Bull Durham Golf Weekend

Durham, NC

by Fat Guy

"Why the Hell am I back in A-ball?"

Put together your own team of minor leagers, and head for a weekend of golf in Raleigh/Durham, home to the real-life Durham Bulls.

Durham Bulls Baseball:  The home field scenes in the movie were filmed at the Old Durham Athletic Park (Corporation & Morris, Durham).  The Bulls currently play at a new park built in 1995.  So refresh your mental stash of Bull Durham quotes before you go, then go catch the real live Durham Bulls at Athletic Park (Blackwell St & Jackie Robinson Place). Check the home schedule at www.durhambulls.com.  At one point, the Old park was still being used for the Coastal Plain Baseball League, although a recent scan of the league website reveals no team based in Durham.

Orientation:  In central NC, the twins cities of Raleigh and Durham are about 30 minutes apart from downtown to downtown, connected by US-40 & NC-147. Raleigh is about 35 miles west of I-95. I-540 is a beltway around Raleigh, and I-85 passes through Durham from the North and West. They're only about 90 minutes from Wilmington Beach. NC State's main campus is in Raleigh, and R/D makes up two sides of The Golden Triangle, along with Duke in Durham and UNC in Chapel Hill.

Raleigh/Durham is a pretty transient city from what I understand, with a diverse cultural backdrop that combines local Southern culture with a growing Hispanic population and a pretty large influx of folks who've relocated from the Northeast. Overall the place has a "new" feel to it, with sprawling suburbs and new office and shopping complexes everywhere, as the area has continued to grow despite the economic downturn. Even many of the older, split-level 1970's residential developments have been well-kept, re-landscaped, and re-modeled. So you can find every chain store/restaurant/etc. imaginable here, along with some local flavor, like plenty of Carolina barbeque. Translation: Traffic moves fast and aggressive when it's not parked at one of the 4 million suburban sprawl stoplights, while overall service and attitudes are much slower.

When To Go:  During baseball season, of course.  Temps get ugly hot from about late June through early August, averaging in the upper 80's and higher. May and September average right around 80. April and October may be the best golfing weather, with average highs around 70 degrees.

Where To Play:  We played a great value round at the Neuse GC in Clayton, about 20 minutes from downtown Raleigh and 40 minutes from the airport.

A few holes run near the Neuse River, named after a local Iroquois tribe, although it's barely in play on a couple holes unless you're really spraying it. Golf Digest rated Neuse GC at 4-1/2 stars for 3 years running back in the early Ott's, but that's a slight overrating to me. It also earned GD's #1 Value in NC, and I might agree with that one. It's a sporty little track routed through a housing development, making great use of the hilly ground running down towards the river, and the houses aren't too obtrusive on most of the holes. The front page pictures on Neuse's website are a bit misleading, as all but 2 or 3 holes lack the unique character of the rocky outcroppings featured on the signature hole pic on the homepage.

The front 9 has an above-average golf community feel, revealing a very playable core with somewhat minimal fairway bunkering, and challenging but hardly brutal green complexes. The 8th is a tough down-and-up par-5 with water at the bottom of the valley, and could be a round-wrecker if you get overly aggressive. The front 9 greens were bouncy and slow the day we played, but green conditions improved on the back. #10 is a roller-coaster par-5 with a tough, well-bunkered uphill approach that announces a step-change up in difficulty on the back. My only complaint: a small sinkhole above #10 green hidden by the thick Bermuda rough caused me to mildly sprain an ankle. The holes begin to take on more character starting at the short downhill par-4 13th before the routing crescendos at the signature rock-laden par-3 14th. The final 4 holes slowly scale back down in difficulty until the uphill 18th, which provides a birdie opportunity only for the most accurate of approaches, as the kidney-shaped green bowls around a large swale, making for some interesting options on long chips and boomerang putts to back pin placements.

Conditions were pretty good outside of the bumpy front 9 greens, and it was well-worth the $42 afternoon rate we paid ($62 prime time in '09). Pace of play was excellent for our Saturday mid-afternoon round (we never saw another soul on the back 9), but we played right after an NC State home football game under gray skies in an off-and-on light drizzle. The grill room is small, casual, and homey, with 2 large screen TV's, NFL Sunday Ticket, ESPN College Game Plan, $2 hotdogs, and beer on tap, but no bar to belly up to.

With this being the Golden Triangle, there's always an emphasis on the UNC/Duke/NC State angles, even when it comes to golf. Online blogs I've read about the best of R/D golf quickly mention the Finley Course at UNC, Duke's golf course (www.golf.duke.edu), and NC State's Lonnie Poole GC. Finley seemed to get the most nods from locals after a Tom Fazio overhaul a few years back (despite pricey fees for non-alums), I believe the Duke Course by Robert Trent Jones Sr. may have been redone by Pete Dye, and Lonnie Poole is a 2009 Arnold Palmer design that will battle Tobacco Road in the unofficial battle for North Carolina's most difficult course.

Fred Couples' Chapel Ridge and DL3's The Preserve also got recommendations from locals.

Not being overly familiar with NC geography, I was surprised to learn that Raleigh/Durham is only a little over an hour north of Pinehurst and the Sandhills golf region. Normally I wouldn't recommend driving upwards of an hour from any metropolitan area to play if there are other options closer, but with Pinehurst #2 (or #8, or #10, etc…) and Fat Guy's favorite U.S. public Tobacco Road being about 50 miles down the road, they're easily worth the drive from Raleigh/Durham if you have a full day to kill. One of my buddy Mark's friends bragged up the value at Woodlake's Arnold Palmer & Dan Maples 18's (www.woodlakeCC.com) near Pinehurst, saying he often makes the drive down to play 36 holes for around $60, but you have to sign up for their email specials.

Best Bar Nearby:  The bar scene where Crash meets Nuke takes place in Mitch's Tavern on Hillsborough Street in Raleigh, North Carolina, across the street from NC State University. Today, in Mitch's there are a few mementos from the movie: framed film still of Crash Davis and Annie Savoy (autographed by Susan Sarandon and Kevin Cosnter) and glass door which Nuke Laloosh breaks is framed. The furniture, fixtures, and layout of the tavern largely remain the same as they were in 1988. [80smovies.com]