KANSAS

Golf on the Prairie: Colbert Hills Golf Course

By ALAN HOSKINS

PGA tour veteran Jim Colbert will tell you his Colbert Hills Golf Course can be the toughest – or the easiest you’ll ever play. I’m not so sure about the easiest part, but there’s no question the Kansas City native has carved an absolute masterpiece into the rolling Flint Hills of central Kansas.

Taking advantage of those rolling hills, the former Bishop Miege football standout has sculptured 18 magnificent holes unlike any in the Midwest – or perhaps even the whole country for that matter.

Virtually every tee box is elevated, thus providing spectacular downhill views of lush green fairways punctuated with countless sand and grass bunkers and an ample supply of creeks, ponds and lakes." It’s unbelievable," says Director of Golf, David Gourlay. "Every hole is a stand-alone signature hole, they really are."

"God built about 14 of the holes so we really only designed four of the holes and we tried to make it so that you couldn’t tell the difference between the four holes we actually designed and the 14 that God did," said Colbert.

I couldn’t, but then most of my first day at Colbert Hills was spent with my mouth wide open gaping at the magnificent beauty of hole after hole after hole and trying to imagine a more spectacular course anywhere. Take just about any of Colbert’s 18 holes and put it on almost any course in Kansas or the Midwest and it would automatically become the signature hole – they’re that spectacular.

The most dramatic is No. 7. The highest point on the course, it offers nearly 40 miles of Kansas landscape – and a spectacular 100-foot elevation drop to the fairway. Played at a whopping 600 yards from the most elevated of tee boxes, only the big hitters can even reach the fairway. "When you’re up there, you’re fully exposed to all wind and environmental conditions so it’s a pretty thrilling tee shot," says Gourlay.

Situated a few hundred feet from a life-size bronze statue of Colbert, the first tee immediately makes one aware this is no ordinary golf course. An intimidating downhill 590-yard par 5, there’s a creek running down the left side and a pond fronting the green forcing all but the longest hitters to choose from one of two lay-up areas from which to hit a third shot into a wide but shallow green.

"Normally on a golf course, the first hole is more forgiving and open and not generally representative of the golf course, but Colbert Hills isn’t like that," says Gourlay. "As soon as the first hole hits you, you’ve got to be playing well." Fortunately, Colbert provides at least five tee boxes on every hole, thus giving the course playability for just about all skill levels. At 7,525 yards from the back tees, it carries a 152 slope rating but it can also be played at 6,559 yards from the purple tees, 6,022 from the white and 4,947 from the gold.

Colbert’s allegiance to his alma mater, Kansas State, is shown front and center at the 213 yard, par 3 fifth hole. Five bunkers in the form of a wildcat paw protect the back right portion of the hole. I could go on hole after hole but words can’t adequately capture the immense beauty.

But equally impressive is what Colbert has given to Kansas State University. Colbert Hills is anything but just a golf course. K-State students are offered the opportunity to earn degrees in golf course management and research an extensive variety of turfgrass species; disadvantaged children are given a chance to learn the game of golf and the Wildcat golf team has a championship course.

Built on 315 acres five miles north of Manhattan, the property was donated by an alumnus who had been using it for grazing cattle. Colbert started a fund-raising drive on the $11 million project with a half million dollars and others signed on resulting in not only the 18-hole course but a state of the art driving range and a 9-hole, par 3 course rated by Golf Magazine as one of the best practice facilities in the nation. Together with well-known Dallas architect Jeffrey Braurer, Colbert officially opened the course in May 2000 with a bevy of golfing celebs on hand including Lee Trevino, Raymond Floyd, Annika Sorenstam and PGA Commissioner Tim Finchem.

In addition to 18 championship holes, K-State and Colbert Hills offer programs like none other in the U.S.

TURF MANAGEMENT – Five years ago, the Turf Management program had 22 students. Now, working with the Golf Course Superintendents Assn. of America and some changes in curriculum, the program has 155 students. "Just about everyone working on the golf course is in the turf management degree program at K-state," says Gourlay.

TURFGRASS RESEARCH – "This is such a neat course not only because of the typography but the course is situated right in the middle of the state which is in the turfgrass transition zone, so we can grow both cool and warm season grasses," says Gourlay. "Every student who comes here is taught all different types of grasses – zoysia, Bermudas, the bents, fescues, the buffalo and blue grasses. They study them all and when they leave here, they can go anywhere in the world for a job.

"Right now, we have two students who are doing internships at St. Andrews in Scotland. We have had others at some of the prestigious courses in the nation including Augusta National. Students from K-State are all over the world."

That research has enabled Colbert Hills to become the nation’s premier layouts in course management. The greens have yet to be aerated; a very limited amount of pesticides are used and no herbicides are used on them; fertilizer is applied to fairways and roughs once a year and the course is watered only every third or fourth day.

