JUNGLE GOLF
My name is Min. I'm a golfaholic. No that doesn't sound right. I am not a
golf addict. Really! I am not. We have lived here at Punta El Custodio for 4
years, almost continuously, and I have yet to succumb to playing even one round
in Mexico. I'm not cheap either, as there is a beautiful course less than an
hour from here where the membership is under $30 per month - I swear.
I did play when I went back to Washington, enlisting my best golf buddy, Doc
Schnee, to play with my rusty and sea spray moldy swing. Then a few unrelated
incidents conspired to bring back into my consciousness the latent desire for
golf.
First, on a lark, I walked one of the local beach parcels we have for sale,
and began to picture a course. I had a local architect lay out a lot plan for
beach homes that included 9 holes of golf.
It looked nice.
On a business
trip to Costa Careyes, our host suggested that we visit Tamarindo, a rich, rich,
development that included a golf course meandering through the jungle. To make a
long story short, I arrived to talk to the land developer, went to the bathroom,
and came out to find Mona talking to the golf course architect, who just
"happened" to be there for ONE DAY this year. Before I knew it we were
out in a cart rolling through a spectacular canvas of fairways and greens laid
out between forests of climax jungle, occasionally interrupted by greens hanging
over the edges of small coves with beaches and headlands. "Keep still my
beating heart." I was in love.
So the architect , David Fleming, said, "Sure, I'll come up and take a
look at your property." And he DID, proceeding to tell me that compared to
the project in Tamarindo, a course on the beach at Custodio would be a piece of
cake. We had everything. Water, Sand, Beach, Palms, Crocodiles for the water
holes - we'd make millions on lost balls alone.
Well, we had a lot of work to complete on Punta El Custodio, so my dreaming
only got as far as doing a few projections on returns on land sales associated
with a course, (Very nice profit potential) and buzzing the ear of a few
potential investors.
Mona, my love, abandoned me to nurture her daughter and comedian son-in-law
in Hollywood. Only temporarily - you rumor-mongers amongst us. But nevertheless,
here I sit with a many extra hours each day that had been devoted to
companionship, bickering, scheming, and "other" moments. Waking up at
3AM with no one to bother, I suddenly found my idle and dangerous mind wandering
to GOLF.
It is hard to think golf without wanting to pick up the clubs. Even away from
a course one can always go to a driving range, hit a bucket or two, to relieve
the anxiety. So I needed to become creative.
Suggestions were put forth that I should drive balls into the ocean, and then
have the local kids retrieve them. I did not have enough balls to test the ocean
dynamics of the tides as related to ball retrieval.
Another idea was to go to the beach and play the worlds biggest sand trap.
But this would leave the majority of my game unattended.
Then one morning I heard our neighborly squirrel making a hell of a racket in
one of the nearby oil palms. I sat and watched as he went over to a bunch of the
small coconuts that these palms produce, deftly plucked one, and sat on his hind
legs, cheerily chirping away as he proceeded to peel the outside of the coco and
nibble on the edible layer between the outside skin and the shell of the nut
itself. Finished, he dropped this to the ground and went on the next.
I walked under the
tree, and found large piles of nuts similarly treated. Picking one up I was
immediately reminded of the winding inside a golf ball. Shows you my current
desperation for ideas. On the other hand, it was the exact same size and weight
as a golf ball, with the exception of the stem, which protrudes from one end
about a half inch.
"WAIT ONE
MINUTE!!" This thing did not only look like a golf ball, but it came with
its own built in TEE. My excitement was uncontrollable. The next time I went to
town, I purchased a door mat. When I brought it home and gently placed one of
the nuts on it, tee side down, I could not believe my eyes. This looked better
than most of the crappy balls I used to carry around in my shag bag.
I quickly rushed out and retrieved my five iron, took my stance, still with
huaraches on my feet, and swung. "Ping!!!!" Yes "Ping", not
"splat", not "clunk", but that beautiful sound of the sweet
spot on the club making contact with the center of the ball.
Ok. So after that there may have been a few different sounds. But in my
gathering, I soon learned to discriminate between the overly green, perfect, and
partially decomposed nuts, which produce "splat", "ping",
and a variety of "clunks", as the older nuts tend to disintegrate
In the movie
"Tin Cup", the hero, Kevin Costner (no relation), plays a has-been
golfer making a comeback. One of the great scenes is the one where his
girlfriend bets her ex-lover, Don Johnson (alas, also no relation), that Kevin
can hit the ball out of the restaurant into the marsh beyond the doors and make
the brown pelican sitting on the pier take off. Of course he does it! This is
the movies. So I'm looking for a good place to set up my 2 sq. feet of tee box.
I look out from my deck, across the estuary, give or take 120 yards, and there
sits this brown pelican on the other shore. DEJA-VU There was no one around to
bet, but after a few "clunks", and even a few errant
"pings", the pelican took off. An impartial observer may be inclined
to say that the pelican had just spotted a meal upstream, but I put that nut
within a meter of the bird.
I have since moved up to my trusty three-wood, with which I can now easily
cross the estuary. The nuts even slice and hook.
Lest you environmentalists out there complain about my interference in the
natural order, I should point out that here at Custodio, we spent a lot of time
and money eliminating the extra palm trees, which were dog hair thick. This palm
is also on the endangered species list, and there is an effort to get them
planted in areas where they were eliminated. Now how many of these nuts do you
think would ever make it to the water to begin their journey to repopulate
distant shores were it not for my five iron? I have seen my little nuts out in
the ocean and in the estuary, searching for a rooting spot. The Audubon society
should give me an award for this.
Each time I hit one of the little brown golf balls, my follow through gives
me a look down the beach, over to palm plantations which WILL one day be home to
a beautiful course, with flowered borders planted by Chago and his landscaping
crew, gentle slopes amid the palms, and the clubhouse looking out over the
Pacific.
Investors need apply in person, and bring an old five iron.
Min - April 1999