When you find the place with a bucket of 70 balls for $5, yellow yard markers stretched to 250 yards, and the peaceful tranquility and stillness of country roads void of the hustle of traffic and speed of everyday life, you have found a sense of solitude and can truly appreciate that golf’s purpose extends beyond a scorecard with sprinkled in birdies and occasional bogeys that test your concentration and sanity. To me, golf has many more lessons to provide.
Through the sculpted Midwest landscape of endless cornfields and the arteries of countryside roads intersecting like the lifelines in your hand, the peaceful ambience of this 45-minute drive outside of LaCrosse, Wisconsin, epitomizes a sense of nirvana. To me, an invitation into the secrecy of a driving range designed solely as a hidden treasure to those who are fortunate enough to find it; a safe-haven with one of the quietest counselors in life.
This secret oasis caters to those who appreciate the complex lessons that the silence of a golf ball being hit creates and its vast messages reverberating well beyond the contact the club initiates with the ball. With picturesque landscape and panoramic views of untouched scenery, it allows for the chance to escape life, and inhale the simplicities the world still provides.
At times, you wonder why circumstance and spontaneity will always outlive pre-planned excursions, and then you remember you find things for a reason. To create memories, teach short-game techniques to better your best friend’s game, and to allow the freeing feeling of giving the mind an opportunity to lose itself in God’s Country. To remember that you can’t put a price tag on freedom and happiness, even if it’s just with golf clubs and your best friend.
Nothing in this world is cheap, yet some people find riches in ways others will never fully understand. To me, pure authentic glitz and glamor hides in an open air venue that delivers a different type of music; one that gives the mind an opportunity to lose itself in Mother Nature’s backdrop while penning techniques into the golfing mind.
Tuck the money in the oversized mailbox.
Find bottled water for $.50 in the quiet buzzing of the 1975 refrigerator.
A scented Port-a-Potty if duty calls.
T’s are free. No questions asked. Smile, You’re On Camera.
For the record, you will not find today’s luxuries here, nor a mile down the road for that matter. But then again, maybe it’s the perspective in which you see luxury that those things can now wait. In truth, you have stumbled upon a golfer’s amphitheater. Here, in the peaceful ambience of the country, where you can swing your swing and dial in your version of golf.
In God’s Country.
-Jeff Erdmann
Author’s Bio:
At one time, Jeff Erdmann was online editor of the Gravity Games in Southern California, and then switched career paths and became a middle school reading and writing teacher in Wisconsin. As an avid golfer, he loves roaming the Midwest in the summer searching for new golf courses to experience.