I love playing golf, and I’ve been doing it for 35 years. And when I play, it’s usually in Ohio, where I’ve lived for most of my life.
So I’ve created this blog to give people a chance to know a little more about some of the more than 700 public and semiprivate courses here in the Buckeye State. I’d like to hear from people about what courses they like the best and why.
But if nothing else, I like writing, and I like golf. So here goes.
I’ve teed up golf balls in Canada, China and more than a dozen U.S. states, so I’ve seen quite a few excellent courses. My favorite is not one of them, however. It’s called Bec-Wood Hills, an 18-hole course nearly hidden in eastern Ohio, near the Jefferson County village of Mount Pleasant.
It costs only $24 to ride Bec-Wood on weekends. They say the course measures 6,077 yards, but that’s overambitious. I don’t believe Bec-Wood is much longer than 5,600 yards. It’s the epitome of a home-grown country course that detractors have described as: a) “a cow pasture”; b) “Brick-Wood”; c) “that dump.”
Bec-Wood is short and unchallenging. Four small ponds barely come into play. And the course has only one bunker — a questionably maintained hazard just short of the 10th hole. I’m not sure if there’s a rake.
The clubhouse at Bec-Wood isn’t really a clubhouse. It’s the bottom level of the small house of the late Charlie Becca, the course founder. It’s like hanging out in your buddy’s garage. Charlie built only nine holes at first. He made the last hole a par-5, so people would go away happy. Today, we reach it with a driver and a wedge, the easiest birdie hole I’ve ever seen.
Charlie’s two sons took over the course when they grew up, and to be fair, they did improve it. They cut the greens low, watered the fairways and started building new tees, although they never completed any.
So why do I love Bec-Wood? It’s where I learned to play this great game. My dad used to take me there after he’d get home from work in the late afternoon. We’d grab a quick bite and get to Bec-Wood by the early evening. There was plenty of time for nine holes before it got dark, and we’d ride back in his rickety Chevy pickup.
When we were young our gang would invade Bec-Wood on weekends, sometimes playing until it got dark. We weren’t very good, but that didn’t matter.
And even though I rarely return to eastern Ohio, my memories of Bec-Wood are so vivid I can picture every tee, fairway and green.
I can see the sun glistening on the October dew blanketing the first hole. I can picture the rain shelters with the metal roofs, where we’d flock to during lightning storms. If I close my eyes and step outside in August, I can feel the stifling, oppressive heat on the 15th green, sheltered from cooling breezes by a thick grove of trees. Charlie once gave us boys a free round for clearing debris from that green after a summer storm.
I’ve played at Bec-Wood hung over. I’ve played there in the rain, in the snow, in the draining heat. Dead tired, indifferent, bored, frustrated, yet strangely happy.
Bec-Wood doesn’t offer any drinking water on the course. Its greens haven’t been aerated in years. Some of the tees are chewed down to the dirt. It has a gravel parking lot, a wretched practice green and little imagination in its architecture.
Bec-Wood’s really not much to speak of.
Yet it’s my favorite golf course in the world.
