PLAY AWAY
By Tom Mackin
My cousin Mike McVeigh was not a traveler. A golfer, yes. But not one who would journey long distances to far-flung fairways like the ones my job took me to around the world. Still, he did venture beyond our native New Jersey to places like Ocean City, Maryland, and Florida for golf trips with buddies.
But when I invited him to join me on my magazine assignments to bucket list golf destinations, like the Monterey Peninsula, Bandon Dunes, Scotland, and elsewhere – I’d take care of golf and accommodations, he just had to buy the beer – the reply was always the same: “Thanks but I’ll pass.” I never understood why, but he could not be convinced otherwise.
That is until I threw out Maui as the invite in the early 2000s. The answer that came back over the phone was different. “Let me think about it,” he said. Then a week later it was, “Count me in.”
I was thrilled. Unfortunately, he didn’t look that way after traveling almost an entire day to get to Hawaii. Having arrived a few days earlier myself, I greeted him at Kahului Airport wearing a brightly colored Hawaiian shirt and holding the keys to my rental convertible. One problem: his hard-shell golf case simply would not fit in the trunk no matter how hard we tried (and he was a big, strong dude). So the clubs rode in the front passenger seat, and Mike sat in the back, with me serving as his chauffeur for the ride to Kapalua. He loved that.
The next day we got stuck for an hour in our cart next to the tee of the par-3 11th during a torrential downpour on Kapalua’s Plantation Course. Neither of us had seen that much rain come down so quickly before or since. He brought a video camera and used it to film whales frolicking in the sea on the ferry ride back and forth to Lanai to play the stunning Manele Golf Course. One of our playing partners during the week turned out to be a Budweiser sales rep. He and Mike became fast friends and together cleared out the beverage cart of said product.
Back on Maui, Wailea Golf Club was hosting the Champions Skins Game. A connection invited us to a luau the night before where the competitors – Hale Irwin, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, and Fuzzy Zoeller – mixed and mingled. We didn’t meet them, but the sight of Fuzzy appearing on stage that evening wearing a coconut bra and grass skirt for laughs became a running joke between us from that night forward. Mike even had some brief but friendly banter on one hole with Zoeller the next day. We played the gorgeous courses at Wailea and Makena and then made the long trip home. It was such a good time, but then I always knew it would be. And Mike brought it up enough times since then that I knew it meant a lot to him, too.
That was the only trip he joined me on, but we did play plenty of rounds together in New Jersey, especially down the Shore where he had moved after growing up in Princeton Junction. Places like Howell, Bel-Aire, and Shark River. Occasionally, we would re-live some teenage summer nights and head back to the driving range at Quail Ridge Golf World on Route 34 in Wall to empty large green plastic buckets of balls.
Our rounds became fewer after I moved to Arizona in 2013. But the golf-related texts and phone calls continued, especially during the majors when we would both be glued to the TV on our respective couches. We also had caddying in common, a job we both came to later in life. I did two years part-time at Liberty National in Jersey City, while he caddied in recent years at Navesink Country Club in Middletown, N.J.
I turned 60 last September, and the list of former playing partners who now join me only in my memory is getting longer all-too-quickly. I was heartbroken when Mike joined that group last month, suddenly gone two months shy of his own 60th birthday. I am an only child, and my cousins were the closest things to siblings I ever had. Mike was as good as a brother in my mind. I will miss him terribly. When I see him in my dreams from now on, I’m betting the setting will involve golf. Possibly at Bayonne Golf Club, which we played in 2016. Mike didn’t hesitate to accept that invite. This was my hometown, and the place where his father, my mother, and their four siblings were born and raised.
I took the red-eye from Arizona, made the short drive to Bayonne from Newark Airport, and met him for breakfast at a diner on 8th Street and Broadway. Over eggs and bacon our excitement for the round was palpable. At the private course, it was just the two of us. We jumped in a cart and hit range balls that floated in the water of New York Harbor. Then our caddie joined us, guided us to the first tee, and we spent the next few hours walking the fairways. Good shots, bad shots, Missed putts. The occasional birdie. Plenty of laughs.
It all took place not far from Ellis Island where our Irish-born grandparents, who emigrated from County Donegal and County Mayo before meeting in Bayonne, passed through a century before. That summer day two of their grandsons played a game we both loved in the town where our family got its start. I treasure the memory of that round even more now, and will think of it, and Mike, often.
May the road rise to meet you, my brother. Slán go fóill.
Based in Scottsdale, Ariz., Tom Mackin is a proud Bayonne, N.J., native who has been writing about golf travel for 25 years. You can usually find him in seat 21D on a United flight.
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