BANDON, OREGON | We stood on the first tee as we have on other golf journeys across the country and across the ocean. Friends from Massachusetts and Missouri and Georgia with the promise of 141 holes ahead of us over the next four days.
With our bags strapped to Rikshas, the starter’s familiar greeting in our ears and the first peg placed in the turf on the original Bandon Dunes course, our Boston rep looked around at the painted yellow horizon of blooming gorse that separated the sweeping fairways and dunes from the blue-gray Pacific Ocean and sky and said what was in all our hearts.
“Feels like home.”
There are places in this big golf world where that feeling of “home” gets into our souls. For many it’s a club where everyone knows your name and you come to know every creak in the clubhouse floors and break in the greens. Or maybe it’s the local 19th hole or pub where you rehash the gory details of the day’s round and watch the pros play on TVs above the bar.
(From right) Adam Sachs, Todd Graff, Mark Schlabach and Scott Michaux enjoy the golf and scenery on the sixth tee at Sheep Ranch.
Scott michaux, GGP
If you’re lucky enough, there are spots far away from our actual homes where that sense of place becomes so familiar that every time you show up it feels like you never left.
GGP colleague Ron Green Jr. feels that way in the Village of Pinehurst, where – among countless rounds played and nights stayed over a lifetime – his father’s retirement party took place in the Pine Crest Inn and his daughter’s wedding will transpire in the clubhouse overlooking the No. 2 course. “It’s a feeling, a state of mind,” Green says. “A place where the tagline ‘it’s a beautiful day in Pinehurst’ fits the way the place makes you feel.”
To our John Steinbreder, the history, atmosphere, courses, pubs and people he’s gotten to know in more than 25 years of visiting St Andrews have made it his special place among the many destinations he’s collected. “It is more than the ‘Home of Golf’ to me,” Steiny says. “It’s my home in golf.”
Our John Hopkins feels most at home on any practice ground, even away from his Huntercombe Golf Club, where Ian Fleming was a member and James Bond claimed a 9 handicap in his match with Goldfinger. “I can work things out without embarrassing myself on the course,” says Hoppy of his affinity for practice ranges.
For me, that home far away from home is Bandon, which in four trips and nearly 700 holes played since 2012 has become my favorite place. Nowhere else on earth packs more variety and quality into one little stretch of real estate on the edge of the world than Bandon Dunes Resort. They get everything right and make you feel like you belong there. Even the food is comforting, from the meatloaf at McKee’s Pub to the chicken parmesan in The Gallery & Puffin Bar to the ribeye at the Ghost Tree Grill to the barbeque at Charlotte’s.
But it’s the golf that brings us back again and again. We never seem to tire of arguing about which of its five championship and two short courses is our favorite, even if Bandon Trails isn’t Adam’s “cup of tea” or Pacific Dunes is “too beautiful a brute” for my game or Todd is “too good” for Sheep Ranch (he didn’t lose a single ball in 159 holes, including Eugene Country Club en route).
When a brief squall made the fourth hole at Sheep play twice as long and stinging rain lashed our faces, my ball settled in the right rough near someone coming down the adjacent 15th. “Are we having fun yet?” I asked him as we checked whose ball was whose. “It couldn’t possibly be better,” he answered sunnily.
There are a lot of bucket-list places in golf. While it’s tempting to try to collect as many as you can, make sure to take the time to find some place to go back to often enough for it to become a bigger part of your life than just another check mark on your ledger.
We haven’t been home long enough for the effects of the red-eye flights to wear off, but we already can’t wait to go “home” again.
Scott Michaux
