One Hundred Two
Minutes Until Reality
Black Mountain Golf Course
Black Mountain, North Carolina
Greens fee: $13 to walk nine (TWILIGHT)
Date played: June 10, 2024
I realized recently that I’m shitty at e-mail.
I blame Gmail. Early in my first year of law school in 2005, I angled hard for an invite to the new e-mail service, which promised unlimited e-mail storage. Who wouldn’t want to live the rest of their life without needing to delete another e-mail?
In practice, though, never delete e-mail again eventually became never organize e-mail again. And eventually, it became just read whatever e-mail happens to catch your attention whenever it arrives, and maybe you’ll catch up later on the ones you missed. For someone whose profession boils down to communication, it’s an unfortunate shortcoming. It’s one thing when your wandering gaze misses an offer for 15 percent off last season’s seersucker shorts. It’s quite another when a federal judge commands your attention to an urgent matter under pain of contempt and jail.
If we’re being honest, e-mail is just one of many things that I spent years mistakenly believing I did well. Replacing windshield wipers, for example. Hanging picture frames. Discerning the doneness of grilled meat without a probe thermometer.
And then there’s playing golf quickly.
Conditions at Black Mountain GC are unmistakably muni-ish but more than respectable, with the fairways a pleasant mix of clover and Bermudagrass.
In my mind’s eye, I see myself striding up a sunset-draped 18th fairway toward a perfectly positioned Pro V1, Sunday bag slung over a shoulder whilst a smiling club pro silently wipes away a tear, struck speechless at my effortless three-hour round. Realistically, though, no element of that picture is more elusive than the well played ball — or any ball, for that matter. I can barely keep my shots in front of me when time is no issue. Put me under even the vaguest sense of urgency, though, and I’m no likelier to consistently find my club face than to consistently find my checkbook. Sure, I can finish 18 holes in around three hours — no less than a dead raccoon in the road “finished” crossing it.
And yet, there comes a time in every golfer’s life where they must choose between playing golf quickly or not playing golf at all. This period of time is called Your 30s, 40s, and 50s. The summer of my 44th year placing me snugly within that era, I am left mostly with golf’s version of Keurig-brewed coffee: fast and bad, but better than nothing.
Thus I pulled into the parking lot at Black Mountain Golf Course with exactly 102 minutes to spare.
. . .
If the Census is a universe, then Buncombe County in western North Carolina is a bizarre solar system — a weird, pulsing star, Asheville; surrounded by smaller rocky planets full of strange but lovable creatures. One of those planets is Black Mountain, roughly 20 minutes to Asheville’s east. My family stumbled upon it in 2023 through a chance conversation at a Christmas party, and we’ll probably return every year until Asheville’s hipsters swarm over its mountainsides and invade it like orcs on the Westfold.
Among the hiking trails and top-notch outdoor lunch spots is Black Mountain Golf Course — an affordable, unassuming municipal track. On a weekday afternoon, a walk around the front nine (designed by Donald Ross in 1929) will set you back exactly $13. That’s less than a dollar and a half per Donald Ross hole. You’d spend twice that on an Egg McMuffin.
Regrettably, my race against the clock left me less time per hole than needed to eat that Egg McMuffin. In exactly 102 minutes, my kids’ day camp would let out for the day. With my wife on an overnight spa sabbatical, the task of basic parenting responsibilities fell to me. As always: quick golf or no golf. I hoped for the former.
At Black Mountain GC’s par-4 fourth hole, a safe drive to the fairway’s wide-open right side leaves an approach over an imposing greenside trap.
Like a gasoline-only trip to Buc-ees, though, that goal was not entirely within my control. Although Black Mountain enjoys a greater pedigree than most municipal courses, it is still a muni — with scruffy fairways, a crowded tee sheet, and lackadaisical players to prove it. This is not all bad. On the one hand, you can walk into the pro shop, ask to walk nine as a single, and get a tee time two minutes away. On the other hand, you might be stuck behind a twosome playing from separate tee boxes and determined to hit every cup — which is exactly what I got. My only chance was to haul my own ass and stay right on theirs. I all but jogged to the first tee.
Another product of fatherdom is the memory of a goldfish. Six months earlier, my family had given me a handsome green Jones Golf bag for Christmas. Six months later, I still hadn’t decided which items should go where — which left the bag’s inventory at the mercy of my aforementioned goldfish brain. Little wonder, then, that I discovered on the first teebox that I now owned exactly two golf tees. The twosome in front was already putting out on the first green. After two warmup swings, I pegged the Kirkland ball petrifying in my bag, swung, and was off.
