A fairway runs through it - golfing in Montana

Golf Digest, Feb, 1999 by John Edwards

Montana's Flathead Valley offers dazzling natural beauty, great golf and a colorful cast of characters Montana is in. If you go there to get away from it all, you might instead run into the likes of Ted Turner, Meg Ryan, or Liz Claiborne, who all have homes there. Robert Redford makes movies about conflicted humans and an injured horse, using the state's stunning and lyrical beauty to mute a story's harder edges.

It is a fiercely independent state with legal gambling, no highway speed limit and no sales tax. It is a place where stores are more mercantile than boutique, food is more red meat than green sprouts, and residents are still pretty much in the boots 'n' Stetson mold. People fly-fish after work, toss down a few glasses of Moose Drool Ale and worry about the future encroaching on their idyll.

There's an area in the northwest of Montana known as the Flathead Valley, gouged out by a glacier, bordered with tree-covered mountains, spotted with lakes and striped with rivers and streams. Of course, such areas of sublime beauty tend to be ripe for the kind of growth that can threaten their very nature, even ruin them. But for visitors, such development can sometimes bring good things, including golf, as I discovered through an ad.

After several toll-free phone calls, I had arranged for eight nights at the functional, neo-western Diamond Lils Inn in Kalispell and five guaranteed tee times, all for $610. And so it was that on a Friday in August our plane broke through the clouds and swooped into a misty valley, filled with lakes and rivers, ringed by mountains.

For the best first impression of the valley, it's good to just drive around. My rental car came without a tape deck. I found only two radio stations, country and western and northwest Montana eclectic. I chose the former. "On the Road Again."

Approaching Flathead Lake from the south, you top the last rise and the windshield fills with gentle meadows rolling down to deep blue water, flecked with white sails and motorboat wakes. On the east side of the lake you can buy fresh cherries from roadside vendors or, for a slight fee, wander into the orchards and pick your own. Later, join the mountain bikers and hikers riding the gondola or chair lift to the top of Big Mountain ski resort, grab lunch at the Summit House and take in the view. Then sit in the Montana Grill on the west shore, watching the flotilla of sailboats scurrying to beat darkness to the dock.

I have no qualms about traveling alone, especially on a golf trip. Golf provides a common bond, good for day-long relationships, sometimes more. The first morning I drove north on Highway 93 to the Whitefish Lake Golf Club, where I discovered James, Vicki and a devilish 10th hole that would frustrate Job.

Years ago, James and Vicki first visited the Flathead Valley and decided it was their destiny. They worked hard to build up their small Midwestern business, then sold it and moved to Whitefish. They have become reluctant salespeople for the area, hoping that it won't continue to grow at its reckless pace. It was a theme I was to hear throughout the week: Everyone would encourage me to have fun in the valley but discourage me from thinking about moving there, usually adding the phrase: "The winters are tough here."

The North Course at Whitefish winds through tall pines. If your head begins to pound and the body shakes, it could be your nerves, but it's probably just the Amtrak train rumbling through a hidden gorge. James and Vicki left me after the front nine. It could be they had other plans, but perhaps they didn't want to watch me suffer through the 10th: a short par 4 of less than 300 yards but with a 90-degree dogleg, rough and O.B. on the right, trees on the left and one big, awkwardly placed, spreading "something or other" in the middle of the fairway that blocks any normal approach to the elevated green. I never thought trees could laugh, but this one seemed to.

Eight miles south of Kalispell lies Eagle Bend, which mixes and matches some newer, more open Jack Nicklaus Jr.-designed holes with the older, original ones. I played with Stan, a high school basketball coach from California, and Jackson, an Army doctor from Missoula. None of us had played the course. There were plenty of choices to be made where local knowledge would have been an asset. It sometimes paid not to have the honors.

This is a must-play course. There's also a separate nine-hole layout that skirts around a protected waterfowl refuge, dips in and out of wooded areas and surrounds a mid-course marina. On the outskirts of all 27 holes are condos and homes, the ostentatious signs of a new Montana. We wondered what the place would look like in five years. We didn't know if we liked what our imagination told us.

Not far from Eagle Bend is the town of Bigfork, an eclectic collection of shops, galleries, sidewalk cafes, art festivals and open-air concerts. Quaint hotels, like the three-suite Swan River Inn and Lake Hotel, were around the corner from bars blaring blues and rock-and- roll.