is limited.\u00a0 Most golf students are entirely unfit (literally) to execute the things they’re being told will make them better golfers.\u00a0 The only thing traditional golf instruction stretches is credibility.\u00a0 On the other side of the dance hall, the mystics encourage golfers to let go, to stop thinking, to BE the ball, for godsakes.\u00a0 But how can you act in a certain way if the metaphor of your body is tightness, stress, tension– in a word, inflexibility, whether to new ideas or the kind involved in bending over to tie your golf shoes?<\/p>\n Fredericks’s approach– which is both simple and so obvious that it hurts (yes, literally)– may be the real key to not only bringing together technocrats and mystocrats, but also to improving the performance of golfers on the course and in their lives in general.\u00a0 Flexibility promises to deliver many of the things that technical instruction and mystical new-age chanting have promised in terms of golf performance, but it may also complete the missing piece in a puzzle in which golf and life really are parallel.\u00a0 Because being more flexible in your body also translates to being more flexible in life.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" *<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3068,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[277563,6127,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wisconsin-golfer","category-so-cal-golf-assoc","category-courses-and-travel"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2011\/10\/LaCosta11_Champions-Course.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3067"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3356,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3067\/revisions\/3356"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>\n<\/a>\n