There Goes the Sun: Golf During the Solar Eclipse

By Jon Rizzi

The “path of totality” for Monday’s solar eclipse skirted Colorado, prompting a mass exodus north to Wyoming and east to Nebraska to witness a once-in-a-lifetime celestial event.

My partner, CAG Publisher Allen Walters, eschewed the northbound traffic on I-25 and flew with his wife and friends to The Powder Horn in Sheridan, and then over to Saratoga to see the total eclipse of the sun at Saratoga Hot Springs Resort.

My wife Jo Anne and I kept our wheels down as we headed towards the Central Time Zone. The road to our final destination—Awarii Dunes Golf Club in Axtell, Nebraska—took us first to Ballyneal Golf Club in Holyoke, Colorado.

Ballyneal’s Mulligan

Ranked by every golf publication among the foremost courses in the world, Tom Doak’s 7,100-yard, walking-only masterpiece in the Eastern Colorado chophills evokes the classic links courses of Scotland and Ireland, only with yucca and prairie grasses rather than heather and gorse bordering the natural blowout bunkers. The fescue fairways and greens heave and churn like an ocean, challenging a player’s shot-making arsenal.

 

As Jo Anne enjoyed a well-earned massage at the clubhouse, I decided to check out to the newest addition to the Ballyneal family: the 12-hole, par-3 Mulligan Course, again designed by Doak and his Renaissance Golf team, which opened two weeks ago. Set in a loop within the original 18, The Mulligan concentrates all the shot-making challenges of the big course in 12 holes ranging from 65-190 yards.

Although the main course requires first-timers (and most others) take a caddie not only to read putts but also to navigate the largely unmarked terrain, the Mulligan doesn’t.

But as I hooked up with a twosome that had just completed the main course, we soon discovered that, even armed with a course routing, the lack of a guide can lead to mixing and matching teeing grounds and greens—all of which are sparsely marked.

 

 

Clearly Doak, master of the reversible course at Forest Dunes in Michigan, no doubt intended this. And once we got our bearings, our threesome discovered that creating “holes”—often stalking pins as if they were trophy elks—leads to no shortage of fun.

Which is what the Mulligan is all about. Its teeing areas all sport drink holders—which also appear around the property’s rollicking one-acre putting course called The Commons.

 

The balcony of the club’s Terrapin Lodge restaurant perches above The Commons. Over magnificent repast of bacon-wrapped dates and impeccably prepared lamb chops, we watched numerous men, women and youngsters happily rolling golf balls late into the night.

A sound sleep in one of Ballyneal’s 56 rooms propelled us the next morning towards Nebraska to watch the eclipse at Awarii Dunes.

Awarii’s Got a Good Engh Going

Located just across the Platte River from Kearney, Awarii Dunes has strong Colorado ties. Kent Freudenberg, a Colorado Springs attorney with “dual citizenship” in Nebraska, developed and owns the course (as well as a house near the first hole). He hired Jim Engh, the architect of 10 Colorado courses, to create an Irish-style course in the sandhills surrounded by cornfields.

 

Six years after opening, Awarii Dunes has hit its stride.

Awarii means “wind blown” in Pawnee, but it didn’t gust as hard during my round as it did during the first round of May’s NCAA Division II regionals (Awarii is the home course of the University of Nebraska Kearney Lopers). “On day one, when the wind was howling, the best score was a 74,” Freudenberg tells me. “The next day, with no wind, 63 was the low round.”

Like Erin Hills, Awarii boasts wide fairways to accommodate the gales and deep rough into which your ball seems to auger. The polarizing elements that sometimes define Engh’s efforts don’t appear here. Yes, some greens appear to have granaries buried beneath them, and many have tiers can lead to tears if your putts can’t climb to the pinned level.

But there’s nothing “unfair” or tricked up about immaculate T-1 bentgrass fairways and greens; nor about bunkers that aren’t hazards. They occur naturally in the sandhills so players may ground their clubs and as many practice shots as they like without penalty.

Or without smoothing the area afterwards. Freudenberg jokes that he was too cheap to buy rakes. But he and his wife Carol are generous to a fault, hosting a spaghetti dinner for guests—including his daughter Kyle and a crew of friends from CU—at their home and allowing eclipse chasers to camp on the course (Kearney’s hotels had sold out long ago).

Eclipse

What he did buy was property that sat right in the Path of Totality for the Great American Eclipse of 2017. So after playing golf Sunday, camping overnight on the driving range and playing more golf Monday morning with Freudenberg and his friend Carl Turse, we joined their family and friends at 11:15 a.m. in the shade of the 12^th tee box.

Looking like the audience at a 3-D movie, we laid on blankets with eclipse glasses wrapped around our eyes and watched the moon slowly begin to block the sun and, as Jeannie Turse, aptly said, put a light filter on the earth.

The light grew dusky and temperature dropped. Golfers played through while the sun and moon ran a crossing  pattern directly above them.

By 12:58 the coverage was complete. Like a center-cut putt, the moon completely covered the sun. The spine-tingling sight of the corona, followed by the “diamond ring” lasted three minutes that will be burned into my memory forever.

That memorable golf played no small part made it all the richer.