Webb Memorial Golf Course
Baton Rouge, La.
Date Played: Feb. 27, 2021
Greens Fee: $14 to walk 18 (afternoon)
Ready or Not,
a Game of Decisions
Wadin' through the waste stormy winter
And there's not a friend to help you through
Tryin' to stop the waves behind your eyeballs
Drop your reds, drop your greens and blues
...
But come on, come on down Sweet Virginia
Come on, honey child, beggin’ you
Come on, come on down, you got it in ya
Got to scrape the shit right off your shoes
The Rolling Stones, “Sweet Virginia”
My therapist tells me that intelligent people with high-functioning depression are prone to indecision: you lay out every conceivable option, cycle through them again and again, weighing the pros and cons repeatedly until you overwhelm yourself. And ironically, my bouts with this indecisiveness usually end in the easiest, most frustrating place: doing nothing at all.
I know that I’m prone to this. When it’s happening, I’m aware of it. And even then, picking one option and pulling the trigger on it can be painfully difficult.
So with my family out of town for the weekend, I’d planned to make a quick trip to the Smokies for camping and golf. But the weatherman had different ideas: a couple of days before I’d planned to leave, the forecast clearly ruled out golf (and camping, for anyone hoping to sleep in a dry tent). And there began the indecision. Several weekend hangouts within driving distance were going to avoid the rain, but none of the options was perfect: too far, or not really fun enough, or too expensive, or too familiar, or too…
This went on for two days.
On the morning that I’d planned to leave, I packed the car, took the dog to the overnight boarder, made one last walk through the house to make sure I hadn’t left any lights on — and then spent 30 minutes on the couch, wondering whether I was doing the right thing. Actually, that’s not fair — I spent 30 minutes wondering two things: whether I was doing the right thing, and why the hell are you doing all this to yourself?
The Daily Advertiser (Baton Rouge, La.); Aug. 25, 1925.
I’m not suggesting that the solution to depression or anxiety is simply to “pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” It’s not. Depression is a medical condition. And just like a broken leg, you can’t overcome depression by pretending it’s not there. But for me, at least, I’ve occasionally found that if I can just get myself out the door and start putting one foot in front of another, it all starts to make sense again. So after some convincing, I scraped myself off the couch, locked the door behind me, walked to the car, and backed out the driveway.
Houston — my ultimate destination — was a solid six hours away. To break up the drive, I’d decided to stop in Baton Rouge, at Webb Memorial Golf Course — a humble municipal course tucked into a residential neighborhood full of live oaks and prefabricated homes, like something between New Orleans and Orange Beach. At its birth in 1925, Webb Memorial was the home of the short-lived Westdale Country Club; when the Depression took the club under in 1936, LSU bought the golf course and owned it until 1957, when the city acquired it. Today, it’s a scrubby but character-dripping urban golf course that you can walk for under $15.
Even for someone with high-functioning depression, that’s an easy decision to make.
. . .
February or not, low-70s temperatures had already come to south Louisiana — obviating the need for the Mid Pines pullover that I’d donned on my way out of the house in the seasonally appropriate cool of Jackson. As soon as I did, I realized it would be a bumpy afternoon: underneath, I was wearing a powder blue Ole Miss golf shirt in the land of purple and golf corndogs.
The lady who checked me in at the pro shop was nice enough — so nice, in fact, that when I asked to buy a logo ball and she handed me a used, unbranded New Orleans Saints golf ball, I didn’t voice a word of protest. The starter, though, couldn’t let the opportunity pass. “You better turn around, you’re in the wrong place,” the old man joked.
After a few holes, I wished that I’d taken his advice. I couldn’t even look at an iron in my bag without putting the hosel on the ball. I’m not above generously treating myself to Mulligans, especially when playing alone. But what good is a Mulligan when you can’t hit it either? At the second hole, a busy four-lane street runs between the second green and the third tee; I bladed a 54-degree wedge that made straight for traffic, buzzing the tower of a maroon 1980s Oldsmobile. I stomped my foot and muttered an obscenity. “What the hell am I even doing here?” I asked myself out loud. “You really want to drive to Houston to do this?”
The same anxiety and indecision that I’d fought on my couch in Jackson poured back in. I thought about quitting after nine holes; about quitting now; about driving home. Instead, I waited for a red light, crossed the street, and went looking for my jaywalking Titleist.
Webb Memorial’s short par-3 third hole (136 yards from the back tees) presents just one hazard, but it’s an imposing flash-faced bunker dropped squarely in front of the tiny green.
Once the anger subsided, Webb Memorial’s cleverness became more obvious. The bunkering isn’t fancy, but it’s almost always situated right where you’d like to hit the ball — which is to say that the bunkering is great. And the playing corridors, while not gargantuan, are wide enough to create the choice that the bunkering posits: play away from the hazards to stay safe, or ride the lightning and take on the traps. At the par-3 third hole (136 yards from the tips, 125 yards from the blue tees), a large flash-faced bunker guards the entire front of the oval-shaped green; there’s plenty of room to miss long, but any chance at birdying a front pin must challenge the sand. Similarly, the tee shot at the par-5 seventh (523 yards from the back, 464 yards from the blue tees) requires navigating a thin stretch of fairway that winds quietly from right to left around a neighboring apartment complex; there’s plenty of room to play out to the right, but that side of the green is guarded by sand — so unless you can thread the needle up the fairway’s left side, you’re going to have to take on the bunker.
