Kingdom 17

$20 where sold Issue 17—Summer 2010

marking history at st. andrews How to win the U.S. Open Book a trip to space ernie els

on mastering Bay Hill

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a r n o l d pa l m e r fo r e wo r d

a Year of anniversaries and honors I can’t help feelIng how remarkable it is that we’re already putting together the finishing touches of the 17th edition of kingdom because it seems like only yesterday that copies of the very first issue landed on my desk.

In fact, kingdom no.1 was published nearly seven years ago—just before christmas 2003—and since then it has gone from strength to strength, covering many important subjects in golf and the wider world in impressive depth and with great style.

This latest kingdom, which I hope readers will find as interesting and stimulating as its 16 predecessors, focuses on a number of subjects that are very dear to my heart—flying, pebble beach, the U.S. and british open championships, and the arnold palmer Invitational presented by mastercard to name but a few.

Since the open was last played at pebble in 2000, I have had the honor of being invited to help introduce a few changes to the course. as is well documented, I never won there despite coming close a few times but my respect for this wonderful stretch of linksland has not diminished one iota since I first saw it more than a half century ago. fifty years is a long time in anyone’s life, and it certainly has been in the game of golf. It is 50 years since I won my only U.S. open title at cherry hills country club near Denver. Yet the events of that final afternoon, when I was fortunate enough to shoot a closing round of 65, are as vivid in my memory as they were the morning after I lifted the trophy.

I also have many clear recollections of my first visit to the british open that same year at St. andrews on the east coast of Scotland. It was the centenary open and I came agonizingly close to winning my third successive major championship there. In the end I came up one shot shy of that fine australian, kel nagle.

This year, the r&a is celebrating 150 years of the british open and I shall be going over to St. andrews to play in the champions challenge that has been organized for the wednesday afternoon over the 1st, 2nd, 17th and 18th holes. It promises to be some week. The previous day I will be receiving an honorary degree from the University of St. andrews at a public ceremony in the town’s Younger hall. I can only imagine what my old teachers at latrobe high School would have made of such esteemed academic recognition for their old pupil. while on the subject of honors, I would like to extend my congratulations to my close colleague erik larsen, executive Vice-president of arnold palmer Design company, on his election as president of the american Society of golf course architects in 2010. our much-missed colleague ed Seay, who himself served in this same role some years ago, would have been very proud of his protege’s achievements. finally, I’d like to wish you, our valued readers, an excellent and memorable summer of golf.

Arnold Palmer

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kingdom 17 summer 2010

Kingdom magazine issue 17—Summer 2010

Arnold Palmer Foreword—Warm welcome from the King Publisher’s Letter—Looking forward to a vintage summer Editor’s Letter—Considering our journey upwards and onwards

20 20 30 36 42 48 54 62 70 76 82 88 93 104 108 112

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Audience With The King—kingdom visits Latrobe for a chat with Mr. Palmer Racing for the Stars—Is man on the brink of flying regularly into space?

Go with the Flow—Olympic nation Brazil is golf ’s new frontier Who Dat!—Drew Brees helps save a city (and he can golf, too) Easy Does It—Ernie Els is champion at Bay Hill for a second time Inland Golf—America’s Midwest is teeming with glorious golf options Dear Seventeen—Imagine a course consisting of the game’s great 17th holes Fifty Years Ago Today—Cherry Hills witnessed Mr. Palmer’s incredible 1960 U.S. Open win Pebbles Ripples—A reshaped layout plays host to this year’s U.S. Open Cat Power—The editor is dazzled by the new Jaguar XFR First Class—CitationAir makes private jet travel more accessible Life in Pictures: Part 17—Images from in the air to down on the beach Salvation Army—It’s 50 years since Mr. Palmer helped rescue the British Open Palmer Style—Fashions from one of the world’s best-dressed men Bella Italia—Add golf to your list of good reasons to visit Italy

kingdom 17 summer 2010

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Kingdom magazine issue 17—Summer 2010

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Model Pilots—The world of hobby aircraft is still flying strong In the Bag—Iconic department store Bloomingdale’s is blossoming worldwide Put Insomnia to Rest—Specialist fitness advice from Charles Poliquin Trump Talks Clubs—The Don’s blueprint for running a successful club Ribera del Duero—Nectar is flowing from these central Iberian vineyards Jet Set—The latest kit for high flyers in search of a first-class experience The Second Golden Rule—Best practice from RBC Wealth Management Erik the Green—APDC Executive Vice President advocates a fresh approach to golfing land Gift Guide—Luxury presents that make a difference to golfers’ lives See the Coffee—New art form portrays Mr. Palmer and other American legends In the Air—Piper Aircraft’s new jet is turning executive heads Airplane Food—With inflight meals off the menu, more people dine before they fly Ultimate Bedroom—Sleeping is only part of the story in this home within a home Top Secret Guide to Pebble Beach—Head pro Chuck Dunbar on how to win the U.S. Open APDC Roundup—The latest news from the team at Arnold Palmer Design Company Course Directory—Our up-to-date checklist of must-play courses Palmer Honors Quail Hollow—The Charlotte club celebrates half a century

kingdom 17 summer 2010

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publisher’s

foreword

Publisher’s greeting being both a bona fide englishman and a golfing aficionado, there is no time of the year I like better than the transition from spring to summer. While I might no longer drink warm beer, I still enjoy the long evenings and early morning access to the golf course.

This year my personal golfing season teed off with a visit to the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented

by MasterCard and, in spite of the weather, it was a privilege to see the newly renovated course play so well.

Ernie Els, whom we profile in this issue, was a worthy winner but it was a comment from Phil Mickelson that particularly resonated with me: “I thought it [the remodeled course] was terrific. I thought every improvement, everything that was changed, was for the better. I loved Arnold’s attitude a few months ago when he said we are going to make 4 and 16 par-5; these guys are the best players in the world, if they shoot 20-under, they shoot 20-under. That’s a great attitude to have. I think as players we are getting tired of some of the courses being doctored so much.”

During my stay in Orlando I also had the pleasure of playing with Arnie’s grandson, Sam Saunders. He has a bright future in front of him and after I’d gotten over my jealousy of his swing, I really enjoyed his company.

He has an impressive demeanor both on and off the course and is certainly a credit to his family.

Returning back to the summer and, indeed, my native Britain, there are two events that I’m sure every golfing fan will have ringed on their calendars: July will see the 150th anniversary of The Open being played out at the Home of Golf, St. Andrews, and at the beginning of October all eyes will turn to the 38th staging of the Ryder Cup at Celtic Manor in south Wales.

I’m sure the competition to lift the Claret Jug will be as fierce as ever and it will be interesting to see how Tiger Woods plays on the Old Course that he tamed so successfully in 2000 and 2005, although, if the public could decide, the most popular winner would surely be Tom Watson following his amazing “so close but so far” performance at Turnberry last year.

On a personal note, I’m particularly looking forward to being present that week with Mr. Palmer—both when he collects his Honorary Degree from the University of St. Andrews and when he plays in the four-hole Champions Challenge on the Wednesday evening of Open week.

In 2008, the atmosphere was electric as a brilliantly led American Ryder Cup team secured a memorable victory at Valhalla down in Louisville, Kentucky. I’m sure the Welsh will stage a similarly compelling contest this year, and from a European perspective it will be interesting to see whether Rory McIlroy makes his team and, if he does, how he performs.

The young Irishman’s triumph at the fabulous Quail Hollow course certainly made the entire world of golf sit up and take note that this is a player who is not just “potential” but one who can already mix it at the highest level and on the hardest of courses.

