Watson will return July 26-29 for the Senior Open Championship. He’ll be able to stay in one of suites named for the winners of the Open Championships played here–himself, Greg Norman in 1986, Nick Price in 1994 and Cink. Watson could also have a pint in the Duel in the Sun Lounge, named after the 1977 Open Championship epic, when he prevailed over Jack Nicklaus.

(Watson also won the Senior Open Championship here in 2003, Loren Roberts in 2006. Previous winners at Turnberry: Neil Coles in 1987, Gary Player in 1988 and 1990, and Bob Charles in 1989.)

Our group of five golf writers warmed up yesterday on the resort’s Kintyre Course, a treat in its own right. We tackled the Ailsa course this morning, a lovely spring day, though with a fairly brisk wind playing about.

I have more on the history and layout of the courses in a series of posts beginning here. This is a quick trip, essentially a day and a half, two rounds of golf and two killer dinners, as we’re off tomorrow on a long travel day to Greece to check out Costa Navarino. But there have been some big changes since last I visited. For one thing, the Ailsa Craig is for sale.

Ailsa Craig

This may be of particular interest to curlers, since about 70% of the world’s curling stones are fashioned from Ailsa granite.

Gannet (Photo courtesy RSPB, Andy Hay)

It may also be of interest to twitchers, as birdwatchers are called here. The island is home to Scotland’s third largest gannet colony. (Yes, I checked–the second is on the St. Kilda Islands, and the first is also within sight of a golf course–the Bass Rock off North Berwick.) Ailsa Craig–a volcanic mound uninhabited except by the gannets and friends–is leased by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds until 2050. But the RSPB is not in negotiations for the island, falling a bit short of the £2.5 million asking price.

I was sorry to see fencing around the grounds of Souter Johnnie’s Inn, a pub and restaurant on the site where the great Robbie Burns went to school. A troop of us had a grand evening here four years ago after an equally grand competition between U.S. and U.K. writers at Turnberry (click here). A recent fire which spread from the building’s thatched roof gutted the place. But there are plans to rebuild.

The resort didn’t rebuild itself, but it did undergo a multi-million pound renovation a few years past its centenary, evolving into a Luxury Collection Resort and re-opening just in time for the 2009 Open Championship.

Luxurious it is, and many of the 198 guest rooms reappointed in contemporary fashion. But many touches have restored the elegance of the original structure, such as the Grand Tea Lounge just off the main entrance.

The hotel has won a boatload of awards, not in the least because of the cuisine. Head Chef Justin Galea bends Escoffier traditions into modern twists in the signature 1906 restaurant, but can really dazzle guests at the Chef’s Table, a private dining room inside the kitchen.

The Chef's Table menu, including the crucial Pre Dessert dessert

Chef Martin Flanagan preparing a Chef's Table course

We wound up here our second night. Galea was away, but chef Martin Flanagan led us through the eight-course meal that had us surrendering like Durán by the end: “No más!”

Turnberry is big on local sourcing, and since 2009 that includes the beer offerings. A Glasgow brewery called West that opened in 2006 produces German-style lagers, and its pilsner, St Mungo Lager, was on hand. Both Boo Weekley and Mark Calcavecchia were big fans.

After a one-under opening round of 69 Calcavecchia suggested part of his success was due to the four pints of St Mungo he was allowing himself each night. It’s a pleasing 4.9% ABV beer, making it hard to fathom why anyone would order a mass market lager with such evident local brewing artistry on hand.

Turnberry Ailsa Amber Ale, with bagpiper, and the Aisla eighteenth hole in background

I was delighted to find the Ailsa Amber Ale on hand and cooling in an ice bucket in my room after the Ailsa Course round. Serendipity. The beer is a light amber ale, I’d call it a bitter stylistically, with English and American hops producing a lightly floral nose. Mildly sweet with a touch of nuttiness, a reasonable hop bit, and she’s done. At 4% ABV, easier to drink four of these than the St Mungo, methinks.

And as luck would have it, it was near seven, the hour each evening when the piper plays at Turnberry. I tried to get a shot of this happy confluence, foiled only by the window reflections.

Most of Turnberry’s beers are now local. The Ailsa Ale is brewed for the resort by the nearby Strathaven Ales company, which has a full portfolio of tasty session strength beers. During the Chef’s Table debauch–when we were probably supposed to be drinking more champagne, I stuck with Strathaven’s Clydesdale IPA (3.8%) and its Craigmill Mild, an absolutely delicious black ale that comes in at a mere 3.5%.

Both beers, as well as the Ailsa Ale, put the lie to the belief that beers must be stronger to be tastier. Would that we could find them in the U.S.!

Although if the Clydesdale IPA were shipped to the U.S. I wouldn’t be surprised if A-B InBev tried to slap some kind of trademark injunction on them. Budweiser usually comes in at about 5% ABV, Bud Light at 4.2%. In either case, the Clydesdale IPA is the better mount.

Name: Ailsa Amber Ale
Brewer: Strathaven Ales, Strathaven, Scotland for Turnberry
Style: Bitter
ABV: 4%
Availability: At the Turnberry resort, Scotland, year-round
For More Information: www.strathavenales.co.uk

Here’s a wee taste of the nightly bagpiping ritual, showing the facade of the hotel, then overlooking the clubhouse, eighteenth green and first tee of the Ailsa Course:

Related posts:
Return to Turnberry
TAP Beer of the Week: Cup O’ Kyndnes

Beer tasting by the Kohler Design Center's Great Wall of China

We decided to give up and declare a tie here, between two of the best golf resorts anywhere, with solid beer selections. Kohler gets the edge with the beer, Bandon with the golf, but both are bucket list worthy.

The small heartland town of Kohler is an hour north of Milwaukee. It’s a company town, but the company is now a lot more than plumbing fixtures: The American Club is the luxury hotel here, and it only stands to reason the Kohler Waters Spa is top-notch. There are four sterling Pete Dye-designed courses, one of which, Whistling Straits, has already hosted two PGA Championships. (Remember Dustin Johnson’s troubles in the bunker last year, which helped Martin Kaymer secure the title?)

The casual eatery at the resort is the Horse and Plow, which has an extensive list of bottled micros and Belgians and a nice rotating tap selection as well, emphasizing (but not limited to) Midwest brews. It would be easy to spend a lot of time here; there’s also a regular series of beer dinners. The Third Annual Kohler Festival of Beer will roll into town May 27-29 this year, and it includes the hotly-contested Beer Cup Golf Tournament.*

[*The Fourth Annual is June 1-3, 2012.]

The clubhouse at Whistling Straits

The old joke about the difference between Scotland and Bandon Dunes is that it’s easier to get to Scotland. But after they built it, people came, and people have been coming ever since to this pure golf location on the Oregon coast. It’s a self-contained universe that could be enjoyed by non-golfers, although the question might be why, since there are now four courses here, all of them ranked at or near the top in every best-of list going.

Indeed, in the most recent GOLF Magazine “Top 100 Courses You Can Play” list, Tom Doak’s Pacific Dunes design overtook Pebble Beach as the No. 1 course in the land.

Pacific Dunes

Doak and his associate, Jim Urbina, collaborated on the Old Macdonald Golf Links which opened last June to more huzzahs from the golf writing press. It wasn’t named after the farmer, but Charles Blair Macdonald, founder of the U.S. Golf Association and the country’s first great golf course architect.

There are a few different drinking and dining options at the resort, and what the beer list lacks in depth it makes up for in regional quality–a Mirror Pond Ale from Deschutes, a Mocha Porter from Rogue, a SOB Porter (Southern Oregon Brewing).

All the courses at Bandon Dunes are walking-only. It’s pretty safe to guarantee that after a 36-hole day of battling winds and one’s swing, settling down in McKee’s Pub with a plate of Grandma’s Meatloaf and a pint of Deschutes Black Butte Porter alongside, there will be absolutely no room, or need, for complaint.

# # #

This piece first appeared, in somewhat different form, in the Spring, 2011 issue of The Beer Connoisseur.

< Previous: Birdies and Brews Part 4: Orlando

Next: Birdies and Brews Part 5: Kohler, WI and Bandon Dunes, OR>

This is a stretch, because while the golf in Orlando is wildly abundant, the good beer-drinking opportunities are harder to find. But we’ve found them. Keep three places in mind and all should be well:

The Cricketers Arms Pub is in the Festival Bay Mall along International Drive, where much of the action (that is to say, theme parks) is outside of the city proper these days. A thoroughly English pub and eatery, the Arms always has some hand-drawn Fullers ESB as well as a half-dozen others from the cask, and more micros on tap or in bottle. There’s likely to be a Manchester v. Arsenal match on the telly, but that’s no hardship.

The funky Redlight Redlight in the Azalea Park area is a bit of a dive, but there’s one terrific selection of micros and Belgian beers on 20 taps, two engines, and countless bottles. Just don’t wear a suit here.

Redlight Redlight

Lastly, it’s time to find a package store, and Knightly Spirits is the place. There are actually four locales, all with good selections, but the mother ship is on South Orange Blossom Trail. Manager and buyer Alan Robey said, “We have a ton of beer here–850 to 900 craft beers, and a good chunk of Belgians: 250 sounds about right.”

Hole 17 on the National golf course at Omni Orlando Resort at ChampionsGate

Arnold Palmer’s Bay Hill Club & Lodge is probably golf choice number one. As the winter home of the King, it’s not at all uncommon for guests to see him strolling about or putting in some range time. The Championship course was tweaked last year under his watchful eye, and Palmer pronounced himself pleased with the results: “The renovations really add some new dimensions of play for Tour players and for our guests.”

Palmer’s old rival, Jack Nicklaus, is responsible for the layouts at Grand Cypress, including 27 holes at the North, South and East courses, and 18 at The New Course, which is an overlooked but enjoyable tribute to the Old Course at St. Andrews.

Both Palmer and Nicklaus, along with Tom Watson, have top flight designs at the Reunion Resort, and the Annika Academy will help out golfers of any gender.

There are two challenging Greg Norman designs, the National and the International, at the lavish Omni Orlando Resort at ChampionsGate. And yes, toward the close of day, those are the sound of bagpipes you hear being played. (On the tenth hole of the International course for those who must know.)

The Mystic Dunes Resort and Golf Club in Celebration has a unique layout by former PGA Tour player and now TV analyst Gary Koch, with some elevation changes more common to Vermont than Florida. There are usually some good stay and play deals here as well.

And David Harman has done a solid design at the Shingle Creek Golf Club, part of the massive Rosen Shingle Creek Resort right off Universal Boulevard.

There’s plenty more, but we have to stop somewhere.

# # #

This piece first appeared, in somewhat different form, in the Spring, 2011 issue of The Beer Connoisseur.

< Previous: Birdies and Brews Part 3: Vermont

Next: Birdies and Brews Part 5: Kohler, WI and Bandon Dunes, OR>

Next: Birdies and Brews Part 4: Orlando, Florida>

Okay, but where in Vermont? No, all of Vermont. The latest Brewers Association stats put Vermont at the head of the list–the state with the most breweries per capita–and all of them are craft breweries.

Vermont is not a huge state–slightly more than 600,000 souls call it home, and there are more senators in the U.S. Congress than the lone congressman. A head to foot (or vice versa) traversal is doable in about two and a half hours, and one is never too far away from the next good beer or golf course.

It all began in Burlington when the late, great Greg Noonan (author of the iconic Brewing Lager Beer) and his wife, Nancy, fought to change the laws to allow brewpubs to operate in the state. The Vermont Pub & Brewery opened in 1988, and is still going strong in the state’s largest city–at under 40,000 people.

Vermont golf rarely gets its due because the season is pretty much over by November. (The less hardy say a month earlier.) But when the hills are green, there’s hardly a more beautiful place to play. Just a few pairings:

The Brattleboro Country Club is a lively curtain-raiser for visitors from the south, and a brisk introduction to the rolling elevation found throughout a state where an uneven stance is more rule than exception. In town the prize-winning McNeill’s Brewery can make the rough places plain, and always has a few hand pumps running.

Ray McNeill at the 2010 Brattleboro Brewers Festival

The Long Trail Brewing Co. in Bridgewater has surpassed the 20-year mark, making it a microbrewery venerable. It’s Double Bag is a 7.2% ABV double Alt doubly notable for its heifer-related label (a cartoon of two bovines viewed from the rear, displaying, well, their bags). And a few miles away the Woodstock Country Club is something of a microcosm of the state–packing large scale complexity into a compact plot:

“On paper the course looks easy,” says long-time pro Jim Gunnare. “It’s only 6,052 yards from the blue tees, it has six par-3s, and plays to par-70. But when you come to the fifth hole already seven-over, you begin to realize it’s a very hard golf course. It’s tough because it’s narrow. The greens are small. And if you play the course perfectly you’re only going to cross Kedron Brook twelve times.”

Tenth hole at the Stowe Mountain Golf Club

The Alchemist Pub & Brewery is a great stop in Waterbury*, and just up the road is the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream factory, a stop almost required by law in Vermont. Just a bit further on into Stowe one can try the fare at the new Brewery at Trapp Family Lodge or old favorite The Shed Restaurant & Brewery**. The tee time will be at the challenging Stowe Mountain Golf Club, a newish Bob Cupp design aptly named, with splendidly elevated views.

# # #

This piece first appeared, in somewhat different form, in the Spring, 2011 issue of The Beer Connoisseur.

*And, alas, since the story first appeared, the flooding from Hurricane Irene devastated parts of  Vermont, including the Alchemist Pub & Brewery. As an operating brewpub, it is no more. But as a production brewery, it still exists in a separate facility, now canning a double IPA called Heady Topper. Click here for a related story.

**The Shed lost its lease and sadly closed its doors last fall. But the brand is currently still being brewed by Otter Creek.

< Previous: Birdies and Brews Part 2: San Diego, California

Next: Birdies and Brews Part 4: Orlando, Florida>

Next: Birdies and Brews Part 3: Vermont>

Melody Pierce fills a pint at Toronado San Diego

There’s so much great brewing going on in San Diego that the city has been required to bend time: November’s annual San Diego Beer Week lasts for ten days; a mid-June Beer Week-end preview lasts four days, all taking place in multiple venues and still only beginning to sample all the glories of the local beer and dining scene.

In the U.S. earthquake of experimental (some might just say mental) brewing, San Diego has been the epicenter. A sour lambic blended with the bourbon barrel-aged Imperial IPA anyone? Think extra hoppy ales, extra-strong oaked curiosities, bars and restaurants devoted to extensive Belgian beer lists. Think Stone Brewing, think Ballast Point, think Port Brewing/Lost Abbey, think AleSmith, and then stop thinking and start drinking, because there’s lots to be done.

Indeed, a visit to San Diego will inevitably seem insufficient to the pleasant task; living here for a few months might do it. And that would leave some time for golf in between the epicurean quest.

There’s a lot on that plate, too. Start with the two Torrey Pines municipal courses, host of the annual PGA Tour Farmers Insurance Open in late January, plus the occasional U.S. Open–as in 2008, when Tiger Woods and Rocco Mediate had their epic battle on the South Course.

Don't go long--the par-3 third hole at Torrey Pines South

Designer Rees Jones undertook a complete renovation of the course before that Open, rebuilding all the greens, tees and fairway features, many of the greens relocated to the edge of the bluffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It doesn’t get much better, unless one is also staying at the Lodge at Torrey Pines, and manages to score a meal at its tony AR Valentien restaurant.

The Barona Creek Golf Course in nearby Lakeside is another gem, one that Golfweek magazine actually ranks ahead of Torrey South, as the fourth best public course in California, as well as the fourth best casino course in the entire country. Golf, beer and a casino? What kind of dream is this? The relatively unknown Todd Eckenrode was the lead architect for the course while with the Gary Roger Baird Design team, and it’s an impressive enough calling card that he soon hung out his own shingle.

There’s more–a Tom Fazio track at the Grand Del Mar, an Arnold Palmer layout at the Park Hyatt Aviara Resort, and a renovated William Bell design (he also did Torrey Pines) at the Rancho Bernardo Inn. Show up at Rancho Bernardo on Tuesdays at 4 pm and you can play with hickory sticks–plus fours optional.

Lining 'em up at the Stone Brewing tasting room

# # #

This piece first appeared, in somewhat different form, in the Spring, 2011 issue of The Beer Connoisseur.

< Previous: Birdies and Brews Part 1: St. Andrews, Scotland

Next: Birdies and Brews Part 3: Vermont>

Next: Birdies and Brews Part 2: San Diego, California>

Another night at Dunvegan's

Having dissed Ireland, we’ll salve the Celtic soul at the venerable home of golf, St. Andrews. As for the beer, consider four words: college town, real ales. Scotland’s first university was founded here in 1413. With classes in session this compact seaside town’s population effectively doubles to 14,000, invigorating the many charming shops, excellent restaurants, captivating historic sites, lively arts scene and boisterous pub culture.

