Saturday, June 9, 2012

Max Mandel Golf Course: surrounded by chaos

C-R-A-W-L-L

Oasis - noun :   A situation or place preserved from surrounding unpleasantness; a refuge: an oasis of serenity amid chaos.

With a 9 Million dollar price tag, the Max Manded municipal golf course 10 miles out on mines road can't help but be some sort of oasis. The above definition of the word is especially appropriate because it certainly serves as a refuge from the chaotic, noisy truck traffic that gnarls the drive out there.

Recently, Pro8News ran a piece on the ongoing development of the course and posed the question : Will Laredoans be willing to drive 10 miles to use the course?  According to Tim Gutierrez, the answer was something to the effect that "They told us that avid golfers will travel hundreds of miles to the Valley or San Antonio to play the game so they don't think travel will be an issue".

The problem is that, at times, those 10 miles will feel more like 100 miles. You can hardly call crawling ever so slowly in bumper to bumper traffic amid hundreds of tractor trailers "travel".

Supposedly, Robert Trent Jones, the architect of the park is legendary in the golf world for his world-class golf courses.  I wonder, however, if this is the only park that RTJ has had the privilege to design smack dab in the  middle of a sprawling Industrial park?



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