Finally, I would like to congratulate Erik Larsen on being elected President of the American Society of Golf Course Architects. He is a great partner, a superb golf course architect, and above all a true friend.

Matthew Squire Publisher

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kingdom 17 summer 2010

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editor’s

letter

to infinity And Beyond!

Space: The Final Frontier A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…

Take your stinking paws off of me, you damn dirty ape!

Whether it’s Buzz Lightyear, Star Trek, Star Wars, Planet of the Apes or one of any number of other characters, books, movies or shows that does it, at some point every young person dreams of going to the stars.

That might go double for those of us who grew up in Florida. When the space shuttle launched, my friends and i didn’t turn on the tV to watch it—we just went outside and looked up. But who knew those boyhood dreams could come true? enter VirginGalactic, which is set to begin commercial flights to the stars in the next couple of years. Not only are they leading the way, they’re doing so responsibly, paying attention to environmental impacts and international participation. And they’ve got the right attitude, as shown by richard Branson when he launched the company: “Any money we make from space travel,” he said, “we will reinvest in more space travel in order to make the dream come true for the next generation of children.”

VirginGalactic and other private space ventures will be joined by more still with the President’s new plan for NAsA. sadly, not all of them will share Branson’s attitude. in fact, some of the rhetoric already flying around in the space community sounds less like a planet moving forward and more like bickering from a 15th century court: arguments over who gets to go where, who’s flying under whose name, who owns whatever we find, and so on.

But they all rather miss the point, in my opinion. in trying to escape this planet, the space industry has the potential to teach us how better to care for it, and that’s a benefit that necessarily transcends all lines on the terrestrial map. More efficient materials and fuels, improved methods for growing food and a million other daily wonders are all products of the space program, and they’re universal.

One of the more obvious benefits of space research: Better vehicles for jet setting at lower altitudes. This issue of kingdom is all about that—and about great golf as well, of course. When it comes to space, i’m hopeful we’ll ultimately do the right thing. We owe it to the night sky, because, in the midst of squabbling over how to reach the heavens, it’s worth remembering that they are quite extraordinary. As ralph Waldo emerson put it, “if the stars should appear but one night every thousand years, how man would marvel and stare.” here’s to dreams coming true, on course and off,

Reade Tilley—Editor

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kingdom 17 summer 2010

reade tilley

matthew squire

editor

publisher

paul trow

leon harris

Contributing Editor

art director

designer

special thanks / contributors

Matthew Halnan

Special Contributors

Cori Britt, Doc Giffin, Arnold Palmer, Donald Trump

Contributing Photographers Patrick Drickey /stonehousegolf.com Getty Images, Arnold Palmer Picture Library, Evan Schiller, Leon Harris, USGA Museum

VP, Operations Joe Velotta

VP, Advertising Sales Jon Edwards

Advertising Sales Andy Fletcher Dean Jacobson Deric Piper Oliver Roland Michael Sullivan Neal Rockman

Executive Assistants Carla Richards Esther Meier

Richard Bellino Jessica Canor Scott Curry Chuck Dunbar Ray Easler and all his team at Bay Hill El Faro Restaurant Ernie Els Dr. Thomas Graham John Harris Ree Hartwell Steve Heit Marc Heseman Steve Killick Shaun Marin Mark Miller Mark Murphy JoAnn Neau Grupo Peñin Charles Poliquin Mimi Rae Chris Rodell Amy Saunders Liz Smith Julian Speroni Greg Swoverland TEAM APDC (as always!)

Karen Watts

Production

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© 2010 TMC USA llc

Reproduction without permission is prohibited. The articles appearing within this publication reflect the opinion of their respective authors and not necessarily those of the publisher.

No responsibility is taken for unsolicited submissions and manuscripts.

Cover image: Stephen Munday—Allsport Arnold Palmer waves goodbye to the British Open from the Swilcan bridge, St. Andrews, in 1995

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kingdom 17 summer 2010

An AudIEncE WITH the King Back home in Latrobe after a great season at Bay Hill, Arnold Palmer was absorbed with his new iPad when kingdom correspondent chris rodell dropped by for a chat. The rain outside meant there wouldn’t be any golf played, but the King was happy—as always— to talk about the game, his family, and why someone might call a penalty on himself

kingdom: What did you think when Brian Davis recently called a penalty on himself when playing out of a hazard during the play-off for the Verizon Heritage Classic at Hilton Head?

Arnold Palmer: I think it’s really typical of most of the guys who’ve always played the Tour. They have an understanding of the importance of the rules and when they see or commit an infraction they report it for the integrity of the game.

Any memorable occasions when you, to your chagrin, had to do that yourself ?

I called a penalty on myself in a tournament in Baton Rouge.

I thought the ball moved and I called a penalty on myself.

Everyone disagreed and said it didn’t move, but I stuck with it. I believe it was the right thing to do.

Did you enjoy yourself at Augusta this year—playing in the par-3 tournament and acting as honorary starter with Jack Nicklaus?

We had a lot of fun and a lot of laughs and it worked out very well.

What did you think of this year’s Masters and what particularly impressed you about the way Phil Mickelson and Lee Westwood played in the last round?

I thought it was very good. Both of them played very well and Phil hit some great shots to win it. I’m very happy for him.

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The forging of a new and

powerful partnership Legendary golfer Arnold Palmer has joined with Mylan, one of the world’s leading generics and specialty pharmaceutical companies, to support the inaugural Mylan Classic – combining the celebration of golf with a desire to give back to our communities.

“We are committed to making the Mylan Classic a first class event that everyone will enjoy.”

– Robert J. Coury, Chairman and CEO, Mylan

“I congratulate Mylan for bringing this wonderful event to the golf fans of western Pennsylvania.”

– Arnold Palmer, Honorary Chairman, Mylan Classic

www.myla n c l a s s i c . c o m • S o u t h p o i n t e G o l f C l u b • C a n o n s b u r g , PA 15317

How good do you think he could be, and also how do you think he managed to turn his form around so quickly?

Certainly, he has a tremendous future. He has really played some wonderful golf and the Charlotte victory indicates some marvellous potential from him at just 21 years old.

I expect we’ll see a lot more greatness from him.

You are scheduled to play in the Champions for Change day at Harbor Shores in August, along with Jack Nicklaus, Johnny Miller and Tom Watson - have you ever previously played as a four together?

No. We’ve all played together individually, but never as a group. I’m looking forward to it. I’m sure we’ll have a lot of fun together. It should be a special day.

Have you personally designed or built any courses which at the time formed an essential part of a land or community restoration project?

I’ve built golf courses on landfills. There’ve been places we’ve used golf courses to create a more pleasant environment than what had been there previously. It’s very satisfying. It’s a wonderful thing to restore to the environment something of beauty.

Arnold Palmer is expecting great things of Rory McIlroy (above)

How about the recent announcement by Hank Haney that he’s parting ways with Tiger and how he emphasized it was his, not Tiger’s, decision?

Hank left him? Why? He said it was time to part ways. He was a little vague. You never had a swing coach did you?

Just my father. And he never left me.

You recently agreed to become Honorary Chairman of the inaugural Mylan Classic at Southpointe near Pittsburgh presented by CONSOL Energy and, of course, at the 2010 U.S. Women’s Open at Oakmont. How did this come about?

They asked me and I’ll help however I can to make their tournaments successful. It’s an honor for me to be associated with them and I expect great things from both of them.

What memories do you have of your US Open victory at Cherry Hills and do you ever visit the club?

