Mystic Creek, Arkansas: A Beautiful Place to Get Humbled

I shot 99 and 104 at Mystic Creek Golf Club in southern Arkansas last Saturday.

My son Ben shot 98 and 116.

Those are not typos.

I’ve played a fair amount of golf over the years, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d posted two scores that high in the same day. Or even the same year. So I did what any reasonable golfer would do and sorted my 33 years’ worth of scores in Excel (all normal golfers keep their scores in an Excel spreadsheet, right?). Turns out I’d shot a 99 and a 104 back in 2007. Fortunately, rounds like those have been pretty few and far between. I’m currently a single-digit handicapper, and I can occasionally put together some rounds in the mid-70s, so this was a pretty thorough beating.

And I absolutely loved the place and the day.

Mystic Creek Golf Club in El Dorado, Arkansas, was my 49th state in a quest to play golf in all 50. It’s a beautiful, demanding course with towering pines, significant elevation changes, and some of the fastest greens I’ve encountered. My son Ben and I played 36 holes there, and while neither of us played particularly well, it turned into one of my favorite golf experiences.

Arkansas was state number 49 in my lifelong quest to play golf in all 50 states. I’d been looking for the right course and the right time to make the trip, and Mystic Creek kept showing up on lists of the best public courses in Arkansas. Located in El Dorado, in the southern part of the state, it looked like exactly the kind of place I wanted to play.

I’d originally planned to go alone during the week. But when I mentioned the trip to Ben a few months ago, he said he’d love to join me if he could make it work.

Ben is in his second year of medical school in Houston. He’s been married a few years to a wonderful woman, and between school, research, marriage, and everything else, golf doesn’t get much of his attention these days. It doesn’t really get much of mine lately, either, for that matter, with work, businesses, family, and whatever else seems to fill the calendar.

So we settled on a Saturday. Ben would drive up from Houston, I’d fly in from Phoenix, and we’d play as much golf as we could squeeze into one day.

That turned out to be 36 glorious, if slightly painful, holes.

Mystic Creek Golf Club: A Course That Doesn’t Give You Much

Mystic Creek is a spectacular golf course. It’s a semi-private club carved through the pine forests of southern Arkansas, and in many ways it reminded me of Augusta National. Towering pines, pine straw everywhere, rolling terrain, and hardly a level lie to be found. The fairways seemed narrower in many places, and being able to move the ball both ways would certainly have been helpful. Unfortunately, I wasn’t always able to move it in the direction I had in mind.

The course was in incredible condition. The weather was nearly perfect, too. We teed off in the upper 40’s under a brilliant blue sky. It warmed up to a fall-perfect 68 in the afternoon, and we finished around 6:30 as the temperature dropped back into the 50s.

There was a steady 10–15 mph “breeze,” which added another layer of difficulty to a course that didn’t need much help.

And then there were the greens.

The club was hosting its own Ryder Cup-style competition that day. Someone told me they thought it was the general manager and his team taking on the head professional and his team. Apparently someone had decided the appropriate preparation was to make the greens lightning fast and cut the holes in places where making par required some combination of skill, luck, and divine intervention.

Either that or Mystic’s Carl Spackler had a really rough Friday night and decided to take it out on everyone Saturday morning.

I’m guessing the greens were running around 12 or 13 on the Stimpmeter. Of course, that’s a golfer’s version of a fish story. Ask me again in a few years and I’ll probably tell you they were running at 20. There were several situations where a putt from six feet above the hole could easily roll off the green if it missed the cup.

I’m not exaggerating. I actually putted off several greens.

The LPGA’s Epson Tour had played at Mystic Creek just a few weeks earlier, from approximately 6,650 yards, with the winner finishing at six under par. That gives you some idea of the challenge. From the black tees, two of the par threes stretch beyond 230 yards.

The rest of my game wasn’t exactly helping. My swing has been in one of those stretches where whatever I thought I’d figured out a few weeks earlier has apparently gone missing. I can play several rounds in a row in the mid-70s, then get busy with life, go a while without practicing, and suddenly find myself wondering how to hit a golf ball again.

Mystic Creek was not particularly interested in helping me work through it.

The first round was from the green tees, 6,729 yards with a 73.5 rating and 137 slope. Ben beat me by a stroke, 98 to 99.

Then we decided to play the black tees.

