Register-Pajaronian sports editor I.A. Stewart takes aim at the greenside bunker at Bayonet Golf Course in Seaside last week

As a kid, my favorite part of

going up to Lake Tahoe in

the winter was the chance to wake up and run outdoors onto a fresh sheet of snow and leave my tracks across its smooth surface. It was as if the snow created a perfectly blank canvas on the ground, and it was my job to spoil it for everyone else.

That same urge came over me a couple of weeks ago. And although I was dressed for snow, there was, in fact, none to be had. I was standing on the 10th tee box at the newly renovated Bayonet Golf Course in Fort Ord, the recipient of a complimentary round on the public course. Both Bayonet and its sister course, Black Horse, have just been reopened to the public, and the fairways, tee boxes and greens couldn’t be prettier. The troublesome kikuya weeds that used to have their run of the place have been eradicated; the fairways replaced with bentgrass and the roughs with bluegrass. The sand traps — and there are many — are perfectly white and their lips manicured. Basically, it’s a perfectly new canvas. Or, perhaps more accurately, it was a perfectly new canvas.

Shot No. 1 of the day went wide left (surprise). Shot No. 2 went across the fairway, and into the rough wide right. Shot No. 3 was a duff, although I did the gentlemanly thing and counted my stroke, even though my ball moved about an inch, and No. 4 finally brought me within a chip of the green. Only a lucky chip-in spared me the embarrassment of double-bogeying my maiden hole within eye sight of the very groundskeepers, managers and architects who had spent the last half-hour explaining the course’s pristine new layout.

Once out of sight, though, I was free to unleash my carnage on the turf. By the time I’d taken leave of the 11th hole, its fairway had three new divots, a golf cart’s tire marks running across its width, and a gallery of deer snickering about the travesty they’d just witnessed from the woods. The final seven holes saw much of the same. By the time lead architect Gene Bates caught up to my terrible twosome on the 15th hole to ask my opinion of the new sod, I had no choice but to answer him with the honest truth.

“I’m not really sure yet, Gene,” I said. “But the rough is lovely.”

My turn at the Black Horse front nine went a little smoother. Just as I’d recovered from the regrettable 58 I scratched onto my card at the turn, I seemed to find the stroke (and the fairway). And indeed, once I was able to locate my tee shots somewhere other than the cart paths, it did occur to me that the grass was particularly nice. The views of the Monterey Bay, too, were something to behold. Bates said that in redesigning Black Horse, which he took great pride in upgrading from the level of an “ugly stepchild” into a world-class public course, he had many of the diseased or dying trees lining the fairways cut down, opening up the view over the ocean.

My partner and I shook off the somewhat distracting hail that threatened my three-stroke lead at No. 8, as even it couldn’t sour our newfound views on the place. By the end of the round, I was completely drenched, but still smiling as I initialed my signature beside a “107.”

For those interested in the particulars on the redesign, take notes.

• Both courses’ irrigation systems were replaced with a “Toro” system.

• The sod was torn up and replaced with the aforementioned bentgrass fairways and bluegrass roughs.

• Black Horse was lengthened from 6,800 yards to 7,100, and Bayonet added several new serrated-edged bunkers.

• The fifth and ninth holes at Bayonet were moved, and the green on No. 16 was elevated.

In all, developers spent $13.5 million on the renovation, the first phase of which was completed in spring 2007. There are also plans for time-share condos and homes along the courses, which should go on the market shortly.

“We wanted to elevate (Black Horse) from a very good muni course to a top golf course in any market,” course managing director Dick Fitzgerald said.

So far, the courses certainly pass the look test. Just ignore all those fresh divots.



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(Published on Dec. 26, 2008)

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Photo courtesy of Jim Seimas

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