Flint Hills National

We left Hutchinson about 4:00 p.m Tuesday and made a reasonable 1.5 hour drive to Andover KS just east of Wichita. Getting to the course, we drove to our accomodations which was the Dower Lodge. This was a real lodge, down to the log cabin design. But it was quite large, 4 bedrooms, each with our own bath, and a great room and big patio, all overlooking the 10th hole. Top notch facilities.

In the locker room was a poster showing this as a "golf retreat", a place you could take 2 or 3 groups, with a top course, good food and drink, and away from a major city. This hit all of those categories.

Wednesday we had another frost delay but teed off about 10:30. There were relatively a lot of people there, especially compared to the last 3 places we had been. Breakfast highlight was the blueberry pancakes.

The course is a Fazio design, but it was unlike others. It was more playable and more of a classic design. It took cues from Prairie Dunes (since they are so close) but this had greens mainly sloping left to right instead of back to front. It had a championship course feel and I can see why the USGA has already had tournaments here. At the end of the round, I thought I could have stayed longer and continued to play - high praise. But we ended up going straight back to the airport and flying out that afternoon.

It was fun today to tell someone "I just played golf yesterday in Wichita Kansas".