For a traveling golfer, heading to St. Andrews is a pilgrimage. The healing scent of golf hangs in the very air. To behold for the first time the iconic eighteenth hole of the Old Course, the clubhouse of the R&A, the Swilcan Bridge, the breadth of the golfing landscape, is akin to being struck by a vision. And to finally tee it up on the Old Course is an answer to a prayer.

St. Andrews, The Old Course

The Old Course remains the plum, but there are ten other courses in the immediate area, seven of them under the auspices of the charitable Links Trust (the Old, New, Jubilee, Eden, Strathtyrum, the nine-hole Balgove, and slightly southeast of town, the Castle Course, which opened in 2008).

The famous Road Hole on the Old Course (the seventeenth) plays partially over the balconies of the luxurious Old Course Hotel, one of the few in the area with some secured tee times on the Old Course, and home to the Jigger Inn, a virtually required pub stop. The hotel also runs The Dukes Course, five minutes away and one of the finer heathland courses going, particularly after an extensive redesign by Tim Liddy in 2006.

Just past the Castle Course is Fairmont St Andrews, another luxury resort and spa gleaming under a recent multi-million dollar (or pound) refurbishment. And the reconditioning extended to architect Gary Stephenson’s reworking of the resort’s Devlin and Torrance courses, the former now called the Kittocks.

Kingsbarns is a slight ride out of town, seemingly in isolated splendor by the North Sea. Since opening in 2000, Kingsbarns has been cited by many as their favorite links of the Auld Grey Toon, and the Kyle Phillips design is unquestionably a modern classic.

Other than the ocean, water hazards are rarities on links courses. But there’s no lack of watering holes. The seeker for real ales–and certainly brands from Scottish brewers like Belhaven and Caledonian should be on the list–will do well to begin at Dunvegan’s, where all the caddies and not a few of the pros go after tournament rounds, and where the collection of golf memorabilia rivals the nearby British Golf Museum.

Further into the town center, spaced at proper pub crawl distances, one can put together memorable nights at the Whey Pat Tavern, the Central Bar, the Criterion and Drouthy Neebors.

Allan Webster pulling off a pint of real ale at the Whey Pat Tavern in St. Andrews

# # #

This piece first appeared, in somewhat different form, in the Spring, 2011 issue of The Beer Connoisseur.

<Previous: Birdies and Brews: Introduction

Next: Birdies and Brews Part 2: San Diego, California>

A good pint is the trick. Lord knows tsunamis of Megabland Bellywash Light have streamed from golf clubhouses for years–particularly in the U.S.–or been retrieved from the icy cold depths of the cart girl’s cache mid-round for those who like to drink and drive (and indeed, can’t seem to get their game right without a little swing oil).

It was always a bit of a puzzle why golfers–restless nomads when it comes to playing new courses in new locales–would settle for the same old fizzy yellow water when a round was over. The quick answer, of course–because it was there.

Lord knows Trappist ales weren’t there, though a golf course would be an apt place for them, considering how often names of the deity are invoked during play. Another factor was that bottles were typically not allowed out on the course.

Times are changing, though. Golfers are demanding better choices in the clubhouse, and more and better beers are now being canned (a tip of the golf cap to Oskar Blues of Colorado, which first put Dale’s Pale Ale in cans in 2002).

But let’s think larger, pondering a few locales with the sublime nexus–terrific beer and great golf. It’s not quite as easy as it sounds. Superlative U.S. beer drinking towns like Portland (Oregon or Maine), or Philadelphia fall a bit short in the golf realm. There’s marvelous golf near Philly, for instance, but mainly at private clubs. Belgium is decidedly not known for golf. And while the golf and Guinness (okay, or Murphy’s) are nonpareil in Ireland, there’s not yet a lot of beer diversity in the Emerald Isle.

This is all open to debate, naturally, preferably over a brew after 18 holes. But here, with quiddities, are five locations where the better beer-loving golfer will not be disappointed, except for that four-putt on the twelfth hole.

Click on any heading to navigate through the piece:

Birdies and Brews Part 1: St. Andrews, Scotland
Birdies and Brews Part 2: San Diego, California
Birdies and Brews Part 3: Vermont
Birdies and Brews Part 4: Orlando
Birdies and Brews Part 5: Kohler, WI and Bandon Dunes, OR

# # #

This piece first appeared, in somewhat different form, in the Spring, 2011 issue of The Beer Connoisseur.

Showing good form on eighth hole at the Highland Course at Primland (Photo by Donnelle Oxley)

They’re both rural, and it takes some getting to get there. One’s in Sam Snead territory, the other near Andy Griffith’s home town. But there’s nothing aw shucks about either The Homestead or Primland resorts, where the golf is great and yet only scratches the surface of things to do.

ATV trails rides are popular at Primland

Primland is the new kid on the block, that block being just north of Mount Airy, North Carolina, Andy Griffith’s hometown, about 20 minutes up the Donna Fargo Highway. The 12,000 Blue Ridge Mountain acres make the resort just a wee bit smaller than all of Bermuda.

Primland has been a wilderness retreat and hunting reserve for decades and remains so, with added ATV tours through the wild terrain, horseback riding, trail hikes, mountain biking and the increasingly popular tree climbing. But now there’s a luxurious new 26-room and suite lodge complete with an observatory for those who like to rough it in high style.

In 2006 the Donald Steel-designed Highland Course at Primland opened and immediately left visitors agog. Running along a ridge of the mountains, the course presents a constant feast for the eyes, and a rollercoaster of thrills during play.

Accurate driving is a near necessity here, what with the frequent possibility of stray shots sailing into oblivion or off the side of a cliff. Even from the regular men’s tees of 6,450 yards the par-72 course is rated 71.9/140. Yet it’s probably one of the most enjoyable difficult courses I’ve ever played.

Rounds here still clock in at well under 10,000 a year, so the feeling of splendid isolation out on the course adds to the pleasure, although this kind of publicity might not help. Now in its fifth full season, the course has just shot up the ladder on various “Best of” lists, including thirteenth on the new Golf Digest best U.S. public courses roster.

***

The Homestead

The Homestead is the more venerable of the two properties, having been established ten years before the American revolution. It wears its history proudly–22 U.S. Presidents have visited or stayed at the Hot Springs property–but not heavily. Its grandly appointed Tower was completely renovated in 2010, and the entire resort is open and bright.

With 483 guests rooms and suites and 3,000 acres for the plethora of activities available (from fly-fishing to clay shooting to dipping in the historic Jefferson Pools…), the resort may seem teeming in comparison.

But it’s also teeming in golf courses. President McKinley teed it up here in 1899, making him the first sitting President to play golf (a neat trick). And he did from the first tee of the Old Course, which dates from 1892 and is said to be the nation’s oldest tee in continuous use.

The course began as a six-hole track, was expanded to 18 by Donald Ross and updated in 1994 by Rees Jones. The Lower Cascades Course was established by Rees’ father, Robert Trent Jones in 1963.

The Cascades Course is the jewel in the crown, a William S. Flynn 1923 design that follows the natural mounding of the Allegheny Mountains for 6,679 yards through tight fairways, speedy greens, with great mountain views, all to a par-70, another Virginia joyride.

Washington, Jefferson and Madison may not have played here, but it’s where golf royalty, Sam Snead, cut his teeth. Part of the charm for the visiting golfer here is that everyone from the area has a Sam Snead story and is happy to tell it–including his nephew J.C. Snead, the former PGA Tour player who still lives in town.

J.C. says he’s not prejudiced, but he thinks the par-3s at the Cascades Course are the finest anywhere. And that’s good, because there are five of them.

The Cascades Course at The Homestead, Hole 12

In somewhat different form, this piece was originally featured in the July-August 2011 Fairways + Greens Magazine, courtesy Madavor Media. To read the digital edition, click here.

2 – Big rocks

Out on the Troon North Monument Course

3 – Bigger rocks

Fifth hole, Boulders South Course

4 – Tough lies

5 – Tougher lies

6 – Cacti

7 – Cacti with embedded golf balls

McDowell Mountain Ranch Golf Club

8 – Distant mountains

Greyhawk Raptor Course

9 – Famous holes

TPC Scottsdale Stadium Course, sixteenth hole

TPC Scottsdale Sixteenth Hole

I had a great day playing the TPC Scottsdale Stadium Course this morning. Not because I was playing well, because I wasn’t. I chalk it up entirely to a lack of sleep and my aching back, with nothing left over for an inherent lack of skill.

But it was a lovely morning that dodged the bullet of predicted rain. We saw a bobcat on the first tee, eagles in a tree on the second, and a few birdies from Scottsdale CVB National Sales Manager Stuart Evans. We being the rest of the threesome, myself and The A Position CEO Bob Senoff, playing his second round of the year. That he beat me by a stroke should shame me, Bob said, but that’s not easily done. It’s golf, after all.

We also enjoyed the company of forecaddie Bryan Fischer, who’s a plus-four handicap, and who will be taking a run at qualifying for the Waste Management Phoenix Open, which begins here on February 2. Construction is already well underway on the stands that surround the famous, or infamous sixteenth hole, here introduced by Stuart:

If proof is needed that the west can still be pretty wild, the tournament supplies plenty each year. More fans attend this early event in the PGA Tour season than any other golf tournament, and by late Sunday afternoon, about the time the networks tune in, there’s a good chance many will be wired. The raucous cheering that attends shots at the sixteenth is as rowdy as any NFL game, and reached its extended epitome in 1997 when Tiger Woods aced the hole. To say the crowd went wild is to use a vastly understated cliché.

The Stadium Course comes by its name honestly; aside from temporary bleacher seating, there are raised mounds around many of the greens where fans can pack in to watch the action, and there’s usually plenty, particularly on the closing holes.

I not only played the course on my first golf visit to Scottsdale almost exactly ten years ago, taking part in an International Media Golf Shoot Out, it was my introduction to desert golf. Although, as my partner that day, John Davis of the Arizona Republic, said, “This isn’t true desert golf. The desert areas here are more cosmetic than treacherous. Wait until you play Troon North.”

I parred the sixteenth that day, and so I was hoping not to mess up my career stats when I stepped to the tee today:

I promptly put it on the putting surface with a nine iron, rammed my first putt about eight feet past the hole, and sunk the comebacker. I’m even through two rounds on sixteen, ten years apart.

My first look at the TPC Course startled me with what looked like tiny stripes of vivid green fairways, with bleached out wilderness areas beckoning from just beyond the rough.  Certainly, it’s a sound idea to keep the ball in the fairway at this Tom Weiskopf-Jay Morrish design, built in 1986.  But it isn’t that tough to find the ball in the arid waste areas, just tough on the irons when playing out.

The breadth of the mountain vistas (the McDowell range) in the Sonoran Desert setting makes the visual aspect of play more deceiving than firing through the wooded corridors I’m used to in the northeast. But once off the tee, it’s easy to see that the fairways are actually fairly generous.

The seventeenth hole has had its share of excitement as well. But let’s let Bryan explain:

The other player Bryan mentioned was Tom Byrum. Magee teed off while the previous foursome was still putting.  His ball rolled onto the green, bounced off Tom Byrum’s putter, and into the hole for a double-eagle one on the scorecard.

His shot of the year was matched by the quote of the year from Byrum’s caddie, Robert Uresti, who quipped, “It was the first putt Tom made all day.”

Peter Kessler lining up his tee shot on the first hole at the Troon North Monument Course

Though I’d been on Peter Kessler’s “Making the Turn” radio show once, the Golf Road Warrior Scottsdale trip was my first chance to meet him, get to know him and play golf with the Voice of Golf, so called thanks to his stentorian tone, his many years with The Golf Channel and his regular stint now on the PGA Tour Network (SiriusXM).

Kessler had chided me about my back complaints in an email before we even departed for the GRW trip:

Enough with the back shit. I have had two back surgeries, minimally invasive and one on my neck. I have trigger finger in my right hand, all finger tips are numb, I dislocated a hip and tore my hip abductor and ripped a major tendon playing golf in northwest Ireland with friggin’ Wallach in July. I have painful sciatica from my back to both of my numb AND pins-and-needles-ridden feet, and some body parts wake up 20 minutes later than others. And I have two stents. I am however an amazingly flexible and gifted lovemaker….

Turned out he’s a damn good golfer, too. And as the self-appointed Rules Chairman, he laid out the GRW Scottsdale ground rules:

1. The highest score you can take is a triple.
2. All putts for double bogey or better must be holed.
3. If you lose a ball or can’t play it, you throw one down at the nearest point of relief where it entered the trouble and add a stroke, so that everything is played as a red-staked hazard. Saves lots of time and aggravation.
4. We try to play the courses at between 6,400 and 6,600 yards for maximum enjoyment.
5. Summer rules, strict rules of golf, no improving lies anywhere on the course.
6. Play ready golf.
7. The two best net balls per group, an individual net score and a foursome net best ball are the competitions when we have two groups of players.

Please advise any tweaks you think appropriate. Be advised, as your chairman, that any tweaks suggested better make sense or they will be dismissed promptly.

Grow the Game Golf works with smartphones and the web.

As it turned out, proviso No. 7 had to go, as the games and teams had already been set up by Grow the Game Golf, a new cross-platform web and smartphone app we were being introduced to in a trial by fire. With all the data for the matches entered beforehand (more easily done at the GTG Golf website, gtggolg.com), on the day of the round players can enter scores on their smartphone for an ongoing live update of individual and team progress throughout the round, no matter how many foursomes are involved. (And that’s up to 1,000 players!)

What this meant today was that, along with individual gross and net honors, our foursome was a four-man team using one best ball net against the foursome in front of us, all easily checked as the round unfolded.

I guess I have a dumb phone, since all it does it make and take calls, so my cart mate, the Voice of Golf, had to enter the scores on his phone. Kessler found this unclear and irritating at first–or pretended to, salting the air with some creative obscenities.

Our actual opening nine scores on the GTG Golf app. A rocky start for me, but note the eighth hole birdie, first of three.

But once he found out he could also check on Jeff Wallach’s score, he was sold: Kessler and Wallach have had an ongoing personal match since a past trip to Scotland, resumed in Ireland in the baptismal Golf Road Warrior trip, and carried over in Scottsdale.

It’s a friendly match, of sorts. To hear either crow about winning the day’s round, or moaning about losing it, you might think it falls just shy of a grudge match. But I had plenty of vicarious laughs listening to Peter cackle when he saw on the GTG Golf leaderboard that Jeff had double-bogied a hole ahead.

It worked the other way, too. Our fourth Golf Road Warrior, Terry Moore, is a stick, and he drove the par-4 fifteenth green, playing 283 yards from the gold tees, then sunk a long putt for the eagle. Hole safely won, he thought. But he was soon astonished to note on the GTG Golf leaderboard that Dave Akin, in our group, also eagled the hole.

Akin’s was more impressive, actually. Dave had been struggling all day, and his pop-up drive on fifteen wasn’t a thing of beauty, but it did land in the fairway. Then he hit what he thought was a pretty good second shot, though it was blind.

When we walked up to the green together he was puzzled, because he couldn’t see his ball anywhere. Until he found it in the hole. Ah, golf!

Dave Akin tees off toward the real Four Peaks, not the Four Peaks Brewery I’d visited the evening before.

More on this round in the preceding post, “My Aching Back vs. The Monument Course.”

Turned out to be a herniated disk pressing on my spinal cord (spinal stenosis), big enough to warrant an operation.

As it was the week before Thanksgiving, I proceeded to tell the doctor the story of the upcoming Golf Road Warriors trip complete with 27 8×10 color glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one.

I couldn’t back out: by this time the Scottsdale CVB had already reserved my flights, I’d been fitted for new Callaway clubs, new luggage from Travelpro was on the way and cigars from Certifresh were waiting to be smoked. I had sponsor commitments!

The doctor said, “Well, then you might want to consider a cortisone shot.”

Done. And when it was done, that doctor suggested it might take two weeks to kick in, which would coincide precisely with our first tee time at the Troon North Monument course.  So for two weeks, anxiety ensued as I obsessed over whether I’d be able to hit a golf ball.

Did I sleep well the night before the round, in the cushy surrounds of the Four Seasons Resort Scottsdale at Troon North? I did not. Luckily, we didn’t rush out to the course on our first full day; instead we eased into The Spa.

