Indholdsfortegnelse for SIP 2022 - Travel i Golf Digest

THERE ARE TWO TYPES of golfers: those who seek new courses and those who don’t. Global pandemics notwithstanding, inertia is what keeps people at home. Maybe a membership has been paid for and each round increases some divisor of utility. Maybe someone in your life keeps your clock and calendar with too sharp a pencil. Maybe you’ve found enough fascination in trying to replicate shots in a game where no two are ever quite alike. I’m so far gone that if quitting were the only other option, I’d gladly sign up to play the same two holes for the rest of my life in some Sisyphean nightmare. That’s actually a fun question to bat around with buddies: Which consecutive holes from your home course would you choose? I can almost…

NOW 103 YEARS OLD, PEBBLE Beach Golf Links is No. 1 on Golf Digest’s ranking of America’s 100 Greatest Public Courses and eighth overall among its 100 Greatest Courses list. Since 1972, Pebble Beach has been the site of six U.S. Opens, with winners that include Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson and Tiger Woods, as well as dozens of other big-time events. Barely 30 years old and ranked fourth among public courses and 24th overall, the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island saunters with its own swagger for golf lore. Before its first birthday, the Pete Dye creation was the site of the 1991 Ryder Cup, known as the “War by the Shore.” Since then, the Ocean Course has been the site of two unforgettable PGA Championships, with Rory McIlroy and Phil…

THE TROUBLE STARTS in the elevator after leaving my apartment. Apparently, it’s impossible for modern humans to see a golf-travel bag and not make a comment. You know, like, “I’m jealous! Where are you going?” How dare they? Then the Uber driver glares at me like I’m trying to bring an alligator into his Camry. Relax, chief. If it doesn’t fit in the trunk, I’ll put it in the front seat. Traveling with the sticks can be a headache, but it’s worth it compared to the alternative: not playing golf or, worse, playing with a rental set. There are perks, albeit small ones. For instance, I’m never tempted to take a carry-on, and I can pack two pairs of socks per day instead of one. Once you arrive at your…

ST. ANDREWS You like things the way they used to be; persimmon woods, windable watches and blood pudding for breakfast. You’d take a steamship to Scotland if you could find one. TPC LAS VEGAS You like to let it ride. Side bets? Bring’em on. Double or nothing? Now you’re talking. You’ll make it all back at the roulette table anyway. PEBBLE BEACH Three Michelin stars, 24K faucets, Harvard for the kids: You don’t always splurge, but when you do, you settle for nothing but the best of the best. PUNTA ESPADA You live La Vida Loca. You prefer your cocktails with little umbrellas in them. You tan instead of burn. But mostly you’re bringing the missus. BANDON DUNES Golf to you is spiritual, a higher power. It’s the poetry of…

THE BRITISH WRITER BERNARD Darwin once described “a perfect stretch of golfing country” as “broken and undulating with… sandhills on the left and a vast expanse of rushes on the right.” It was a sight, he wrote, “to make glad the heart of man, and at the same time to fill him with gloomy doubts as to whether he is quite good enough to play upon such a course.” The terrain Darwin writes of is, broadly, the links, those rather cold landscapes of hollows, sandhills, heather, fescues and gorse that occasionally arise in special places where the ocean cedes slivers of shore to golf. For several hundred years, players of the game knew nothing else; golf was played only in these conditions, across winding bumpy ground tossed hither and yon…

Two CLUBS, BUILT A QUARTER century apart, have become avatars of the modern destination club. Sand Hills Golf Club, designed by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw in 1995, resides in the seemingly endless Sandhills region of north-central Nebraska. What at first looked like a folly—a lone 18-hole private club without a single tree, hours from any sizable city, barely any facilities and no local pool of players to draw from—became an archetype. Golf romantics from east to west quickly made the long journey to sign on. The sophisticated Ohoopee Match Club, near Cobbtown in rural southeast Georgia, is the young contender. Designed by Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner in 2019, it’s more like Sand Hills 2.0, a next-generation take on Sand Hills’ rugged golf individualism but with a more refined…

