Monthly Archives: January 2011

January 31, 2011 · 7:34 pm

Merion Tops Van Sickle Bucket List

SI senior writer Gary Van Sickle took an apologetic tone in a recent e-mail. “Forgot to give you my must-play list,” he wrote. Then he shared his list. Then he apologized again. “I’m sure I left out some big course I haven’t played yet, but this was right off the top of my head and, as you know, there isn’t much left up there.”

Castle Stuart 10th Tee

Castle Stuart: Come July, Eurotour will pay the piper.

He continued: “Colonial? I’ve walked it so many times, but I’m not sure if I’ve actually played it. There’s still eight states I haven’t played golf in, but I’m working on it. Amazingly, Kansas is one of them. Also the Dakotas and most of the Pacific northwest, except Washington.”

Gary drew up his list of “great courses I have yet to play” in response to my own bucket list of must-play tracks, which was, in turn, inspired by “Travelin’ Joe” Passov’s wish list on Golf.com. Gary, like Joe, has played more than a thousand golf courses and, like me, he prefers to change his shoes in the parking lot. That may explain why Gary hasn’t gotten invitations from the most exclusive clubs on his list.

Anyway, here’s Gary’s bucket list:

1. East Course, Merion Golf Club, Ardmore, Pa.  (“Covered my first U.S. Open there. David Graham beat George Burns.)

2. Bandon Dunes Golf Resort, Bandon, Ore. (“Haven’t been there yet.”)

3. Bandon Dunes Golf Resort, Bandon, Ore. (“The second course. Or is it the third?”)

4. Bandon Dunes Golf Resort, Bandon, Ore. (“Isn’t there one they sing about in kindergarten?”)

5. Sand Hills Golf Club, Mullen, Neb. (“Haven’t been there either.”)

6. Seminole Golf Club, Juno Beach, Fla. (“If Bob Ford is their pro in the winter, it’s got to be a good club. Hard to believe a course in Florida could be anything special, though. It’s freakin’ Florida.”)

7. National Golf Links of America, Southampton, N.Y.. (“Who doesn’t love windmills? They’re fantastic in miniature golf.”

8. Fishers Island Club, Fishers Island, N.Y. (“Not even sure where it is, but everybody raves about it. I suspect it’s like Tickle Me Elmo. Fantastic when nobody can get one. When the shelves are full of them, it’s just another toy.”)

9. Philadelphia Cricket Club, Philadelphia, Pa. (“Bamberger is a member there. Screw him.”)

10. The Camargo Club, Cincinnati, Ohio. (“Reminds me of my favorite knock-knock joke. Who’s there? ‘Argo.’ Argo who? ‘Arrr, go f— yourself.’”

“That’s my American list,” Gary wrote. “I could start talking about all the great courses I’ve missed in Scotland and Ireland, but there’s too many, and it’s just too sad to think about.” And finally, after thinking about it: “Castle Stuart!”

I have played only one of the courses on Gary’s list — Seminole — but four of his wannaplays are in my Top 50. This proves that courses can’t buy or bribe their way into my rankings.* It’s also a good test of Travelin’ Joe’s theory that a golf writer can shorten his bucket list by publishing a Ten-Courses-I-Need-to-Play column. (An invitation to  play Prairie Dunes has already fallen into Joe’s hopper. Can Cape Kidnappers be far behind?)

*Although I’m always willing to parse the Top 50 over a sandwich and 7up at the halfway house of any course in GOLF Magazine’s Top 100.

I, meanwhile, have heard nothing from Indian Army 9-Hole Golf Course (Ladakh) or any of the other courses on my own wish list, posted a couple of weeks ago. Is it too soon to write my Ten-Most-Overrated-Golf-Courses column?

Top 50 on TV: Nothing this week, but the European Tour has confirmed that Castle Stuart Golf Links of Inverness, Scotland, will the new venue for the Scottish Open. The Eurotour’s decision was almost certainly driven by two-year-old Castle Stuart’s Top-10 ranking in this space. In appreciation, the technical staff at Catch Basin has boosted Castle Stuart two rungs to No. 7, replacing Pebble Beach Golf Links as the world’s best cliffside course. The Cal Sci Algorithm will be jiggered to reflect the change.

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January 23, 2011 · 10:27 am

Askernish: Who Needs Winter Rules?

The key to a January golf trip in Scotland is flexibility. My original itinerary had me right off the plane at Glasgow and down the road to ancient Prestwick for a quick 18, followed on successive days by rounds at Askernish, Castle Stuart, Royal Dornoch, Nairn, Carnoustie, the Old Course at St. Andrews, Kingsbarns, Kinghorn, Crail, Musselburgh Links and Muirfield (same day), Turnberry, Western Gailes and Girvan — with 9 squeezed in at Maybole, if time allowed, on the way back to Glasgow. However, heavy snows across the country convinced me that I should alter my plans and spend the entire two weeks playing top-ranked Askernish Old.

