Three men wearing windbreakers pull up to the tee box on No.

Saturday, October 02, 1999

Three men wearing windbreakers pull up to the tee box on No. 8 at Ramsey Golf Club.

The Cedar River to their right runs the length of the sun-soaked fairway.

Autumn’s first fallen leaves float on the grass and scatter at the hint of a breeze.

It is a day worth forgetting – worth forgetting everything else in order to remember golfing.

But Keith Engle is having nothing of this talk of golfing in the fall.

"I like golfing – period," he said.

But even Engle can appreciate autumn golf in Minnesota.

In two weeks, he and Don Bartley – the second of the trio – will be in Texas. The retired Austin men migrate south each and every year, Bartley since 1990.

"We play golf year round," Bartley said.

But in Texas, "we get more roll," Bartley added.

Why is that?

"Because there’s no grass," he said.

In Texas, even on the golf courses, the winter grass stops short like a Marine cut and grows brown.

Contrarily, in Austin, Minn., in two weeks, you’ll be able to play a round of golf on greens that look like watercolors.

"Some people think it’s the best time to play," Roger Larson said.

Larson is the manager at Ramsey. He proceeded to give a grocery list of reasons why some people share a love for a poorly-kept secret called fall golf.

Among those reasons:

– There’s not a lot of people on the course.

"The kids are in school … a lot of the summer-month golfers don’t play anymore," Larson said. "Labor Day is a huge cut-off day for golfers."

In Texas, there are so many people golfing in the fall and winter that "if you don’t call in for a tee time," Engle said, "you don’t play."

– The weather and the conditions, like they were on Wednesday afternoon, can be downright gorgeous.

"There’s really nice golf to be played in the fall," Larson said. "Today’s a perfect example. Sixty-some degrees, light wind. It’s as nice as can be and the golf course is still in good condition."

– The tree-lined golf courses of Minnesota can be awfully pretty and especially comfortable in the fall.