I enjoy visiting there on occasion. We’re going there June 13 for a 50th anniversary reunion. And, of course, I’m a member at Cherry Hills and I enjoy that I can go there and play.

And my wife’s children live in Denver, so it’s a very pleasant place to visit. I feel a lot of warm nostalgia for Cherry Hills.

It’s where I won my only U.S. Open, so it’s always going to mean a lot to me. We had a great time there last fall for the Palmer Cup, too. That was a very special event.

How much are you looking forward to going over for the Champions Challenge curtain-raiser for the 150th British Open at St. Andrews and what else are you planning to do while you’re over in Europe?

I’m really looking forward to that and to going to the University of St. Andrews for an honorary degree [with Padraig Harrington and Tom Watson]. I can’t wait to get back to the Old Course to see it and some of the action there. I hope the volcano doesn’t prevent our visit. That is a possibility. We’ll have to wait and see.

We presume you’re pleased that this new tournament is being staged in Western Pennsylvania. What are your thoughts on how the Nationwide has progressed over the last 20 years or so?

It’s done very well. The Nationwide Tour has given us a succession of winners, most of whom advance to the regular Tour, which is a sign that it’s a good starting point for people who want to prepare for the Tour.

St. Andrews has a special place in the hearts of so many golfers.

What are your fondest memories of the Auld Grey Toun?

It’s very unique. I love the whole situation there. The hotels—the old ones and the new ones. It’s such a great place for golf and it’s great to go there and think about the game and all that’s happened there over the years.

Looking back over your career, how many stretches of play did you enjoy that compared with Rory McIlroy’s 128 on the weekend at Quail Hollow?

Well, I had a pretty good string of those in 1960, ’61, ’62 and ’63. There were quite of few of those streaks where I got hot and was playing pretty well.

Looking forward to the Ryder Cup in October, what sort of a contest do you envisage at Celtic Manor?

I think it’ll be great. I have been there and seen a little bit of the golf course and stayed at the hotel. I expect it’ll be a fine Ryder Cup. I think it’ll be tough for the U.S. The weather is going to be a major factor.

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Do you think lob wedges with lofts higher than 64 degrees should be banned and if so why?

I don’t think so. I don’t know if the loft on a club has anything to do with the ability to use it. I’d say no. I’m for banning or restricting a lot of things, but loft on a club isn’t one of them.

I’m guessing the slowing down of the golf ball is one of them, yes?

Exactly. I’d love to see that happen. There’s always a chance it’ll happen. We’ll just have to wait and see. It would mean so much to the game.

Would you like to see the number of official major championships in a year increased from four to, say, six?

No. The four are the ones that should be. They are the recognizable ones and the most rewarding to win. They should just keep it the way it is.

How pleased were you with the way Bay Hill played during this year’s Arnold Palmer Invitational presented

by MasterCard?

I thought we had a great tournament. The golf course showed itself very well, and I think it’ll only get better as the years go on.

Are you planning any further changes for next year’s Invitational, either on or off the course?

No. Nothing for now.

After a creditable early-season showing, what is the next step in the career of your grandson Sam Saunders?

Sam is working very hard on his game and getting the feel for getting on Tour. I think he’s got to get more aggressive with his game. That’s what we’re working on. I’m hoping that’ll show itself soon. He’s got a great swing and I’m not trying to change that. I’m trying to get him to be a little more aggressive with his swing and I think that will help him improve and get him into the state of mind he needs to be in to compete at the top level.

We’ve learned a lot about Sam over the past year or so, but what do your other grandchildren do, or aspire to do?

My other grandson, Will Wears, is very interested in golf, too. He’s 15 years old and he’s 6-foot-4. He’s a young guy and he can really hit the ball. I think it’s only a matter of time until he gets to where he can really become a factor in the game. I think the older he gets the better he’ll be. I hope he stops growing. I think he’s now at the right height to get the distance he needs and play the game very well. His younger sister, Anna, is also playing pretty good golf.

Do you think the PGA Tour should evolve into a world tour with perhaps half the events in the US and the other half overseas?

I don’t think the PGA Tour should be doing that. Eventually, we will have some sort of a world tour. I think that’s going to happen. I’m not sure the PGA Tour, the European Tour or any Tour should be a part of it. I think it should be a situation where all the Tours collaborate to contribute something to a world tour.

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kingdom 17 summer 2010

Palmer has worked hard with his grandson Sam Saunders

Photo: Brian Mills

In this issue of kingdom we have created an imaginary 18 hole course purely from great 17ths. What is your personal favorite 17th hole?

Of course, I love 17 at Bay Hill. It’s one of the best holes in golf. Number 17 at Pebble Beach, another outstanding par 3, is a winner. And I don’t think you can avoid talking about the island green at TPC when you’re talking about great 17s.

It’s a fun hole, too.

How important is a good night’s sleep during a tournament, and how did you make sure you got a good night’s sleep during a tournament? We would imagine it would be difficult, with nerves and adrenaline going full-bore.

A good night’s sleep is very important to playing good golf, especially going into the last round of a major championship.

I liked getting that good night’s sleep and going into the last round knowing I was well rested and ready for the challenge and the excitement. I never really had too much trouble sleeping. I was very fortunate in that regard.

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Citation X

Traveling in space on a Virgin Galactic appeals to Mr. Palmer, but he’s not sure whether it would be an especially good idea for someone of his age

With golfers like Tiger Woods and Annika Sorenstam having put great emphasis on physical fitness, how important is it really to great performance in golf ? And was it less important to pro golfers when you were coming up through the ranks on Tour?

I think that staying in shape and increasing your longevity as far as playing and walking on a golf course is very important.

Keeping in shape without overdoing it is important. You can overdo it and that’s something you need to watch. Some guys are excessive in their exercising. You can get too carried away. I always considered it important. I didn’t do some of the things the guys are doing now, but I worked hard to keep in good shape.

With VirginGalactic launching soon, and with a host of other private opportunities for space travel likely to emerge over the next few years, have you ever considered booking a trip to fly into space?

Ha! I’ve considered it and thought about it, but I don’t think I’ll ever do it. At my age that would be difficult. I’d like to think that someday we’ll be playing golf in space. I don’t know what it’ll be like, but I’ll bet we’ll all be able to hit the ball a very long way!

Have you checked out your personal website, arnoldpalmer.com, much recently?

Not lately! I’ll have to visit there...

Accordingly, did you make any specific efforts to stay fit while you were competing—going to a gym, eating a specific diet, etc.—and what is your fitness regimen now (if you have one)?

I worked out in gyms quite a bit. But in my youth I worked on a golf course and I pushed mowers. They didn’t have motors and the tractors didn’t have power steering. I was the motor and I was the power. That was my fitness regimen.

Is there anything else you particularly want to talk to our readers about?

No, just to stress again the need for the golf ball to be slowed down. The sooner we get to that the better off all of golf will be.

There are pictures of you having quite a bit of fun in various aircraft. Do you still make time for recreational flying or is it mainly a means of travel for you now?

I haven’t flown a lot for recreation. I always used my flying as a business tool. The fact that I enjoyed it was just one of the pluses of helping me get around. It’s still a thrill. I still love it.

Thank you, Mr. Palmer. We’ll let you get back to your iPad. How are you enjoying it?

I’m still getting up to speed on it, but I’m enjoying it very much. There’s nothing you can’t bring up on it.

