Play Hampton Golf Village in North Georgia; Experiencing The Trifecta of Golf in Atlanta!
How good is it to be a golf & travel writer! I met a new friend Bob Thibodeau from Atlanta earlier this year at the 2020 PGA Show in Orlando. I went to Atlanta to visit my son, daughter-in-love, and grandson in Atlanta. Bob Thibodeau sets up a golf game at Hampton Golf Village in Cumming in North Georgia. A beautiful part of the state where one can go directly north from the Atlanta metro area, touch the Blue Ridge Mountains, and enter North Carolina directly while bypassing South Carolina. Pure Paradise! Nothing against South Carolina, in fact I love South Carolina too! I am a Hilton Head Hillbilly! Just a piece of geographical trivia! Bob Thibodeau’s friends Gary and Bob S. make it a memorable foursome on an impressive golf course on a day I played my best in many years!
Experience the Trifecta of Golf—playing a great golf course—playing with three other good guys (or women too!)— and scoring well—at Hampton Golf Village in Cumming, Georgia on a perfect Spring day!
Granted it was a social golf outing for the most part. First time seeing the course and first time playing with these guys. In the midst of a work week of doing some hard labor helping my son remodel his home. Expectations were high for having a good time but low in regards to playing well. Hey I am 60 now but then again I think the Bobs may be in their early 70s and I know Gary is 85 years young! I was the young puppy in the foursome!
After a brief warm up and socially distanced pic of the foursome, we teed off right on time. I think one instinctively knows a well-run golf course from the little bits and pieces of gathered subconsciously from arrival to clubhouse to pro shop to getting cart to practice facility to meeting the starter and teeing off. I can tell you two things about Hampton Golf Village—it is a well-run golf operation and business has been booming since the COVID-19 Pandemic. We played Hampton Golf Village on Day No. 33 of the Recovery after the seven weeks of being quarantined yet able to exercise in a healthy manner while playing golf! A couple of days before they had 310 golfers all playing, as we did in about four hours or less!
Immediately the golf course fit my eye! It is true what the professional golfers say and do when a golf course fits their eye. It is easier to go low whether that is a run at breaking 60, 80 or 100! Just look at these pictures! Definitely a golf course that looks hard but plays easier, at least the first time you play it and have no clue where the danger is! Ours was a positive foursome, we dreamed of keeping it in play, making some pars, and maybe even scoring a birdie or two along the way! On a day when all the bounces seemed to be back into the fairway or onto the green we all enjoyed our round of golf!
Hampton Golf Village is a varied and interesting layout. A little up and down though not extremely so. A little over here and then over there though the routing finds its way back to the clubhouse for the turn. The second nine seems to flatten out a bit more and open up a bit more yet concludes with a difficult, tight hole with a forced carry at the green. A driver, hybrid-4 and a missed eight-footer for birdie ended my round there with absolutely no regrets. But I am getting ahead of myself.
Clyde Johnston, the architect who designed Hampton Golf Village, is in my 1981 first edition of Cornish and Whitten’s “The Architects of Golf.” That is a good thing! Hampton Golf Village, opened in 2000 is not but there are 20 or so golf courses listed that Clyde designed anew like Hampton or remodeled or expanded. Remember that snapshot was taken 40 years ago! Son of onetime Wake Forest coach Johnny Johnston, Clyde has collaborated on a few golf courses with Fuzzy Zoeller. I bet there are a few stories there! Hampton is a thoroughbred of a golf course to say the least!
Per the ‘Clyde Johnston Designs’ website—Johnston has now completed over 75 golf course design projects, both new designs and redesigns. Johnston has received awards for several of his designs including Cherry Blossom GC, Heather Glen Golf Links, Jacksonville Golf and Country Club, Old South Golf Links and Covered Bridge Golf Club, owned and co-designed by Fuzzy Zoeller. I am surprised that he did not win an award for Hampton Golf Village as it was a nominee for Golf Digest's Best New Public Course of 2000!
Great golf course... What more can you ask for?
How about a great foursome?
Gary, the youngster at 85, seemed to go about his golf game as I imagine he did his family and career—with vigor, focus, determination and success all while enjoying it immensely! As a teacher-turned-Warden of the Students- a.k.a. known as my Pal the Principal you could tell he placed emphasis on learning and learning how to play the game right since taking it up in his mid 50s! A college basketball player who played for Jacksonville State in Alabama when six-foot-three guys could play center. This man putts like an inspired-the-right-way demon with a Scotty Cameron his wife bought him 4-5 years ago.
Bob S. and Gary have been friends for the last 20 years or so. They lived in the neighborhood together but became good friends when their wives took up golf. A career that reached the highest levels of civil service for the United States Government, Bob S. was the comptroller for FEMA, but with his solid game no disaster relief was needed on the day we teed it up together! We spoke of our travels to New Zealand where unbelievably he played no golf. A smart man, with a lovely wife, that must be obeyed!
I knew Bob Thibodeau to be a man of great integrity when I first met him at the PGA Show. He along with others responded immediately to my plea for help to get a friend with an amputated right leg back up and out and playing golf again. Sadly my friend has since passed but God and the golfing god has presented me with a new golfing and life friend!
Bob Thibodeau, a Veteran who served his country in Vietnam is a man on the move involved and actively pursuing a lot of meaningful initiatives!
First and foremost is the way I met him as an Outreach Leader & Coach for Adaptive Golf—a way designed for adults, juniors, and veterans of all generations with any physical, cognitive and/or sensory impairments such as: stroke, spine injury, limb loss, TBI, PTSD, MS, MD, joint replacements, cerebral palsy, macular degeneration, Parkinson’s, spina bifida, low vision/blind, hearing loss, orthopedic, arthritis, diabetes and more such as autism to get out and play golf for the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health benefits.
Bob Tthibodeau is writing a book on Adaptive Golf in conjunction with the United States Golf Association and the Georgia State Golf Association. He also has a draft for his book on ‘Shooting Your Age (SYA)!’ All of which, obviously, has endeared me more to him since we first met!
Not if but when will you shoot your age?
Gary does it regularly; the Bobs are getting close and it is a dream for me but certainly an addition to the Life’s Bucket List! Hopefully and maybe even before my date with par in my life in twelve years! Something to bring into focus and work on!
Bob Thibodeau met Bob S. and Gary as part of the “Carter Group” at the Hampton Golf Village. Carter is a guy that has amassed a group of what I can tell of about 50-60 golfers that play in a somewhat organized way at Hampton Golf Village. Something tells me my experience and knowledge of the golfing experience at Hampton Golf Village may be somewhat limited until I get a chance to meet and play a round with the somewhat mysterious Mr. Carter!
Great golf course... Great foursome... What more can you ask for than a Daily Double?
A great golf score- right?
Let’s suffice it to say my focus for the round was to have fun, get to know these great guys, and enjoy a great golf course. I certainly did that! A funny thing though happened on the 8th hole while enduring my fifth bogey in a row. A little voice inside my head said that with a little more focus on playing my golf shots in the midst of enjoying my social golf that I could possibly score well on the remaining eleven holes. Possibly break 80… So I did and the rest is written on the scorecard, signed, and attested! Ten pars and a birdie on the way past and then back to the clubhouse! One under par on the second nine and a remarkable (for me) and rememberable (for me hopefully) golf score of 76!
Indeed, I played Hampton Golf Village and experienced The Trifecta of Golf!
I hope you will too!
Thank you to Head PGA Golf Professional Shaun Kelley for hosting Andy’s Golf & Travel Diary!