Sand traps often devolve into window dressing, of course. At Webb Memorial, though, bunkering serves the hazard’s highest purpose: it forces players into a choice, and exacts consequences for the decision.
Of course, making decisions hadn’t been my strongest suit all day long. Still, sometimes you get lucky, and the world hands you a break when you can’t make one for yourself. At the eighth hole, and again at the ninth, bunkers several dozen yards in front of the green appear to guard the putting surface and seem to compel a cautiously long approach shot; but in both instances, the threat is an illusion, and there’s more than enough room to miss short (which I did in both spots, and still managed par).
A pair of sand traps crowd the view of an approach shot into Webb Memorial’s ninth green, but the bunker appearing to guard the entrance actually lies well in front of the putting surface.
That’s not to say that either hole is a walk in the park (not figuratively, at least). In particular, the par-4 eighth (311 yards from the tips, 289 yards from the blue tees) might be Webb Memorial’s quintessential hole: short but not reachable for mere mortals, with strategy forced by the course’s trademark minimal but effective bunkering. Off the tee, players must confront a fairway bunker guarding the right half of the landing area; a sliver of turf between the sand and Westdale Drive offers some respite, or else players must choose between laying back or taking on the trap. On the scorecard, the hole looks like Thanksgiving dinner. But once you get to the tee, you quickly realize that the matter isn’t as simple as its yardage suggested. That’s Webb Memorial’s story all afternoon.
. . .
The level of focus that golf requires has always eluded me. You’re supposed to focus, but not too much. You’re supposed to try your best, but not too hard. You’re supposed to find a target and imagine a shot shape, but you’re not supposed to think about your swing.
I’ve been able to go on autopilot from time to time, but that effortless flow from shot to shot is easier said than done when you’re stuck behind a foursome of teenage hacks, playing from the tips with their fathers’ clubs. Throughout my back nine, I simmered while they loafed around in my landing zone. And when they finally cleared out, I’d boil over when my next stop inevitably veered wildly off course. Golfers like those teenagers are the game’s future, of course. But do they have to be my present?
Signs of life on Webb Memorial’s back nine, for the golf course if not for my golf game.
If the U.S. Mid-Am were held at a driving range, then I swear to God that I’d make the cut. The mindlessness of the experience is tranquil: address, swing, reload; repeat; repeat again. There’s no waiting — no nothing at all, except address, swing, reload, repeat, repeat again. Some people find the repetition of it dull; to me, it’s beautiful. There, I’m in my element. But put me with the same clubs and the same balls on a real golf course, and suddenly I’m lost. It’s like I’ve never hit any of these clubs. Then again, maybe that’s because for the most part, I haven’t: I do almost all my practicing with a 6-iron — and when I pull my 8-iron out, it looks like something from another planet.
If this crankiness is a cost of middle age, then thankfully, so too is the freedom from worrying about style points. Somewhere around the turn at Webb Memorial, it occurred to me that when confronted with a choice between a full wedge and a bump-and-run with a mid-iron, pragmatism should beat out pretty. It’s not going to get you on SportsCenter, but then again, there aren’t any camera crews around here. Besides that, Webb Memorial’s yardage is so short (just 6,197 yards from the back tees, and 5,796 yards from the one-up blue tees), and its tilted, push-up greens so tiny, that awkward yardages from the fairway are inevitable. Unless a player’s wedge game is truly dialed in, then the safer route from fairway to green at Webb Memorial is along the ground, relying on the tilt and relative slowness of the greens to stop the ball before it runs off.
That’s not to mock the course’s conditions, though. The greens are fairly slow, but consistent; the bunkers were neatly maintained, and the whole course was well cared for. I have paid much more than $14 for much less than Webb Memorial delivers.
The quirkiness that one expects (nay, demands) at an urban municipal course finally rears its head on the back nine. At the short par-4 14th hole (338 yards from the back tees, 322 yards from the blue tees), the player takes her drive over a huge drainage canal and leftward around an apartment complex to a bunker-guarded green backed up to South Foster Drive (imagine a $14 version of the Old Course’s Road Hole). And at the even shorter par-4 16th hole (302 yards from the back tees, 237 yards from the blue tees), the tee shot comes back over the canal toward a green whose entrance is pinched by tiny saucer-shaped sand traps.
Webb Memorial’s bizarre but wonderful 14th hole.
Somewhere within shouting distance of that canal, I decided to stop keeping score; I didn’t need to do the math to know that I’d be happier not doing the math. Still, as I lugged my bag up the 18th fairway, squinting for my ball through the last few minutes of daylight on a golf course woven into its neighborhood’s fabric, I felt serene for the first time all day. This place made sense; the afternoon made sense. The world is a long way from closing the book on the pandemic, but this was the first round of golf I’d played in a year that felt normal.
I tapped in for a one-putt bogey (is there any better feeling in the world?), tossed my bag in the trunk of my Camry, and turned onto College Drive. My game certainly hadn’t justified my decision to get off the couch earlier in the day, nor did my score justify continuing on to Houston. But something had changed since that morning. It felt right.
Where College Drive hits Interstate 10, a left turn points east, back to Mississippi; to the right lies the west and everything in it. I turned right.
. . .
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