We live near a course that hosts majors, which still seems unlikely
Louisville is not where you expect to find a course that has hosted multiple PGA Championships and a Ryder Cup. And yet: Valhalla, out on the east side, Nicklaus design, cut through Floyds Fork with limestone ledges and a waterfall in front of the eighteenth green.
For anybody who grew up here it's the local course you watch on television, which is a strange and specific pleasure. You know exactly which hole they're standing on because you drove past it on the way to work.
They were young enough here that I could still beat one of them
I took the two of them around and they were the age where golf had just stopped being something Dad made them do and started being something they wanted. You can see it in the photographs — the stance is real, the glove is on, they are taking it seriously.
That window is short. Somewhere in the next couple of years both of them got long enough that these rounds changed character permanently. Glad I have the pictures from the last summer of the old arrangement.
It is a genuinely great golf course — long, dramatic, fair, and unmistakably Nicklaus, which means you will be asked to hit a lot of shots that require a decision before they require a swing.
Five stars because it's world class, and because it's ours. Not everybody gets a major venue in their zip code.