Anything you can bring your mind to think of, it’s right there for you. n

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You need only look up to see it, but space—that is, the potentially infinite blackness overhead—is perhaps best experienced by closing one’s eyes. For the moment, there’s not a tremendous amount of distance between the imagination and the relatively few realities we’ve discovered “up there.” Less certain is how our next round of discoveries will be made; the Shuttle program is ending this year, the most recent NASA mission has been scrubbed and a new plan is just now starting to take shape.

CommerCial flights to spaCe are set to begin But we are still making strides, in the next couple of years; like something out of a movie, and many of them were little glossy brochures are already touting “emotional” views and the “gracefulness” of zero gravity. on the business side of things, more than dreams themselves commercial spacelift vehicles are becoming faster, cheaper just a few years ago. and safer, meaning more satellites whizzing around, increased global communications, affordable scientific research and improved super Bowl broadcasts to Vanuatu. and finally, the country itself has recently re-charted its course to the cosmos with a grand vision that might inspire us to reach higher and achieve more than we ever have, or it could just be another expensive tangent in Nasa’s roller-coaster mission history.

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Politics, individual desires, and commercial needs—considering how much we don’t know about space exploration, it’s all getting awfully complicated. But then there’s a lot at stake: countless financial rewards, untold technological and scientific gains and that Holy Grail of any age of exploration: bragging rights.

We’ve barely started the engine when it comes to discovering our universe, and people all over this small rock are already fighting over who gets to drive, who gets to navigate and who has to ride in the back seat. Barring some huge disaster, we’ll all get there eventually. But 53 years after Sputnik, the quickest path to the stars for most of us is still a moonlight walk and a head full of dreams.

Here’s a quick look at the state of space:

PeoPle To fly among the stars... Countless artists have made a living keeping this dream alive in novels and films, while workers in the space industry have been busy making it come true—for a very select few. In fact, less than 500 people have experienced space travel, but that’s about to change. Moon vacations and space hotels are still fantasies, but private space flight is here, and the most talked-about, publicized and arguably exciting option comes from Richard Branson and VirginGalactic.

At this very moment—that is, right now, today—you can go to VirginGalactic.com and buy a ticket to space. Sure, the ticket costs $200,000, but YOU GET TO GO TO SPACE. To put that in perspective: In 2007, an Australian man named Julian Hayward paid more than $100,000 for two one-way plane tickets from Singapore to Sydney, Australia— on a plane that maxes out at 677mph and has a ceiling of 43,000 feet. Virgin’s SpaceShipTwo can make Mach 3 (three times the speed of sound, roughly 2,300mph) and climb to 360,000 feet (68 miles), putting all six passengers into a severely quiet, zero-G suborbital flight just inside the thermosphere. It’s not the Space Shuttle’s 600-miles-high view, but the sky outside is black and you’ll be looking down on the atmosphere, getting the “blue planet” experience.

With more than 340 potential passengers already signed up to fly, VirginGalactic is on track to single-handedly double the number of people who’ve had the experience of space flight.

SpaceShipTwo is the creation of aerospace designer Burt Ratan and his Mojave-based Scaled Composites. Ratan made a name for himself when his SpaceShipOne took the $10 million Ansari X Prize in 2004, becoming the first private, piloted craft to successfully reach an altitude of 62 miles twice in two weeks carrying near 400 pounds in extra weight to simulate passengers. SpaceShipTwo is built of the same carbon composite construction and uses the same basic design as its predecessor, but it’s twice as large—60’ long with a 90” diameter cabin (similar to a Falcon 900 executive jet, but with no floor splitting the cabin because hey, you’ve got to have room to play in zero gravity). Basically an air-launched glider, SpaceShipTwo is carried to near 50,000 feet by Virgin MotherShip Eve, a twin fuselage aircraft that’s an equally impressive bit of engineering, and then launched spaceward.

Another potential player on the commercial RLV (reusable launch vehicle) scene is taking a different approach.

XCOR Aerospace, also based at the Mojave Spaceport, is

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working on the Lynx, which will take off and land like an airplane under its own rocket power. The company says the two-seat piloted transport will eventually be making up to four flights per day, carrying humans and payloads to 330,000 feet on half-hour suborbital flights. XCOR is also selling tickets to ride on its Web site and they’re roughly half the price of VirginGalactic’s—but then a Lynx hasn’t yet flown to space.

There are other options on the drawing board as well.

SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies, another company at Mojave Spaceport) is working on Dragon, a free-flying reusable spacecraft that will be able to hold cargo and/or crew members. More of a traditional capsule, Dragon is designed to launch atop the company’s Falcon 9 rocket. What opportunities it will offer for human experiences are yet to be determined, but this company is closer than most to getting off the ground. As of press time, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was vertical and basically ready to launch at Cape Canaveral.

And there’s still the Russian Space Agency option: a trip to the International Space Station aboard a Soyuz spacecraft for somewhere between $20 and $35 million. The thing is, though, with so many private companies in the game now, governmental space agencies don’t really seem the place for tickets to space anymore. The moment the X Prize was claimed, their future in space flight and the future of the big companies that have supplied them—namely Lockheed Martin and Boeing—was rewritten. Burt Ratan put it best after he accepted the award, telling MSNBC, “I think they’re looking at each other now and saying, ‘We’re screwed.’”

I THINk THE BIg AEROSPACE COMPANIES ARE LOOkINg AT EACH OTHER AND SAyINg, ‘WE’RE SCREWED’ VirginGalactic’s SS2 (above) and the falcon 9 rocket from SpaceX (left) are both set to redefine commercial space

Stuff In the late 1990s, the Space Shuttle was going strong, the X Prize had yet to be claimed, and the key letters in space vehicle development were SSTO—“single stage to orbit.”

VentureStar, the Shuttle’s planned successor, was an SSTO, as were a number of other projects on industry drawing boards.

The reason SSTO is so important is because things fall off of multi-stage launch vehicles as they climb toward space, and those things need a place to land. Hence, all launch sites had to be near an ocean or large, barren expanse of land. With SSTOs, there’d be nothing falling off, and almost anyone with a sizeable chunk of real estate could build a spaceport. With even the cheapest launches costing near $120 million, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that this is big business.

When the VentureStar project was announced, competition for the launch facility was incredible. More than a dozen land-locked communities stepped forward in areas such as West Texas and the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana.

Because VentureStar was so big (too big to piggyback on an airplane like the Shuttle), it had to be launched where it was built, meaning a multi-billion-dollar investment and, effectively, a new town for whatever location won the contract.

When VentureStar was canceled, thousands saw their dreams disappear, but SSTO development kept going strong.

Today, the very notions of SSTO and spacelift are being redefined. Spacecraft like SpaceShipTwo and Lynx aren’t conventional rockets at all, but they’ll be able to deliver satellites into low orbits. Their role and impact in payload delivery has yet to be written, but their base of operations says it all. The Mojave Spaceport in Mojave, CA, is about an hour east of Bakersfield in the desert, and it’s host to the most cutting-edge space development companies in the world, leading Popular Mechanics to refer to it as “The New Area 51.” While men (and women) will no doubt be riding vehicles developed here into space, it’s the satellite business that’s really keeping an eye on Mojave.

Currently there are more than 500 satellites in orbit, originating from any of 22 major space launch sites in the world.

Up ’til now, most of the launches have been from military installations, like California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base, on rockets developed under government contract with big-name aerospace companies. And there have been choices: Lockheed Martin has Atlas rockets, Boeing has Delta. The Chinese have Long March rockets, the Russians have Soyuz, the Ukrainians have Zenit and Proton and The European Space Agency favors Ariane rockets. And so on. But the future seems to be in smaller companies and private spaceports, like Mojave.