WHEN THE ROYAL AND ANCIENT GOLF Club of St. Andrews first opened the doors to its new clubhouse in 1854, it was the first of its kind—a structure designed and built as a golf clubhouse, allowing players to store equipment, change clothes, socialize and eat and drink. Golf, of course, had by then a much deeper reach into history, having been played for well over 300 years, but the concept of a dedicated clubhouse was new in 1854. Before that, players made use of nearby taverns and social clubs, which had long functioned as de facto clubhouses. “It was typical, as it was at St. Andrews, to have social clubs next to a golf course,” says Richard Diedrich, the author of Legendary Golf Clubhouses of the U.S. and Great Britain.…

Over the years, I have developed some expertise in gaining access to a variety of the most exclusive and sought-after private clubs in the world. There are several ways you can follow my lead and do the same. ▶ Finding and meeting a member is the best way, of course, although sometimes this isn’t practical, particularly if the course is in another city or state. Playing in a charity event is another good option, as is leveraging the golf pro at your club to ask on your behalf. I have been able to access several excellent clubs by befriending the caddiemaster or greenskeeper, so keep an open mind about who can help you. In recent years, golf societies, which have been popular in the British Isles, have sprung up on…

MORGAN PURVIS HAD SOME FREE TIME ON his hands. The financial analyst from Aiken, S.C.—just across the border from Augusta, Ga.—had gone through the same micro-discectomy surgery on his back that put Tiger Woods on the shelf, and he wasn’t sure when he would be able to play again. ▶ “It was the first time in my life where I physically couldn’t do something,” says Purvis of the injury that came after years of playing golf and paddle tennis. “I wanted to set a goal for myself for what I’d do when I was back on my feet again. What could I do to celebrate that?” ▶ Laid up from the surgery, Purvis had been reading about his home course, Palmetto Golf Club, and how Augusta National designer Alister MacKenzie…

FEW THINGS WARM THE heart of a golf enthusiast more than a golf trip with buddies, especially one that is well-planned. If it has been a while since you have undertaken a buddies trip because of the pandemic, then your next one is even more important to get right—down to every last detail. In case you need a refresher on what goes into a successful buddies golf trip, here is a rundown, in no particular order, of 10 factors that a trip organizer should take into consideration in preparation for that special occasion. Who you invite is important A group of buddies could just as easily visit the world’s worst golf resort and have a blast as it could travel to Pebble Beach and be miserable. More than lodging, food,…

ONE PLACE RESIDES IN THE central section of a large state surrounded by agriculture, open space and small towns that have seen livelier days. The other is also located in the rural center of a large state, crossed with country roads, power lines and occasional single-story homes. One is a golf resort, hidden in a pocket of overgrown nature, developed in the image of Bandon Dunes. The other, cloaked by hundreds of acres of pine, was developed by the founders of Bandon Dunes. One is built over surprisingly varied ridges of sand and large dunes that not even locals suspect exist. The other… you guessed it. Streamsong, in south-central Florida, and Sand Valley, in Wisconsin, share considerable DNA. Each destination features multiple courses designed by marquee minimalist designers, including one…

RANKED 64TH ON AMERICA’S 100 Greatest Public Courses by Golf Digest, the Dunes Golf & Beach Club in Myrtle Beach is a 1948 Robert Trent Jones Sr. creation. Unforgettable is the 640-yard, par-5 13th “Waterloo” that doglegs 110 degrees to the right around alligator-strewn Lake Singleton. Drenched in Lowcountry charm, Caledonia Golf & Fish Club delights with a short, tight layout that’s replete with lakes, wetlands and fairways framed by live oaks. Ranked 85th among the 100 Greatest Public Courses, this 1994 design by Mike Strantz closes with a par 4 that edges the Waccamaw River, with a green backdropped by an antebellum clubhouse. More than 30 years after its debut, Shadow Creek in Las Vegas remains an oasis of pine trees, rolling hills, flowers and waterfalls hewn from a…

In the metaverse era, you can go anywhere without moving. So it is that Brian Curley is sitting in his workroom in Paradise Valley, Ariz., surveying the giant dunes that line the coastline of Quang Binh Province in north-central Vietnam. ▶ Curley’s travel horizons are narrower because of the pandemic, but the architect has not been underemployed of late. Today he is mulling the contours of his latest creation at FLC Quang Binh, a 6,000-acre site south of Dong Hoi that runs along a beach. ▶ Curley, a former Pete Dye acolyte who heads up the Schmidt-Curley architecture practice, has already designed two courses—Ocean Dunes and Forest Dunes—at the ambitious project. The plan is for eight more layouts, extending into the site’s vertiginous dunes. It is to those that Curley…