I just returned home from a one-week swing through Virginia and the Carolinas that started with golf clubs in the car trunk and expectations wide open. I played five different courses in a twosome with three different friends – one new one, two longtime. With a golf handicap of 12, I should be disappointed that I failed to break 90 twice, but I have become realistic about my physical limitations. At 75, my back muscles are not built for five rounds in five days. They need a day or two to rejuvenate. By the end of the week, I was ready for an ice pack and heating pad – and filled with memories of terrific conversations, some good shots, and the accomplishment of a golfing goal.

My new friend, Jefferson Burgess, who grew up in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, is a character, and I mean that in the best sense of the word. I will be writing about Jefferson and his endeavors later in this space but, suffice to say, he is on a mission that lies on that thin line between genius and madness. (He is the first to admit that.) His mission, among other things, is to get the word out about the quality of golf and the general attractions of the Shenandoah Valley. He has started with a glossy print publication called BoBirdie – in a digital age, many will look on that as the “madness” part – which takes a lifestyle approach to the game and all that surrounds it (dining, local history and, in short, everything that makes the Shenandoah lifestyle unique). BoBirdie is a mashup of bogey and birdie, and Jefferson’s first issue, which I picked up at one of the Virginia Welcome Centers on Interstate 81, is an entertaining read whether you know much about the Shenandoah Valley or not. He has a solid communication strategy to make as many people as possible understand the Valley’s attractiveness, for golf and every other aspect of living. I will leave it at that for now…

The greens were in excellent shape on the Shenvalee Resort's Creek and Miller nines. The surrounding mountains added to the stress-free nature of the round.

…except to say that I pulled the wool over my new friend’s eyes about the quality of my golf game. During our round at Shenvalee Resort in New Market, I was in a zone I haven’t felt for almost a decade -- not overswinging and hitting most shots flush. I was able to hit the ball straight enough to avoid shots from trees and rough and the other hazards Shenvalee presents. I shot a 75, the first time I have shot my age and something I thought might have to wait until next year at the earliest. Jefferson was a calming influence and a one-man enthusiastic gallery after each of my better shots. I credit his supportive attitude but also a new lob wedge and a 40-year-old putter I had put in the bag before leaving Connecticut for the trip. The new wedge had stopping power on the greens at Shenvalee, something my game hadn’t seen in 15 years or so. I also used a Ray Cook putter which I rescued from a dusty corner of the basement; it replaced a $350 See-More putter I bought 18 months ago and found to be just too bottom heavy. (Beautiful club but absolutely none of the “feel” I recall from previous putters.) I am feeling it again with my Ray Cook which cost nothing but a new $25 grip.

Trees are the dominant "hazards" on the Shenvalee layout.

Shenvalee (pronounced shen-vuhlee, accent on the last two syllables) is an old-fashioned resort course that features 27 holes. The older nine, which we did not play, is short and with postage stamp greens. As I drove into the resort as the sun was going down, I passed one of those greens and thought “Uh oh” – smallest I have seen this side of a pitch and putt course. But the 18 we played – the Creek and the Miller Courses – featured reasonably sized greens and a sometimes classic, sometimes quirky layout. From the tips, the combo of the two nines plays to 6,400 yards; but given my paltry 190-yard average drive these days, I opted for the white tees at a total 5,600 yards and a modest 116 slope rating.

On most holes, you can see green and flagstick from the tee box, but a few of the holes feature blind tee shots. One memorable tee shot that took only seconds for Jefferson to explain to me, and a minute or two for me to digest, is a dogleg right par 4 with a large tree at the inner elbow of the bend and a severely tilted fairway to the left that just didn’t look as if it would hold any shot. Once I was mostly convinced where to aim with my 3-metal, I proceeded to push the shot into the tree and, luckily, bounded left into the fairway, about 180 yards from the green on a relatively short hole. I was happy to make bogey. Another hole, #4 on the Miller course, is either a par 3 or par 4, depending on where you choose to play from; it plays straight up a steep hill, around 160 yards for the par 3 layout or under 300 for the par 4. I preferred the par 4.

