Regardless of the type of travel , expeditiousness drives the engine . When moving from place to place via air travel , the essence is in reaching the flight on time .
Once at the gate ( or even better , in the seat ), the traveler relaxes , knowing that the principal share of the work is now in the hands of the airplane crew . Similar , too , is the experience on the bus and the train . Driving , though , is an entirely different matter .
There was never a day where a round of golf lay at the end of a long day on the road . There were days , however , of 450-plus mile trips , fueled by the knowledge that a course waited in El Paso , or San Diego , or North Carolina , to be played the following day . If you asked me the type of drive I preferred , and the choices were flat , same , boring , pitted against undulating , diverse , interesting , I would opt for the former . You don ’ t want to work too hard when 10 hours of road navigation await , and you ’ re the only driver . In fact , you ’ re the only person in the car ! In contrast , the latter trio of adjectives is what I desired when I would pull into the car park of each golf course . I was rarely disappointed .
TEXAS ( LA TORRETTA , BUTTERFIELD TRAIL , TOUR18 HOUSTON )
As vast a state as Texas is and also claims to be , the diversity of its golf courses must be considered . From the hill country of Austin to the gulf coast of Houston , to the western reaches of El Paso , the golf comes in a variety of forms and faces .
As I headed west toward Arizona , New Mexico and Colorado , my path took me from Arkansas to Fort Worth , Texas , and then diagonally down toward Mexico . Instead of crossing borders to Ciudad Juarez , I decamped in El Paso , the border city across from the well-known Mexican city . Tom Fazio was brought in to design a golf course on a piece of wasteland adjacent to the international airport in town . Butterfield Trail , named for the overland mail route that stretched from Missouri to San Francisco , is a spectacular course built from an unspectacular piece of land . All around the course , for the most part , the land is flat and broken . The golf course never once feels flat , beginning with the drop-and-climb of the first two holes . Even when a fairway seems to run level , a drop-off to one side of the fairway beckons .
If you ’ ve never played a Fazio desert course , and there are a fair number , you should write in a line on your golf bucket list . In part one of the Diverse Drives triumvirate , we looked at the Primm Valley courses on the California / Nevada border , 30 minutes from Las Vegas . Butterfield Trail is a stronger track than either Primm course , and that is quite a statement . Butterfield Trail is challenging when necessary , accommodating when a break is required , and always interesting . From short par fours to long par fives , Fazio ’ s creativity is always evident . No other holes exemplify this better than the sequence of 14 and 15 . The former is a short par five shaped around a centerline hazard near the green . The latter is a short par four whose principal feature is , you guessed it , a centerline hazard . Asking the golfer to make these choices and giving them options is the hallmark of thoughtful design .
On my return , I spent a few days in the Houston area and stopped by two distinctive designs . In the lake country north of the city is the La Torretta course , located in Montgomery . Part of a sizeable resort , the golf course was redesigned in 2007 . Treelined fairways and a fair bit of rise and fall give the course a healthy bit of interest . Jeffrey Blume utilized all the original hole corridors in his redesign , but softened the green sites a bit to make the course more playable for the typical resort guest .
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