A Cuckoo, A Castle and 9 Holes
For context, I convinced my brother to pursue an Italian wedding a year earlier with minimal difficulty, I might add. My ulterior motive was to force an Italian vacation on our family and get another chance at European golfing glory. I made it a priority to sightsee and golf in as many places as time would allow.
My several-week odyssey through the European countryside started in Paris, taking the long way around to my brother’s wedding. In the Alps, I had found my next adventure.
Along the winding mountain roads of the French Alps, at the base of Mont Blanc in southeastern France lies the small city of Annecy.
Its picturesque streets straddle the glacier-fed streams flowing into the lake, one of the cleanest in Europe. After a few days of mountaineering and convalescing, necessary because the Mini Convertible I had ordered was too small for comfort and required a long amount of recovery for every hour spent driving, the time had come to experience some French golf.
Like any small town in America, golf courses are usually placed into whatever landscape is available. For public courses, there isn’t some grand design to make them more picturesque; they just happen to be near town. In this case, however, this town happened to have a castle.
Castles in Central Europe sprout like trees. Somewhere between 80,000 and 150,000 castles lie throughout Central Europe in various states of repair. These dreamlike structures make any moment better simply by being in the background, and this golf course was no different.
Golf du Lac d’Annecy is the local course in town, within shouting distance of the lake and within earshot of the ramparts of the local castle. Château de Menthon has sat on this rocky outcropping in one form or another since Roman times, guarding the road from Geneva to Italy. It is said to have inspired Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty castle for the 1959 cartoon feature and has since become quite a hotel and spa for wealthy travelers passing through the area. The golf course complements the area like it was made for it.
Golf had never had a better home.
I called on a whim to see if I could play nine holes before the rain moved in, which is common this time of year. They had an opening.
I rushed to the Mini as fast as I could, my wife and walking buddy jumping into the passenger seat, and slammed it into gear. We raced up the long, winding mountain road parallel to the lake and made our way to the course.
A French country home was the clubhouse. How typical.
I have found that most small non-golf resorts utilize the manor house left standing on the property for its facilities. To an American, this is amazing—older buildings with character and whimsy. To the European regular golfer, this is probably about as common as a single-wide trailer with a golf shop sticker slapped onto the metal exterior.
I was given a pull cart, told to start walking, and away I went.
The storm clouds were slowly approaching from the Alps above, so time was of the essence. I started slow, bogeying a few holes. I was so tired from my rushed start, and it took several holes to calm my nerves and settle.
The terrain climbs and drops abruptly, with paths worn from years of cleats trampling the landscape. The distance between holes became a problem almost immediately. Feeling more like a hike than a golf round. We were also on the hunt for the elusive cuckoo bird call. Hearing it from a clock is one thing; we wanted to catch one in the act.
The course rose and fell down slick, wet hills of green, my shoes slipping on occasion and threatening to give my pushcart a chance to break away and roll down the hill at any moment.
Toward the end of the seventh hole, as the storm clouds rolled in, we heard it.
The cuckoo.
Somewhere in the dense forest that surrounded us.
I felt as if a mission had been accomplished. Good municipal golf, a new bird call in the bag, a castle in the background, and my walking buddy by my side again, trying to figure out what exactly I was trying to accomplish with this desperate grasp for golf wherever I happened to hang my hat that night.
After a rain-soaked disrobing in the parking lot and a fondue dinner in town, I figured I had made the best of my time along the Alps. For now.
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