If Black Mountain’s greens lack the undulation and frivolity of Ross’ more famous projects, then Ross’ nine compensates through its designer’s exceptional routing skill. The first two holes run opposite one another through a broad cleft in the land, so that each fairway cambers hard from right to left. From there, the course crosses a narrow neighborhood road to a trio of holes running across and around a slow, low-lying stream, before crossing back over the street for four final holes that skirt clockwise around the edges of the first two holes’ cleft — so that they tilt slightly from left to right, opposite the cambers of the first two holes.
Under the gun, though, I had little time for strategy — not that my rusty swing’s spray chart could play along, even if I had all day. My first tee shot hit the middle of the fairway but rolled (as most probably do) to the lefthand edge at the bottom of the cleft. After another near-jog to my ball, I aimed left of the small bunker fronting the green’s right side — and then promptly pulled my 8-iron approach well left from the obvious — yet unaccounted for (remember: bad at playing fast) — lie above my feet. No matter. Bump and run on for three; quickly two-putt for bogey. Hustle back to the bag. No time to sling it over a shoulder — grab the handle like an old suitcase and speed-walk to the second tee. Eight holes to play; 86 minutes to play them.
With precious little land on Black Mountain’s edges to allow for growth, the course has remained short: just over 6,200 yards from the back tees (2,941 on Ross’ front nine), and a hair under 5,800 from the middle whites (2,770 on the front). Aside from the gimmicky, 747-yard “par-6” 17th hole, just four of Black Mountain’s 18 holes measure more than 400 yards from the back tees.
By the time I walked off the green at the short par-4 fourth, though, I was still racing against the clock. But for the first time, I found it realistic that I might finish nine holes. I’d been on the course for 50 minutes, leaving 44 minutes left to play five holes. A lot would depend on the twosome ahead of me, but the four of Ross’ last five holes measure fewer than 340 yards from their middle tees. The dream, fast moving though it was, was still alive.
From the wrong side of the fairway on the par-4 fifth hole (424 yards from the blue tees, 390 yards from the whites), though, I pulled my approach behind a tree. When I tried to bump a hybrid underneath its bottom limbs, the ball sailed six inches too high into a tangle of leaves and spindles before falling straight down. I cursed at the tree and swung my club at the air. Then I looked quickly at my watch again. Forty minutes left before I had to pull out of the parking lot. Not enough time for a temper tantrum. But after an unlikely up-and-down for bogey, finishing still seemed within reach.
. . .
For the first time in a couple of summers, my older son recently asked to come with me to the driving range. He’s no prodigy, but the couple years of growth showed: his swing was more stable and serviceable. By his father’s standards, that’s all anyone can hope for. When I asked whether he’d like to play nine holes sometime soon, he took me up on it before the words finished coming out of my mouth.
Black Mountain GC’s seventh green, looking over the second and first fairways.
I’ve never pushed him toward golf, but I’ve always tried to make it available to him — hoping that he’d reach for it one day. Maybe that day is here. If so, it’s a dream come true. But it’s also a nightmare, because the last thing I want is for him to see how I treat myself on the golf course and think that it’s normal. If golf teaches life lessons, then maybe one of mine is that I’ve got work to do. Part of that is accepting that life is hard when you’ve got lots of balls in the air — whether that’s parenting, playing golf, trying to install wiper blades, and especially when you’re trying to do it all at the same time. But you can’t lose your head every time something goes badly, because most of the time, at least part of that something is out of your control.
…of which I was reminded in the seventh fairway.
After nearly driving the green at the seventh (288 yards from the blue tees, 278 yards from the whites), I had almost reached my ball — with a generous 27 minutes left — when my cell phone rang. It was the kids’ day camp. My older boy had hurt his foot whilst honoring a dare to jump down a flight of stairs. It had ended predictably, in injury. Golf again would have to yield to life’s curveballs — also predictably. I pitched on to within four feet of the hole, then two-putted with a wedge. If I’d taken an extra five seconds to grab my putter, I might have squeezed out the day’s only birdie. But again: juggle enough balls for long enough, and sooner or later, one of them is going to fall. And that’s OK, because it has to be.
I slung my bag over my shoulder and began hoofing it back across the second and first fairways, into the cleft dividing the pair of holes and back toward the parking lot. A few steps from the asphalt, I passed a sixsome of teenagers, gym shorts and backward hats aplenty, moments away from a loud, late-afternoon round, burdened by no responsibility beyond coming home at a respectable hour.
I passed them with nostalgia — but not envy. Yes, life is more complicated as a mid-40s father. Yes, it leaves less time for selfish indulgences — even when those selfish indulgences are healthy. Even when those indulgences are available, often there’s less time to savor them. But the complications are wonderful. Playing quickly is a compromise I’m happy to strike.
. . .
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