Fore!!

I was 11 years old when I started shagging balls at the driving range on the Ironwood Nine golf course. My first real job after having a paper route. I would ride my bike down the road only 5 blocks away. Tucked on a hill was a small 9 hole par 3 golf course. Now it was called a executive 9 hole course because it had to pars 4 hole on it as well. But to the small town of Pleasant View just outside of Golden it was a place to hit balls on a Saturday afternoon. The grass never really took root on the fare ways and the owners had little money. This was a golf course built by the land it on not by big bulldozers and earth movers. Small and simple things seemed to slow down just a little bit on Ironwood Nine.


I learned to play golf in the heat of the afternoon. Not much to on the course in 90 + degree heat in the middle of the week. It was way to hot to mow on the old tractor so I would bang the golf ball around in heat until the late afternoon when the business men would come and try to sneak in around or hit a bucket of balls before going home. Then a would spring into action selling the bucket of balls I would later have to retrieve and bucket up for the next day.

It was on this golf course I learned to drive. First on a small Cushman cart, a three wheeler with a tiny truck bed, to haul dirt, small trees and allot of rocks dug up on the old farm turn into Ironwood Nine. By the time I was twelve I was driving the tractor to mow the fairways, mostly weeds but we called them fairways. I moved to the big leagues and got to drive the Ford 250 truck. I can't think of a better place to learn to drive a standard three on the tree transmission. It took some time but soon that old truck and I became good friends.

I made some good friends too. Like Pat, she was a pro golfer in the early 70's. The tour was a struggle so she came out to Colorado to start this golf course. She made allot of friends on tour and, through her, I meet Pat Bradly, Nancy Lopez, and many more pro golfers that would stop by to say hi.

Don was an old timer. He retired from the railroad and started Ironwood Nine with Pat and did most of the work himself. He taught about the dirt and grasses, planting trees and filling the tractor with heavy oil. Don also let in on a little history like the "mob" killed Kennedy because of the Bay of Pigs.

Now the grand old course, in my mind at lest, is no more. Pushed aside to sell motor homes, and a nice little open space park with a walking path. If you squint just right in the heat of the afternoon, about mid August, you can almost see the flag on the first green. A high 8 iron with a fade just might get there or put out a window at lest.