“It had only taken a few holes for Gene Littler to learn Pine Valley’s universal rule: A good shot is safe, a great shot is rewarded handsomely and a bad shot is punished like nowhere else in the world.”
A Bandon Surprise, Just for Ewes
Mike Keiser’s signature resort may never have existed without the pen of prolific children’s book and greeting card author Sandra Boynton.
“Boynton traveled to New York City during the summer of 1974, wholly uninterested in changing the history of golf. Sustainable employment was a more immediate concern. But even then, she knew the game.”
Because You Can
As this California mission shows, the best golf adventures often don’t make perfect sense.
“I expected it to be hot. It was a golf course called Furnace Creek, located in Death Valley. But 101 degrees at 5 a.m.?”
The Man Riding Clouds
Peter Beames has brushed shoulders with legends, taught all over the world, experienced homelessness and somehow keeps happily floating along.
“Only golf creates characters like Peter Beames. But only golf (or maybe some religions, too; same difference) creates the sort of community that would keep a Peter Beames alive all these years.”
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American Safari
The Sand Hills became a second golf home after one blind trip turned into years of adventure on the plains.
“Club literature states, ‘The Sand Hills golf course is lacking trees, lakes, fountains, waterfalls, hanging tee signs and adjacent home sites. If one believes those elements are requisites for quality, this golf course is deficient.’”
“He had amassed so many that he could lose a ball every hole for the rest of his life and never run out. Just once, just today, could he have not looked for balls?”
The Inexhaustible Variety of Life
A walk among the massive boats, fast cars, pitched fairways, facts and fictions of White Bear Yacht Club, potential birthplace of the great American novel
“There was a chance—maybe a too-romantic notion, but perhaps not—that …somewhere here at White Bear, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s imagination may have met Jay Gatsby for the first time.”
We Need to Talk About Your White Belt
The surprising history and broader impact of golf’s most debated fashion choice.
“Anything a golfer wears is going to make them look like an asshole to somebody.”
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The Wake-Up Call
One man’s winding path from white-collar criminal to architect of Aspen Golf Club’s bustling junior golf program
“At its peak, Boyd’s program was renting about 14 buses every summer. He would drive one up and down the Roaring Fork Valley himself, picking up any boys and girls in the towns south of Aspen who wanted to participate.”
This Ain’t Pebble Beach, Son
Celebrating when muni life finally, briefly, got its Hollywood closeup
“So often—too often—movies and television portray golf solely through a private-club lens as either an aspirational ideal or a comical waste of time.”
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“My joy is in the walks and the chuckles, the cigars and the well-struck 8-irons. The old me walking off that green in Arizona would have never believed that today I’m more invested in my playing partners’ numbers than my own”
