"A PGA Tour player's goodbye, and record-breaking round, at his childhood course"

Sadly we’ve all lost a golf course we once knew or know of a favorite that may put us in the position Jim Herman recently experienced.

It’s a lovely read from another Cincinnati man, Joel Beall at Golf World, who talks to the two-time PGA Tour winner about returning to the muni that meant so much to his game, Shawnee Lookout. The course is closing in September and will be converted to a nature preserve.

Shawnee Lookout, a golf course that resides on the outskirts of Cincinnati. A place that charged $3 to play, that was so out of the way that Herman usually had the property to himself. A course whose fairways were rough, with greens that weren't, built on an incline so severe that it was better suited for skiing.

"It wasn't much," Herman says, "but it was ours."

Herman kept afloat through the memories of his youth that cascaded back that day, until he reached the 10th. That was the hole, Herman says, where golf hooked him. Driver, 3-wood, two-putt for a 4, from just over 300 yards, when he was no older than a fourth-grader.