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It\u2019s a fine day on the southern Oregon coast\u2014warm and clear, with a nip of salt on the breeze blowing in off the Pacific.\u00a0 I\u2019m in the car with my new friend Al Greenfield, proprietor of A Bandon Inn, on our way from the renowned Bandon Dunes Resort to the Sheep Ranch\u2014 which is not actually a ranch, and has no sheep.\u00a0 Nor is it a clever moniker for a house of ill repute.\u00a0 It is, in fact, a nearly mythical linksland, but not really a golf course.\u00a0 It is a magical domain right out of a Michael Murphy book, where scores and yardages cease to hold sway.\u00a0 It is a grassy hallucination.\u00a0\u00a0 And it has generated more gossip and jealous buzz among hard-core golfers than an invitation to Augusta.<\/p>\n
The car torques and twists along a back road made tiny by high yellow hills of blooming gorse, and then veers onto a gravel road that leads to a locked gate. Al has been entrusted with a key for the day so we unlock two padlocks, pull forward, and close the gate behind us.<\/p>\n
The gravel road jogs north to parallel the ocean a quarter mile inland from sheer cliffs. Between the road and the cliffs stretches what may be the most sublime golfing grounds you\u2019ve never heard: a mile of perfect, musical, rolling, wild coastline that plunges down to the Pacific. It boasts one of the best short par threes most people will never play\u2014over crashing surf to a green that clings Cypress-like to the very edge of the continent. The links are buffered on the inland side by shore pines and the gray, elegant ghosts of dead shore pines that, in juxtaposition, seem to impart some wisdom about the nature of time. It is all perfectly green and gorgeously wide and humongously empty beneath the golden sun.\u00a0 If Al and I were movie villains we would wring our hands and laugh: \u201cMu-hu-wa-ha-ha-ha!\u201d<\/p>\n
We follow the road up a steep hill to a dirt parking area.\u00a0 In the distance, we notice a pickup hauling ass toward us, trailed by a twister of dust.\u00a0 When a middle-aged man becomes visible, Al says, \u201cHere comes the starter, the cart girl, and the head pro.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moments later the superintendent of the Sheep Ranch climbs out to collect our \u00a0greens fees as if we are spies passing him microfilm that will bring down a government. He is a man of few words.<\/p>\n
I learn this much. The owner of the property only allows a few groups a month to play out here. The course is closed on weekends. It\u2019s closed in the summer\u2014because there\u2019s no irrigation and, as the super says, \u201cSo I can go fishing more.\u201d<\/p>\n
He tells me that the putting surfaces\u2014all 13 of them\u2014are watered by hooking up a 1,000-gallon fire truck to a few sprinkler heads around each green. Some greens soak up two or three truckloads. Two maintenance workers will spend eight hours every day all summer watering seven acres of greens on this golf course that isn\u2019t even open and some would say doesn\u2019t really exist.<\/p>\n
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Finally, I ask how folks can book a tee time and he says that he doesn\u2019t want to encourage that too much. But people should just call him. <\/ins>And I think: this may be the most private public course ever conceived.<\/p>\n \u201cHow do they find you?\u201d I ask.<\/p>\n \u201cThey just find me.\u201d<\/p>\n And then he is gone– but not before reminding us to lock the place up when we\u2019re through.<\/p>\n For the rest of the day it\u2019s just Al and me amid the blowing fescues and the snapping red flags, the views of rolling lines of white breakers and the old fire truck parked on the gravel road behind one of the greens. All part of one of the greatest tracts of pristine, embraceable, untrammeled golf terrain on the planet. And possibly the only course where you can actually hit a shot over a fire truck and remain in play.<\/p>\n We commence our round from an elevated tee box just below the parking area. The scorecard informs us there is a hole 427 yards away. We\u2019re not certain where, but we hit directly at the blue splash of the Pacific. Eventually we find a green and think it\u2019s the correct one, called \u201cH.\u201d The greens at the Sheep Ranch are labeled \u201cA\u201d through \u201cK\u201d (plus one called \u201cA-\u201c) in no discernable order. Though the card lists 18 holes (you play some of the greens twice) and even provides distances, this is more or less a nod to convention, an option that we happily ignore. Next to two asterisks at the bottom it also says \u201cTeeing areas not available.\u201d A local rule holds that whoever wins a hole walks off the green, finds a flat spot, and invents a tee\u2014just like they did in Scotland 500 years ago. He also gets to pick where the next hole is by pointing to a flag and saying, \u201cLet\u2019s go there.\u201d\u00a0 And \u201cthere\u201d might mean a green sitting on a ridge beyond a rock-filled bunker a punch shot away.\u00a0 Or it might mean \u201cTHERE\u201d\u2014700 or 800 yards distant at the other end of the property.<\/p>\n The scorecard actually describes a course of 6,500 yards and a par of 70 but these, too, are negotiable. It\u2019s anyone\u2019s guess whether you\u2019re even following the routing\u2014a generous term for how the Sheep Ranch is laid out. The card identifies holes ranging from 154 to 562 yards but this doesn\u2019t include par sixes and sevens or the rumored par 12 if you play from the northern to the southern end. Even if you tried to play the greens in order you couldn\u2019t really be sure you\u2019d chosen correctly since the fairways often branch toward several different putting surfaces. But very soon none of this sort of thing really matters anyway.