SpaceX says its Falcon 9 rocket (almost ready to launch, as previously mentioned) offers improved reliability, lower

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cost and better overall efficiency compared to the big boys.

Other private companies are promising the same from their launch vehicles, and it’s not tough to see why they want to be in the game—and why they might have a chance.

In the late 1990s, two companies, Globalstar and Iridium, were racing to set up the first satellite telecommunications networks. Globalstar had already put 52 satellites into orbit on launches of seven Delta 2 rockets and six Russian Soyuz rockets (each carrying four satellites) when, in a bid to leap forward, the company put 12 satellites on a single Ukrainian Zenit 2 rocket.

It launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in September of 1998. Five minutes later, it exploded and all 12 satellites were lost—at a cost of nearly $185 million and 40 percent of the company’s stock. And that was more than ten years ago.

Obama’s new plan for NASA (more on this later) promises $6 billion for investment in private sector space development. If, as they claim, the smaller companies can improve reliability, lower costs and increase overall efficiency, it will be money well spent. If not, the big boys aren’t leaving the building anytime soon. In fact, under NASA’s new mission, they may be going further than they ever have.

“I believe it’s more important to ramp up our capabilities to reach —and operate at — a series of increasingly demanding targets, while advancing our technological capabilities with each step forward,” he said.

Critics don’t like the idea of American astronauts potentially hitching rides to the ISS on Russian spacecraft, and they don’t like killing a $108 billion plan (and the attached jobs) after already spending $10 billion on it. Supporters argue that space exploration should be a cooperative effort, that missions like ISS transport are best left to private developers and that the agency tasked with defining America’s role in space should be aiming high with the same kinds of awe-inspiring goals it used to chase.

Buzz Aldrin (the second man to set foot on the moon) likes the new plan. Neil Armstrong (the first) doesn’t and believes canceling Constellation was a bad move. In an open letter, he and two other commanders (Eugene Cernan of Apollo 17, and Jim Lovell of Apollo 13) wrote that, “For The United States, the leading space faring nation for nearly half a century, to be without carriage to low Earth orbit and with no human exploration capability to go beyond Earth orbit for an indeterminate time into the future, destines our nation to become one of second or even third rate stature. Without the skill and experience that actual spacecraft operation provides, the Country USA is far too likely to be on a long downhill slide to mediocrity.”

“It was from here that men and women, propelled by sheer nerve Aldrin thinks this perspective misses the mark. In an and talent, set about pushing the boundaries of humanity’s reach.” interview with MSNBC, he pointed out that government Those words came near the opening of President Obama’s started the business of commercial flight, then pulled back and speech to a group of engineers, astronauts and NASA employees let airlines take over. Letting the private sector handle day-to-day this April at the John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida. missions while NASA focuses on the big stuff, he says, isn’t so That statement, and the rest of Obama’s speech, were met with different. And while he doesn’t like the idea of Americans riding cautious applause from the mostly NASA crowd, many of whom Russian spacecraft to the ISS, he doesn’t think it will be necessary. have lived through decades of dramatic agency budget shifts, There are currently military rockets like the Atlas V, he suggested, occasionally aimless leadership and harsh criticism. The agency’s that could be repurposed. And many private developers are latest mission, a plan from former President Bush named working on exactly the same kinds of technology. The important “Constellation,” suffered from plenty of the last, and subsequently thing, Aldrin said, is that we should move forward—and boldly. didn’t find its way into the 2011 budget of his replacement.

“We should not go back to landing in the ocean,” he said, Stated in the most basic terms, Constellation’s main goal “after 30 years of successfully landing on a runway.” n was to put Americans back on the moon. To do this, Bush A rendering of X-33, the test vehicle for the ill-fated VentureStar project wanted NASA to develop a large rocket (Ares V) that would be topped by a crew capsule (Orion) and a lunar landing module (Altair). If you think that sounds familiar, you aren’t alone. President Obama said Constellation was “over budget, behind schedule and lacking in innovation,” then offered this bit about the moon: “I just have to say, pretty bluntly here: We’ve been there before. There’s a lot more of space to explore, and a lot more to learn when we do.” The President effectively killed Constellation (there are bits and pieces that will stay in play) then introduced his own new plan that, in a nutshell, aims to outsource many low-orbit spaceflight missions (like ISS crew transport) to the private sector, leaving NASA to focus on deep space exploration and an eventual Mars mission.

WE ShOULD NOT GO BACK TO LANDING IN ThE OCEAN

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The language is Portuguese and the phrase is “fique tranquilo!”

(Don’t worry about it.) james gannon looks at some of the best places to relax in the country that’s soon to host golf ’s Olympic return...

the f l ow 36

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Heloísa eneida Menezes Paes Pinto May not be a HouseHold naMe, but sHe could be one of tHe Most faMous woMen ever born. The story has it that on a sunny day in the early 1960s, a 15-year-old Heloísa was headed for the beach when she left her home on Montenegro street in the ipanema district of brazil’s rio de Janeiro. she passed by the veloso bar/café, where she often stopped to buy cigarettes for her mother, and caught the attention of veloso regulars antonio carlos Jobim and vinicius de Moraes, a songwriter and lyricist, respectively. tall and tan and young and lovely, the girl from ipanema couldn’t help but inspire the two musicians to write a song—The Girl From Ipanema, if you hadn’t guessed—that won a Grammy, sold millions and ultimately gave a sound and an image to one of the most beautiful, complex and vast countries on the planet. striking women, picture-perfect beaches, a lush landscape and vibrant culture are only part of the planet’s fifth-largest and fifth most populous nations. More recently, sensuous music, international business, the inevitable tropical clichés and a rich cultural reality have been joined by golf as defining elements of the only Portuguese-speaking country in the americas. and with the sport slated to make its first modern olympic appearance at the 2016 summer Games in rio de Janeiro, it’s safe to assume we can expect more green and yellow flags on golf courses in the near future.

GrowinG Game brazil is vast. technically named The republic of brazil, the country covers 3.2 million square miles, including nearly 4,700 miles of atlantic coastline, and holds 190 million people, of which 25,000 are estimated to be golfers. in contrast, the u.s. covers 3.8 million square miles and has a population of near 310 million people, with the number of golfers estimated at between 50 million and 61 million (according to sports Marketing surveys, a group that tracks international golf trends). That said, brazil is second only to argentina in terms of golf popularity, and it could be moving to no.1 because, along with the 2016 olympics, brazil has already been experiencing a golf boom of sorts. More than 30 golf course projects are under construction or in the stages of advanced planning in the country, and at least one of those will be a phenomenal new course from the arnold Palmer design company. aPdc is currently working on a project in são Paolo called Fazenda Boa Vista. with rolling hills that remind its designers of Kentucky, they say, it’s going to be an absolute stunner. in the meantime, there are more than 100 courses ready to play in the land of carnival and girls from ipanema. no question: each one you pass will make you go, “aaah…”

