Portland, OR

I cannot begin to express how happy I am living in Portland and being a golfer. I grew up in Michigan, and golf courses were abundant. You could play a really nice course, or you could always find cheap greens fees at decent courses. Portland is a lot like that.

12th hole at Eastmoreland Golf Course via its website.

Living in Chicago made me question my devotion to golf, only because good courses were invariably an hour away. Not that they were far, necessarily, but with the horrendous traffic issues, it seemed that golfing 18 holes meant an entire day devoted to driving there, waiting behind people that seemed to have no idea what they were doing or how they ended up with a club in their hand, and then driving another hour to get home, and gee, now it’s dark out and I am so irritated after being stuck in stand-still traffic that all I want to do is start drinking.

Wow, that was a really long sentence.

Sure, there were courses that were closer in the city. I played a city course on the Southside of Chicago, Jackson Park, in August and no joke, I was hitting off bare dirt in the middle of the fairway. That ain’t cool. And it ain’t golf.

But seriously, golfing in Portland is a pleasure. I live about a mile from Eastmoreland. Colwood National, Rose City, and Glendoveer are twenty minutes away. These courses, despite being municipal courses, are in nice shape, they can be challenging, and the most 18 has taken me is 4 and a half hours. And that is on a really nice Saturday.

In Chicago, it seemed that 18 always took at least five hours. I am a fairly fast golfer. I don’t spend a lot of time dickering with myself about my club selection, or take five practice swings. It’s one practice swing, I address the ball, and I hit. Amateurs do not need to act like they are one shot ahead of Tiger at Sawgrass and take ten minutes to hit their shot.

So anyway, if you like to golf, Portland gets a huge plus in that you can pretty much golf all year. Sure, it’s not Tuscon with 80 degree days in January, but really, who would want to live in Arizona anyway? I kid. Arizona has its charms.

There are some really nice courses in the area as well. Mt. Hood provides some stunning holes and backdrops. I have yet to make it out there, nor have I been able to go down the coast or up the coast to that new course near Tacoma, that is hosting the US Open in something like 2015.

golf, Portland, Michigan, Chicago, Eastmoreland, Colwood, Rose City, Glendoveer, Mt Hood, Sawgrass, Arizona, Tuscon