"The new technology is unbelievable," says Gourlay. "With the new specialized L93 bentgrass that is genetically bred to resist disease, we really don’t use any pesticides or herbicides. We fertilize the fairways and roughs only once a year with a new specialty product made for us that releases approximately 0.02 pounds of nitrogen a week. A plant can only utilize this amount so it releases just enough to keep it green without any extra being leached into the environment."

Built in 1999, the greens have yet to be aerated. "They are built in such a specialized manner that the greens never compact and we’re able to manage the thatch layer just by top dressing. Also, with limited fertilizer usage we limit the flush growth spurts that can cause thatch accumulations," says Gourlay.

While most courses water their greens daily, Colbert Hills requires it only every third or fourth day. "The design of the course fits in perfectly with the prairie. There’s not a lot of trees around the greens so we have good air circulation. Also, most courses due to design have to syringe their greens; we never syringe greens."

FIRST TEE – The home of The First Tee Academy at the Earl Woods National Youth Golf Academy, more than 100 youngsters who would not otherwise have the opportunity to enjoy the challenge, character-building and fun experience of the game of golf are brought to Colbert Hills for a week each summer. Representing 154 First Tee programming facilities spanning 38 states and three foreign countries, the youngsters are taught the nine core values of the program – honesty, integrity, sportsmanship, respect, confidence, responsibility, perseverance, courtesy and judgment.

"They’re excited to be here and appreciate the opportunity," says Mary Kay Siefers, who facilitated the fifth annual summer camp in mid-July. "Many of the students don’t have the opportunity to go to camps and play on a golf course like this."

As many as 40 top coaches in the U.S. including the likes of Colbert and Sorenstam’s personal coach Pia Nelson volunteer their time to teach golf and life skills to the students, who are housed by K-State. "It gives kids the insight of what could go on if they continue their education and that they can go on to a university and take programs such as those offered by Kansas State," says Gourlay.

K-STATE GOLF – "K-State used to be talked about as the worst football program in the country but do you know what else was the worst in the country? The golf team," says Gourlay. "Three years ago we were ranked about 125th in the nation. This past spring the men were ranked 16th and the ladies team 24th. It’s a story in itself."

AUDUBON COURSE – Audubon International has designated Colbert Hills as a signature program member observing the environmental guidelines developed and monitored by Audubon International Research.

Open to the public, green fees with cart are $60 Mondays through Thursdays and $79 Fridays through Sundays. However, various golf packages and coupon specials are often available on the internet at www.colberthills.com.

At any price, it’s a bargain.

Craig Schreiner golf library offers fascinating reading

By ALAN HOSKINS

Craig Schreiner is a man of many golf hats.

One of the nation’s foremost golf course architects and a member of the exclusive Society of Golf Courses Architects, Schreiner also has the background of a golf course superintendent, is an accomplished golfer (his first hole-in-one came on Pebble Beach’s famed seventh hole) and a golf historian of the highest level.

If there’s a book written about golf, Schreiner probably has it in his library of 3,400 volumes on the second level of the snazzy new clubhouse at Schreiner’s Prairie Highlands public golf course located in the Kansas City suburb of Olathe, Kan. “Anything related to golf,” says Schreiner, pictured at left with wife Katie. “As old as it is, there’s probably as much written on golf as any sport.”

While golf as we know it today is generally credited to have been founded at St. Andrews in the late 1700’s, there are countless pieces of evidence that golf was played in The Netherlands as far back as the early 1400’s.

One of Schreiner’s many collector’s items books, the “Royal & Ancient Game of Golf,” No. 43 in a limited edition of 900 published in London in 1912, has several illustrations of golfers playing in 1500 while “Golf: A Royal and Ancient Game” first published in 1875, talks about the game being played when it was known as “goff.”

In fact, a book entitled “The Goff” written by Thomas Mathison in 1743, is a comical poem written in three cantos (verses) recounting a golf match. “It’s a wonderful piece of writing, fascinating reading,” says Schreiner, who does not have an original copy of the book, Very rare, it would probably bring $20,000 if one could be found.

Even more fascinating is the evolution of the golf ball. We’re overwhelmed today by the countless kinds of golf balls but if you’ve never given any thought to how golf balls were first made, it makes for fascinating reading.

“The first ball was known was a ‘feathery’ because it was six ounces of feathers stuffed into a leather ball,” says Schreiner. “They figured if you want a ball to fly, use feathers. They’d use feathers from falcons, pigeons, larks, chickens. It’s tough putting six ounces of feathers into a leather ball. Then they would wet both so the leather would shrink and the feathers expand when they dried.”