Golfer's Massage at The Spa at the Four Season Resort (Photo courtesy of Scottsdale Convention & Visitors Bureau)

It was time for a Golfer’s Massage, which incorporates stretching into the routine, as well as the use of heated golf balls instead of stones. (That’s not me in the photo above, but trust me, she’s better-looking. And I didn’t get worked over by Titleists either; I checked: Top Flites.)

This bit of pampering set a nice tone for our Golf Road Warriors tour of duty. But pretty soon I had to face the music on the practice tee, where I would swing a club for the first time in weeks–and my new Callaway clubs for the first time ever.

To end the suspense quickly, I seemed to be rejuvenated. Not free from pain, but able enough to swing a club, sometimes well. I marched off the eighteenth green with an 87, pretty decent for me from the Monument Gold tees, 6,716 yards, 137 slope. I fired three birdies, so the Callaways seemed to be doing the job, too.

Well, who wouldn’t be pumped up, as the Golf Road Warriors adventure was finally unrolling on the fairways, and at a superb golf course?

The Golf Road Warriors! From left: Peter Kessler Jeff Wallach, Tom Bedell, Terry Moore

The third hole at the Monument course is unsurprisingly called The Monument

On my first visit here about ten years ago I was actually rained out of a round at the True North Monument course (a Tom Weiskopf-Jay Morrish design that opened in 1990). But I did play the Pinnacle course (a solo Weiskopf effort opened in 1995). By the time I returned in 2009, a two-year project to renovate and reroute the two courses had been completed under Weiskopf’s direction.

The Monument course now comprises the two original front nines of Monument and Pinnacle, but as always, the setting in the high Sonoran desert couldn’t be more dramatic, and the giant granite boulders strewn about the landscape give the course its apt name.

I played with Peter Kessler, Dave Akin of the Four Seasons and Mike Friend, Troon North’s director of golf events. The original Monument course was the first course in the Troon Golf stable, now coming close to 200 courses worldwide, so clearly they chose wisely.

On TV, desert golf looks a little artificial, oxymoronically like a colossal miniature golf course, with giant pieces of felt slapped over the desert wastes. On the ground, it all looks pretty lush, though from the tee it sometimes seemed like it would take a miracle to keep the ball in the fairways. But they were pretty broad.

Cholla cactus with golf ball

Go awry, and the rock, saguaro cactus and scrub areas can be pretty punitive, which is why the desert is often played as a lateral hazard to speed up play, go a little easy on scores, and keep players away from rattlesnakes in the warmer months or the cholla cactus anytime. The cholla is sometimes called jumping cactus for its seeming penchant of leaping onto and impaling itself into unsuspecting golfers.

The flora is only a part of the intriguing desert wildlife.  The fauna includes deer, cottontails and jackrabbits, prairie dogs (affectionately called desert rats), not to mention all sorts of talented birds, including grackles that think nothing of stealing wrapped granola bars right out of golf carts.

More on this round in the next post, “Meet and Beat.”

Kangaroo Island

Congratulations to the U.S. team for its Presidents Cups win in Melbourne earlier today. Watching some of the play on the Royal Melbourne course put me in mind of the time I was fortunate enough to play there. So I thought I’d pull this one out of the vaults as a nod to the land down under, part of a trip I took eight years ago, and which remains one of the high points of my globetrotting.

I’ve left the piece as it was in early 2003. By way of minor update, the Jacob’s Creek Open Championship ended its sponsorship with the Nationwide Tour after the 2007 tournament. Tommy Tolles kept his hand in on some mini-tours, winning a 2007 tournament on the Tarheel Tour, now the eGolf Professional Tour.

***

It was after emerging from the sheep-shearing shed on Kangaroo Island that it began to sink in, looking up into a night sky I had never seen before, and finally finding the Southern Cross: I was below the equator for the first time, in a new country, on a new continent.

I wasn’t there to shear sheep. The shed had been transformed into a dining room for a few golf writers, golf tour officials, and employees of our host, Jacob’s Creek. The Australian wine company was the primary sponsor of the Jacob’s Creek Open Championship, the first Nationwide Tour event of the year and the first of two tournaments co-sanctioned with the PGA Tour Australasia.

It was the first of a packed two weeks in Australia for me, the first in and around Adelaide, the second in Melbourne and environs, roaming over some of the country’s finest golf courses, sampling plenty of its fine food, and wine, and beer, and enjoying the hospitable and energetic Aussies. Australia may be far away, but it’s nice to know we still have friends somewhere in the world.

True, some may interpret Scott Kelf’s suggestion that I try some Vegemite for breakfast as a hostile act. Scott, from Melbourne, was my seatmate on the Qantas flight, which lasted about fourteen hours. (Luckily, I was in business class, with a six-hour flight to L.A. behind me, and another hour’s flight from Melbourne to Adelaide ahead of me).

Scott filled me on the Aussies’ sports mania, particular for Aussie Rules Football, a roughhouse blend of rugby, our soccer (their football) and our football (gridiron), though with little protective equipment.

And then there’s cricket. Since the Cricket World Cup was underway in South Africa, attended to by much of the rest of the world if ignored in ours, I made dogged and repeated attempts to interpret the rules. I made feeble progress, though I’m on top of it enough to know that Australia is currently in the lead, and the final match is Sunday.

Vegemite jars are stamped with a “Best Before…” date, and the phrase seems a bit euphemistic. Even the flight attendant suggested I might not be ready for such a taste adventure. But the stuff is made primarily from spent yeast and malt extracts used in brewing, and a lot of salt, so how bad could it be? Australians are raised on Vegemite, and love it. (However, no one in Australia drinks Foster’s Lager.)

Scott said to spread a lot of butter on my toast, and then cover it with a thin veneer of Vegemite. It wasn’t actually that bad. Sort of like a spreadable bouillon.

It was a benign omen that things are a little different down under. I sure felt different, and never quite shook the sensation that I was living in a parallel universe from home, where it was a day earlier, freezing, looking distantly toward spring. In Australia, it was sunny, toasty warm, heading toward fall.

Good golfing weather, to be sure. After landing in Adelaide, South Australia’s capital and the country’s fifth-largest city, I was whisked an hour north to the prime wine-making region, the Barossa Valley. Next to the Jacob’s Creek Heritage Site, where Bavarian immigrant Johann Gramp planted the first vines in 1847, we fired some short irons at a temporary flag.

Jeff Wallach displaying some beach cricket form

Tom Mackin works on his sand play on Kangaroo Island

This included fellow golf writers Jeff Wallach, Tom Harack, and Golf Magazine associate editor Tom Mackin, all of who had arrived a few days earlier. We made great hay throughout the trip that three of us were named Tom, and with the Aussie penchant for nicknames, we were soon known as Beds, Harry, and Macca.

Les Perchevski, originally from Newcastle, Australia, now lives near San Francisco and runs a market in Corte Madera that sells enough Jacob’s Creek wine that he garnered an invitation, too. Greg Stirling, a senior brand manager, was our Jacob’s Creek impresario for the week.

If I was spacey from travel, my cohorts were logy from just having sampled the entire Jacob’s Creek portfolio (about 18 varieties) with one of the winemakers, Bernie Hickin. They tasted a few again in a lavish lunch at the site, which introduced us to the local King George Whiting fish.

The lunch almost made dinner that evening redundant, but we strolled down the boardwalk from our seaside Stamford Grand Hotel in suburban Glenelg, where I tried the tasty barramundi lungfish at the trendy Salt restaurant.

All in all, we were in fine shape for the pro-am the next day at the Kooyonga Golf Club, where the tournament proper was to be held. I was teamed with Greg, Harry, and Peter O’Malley, the Aussie who beat Tiger Woods 2 and 1 in the opening round of last year’s WGC-World Match Play Championship.

(Left to right) Pro-am partners Tom Harack, Peter O'Malley, Greg Stirling, Tom Bedell

O’Malley splits his year between Australia and England, where he plays the European Tour. Now 93 in the world rankings, the 37-year-old displayed some marvelous driving accuracy and near-wizardry with his short irons. “I figure I get about 80 percent of my shots from 160 yards and in, to within eight to ten feet of the cup,” he said, and he went on to prove it.

On the fourth hole, I actually out drove O’Malley, and we were playing from the same tees. (He was using a three wood to my driver, but still.) My bragging rights lasted only until he walked away from the hole with a birdie to my bogey, and I was reduced to saying, “That’s why they pay you the big bucks.”

The Tommy Tolles incident occurred near the end of the gala dinner that evening at the Stamford. Tolles, 36, from Flat Rock, North Carolina, was riding high on the PGA Tour in 1996 and 1997, winning over $800,000 each year, ranking 16 and 27 respectively. He never won on the big tour, though he came tantalizingly close in some big tournaments—third in the 1996 PGA, second in the 1996 Players Championship, third in the 1997 Masters. But after 1997, things started to head south. I’d always wondered why, and his caddy, Mark Pace, said, “Ask him.”

Five Toms: Pros Tolles and Biershenk (left and center) and writers Bedell, Mackin and Harack

So when Tolles wandered within earshot, I did. But all my traveling mates heard was the blunt, “So what the hell happened?” and for the rest of the trip suggested that my zinger would destroy any hopes Tolles had of playing well, now or ever, and that he would probably be seeking me out before the end of the trip to throttle me.

I protested that they hadn’t heard my sensitive lead-up to the question, in which I praised Tolles for single-handedly helping me win my golf rotisserie league in 1997, and that ever since I had looked for his name in tournament results.

“You’d have to look pretty low, lately,” he admitted.

With that out of the bag, I decided it was okay to ask, “So what the hell happened?”

Tolles pointed to his head, and said, “It’s all between the ears.”

I began to wonder. The next day we took our side trip to sample the natural wonders of Kangaroo Island, and where we heard from the mainland that Tolles had opened the tournament with five consecutive bogeys, and wasn’t likely to make the cut. “You’re a dead man walking,” said my mates.

Our meal in the former sheep-shearing shed had been another eye-opening production—spit-roasted grain-fed beef topped with Kangaroo Island lobster and béarnaise sauce with vegetables. There were four Jacob’s Creek wine selections, and a sticky date pudding with butterscotch sauce dessert that was worth flying all day for alone.

Outside, looking skyward, contentedly filled, I contemplated that whatever universe I was in, it was a good one. All I had to worry about was being clubbed to death by Tommy Tolles.

The Pete Dye Course at the French Lick Resort

The plane was rerouted to Nashville, which meant I had about a four hour bus ride ahead of me to the Louisville airport, and then an hour’s-plus drive to the resort.

I missed a day of golf, but all was well in the end, and I think it’s now safe to step forward and take credit for Barack Obama’s 2008 victory. As the following piece shows (it originally appeared in the Brattleboro Reformer in Vermont before the election), my trip to Indiana clearly tipped the scales, and threw the formerly red state into the blue column for Obama. I don’t know whether Dave was the deciding vote or not, but I’d like to think our little chat had something to do with it. As for 2012, my strategy is still in the planning stages.

***

I packed the sticks and pinned on my “Vote Obama” button last month, traveling to the heartland to discover that Indiana is a swing state.

I was heading for the French Lick Resort, where the midwest meets the south, 70 miles northwest of Louisville, Kentucky, and where the Ryder Cup was set to unfold the following week.

I was set to preview the new Pete Dye course that will open in the spring, as well as play the restored Donald Ross course at this equally—actually, stunningly–restored casino resort town.

The hick from French Lick

Unfortunately, there is no lascivious origin for the town’s name. Its bubbling minerals springs left salty deposits on rocks that the wildlife would lick, the early settlers were French, and there you have it.

By the mid-19^th century a Dr. William Bowles was bottling the local specialty, selling it as Pluto Water and putting up guests who had come for the cure in the French Lick Springs Hotel, where chef Louis Perrin created tomato juice in 1917.

In 1850, a mile away in Mile Lick, the similarly conceived Mile Lick Inn went up and the area was truly launched as a resort destination. The Mile Lick owner, Dr. John Lane, later changed the name of his hotel and the town to West Baden Springs, where Mr. and Mrs. Joe Bird created their son, Larry, in 1956.

FDR in 1931

Bird also lived across the town border, hence the nickname “the hick from French Lick.” The boom years were over by time Larry started dribbling. Both hotels had flourished for decades, largely because illegal gambling thrived until 1949, which it managed to do because the West Baden hotel became a headquarters for the state Republican party, while the French Lick hotel became a Democratic fixture.

Indeed, it was at a conference at the hotel for Democratic governors in 1931 that Franklin Roosevelt solidified support for his presidential run.

With the current presidential run on my mind, it was instructive to find out that not everyone in the country is a rabid Obama fan, and that a mere campaign button could provoke stares and comments and turn me into a proselytizer. I was ready to flap my gums at any opportunity.

Not for naught: the day after I returned, Obama had gone up two percentage points in Indiana polls and the state is now officially considered a tossup, if still leaning McCain’s way. And my handicap went down two points, so all in all it was a successful trip.

And after a half-century of bust days, French Lick looks to be revving up for success as well. What began as a philanthropic gesture in 1996 by the Cook Group Inc. to save and partially restore the West Baden Hotel took on a life of its own, ultimately a half-billion dollar effort that has included an historic restoration of both hotels, a new (legal) casino, two spas and the various golf courses.

The expenditure, if startling, is understandable just by walking into the atrium of the West Baden Hotel. Prior to the construction of the Houston Astrodome, the hotel held the record for the world’s largest free-span dome, stretching 200 feet and once called the “Eighth Wonder of the World.” Shining once again with an old world elegance, the atrium is a visual and acoustic marvel.

With 45 holes of golf on hand, I never even made it to the casino, another marvel. There’s history in the golfing grounds, too. The nine-hole Valley Links adjacent to the French Lick hotel was built as an 18-hole layout in 1907 by Tom Bendelow. Lee Schmidt did the reworking in 2006.

Schmidt also took on the 2006 restoration to its original design of the Ross course, built in 1917 and the site of the 1924 PGA Championship won by Walter Hagen, and the 1959 and 1960 LPGA Championships (Betsy Rawls and Mickey Wright, respectively).

The Donald Ross Course

At a cost of $6 million, the restoration included reshaping and expanding many of the greens to their antique square or rectangular configurations. It’s a splendid job, at a course traditionalists should flock to.

One curiosity is that the 1957 Midwest Amateur Tournament was held at the course, won by Pete Dye. Dye knew Ross, and Lee Schmidt once worked for Dye; there are fewer than six degrees of separation in the golf design world.

Dye was on hand for the preview rounds at his course, and responded to a fawning introduction with refreshing self-deprecation: “I may not be the leading architect of the day, but I am the oldest.”

Pete Dye, his handiwork in the background

His newest creation is a study in grandeur perched on one of the highest hilltops in Indiana, with 30-mile vistas in all directions, but plenty of work on the ground for the golfer to attend to in a brawny design likely to be compared to Dye’s work at Whistling Straits.

It was a lot to take in in a two day campaign, but there’s no question that French Lick is a fresh golf destination to reckon with.

On my last morning in Indiana I was ushered into the dining room for breakfast, the hostess seated me, wandered away, and then returned to say, sotto voce, “It’s nice to see someone wearing an Obama button here.”

“Not too many in these parts?”

She laughed, and said, “Pretty much none.”

My driver back to the airport, let’s call him Dave, wasn’t wearing one. Dave agreed that the Dye layout was a beautiful site, though he didn’t really play golf much.

In truth, Dave was something of a walking stereotype—a former truck drivin’ kind of guy, a pot-bellied, hog ridin’, beer swillin’, gap-toothed grinnin’, deer huntin’, chaw chewin’ McCain supporter.

But Dave had a brain in good working order, and we were able to bounce things back and forth genially enough for awhile before he sensibly concluded that we could agree to disagree.

So then we spent the rest of the ride talking about marriage, wives, kids, grandkids—the important stuff. Plus a lot about beer swillin’.

Golf course architects may bemoan the sunny 1990’s, when new layouts debuted virtually daily, peaking at 398 in 2000. Such days are unlikely to return: there were fewer than 50 new course openings in 2010. But it does makes it easier to spot the winners.

Castle Stuart Golf Links, Inverness, Scotland

The par-3 eleventh hole at Castle Stuart

The accolades are stacking up like revetted bunkers for this Highland course overlooking the Moray Firth, which opened July 2009. On a Golf Tourism Scotland short list with The Old Course at St. Andrews and Kingsbarns, Castle Stuart was named the 2010 Golf Course of the Year, and will host the 2011 Scottish Open on July 7-10.

The trick with a 21st Century links course is to make it seem like it’s been around since the 19^th, or earlier. Architect Gil Hanse and Mark Parsinen, managing partner and co-designer, have nailed it. They’ve blended the land forms in harmony with the stunning visual surroundings, while creating thoughtful strategic patterns that suggest The Old Course or Royal Portrush.