Golfer on Askernish Old course

Postman Paddy Forbes leans into the wind at Askernish Old. (John Garrity)

“Is Askernish even playable?” an American friend asked in an e-mail. “I’ve heard that the Western Isles are brutalized by Atlantic gales this time of year. Plus, you’ve got what, four hours of daylight? And don’t they have cattle and sheep on the fairways?”

Re-reading his words after a fortnight of challenging but delectable golf, I have to laugh. First of all, I don’t think the wind ever got above 60 or 65 miles per hour while I played, and those were gusts, not sustained winds. Twenty or 25 mph was more the norm, and with the average midday temperature topping 40-degrees fahrenheit, four layers of clothing provided a nice balance between comfort and mobility. Squalls sweep in from the Atlantic with some frequency, but the local golfers have taught me how to squat with my back to the gale until the horizontal rain exhausts itself. That generally takes a few minutes, and it is common to see the sun pop out while you are collecting tee markers that have been uprooted and sent tumbling down a dune.

Askernish Old

Askernish Old is a dog-friendly course. (John Garrity)

Neither is the Hebridean day as short as my friend suggests. The sun appears over the hills a little after 9 a.m. and takes a languorous turn across the southern sky, never rising more than thirty-degrees above the horizon, before plunging into the Atlantic a little before four p.m. A four-ball venturing out at noon finishes at twilight, making for an enjoyable 500-yard stroll in the moonlight to the two-room clubhouse.

Askernish does accommodate more livestock than you’ll find on a typical American course, but I’ve never heard a visiting golfer complain because he was able to find his ball in the well-grazed rough. The greens are protected with single-strand fences that give the cattle a tiny shock when the batteries are connected. “They’re not hooked up at the moment, but it doesn’t matter,” one of Askernish’s 18 resident members told me last week. “The cows think they are!”

Fivesome at Askernish

Five members of the regular Friday nine-ball at Askernish. (John Garrity)

Another friend asked me if winter rules were in effect. No, they are not. The fairways at Askernish, an authentic links course, are as sound in January as they are in July, so there is no need to improve one’s lie. The roughs are easier to play from, thinned out as they are by dormancy and grazing. The one local rule of any consequence, involving naturally-applied fertilizers, had an R&A committeeman scouring his decisions book last week, looking for references to “manure” or “cow poop.”

“The rule at Askernish is simple,” club captain Donald MacInnes told him with a smile. “Pick up your ball, lick it, and drop it.”

Golfers at Twilight

Club captain Donald MacInnes drives the 18th by moonlight. (John Garrity)

Tee times are not a problem this time of year. On a given winter’s day, you might see a lone golfer striding up the par-5 sixth, parallel to the beach, with a wool cap pulled over his ears and no shadow in tow. On a god-given winter’s day, such as Friday afternoon was, you’ll encounter a four-ball sunning in the bowl of the multi-tiered 16th green (“Old Tom’s Pulpit”) while a sixsome, accompanied by frolicking dogs and darting lapwings, takes turns firing at the flag from cliff’s edge on the dogleg ninth (“Brochan”).

Askernish is not for everyone, I suppose. Maybe just for golfers.

Anyway, I’m heading home. If you’d like some help planning your own low-season Scottish golf tour, send me your e-mails. I’ll forward them to the proper tourist agencies. And if you don’t get an immediate response, be understanding. Their staff is probably wintering on the Costa del Sol.

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January 13, 2011 · 11:52 am

Courses I Need to Play, Part One

Inspired by “Travelin’ Joe” Passov, I’ve been trying to come up with my own wish list of “Courses I Need to Play.” The fact that I’m having trouble finding ten testifies to how lucky I’ve been over the years. I’ve played Mollymook. I’ve played Formby Ladies. I teed it up in the inaugural event at Medicine Hole. If my current bout with tendonitis were to end my golfing days, I’d have no cause for complaint.

But Joe is right, there are courses — Cypress Point and Pine Valley come to mind — so enticing that you would pay to play them. One of those courses, for me, is the Indian Army 9-Hole Golf Course outside Leh, Ladakh, on the Tibetan plateau. I stumbled upon Indian Army 25 years ago while covering a polo match in Leh. The course was a bit outside town on a dusty road that crossed a moonscape of boulders and rubble punctuated with Buddhist burial markers. A barbed wire fence and gun placements emphasized that it was a private course, but I couldn’t help but stare longingly at the crooked bamboo flagsticks impaled on gravel greens next to coffee-can holes. Not a blade of grass on the property, but, as Gary Player often said, “It’s the finest course of its kind I’ve ever seen.”

Ft. Meade Golf Clubhouse

Golf at Fort Meade: an unrealized dream? (John Garrity)

Even higher on my list, maybe at No. 1, is the Fort Meade City Mobile Home Park Golf Course in Fort Meade, Fla. Fort Meade has finished dead last among the world’s courses in every Top 50 survey, a record not likely to be broken. On the other hand, it is the best 9-hole, par-3, clay-greens course in the South. I’ve walked Ft. Meade on a couple of occasions, taking in the surrounding banyan trees and fire-ant sand hills, but I’ve never gotten the opportunity to play. Just once I’d like to stride up that final fairway with a club in my hand, crossing in front of the tee boxes for the previous eight holes, and stepping onto the profoundly round and flat ninth green, at the foot of the municipal water treatment plant.

