This weekend, we headed back to Becky’s home town of Onida South Dakota to see her family and to play one of the best private golf courses in America, Sutton Bay. Take a look at this write-up for the perspective of Golf Digest – http://www.golfdigest.com/courses/critic/index.ssf?/courses/critic/suttonbay.html. Becky’s mom was nice enough to work with a local to allow us to play the course; typically it’s a members-only course where there’s a $90,000 lifetime membership fee. I searched under my couch cushions, and I wasn’t quite able to come up with the 90 grand, so this is the route we had to go in order to play.
When I arrived, the attendant grabbed my clubs from the trunk, placed them in my cart and parked my car. A little different from what happens when I arrive at the B’ville course. The golf cart came outfitted with tees, a distance scope, bottled water in a thermos, and a club and ball washer.
A few random thoughts:
> the course has its own par-3 practice set of nine holes – a little nicer than just a putting green
> the trek to the 1st tee is by far the longest I’ve ever seen – without exaggerating, it took us 10-12 minutes to drive there with a cart
> the views of the lake are great from just about every hole – it’s neat to be at a course where you can’t see any other civilization around
> my favorite hole was probably #9 for the view – I think the picture of #13 turned out the best
> I shot OK – a heavily mulliganed 88.
> due to the rattlesnakes and high grass on the course, you’re discouraged from chasing your ball in the rough, so I ended up losing about 10 balls
So if you go, bring connections (priority #1), a lot of golf balls, a lot of cash (my box lunch was $13) and some sunscreen. Since it’s an out and back course, you’re about a 35 minute cart ride from the clubhouse when you get to 9, so you’d better hope you don’t catch a lightning storm out of nowhere.
We had a great time playing the course and taking in some Agar Mexican Food afterwards at the unfortunately un-famous Bunkhouse.
Eric's space 