DogDays
Quintero
A course cut into the desert, unbookable or price unthinkable in the primetime season. Cheap and empty in summer, if you can sweat it.
01We drove west on Carefree Highway until we started to question if we had missed our turn. We booked the round on Wednesday knowing there were monsoons on the report for the weekend, which was all the better because we knew it would be a hot one.
The card clipped to the wheel stayed there the whole round, blank. We kept tabs in our heads, knowing any birdies would be remembered.
The range was ours alone, which no tee time buys in the winter months, and the warm-up stayed short: six balls and a towel over the grips, an old trick to keep them whole through September, when the real Arizona golf season ends.
When you have the course to yourself, not rushed and packed between snowbirds, every hole flows from fairway to green and every pin feels attainable.
The course wound through the mountains, and each turn revealed a new tower of storm cloud in the distance. They kept building into larger thunderheads, and we couldn’t help but watch and silently hope one would make a break in our direction.
In January, this tee time is three hundred dollars. In July, a foursome runs the same rate, leaving room in the wallet for drinks at the turn.
We were surprised by the course and our hosts. Usually this time of year, the Bermuda and those willing to stick it out marshaling or tending the bunkers are prickly. Everyone at Quintero was overjoyed we were willing to suffer with them north of 110°F.
Whatever it costs to keep a place this soft through an Arizona summer, they were spending it that afternoon on four friends and a roadrunner.
Over the first eight holes, my brother and I struck the ball better than we had since picking up the game. Maybe it was the delirium of the heat or the free Modelos the cart girl tossed our way, but we resigned ourselves to the bogey onslaught of the back nine.
Preoccupied with the course, drinks, and jokes with friends, I cracked open the back of my camera, bleaching the film with the same light that was tormenting us. The stills turned out well and serve as a reminder of the heat of the day.
A mirage on the back nine: a 4-iron close on 14, the final birdie of the day on a hole flanked by the traps.
We left in a hurry after a nearly six-hour round, with a 45-minute drive ahead of us if we were lucky. We reminisced about the round, bitched about the heat and the bogeys, and laughed when rain touched down right as we parked the car to unload and head our separate ways.
Letters from Fischbeck3
There’s more on the way.
I’m working on a photo journal and story from Bajamar, along with photographs from a few new courses. If you’d like to follow along, I’ll email you when they’re ready.
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Whitefish
A bachelor party. Friends in from Washington, Illinois, California and Arizona, twenty-seven holes at Whitefish Lake Golf Club, aspens around the cabin, and the lake to get into when the round was done.
02The smoke took the mountains out of the background. What is left is a flat white sky and whatever stands close enough to see.
Dead timber stands in the shallows off the fairway. The south course plays alongside it for a stretch.
A foursome with two plans: the women took the cart and the margaritas, the men took the bikes and the clubs.
Some of us live minutes from each other, but latch on to a reason to celebrate and a far-off course to tee it up on.
The smoke took the mountains out of the background.
I pushed the film to its limit to capture the night by the fire. The Montana night had other ideas.
The mountain keeps its ski runs through the summer. From the water you can read them right through the smoke.
Letters from Fischbeck3
There’s more on the way.
I’m working on a photo journal and story from Bajamar, along with photographs from a few new courses. If you’d like to follow along, I’ll email you when they’re ready.
Free to subscribe. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Pass it along.
If this reminds you of someone you’ve traveled or played golf with, you’re welcome to send it their way.
Oak Quarry
Dog Days · Chapter 03 · California
I’d played Oak Quarry before on a similar work trip, but needed to leave after the twelfth hole to make a flight. The white of the granite, the boulders in the fairways and around the greens, and the fantastic conditions made me want to see more. The bunkers are the best maintained I’ve ever played, and I knew I had to make it back to see the signature par 3.
When I returned, I caught a heatwave in the area that gave me the course to myself for two weekdays.
On the first day, shooting Portra 400, I realized I’d left my 85mm lens in my duffel in the car and spent the day with the 28mm, a focal length that hasn’t entirely agreed with me. I’m glad I did. Those photographs capture my memory of the course best: the grandeur of the landscape and the depth of the shots, both on the course and through the camera.
The par 3 is incredible. You drop into the quarry you play around for most of the course, walk to the sunflower-lined back tee boxes, and face an intimidating 200-yard shot with danger on all sides.
My tee time was 3:30, and the granite wall nearly blinded me. I caught my 6-iron thin, and from the second my club hit the ball it felt like a bogey or worse, but I managed to get up and down for a surprising par.
I drove the ball and hit my woods well but timidly that round, managing an 85 with some strong iron play and work around the greens.
On the second day, I had the 85mm and HP5. I was excited to see the contrast between the two rolls, and shooting without color nudged me to capture detail.
On day two, I committed to pulling driver and managed an 84 despite a tragic triple on hole two. Hopefully another work trip brings me back this way, but I’d happily make a spontaneous trip just for Oak Quarry.
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The contact sheet
New photographs and stories, by email when they’re ready.
Jerecho
I shoot film on an old Nikon F3, mostly on trips, mostly of the people I talk into coming along. The photographs are what’s left of good days: the road out, the long lunch, the light at the end of it. Golf gets us to some of these places. The rest is just paying attention.
At the pin, Hunter Ranch · Nikon F3 · Portra 400Selected film work, available for editorial features and prints.
The camera
Every frame on a Nikon F3. Four lenses in rotation: 28, 50, 105 and 180mm. Mixed film stock, whatever’s loaded. Scanned, barely corrected; the light is left as the light.
The work
Trips, mostly: who came along, where we went, what the light did. Three so far: Bajamar on the Baja coast, the Central Coast, and Pinehurst in the Carolina sandhills. More on the way.
New issues
I’ll email you when I have new photographs and stories to share.
Commissions & licensing
For features, portfolios, or prints, write to
jerecho@fischbeck3.com