More tHan 30 Golf ProJects are under construction in tHe country

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Costa do sauipe The brazilian state of bahia holds the country’s longest coastline—685 miles—and the city of salvador, one of the country’s oldest and most storied. a noted tourist destination, bahia offers plenty of top-quality lodging, fantastic restaurants and every amenity a visiting golfer could want. at the northern end of the state, just outside of the city of Mata de sao Joao, we find the Costa do Sauipe Golf Links. The course opened in 2000, and since then it’s grown to become one of the most popular in the region. bordered by cashew trees, mangabeiras and Plassava palms, this 18-hole beauty will wake you up from any tropical dream with sincere challenges on no’s 7, 9 and 16, a bit of water and more than enough sand (not on the beach, sadly). as distracting is the wildlife, which includes iguanas, foxes, armadillos and numerous varieties of hawks and parakeets. safari shorts and a camera are perfectly appropriate. Just down the coast, a half-hour flight from salvador, the Ilha de Comandatuba’s Ocean Course is everything an island course should be. comandatuba island is beautiful enough by itself, but it also holds the only resort in the country to be included in the Leading Hotels of the World list. coconut trees, african oil palms, caxando palms and Morning Glories frame just over 7,000 yards of top-drawer golf. as you might expect, sand and water come into play, and no.11 and no.15 will bite all but the best. but with a huge practice area, a full-service bar and four restaurants in the on-site hotel, the only truly alarming aspect of play may be the capuchin monkeys that roam the island. ball searches in the rough may net you a few unanticipated helpers. all the way down at the southern end of bahia, trancoso and the town of Porto seguro represent a trip back in time. it was here that brazil was discovered by europeans, and if it weren’t for the luxury hotels and top eateries in the area, the original explorers would likely feel right at home. rustic beaches, lush forests, wild beauty and incredible nightlife on the town square, the “Praça são João,” characterize the area, which benefits from The spa at Comandatuba has an idyllic tropical ambience

Photo: © Terravista Golf Course The clicking of cameras will rival the sound of ball on clubface when the five oceanside holes at Terravista Golf Course loom into view

exPeCt A fuLL SAfARI ON COuRSe WIth CAPyBARAS, DeeR AND LIzARDS high cliffs, freshwater ponds and miles of white sand. Surfing and great seafood are joined by the Terravista Golf Course as reasons to visit, though only the last requires that you bring your big game. Mixed grasses and no less than five oceanside holes make decision-making a bit bewildering at times, as do the 39 bunkers and bordering forest. As with other Brazilian courses, expect a full safari on course with capybaras, deer, lizards and a host of other wildness populating the rough (and sometimes the fairways). All of it makes a camera as necessary as your putter.

Rio When you leave the southern border of Bahia, you enter one of the most legendary and best-known areas of Brazil: Rio de Janeiro. “Rio,” as it’s called, is both the name of the city and the state in which it sits. Brazil’s second-largest city (São Paolo is the largest), Rio used to be the country’s capital city.

The large statue of Christ the Redeemer atop Corcovado Mountain was named as one of the New Seven Wonders of the World. The city’s Carnival is a world-renowned event, the beaches of Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon are go-to dream destinations for anyone imagining a tropical getaway, and in 2016 the city will host the Summer Olympics, welcoming golf back to the Games.

While the Olympic course has yet to be planned, there are a few great offerings already in play for golfers who find themselves in the sunny land of Caipirinhas. Among the more attractive options, and just two hours away from the city of Rio proper, the Hotel do Frade e Golf Resort is one of the best anywhere. Designed by Dave Thomas and Peter Alliss (perhaps better known for his work as a golfer and

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TV presenter), the course’s setting—rain forest, mountains, streams and the sea—is stunning. There are 70 traps and 14 holes featuring water, which makes for a challenge. But when the sun’s shining, the waves are crashing and the drinks are chilling at the 19th, who’s really bothered about the score?

Inland OptIOn While coastal golf courses will always get more than their fair share of photo coverage on the pages of magazines, Brazil’s on-course riches aren’t limited to Atlantic-washed fairways.

In the westernmost corner of the State of Paraná, which borders Argentina and Paraguay, the amazing Foz do Iguaçu (Iguaçu Falls) is one of the world’s most treasured natural sites. And just miles from the falls themselves, the Bourbon Iguassu Golf Club e Resort benefits from the lush tropical

gOLF TOUrISm WILL grOW LOng BeFOre The 2016 OLymPICS

landscape, offering a deep country experience unlike many others. Leaving the palms and ocean flora of the coast behind, the course is cut among thick stands of pine and rubber trees.

Likewise, the fauna represents a wide array of inland exotica, including ocelots, thrushes, and macaws, among others. The resort that holds the course is family friendly, and the course makes for a rather relaxing round. That said, challenges are available for those who want to go for it.

COnClusãO Like the United States, Brazil is an impossibly diverse country. It’s huge, and the wealth of attractions, natural wonders, cultural experiences and adventures within its borders is immense. It wasn’t that long ago that hardcore golfers might have given South America’s largest country a miss, but no longer. The country that will host the re-emergence of Olympic golf in 2016 is on its way to becoming a golf destination in its own right. The courses listed here are just a smattering of those available, and with the new Arnold Palmer Design Company project—Fazenda Boa Vista—soon joining the list of places to play, the question won’t be whether or not to visit Brazil, it will be which part of Brazil to visit. n

Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana beach is one of the world’s most beguiling sand traps, teeming with potential temptations and hazards

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Few people know the thrill of winning a Super Bowl. Fewer still know what it’s like to bring victory home to a city in need of some good news.

Drew Brees did just that, and became one of New Orleans’ favorite sons. mike andrews wonders how the quarterback finds time for golf...

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The AmericAn home of gumbo, Zydeco And mArdi grAs isn’T Tough To reAch from AusTin, TexAs—geT on inTersTATe 10 And drive eAsT for 500 miles—buT iT’s A whole world AwAy in Terms of whAT you see when you sTep off The bus. drew brees was born in dallas but grew up in Austin surrounded by the city’s mix of plain speaking, clean-shaven Texans in requisite hats and boots and its laid-back liberal student and artist contingent, which dominates downtown and lake area with chilled-out bars and hi-octane nightlife. it was good preparation for his current home of new orleans,

we knew we were playing for more than just ourselves—we were playing for a city

which attracts one of the country’s most eclectic mixes of cultures and personalities. however brees found the big easy when he moved there in 2006, there was a moment this winter when he knew it was the happiest place on earth. on february 7 in miami gardens, florida, four years after hurricane Katrina devastated the city, the new orleans saints beat the indianapolis colts 31–17 to win super bowl xliv. brees, the game’s mvp, knew the saints had done something important. “oh we knew,” he told reporters at The honda classic, where he was playing golf paired with Jack nicklaus, just a month after the super bowl. “we knew we were playing for much more than ourselves and our team and our organization. we were playing for a city.” new orleans made it to the nfc championship game in 2006 but ultimately lost a super bowl bid to chicago. failed attempts to get back to the top in 2007 and 2008 were “heartbreaking,” brees said at the classic, but “we always knew that if we just stayed the course, we would have the support of our fans. And that gave us strength over the years.”

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Athlete Brees’ awareness and “there’s no ‘I’ in team” attitude are characteristic of the man, who, like many Texans, was raised to love football. Drew’s grandfather Ray Akins coached high school football in Texas, while his uncle Marty Akins was the starting quarterback for the University of Texas during the Earl Campbell era. It has been reported that Brees was named for Drew Pearson, a wideout for the Dallas Cowboys in the 1970s and ’80s, but his amazing arm put him in the quarterback position. In 1995, as a junior at Austin’s Westlake High School, he earned the starting QB position for the school’s Chapparals, also known as “The Chaps.”

The following year, on a team with future NFL players Dominique Rhodes and Seth McKinney, Brees led the Chaps to the school’s only perfect 16–0 season and a 5A Division II State Championship. Named 5A Offensive Player of the Year, Brees also lettered in basketball and baseball.

When he hit college, his game didn’t slow down at all.

