Instant Classic

Rustic Canyon in Moorpark is a municipal course that defies the paradigm: Yes, it is affordable (under $50 smackers during the week, with electric cart!), no, it isn't forbiddingly difficult and, wonder of wonders, it is in perennially good shape for a track that gets quite a bit of play.

Additionally, the six-year old layout was designed and constructed with a minimum of earth-moving. A mere 17,000 cubic yards of dirt was displaced, meaning that architect Gil Hanse, working with Geoff Shackleford, created a course that hews to the lay of the land, an anomaly in this age of dynamite and bulldozers.

And if you tend to be a little timorous when hitting those high, spinning wedge shots the pros make look so easy, Rustic Canyon's greens are surrounded by the same bent-grass mix as the putting surface, allowing one to use the putter from twenty to thirty yards from the flagstick. When the winds are whipping, as they sometimes do in this pristine canyon, it's nice to be able to keep the ball close to the earth.

Rated by Golfweek in the top 100 modern golf courses in the entire country (and I should know -- I'm a course rater for the magazine), Rustic Canyon is an oasis of friendly, unfussy service and a return to classic architectural values. Nobody has informed the good folks out in Moorpark that we're in a new millennium -- and that, my friends, redounds to all of our benefit.