The 425-acre site will ultimately include a boutique hotel and spa, 148 lodges and apartments and another 18 holes, but the current course is a brilliant first step. Thoughtful visitors will also book rounds at the nearby classic links of Nairn, Royal Dornoch and Brora.

Verdura Golf & Spa Resort, Sciacca, Sicily

Verdura ninth hole and clubhouse

Kyle Phillips, who designed Kingsbarns and Dundonald in Scotland, has worked his magic on the southwest Sicilian coast on 36 holes (plus a nine-hole par-3 track). Many wend right to the Mediterranean Sea, which is never out of sight during play. If the clubhouse is an appropriately bleached Italianate stucco, the windswept course suggests Scottish links play, with the anomalous sightline of distant olive and orange groves.

The West Course has slightly edged the East in some recent rankings; others say a composite routing of all the seaside holes is best. We say play ‘em all, and then indulge in the Verdura Spa, which includes four Thalasso pools, in graduated temperatures, varied densities of salt and minerals and a plethora of jets and waterfalls.

The 570-acre resort opened last March, part of the Rocco Forte Collection but the first built by the luxury hotel company, all on a splendidly private 1.2 miles of coastline.

Corales Golf Course, Punta Cana, Dominican Republic

Corales eighth hole

P.B. Dye’s La Cana Golf Course has some serious sibling rivalry since the April 2010 opening of Tom Fazio’s Corales Golf Course. The pair may well have helped PUNTACANA take the 2010 Golf Resort of the Year award from the International Association of Golf Tour Operators (in the ‘Rest of the World’ category–outside Europe and North America).

The course is pretty much out of this world. On land once bush, cactus and seagrapes, Fazio has fashioned a fecund beauty with six holes skirting the Caribbean Sea, the home hole requiring a carry over the rocky limestone coral of the Bay of Corales.

Fashion is the right word; Oscar de la Renta is an investor in Corales, as is singer Julio Iglesias, and both live in the developing Corales neighborhood that gives access to the course. But guests at the de la Renta-designed Tortuga Bay villas and the PUNTACANA hotel can also corral some tee times.

Baker’s Bay Golf & Ocean Club, Abaco Islands, The Bahamas

The fifteenth at Bakers Bay (Henebry Photography)

Can Tom Fazio top himself in the Caribbean? His layout for the Discovery Land Company opened in December for those eager to settle the question. The developing 585-acre private club and community with a deep water marina is on the northern end of Great Guana Cay. While the course is reserved for residential members and guests, two daily tee times are set aside for guests at the newly opened Marina Inn.

Players will find wide open links-style fairways ranging from the Atlantic Ocean shoreline at the start of play, over to the close of the front nine with a daunting 215-yard par-3 carry over the Sea of Abaco. From the panoramic thirteenth hole high point, Fazio pretty much puts the hammer down the rest of the way. The course measures over 7,327 yards from the tips; this is not recommended unless you have a PGA Tour card.

Old Macdonald Golf Links, Bandon Dunes, Oregon

Fifteenth hole at Old Macdonald, Bandon Dunes (Photo by Brian Oar)

Charles Blair Macdonald

Not named after the farmer, definitely not a cow pasture course, this fourth track at the Bandon Dunes Resort opened last June and almost immediately joined its three brethren in the top 15 of GOLF Magazine‘s “Top 100 Courses You Can Play” list (and where the Pacific Dunes course overtook Pebble Beach as No. 1).

Charles Blair Macdonald was the founder of the U.S. Golf Association and the country’s first great golf course architect. Tom Doak and associate Jim Urbina have created their big-shouldered versions of classic Macdonald holes (themselves reproductions of European models)–the Eden hole, Hogback, Biarritz, Cape, Redan, Punchbowl–with an uncanny blend of vigor and simplicity. Wide open fairways, fierce bunkering, immense greens, all typically whipped by wind, add up to an intensely satisfying strategic challenge.

Wrap it all up at McKee’s Pub with Grandma’s Meatloaf and a Deschutes Black Butte Porter and life will indeed be good.

* * *

Time for nine more? Here they are:

Seneca Hickory Stick, Lewiston, NY (senecahickorystick.com): Pure golf, lots of water at Robert Trent Jones II design near Niagara Falls.

Fourteenth at Seneca Hickory Stick (photo courtesy KemperLesnik)

The Scandinavian, Farum, Denmark (thescandinavian.dk): Bruce Charlton was RTJ II’s man on the tundra for two new courses officially opening this spring.

Apes Hill Club, St. James, Barbados (apeshillclub.com): Private to property owners, stunning Landmark Land Co. design might prompt opening checkbooks.

Apes Hill Club thirteenth

Macrihanish Dunes, Scotland (machrihanishdunes.com): Next door to a classic Old Tom Morris routing is David McLay Kidd’s modern take. Double pleasures.

Shining Rock Golf Club, Northbridge, MA (shiningrock.com): Rugged New Englander by design newcomer Patrick Sullivan.

Meadow Brook, Richmond, RI (meadowbrookgolfri.com): Expansive Roger Rulewich and Dave Fleury track is longest public course in the state.

Eighteenth green looking toward ten at Meadow Brook

The Prairie Club, Valentine, NE (theprairieclub.com): Two 18’s and a par-3 nine–potential Bandon Dunes aborning in the grasslands?

TPC San Antonio, TX (tpcsanantonio.com): Two private tracks by Greg Norman and Pete Dye, open to guests at JW Marriott Resort.

The Patriot, Owasso, OK (patriotgolfclub.com): Limited public tee times at this RTJ II routing, with percentage of fees going to Folds of Honor scholarship fund.

This piece originally appeared in the Spring, 2011 issue of American Airlines’ Celebrated Living magazine, in somewhat different form.

Baker’s Bay photo courtesy of Henebry Photography.

Old Macdonald photo courtesy of Fairways & Greens Magazine.

All right, I’ve used some indelicate language here, but I didn’t know the exciting conclusion to this international round was going to go international on YouTube. For that I have to thank Joe Whitley, a strapping young Yorkshire lad who is a staff writer for the National Club Golfer and Lady Golfer magazines across the pond. (Some of his Flickr photos can be seen here.)

Joe and I played several rounds together in late January in Abu Dhabi, and considering that he took the game up only in recent years, he has come a very long way–the same distance he hits the ball. Joe writes mainly about equipment, and he was testing the then brand-spanking new TaylorMade R11 driver with its then incongruous white head. (The R11 has quickly become ubiquitous, and now after hitting it at a demo day and making a few of the many adjustments that can be made with the club, I’m lusting after one myself.)

But Joe put on quite a demo himself when we were playing the tenth hole at the Saadiyat Beach Golf Club in Abu Dhabi. Albeit it a short par-4 at 296 yards from the tees we were playing, Joe decided to go for it with his driver and not only landed the ball on the green but almost aced the hole.

Joe Whitley and designer Gary Player at Saadiyat Beach Golf Club

Martin Kaymer at press conference following his win in Abu Dhabi

A day or two later we played the Abu Dhabi Golf Club, this right after the early season European Tour event, the Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship. It was here that Martin Kaymer blew the field away, vaulted past Tiger Woods to the number two spot in the world rankings, on his way to the number one spot for a time. (As of today, Kaymer is third behind Luke Donald and Lee Westwood; Woods has slipped to #15.)

All I can say is that these guys must really be good, because once I strayed off the fairways at the Abu Dhabi course I was cooked. While actually hitting the ball fairly well, I was just enough off line to wind up in snarly long grass hole after hole. Yet the pros were going low as usual.  Kaymer finished at 24-under! Also using the R11 I might add.

I was probably about 24-over for the one round, so by the time we came to the par-5 eighteenth I wasn’t much concerned with the score.  (Looking at the card now, I see I stopped writing anything after another X on the thirteenth.) I hit a blistering drive on the 515-yard hole, but there was still only one way to make it home.  Joe, who hadn’t lost his glow from an earlier eagle from the fairway, urged me to give it a go with the driver (a TaylorMade R7 in this case) and pulled out his camera to record the attempt.

A good attempt it was, too; a few shouts of amazement can be heard at the end of the video, but young Joe did let up on his filming trigger finger a bit too soon, and the soaring beauty of the shot is lost.

For the swelling multitudes who have asked–I had the distance. But the shot didn’t cut enough to avoid a left greenside bunker. And then I made a complete hash of it from there.

The Fuller’s London Pride in the clubhouse removed the sting. And just to play fair, here’s one of Joe at Saadiyat, with an arguably more universal beverage:

Though it’s in rural Connecticut, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, the truth must told–when approaching Foxwoods Resort by car it arises suddenly out of the countryside like the Emerald City in “The Wizard of Oz,” a suggestion that past television ads for the resort have played upon.

The Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation has indeed created a wonder in the North Stonington woods. Foxwoods began life in 1986 as a single high-stakes bingo hall, but the action grew into the largest resort casino complex in the world, with a towering hotel, theaters, nightclubs, a full house of high-end dining spots, a bushel of casual restaurants, and a jackpot of snack bars, not to mention the ever sweet siren song of the many gaming tables.

Even better, the Nation set Rees Jones loose on 900 acres across the street from the resort, and the May 2005 debut result was Lake of Isles–36 holes of splendid and challenging golf (though only the North Course is open to the public; the South Course is members only.) The complex is now enhanced by a Hank Haney Golf Academy, indoor and outdoor practice facilities, and a gracious 50,000 square foot clubhouse and grill (Matches Tavern), with an award-winning golf shop.

North Course, hole 17

The North Course is clearly a winner–copping the Golfweek Best in State award for four consecutive years. But it’s easy to toss strokes away here as breezily as dollar chips at the roulette table. The course demands attention, with a 135 slope rating–and that’s from the mid-tees (6,304 yards).

The tips extend beyond 7,300 yards, but mortals will not want to go there, unless to check out some of the dramatic and daunting views from the tee boxes, and there are many, as the course is big-shouldered, with lots of elevation and seven holes that skirt a picturesque 90-acre lake.

The secret at the North–or one of them–is getting safely away off the tee; fairways are ample, but straying from them hazardous, with a fair share of forced carries and dense Northeast woodlands to contend with–mighty pretty in the green of summer and glorious in the flaming colors of fall, but not too kind to hookers and slicers.

North Course, hole 3

The greens are huge, but well-protected throughout. And the par-3s, which include some of the prettiest elevated tee shots of the routing, can put a real spike in a scorecard.

As popular as the course has proven, the eighteenth hole had many a player fuming, with a forced carry over the lake to a slender landing area, beyond which was a gobbling bunker and then a sharp left dogleg besides, over another hazard.

The good news at the start of the 2010 season was that Jones had taken pity, and tinkered with the hole so that players falling short of perfection still had a prayer. The fairway was extended, the landing areas widened, and additional grassed areas planted on the landing side of the lake to shorten the carry. In an additional stroke of generosity, the fairway bunker was eliminated.

South Course, hole 11

The experience is similar on the South Course, though members and high rollers who manage a round there will certainly find fewer divots due to smaller number of rounds.

The conditioning is superb at LOI, and the service attentive, as one should rightly expect at a course with upscale rates in high season (off peak rates begin dropping in October). But there are great stay and play packages, and none of this is a concern anyway, if one’s luck is holding across the street.

This piece originally appeared in somewhat different form in the September/October 2010 issue of Troon Golf & Travel. The current issue can be viewed here.

I stole a few lines in this piece from a post about an earlier visit to Lake of Isles. Click here for “By the Time We Got to Woodstock.”

WALT DISNEY WORLD

This is pretty much a no-brainer. With four theme parks and two water parks to choose from and more than a score of resort options, if the addicted golfer can’t keep the kids happy at Walt Disney World, then there’s no hope.

Out where the grass is short, there are 81 golf holes to take for a ride, five 18-hole tracks (by Tom Fazio, Pete Dye, Joe Lee) and a nine-hole walking course (Ron Garl). And this is only Walt Disney World! With Sea World, Universal Studios and all manner of orlando florida golf courses, it’s no wonder this is one of the top vacation destinations in the world, much less the U.S.

But for the serious younger golfer, there are five-day golf camps (ages eight to 13) and a summer series of Junior Tour tournaments (ages 14-18). Walt Disney World, Lake Buena Vista, Florida; www.golf.disneyworld.com

HERSHEY RESORT

Coming in a close second in the can’t-miss department is a trip to “The Sweetest Place on Earth,” as Hershey, Pennsylvania calls itself. The whole town, it seems, is in the business of welcoming kids, and keeping them slightly addled by the ubiquitous aroma of chocolate in the air, street lamps that look like Hershey Kisses, and attractions at Hershey’s Chocolate World, ZooAmerica, and Hersheypark. Teens are even welcome in the spa at the stately Hotel Hershey, although the Whipped Cocoa Bath or Chocolate Fondue Wrap treatments are reserved for Mom.

Sixth Hole at the historic Hershey West course, chocolate factory in background

Out at the Hershey Country Club there are 63 holes to choose from. The par-73 West Course should top the list for the adults. The Spring Creek Golf Course opened in 1932 specifically with young chocoholics in mind. The 2,200-yard, par-33 track has regular offerings of junior camps, competitions and “Learn the Game” clinics throughout the summer for resort guests. And kids are even welcome to bring their parents to play along as well. Hershey Entertainment & Resorts Company, Hershey, Pennsylvania; www.hersheypa.com

AMELIA ISLAND PLANTATION

Almost four miles of Florida beachfront, a full range of youth programs, poolside activities, accommodations spread over 1,350 acres, a luxury spa, 23 clay tennis courts, bike paths, Segway tours and we still haven’t mentioned the golf yet. But there are 54 holes worth at this full service resort north of Jacksonville, by Pete Dye, Bobby Weed, and Tom Fazio, at the flagship Long Point course.

The 2011 summer schedule isn’t finalized yet, but chances are good that the Family Tee Program will again be in effect–with the way upfront tees on the front nine at the Oak Marsh course, occasional free golf for juniors, and four-day Junior Golf Camps throughout the summer for ages six to 18. Amelia Island Plantation, Amelia Island, Florida; www.aipfl.com

At the Barton Creek Resort & Spa

Some other good picks:

> Barton Creek Resort & Spa, Austin, Texas: Two Fazio courses, one by Crenshaw and Coore, one by Arnold Palmer. Not bad. A full-blown golf academy and regularly scheduled junior academies as well. Number one golf resort in Texas? No argument here. www.bartoncreek.com

> Los Sueños Marriott Ocean & Golf Resort, Costa Rica: Take a family eco-cation, a zip line through the jungle, and kids play golf for free, as at many Marriott resorts. www.marriott.com

> WaterColor Resort, Watersound, Florida: The No Hassle Family Golf Experience unfolds on the specially-designed and adaptable Origins Course. www.originsgolfclub.com

> Westin Kierland Resort & Spa, Scottsdale, Arizona: Kids’ clinics plus junior tees set up on the Mesquite nine in the Family Golf Program. www.kierlandresort.com

The Kauai Lagoons thirteenth, but soon to be the Kiele Moana fifth

And you’re asking why I promptly dump the shot into the Pacific? Could it be the thought of having to borrow underwear from my fellow travelers, since my luggage will only arrive at the airport the day I depart? Might as well ask why I want to go back and take that shot over!

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Here at The A Position we’re given a topic to address (or not) each month for “The A List” feature in about 150 words, and this month we were asked to write about “Our Worst Golf-Travel Experiences.”

The context was important to note–that as golf writers, we’re basically spoiled rotten, traveling to the world’s greatest golf destinations on someone else’s dime, suffering through great meals, spa treatments and golf on top of golf. Who are we to complain? As a species, golf writers are rarely showered with sympathy. But as my comrades point out here, sometimes it was the trips that were rotten, if not out and out dangerous.

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The Prince Course

In the face of machete-wielding thugs, my grievance was downright mild, and directed at no one but fate–and the airlines, of course. It wasn’t my first or last missed connection, nor the only time my luggage and clubs went astray. So far in my golf-traveling life, knock wood, both have always arrived–eventually.

A trip I once took to Mexico was more costly, since while I was eating dinner alfresco in Playa del Carmen my camera was stolen right off the chair I’d looped it over, and presumably by a cadre of seemingly charming youngsters who had stopped by to serenade us as we ate. Some serenaded us; others made off with the goods.

And luckily, I’ve never been sick abroad, although I once returned home from Scotland, of all places, with a nasty stomach virus. (Could it really have been the Lanark Blue Cheese?)

I still have a pair of loaner underpants from one of my generous golf-writing buddies on that Kauai trip, a sort of wry souvenir. He’s never asked me to return them for some reason.

