Fans lucky enough to secure a seat behind the 17th will have a great view of the hole and the James River at Kingsmill Resort's River Course.

    The River Course at Kingsmill is everything you would expect of a professional golf tour stop.  It is in terrific shape, and not nearly as good as it will be in a month when the LPGA makes its stop for the Michelob Ultra Open.  You may recall the PGA used the course for 22 years as its local tour stop.  In 1994, Pete Dye renovated his own original design, adding new fairway bunkers and softening some of the harder edges on and around the greens. 

    From the blue tees at 6,300 yards, the course rating is a modest 70.9 with a slope of 133, which seemed a little inflated for the routing.  The comparables from the gold tees, at 6,800, are 73.3 and 138.  Distance counts for a lot at the River Course, and when the blue tees were back near the gold tees, the holes played much tougher.    

    Kingsmill must have spent a fortune in over-seeding its courses last fall because everything was green and near lush, including the rough, which was close to tournament length.  The greens were smooth but very difficult to read; Dye's typical mounding around the greens made it seem as if putts broke away from them, but looks were often deceiving.    

    There wasn't a bad hole in the 18, and a few memorable ones.  The 17th, the par 3 that runs along the James River, is about what you see on TV - treacherous right of the green and nasty to the left (nasty is better than treacherous).  The 15th, a benignly distanced par 5 at just 473 yards, requires that you thread the needle off the tee between one trap left and four at right.  If you make the go zone, a deep ravine awaits, covering the entire right half of the fairway in front of the narrow green.  Left and front of the green almost guarantees a par, if not a birdie; the ravine leads to bogey or worse.

    We were restricted to cart path only, and one ranger told us he expects it to be that way right up until the LPGA arrives.  I'm sure the course will close in the next two weeks as the heavy resort play has left many divots in the fairways.              

    I had the pleasure of playing the round with Chuck Coe, a self-described "rug merchant" from Maryland and a member of the Bethesda Golf Club.  We had a great conversation during the round and at lunch about golf, family and exercise (Chuck was quite articulate about how yoga has helped him regain and maintain flexibility and improved his golf game after serious shoulder and knee surgeries).  Yes, it's fun to go away with your buddies for a week of golf, but one of the glories of the game is the match-up with total strangers who, for four hours at least, turn out to be good friends.  Thanks Chuck.

Modern art:  From the tee at #5, the stream, bunker and mounding form parallel lines around the smallish green. 

Chuck Coe of Maryland played some excellent golf and was great company.

  Yesterday I noted that I have lost significant distance off the tee since last year, maybe 20 yards, and I am about one club shorter with my irons.  I know it is the lack of shoulder turn, the result largely of advancing age and sedentary habits.  Still, I had my best score of the year on the back nine at Ford's Colony's Blue Heron course in Williamsburg, so the logical conclusion is that the course was easy.     

    Dan Maples designed the Blue Heron as well as the two other 18s at Ford's Colony, the Black Heath and the Marsh Hawk.  None of the ratings from the men's tees exceed 70.0 and the highest slope rating is 125 (the Blue Heron is 124 at 6,328 yards).  I like Maples courses, but his designs do seem geared to "vacationers." (Who wants stress on a vacation?)  The Blue Heron, which featured some nice elevation changes, fairly slick and smooth greens, and just enough in-play water to keep some adrenaline pumping, was the right medicine to boost my ego with a decent score.  But I am not sure this, or its companion courses at Ford's Colony, would satisfy me day in and day out while I still pretend I am the golfer I once was.   

    Those of us contemplating retirement to a golf-oriented lifestyle face a dilemma:  Will the course we choose to play a few times a week pose enough of a challenge or too much of one?  At the brutally tough Davis Love III course in Chapel Hill, The Preserve at Lake Norman, breaking 80, for a 10-handicap golfer, would be a thrill; but the thrills would be far and few between.  I also have played a course in eastern Tennessee, at Rarity Bay, that was so forgiving that the thrill was gone by the end of one round.       

    The Blue Heron tended a little toward the easy side, but in five years, who knows?  It might be all the challenge I would want, and then some.  So in choosing a community and its adjacent golf course(s), do we make the big investment based on our game today or the one we project for ourselves a few years out?   My own theory is that many of us will have it both ways, moving a few times in retirement for a number of reasons, not the least to rehab our scores on courses more suited to our then-current game.  As the generational psychologists like to say, baby boomers want what they want.      

    Last night's dinner was at a local Vietnamese restaurant called Chez Trinh.  The "Chez" part is a little frilly, since there are no combo French/Viet dishes on the menu, but the food was serious, ample and quite tasty.  The crab and asparagus soup was the real thing, not those ubiquitous, imitation and unfortunately named sea legs, but real shredded crab.  The white asparagus may have come out of a can, but the half dozen pieces held their own in the silky broth.  The rice paper that enclosed pieces of garlic pork, mint leaves and bean sprouts was a bit spongy, and the pork seemed a little past its prime, but the mint gave the dish a refreshing kick.     

    The Saigon Seafood plate announced itself just as the kitchen door opened, a sizzling - almost howling - dish that included small shrimp, the oxymoronic large shrimp, and scallops, as well as a heady dose of ginger.  Well-prepared Vietnamese food depends on the freshest ingredients, and this dish did not disappoint.    

    Later today I play the River Course at Kingsmill, which Pete Dye renovated a couple of years ago.  Stay tuned.

The 17th on the Blue Heron at Ford's Colony is not as tough as it appears.  That bank in front of the pin is not steep and you can land just short of the green without fear of rolling into the water.  However, the pin position indicator -- halfway up the stick -- was wrong.  The pin was at front on a very deep green, and I hit way too much club.