BIRDIES & BOGEYS: GREAT PAIRS

 By Russ Pate

 Two Texas-size challenges await at Oakmont Country Club.

Great pairs — from Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig to Joe Montana and Jerry Rice to Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen — have left an indelible impression on the sports landscape. Oakmont Country Club, 20 miles north of Dallas in Corinth, Texas, offers its burgeoning membership and Associate Gold guests alike a twist on the great pairs theme with two outstanding par-5s.

Call them The Beauty and The Beast.

The Beauty at Oakmont is No. 13, which from its elevated championship tee presents a memorable panorama of the rolling North Texas countryside. The tee faces west and, around sunset, serves up a stunning palette of crimson and orange hues. On a clear day, Oakmonters can see the outskirts of Fort Worth (which, for readers not up on Lone Star lore, prides itself on being “where the West begins and the East peters out”).

The Beast at Oakmont is No. 6, which stretches a brutish 570 yards from the championship tee. Because the hole plays uphill and directly into the prevailing wind, its effective yardage extends to more than 600 yards. On some windswept days, in fact, The Beast can become a three-woods-and-a-wedge proposition. The Beast is one of those rare par-5s designated as the No. 1 handicap hole. “That’s because the hole plays so much into the teeth of the wind,” observes John Ericsson, Oakmont’s head golf professional. “In the spring, it’s a bear. The wind just sweeps through there.”

CONQUERING THE BEAST
Adding to the degree of difficulty at The Beast (which measures 550 yards from the blues, 495 yards from the whites, and 388 yards from the forward tees) is the rise in the fairway. On approach shots to front-pin positions, players often find themselves unable to see the bottom of the flagstick; such semi-blind shots fill many amateurs with anxiety, if not dread. Moreover, the green, protected by two bunkers on the left, slopes appreciably from back to front. Shots straying too far above the hole bring the possibility of a three-putt into the mix.

Not that The Beast can’t be tamed. At last year’s qualifier for the Country Club & Resort Associate Club Team Championship at Pinehurst, Oakmont members Mike Roesner and Gary Nixon combined to register a rare albatross, or double eagle, in the “shamble” format (in which individuals play their own balls from the best drive of a foursome). Playing from the blue tees, Roesner, a food and beverage salesperson who sports a 2-handicap, smoked his tee shot some 340 yards into the first cut of rough on the right. From there, Nixon, who owns a residential and commercial drywall company, fired an arrow-like 3-iron shot that flew directly at the flagstick.

Given the aforementioned change in elevation, no one could tell where the ball had landed or come to rest. Nixon, then a 21-handicapper, who has whittled five strokes off his average score, searched behind the green to no avail. “One of the guys in our group decided to take a look in the hole and there was my ball,” Nixon recalls. Roesner and Nixon subsequently scrambled their way to a second double eagle this summer. It came at 15, a benign 500-yarder that plays downwind and begs for a new back tee to add needed bite. After Roesner bombed another massive 350-yard-plus tee shot, Nixon holed out with a sand wedge. Talk about great pairs.

WHAT A BEAUT
The Beauty, rated Oakmont’s sixth most difficult hole for handicap purposes, plays shorter than its listed yardage (548 yards from the back tees, 533/510/460 yards moving forward). That’s partly because the drive is downhill and partly because a depression roughly 30 yards in front of the green tends to propel approach shots toward the putting surface.

The crucial play at 13 is the tee shot. Trees line the fairway and out-of-bounds loom on each side. “It can get a bit claustrophobic standing on that tee,” Ericsson says. The ideal drive lands in the right center of the fairway, catching a bank that slingshots balls forward. From there, long-hitters generally have a fairway wood or long iron to a sloping green guarded by a large bunker on the left. Shorter hitters can lay up to the 100-yard range.

“Thirteen is a hole where players might make a good number one time, and then the next time have to write down a snowman [triple bogey],” says Ericsson, citing a tricky left-to-right crosswind as another deterrent to low scores. Players must exercise care not to be long at 13, because the drop-off behind the green is sharp and severe.

Texas produces golfers like Wall Street produces financiers, and among the Lone Star legends is Don January, who served as a design consultant on Oakmont for architect Roger Packard. Last spring, the club conducted its first UNT/Don January Classic, which raised funds for golf teams at the University of North Texas in nearby Denton. Organizers now envision the event becoming an annual affair.

Oakmont opened in 1986, when the penal school of design characterized by forced carries and a make-’em-bleed mentality was all the rage in golf course architecture. Packard and January took a contrarian approach, however, creating Oakmont as an accommodating (some might call it user-friendly) layout. It’s the kind of course where reigning club champion Mark Deserrano and other accomplished players can go deep. After several years of struggling with stress-prone bentgrass, the club changed in 1997 to hearty Champion Bermuda. The transition has helped course conditions immeasurably, and in 1999, Oakmont was cited as ClubCorp’s Golf Club of the Year.

Spearheading the club’s recent successes has been the management team headed by club manager Tim Koressel, a former Big Ten standout at Indiana University, where he was a ball-hitting buddy of Hoosier basketball coach Bobby Knight. New homes in the Corinth area are going up as fast as derricks during an oil boom, and Oakmont’s membership rolls are keeping up with the growth.

Awaiting those newcomers are two Texas-size challenges: The Beauty and The Beast. __

In researching this story, contributor Russ Pate bogeyed both The Beauty and The Beast. Playing partner Tim Koressel birdied each hole.