#1Jan 9th, 2007
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“We are spread wide, then brought to a tiny place,” Michael Murphy writes in his classic work, Golf and the Kingdom. The observation occurs as the writer, under the tutelage of the legendary golf guru Shivas Irons, unravels the mysteries of moving a little ball from a tee box to a hole in the green a few hundred yards away. What struck Murphy more than 50 years ago on Scotland’s mythical Burning Bush golf course will seem equally apropos for those approaching the third tee of Green Gables course on Prince Edward Island.
Spread wide below the golfer’s feet is a breathtaking view of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, whose blue waters seem to stretch to infinity on the far side of a dark band of conifers encircling the hole 536 yards away. Watching the white ball hang in the sky against the billiard-cloth verdure of the broad, sloping fairway is to be reminded that golf is a game of ballistic beauty, and to realize that few places can better P.E.I. courses for their natural aesthetic delights.
When we played the Stanley Thompson-designed Green Gables course in late summer, it was showing not only its 1937 birth date but also the acute effects of a long season’s worth of trampling. Even so, every few holes gave cause for a “Hey, wait a minute” slowing of the feet. Here, it was a corner being rounded to reveal late afternoon light glinting off a pond. There, it was the curiosity of a small Japanese tour group shyly crossing behind the 12th tee as they emerged from the “Haunted Woods” of the adjacent Anne of Green Gables village. Everywhere, there was something.
Across the island, well beyond its golf courses, P.E.I.’s many splendid “somethings” combine to create a sense of amazement that a place so compact can contain so much that is so wonderful. Against the vastness of the Canadian land mass, after all, P.E.I. is a truly tiny place. A driver travelling 100 kilometres an hour could cover the island, tip to tail, in just over two hours. Motorists with lead feet would have enough spare time to grab a lobster sandwich at a drive-through in Charlottetown.
Yet within its diminutive width and length, visitors find dune-scapes and rolling pastoral hillsides just minutes apart; sea crags soaring out of the Gulf above the red beaches on the northwest side of the island, dense woodlands to the southwest in the Cardigan area.
There’s history to soak up in Charlottetown, of course. Yet in the Cavendish area, the tourist trap offshoots of the Anne Shirley industry—from T-shirt shops to pizza joints to full-blown amusement parks—will keep preteen tagalongs happy for days. (In what appears to be a display of classic Island good sense, residents seem to have quite deliberately confined such necessary economic evils to one corner of the province, much the way rich, mad Aunt Agnes was once kept fed, watered, comfortable—and out of sight—in the attic of the farmhouse.)
Those who associate P.E.I cooking with potatoes, potatoes and more potatoes haven’t been lucky enough to stumble on Windows on the Water, a restaurant in the tiny village of Montague, or even a traditional lobster supper in the basement of St. Anne’s Church. The sea and the fields provide the abundance. Talented local chefs create the variety of really great meals.
Heightening this richness are some of the most delightful golf courses imaginable. A few, such as The Links at Crowbush Cove, Brudenell River and Dundarave, are household names—at least in golfing households. Yet there are discoveries waiting to be made, such as the Eagles Glenn, a relatively new links-style course tucked into the hills above Cavendish. During our recent, all-too-brief visit to the island, we played Crowbush, Brudenell and Dundarave and found them worthy of their reputations as must-play courses that are jewels in the crown of P.E.I.—indeed, Canadian—golf. It was Eagles Glenn, however, that we squeezed in for a second round, and which we all vowed to take on again as soon as time and funds allow.
Still, Brudenell is a wonderful course, amenable to golfers of various skill levels, though no gimme track. At 6,517 yards off the back tees, its par fives and longer par fours can still challenge even big hitters. With its many wide, hit-away fairways, however, the course allows enough calm to let players savour its spectacular setting. The par 3 “Shimmering Waters” 10th Hole, for example, takes golfers down to the shore of the Brudenell River, then sends things off on the back nine from a peninsula tee-box aimed towards a well-bunkered green surrounded by majestic trees. Players who don’t do stupid things like, oh, say, trying to hit flop shots out of a pot bunker over a very tall oak tree, can finish the day with the feeling they’ve stolen one from the golf gods.
Dundarave, by contrast, is a demanding course. It is visually stunning thanks to its sweeping, elevated architecture and its signature 131 red-sand bunkers that mark the fairways and sides of greens. The sheer number of those bunkers demands precision play and, when one too many shots go wide of the mark and land in them, risks giving parts of Dundarave a slightly tricked-up feel.
There are no tricks to playing The Links at Crowbush Cove. You play well. Or you don’t. It’s that simple. The saving grace, even for those in the latter category, though, is the experience of playing the series of tough, tight holes that parallel the sea. Hit a good shot against the huffing, salt-laden wind and you can believe for an instant you’re back where the game began, back at its origins in Scotland before it spread so wide as to bring us to play in tiny, remarkable P.E.I.
PS.....It's P.E.
We'd surely miss them if they decided to go elsewhere.