At Indiana’s Purdue University, Brees was twice named as a Heisman finalist. The Big Ten Player of the Year in 1998 eventually led the Boilermakers to a Big Ten Championship and a Rose Bowl appearance in 2000 (the school’s first since 1967). That year, he won the Maxwell Award as the nation’s top collegiate player, was named Academic All-American Player of the Year and earned the National Football Foundation’s post-graduate scholarship. When Brees graduated (with a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Management from the prestigious Krannert School of Management) there was never a question that he was headed for the NFL—the mystery was where he’d end up.

The San Diego Chargers were coming off a terrible season when Drew stepped up in the draft. They’d gone 1–15 and owned the first pick in each round. Their first pick was Landainian Tomlinson; their second was Drew Brees. The two had met at a Heisman banquet and were reportedly happy to have the chance to play together. While Drew slotted in behind veteran QB Doug Flutie, he was able to pick up an amazing amount of information in his first year. It was a good bit of schooling, because when new coach Marty Schottenheimer arrived in 2002, he gave Drew the starting job.

The Chargers won the first four games that season but ended up 8–8; respectable but not exceptional. In 2004 they improved dramatically, going 12–4 and making the playoffs.

They didn’t survive the post-season, but even worse things were on the horizon. The following year the Chargers didn’t even reach the playoffs, and the season ended with a bad injury to Drew’s shoulder. Trying to recover a fumble, he got hit hard. His right labrum was torn and his rotator cuff was damaged. Surgery went well, but the injury ended up as a bargaining chip in contract negotiations with the Chargers, and Drew went looking elsewhere.

With most teams a bit wary of the recently injured QB, a struggling New Orleans signed him in March of 2006.

Whatever initial concerns Saints fans may have had, Brees soon put all fears to rest. Playing with standouts like Deuce McAllister and Reggie Bush, the team’s record over the last Drew Brees leading the New Orleans Saints to a strong 31–17 win over the Indianapolis Colts in the Super Bowl

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four years has been outstanding, culminating in the Super Bowl victory earlier this year. With the amount of talent on the Saints, and Brees’ tremendous work ethic, the victory wasn’t necessarily surprising—but that didn’t make it any less thrilling.

“It’s something you obviously dream about,” Brees said at the Honda Classic. “Nine years in the NFL it took to have a shot at winning the Super Bowl and now that we won it, I guess it took a week or two to kind of sink in. But certainly it’s just one of those things that’s a dream come true.”

the super bowl win is something you dream about in the nfl

Above: Brees was twice a Heisman finalist in his time at Purdue; Right: Hoisting the Lombardi trophy

i make solid contact but my short game can be my nemesis at times Golfer His football prowess is obvious, and his early talent for baseball and basketball well known, so it should come as no surprise that the guy can play a little golf as well.

“Obviously I love the game of golf,” he said at the Classic in March. “I try to do a little bit in the off season.

Unfortunately I haven’t had a chance to play a round of golf since last June. That’s what happens when you go and play in the Super Bowl in February—but I’ll take that every year.”

At one point, Brees was on a three handicap, but admits that his schedule over the last year might have bumped that number up a bit. With the NFL season over, though, he’s likely been working on his game.

“My goal is just to get better, a little bit better each year,” Drew said at the Classic. “I make solid contact and I hit it pretty well. But my short game could be my nemesis at times, consistency, putting in and around the green. As long as I can keep it in the short grass and not be too concerned with this—and more so just my consistency and accuracy—I think that’s the key.”

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There are differences between his day job and golf, obviously, but Brees said that one of the big challenges playing on course comes down to pure environment. Paired with Nicklaus at the Honda Classic, and playing in a foursome with Dan Marino and Kenny G, Brees said any nerves he was experiencing might have been due to the fact that he wasn’t wearing a helmet and facing a huge defensive line.

“It’s outside your element, outside your comfort zone a little bit, especially if you haven’t played—you don’t have as much confidence in that three-foot putt as you do on a third down pass.”

In the end, though, he said that when it comes to golf, nerves, skill and even score don’t always matter. He thinks Nicklaus beat him by three strokes, but he’s not sure because, he said, no one kept score.

“I love the game of golf; I really enjoy playing it, and I think it’s about the guys you’re playing with. Having a chance to play with Jack Nicklaus, Dan Marino and Kenny G, it’s a great honor.”

here’s the thing: we needed the city as much as it needed us Humanitarian The Honda Classic isn’t the only tournament Drew played in this year. He hosted the Cox Celebrity Championship in San Diego this May, which benefited his Brees Dream Foundation.

Brees founded the group with his wife Brittany in 2003 with a mission to advance research in the fight against cancer and to provide care, education and opportunities for children in need. Since it started, the Brees Dream Foundation has raised more than $5 million, which has gone to the New Orleans, West Lafayette/Purdue and San Diego communities. Cancer research and patient care, projects to rebuild schools, parks and playgrounds and athletic fields, and other initiatives have all been served by the Foundation, which is on track to be helping more than ever this year. It’s just another example of Brees’ winning spirit, which—despite his incredible personal abilities—ultimately is all about teamwork. As he said of his impact and the impact of the Saints’ Super Bowl victory on the people of New Orleans as they were recovering from Katrina: “Here’s the thing, you know: We needed the city as much as you might say that they were needing the Saints and needing us as a team to be successful. We just leaned on each other for the last four years, and we had so much support from them that, in the end, there wasn’t extra pressure on us.” n To learn more about Drew, or to help the Brees Dream Foundation, visit drewbrees.com

Brees at the Honda Classic with Dan Marino, Jack Nicklaus and Kenny G

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Els brings his trademark focus to the Arnold Palmer Invitational

e a does

it!

Ernie Els is Arnold Palmer’s kind of man, and golfer. Personable, friendly and above all a crowd pleaser, he plays the game in the style and spirit of the King—hard, fair, and with flair. paul trow was at Bay Hill when the big South African received the royal assent

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Still wAtErS run dEEP And no golfEr EPitomizES tHiS truiSm BEttEr tHAn ErniE ElS. Known throughout the game as the Big Easy, he ambles around apparently without a care in the world—smiling and waving to fans, and taking particular care to smell the roses along his way. His swing looks effortless, smooth as silk, a gift from the gods if you will, but it had absolutely nothing to do with his blue-collar, rain-delayed and very popular victory in this year’s Arnold Palmer invitational presented by masterCard. in recent times, alas, it’s been more a case of the Big Struggle for the giant South African, both in his golfing and personal lives. it was certainly a struggle as he squelched toward the 69th title of his tournament career at Bay Hill Club & lodge back in march. By comparison, his four-shot victory over compatriot Charl Schwartzel in the wgC-CA Championship at doral golf resort & Spa two weeks earlier was a stroll in the park. now 40, Els is the first to admit that he has to work a lot harder these days—so much so that at the turn of the year he opted to re-dedicate himself to honing his game, to commit to a fuller program on the PgA tour and to cut out much of the international travel that he finally recognized was undermining his form.

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In retrospect, this was a ‘no brainer.’ Prior to his success at Doral, he had not won anywhere in the world since 2008.

He hadn’t gone away—far from it—but his game was in the Doldrums.

Taking Tiger Woods, so often his nemesis, out of the equation, Els vies with Vijay Singh and Phil Mickelson as the player of his generation. He has had 30 top-10 finishes in major championships, including three victories—in the U.S. Opens of 1994 and 1997 and in the British Open at Muirfield in 2002.

All told, though, these moments of glory were quite a long time ago, and much has happened in Els’ life since, not only to deflect his focus from the cold-eyed pursuit of trophies but also from the notion that golf is somehow life’s be-all and end-all.

