Here’s how I judge golf clubs:
1. As a guest, do the members and/or staff give you the”who the F-R-U” look?
2. Do they have something on the menu that could be called “signature”?
3. The Locker Room Guy(s)
Condition of the greens comes in at #4 while condition of the course doesn’t really rank at all.
On to my story…I stole an afternoon Thursday at Cassique GC down on Kiawah Island. Just a two-ball with a caddie that was a better kid than caddie, which works just fine for me…two and a half hours of a nice walk on a really good golf course.
They do well on all of the above…the greens are the best in Charleston at least that I’ve played, and they have a great Locker Room man in Eugene White.
Eugene lives on Wadmalaw Island not far from Kiawah and lives on the land his ancestors didn’t own at the time and who didn’t have a lot of employment options…get my drift?
Fascinating man…we got talking about a few things including family, property taxes, and of course food.
When I told Eugene I was taking my son camping the next night on Wadmalaw Island at the Boy Scout Camp he for some reason felt the need to spend the next twenty minutes or so scaring the hell out of me with ghost stories.
There was one about his daughter, then 4, who woke him up in the middle of the night scared that their was a “policeman” in her room. Turns out the policeman was a Union soldier complete with blue uniform and rifle over his shoulder. No biggie.
Or the one about the man who mowed Eugene’s lawn every Saturday. The poor guy was killed on a Thursday riding his bicycle down the road…when Saturday came though, he was there to complete his usual job.
The riding lawnmower he used, and that belonged to Eugene, started up by itself and began to mow the lawn! No problem, he called his mother-in-law, who he describes as “spiritual”. She told him to chase the mower down and put his Bible on it…sure enough that worked, but only after the 3rd time it happened. HMMM
And the Boy Scout camp? Eugene said to check out the Red Rock cemetery on the property…”ain’t no tellin‘ what you might see down there at night” says Eugene.
“Oh yes there is,” says me…”nothing ’cause I ain’t goin“
Now that’s a great locker room guy…Eugene White is +2 at pouring a Guiness just right and scaring it out of you …all in the time it takes to play a short par 5.