Schreiner said the balls were fabricated with three pieces of 5/32nds inch thick leather, usually bull or horse hide, with two cap-shaped end pieces joined by a rectangular middle piece to produce a hollow case. The combination of the drying of the leather and the feathers produced a ball that was hard and playable but very time-consuming and expensive to make.

It would take a ball maker three hours of strenuous work just to create one feathery. “A ball maker would only make three balls a day,” said Schreiner. As a result, the game was pretty well restricted to the well-to-do and royalty.

Weighing anywhere from 1.32 to 1.87 ounces, the balls were not always perfectly round and were easily cut so iron clubs were used sparingly. Rules allowed feathery balls to be changed at the start of a hole but if a ball in play was badly damaged and had feathers exposed, it still had to be played until the hole was finished. Under normal conditions, an average drive was about 150-180 yards but the length of holes was much shorter than today.

That all changed in the early 1850’s with the introduction of Gutta Percha balls. A rubber-like material from the dried sap of sapodilla trees of East Africa, the solid Gutta Percha balls were made by rounding the heated gutta percha material into a ball by hand.

After a few years, metal molds were used, thus making it possible for a skilled ball maker to produce six dozen or more gutty balls a day or 25 times what the feather ball maker could turn out. The volume of production caused the price to drop to a cost that middle and lower income golfers could afford, much to the dismay of the makers of the feathery ball.

“There was a huge uprising when the new gutta percha ball came out, a lot of resistance by the older players because the new ball changed the game,” says Schreiner. “Old Tom Morris, who was a club and golf superintendent and a champion player, was one of the first designers of the feather balls. When the new balls came out, they would go 20-30 yards farther and make the courses outdated. Bunkers were no longer relevant because golfers could fly them.”

Like featheries, gutty balls had their liabilities. “They were the first real challenge to the game,” says Schreiner. “Wooden clubs were used so they would break more. They were not able to keep up with the hardness of the balls hence steel shafts evolved which provided more torque.”

Also, gutty balls became brittle and had a tendency to break up in cold weather and to become soft and not fly as far in extremely hot weather. Likewise, the ball often sustained major blemishes, chips or gouges and after repeated uses, they had to be repainted which created a whole separate industry: ball remaking.

Schreiner hopes to add yet another book to his collection in the not too distant future – one he plans to write himself. Bearing the title “The Heart of Every Hole: The Short Game of Golf,” Schreiner describes it as a thesis on the integrity of every hole.

“The last fortress golf architects have against the distance of golfers today is the greens; they’re the only thing that’s not changed and are the integrity of the course,” says Schreiner, who contends that distance makes a difference only for the better players or about one percent of all golfers. He also points out that a round of golf is designed for twice as many putts (36) as tee shots (18)..

The architect for nearly 30 courses including Falcon Ridge, Falcon Valley, Overland Park’s Westlinks, Winterstone and Prairie Highland in the Kansas City area, Schreiner is currently working on a course in Myrtle Beach with Nick Price and next year on Aug. 15, he’ll renovate all the greens at St. Andrews in Overland Park, Kan.

To preserve the integrity of his green, one of his trademarks is create a fair challenge of golfers. “We make them subtle, not severely sloped, just subtle enough there’s a challenge in reading them,” he says. “Greens are the representatives of all great courses. They should influence tee shots, getting the ball in position to attack the hole and then staying below the hole to lessen the break. Putting is a test of nerves.”

Kenneth Smith Golf Clubs Folds Up Shop

The name Kenneth Smith is associated with custom-made golf equipment around the world. And rightly so as the Kenneth Smith Company has been supplying hand-crafted golf clubs to players globally for nearly 70 years — until now that is.

As of now, the gates are locked, the inventory has been liquidated (nearly 400 pieces have been sold by the company on E-Bay since last November) and the web site is no longer available.

The company has laid off its employees, and the buildings and land — which have significant historic value — seems to be destined for another suburban subdivision.

Mr. Smith was introduced to the game in 1916 when he accepted a job as a caddie at Mission Hills C.C., because it paid better than his old newspaper route. Soon after, he was made an apprentice clubmaker at the course, and then took on the duties full-time when the resident clubmaker was called into military service.

Smith opened his own clubmaking company in 1928 in Kansas City. Shortly after, he custom built a set of clubs for a pro named Horton Smith, who would later gain immortality in winning the first and third Masters Tournaments — thus created the demand for Kenneth Smith products.

Mr. Smith died in 1977, but his company had continued to operate in the same low-key, high-quality manner he championed.

FREE 2004 Kansas City Golf Guide Now Available

The Official 2004 Golf Guide of the Convention & Visitors Bureau is now available.

The handy guide provides detailed information about Kansas City area golf courses, practice facilities and more.

Since its inception in 1997, the guide — which is updated each year — has become quite popular among local golfers and visitors to the area.

To receive a free copy visit www.kansascitygolfguide.com.