GOD PLS SEND RAIN
The message on the portable marquee outside a Hill Country church could have been speaking for our entire drought-stricken state. Not that I picture God as a voice in the drive-through at a cosmic fast food restaurant. “This is God, may I take your order? Rain…a meaningful relationship with a human woman…crisper contact with the irons. Anything else? Fries?” It will rain if it rains, in other words, and until it does, we’ve got to help ourselves. I’ve got an idea…
The scenic route from Dallas to the primo Westin La Cantera resort in San Antonio took me through Blanco, where the cost of a gallon of gas at the Shell station was $3.47 and the woman working there called me Sweetie, twice. I looked down as I crossed a bridge over the normally robust Guadalupe River and saw a minor trickle, not a lot more than the shallow stream on the driveway after you’ve washed your car. The parched land outside my Prius looked dispirited and sullen, like a teenager.
La Cantera—“the quarry”—is an elevated oasis atop a giant limestone outcropping. Its views are commanding, its food and rooms outstanding, and if it is your fate to take the kids to Sea World or Six Flags, it is a far more sane choice than the buzz-kill of a chain hotel. You could walk to either attraction, not that you would in this heat…Thirty-six holes of golf course is the other attraction at La Cantera. The PGA Tour played the Texas Open there between [blank and blank] at the Resort Course. Tumbling terrain, rocks, and imaginative paths from tees to greens make it enjoyable, and wild driving from the tee can make it very difficult. Ditto the Palmer Course, a two-minute cart ride away, only there the views and off-fairway penalties are even more vivid.
Water use restrictions had both courses playing fairly fast, but what if we took the conservation thing a couple of notches further. What would that be like? I can tell you exactly what we’d get if we stopped drenching our fairways and roughs—we’d have a better game.
Curmudgeon alert: I played a lot of golf as a kid on un-watered or haphazardly watered courses, and it was a ball. Tee shots rolled as if gravity had taken a coffee break. The game had a pinball aspect and was much more feel-based and intellectual than the boring modern version. Low, lower, lowest scores became a tantalizing possibility. Yardages weren’t important, water bills weren’t an issue, the fairway mowers could rest, and golf–an outdoor game, after all–felt much more natural as it responded to the seasons.
But golf equals green to the dilettante. The first course most of us see every year is Augusta National, and then we spend a fortune trying to get emerald fairways like theirs. We shouldn’t bother. Will you, dear reader, have a go on fast brown and tan surfaces? If this drought gets much worse, you might have to.
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