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| The Donald Ross Course at French Lick has been a golf enthusiast's destination since 1917, and it's one of two courses at French Lick Resort that are more than 100 years old as The Valley Links Course (formerly the Tom Bendelow Course) opened in 1907. |
Could French Lick Resort be the birthplace of the golf buddy trip? There is a cool little slice of historical evidence we have on our side.
GolfBlogger.com recently shared this post detailing what has to be one of the first reported examples of a guys’ golf outing. “L.A
Sportsmen Plan Cross Country Trip” was a front-page headline on the May 20,
1916 issue of the Los Angeles Herald, detailing four friends who were planning
a cross-country car trip with plans to stop in French Lick to play golf. (No
word on if their wives tried checking in with them with a telegram instead of a
text.)
More than a century later, the guys’ golf trip is a
tradition that proudly keeps rolling. Here’s a look at a couple groups that
have turned French Lick Resort golf trips into traditions.
Chad’s group
You know you’ve got a good tradition going when the numbers
start getting fuzzy.
Chad Bosley and his buddies have made French Lick the annual
stop for their golf trip, and it’s either their ninth or 10th year
though “I’m losing track,” Chad acknowledges with a laugh.
It provides the chance to reconnect for everyone, since
about 12 guys in the group are from the Chicago area, one lives in Indianapolis
and three more fly in from Omaha, Dallas and San Francisco. As Chad’s group of
friends gets up into their mid-30s and 40s, everyone’s able to gather once or
twice a year — and the golf getaway has become the one time they can count on.
After so many visits, they’ve learned a thing or two. For
starters: four days of golf is a little ambitious these days. “Just three days
now, because we all found out that we probably stayed out a little too late on
Saturday night. Playing 18 holes and driving back home is not good,” joked
Chad, whose group has made it tradition to play The Donald Ross Course on the
first day followed by rounds at The Pete Dye Course the next two days.
They’ve come to count on familiarity, whether it’s getting
to know the bartender at Legendz restaurant and bar across the highway from
the resort, or running with the same caddie year after year on the golf course.
On one of their first visits years ago, they had an empty course mostly to
themselves and went back out on the course to play a scramble. And with 16
people in the group, “it just looked like an army on the second 18, which was
pretty funny,” said Chad, adding that a few innocent shenanigans tend to
accompany every trip.
“Nothing too crazy; I feel like someone always gets up on
the horse (statue) or something that’s up there at the Dye Course, and then
they don’t realize that it stains their clothes black,” he said with a laugh. (Just to clarify, yes, the horse is for admiring and not riding!) “It’s
nothing too crazy, but it’s just the same thing: everybody just comes down to have
some fun, have some drinks.”
Arranging a guys’ golf trip of your own can be done in a
couple different ways, depending on the group’s size. Groups of eight or more
can contact Alex Whiteman in the golf department, and smaller groups of seven
or fewer can contact the courses directly to arrange tee times. Chad’s group
goes a different route with setting things up. Since several of his buddies hit
up the casino after dark and have an established history of play, their casino
host helps make all the golf and hotel arrangements. And that simplifies Chad’s
job since he’s always the one in charge of making plans.
“The process is just easy — we don’t have to call or
anything, we just email (the casino host), she takes care of it and sets it up,” Chad said. “For
the quality of golf — we’ve been on a lot of golf trips, probably most every
good place throughout the U.S. — the quality of golf for the price, the access,
the ease of it, you can’t beat it. It’s awesome.”
Mike’s group
It started at eight. Now it’s a dozen. Demand is steep to
jump aboard with this guys’ golf trip.
“Word got around the fun we were having, and so four more
guys wanted to join,” said Mike Slimbarski, the organizer of this group of
retirees who’ve visited French Lick four times.
While it was geography that brought them to French Lick the
first time — much of the group is from Illinois, Mike is from Tennessee and
French Lick represented a good midpoint — the hospitality they encountered on
their first visit is what keeps them coming back. They visit a different place
every other year to keep things fresh and see new courses, but French Lick has
become the hangout spot they’ve set in stone every other year.
They’re more scattered out now compared to when they all
used to work for the same company, but the biannual reunion at French Lick
seems to be worth the trip even for the guys with the farthest to come. In
particular, “we just want to be able to tell our friends we played Pete Dye,”
Mike said.
“That’s probably one of the big draws. Particularly with the
guys from California and Arizona, because they play nice courses all the time,
but to play The Pete Dye Course is phenomenal.”
The Dye Course is always the grand finale of their three-day
trip, as The Donald Ross Course and Valley Links Course are where Mike’s crew starts
off the first two days. A few years back they thought about venturing beyond
French Lick and trying some other nearby courses, but the
three-courses-one-location setup suited everyone just fine.
“We didn’t know the other two (courses) were going to be as
good as they were. So we were pleasantly surprised,” Mike said. “We were so
happy with all the courses there, so there was no reason to leave.”
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At least one night eating at 1875: The Steakhouse has also been built into the usual itinerary, and while Mike doesn’t necessarily have a go-to dish on the menu, but since he spent some time living in France, there’s usually a good find whenever he scans the restaurant’s wine list. “I can always find something there to tell the guys about,” he said.
Mostly, though, the best traditions for Mike’s group are
rooted in the simplest things. Lighting up cigars together. The email exchanges
that happen months before the trip, ribbing the guy who played the worst during
the previous year’s trip. And the special meeting place for Mike’s group after
they’ve played their round for the day.
“There’s a second-floor lobby area where we congregate, have
some wine and just kind of hang out there. That’s kind of our place. Everybody
knows we’re going to meet there every year,” Mike said. “It’s no big traditions
like you might think of, but for us old guys, that’s pretty special.”