All 7,518 yards of them. Rating 77.6, slope 145.

We probably needed a VP of Common Sense to intervene, but alas, there was none.

Ben is young, strong, athletic, and capable of hitting the ball a very long way. Like most of us, he’s also capable of hitting it a long way into the trees. We both spent more time punching out of the pines than we’d have liked.

Instead of the short irons and wedges I usually approach par fours with, I was going into the bag for long irons, hybrids, and fairway woods. Trying to hold those greens with those clubs was an adventure.

Ben shot 116. I shot 104.

I’m not sure either of us was particularly surprised by the time we finished.

The Fun of Doing Something Difficult

Here’s the thing, though. We had an amazing day.

There were plenty of moments when all we could do was laugh. Sometimes together, sometimes at each other. Neither of us was throwing clubs or carrying on about how unfair everything was. We both knew we weren’t playing well, but we also knew we were playing a magnificent golf course on a beautiful fall day.

More than once, we said out loud how great it was just to be there.

Everyone who’s played more than a couple of rounds of golf has heard some version of “A bad day on the golf course beats a good day at work.” I’ve found that to be mostly true, and it was definitely true In El Dorado, Arkansas on this beautiful October Saturday.

Ben had never played 36 holes in a day. After getting knocked around for the first 18, he was still excited to take on the championship tees and experience everything Mystic Creek had to offer.

I loved the desire to take on a challenge.

I’ve heard people say you don’t get anything extra for playing from the tips. I’ve also said it’s a good way to see the whole course and really get your money’s worth. We certainly got our money’s worth at Mystic Creek. Our average cost per stroke was very low.

We’ve always talked with our kids about the value of doing hard things. They’ve learned that through sports, tough jobs, and challenging academic programs. I’ve learned it through law school, a career that’s taken a few unexpected turns, my several back surgeries, marriage, and raising four kids. Things don’t always go according to plan, and figuring out what to do next is usually more productive than complaining about it.

That doesn’t mean you have to enjoy every obstacle. I certainly didn’t enjoy the four-putts or searching for my ball among the pine straw and fallen leaves. Although I did appreciate the generosity of those who’d gone before us and left behind a few premium golf balls for us to find while looking for our own.

But there’s something satisfying about taking on a difficult challenge, getting knocked around a little, and still wanting to come back for more.

And we both wanted to come back.

The Part That Matters Most

As much as I enjoyed Mystic Creek, the best part of the trip was spending the day with Ben.

My four kids are adults now, building their own lives, careers, and families. I love seeing what they’re doing and how hard they’re working at the things that matter to them. And I appreciate just about any opportunity to spend time with them.

A few months ago, we traveled to New York to help our oldest daughter and her husband with the very old house they’d just bought as he continued his medical residency. We replaced toilets, unclogged drains, changed locks, and worked on whatever else needed attention.

There wasn’t a golf club in sight.

I enjoyed that trip every bit as much.

I’ve come to realize that it doesn’t matter nearly as much what we’re doing as the fact that we’re doing it together. I love watching our kids take on challenges, work through problems, and build good lives. And I love being included in some small part of it.

The morning after Mystic Creek, I flew home to Phoenix and Ben headed back to Houston.

I sent him a text telling him how glad I was that he’d made the trip, how much I loved him, and how proud I was of him.

He wrote back that he was really glad he’d made the trip, that it was totally worth the drive, and that he’d really needed it.

I knew exactly what he meant. I’ve felt that way about golf more times than I can count. Sometimes spending a day outside chasing a little white ball around, especially with someone you love, is exactly what the doctor (or medical student) ordered. It’s good for me in so many ways, regardless of the number in that last box on the scorecard.

The Long Game

When I started this website, I called it The Long Game partly because I’ve spent decades trying to play golf in all 50 states.

Arkansas makes 49. Georgia is the only one left.

But the longer I play golf, and the older I get, the more I realize that the long game means something else, too.

There’s the lifelong challenge of trying to get better at a game that never seems to let you get entirely comfortable. There are the places you go, the people you meet, and the experiences you collect along the way.

And then there are the people you get to share it with.

I’ve played some wonderful golf courses and had some terrific rounds over the years. I doubt I’ll remember many of the scores twenty years from now.

But I’ll remember that Saturday at Mystic Creek with Ben.

Even the 104.