LAURA TEREBY ON THE ROAD

Editor’s Note: Puncbow Golf is proud to introduce Laura Terebey to the site. Laura grew up on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, played college golf at Radford, and now is travelling Europe trying to make a living playing the Ladies European Tour. This post is the first of a recurring installment on Punchbowl Golf about her travels and adventures abroad. For more background on Laura please see the contributors section on the ABOUT US page.

Golf Club Gerre, Deutsche Bank Ladies Swiss Open, Losone, Switzerland
May 10th – 17th, 2009

The hills and valleys are just as I remember them. The serenity no less serene, the mist no less majestic, the sights and sounds of Switzerland come to life again. Thick forest cascading down the mountain sides which encompasses each corner of the panorama. It is sheer beauty and as it happens, also the first stop on European leg of the Ladies European Tour. Over the next five months I will be crisscrossing the continent with a full tour card and teeing it up in 14 events over that time.

It was a week ago mid-Sunday morning that I stepped off the plane in Milan feeling okay, even bordering on energetic as I had managed a few hours of shut eye on our two flights over from Philly. An hour later slumped over with my head in my hands, my stomach threatening to heave, mashed between boney Ben and squishy Eric in seat built for two being wildly tossed about in an endless sequence of roundabouts taken at top speed in the Deutsche Bank courtesy van, well lets just say it wasn’t the welcome I had in mind. Even now it seems like eons ago. It is a by-product of time spent on the road. Minutes and hours can drag endlessly but days as a whole speed by in the blink of an eye.

The welcome we received once we arrived at the apartment that Dana had secured for the week was lukewarm at best. While the driver patiently wandered up Via di This, down Via di That, and finally up Via di Porta, I was little unsure whether or not I had the correct address. As we pulled up to the orange and white apartment block, a hunched figure with dyed black hair emerged. Her speech was German. My response a blank, timid stare. Gestures and action continue to be the communal international language and in the end we were given our keys and shown the way to our apartment on the second floor. The ensuing discussion between Ben, myself, and the crazy German to figure out the tourist tax, due in cash, was another case of charades and some elementary arithmetic. All’s well that ends well.

The apartment was perfect for our crew of four comprised of Dana, Gregg, Ben, and myself. It had two bedrooms, a fully equipped kitchen, a living room bearing a hard, orange couch, a TV continually set on CNN, and a puzzle depicting an Italian Cathedral that didn’t take 24 hours for us to complete. For the benefit of those who don’t know Ben, Ben has taken on the monumental task of being friend, caddie, travel companion, Sherpa, and general side-kick for little recognition and even less pay. He shares my desire to see the sights and always has he camera within reach documenting our days and memories.

A ten minute stroll down the back streets of Losone lead us to the golf course. The quickest way to traverse the distance was a point of major contention over the dinner table. It was peaceful listening to a few tunes on the iPod, kicking a smooth pebble down the rough pavement, and looking up at the mountain ranges surrounding us. Golf Gerre Losone, our tournament host for the week, sits in the lowlands of an otherwise mountainous landscape making for a pleasantly flat walk. My legs, still unaccustomed to the rigors of walking a golf course for days on end welcomed the flat terrain. Sheets of rock and cliffs sprung up from both sides of the fairway and it was not unusual to see a helicopter flying low, dragging supplies to and from construction sites hidden from view. But this was found out after much observation and discussion to rule out the possibility of lost hikers being picked up and ferried across the sky at top speeds. I, for one, surely wouldn’t have wanted to be in that cage.

Golf Gerre Losone, designed by Peter Herradine, is a course that favors the long-hitter and this year further lengthened to a par-73 lay-out. The fairways and greens were soft on account of a wet spring which seems to be the norm when the tour comes to town. The 2008 event was rain-shortened to 54 holes. There is ample room to spray the ball off the tee but you may find yourself with a treacherous lie from a wet and unfriendly rough. Approach shots into the green deserve more precision and solid contact, often being guarded by small lakes that dot the course. All the par-3s are tricky. The 2nd plays an 8-iron, the 4th a solid 6-iron that have very severe slopes from back to front. Players must keep the ball underneath the hole to avoid a dreaded three-putt. The turtleback green of the par-3 7th forces you to play to its center or else watch your ball roll off the green into some tightly mowed collection areas. With the ground damp and your ball on a tight lie you may want to take a second look before you reach for the your sand wedge. Safely navigate the water guarding the last par-3 of the bunch, #11, and gear up for some long and punishing par-4s lurking on the way home. Golf is supposed to be fun right?

The dramatic views on the course did little to inspire my play. The technical and physical abilities I had worked so hard to improve in the off-season is meaningless without the mental focus to take your game from the range to the course. By in large it was little more than an opportunity to shake the cobwebs out of my competitive head and remove the rust that comes with a six month layoff from tournament golf. I am patient enough not to worry much about it.

I dare say our exit from Switzerland was infinitely more pleasant then our entrance. It is a six-plus hour bus ride from Losone to Munich, Germany straight through the Swiss Alps. It is one of the most breathtaking rides I have taken. Once we hit the first set of snow-covered peaks, the fifty-odd players and caddies settled quietly in their seats and pushed their faces to the glass. Springs sprouted out of the mountain, creating miniature waterfalls that crashed into the rock below. Stone fortresses and crumbling outposts sat on top of the most precarious of perches. The outlooks had looked to be untouched for centuries. What kind of job it must have been to build them with primitive tools and only the power of human and animal force to work them.

It is good.
It is good to be.
It is good to be here.
It is good to be here now.