I’ve been back to Hawaii since, and all went swimmingly. But I’ve never returned to Kauai. I’d like to, since other than my ongoing discomfort on the trip, it was splendid in every way, particularly the golf way. Among golf courses in hawaii, there can be no greater collection than on Kauai–Poipu Bay, Puakea, Makai at the St. Regis Princeville Resort, to name a few, and the Prince Course, a Robert Trent Jones II golfing profundity that is currently closed for renovations until October.

Poipu Bay

Kauai Lagoons has been getting a work-over too, from the Golden Bear himself. When Nicklaus completes phase one of the major course renovation now going on in May of this year, the iconic thirteenth hole mentioned above will become the fifth hole of the renamed Kiele Moana course.

What I could do there with my own clubs, in my own clean underwear!

I once played in a hickory club tournament, carting about seven clubs around in the bag. But those antique sticks were tough to hit, and I basically wound up playing the entire round with three clubs, ultimately faring not much worse than with my regular weapons of crass destruction.

Players are legitimately allowed to use 14 clubs per round these days, but I’ve often wondered whether we really need them all. It sounded like a project for the MOTO Research Team (the usual foursome, formed from the meat of the order of our softball team: David Cotton, Prentiss Smith, Jerry Carbone and me).

The MOTO Research Team, maintaining its anonymity as always. No idea who the fifth guy is.

We headed out to the Wintonbury Hills Golf Course in Bloomfield, Connecticut for 36 holes. The first 18 would be with all our sticks, the second 18 with but three clubs, those three left to the player’s discretion. We’d see what we would see.

The ninth hole green complex at Wintonbury Hills

We saw a lot of the fine Pete Dye design near Hartford, and that was a no-lose proposition. But it was a busy late fall day, and there was some question as to whether we’d make it through both rounds before darkness. We played as briskly as we could, and since we’re all in the range of the mid-handicapped, we all shot our more or less typical mid-handicapped scores.

What was different about the round was all the strategizing we did for the one to follow. Should one of the three clubs be a putter, or not? Forego a sand wedge, and then pray not to land in one of more than a hundred bunkers on the course?

What is the sound of the Zen putter putting?

I decided fairly early on to take my putter. I was the only one who did. Jerry was the only one to take his driver. Prentiss decided he would take his three wood and use it to putt, after he experimented with it in the opening round and actually pared the fourteenth hole with four strokes of the three wood–for all I know, some kind of world record.

After a speedy lunch break we stashed our unchosen clubs in the car trunk to avoid temptation and went back out to the first hole with this lineup: David (three wood, five and seven irons), Prentiss (three wood, seven and nine irons), Jerry (driver, seven and nine irons), me (five wood, eight iron, putter).

To cut to the chase, the results were mixed, and a bit hampered by the encroaching gloaming. By the eighteenth it was so dark we didn’t think we’d be able to find our tee shots. Indeed, we could barely see the ball on the tee. I hit a poor shot that scudded forward and hit the curb of the cart path and then clearly ricocheted–somewhere. There was no point in even looking for it.

We muttered about whether we should just drive on in or try to find the other tee shots. Jerry was still standing on the tee when my ball, which had apparently gone briefly into orbit and then into reentry, came down afire. The ball must have gone as high vertically as some of my drives achieved horizontally. So impressive was its hang time that Jerry wasn’t even sure what had almost brained him, until we confirmed it was indeed my ball, and then we all pretty much lost it.

Put us all down for a double on the last, and we get these results—Prentiss was six strokes higher with three clubs, I was five strokes higher, Jerry two strokes higher, and David–nine strokes lower!

The cold analysis actually suggested no significant data. David had had a particularly poor first eighteen, so kicking the ball around might have been an improvement. I was one stroke better with three clubs after nine, and Jerry two strokes; the last nine falloff could have been attributed to fatigue and the gathering dark.

Prentiss suggested not having a putter made the difference for him, but he did improve on his world record by using his three wood for five consecutive shots to par the eighth hole. Jerry was concurrently double-bogeying the eighth, using his driver for all seven shots!

It was such anomalies that kept us laughing and scratching. We were in carts, so when dropping partners off with all three clubs in their hands, it was hard to resist saying, “Got what you need?” Or when Jerry sunk a putt with the big dog: “Nice drive.”

Wintonbury Hills scorecard

We may have learned something about being more creative with shots, or that there’s not much point in slowing play down with agonizingly deliberate club selection when one will do about as well as another.

Or it may be that we just helped breathe life into golf clichés, as when I notched my first par on the sixth hole with a regulation five wood, eight iron, two putts, and someone said, “Play Wintonbury Hills: You’ll use every club in your bag.”

Conclusion: A definite need for further testing.

Ai Miyazato

Golf was first played in Thailand in 1906, at the Royal Bangkok Sports Club. When the Banyan Golf Club in Hua Hin opened in 2009, it became the 260th course in a country roughly the size of France or slightly smaller than Texas. It’s hotter than either.

The LPGA added its glamour this week at its season-opening Honda LPGA Thailand tournament, with a full complement of its stars, including defending champion Ai Miyazato, the Rolex Rankings No. 1 player Yani Tseng–who emerged victorious–Michelle Wie (who finished second), Paula Creamer, Christie Kerr and Natalie Gulbis.

Tseng shot 6-under-par 66 on Sunday to win the Honda LPGA Thailand by five shots over Wie.  Tseng has now entered four events for the season and yes, won four times.

Miyazato, who finished in a tie for 13th, had little to show after the first round, with a three-over-par 75. But Tseng, with three straight wins under her belt, and Hall of Famer Juli Inkster, the oldest player in the field, were three strokes behind the leader, I.K. Kim. The 22-year-old Kim, from South Korea (but now living in San Diego), fired a bogey-free nine-under par 63, a course record.

The course is the Old Course at the Siam Country Club, old being relative, of course. The first privately-owned course in the country was built in 1971 to a design by Isao Mazumi, but re-designed over the same routing by the Schmidt-Curley Design team and reopened in 2007.

Lee Schmidt and Brian Curley (but mainly Schmidt) also did the club’s newer 27-hole Plantation Course. I was lucky enough to play both tracks in 2009, my first visit to the Kingdom of Thailand, and there are certainly similarities between the two: plenty of expansive bunkering, fecund landscaping–such as the ubiquitous elephant-shaped topiary that takes note of the country’s favored pachyderm–and excellent conditioning. (“The greens are awesome,” Paula Creamer tweeted after the first round.)

The Old Course is a relatively flat layout, with a number of up and back holes, but it does have a more comfortably antique, wooded feel to it with its abundant fruits trees and palms, and as one golfer noted, “More shade,” no mean consideration.

Twelfth hole at Siam Country Club

The Plantation Course, by contrast, opened for its first full season in 2008, and is a wide open and rollicking affair, with far more movement in the fairways and on the greens. If the Old Course is a slowly unfolding reverie, the Plantation is a modern drama with sudden loud scene changes, playing out over former pineapple and tapioca fields. For a visitor the usual solution prevails, naturally: play them both.

As for rollicking, the course is near Pattaya, which was nothing more than a fishing village on the Gulf of Thailand over forty years ago, when American military personnel engaged in the Vietnam War turned it into an R&R stop. This may well account for the continuing rambunctious nature of the city, best seen in all its vividness at night in the notorious Walking Street district, which makes Las Vegas look like a church social.

But the action on the course this week was thrilling enough for the top-three players at the end of the tournament, Tseng, Wie and Karrie Webb, who gained exemption into the season-ending Titleholders at Grand Cypress Golf Club in Orlando, November 17-20.

Masseria San Domenico

I’m not talking about my wife–although she can certainly make a claim to the title, especially on Valentine’s Day–but about a resort we visited a few years back, the Masseria San Domenico Resort and Spa in Savelletri di Fasano, Italy.

Here at The A Position we’re given a topic to address (or not) each month for The A List feature, and last year for Valentine’s Day, the world’s sexiest golf resorts was on the table. Click here to see what lubricious choices eight other TAP writers made. My pick was pretty clear, especially since we had visited on our 25^th wedding anniversary trip:

After toasting your limbs on a private beach on the Adriatic, a plunge into the salt water Talassotherapy spa sets the senses tingling at Masseria San Domenico in Puglia, which has refined the art of Mediterranean lotus-eating. Feast on succulent fruits and oil from the onsite orchard and ancient silver olive grove, dine in a blazing white stone 15-century watchtower.

Don’t neglect the sumptuous San Domenico Golf Course, where the Masseria Cimino, a 15-room guesthouse perched on the eighth hole, is the all-in aphrodisiacal option: light the candles, uncork the Prosecco, savor the chocolates, and remember to turn down those cool white sheets.

Masseria Cimino

There was a short drive required from the hotel-spa to the course, a splendid links-like track by European Golf Design, easily the best of five courses I played on our Italian jaunt. It has and will again this year serve as the site for the Challenge Tour Grand Final in November (the European Tour’s equivalent of the Nationwide Tour).

San Domenico Golf Course

The tournament was won last year by Matt Haines, but you knew that, right? With the win Haines, from Kent, England, finished second in the 2010 Challenge Tour Rankings, thereby securing his European Tour card for 2011. Not bad for a member of the 2009 Great Britain and Ireland Walker Cup team, although he’s off to a somewhat rocky start this year, still looking to make his first cut,

In any case, since our visit I’ve learned that a new sister property has been built even closer to the San Domenico course, and Borgo Egnazia sounds just as enticing as the original, if that’s possible.

With 63 hotel rooms suites and 23 private villas, each with its own pool, the Borgo Egnazia would certainly work for couples, except in the sense that it’s probably even better suited for families. So there are likely to be lots of kids splashing around the place. Indeed, there’s a Kids Club that caters to infants to 13-year-olds, in case Mom and Dad need to head out to the golf course or have, well, some other activity in mind.

I haven’t eyeballed this one yet–one can only hope–but all three properties are run by the same family, and they haven’t let me down yet. Each locale can be accessed at the Masseria San Domenico Resort and Spa website, if you dare set yourself up for powerful yearnings.

Borgo Egnazia

Play Away: The first hole at Doonbeg Golf Club

Sunday, June 1, 2008: Back to Doughmore Bay

The fervor of international competition has arisen again, this time on the southwest Irish coast in County Clare, an all-American team taking on some rakish blokes (and one betty) from the UK and continent. The venue is the links course at Doonbeg, a modern gem fashioned by Greg Norman’s design team, and surely one of his best efforts. I played here four years ago in a similar event (I had a hazy memory that we had lost, but that was stinking thinking, as Doonbeg emissary Roddy Guiney, who was captain at the time, assures me that the U.S. won in 2004). However that was before the luxury lodge, golf cottages, clubhouse, pro shop and various restaurants were constructed at the private club and resort. They were merely piles of dirt or stakes in the ground. Now they’re like a cluster of castles at the bend of Doughmore Bay, the shape of which is reflected in the Doonbeg logo. It looks so different now I could barely find the first tee. Once I did, I went in search of a swing.

The course was still being tinkered with in 2004, too, and is being tinkered with still. As I played a practice round with mates Tom Harack and fellow Vermonter Larry Olmsted, I could see where a few holes had been softened, a few bunkers eradicated, a few greens moved.

But the essential links golf experience was intact, and the lightly breezy day was sunny and warm enough to wear shorts.

I wish I could say I was playing well, but the usual short game woes attended me, and I flailed away for quite some time in a couple of deep pot bunkers. But it was a jet lag round, after all.

The fourth hole at Doonbeg

Monday, June 2: Handle Pot Bunkers With Care

Another practice round was the order of the day, though not before a sorely needed pot bunker lesson over at the extensive practice range at Doonbeg, rendered by assistant pro John Dooley.

John had me back off from the ball a bit so I would less crouched over it, had me strengthen my left hand grip, and suggested a smooth swing tempo, moving through the ball area. The length of the takeaway, he suggested, was the key to distance control from the sand. It worked from the practice bunkers.

Cap'n Buddy Darby (left) on the spoons at the Comerford pub (Photo: Kieran Clancy)

I already knew the hellacious bunker that used to snatch balls right off the back of the eleventh green into an unforgivingly deep pit was no longer, one of the numerous attempts to soften the course.

Buddy Darby, Chairman and CEO of Kiawah Development Partners, the force behind Doonbeg, said the course in its initial incarnation could best be termed, “Greg Norman meets God.” Norman was so taken with the Irish linksland handed to him that he went epic.

“The course was simply too hard at first,” Darby said. “Greg played it and lost five balls. So I said to him, ‘Where do I put that in the marketing literature?’”

Bruce McGill as D-Day

Darby was also wearing the Captain’s hat for our team, in place of actor Bruce McGill, who at the last minute took on a role presumably more appealing than spurring us on to victory. McGill played Walter Hagan in “The Legend of Bagger Vance,” but he may always be best known as D-Day, who thumps out the William Tell Overture on his throat in “Animal House.”

Bruce McGill as Walter Hagan

McGill is now filming a production aptly titled for a golf movie, “Obsessed,” but it’s apparently about something less interesting (lethal stalking). I was looking forward to talking to him about one of my all-time favorites and McGill’s first (of over 120) film roles, in Jonathan Demme’s “Handle With Care.” Actually, I wanted to bellyache about it’s not being on DVD. Then I was hoping he’d play Irish tunes on his throat.

Tuesday, June 3: Round One

Tough work at a competitive whiskey tasting

My taxi driver to Doonbeg, Martin Murphy, had said that the beds at the Lodge were the most comfortable in the country, which they should be, at about $5,000 apiece. They certainly did the job last night, but then a bed of nails might have as well, following the evening’s competitive whiskey tasting. No one remembers who won.

The pairings were announced at dinner. Larry Olmsted and I were to battle Irish Times reporter John O’Sullivan and Golf International publisher Richard Simmons. We laughed in the face of Simmons’ formidable 1-handicap, right up to the moment we lost the match 4 and 3.

Our mates weren’t faring much better elsewhere in the field, and the day ended with the Euros sporting a 3-1 lead.

This evening’s consolation was a fine meal at Naughton’s of Kilkee, and a few more pints, music and reeling, good craic, at the Comerford pub in Doonbeg.

Perhaps to give us a fighting chance, the format for Wednesday’s round was set up as two nine-hole matches.

Second hole at Doonbeg

Wednesday, June 4: Once More Unto the Breach

Guess I sunk one... (Photo: Kieran Clancy)

Well, that didn’t help. Nor did Captain Buddy Darby’s seemingly inspired pairing of the two Toms, myself and writer Tom Harack, to take on Simmons (again!), this time paired with Dominik Holyer, an on air TV “presenter” for Setanta Golf.

Off to a promising start, I faded to invisibility, and neither of us were sinking any winning putts. We lost both matches, leaving my 2008 record in international competition unblemished by victory. Meanwhile, the rest of the U.S. team was also taking it on the chin.

This was little to do but be gracious at the Awards Dinner and try to enjoy another ravishing Doonbeg meal. With ample Guinness on hand, the jokes were flying as fast as the chatter about the Presidential campaign. European interest in our political doings is remarkably acute, right down to familiarity with our primaries, while I was hard-pressed to name the Irish prime minister (Brian Cowen).

The Euros were also quite polite about not criticizing President Bush, at least until I mentioned my own lack of enthusiasm. Then we were off to the races.

The eighth hole at Lahinch Golf Course

Thursday, June 5: Old Tom Abused by Old Tom

A few of us lingered one more day to play the classic links at Lahinch, designed by Old Tom Morris in 1897, re-designed by Alister MacKenzie in 1928, and then largely restored to MacKenzie’s intentions by Martin Hawtree in 2003.

Few modern designers would have the nerve to insist on the numerous blind and quirky shots extant here, but at least they’re still here, such as The Dell hole, the par-3 sixth, totally blind from the tee. (On some days, the top of the flag may be evident).

My second shot on the third came to rest in a John Deere utility vehicle, a recovery shot Old Tom surely never planned for, and from which I never really recovered. If a shame to play poorly on such a lovely course, it was nonetheless also a lovely day, the company was good, and the post-round Murphy’s quenching.

We wrapped it all up back at Darby’s pub and restaurant at Doonbeg, pondering the new development the KDP folk are cooking up at Christophe Harbor in St. Kitts, a destination golf club, marina and resort community looking to blossom in 2011. Tom Fazio will design the course, and the U.S. team will try to come up with a better strategy.

Doonbeg Writers Cup 08 contestants (Photo: Kieran Clancy)

So I’m glad I hung on to the last bottle spirited home from Wales, from the Kingstone Brewery in Tintern, in the Wye Valley and not much more than a sheep toss across the River Wye from England.

