Nakoma Resort, California
If you’re a do-it-yourselfer, surely you understand how small, seemingly simple undertakings can mushroom into major projects. You decide to replace a few tiles in the shower and three months later you’ve remodeled your entire bathroom. When Dariel and Peggy Garner start a project, it tends to build to a grand scale. They couldn’t seem to find the […]
Golf Travel: Naples, Florida
By Mick Elliott With sun-soaked beaches, a kaleidoscope of golf resorts, upscale shopping, culture, nature excursions and a wealth of history, all served in a laid-back setting, Naples is a treasure. This sparkling city on Florida’s southwest coast has been busy shaking off its one-time image as a retirement enclave and is moving up […]
Royal St. David’s Golf Club, Wales
Beneath a 13th-century castle built to keep the Welsh in check, this rugged links has subjugated eager golfers for 110 years running. And now we plunge into a tract of truly wonderful duneland—tall and short sandhills, ridges and hillocks and hollows, rumpled fairways, hidden greens and long-legged rough, where skylarks breed and 12 varieties […]
Murcar Links Golf Club, Scotland
If you agree that a golf adventure doesn’t have to begin or end at the links themselves, the drive north along Scotland’s east coast to Murcar Links Golf Club will be part of the fun. True, you can fly into Aberdeen, Murcar’s home, but most American guests will be coming overland from St. Andrews, […]
Portmarnock Golf Club, Ireland
Apparently they couldn’t wait for Christmas. But who could blame them, given the sporting potential of the grounds that beckoned W.C. Pickeman and George Ross to the peninsula of Portmarnock, northeast of Dublin? On Christmas Eve 1893, Pickeman and Ross left the tiny village of Sutton, manned a rowboat and skulled across Howth Bay […]
Ballyneal Golf & Hunt Club Revisited
Back in 1979, Jim O’Neal and his older brother Rupert were mending fences on grazing land for the family’s cattle. Only 12 at the time, Jim was the family golfer, playing the Holyoke municipal course at every opportunity. Looking out across the unusual sand dunes known as chop hills, Jim proclaimed, “Rupert, you could […]
Belvedere Golf Club, Michigan
Simple pleasures and fond memories lie at the heart of one of American golf’s great Northern outposts. Wheel into the parking lot of Belvedere Golf Club and you know right away that this place is not into pretense or status. The modest white-clapboard clubhouse sits at the far end of the lot. At the other […]
Peachtree Golf Club, Georgia
In the golfing world, a smile that speaks of deep respect and awe emerges on the faces of everyone who hears the name “Bobby.” Even more than 25 years after his death in 1971, people still remember “Bobby” as the immortal Robert Tyre Jones Jr., and they do so with great appreciation for a […]
Friar’s Head
Among the American courses I’ve played in 50-plus years, those approaching perfection fit on a short list led by Cypress Point, where my stepfather was a member and where I first got pathologically serious about golf. Alongside it is the National Golf Links of America, my home course since college days. Pine Valley and […]
Grayhawk Golf Club, Arizona
In an area known for high-end experiences, Grayhawk Golf Club set the standard for country-club-for-a-day facilities when its first course, Talon, opened in 1994. Tom Fazio’s Raptor opened the following year. Together, they pack a one-two punch worthy of Muhammad Ali. So do the service and amenities, which rival those of a top club. Inside the grand stone […]