Extreme summer heat, Jefferson indicated, had burned out parts of the fairways at Shenvalee, but the course superintendent had done an excellent job on the greens, which were of medium speed and not too difficult to read. It had rained hard the night before, but the course drained well. This being a valley layout, it is ringed on two sides by mountains, and the distant backdrops are what you might find on many Vermont and New Hampshire layouts. The scenic views, a fun and mostly stress-free round and the good company of a new friend was exactly the right way to start my weeklong trip.

On the Sunday evening I pulled into the resort, foursomes were coming off the course as the sun went down. Many of the rooms in the 1960s style single-story motel buildings were clearly populated by buddy foursomes attracted by the fine golf course and cheap prices. The resort could use a refresh although my room was clean and functional. New Market is an historic town, site of a Civil War battle between Union forces and students from Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, about 40 miles south.

Twenty miles down the interstate, the college town of Harrisonburg – nickname “Rocktown” – is my new favorite town, with outstanding restaurants, including the Magpie Diner, a great place for brunch, Jimmy Madison’s, a barbecue and tavern combination, and Broad Porch café, whose coffee was so good I stopped there to bring back a couple of bags of beans to Connecticut at the end of my weeklong trip. Servers in Harrisonburg’s shops and restaurants appear to be almost exclusively college students, giving the town a youthful vibe. But plenty of their customers are baby boomers which implies that the Shenandoah Valley has been discovered by at least some of my contemporaries.

I could not find any current homes listed for sale at Shenvalee, but there is one lot, just under an acre, listed for $104,500. It backs up to the golf course and enjoys valley and mountain views. If interested, please contact me. 

Coming Soon: More on my trip, including photos of Tanglewood Park’s Championship Course in Clemmons, NC, site of the 1974 PGA Championship where Lee Trevino defeated Jack Nicklaus by one stroke.

In Hollywood, the striking screen writers have anointed ChatGPT as their bête noire -- the technology that will ruin their careers and their lives. Yet, any of the strikers who take the time to compare one of their scripts to the details of the assignment they were given to produce that script may consider that they have little to worry about. (Their whining could be more a smart negotiation ploy than a real concern.)

ChatGPT – the GPT is for “generative pre-training transformer” -- is the artificial intelligence program that has been lighting up the Internet with equal cascades of praise and concern since it was introduced to the world late last year. ChatGPT ingests simple instructions and spits out copy in seconds. Its supporters consider the copy so reasonably written and researched that they believe it will replace marketing and other forms of commercial communication (screenwriting among them). High school students, typically early adopters of new technologies, are already using ChatGPT to produce the essays required with their college applications. College admissions officers, who also use the Internet and social media, are wise to those efforts; some, like at Yale, have labeled the efforts “cheating” and have put in place detection protocols.

Given the cheesy quality of the ChatGPT-generated copy I’ve reviewed, the admissions offices won’t have to work too hard at detection. Although ChatGPT delivers grammatically correct copy most of the time, the stilted language and torrent of adjectives it disgorges is a dead giveaway for the lack of humanity behind the lack of creativity. College admissions offices are not looking for candidates who answer an essay question with dispassionate and soulless prose. Ditto Hollywood directors and producers. Still, when I recoiled at an  friend’s suggestion that ChatGPT will learn enough to delete most “commercial” writers like me, I decided to test it out on something I know very well: Golf communities and, specifically, a couple’s search for the golf community that best matches their lifestyle and budget.

I developed a specific description of what my imaginary couple was looking for, and I used an app called AIChat, which I had downloaded to my iPad. Here was my input for the exercise:

My wife and I are looking to move to a golf community home in one of these states: North Carolina, South Carolina or Georgia. The golf community must have at least one private golf course inside its gates; the initiation fee must not exceed $10,000 and monthly dues not exceed $1,000. We can spend up to $750,000 for a single family home and require a minimum of three bedrooms and two and a half bathrooms. The golf community must be located within eight miles of a hospital with a minimum of 50 beds and both a cardiac care unit and orthopedic care unit; within five miles of at least two supermarkets; and less than ten miles from a public beach on the Atlantic Ocean. Homeowner association dues must not exceed $8,000 annually. Please list 10 golf communities that we should consider.