Besides toasting captains Corey Pavin and Colin Montgomerie and the boys–if one needs another excuse for a tipple–Tuesday is National Drink a Beer Day in the U.S. I’m not sure I’ll treat this day any differently than the other 364, although I did forget to take note of International Beer Day on August 5, so maybe I’ll make it a twofer Tuesday.

The golfers will be further south, not inspired by the magnificent wreckage of Tintern Abbey near the brewery, so I don’t imagine too many of them will be quoting William Wordsworth:
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,
O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro’ the woods,
How often has my spirit turned to thee!
Bonus points for those who know the full title of Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” is ““Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798.”

J.M.W. Turner, "The Chancel and Crossing of Tintern Abbey, Looking towards the East Window," 1794

The long-abandoned abbey also inspired Tennyson, and the painter J.M.W. Turner, whose The Chancel and Crossing of Tintern Abbey, Looking towards the East Window was composed four years before WW’s ramble through the countryside.

Edward Biggs also takes his inspiration from the natural world, particularly the way yeast takes on sugars in the brewing process: “I’ve always loved ales, and drank them.  That’s why we had so many ales in the shop.”

That’s the Meadow Farm Shop, which Biggs and his wife, Tori, took on eight years ago, and which sells its own breads, preserves and other baked goods as well as local produce and now the Kingstone beers.

“A friend was running the brewery and basically said he’d had enough of it, so I took it on,” said Biggs.  “Now we sell only our own beers, all brewed on a four-barrel system.  They’re all bottle-conditioned or cask-conditioned, and I do about three to five brews a week.”

Biggs is a lucky man–he loves his work: “I love the entire process, from grinding the grain, going through the brewing process, bottling, and meeting the customers, which to me is just great.

Edward Biggs pours some of his Kingstone beers with help from daughter Alisia

“Not that I always understand them.  One said to me one time, about the 1503 Tudor Ale, ‘Oh, I couldn’t drink much of that.’ I said, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ I think it’s definitely one of our moreish beers.”

The name comes from his appreciation that 1503 was the year that Nostradamus was born, Leonardo da Vinci began work on the Mona Lisa, and Richard Arnold, in a work called Customs of London, made one of the first references concerning the use of hops in flavoring beer, in a recipe that included oats and wheat in addition to malted barley.

Biggs went from there to produce his Tudor Ale recipe, which he calls an old ale more from antique tradition than alcoholic strength. It includes chocolate malt and some smoked malt along with the barley, wheat, oats and hops.

I appreciated the full lineup of eight different beers that Biggs poured for me the day I visited, but the 1503 Tudor was my favorite, and it still tastes like it’s right from the brewery. There’s a bit of green apple in nose, but toasty and chocolately aromas, too, all of which carry through to the flavor. It’s a textbook example of how to make a mid-level strength beer with plenty of flavor.

The European Ryder Cuppers might like this one, but I have my doubts about the American lads, who are more likely to be swilling lite beers, assuming their religiosity permits drinking.

Richard Arnold would surely have approved.  Wordsworth and Turner would probably simply be irked that the brewery wasn’t around 216 years old.

Name: 1503 Tudor Ale
Brewer: Kingstone Brewery, Tintern, Wales
Style: Old ale
ABV: 4.8%
Availability: Southern Wales, London, Surrey, Bath, Bristol
For More Information: kingstonebrewery.co.uk

Tintern Abbey

My schedule fit this indolent mood like a velvet glove. I’d been invited out to sample the pleasures of CordeValle, a Rosewood Resort, and there turned out to be quite a few.

I’d barely driven through the stylish gates when I was conveyed to the resort’s full-service Sense Spa for a two-hour treatment called the Gentleman’s Rejuvenation.

This was, hands-down (or hands-on, I suppose), the best massage treatment I have ever had. The first hour was spent in a wet room, complete with steam and a Vichy shower. Experiencing the latter is a little like being indulgently conveyed through a car wash, or taking a shower lying down. Either way, it feels good.

A young masseuse then put me through the paces—an exfoliation with some pumice-like rub, a Vichy rinse, more exfoliation with loofahs, rinse, and then off to a dry room for a full-body, deep-tissue massage.

After two hours of this it was hard to tell whether I was rejuvenated or approaching coma. But there was daylight left, so I went over to the extensive practice area at the golf course and put time in in the bunker, around the green, sixty yards out, and on the range. I was very relaxed. [See a short take on this massage here.]

If I’d had any kinks left when I finally settled into my room, I could have wandered outside to the fenced-in wing of my villa and used the private hot tub and outdoor shower, or I could have lounged on the back patio and just taken in the not-inconsiderable views of the golf course, surrounded by the still-green hills of spring.

It was classy stuff. Not cheap, although there are always special packages to be found (beginning at the website).

The property is part of the Dallas-based Rosewood company, established in 1979. CordeValle opened 20 years later, and has always had an intimate, rural, yet upscale emphasis on wine and fine dining. The added attraction is that CordeValle has vines right on the property; home sites bordering the golf course each have about two acres of grapes.

Clos LaChance

The homes are removed enough from the course that there is little chance a Titleist will wind up in the crusher, but the grapes will eventually be harvested and used by the adjacent vineyard and winery, Clos LaChance.

Indeed, CordeValle’s initial permitting process required that part of the land be utilized as vineyards, and the relationship with Clos LaChance developed. While separate entities, the resort and vineyard are a tasty blend. A studious moment with the label of the in-room wine bottle awaiting guests checking in reveals it’s CordeValle Cuvée, estate-bottled by Clos LaChance.

The winery overlooks the sixth green of the course, and my last evening at CordeValle coincided nicely with a Spring Release Wine Dinner at Clos LaChance, the wines paired nicely with a seafood menu. It was pleasing to sip a sparkling wine on the Italianate terrace before the meal, contemplating my sins of the previous two days, egregiously perpetrated on the par-5 hole.

Players will usually find (and can always request) that impromptu wine tastings break out on the seventh tee during a round. It’s a sophisticated touch, though obviously a debatable game improvement strategy.

Clos LaChance will be the official winery of this year’s Frys.com Open October 14-17, since the PGA Tour Fall Series tournament will be played at CordeValle.

All this said, it will come as no surprise here to realize I’m more a fan of the barley than the grape, and the beer selection could be a little more capacious. But there’s always a decent Sierra Nevada available, or a bottle of Chimay Bleu, one of the finest Belgian Trappist ales going. Pilsner Urquell is a constant on tap, and other beers rotate bimonthly through another handle.

Playing Through the Foothills

It’s always nice to play an unfamiliar course twice to get a better feel for it. I meant to play CordeValle once from the 6,703-yard tees and once from the 6,096-yard tees, but on the second day I was paired with a twosome playing from the longer tees, so who was I to hold up progress?

As I soon enough discovered, Robert Trent Jones Jr. has fashioned a visually splendid layout that is sneaky tough. It looks wide open, but shots that stray from the fairway can dribble into the proverbial meandering creek, seemingly coursing throughout the property just to gobble up balls.

If not the creek, then patches of dense grasses or groves of sycamores and live oaks suffice. My scorecards are pockmarked with notations about lost balls and penalty strokes. My first day I ran out of ammo, exploding from a bunker behind the eighteenth green directly into the pond fronting the green. No more balls, game over.

In spite of my travails, I loved the course, which shot right up the best-in-state rankings since opening. (It’s currently number 7 on Golfweek’s Best-in-state list for California public access courses, after such stiff competition as Pebble Beach, Spyglass Hill and Pasatiempo, but ahead of Torrey Pines South, the Links at Spanish Bay and others.)

I enjoyed the look, strategy and variety of the rounds. Though rated 73.4 with a slope of 136 from the green tees I played, the challenge is usually self-evident, except when some off-kilter tee balls set up blind second shots.

The mixed bag of yardages keeps the brain working on the tee, instead of blandly reaching for the driver on all the non-par-3s. But club selection can also be discussed with a caddy. CordeValle is eminently walkable, and the best way to take advantage of this is through the caddy program. The resort contracts with the company that trains loopers for resorts nationwide (like Pinehurst) or, indeed, internationally (like Doonbeg in Ireland), so they’re well-versed with the terrain.

And the local knowledge is particularly helpful on the greens, where more adventures await at CordeValle—they have plenty of movement in them, and are cut to roll fast. Beginning with a good read is a strong point in favor of the caddy program.

But so is the ability to just enjoy the walk unencumbered by one’s bag, while taking in that strange and curious air.

Return to Turnberry 5: May 14, 2008

Even without the “Golf With a Hangover” program, most of us wobbled over to the Colin Montgomerie Links Golf Academy in the morning for a few tutorials, practicing some shots in the excellent short game area, as well as attempting links golf knockdown shots.

In truth, the knockdown shot hasn’t really been required–the weather has been beautiful and the wild relatively mild.

I played today with old friend Jeff Wallach on the Kintrye course, pitted against Euro captain Pete Simmons and Kevin Ferrie (left to right below). Neither the Englishman nor the Scotsman, unfortunately, showed any ill effects from last night’s dissipation. And while Jeff and I were driving the ball well, neither of us could finish off holes with any great aplomb. We each won or halved our share, but our share wasn’t big enough.

Bust of Robbie Burns at Souter Johnnie’s Inn

Though teammates Emmon Lynch and Josh Sens were prevailing in their match, the rest of the North American squad was faltering, and at the end of the day we’d received a fair pasting. The record shows that the Euros took the Ailsa Cup by a 5-3 margin. Too bad, although no one seemed completely crushed by it, nor were the Europeans crowing unduly. (At least, I haven’t received any such reports; I had to miss the next day’s round at Prestwick and the official awards dinner that night.)

But this evening we ate at Souter Johnnie’s Inn, a thatched pub and restaurant on the site of the school Robert Burns attended. It seemed only fitting, as we pondered some of the lessons that will be meted out on the Ailsa Course at next year’s Open Championship.

Beyond that, we simply waxed poetic:

And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere!

And gie’s a hand o’ thine!

And we’ll tak’ a right guid-willie waught,

For auld lang syne.

Related Posts: TAP Beer of the Week: Ailsa Amber Ale
TAP Beer of the Week: Cup O’ Kyndnes

Return to Turnberry 4: May 13, 2008

The first round of the Ailsa Cup matches, over the eponymous course, ended in a two-two split–no blood. Team captain Tom Mackin (left) and I fought well in our match against Alistair Nicol and Jonathan Ashworth, but faltered on the last two holes to lose two down.

It was difficult to get too upset about this, since we were, after all, playing the Ailsa course. This was the second course I ever played in Scotland–the first being a jet lag round at Royal Troon back in 2004.

By the time I worked around a mild dogleg left at the fourth hole at the Ailsa course, aiming at a green nestled seemingly on its own planet–a world of wild grasses waving serenely in a briny seaside breeze, all sound muted, the distant target beckoning seductively, almost illuminated–I was a hostage to its charms.

And that was before I came to the money holes, the eighth and ninth that run right along the sea in full view (when it’s in view) of the Ailsa Craig, a rocky shoreline, the totemic lighthouse, and the ruins of Bruce’s Castle, as in Robert the Bruce, Scottish King from 1306-1329.

The pros will play the course at 7,211 yards in 2009, about 250 yards longer than 1994, and with a score of new bunkers.

We played the more sensible medal tees at 6,493 yards, but after hiking miles a day for four days, the old bones appreciated being worked over in a massage at the Spa at Turnberry, just one of the many amenities that draw visitors here. For the relentless golfer there is a practice green right in front of the hotel, and further down at its base an 18-hole pitch and putt course.

The non-golfer need merely head to the Outdoor Activity Centre to set up salmon or trout fishing, horse-riding on the beach, off-roading by 4×4 or bike, archery, falconry, clay target shooting or hill walking.

Jonathan Ashworth (left) and I at our kilted best

The massage may have put me into too relaxed a mood prior to grappling with the dress code for the night’s gala Scottish Dinner—full kilts for both teams. Luckily, we were given an instruction sheet: “The easiest order in which to dress, is to start with your socks…” and taking us right through the right way to hang the sporran, where to slip the sgian dubh, how to lace the ghillie brogues.

What the instruction sheet made no mention of was the under-the-kilt question, which naturally, well, arose frequently. The two kilted bellmen I had spoken to in the hotel lobby were of somewhat different minds, one saying it was largely left to “personal choice,” the other suggesting that there was simply no debate, and that one was duty bound to go commando.

I felt duty bound to wear the Black Watch tartan to honor my Campbell heritage, and I cut a fine Celtic figure if I do say. The night fairly dripped with plaid, as a bagpiper led a procession into our dining room for Burns’ “Address to the Haggis”:

Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,/Great Chieftan o’ the Puddin-race! as recited by Drew Cochrane, an editor at the local Largs & Millport Weekly News by day, but a rousing Burnsian in the evening parlor. Cochrane reappeared toward the end of the meal for a full-tilt recitation of “Tam o’ Shanter,” albeit seasoned with a few anachronistic jokes.

Our jokes were growing more rancid by the minute, more than one about fondling our sporrans, so a full-blown bagpiping band marched up to the front of the hotel in timely fashion, to Beat the Retreat. The band played the tunes of glory with enough fervor to cause one Scotsman to remark, “That would bring a tear to a glass eye.”

There were numerous glasses being passed around at our dinner, to be sure, so that Scotsman Kevin Ferrie asked the pertinent question: “Does the Academy actually have a ‘Golf With a Hangover’ program?”

Drew Cochrane doing a spirited recitation of Burns' “Tam o’ Shanter”

>>Return to Turnberry 5

Return to Turnberry 3: May 12, 2008

Two teammates, Hal Quinn and Steve Eubanks arrived last night, and we played a practice round this morning on the Kintyre course, and another in the afternoon–with later arriving teammate and our captain, Tom Mackin–on the Arran course.

The day sadly revealed that if the team had to rely on my apparent skills, we could all go home now.

There are higher hopes for next year’s 138^th Open Championship, the fourth that will be held at Turnberry (on the Ailsa Course). Each of the previous three were considered thrillers, particularly the first.

After the Duel in the Sun

The 1977 Open Championship has legendarily become known as The Duel in the Sun, thanks in part to the largely benign weather conditions, but more due to the epic battle between Tom Watson and Jack Nicklaus, the match played like a twenty-round boxing match, each man refusing to stay down. Indeed, the tournament came down to the last shot, with Watson prevailing by a stroke and setting an Open record for the lowest aggregate score, 268.

The golfing prowess of the pair was such that the third place player, Hubie Green, was ten strokes back of Nicklaus, causing him to utter the immortal line, “I won the tournament I played. They were playing in something else.”

Greg Norman in the 1986 Open

Competitors in 1986 must have thought they were playing a different course from 1977. The balmy weather conditions then were replaced by a cold and raging wind in the first round. One player, Ian Woosnam, shot an even par 70. The other 152 players finished the day 1,251 stokes over.

Alistair Nicol, whom I’m playing against tomorrow, wrote about the 1986 Open thusly: “When the golfing circus came to Turnberry in 1986 they found the most perfectly manicured course in recent Open history, probably the best-ever in fact. The rough, however, was ferocious and far too many players, it seemed to me, were at least three down as they stood on the first tee.”

Norman celebrates in appropriate style

The second day’s weather was slightly better. Greg Norman, near the head of the pack with a 74 after day one, was much better. He tied the record for the lowest round in an Open Championship with a blistering 63 and a two-stroke lead overall. (The mark had been set by Mark Hayes in his second round at Turnberry in 1977.)

Though his lead fell to one stoke after the third round, Norman never relinquished it, and waltzed to a five-shot victory on Sunday for his first major.

In 1994 another down-to-the-wire match was played in mostly fine weather, and after two rounds the leader was none other than Watson. But he faltered in the final round, which began with about a dozen players still in the hunt.

Nick Price with the Claret Jug

As the day developed, the Championship looked to be heading Jesper Parnevik’s way. He arrived at the final hole with a three-stroke lead, but left with a two-stroke margin after a bogey.

By then, only Nick Price had managed to stay within sight of Parnevik (literally, in the group behind). Price birdied the sixteenth, and then managed to reach the par-5 seventeenth in two, although forty to fifty feet away, facing a downhill, curling putt. It dropped for an improbable eagle, Price made a wild leap into the air, and when he landed he had a one-stroke lead. A par at the last put the claret jug into his hands.

Price matched Watson’s 1977 score of 268, although Norman had set a new record for low aggregate the year before at Royal St. George’s, 267.

Turnberry’s turn in the Open rota was put into abeyance after the 1994 Championship until the roads to the resort could be improved upon, and that’s been done with the construction of the M77.

