Travel

New South Wales Golf Club: Fourth Leg of Dr. MacKenzie’s Grand Slam

Dr. Alister MacKenzie was a civilian surgeon in the British military before turning to golf course architecture. He designed around 50 courses world-wide, with three immediately recognizable to most avid players: Augusta National, Cypress Point, and Royal Melbourne. A strong case can be made that the good doctor’s 1928-vintage New South Wales Golf Club rounds…

Cape Kidnappers in Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand

Ask avid golfers in the US for opinions about “dream golf trips” – you know, those bucket-list destinations dotted with bucket-list courses – and Scotland and Ireland will naturally be mentioned first. Beyond those iconic venues, it’s hard to predict responses. The savviest of sticks might surprise you by casting their covetous eyes southward –…

Sandals Emerald Bay Resort and Golf Course are out of this world

The water around Great Exuma Island in the Bahamas is one of the most recognizable landmarks to astronauts 249 miles overhead. The irradiant blue-green hues are unrivalled elsewhere on the plant, as tides rush in and out through shallow channels between Exuma’s 365 islands and cays. The ocean seems to glow, as if lit from…

Golf in the Midnight Sun at Iceland’s Brautarholt Golf Course

It was 9:30 p.m., June 21—Summer Solstice, 2019—when Gunnar Pálsson picked me up at Hotel Frón in Reykjavik. Soon joining us in the Brautarholt Golf Course shuttle were four test pilots from Phoenix and a couple from outside Toronto. We were all heading to the course to play a round of golf under Iceland’s never-setting…

Kingsmill Resort: Where American History and Golf History Converge

The final two holes on The River Course at Kingsmill Resort, outside of Williamsburg, Virgina, feature several historical markers. One of these describes how the first English settlers in North America landed near the escarpment above the wide James River that is now the elevated tee box of the par-3 17th hole. Those settlers moved…

Royal County Down: A Bucket-list Golf Experience

Imagine this: You’re playing golf. It is 38 degrees Fahrenheit. You are hitting off of a little plastic mat you’re carrying around with you. You are playing very, very badly. Yet, when you hole out on the 18th green, you can barely hold back tears because you’re so sad that the round is over. There…

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