Another not-to-miss track that I have toured without playing is the new Machrihanish Dunes course in Machrihanish, Scotland. While not exactly the black sheep of the Kintyre Peninsula, the Dunes course does have black sheep on the property, their job being to keep the marram grass on the dunes to a playable length. At 79 pounds per round in peak season, Machrihanish Dunes is the priciest layout on my must-play list, but I’ll claw back some of that by neglecting to leave any money in the honesty boxes of my other choices.

I’m also pining for the Papa Westray Golf Course in the Orkney Isles of Scotland. Although panned by one critic as “worse than Ronaldsay,” Papa Westray provides tourists with the opportunity to experience the world’s shortest scheduled flight, a less than two minute hop from Kirkwall. But first I have to experience the Lost City Golf Course of Sun City, South Africa — if only to play the famous 13th hole, which is fronted by a stone pit full of hissing crocodiles.

But that’s only five courses, isn’t it? (Seven, if I poach Cape Kidnappers and Hirono from Joe’s list.)

Well, I’ve got time to work on my list after dark — of which I’ve seen plenty this week, my four golf clubs having found their way to top-ranked Askernish Old in the Outer Hebrides. I’ll post my reflections on the world’s best golf course in a day or two, weather permitting.

Top 50 on TV: I’m on an island in the North Atlantic. Ask a friend or check your local listings.

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January 10, 2011 · 1:09 am

Scottish Golf Trip off to Frigid Start

It snows in Scotland? Nobody told me! Flying into Glasgow yesterday, I looked down on a rumpled, white blanket that could have been the Rockies. And when I collected my suitcase and four-club quiver at baggage claim, I noticed that there were no hulking golf-travel bags on the carrousel. Not many bags at all, for that matter. (Or travelers!) One young couple had skis. They were either just back from Switzerland or arriving from the Canary Islands and headed for the ski lifts at Carnoustie.

“Call Prestwick,” I told Gustov, my traveling secretary. “Cancel today’s round.”

I guess I should have talked to my old friend, Joe Passov, before signing up for my “Highlands and Islands Low-Season Golf Package.”  “Travelin’ Joe,” as he is known to the readers of GOLF Magazine and Golf.com, is the world’s foremost authority on golf travel, having played, by his own count, 1,423 courses — only half of which are within twenty miles of his home in Scottsdale, Ariz. A true globetrotter, Joe knows Scotland and Ireland like the back of his hand. He would have warned me about the ice and slush surrounding the Glasgow Marriott.

Speaking of Joe, he penned a Golf.com column last week called “Travelin’ Joe’s Wish List: 10 Courses I Need to Play.” Number 1 on his list was Pete Dye’s “Teeth of the Dog” course at Casa de Campo — which I have not played, either — and Number 10 was Friar’s Head, a Crenshaw-Coore design in Baiting Hollow, N.Y., which I only mention because I love the sound of “Baiting Hollow.”

The surprising thing about Joe’s list? It includes two courses that I have played: Seminole Golf Club in Juno Beach, Fla., currently No. 14 in the Top 50, and Prairie Dunes Golf Club in Hutchinson, Ks., No. 6. Here’s Joe on Seminole:

Perhaps the finest routing Donald Ross ever did, this ultra-exclusive Palm Beach-area enclave also features one of the greatest clubhouses in golf. Hogan used to practice here every day for a month leading up to the Masters. I’d just like to do it once.

Ha, ha, Joe! I have done it … once!

Here’s his take on Prairie Dunes:

All that’s missing is an ocean at this linksy-looking layout in landlocked Kansas, which played host to the 2002 U.S. Women’s Open (Juli Inkster) and the 2006 U.S. Senior Open (Allen Doyle). I question if the wind and rough make it unplayable for 10-handicaps.

Having covered both those tournaments for Sports Illustrated (and currently playing to a 10 handicap), I can assure Joe that my favorite mid-continental course is more than kind to second-tier golfers, thanks to fast, flawless greens that practically funnel the ball into the hole. But he’s right about the absent ocean. And it’ll take another thousand years of climate change to fix that.

Anyway, since I can’t play golf this afternoon, I think I’ll sit down with a notepad and a bottle of Diet Irn-Bru and try to compile my own Top-10 list of courses that have eluded my grasp. I’ll post that list from the next stop on my winter golf itinerary: top-ranked Askernish.

Top 50 on TV: Nothing this week, but Jonathan Byrd bagged his second consecutive PGA Tour win at last week’s Hyundai Tournament of Champions, held on Maui’s Plantation Course at Kapalua, No. 34. The AP report of his win makes no mention of snow.

 

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