Having warmed up some in recent years with the 2002 Women’s British Open (won by Karrie Webb) and some Senior British Open championships (Watson won in 2003 for some nice symmetry, and Loren Roberts in 2006), the stage is as well set for 2009 as it is for tomorrow’s opening tilt of the Ailsa Cup Match.

>>Return to Turnberry 4

Return to Turnberry 2: May 11, 2008

Coat of Arms of the Marquess of Ailsa

On his Turnberry estate, the Marquess of Ailsa, a former Captain at Prestwick Golf Club (home of the first Open Championship in 1860), had the Royal Troon professional Willie Fernie design a layout that opened for play in 1901.

The Marquess soon agreed to a take-over by the Glasgow and South Western Railway, which led to the construction of the resort hotel in 1906 and a long history of competitions at Turnberry. But the two courses on the site, the Ailsa and the Arran, were pressed into service as an airfield in both world wars.

The Ailsa course reemerged in 1951, designed by P. Mackenzie Ross. Donald Steel redesigned the Arran course, which opened in 2001 rechristened as the Kintyre Course (which I played today). A year later a new par 4 and par 3 Arran course opened as part of the onsite Colin Montgomerie Links Golf Academy.

I wandered over to the Academy in the morning to try and iron out, so to speak, my sideways problem. It didn’t help, and I approached the first tee with trepidation, since the Kintyre course imposes difficulties the Ailsa course is less prone to—more narrow fairways and more profuse gorse, which gobbles up offline shots with prickly efficiency.

The gorse, an evergreen shrub, is in full yellow flower, redolent of coconut. The blossoms will fade by June, but the toothy bush will remain, and the abundance of it on the Kintyre Course makes for many a daunting tee shot. Hit one into the gorse, and you might as well hit one into a lake, except the penalty is stroke and distance.

The yellow gorse bushes are best appreciated at a distance at Turnberry

The rough on the Kintyre Course is deep and penal, too. I nestled many a ball into it today, and getting it out was akin to another penalty shot. And first, of course, the ball had to be found. Luckily, I was playing with a 16-year-old named Chris Todd from the Northern Ireland town of Green Island, outside of Belfast.

Chris, aside from being a fine player, had a keen eye for following wayward shots, and kept me from losing a single ball all day, despite the (only occasional) odd shank or pulled drive.

Chris Todd on the Kintyre Course

Our playing mates were Tom and Margaret McCoy from Newcastle West, members of Ballybunion. So for me, it was an Irish day in Scotland. They told me the hotel guest green fees were £140 for the Ailsa Course, £80 for the Kintyre.

We had a grand time on a lovely day, even if the prevailing haze again cloaked the Ailsa Craig, and suggested the old line, “If you can’t see Ailsa Craig, it’s raining. If you can see it, it’s about to rain.”

To be honest, my last three trips to Scotland have been blessed with abundant sunshine, and I probably shouldn’t jinx it by mentioning it. But it looks like the days ahead will be sunny and clear as well, so the old expression that, “If there’s nae wind and nae rain it’s nae golf,” is nae quite holding true so far. Wind there has been. Of rain, nae a drop.

>>Return to Turnberry 3

God's view of Turnberry

[I first posted the next five entries on Turnberry on my old blog site, Three Guys Golf, exactly two years ago. As the three guys retired that site I saw no harm in reviving the material here; it's dated only in a specific, not general sense. For that reason I’ve left the original dates in place. There were big doings there at the 2009 Open Championship, and I refer to these in another post here.]

Robbie Burns

I’m in Robbie Burns territory, the birthplace of Scotland’s national bard just up the road in the town of Alloway. Burns will get his due in a few nights’ time, but I can find no evidence that he ever actually played golf, or gowff, despite these lines, perfectly descriptive of the game:

The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men/Gang aft agley,/an’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,/For promis’d joy!

One of the world’s loveliest golf courses, the Ailsa Course at the Turnberry Resort here in southwest Scotland along the Ayrshire coast, is the site of the 2009 Open Championship–reason enough for a team of North American golf writers to try out the course by going head to head against a European squad.

Clearly this must leave one team joyful, celebrating with a wee dram, while the other writhes in grief and pain, drowning its sorrows with a wee dram.

But the competition is yet to come. Since I have to leave the event a day early, I arrived a day early, making the hour plus journey from Glasgow airport to Turnberry in the agreeable company of driver Ricky Fulton, formerly of the Royal Navy for 30 years, and hence up on his military history.

He pointed out, as we drove past the Fenwick Moor, that in May of 1941 Hitler’s second-in-command, Rudolph Hess, crash-landed a Messerschmitt in Fenwick Moor while on a bizarre personal crusade to sue for peace.

Otherwise, Fulton opined, “The only things that grow on Fenwick Moor are trees and sheep—or haggis on legs, as I like to call them.”

Fulton took me on the scenic route into Alloway, past Burns’ natal cottage, his parents’ gravestones, the Brig o’ Doon (literally, the bridge over the River Doon), which figures prominently in his long poem, “Tam o’ Shanter.”

Auld Brig o’ Doon

Fulton said, “Turnberry is actually closer to Northern Ireland than it is to Glasgow. It’s about 60 miles from Glasgow. But across the Firth of Clyde to Ireland is about 40 miles.”

On this hazy day, Ireland wasn’t visible at all, and neither was the totemic Ailsa Craig, a volcanic mound ten miles off the coast, but no scenic discount kicked in.

I played a jetlag round on the Ailsa course with John Butler from Houston, Texas, who told me he had paid something over £200 to play. With the current horrendous exchange rate, that’s more than $400 dollars, pricey for any round of golf.

John played fairly well for his first go-round in Scotland, despite some eye-opening and repetitive work in the revetted pot bunkers. But say he had shot 100—that would have been about $4 a stroke. (“Count the lost balls,” John said, “and some would have been $8 a stroke.”)

That’s some serious money, perhaps enough for a down payment on those new wood floors John’s wife has been yearning for. But he was well-armed with well-worn excuses: “It’s not every day you get to play a British Open course,” never mind that he was going to try to play the Old Course at St Andrews the next day. Another was, “I may never pass this way again.”

I think I’ve used that one myself. But, here I am again, having attended a similar event here back in 2004. That was my first time to golf in Scotland, and after a jet-lagged round at Royal Troon, the Ailsa course blew me away.

Ailsa Craig

It was no less agreeable today, although my decent start gradually unraveled. By the time we reached the fifteenth tee I was able to point out to John the faint outline of the Ailsa Craig, but I was now deep into a double bogey shankfest. I chalked it up to fatigue, thereby bypassing excessive grief and pain.

Turnberry has a good deal of intriguing history attached to it (more of which to come), much of it well-documented on the clubhouse walls. There are also display cases of antique clubs designed by Old Tom Morris and other ancient artisans of the game.

There was one club, circa 1905-1910, that caught my eye: the Plain faced anti-shank lofting mashie. It looked amazingly like the F2 wedge now on the market from Face Forward Technologies. La plus ça change…. I had an F2 once, and now I’m wondering why on earth I gave the club away without checking out its anti-shank lofting capabilities.

>>Return to Turnberry 2

It is fitting that a statue of the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy and Compassion overlooks the eighteenth hole of the Olazabal Course at the Mission Hills Golf Club in Shenzhen, China. Fitting, in that golfers can always use a little mercy. Fitting, too, in that the representation of Guanyin towers over 80 feet tall, and like everything else at Mission Hills, is outsized to stunning proportions.

Mission Hills, about a half-hour north of Hong Kong, entered the Guinness Book of World Records in 2004 as the world’s largest golf facility, when it had a mere ten courses. In 2007, two more opened.

The courses are named after greats of the golf world, several making their design debuts (Annika Sorenstram, David Duval, David Leadbetter), though most were done in collaboration with golf architects Lee Schmidt and Brian Curley out of Scottsdale.

The Annika Course

“There are eight courses at Pinehurst, build over 80 years,” said Curley. “We did ten in about nine years, a pace and a scale that still amazes me. We basically did five courses at once in one year, with 2,000 people working in two ten-hour shifts, 750 dump trucks moving more than 30 million cubic meters of dirt. Nothing like this has ever been done before.”

Building the pyramids may compare, the difference being that this time the workers were paid. Putting five Central Parks together would approximate the size of the more than 4,500-acre resort, and probably look about as patchwork. Though it’s all contiguous, there’s no real way to go directly from one side of the complex (emphasis on complex) to the other except through near-jungle. Consequently, there are three clubhouses, one on the eastern (Shenzhen) side to serve five courses, one in the middle section for two courses, and one on the western (Dongguan) side for five courses, and it takes about a half-hour to get from one to the other.

Dongguan Clubhouse

The newer Dongguan clubhouse perpetuates the Mission Hills trend toward the superlative: it’s the largest clubhouse in the world at 650,000 square feet, fronted by the beatific Guanyin. There are seven restaurants at the luxury resort, 51 tennis courts, three spa locations, two swimming pools and not one but three golf academies.

Mission Hills is the vision of David Chu, a Hong Kong native who largely raised his family in Toronto, but returned to invest in mainland China in 1979, making his fortune running the country’s largest corrugated packaging company. He opened Mission Hills in 1994 with the Jack Nicklaus-designed World Cup Course, promptly deemed one of the best in Asia, and which indeed hosted the World Cup of Golf in 1995.

(Mission Hills hosted the Omega World Cup of Golf again in 2007, and will continue to do so through 2018–curiously, not at the World Cup course, but the newer Olazabal Course.)

The Olazabal Course

According to Chu’s son, Ken, “We didn’t build 12 courses for the sake of setting a record. We built them because of demand.” The population within a two-hour driving distance of Mission Hills is close to 200 million, though few of them golf. But Chu estimated there were about three million golfers in the country, and only 376 courses. “Demand exceeds supply, and demand is growing.”

Hong Kong skyline

There’s little question that the next boom in golf is likely to be driven by China, and Mission Hills is the engine. Schmidt-Curley Design recently opened up an office in Haikou on Hainan Island in the South China Sea. “We have 20 projects in the works in China,” said Curley.

Mission Hills is essentially private, although play is open to the increasing number of international travelers who stay at the resort. There are 10,000 members, many from all parts of China, since the more temperate south permits play all year, unlike courses in Beijing and Shanghai. There are different levels of membership, but a full 12-course membership cost about $175,000, and there have been takers.

“People become addicted to golf,” said Ken Chu. “It’s the green opium.”

I have no idea what he meant; all I knew was that when I’d received an invitation to travel to China for a week I immediately began pacing the floor, wondering if I’d actually be able to play all 12 of the Mission Hill courses.

Golf Gone Wild

Two courses were quickly eliminated, the Olazabal Course being readied for the World Cup, and the Ernie Els Course closed for conditioning. Ten were left, but our golf dependent crew of journalists was doomed by a succession of seven-course lunches and interviews. Our routine was simple–up before six, a leisurely breakfast, eighteen holes, luncheon banquet, eighteen holes, dinner banquet, fall asleep on our feet, and the same routine the next day. The Annika Sorenstram and Vijay Singh courses fell by the wayside.

We sampled the myriad dining options this way, and some of us tucked in happily while others eyed the more jellied options with suspicion. As Eamon Lynch, an editor at GOLF Magazine, put it: “I love Chinese food–just not real Chinese food.”

We also met members of the Chu family and others involved in the running of Mission Hills, an impressive feat of human engineering. There are 7,000 employees at Mission Hills, all held to a high standard. “There’s no room for failure,” said Ken Chu, who appears to work as hard as anyone else, and even plays his golf at a dead run. He once clocked a round of 18 holes on the Singh Course in 56 minutes. (“But it’s the flattest and therefore quickest,” he said modestly.)

Teeing off on the Leadbetter Course

I was happy that my first swing in China landed in the fairway of the Leadbetter Course, since that was the one I was playing, though I was still adjusting to travel fatigue and the sheer impact of the Mission Hills logistics. There was a sense of incongruity, as well, pondering the opulent surroundings and lavish homes surrounding some of the courses (selling for up to $20 million) being in China at all.

The uniformed, red-clad ranks of caddies ranged at attention near the golf course staging areas seemed more of a piece, if still exotic. The 3,000-strong caddy force, all women in their mid-twenties, is a vital part of the golf experience. Each player is assigned a caddy who rides on the back of the golf cart and is indefatigable in her duties, if usually a little shaky with English. (Still better than my Chinese, of course, although I did learn “Kàn gíu!” for “Fore!”)

There’s nothing quite like it for a typical hacker hearing a quartet of young women murmuring and then breaking out into, “Oh, good shot!” after a booming drive. Hearing the one-word judgment, “Rough,” was another matter, since the rough at Mission Hills is more of a low and leafy vegetation that effectively swallows balls whole. “Rough” really meant, “You’re screwed; better drop and hit another.”

Aside from the caddies, once out on the courses themselves, it’s just golf, naturally, with some fecund tropical vegetation and snake warning signs added for spice. But the impressiveness of the achievement remains, because the courses themselves are of such distinct and agreeable character.

The Faldo Course

Brian Curley suggested that the Nick Faldo and Olazabal courses are emerging as favorites. The Greg Norman Course is one everyone wants to play (at least once) because the mandate was to build one of the toughest courses in Asia, and it is–beautiful, but death to high handicappers. I played it with the writer Ed Schmidt (no relation to Lee Schmidt), and we deemed it “Golf Gone Wild,” a judgment that could pertain to the entire enterprise.

I should say the golfer formerly known as Ed Schmidt; he now prefers the sobriquet Ace, since he put one in the cup on the par-3 thirteenth hole of the World Cup Course–while we were teeing off simultaneously, I might add, as we were running out of light that afternoon.  This is a story that begs to be (and will eventually be) gone into further.

Four of the courses are equipped for night golf, so we tackled the Jumbo Osaki Course well after sundown one evening, although I can’t remember if it was before or after our seven-course dinner banquet. We played a few holes of the Duval Course with executive director Tenniel Chu, and enjoyed some of the classic golf hole replicas on the par-3 course, the Zhang Lian Wei (named after China’s highest-ranked golfer, pronounced, oddly enough, like “John Elway”). Only the Pete Dye Course came in for brickbats from our group due to its extreme mounding and odd strategic choices.

According to forecasts by the World Tourism Organization, China should overtake France as the world’s top tourist destination by 2020. Mission Hills strongly suggests golf will play its part.

Indeed, while giving us a tour of the Olazabal Course, Andre Dupont, a Canadian lured out of retirement to oversee Mission Hills tournaments, could barely contain his own astonishment; “I’ve never seen anything like Mission Hills, because there is no place like this. It’s a city, really.”

And yet, Dupont said, there were plans afoot for Hainan Island that would make Mission Hills look puny. This amazing aside, alongside the news that the Schmidt-Curley team had opened that office on Hainan Island, soon fed the rumor that the Chus were planning a complex of 36 golf courses!

No one would remotely confirm this, but no one out and out denied it, either. Thirty-six golf courses in one place? Goddess of Mercy!

The Norman Course

I’ve updated general facts in this piece, but not the individual professional or personal relationships, which remain captured, frozen if you prefer, in 1997 time:

There are no trees in Iceland. Or so I had been led to believe, and for a golfer used to tramping deep into Vermont woods tracking errant shots, this was tantalizing. I knew the Iceland-is-green-Greenland-is-ice adage, and expected plenty of rolling grassland, along with volcanic rock and glacial tundra when I visited in mid-June, and so it was: Touching down in Keflavík and shuttling a half-hour or so to Iceland’s capital city of Reykjavík revealed little beyond craggy fields stubbled with lichen, flocks of purple lupines the only sign of spring color. On the hour flight north to Akureyri–more a glacier than puddle jumper–the view was black and white, lava and ice.

At home my golf game had been heading south. The cure, as I saw it, was to trek north for the two-day Arctic Open Golf Tournament in Akureyri. Then I stepped to the first tee and stroked a beauty that rocketed thirty yards into deep, craggy, lichen-stubbled rough.

The Icelandic word for “mulligan” is “mulligan,” but they aren’t allowed in tournaments. I slashed my second shot smartly out of the rough, and it promptly caromed off the only tree in Iceland. It was a spindly little thing, too. The dexterous lack of talent and bad luck required to hit it startled me so, I proceeded to play in a befuddled arctic haze, as though I’d gone all the way to the North Pole and was completely directionless. I shot a 61.

Two pints of Viking (the potent local lager) later, I managed a 49, just missing a hole-in-one on the par-3 eighteenth, meaning I would have won a Volkswagen Polo and fainted dead away. Instead I missed the putt, settled for par, a 110 in all, my worst round of the year.