And here was the AI bot’s response:

“Based on your criteria, here are 10 golf communities across North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia that you should consider:

1. Sea Pines Resort - Hilton Head Island, South Carolina

2. Reynolds Lake Oconee - Greensboro, Georgia

3. Wachesaw Plantation East - Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

4. Dataw Island - St. Helena Island, South Carolina

5. The Landings - Savannah, Georgia

6. St. James Plantation - Southport, North Carolina

7. Harbor Club on Lake Oconee - Greensboro, Georgia

8. Palmetto Dunes - Hilton Head Island, South Carolina

9. Keowee Key - Salem, South Carolina

10. Brunswick Forest - Leland, North Carolina

These communities meet your desired criteria of having a private golf course, initiation fees and monthly dues within your specified limits, single-family homes within your budget, minimum bedrooms and bathrooms, proximity to hospitals, supermarkets, and public beach access, as well as homeowner association dues under your specified limit.”

For the record, AI Chat is quick; the list was generated within 15 seconds or so and includes high-quality golf communities, all of which I have visited personally. Yet its misses are way too big to ignore and potentially injurious to a couple’s search for their dream golf home. First of all, three of the communities (Reynolds, Harbor Club and Keowee Key) are located adjacent to lakes, hours from the Atlantic Ocean; #3 on the list, Wachesaw Plantation East, is a golf community but with a public golf course (the AI program confused it with a separate private community a mile away that is named Wachesaw Plantation); #1, the Sea Pines Resort, offers three courses, none of them private; and as for my limit on golf fees, I know that golf at Reynolds Lake Oconee and The Landings, though both are terrific golf venues, is considerably more expensive.

In short, the recommended list is accurate for just four of the 10 communities it generated. Couples searching for a golf home should not have to rely on 40% accuracy. (Shameless plug: Instead, consider purchasing my human-produced book, Glorious Back Nine: How to Find Your Dream Golf Home, available at Amazon. It will save you time and, probably, money and based on 20 years of research, there is nothing “artificial” about it.) The list had enough errors to cause me to question whether I had downloaded a bad app. Therefore, I decided to plug the same criteria into the original ChatGPT website.

The list that was generated included these 10 communities, in order: Pinehurst (NC) Resort, Country Club of Hilton Head, The Landings (Savannah), Berkeley Hall (Bluffton, SC), Club at 12 Oaks (Holly Springs, NC), Sea Island (GA), Hampton Hall (Bluffton), Sea Trail Plantation (Sunset Beach, NC), Reynolds Lake Oconee, and The Reserve at Pawleys Island (SC).

Although the ChatGPT website had generated a somewhat different list, three of the communities were nowhere near the Atlantic Ocean. (Holly Springs, NC, just south of Raleigh, is more than a 2 ½-hour drive to the ocean.) Again, like the app I first used, ChatGPT ignored not only my distance to the ocean requirement but also the limit on golf fees and that my couple was looking for a private golf course. (Sea Trail’s three golf courses north of Myrtle Beach are open to the public, Reynolds and Pinehurst courses are available to resort guests and Hampton Hall’s website indicates that some tee times are available to the public.) The #1 choice of Pinehurst as the top community for my mythical ocean-seeking couple was especially silly; Pinehurst is more than a four-hour drive to the nearest Atlantic beach on the Outer Banks, and its golf courses are almost all open to the public.

Generating a list of golf communities based on specific criteria should be a no-brainer for an artificial intelligence program that allegedly will put researchers and writers out of work across many disciplines. Yet if artificial intelligence cannot produce a simple list that is more than 40% accurate, how will it create the more nuanced persuasive writing we rely on from human intelligence?

Color me not worried.