I was a conscientious college student, but I won't lie: there were a couple (just a couple!) times when I may have ended up on the golf course when I might have otherwise been in class. Sometimes working on your long irons takes precedence over Existential Philosophy, right?
That familiar feeling came over me this week, more than 1,000 miles from my own alma mater. I found myself in College Station, Texas, playing the on-campus Golf Club of Texas A&M.
A&M might have the ur-college golf course. It is literally in the midst of the campus. Among the landmarks in constant view are the university's meteorology school, which lords over the land like an airport's air-traffic control tower, and Kyle Field, the university's 102,733-seat football stadium, the fourth-largest in the country. No doubt current wannabe-pro-golfer-Johnny Manziel made the short trip between the course and the field several times during his storied Aggie career.
The course was good - open off the tee but heavily bunkered, making for some nervy shots, especially in a healthy 20-mile-per-hour wind for much of the round - but what followed really tied the college-throwback experience together nicely. When I asked for a post-round lunch recommendation, the friendly young ladies working the pro shop directed my friend Kyle (no relation to the stadium) and me to the promised land: Layne's, a College Station institution. With a tiny menu and spectacular food quality, Layne's is to chicken fingers what In-N-Out is to burgers. The simple pleasure of such a lunch was the only fitting follow-up to the memory of hiding from textbooks in a classroom of a greener hue.