But it was also my best round of the year. How could it have been otherwise?: It was clear, though in the 40′s, due to a breeze from the north, right off the very visible Eyjafjördur, the largest fjord in Iceland. Eyjafjördur opens into the Arctic Ocean; I was a mere sixty miles south of the Arctic Circle, launching golf shots into the crisp evening air, surrounded by snowy slate-colored mountains, sheep and horse farms, an immense sky with ever-shifting and roiling clouds. I had teed off in the bright sunlight of 8:24 p.m., and was still swatting golf balls during the flaming phenomenon of the midnight sun. It was intoxicating. Maybe that’s why I was putting so poorly.

My partners were Edgar and Catherine Peng of Zurich, Switzerland, and Hörður Þorleifsson, an Akureyri dentist. Hörður said, “Your English word ‘green’ sounds like the Icelandic, ‘jrin.’ Which means ‘joke.’” He may have been characterizing my stroke, but the greens were in tough shape, patchy and rock hard, following uncharacteristically heavy June snow.

During the summer solstice period, there are basically 24 hours of daylight in Iceland and no bedroom is without heavy curtains. This is a fortunate lighting arrangement in a country with a 16-week golf season at best, and but two months when the courses are in top shape. Iceland had just under 60 courses at the last imprecise count, some of them beauties, and I did my best–126 holes on four courses in seven days.

Almost half of Iceland’s 317,000 population lives southwest, in Reykjavík. (The entire island country is about the size of Virginia.) Akureyri is Iceland’s second largest urban center, inhabited by 17,000 hardy northern souls. The Akureyri Golf Club was founded in 1936 (second to the Reykjavík Golf Club, in 1935), but the present nines date from 1970 and 1981, meandering over a former farm with its canal-like ditches (skurdurs) still in play. This Venice of golf courses is a links-like layout, only 6,322 yards, but with plenty of topographical quirks, and opportunity for the unexpected: I was about to tee off on the fourth hole early one morning when a herd of Icelandic horses went thundering by.

Akureyri, Iceland

The Open is limited to handicaps of 24 for men, 28 for women, but no one appears to be checking closely. Though excellent golfers compete, the tournament also has a history of ineptitude clinging to it. In 1993, Louise Wakeman, a Connecticut grandmother, shot 164 on consecutive nights. She was so pleased, she painted a picture of the clubhouse–where the painting now hangs. In 1996, U.S. reporter Ron Rudolph, perhaps smarting from too many reindeer jokes, shot a 144 for one round. Jeff Hull, another U.S. writer, was worried he might better this disaster–or, at any rate, surpass it.

The Vikings never had it so good

We finished our round after 2 in the morning, then sipped restoratives and feasted on rumors. One had Jack Nicklaus further north, salmon fishing, something he often does in Iceland. But he wasn’t. Another was that Jeff Hull had shot a 110–for the first nine holes.

“That’s not possible,” said Edgar.

It almost was. Hull shot a 101, then scrambled for a 75 for the back nine, finishing at 176 and into the record books, at a mere 105 over par.

The fourteenth green or fifteenth tee, or the eighth tee, were the places to be for the most mesmerizing effects of midnight, with elevated views north. The sun appeared to dip right into the Eyjafjördur, flooding the valley with fiery hues and shadows that further complicated play. Club member Egill Áskelsson had once played with a six-foot six golfer: “At midnight, he cast a shadow from the fourteenth tee all the way to the green,” a 190-yard stretch.

The clubhouse became the crucible for tales of joy and woe. Many others had come close to nailing the Volkswagen Polo–their shots veered so far right they just missed hitting the car itself. Egill recalled the golfer who in a particularly frigid Open, had only 40 or 50 meters to go when he lost it: “He was so cold he used his putter all the way home. ‘What are you doing?’ I asked him. All he would say was: ‘I don’t care.’”

After the opening night rounds about 20 players took four clubs each and wandered out to the course for a wild and well-lubricated scramble that finally tumbled to a close about 6 a.m. I believe my team won, thanks to a birdie putt I made on the last hole, and that’s why someone bought me a hot dog. But I wouldn’t swear to any of it.

Golf Around the Clock All Night

The Pengs, Hörður and I decided to play together again in the second round, but we teed off earlier–at 4 p.m.–under threatening skies. We played through some rain, but mainly a warm southerly wind, howling so fiercely at times it was like hitting shots through water. On the eighth hole, I foozled a drive smack into the only other tree in Iceland.

But I had my moments. On the sixteenth hole, I whacked a nice drive, then landed a perfect 7-wood on the green, before holing out for par.

“You’re an artist,” Edgar said. A 50-44-94 was more to my norm. My golf demons had fled into Edgar, coming down with a cold and having his troubles. But he was philosophical: “I’m glad I don’t have to earn my living playing golf. Though maybe I could be a golf clown.”

Well after midnight I went out with golf writer Alex Miceli to tee it up some more, before we turned to spectating. Shortly after 5 a.m. the Twelfth Arctic Open was official: Örn Arnarson won with a 4-over-par total of 146. By then my clock was totally screwed up–I went to bed at 9 a.m., and rose at 4 p.m., barely in time for the closing cocktail party and dinner.

About a third of the 140 Open participants were from abroad, and the varied cultures mixed gleefully. The two rounds of golf were sandwiched between opening and closing banquets, worthy displays for the Icelandic love of long stories and traditional foods, such as the eye-opening pairing of hákarl, a cured shark meat that reeks of ammonia and tastes like the cure is incomplete, best washed down by an Icelandic schnapps called brennivín, fondly known as the black death. It rendered the general equation for the tournament sensible–show up for four days, and sleep about four hours. When the clubhouse emptied after the last night, it was to stream back to town for more revelry.

While reviving slightly in my hotel room I decided I could carouse anywhere. So I took a cab back out to the course at 3 a.m., just as Alex Miceli was arriving in another. We had a lot of Icelandic real estate all to ourselves. We played nine, and then assessed the situation: We were alone, it was too far to walk back to town, the clubhouse was locked so there was there was no way to get at a phone. We couldn’t sit there and watch the sun come up, because it had never gone down.

“I guess we might as well play some more golf,” I said.

“I think it’s the right thing to do,” said Alex.

It surely was, even though I started off with a 9 and never recovered, losing 800 króna, and owing Alex breakfast. That didn’t matter. What mattered was we roamed up and down the solitary fairways like the last two men on earth, doing what the last two men on earth would surely do. It was sunny and mild. Except for the cries of birds and our usual golfing bellows, it was silent as the dawn of time. It was about what could be expected of golfing in Iceland in the indeterminate morning: unearthly, and beautiful.

Viking Beer photo courtesy of creativecommons.org

I was sorry to hear in 2008 that, over ten years after I had visited it, the Oakhurst Links golf course was closing for general play and was up for sale. As my resurrected piece below indicates, my rounds at Oakhurst were about as refreshing as any golf endeavor I’d ever had.

But now I’m happy to report that the course itself is resurrected once again, and will open for play May 1, 2010, and will again host the National Hickory Championship, June 10-12. I was also happy to chat with Lewis Keller, Sr. in January, and to hear him sounding hale and hearty just weeks before his 87^th birthday. When in Florida in the winter he still plays daily, sporting about a 12 handicap. “I know I can shoot my age, anyway,” he said.

The property is still for sale, however, and at the under $4 million asking price, it seems like a steal to me. (There have been nibbles, so those interested should contact Keller directly at 304-536-1451.)

There didn’t seem to be much point in changing the particulars of this piece, so I haven’t. Obviously, Sam Snead is sadly no longer with us; but the spirit of it all is unchanged:

Visits to shrines don’t often lead to hilarity. But then the 1884 Oakhurst Links golf course is unlike other shrines. Oh, there are ghosts on the property, all right, but they’re pretty benign, watching over those engaged in sport, rather than some graver exchange.

True, my regular golf game–depending upon who is considering it–is not a laughing matter, but during the first round of my golfing pilgrimage to White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, I was constantly chortling, liberated from my usual frustrations.

But then I wasn’t playing my regular game. And I wasn’t playing on a typical course of the 20th Century. What I was doing was hiking up and down the rolling terrain of the first golf club established in the United States. I carried four hickory-shafted clubs common to the golfing gentleman of the late 1800′s. I approached the dirt teeing grounds, where I dipped my hand into a bucket of water, and then into another bucket of sand, so I could construct a small tee.

I would set my gutta-percha golf ball on the packed sand, survey the hole ahead, wondering whether my shot might scatter the herd of sheep grazing contentedly unaware on a hillside. I would waggle my driving club, let go a smooth, slow, gentlemanly stroke, and watch the gutty soar a full 150 yards, rolling another 15 in the high grass of the fairway, a mighty blast. And I would be chuckling the whole time, suffused with delight.

Playing at Oakhurst adds to what modern golf offers by subtracting much of its effluvium: There are no yardage markers to hunt down, no cart paths to contend with because there are no golf carts, or even golf bags. There are just the antique nine holes, the four clubs a player carries from hole to hole–five for those who want to take along a rutter club, which resembles an ice-cream scoop on the end of a stick–the rolling hills, and the livestock.

Local rules allow a free drop should a ball land in sheep castings. There’s also a permissible mulligan on the first tee. But should one’s ball be blocked by another on the green, tough luck, because the stymie rule is in effect. And should one’s ball break during play, the larger piece must be played until holed out.

Because the link to the game’s past is so direct and vibrant, and because it’s sheer folly to have great expectations of playing well with such antiquated equipment, a round at Oakhurst is a virtual elixir for the jaded. Golfers prone to take their game too seriously, the club throwers, the violently obscene, the merely boorish, should be sentenced to play here. They might rediscover the joy at the heart of golf.

Indeed, Oakhurst is golf’s field of dreams. In the few days I loitered around the course in July players arrived from Texas, Illinois, Missouri, California and Winnipeg, all with the sole intent of playing at Oakhurst. “It is a spiritual notion of sorts,” said Lewis Keller, the proprietor and presiding numen, though it wasn’t really necessary for him to build anything so people would come. The course was already here. It merely had to be reclaimed.

Men in Knickers

Two bits of history are useful. The first concerns Russell W. Montague, Harvard class of 1872, who also studied in England and golfed in Scotland. He practiced law in Boston, but moved to West Virginia for health reasons in about 1878. Why he picked the White Sulphur Springs property is a matter of mild dispute–he either had a royal land grant for the spread or, as family legend has it, his granddaughter closed her eyes and put her finger to a spot on the map. Either way, the Montague family moved in about 1878, constructing their house–the current clubhouse–in stages.

Montague paled around with a few Scottish expatriates, the brothers Roderick and Alexander McLeod, and George Grant. In 1884, Grant expressed his concern to the group that his nephew, Lionel Torrin, a crack golfer in the home country, was due for a six-week visit, a long stretch to go without swinging the sticks.

That set the group in motion to construct a course on Montague’s 35-acre spread, and even draw up club bylaws and tournament rules. When Torrin came and play was underway, golf was officially established in the United States, if still considered peculiar: it was not unusual for locals to take a trip to the country estate to watch these eccentrics engaged in their bizarre ritual. One story goes that after Montague sliced his tee shot on the first hole, he turned the air blue (some things never change) in earshot of a Virginia clergyman, R.N. Mason. The minister said the game looked like child’s play, so Montague handed him a club. One hundred strokes later, Mason holed out on the first green, and promptly gave up the sport forever.

Period dress isn't required at Oakhurst, but is part of the fun

But the Oakhurst gang was hooked, and in 1888 began what is now thought to be the first annual tournament, played on six successive Christmas days for the first golfing prize, the Oakhurst Challenge Medal. Inscribed with the ancient golfing motto “Far and Sure” and a crest of crossed golf sticks, the first was won by Montague himself.

Lewis Keller, now 75, also came to West Virginia for health reasons. Originally of Virginia but living in New York in 1958, where he was a scratch golfer at Winged Foot, Keller was feeling poorly, and decided a golfing trip south might help. He wound up playing some rounds with golf legend Sam Snead, still the professional emeritus at the famed Greenbrier Resort up the road a few miles. Keller did the rare thing–he won a bet from Snead. That would never do–Snead was unused to having another man’s hand in his pocket. He suggested that Keller move down to West Virginia: “We can play a lot of golf together.”

The two have been fast friends since, still playing on an almost weekly basis–Snead now with his hand comfortably in Keller’s pocket. More importantly, it was Snead who suggested Keller look over the Oakhurst property.

The late, great Sam Snead, left, with Lewis Keller at Oakhurst

“I met with Cary Montague, Russell’s son,” said Keller. “He was 82 then, nearly blind, and the first thing he asked me was, ‘Do you play golf?’ We had a deal in about 15 minutes, though restoring the course was not part of it. Still, he then took me by the hand, walked me outside and showed me where the first tee had been. He described the whole course to me, showed me what he called the finishing hole. It was fantastic, just standing there hearing all that. Then we shook hands, and that was that. ”

The Oakhurst club had disbanded by 1904, since Grant, the McLeod brothers and Torrin had returned to Scotland. Keller often thought about resurrecting the course–he and his sons had found old gutties on the property, and one of the original cups, still in the ground. But it wasn’t until 1992, at the urging of the late golf sportswriter Dick Taylor, and golf architect Bob Cupp, that the wheel began turning. Cupp, a chief designer for Jack Nicklaus before hanging out his own shingle in 1984, finally dove into the project all the way, gratis.

In early March of 1994 Cupp and Keller began walking the old pasture, using past writings, measurements, descriptions in an effort to find the archaic contours, bunkers, greens. It took all of eight days to reconstruct the course, since it was merely slightly buried. No dirt was moved, no bulldozers were required. “It’s right on the ground, right on the same earth Montague and the others played on,” said Keller.

After 82 of slumber, the old course awoke in October of 1994, the first tee shot launched by Sam Snead.

Real Golf

Keller is only the third owner of the property, and if he had had his way, the next and last would have been the United States Golf Association. But he and the USGA have never been able to work out an agreement. So the genial proprietor of the links is looking into creating a foundation that would maintain the property as a living museum of how golf used to be played.

Exhibits in the restored clubhouse offer further proof, and Martha Asbury serves as the resident docent, leading visitors on a brief tour and then supplying them with the necessary sticks and balls. The intrepid can even don the plus-fours and antique golfing caps available. Martha doesn’t play herself, but she hospitably leads the unwary to the elevated first tee, a blind shot over a small pond to a green a mere 226 yards away. She’s seen her share of foozled drives. My first hit was an impressive slice. I said to Martha, “It’s just like real golf.”

But then it occurred to me: This is–was–real golf. The course is a compact 2,235 yards, but by 1880 standards, it’s a considerable test. Montague and the rest were no wimps. I was thrilled to shoot a 45 in my first round, especially when I heard that Lee Trevino had shot a 47. But the next day I discovered the one anachronistic concession Cupp and Keller had made on the course–forward tees, and I had played from several the previous day. From the back tees, I shot a more unwieldy 53. Just like real golf.

There is no par on the course; holes are described as requiring one, two or three shots to reach, each one bound to be an adventure. The second and ninth fairways intersect, but the course is never so crowded that this really matters. Keller hasn’t advertised Oakhurst, but people come nonetheless, and are scheduled to tee off at a leisurely pace. (The course is not yet non-profit, merely no-profit: “Family-supported,” Keller notes with a grin.)

The grounds crew

I never had to contend with sheep castings or split gutties, but I did manage to lose a ball right in the middle of the fairway, not that hard to do. The grass is cut to about one and 7/8″, compared to the Greenbrier courses, manicured to 1/2″ to 5/8″. The 35 sheep do their part, but according to course superintendent–and shepherd–Mark Waid, he does have to mow from time to time: “We’d need a herd of a 100 to do the course solely by natural grazing–and a way to keep them in the fairways.” The greens are cut to 3/8″ (Greenbrier–5/32″ or shorter), meaning a putt can be rammed pretty firmly.

The view from the fourth green and elevated fifth tee is majestic, with the entire course spread out in its deep green glory, and the swelling Alleghenies in the distance. Hard by is an old graveyard where Keller and Cupp have toyed with the idea of being buried, which would only increase the spiritual feel of the place.

I’m a skeptic in these matters, but I felt a decided presence near the seventh hole when I was the sole player on the grounds one late afternoon. I wasn’t playing well, so I’d stopped keeping score. With the heat cooling, the colors warming, the course was peaceful, silent. I’d hooked a driving iron shot into some brush. Lucky to find the ball, I was still in a pickle, in a deep tangle without much room to swing. But I picked up my pitching iron, managed to punch the gutty right out of trouble and rolled it onto the green. I swear I heard a murmuring that sounded like, “Well struck, lad,” in an admiring Scottish burr. And I had to agree.