Downhill Lies Par for Course on Way to Pinnacle of Sport

Tom Clarke stood at the upper reaches of the mountain, glaring through the West Virginia heat, zinc oxide and camouflage flecked in war-paint stripes across his face, the sleeves ripped off his T-shirt, hiking boots laced tightly, golf clubs by his side.

In front of him stretched the wide and unfriendly pocks and crevasses that mark Snowshoe Mountain’s terrain, suitable for rock climbing in the summer and skiing in the winter. But golf?

Yes, golf. Or rather, extreme golf, a game played mostly downhill on a course marked out on the side of a mountain, with nightmarish natural obstacles such as jagged rocks, gullies and sprawling trees.

A game played by rules that could take everything amateur golfers such as Clarke knew and cherished about their game and break it all apart.

Flagsticks in the mud. No putting. Four clubs only, your choice. Chipping into a 20-foot chalked circle around the flag to score. New meaning to the word “hazard.”

Miss a shot on a regular course and, perhaps, it’s a one-stroke penalty. Miss a shot here and a golfer might have to jump a brook, slosh through mud or climb rocks to reach his ball, and it’s still an extra stroke.

It’s UX Open golf, a game so wild it could take the most confident golfers and churn their egos to mush.

Clarke, from Truckee, Calif., had come to Snowshoe Mountain last summer for the 2000 UX Open extreme golf championship. He had finished first in a qualifying round at Northstar-at-Tahoe, and with his battle attire, he already had the extreme part licked, more so than any other finalist.

Players stared. ESPN2 cameras followed his every move.

On the first hole of the four-hole championship, Clarke zinged the ball about 100 yards, landing it in the chalked circle for a hole in one, extreme-golf style. Holes range in length from 100 to 600 yards.

After taking a penalty shot on the second hole, a par-four double dogleg, he still managed a par--”a miracle,” he called it. But other players, such as Jim Ryan of Rochester, N.Y., started to make their moves.

“Golf and climbing mountains are in my blood,” said Ryan, who began the last hole trailing Clarke by only one stroke.

It was Ryan’s brother, Rick, who came up with the concept of extreme golf in 1981, while he and friends were visiting a ski area in Middlebury, Vt.

“We were just goofing around,” Rick Ryan said. “Somebody had brought their golf clubs, and we just started playing golf on the mountain. It was a beautiful scene. We were just hitting golf balls out into the nothingness. That planted the seed.

“The idea was to combine golf’s interest and popularity with alternative sports. We launched the UX Open in ‘99, and the response was phenomenal.”

There are four qualifying tournaments staged on mountains across the country. Only amateur golfers are eligible and the field is limited to the first 72 who sign up and pay the $80 entry fee.

On some of the mountains, ski lifts carry golfers to the first tee. No carts are allowed, of course, but many players use laser range-finder binoculars to help judge the distance to each hole.

Clarke was pumped up heading into the last hole last summer. So much so that he overshot the green. A subsequent chip-in tied him with Ryan and forced a playoff.

Nothing was settled after three more grueling holes, so Clarke and Ryan were pitted in a chipping contest: Whoever got his ball closest to the flag was declared the winner.

“If I won, my intention was to throw down the gauntlet to Tiger [Woods],” Clarke said.

But after his shot, Clarke could only watch as Ryan knocked his ball about an inch closer to the pin to win the UX Open’s coveted red crushed-velour jacket--a tongue-in-cheek homage, no doubt, to the Masters’ green jacket.

“The jacket is hanging up at my house,” Ryan said. “My wife actually put it on display.”

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Extreme Golf

* What: 2001 UX Open

* Qualifying rounds: July 21 at Skyline Ski Area, Friendship, Wis.; Aug. 11 at 49 Degrees North, Chewalah, Wash.; Aug. 18 at Snowshoe Mountain, Snowshoe, W.Va.; Oct. 5 at Holiday Valley, Ellicotville, N.Y.

* Championship: Oct. 6 at Ellicotville.

* Details: (877) 583-9924.

* Web site: https://www.uxopen.com