What a wonderful golf trip! Samir Sleiman, Joe Busch, and David Hughes joined with me to take on three of the super golf tracks in the White Mountains of Arizona. Show Low’s Torreón is an extremely challenging layout. Its difficulty is made tolerable by its beauty. Cut out of the tall Ponderosa pine forest, Torreón will give any golfer all he can handle and then some. When we retreated to our lodgings Friday evening, we felt more like we’d just gone 15 rounds with the champion. Did we finish as champs or chumps? You be the judge. We survived.
Saturday, we moved up the mountain to Pinetop Lakes Country Club at 7,400 feet above sea level. It’s an interesting and challenging track, but most of all, it’s a fun course. We all enjoyed ourselves and followed up the round with pizza and beer on my patio near the 11th green.
Sunday, thanks to Mike Smothermon, we returned to the world of golf challenges. White Mountain Country Club is an exclusive, private club founded in 1954 by (among others) the Goldwater family and their friends and accomplices. It has drawn some great golf members like Tom Weiskopf, Tom Purtzer, Bob Goldwater, and Mike Smothermon. Breathtakingly beautiful, WMCC offers eighteen challenging holes. We battled 35 mph winds and cool temperatures, but it was well-worth the time. With the winds covering the greens with as much as an inch of pine needles, putting was problematic. Joe Busch solved the putting challenge by hitting approach shots into the bunker and then throwing thirty-yard sand shots directly into the hole. In extremely difficult playing conditions, Joe managed to finish the day by carding an even par 36 on the back nine to cap a super day of golf.
Monday morning, I awoke and glanced out the window toward the 11th green on PLCC. What I saw is shown in the picture above. It had just started and piled on for another three hours. Time to return to Scottsdale.
Here are a few shots of Joe, Samir, and David battling at Torreón on Friday.
Scottsdale Golfer News 