Fore! score and two days ago, I played my first round of golf for the season.

I truly meant to get on the courses before that. This year's early spring brought with it another bonus; early golf season in the Adirondacks. We're always playing in May here, but this year, some of our courses have been open since April.

With a perfect weather forecast, I convinced my reluctant-to-golf sister to play this weekend at Westport Country Club, just a short drive from Lake Placid on the Adirondack Coast. They logged their earliest opening date on record - March 12.

It turned out to be easier to convince her than expected: who wouldn't want to spend a few leisurely hours on a perfectly manicured lawn during a sunny, 70-degree Adirondack day? We decided just to play the front nine as our introductory round for the season.

Having grown up in Westport, I'm very familiar with the course layout. (When we were kids, though, we spent more time in the Country Club pool - now long gone from the property.) The front nine is an open, rolling links design that takes you back to the clubhouse after the ninth.

I'm a consistently mediocre golfer, and no expert on course maintenance. However, I introduced a few professional golf journalists to this course last summer, and I recall how very impressed they were with the "perfect, true greens". Now I know that perfect greens should look like those at Westport; and I assume the problem with my short game must be my putter.

In all, we had a fantastic round - the only delays of game were a chat with some friends we saw out on the course and a

rogue ladybug that wouldn't get off my sister's ball on the 9th fairway. When it finally flew away, she pitched her ball onto the green, and right into the flag. (To top it off, the course's PGA pro and owner happened to see the whole thing!)

Shouldn't have much trouble convincing my sister to play next time. I'll offer to bring along another lucky ladybug.

 

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HISTORY: Though it looks new to me, Westport Country Club has been around since the turn of the century, and was turned from a 9 hole course into a challenging 18-hole course in 1928 by Scottish Architect Thomas Winton.

Actually, it's notable that the region is home to a number of historic golf courses by famous designers.

• Craig Wood Golf Course, designed by Seymour Dunn in 1925 as a nine-hole course, and lengthened to 18 in 1932.

• The Lake Placid Club Links course, designed by by renowned Scottish architect Seymour Dunn 1909. The Lake Placid Club's Mountain Course was laid out in 1910 by Alexander Findlay, and redesigned in 1931 by Alister MacKenzie.

• The Whiteface Club was designed in 1898 by architect John van Kleek with his design consultant, the celebrated golfer Walter Hagen.

• The Saranac Inn Golf and Country Club was designed by Seymour Dunn in 1901. One of over 300 courses Dunn designed, he called it "His Masterpiece".

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Kimberly Rielly is the director of communications for the Lake Placid CVB/Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism.