The flipping of the calendar is when Tour professionals seem least like the rest of us. Their goal-setting for the coming year is invariably focused on lofty objectives, like winning, making teams, retaining privileges, improving rankings. The closest I get to performance-based ambitions is a desire to reduce both balls lost and F-bombs dropped, a fruitless effort of several seasons now.
The dawn of 2020 offered a fresh reminder of how few of those who play for a living also play for pleasure, or for education. Zac Blair stood alone among his peers simply by mirroring what so many of us mortals do at this time of the season: compiling a wish list of courses yet unplayed. Blair’s brief included several courses featured in my own version, but the only thing any of our lists really share in common is their essential subjectivity. The lineup aspired to by a casual enthusiast may differ greatly from that of an architecture aficionado, but neither is inherently superior.
As a callow youth I spent a decade and a half sullying the world’s finest golf courses, each round completed helping move others higher up the target list. In recent years I’ve played less — apathy and inaccuracy are a debilitating combination — but the list still exists. Most of my roughly 15 rounds in 2019 came at courses I’d played before. I erased just one entry on the wish list, Garden City Golf Club, the Devereux Emmet-Walter Travis masterpiece just 25 miles east of Manhattan.
On January 1, I tweeted my top five wish list for U.S. golf courses (the final spot on any such docket should always feature a tie, hence my top five totals 11 courses):
1. Fishers Island
2. Chicago Golf Club
3. The Country Club
4. Somerset Hills
5. Eastward Ho, Myopia Hunt, The Creek Club, Mountain Lake, Crystal Downs, Maidstone, Yeamans Hall
A few Tweeters wondered how such a list could not include places like Pine Valley or Cypress Point, but such correspondents would also likely ask Pope Francis why he didn’t list the Vatican among places he’d most like to visit. More surprising was the number of strangers who kindly reached out with invitations to join them at these clubs, a delightful change from the usual social media offers inviting me to go forth and multiply.
An offer to play Seth Raynor’s Yeamans Hall near Charleston, South Carolina, came from Brian Schneider. He works with the eminent designer Tom Doak and has produced fine work, like a renovation at Hollywood G.C. in New Jersey. I first met Schneider over fish and chips in the tiny village of Bridport on the northern coast of Tasmania, Australia, in 2003. He was working on Barnbougle Dunes, the celebrated creation of Doak and Mike Clayton. We have seen each other just once in the ensuing years, but such is the circle of golf.
A desire to see the finished product is why Barnbougle Dunes is among the 11 courses that make my top five international targets.
1. Royal Melbourne
2. Royal St. George’s
3. Kingston Heath
4. Swinley Forest
5. Barnbougle Dunes, Lahinch, Morfontaine, Cape Wickham, Cruden Bay, Machrihanish, Royal Cinque Ports.
This list numbers several clubs that are difficult to get to and at least one that is difficult to get into, though I have yet to issue that s’il vous plaît request. Each earns a spot for distinct reasons.
I walked the beguilingly beautiful Royal Melbourne with Doak during that ’03 trip but we didn’t have time to play it — akin to ushering a ravenous man from a banquet having served only a feast for his eyes. It has been top of my wish list ever since.
Jack Nicklaus once famously remarked that Open Championship venues get worse the farther south one goes. Royal St. George’s sits on England’s southern coast, but my interest is less noble than comparative architectural merit. It will host golf’s oldest major for the 15th time in July and is the only course on the rota I’ve never played.
Swinley Forest is a club renowned for its eccentricities and a course celebrated for its brilliance, though barely 6,000 yards in length. Lahinch is the only top-tier Irish course I’ve not played. I’ve stood on the breathtaking first tee at Machrihanish, but that was at night. Reasons enough for all to feature on my list.
It’s both a blessing and a curse for golfers that our wish lists are never completed, that like an Irish enemies inventory it is perpetually replenished from a seemingly bottomless reservoir. For every Fishers Island or Royal Melbourne that is eliminated, an Ohoopee Match Club or Hirono stands ready to take its place. And that is an indispensable element of these dreams in draft form — that pleasure exists not only in striking through the names consummated but in the addition of those to be courted next.
Most all of us have more great courses remaining to be played than years in which to do it. All we can hope is that the wish list we draft a year from now measures progress against today’s.
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