The Only Real Difference Was The Scenery

A lot of private golf courses are open to outside play, and the more you involve yourself with reciprocity the easier it is to guess what courses will let you out. As you get better at guessing, courses start to be divided into tiers, or at least into binaries, obtainable and unobtainable. In the upper […]

The Stroke Dome

Summer, 2007. I had spent the last two semesters studying abroad in Vietnam and wondering what exactly I wanted to do with my life. In hindsight, the hard-fought answer that I arrived at, live in the mountains and work at a golf course, is a stunning example of both the stunning mental clarity and the […]

Brooksy Splish Splash

With points hacking fully in the mainstream, loopholes close as soon as they’re discovered. I am loathed to think that I’m outsmarting the good people at Hilton, and I’m scared to share specifics because I’ve got a really good thing going, but with the right combination of credit cards, there is a points hacking instance […]

Inclusivity and Green Grass

My biggest hobby, if you can call it that, is leveraging my golf memberships and my connections to explore coveted and celebrated golf course architecture. If you have the stomach for this type of networking, the private club experience, as it extends to accompanied and unaccompanied guests, is phenomenal. Of course, there are amazing public […]

Pilgrimage, Mecca…

Harvester>Landmand>Landmand>Lost Rail>Omaha Country Club. Three days, 90 holes. No bullshit here, this, or some iteration of this, is the best thing going in golf right now. I conceived of the trip when they announced the construction of Landmand, and hashing it out on Twitter, the most consistent feedback I got was, “You’d better know someone […]

Folding It Up

Being a father is the most rewarding experience of my life, but no one told me how much time and energy I would have to devote to parenting. I recently read a romance novel where a woman spent her college years in love with and hopelessly devoted to a college-age sociopath. This sociopath went to […]

Upgrading a National Membership

I don’t know much about wine, but I know enough to look at a bottle and identify it as the one I ordered. Or I thought I did until the waiter poured some for me to taste, and it was red. Typically I would let this slide, but here we had splurged on a nice […]

The Worst Course I’ve Ever Played

In June, even in early June, Baton Rouge is a fucking furnace. I first felt the oppressive heat on the short walk from the overly airconditioned airport to my overly airconditioned Uber. “This can’t be right,” I thought to myself as I quick-stepped through what had to be hell. The Uber driver did nothing to […]

Colorado Clubcorp Courses Ranked

1. The Sonenalp ClubThis course is right across I-70 from Country Club of the Rockies, where for some reason, Jack Nicklaus put a paint by numbers links offering on the floor of the Vail Valley. Nicklaus knows links, and in a vacuum, you can do much worse than CCR, but with traffic, it’s threeish hours […]

On The Search for a Private Club

In fourth grade, I was 4’11” and 155 lbs. I’m not sure if it was the weight, or the start of puberty, but I’ll just come out and say it here: I struggled with body odor. I was aware that deodorant existed, but no one taught me how to use it. The fact that I […]