27Sept2013

A day off, what a concept!
Buried deep in the cockpit locker for years, our two sets of golf clubs saw the light of day as they passed into our storage unit in July. As we unloaded Threshold in preparation for the coming work we vowed we would play a round of golf while the paint job progressed. Little did we know it would be so difficult to find a day with the free time and energy to make it happen. We discovered the only golf course we know about on the top of a mountain outside of Kusadasi while finding our way home from Ephesus. It looked steep and lumpy but the card said it was short at 6322 from the back tees. A few warm up shots at the practice tee: solid strikes, mostly straight, seemed a little short but I’m a little weak. Karyn was whacking them well down the steep hill. The first tee seemed deceiving: too far from the too narrow fairway of a 389 par 4. Two bad swings and two good balls sliced into the water later I joined Karyn on the short tee, marked 309. This is course is only one year old but is in remarkably good shape and very few players with only 12 groups planned for today. Strange. This first fairway certainly seems narrow. At the 150 marker I dropped another ball, hit a solid 7 iron, short! of the green. A chip and several putts across a slow green that looked as if it needed the moguls groomed by the snow-cats from Alta, Karyn had beat me with an 8. On to the second tee. I glanced down at the yardage marker, “358 meters”. “Meters?!” Suddenly life made more sense. 150 meters = 164 yards. That is a six iron shot, not seven. And, this course is no short course at 6914 “yards”. Besides that it is extremely narrow, rough and filled with moguls everywhere. To be 15 meters from the center of these narrow fairways, every fairway, is to be unplayable, lost, or out of bounds. Carts were not allowed off the concrete cart paths as they would not find traction on the steep hills. One cart path was cut out of a rocky cliff: fairway on the left, rock 50 feet high on the right. I hit the rocks, got lucky, found the ball on the other side of the fairway. This is the most difficult course I have ever played. www.kusadasiinternationalgolf.com This is not a golf course it is an obstacle course. We actually lost so many golf balls that we were down to our last two by the thirteenth hole. We finished the round though. Not with our last two balls however. We had to finish with balls we found in the rough that someone else had lost. It was not a fun round. But, it was an interesting round that had us totally absorbed, distracted, and away from the boat project. What a great