The sounds of golf can make the game special.
I ripped a shot with my driver, the massive head sending the ball beyond the 200-yard sign like a high-tech drone.
The titanium tink, that beautiful sound, settled into my ears and brought a smile to my face as I watched the satisfying shot.
One perfect shot and nine putrid pounding of golf balls — but who's counting?
As I lined up another shot on the driving range, I heard what sounded like the tinkling of water behind me. I turned and saw a rather rotund yellow lab watering the grass with a profoundly pleased look on his face. After finishing his duty, he moseyed over, letting me pat his head and scratch his backside. Then he strolled off down the middle of the driving range to the west.
After the canine trotted his way to the far edge of the range, I whipped the driver into another ball.
No tantalizing titanium tink, no satisfaction, no smile.
But sounds are still part of the game as I let loose with a few choice aggravated adjectives.
The South Forty Golf Course in Cortez provided me with a fun, frustrating and formidable Sunday morning.
The course, owned by Bruce and Nancy Maness, has an intriguing self-service setup.
“I really like it,” said David Silverman. “I can come out here hit a bucket of balls and get a quick round of golf in.”
South Forty is a driving range and nine-hole par 3 course set on about 48 acres.
A tink echoed as Silverman slammed the head of his driver into a range ball. The shot was long and straight.
I dispensed an envious sigh.
FROM DAIRY LAND TO RECREATION
It's hard to believe that the South Forty was once a dairy farm. The driving range was completed in 1996, and the par 3 course was opened in 2007.
Nancy, 63, chuckles as she tells the story of how a dairy farm went from agriculture to recreation. Cow legs to doglegs, hay to fairways, tractors to drivers …
“We got rid of the hay, got rid of the cows and we wanted to travel,” Nancy says. “Bruce was bored and driving me nuts.”
One day as he was bringing in the cows Bruce, 69, looked around and thought his little farm would make a beautiful golf course.
How does a farmer go from driving his wife nuts to letting people drive golf balls?
“He told me that he was thinking about building a golf course. I said ‘what?'” Nancy says.
Then she gave Bruce three reasons why it was a bad idea: It takes a lot of money; they don't play golf and they wanted to travel.
She ignored him and thought Bruce's odd dream would putter out.
But it didn't.
Once she realized Bruce was going to give his golf course plan a shot, she convinced him to build the driving range first.
Bruce, a Cortez native, and Nancy still live on the property next the course.
A round of golf costs $10. I slid ten bucks into the envelope and slipped it into the cleverly named “Fee Box” slot and I was off to the No. 1 tee box.
After sending a pair of Titleists to their watery graves in the pond on No. 3 that was once a watering hole for cows, I launched a gorgeous shot that plopped onto the green and rolled to within 6 feet of the cup.
The near perfect shot with the 7-iron smacking the ball, drowned out the sounds of the two balls splooshing into the drink.
“It's a very challenging course,” Nancy says.
Challenging isn't the exact word that I used when I launched yet another wayward shot into a ravine on No. 4.
The course has four creek crossings and lots of terrain that loves to gobble up those errant shots.
It took between $60-70,000 over a 10-year period to get the operation underway. Nancy says.
The self-service features include a ball-distribution machine for the driving range — $2 for a half bucket of balls.
MAKING IT HAPPEN
Bruce, who can fix anything, Nancy says, retrofitted a machine to take dollar bills instead of tokens; otherwise an attendant would have to be on sight to swap tokens for money.
Then, while in Denver they came across an advertisement for a large piece of machinery that was listed at $1,500. Bruce figured it was a misprint since he estimated that the cost for the machine would have to be more than $50,000.
It wasn't a misprint, so they bought it and Bruce grabbed the tools and started tinkering away. Now the machine snatches up driving range golf balls and cuts the grass at the same time.
On No. 8, I came to the conclusion that my golf skills were considerable more south of mediocre that I first thought. At one time, I had spent a good amount of time on the links. Now, what skills I had once developed, were as lost as the 11 balls that I hooked, sliced, sizzled and thumped into ditches, ravines, sagebrush patches, weeds, water and swampland.
Nancy jokes about why it makes sense for non-golfers to own a golf course.
“We'd be busy golfing and not busy doing maintenance,” she says.
As I departed No. 8 slightly teed off after a short futile search of another drive gone awry, I didn't even notice the enormous cottonwood tree. It's actually not on the golf course but is on another section of the Maness property right next to the course.
“That is the second-largest cottonwood tree in Colorado. We just got the designation,” Nancy says proudly.
The largest is in Montrose.
Now, 15 years after getting into the golf course business, Nancy says it wasn't a bad move. They've traveled a little bit — cruises to Panama and the Bahamas, and an Alaskan cruise is scheduled for this fall.
“So many people say it's beautiful and quiet,” she says about the course. “And challenging.”
Yeah, don't remind me.
Bruce is out on the mower most days in the summer. He likes to keep busy.
“I honestly believe he built a golf course because he was bored sitting around the house doing nothing,” Nancy says with a laugh.
On No. 9, I hit a nice tee shot. “Finally!” I exclaimed. The sound of the 8-iron was scintillating. The ball cut through the breeze, landing left of the flag but it was on the green about 20 feet away
It was the last ball in my bag. But I had to dig it out of the weeds on No. 8 just so I could finish my round.
I two-putted and let out an exhausted moan.
Brutal. The South Forty pummeled me and I staggered back to the truck.
I thought about the sounds from the South Forty on this Sunday and they ran the gamut. It was the good, the bad and the ugly. But the latter two far out-distanced themselves from “the good.”
It was a rather outlandish notion of transforming a dairy farm into a golf course, born out of boredom 15 years ago.
And now, it sounds like a dream come true.