<\/p>\n Almost immediately Al and I abandon any notion of propriety and begin making up holes as the mood strikes. Still, for the first three of these holes I write down our scores in the little boxes on the card\u2014until I recognize how truly ludicrous this is. As if it\u2019s a fresh revelation, I begin to understand that the true nature of golf has little to do with score and everything to do with the quenching thwok of clubhead against ball, the joy of envisioning and executing cool shots to unknown locations, the camaraderie of friends old and new. I have spoken or written similar sentiments a thousand times but never really believed them until now.<\/p>\n I am dumbstruck by the simple idea of walking through a beautiful landscape and playing for the pure sake of play, undiluted by extortionist greens fees, Pro V1s, graphite shafts, GPS systems and all the other horseshit that we\u2019ve built around the game. As we begin to play close enough to the ocean to hear waves crashing against the shore, I almost wish I had a stick and a pebble instead of my ridiculous high-tech equipment. I am embarrassed by my golf bag. I have an urge to strip off all my clothes except my shoes.<\/p>\n Soon we discover ourselves a wedge shot away from the green that I have heard described as \u201ca power spot\u201d and a \u201cvortex.\u201d We stumble upon a tee box on the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean. Across a wide chasm\u2014beyond a gorse-covered hump and a dead tree that create a half-blind shot right out of Prestwick\u2014 lies a 32,000 sq ft., tightly mown platform only the tip of which is visible from the tee.<\/p>\n Al and I hit shots to this green from three different \u201ctee boxes.\u201d After playing out, we strike putts for fun from 120 feet. We back up to seven-iron distance, three-wood distance. We approach from various angles. We spend an hour here, maybe two\u2014I don\u2019t know. Why? Because we can. Even when we eventually play south down the beach to an elegantly curving Cape hole, and a blind par three hole, and to another cliffside green shaped like the infinity symbol, we still think about that vortex hole. We are drawn irrevocably back to it. The rest of our afternoon is right out of a Beckett play.<\/p>\n At one point Al, wandering the topography, says, \u201cI think this is a tee box.\u201d<\/p>\n Long pause.<\/p>\n \u201cNo. Seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n Pause.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not kidding.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s as good as any,\u201d I say. \u201cWhere are we going?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhere do you want to go?\u201d<\/p>\n I consider this. \u201cHow about over there?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIs there a flag over there?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI have no idea.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLet\u2019s hit it over there. If there\u2019s no flag we\u2019ll go somewhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOkay,\u201d I say. \u201cHow far do you think it is to the short grass?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI have no idea.\u201d<\/p>\n Later, after stepping off one of the greens, I notice a sprinkler head that reads \u201c96.\u201d But from what? There\u2019s nothing in view but the putting surface we just holed out on five feet away. Perhaps this has some deeper meaning that\u2019s lost on me.<\/p>\n Similarly, as we\u2019re golfing cross-country from the road back to the hanging oceanside vortex green (a par six, we determine), we pass three pot bunkers luxuriating in the long grass. They\u2019re not guarding a putting surface or set in a fairway, but they\u2019re lovely, and we admire them and move on. It\u2019s as if this golf links exists in several dimensions and while we\u2019re playing in one of them we see occasional signposts from the others, though we don\u2019t know what they mean.<\/p>\n As we approach the vortex green from this new direction I gaze toward the south and notice a red flag way off in the misty distance. I recognize the thirteenth hole on Pacific Dunes, at the Bandon Dunes Resort, which lies on the other side of a huge sand blowout just beyond the southernmost edge of the Sheep Ranch. So close, yet worlds apart. People are playing golf there right now. We are just playing.<\/p>\n If you ask anyone at the resort about the Sheep Ranch they\u2019ll shrug like the locals probably did when Cortez showed up in Mexico five centuries ago and asked if they\u2019d seen any gold. Ask them how you get on the course\u2014call it \u201cArea 51\u201d or \u201cthe Secret Course\u201d or use one of the other names this place has been described by, to show that you\u2019re in the know– and they\u2019ll still just shake their heads in apology. You\u2019ll need to search further. But I can\u2019t tell you how.<\/p>\n Al and I finish the par six to the ocean and decide to play one last hole from the vortex green back up to the car. Then we drive away and lock the gate behind us.<\/p>\n All photos by Rick Schafer, www.rickschafer.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"DSC_0206\"](\"http:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2009\/08\/DSC_0206-195x300.jpg\")
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