Perhaps the turning-point for him came in 2006 when his (then) four-year-old son Ben was diagnosed with autism.

“We’d suspected for a few years that something was wrong,” Els says. “I mean, there’s a process that every kid goes through. Crawl at nine months, walk at 12 months, and then start talking and so on. With Ben we started thinking: ‘Why is he not crawling? Why is he not walking? Why is he not looking me in the eye?’ We soon discovered he was quite severely touched by autism.

“One in 150 children is affected by autism and that was perhaps the most shocking thing; the number of people it affects. It hits the whole family hard. For a long time you try to figure out ‘what just happened to my life?’ You feel sorry for yourself and for your kid and for your family. And the tragedy is that even in this day and age, the kid who has autism is often forgotten about. The feeling is that he’s almost a waste of time, which says a lot more about society than it does the child. It’s heartbreaking.”

Ben’s condition was the driving force behind Els’ decision to relocate his family to West Palm Beach, Florida from Wentworth in Surrey, England where he won seven World Match Play Championships and is also feted for his course-design skills.

“The move has benefits for my golf,” he acknowledged, “but more importantly we’ve been able to secure a more intensive form of therapy for Ben. And he’s doing great. He might act and say things a little differently from other kids, and he obviously has some difficulties, but he understands everything we say and is particularly in tune with our emotions; it’s almost like a sixth sense.

“And thank God he’s got such a nice nature. He’s a very friendly, very happy, very shy kid and the more loving attention he gets and the smiles that he sees, the better.

Samantha, his older sister [now 11], is great with him.

“Liezl [Els’ wife] and I are private people, but we are also very much in the public eye and we recognize that this gives us a platform to raise funds for and awareness of autism, and its possible treatments. It is something we both feel very passionate about.”

Ernie and Liezl established the ‘Els for Autism Foundation’ last year. “My first goal was to help fund an Autism Center of Excellence, a model for the world of what should be done for children with Autism,” Els explains. “The Center will include an educational program for children aged between three and 21, an on-site services component for doctors, speech therapists and other specialists, a continuing services program for adults, and, for me most importantly, a research facility where scientists can study what causes autism and possible treatments for it.

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“But that’s just the beginning. The foundation will also be funding cutting edge Autism projects at some of the best universities and research labs around the United States.

“Years from now people may remember me as a golfer and a major champion. But I’d like also to be remembered as somebody who took the issue of autism and did something with it. The rest of my life, I’ll be fighting this thing.”

Given his resounding commitment to this cause, Els clearly has the role and status of golf within his life firmly in perspective. If possible, his on-course demeanor exudes even more calmness than before. However, it did not stop him from becoming the first player since Woods in 2001 to claim two titles in Florida in one season.

Doral might have been the ultimate Big Easy for Els, but Bay Hill was anything but. Around the top of the leaderboard all week, his lead had just been cut from five strokes to just two due to a double-bogey at 13 and another dropped shot at 14 when a thunderstorm and torrential rain triggered the siren that halted play on the Sunday afternoon. Els then had to endure a largely sleepless night before completing his final round of 71 for an 11-under-par total of 277.

“The whole thing changed from being very comfortable to being just as tense as I’ve been for a long time,” Els admitted.

“When we went for dinner [on Sunday night], I couldn’t get the mistakes out of my head and thoughts of what I had to do to win and what the weather was going to be like. I’d let a few players back into the tournament and there was a lot of uncertainty.”

In the end, he sank lengthy putts on 15, 17 (where his ball was plugged in a greenside trap) and 18 to grind out four closing pars and deny Italy’s Edoardo Molinari and young American Kevin Na, who tied for second, by two shots.

“I played nervous golf today,” he conceded, after celebrating his moment of victory by exchanging a few laughs with Mr. Palmer beside the 18th green. “I really earned this one. It feels special. I think if you’re a betting man you would have got really good odds anywhere in the world that Ernie Els would win two tournaments in a row.

“A lot of guys have written me off and probably said it was a fluke in Miami [when he won the WGC-CA title].

It was hard work this week and I’ll have to keep working hard. There are still a lot of flaws in my game that I’ve got to figure out and get right. I’m never going to play the game perfectly, but I can still improve.”

Els, who now has 18 PGA Tour titles, has certainly improved in terms of consistency this year since cutting back his travel commitments—he is back in the top-10 of the World Golf Ranking and riding high in the FedExCup and scoring average tables. “I want to make this a special year, especially after these two wins,” he added. “But I still have a lot of work left and there are a lot of majors left, and that’s going to be fun now.”

He admitted that his mind was on the upcoming Masters Tournament when he stood on the tee of the 458-yard 18th hole at Bay Hill on Monday afternoon. “It’s exactly the same shot [as on the 18th at Augusta National],” Els said. “I had to hit a little fade and I opened up my body Els has tasted victory in the British Open (left) and the U.S. Open (above right) as well as the Palmer Invitational (right)

nicely and hit a perfect fade down there. I was just trying to imagine that I had to hit this shot at Augusta.”

The mental image clearly did the trick at Bay Hill, though at The Masters it was less effective despite a closing 68 that catapulted Els up into a tie for 18th.

He has twice finished second in his pursuit of the everelusive Green Jacket, so it’s not surprising the year’s opening major is at the front of his mind every spring. “In practice, you try and get a draw going with your driver, hit high shots with your irons, and have your short game very sharp,” he said. “It feels good now to be able to feel like I can play with these boys.”

Another dimension to Els’ revised approach to the game has come with his choice of caddie. This season, the bag duties are being shared by his ‘old faithful’ Ricci Roberts and Dan Quinn, a former NHL player and accomplished celebrity golfer. Roberts was on duty at both Doral and Bay Hill, but Quinn, whose enthusiasm particularly appeals to Els, did the honors at The Masters. Els explained that decision was based on the fact that he knows Augusta like the back of his hand and it therefore didn’t matter which caddie he employed that week. From a distance, the jury is out on this policy which is probably best assessed after a full season.

However, Els’ knowledge of Bay Hill after 16 appearances in the tournament is equally impressive. He was particularly effusive when asked how he rated the course following changes overseen by Mr. Palmer last summer, particularly compared to the set-up when he previously won at Bay Hill in 1998.

“I think it’s brilliant. The changes are unbelievable and the course really tests your ability coming in. If you win here you can feel comfortable in majors. The shaping is different. It has bigger bunkers with edges flowing through. Some of the new green complexes are very good and offer really tough pin positions.

“For a par-72 course, to yield a winning score of 11-under is pretty good. That’s where as a designer you want the winning score to be. As a designer, you don’t want the guys to be ripping your golf course apart and I think he’s achieved his goal. Anything from 10- to 16-under on a par-72 course means that it’s playing tough.

“It was hard work this week, but two wins is definitely special.

It can be one of the toughest, cruelest games in the world. And then when you sit here, it’s one of the nicest games.”

So says one of the nicest guys. n

ErniE iS a Sam Fan Ernie Els found time during the prize-giving ceremony for the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by MasterCard at Bay Hill Club & Lodge to congratulate the tournament host on the instructional work he is doing with grandson Sam Saunders.

Saunders, 22 and winner of $95,226 in prize-money in five PGA Tour starts this season, tied for 50th at Bay Hill with a four-round total of 292, four over par.

But Els believes the young man has a bright future in the pro ranks and was quick to convey this message to Mr. Palmer. “I just said that I’ve seen Sam play in the tournament and on the range—actually I’ve been seeing him around the club here for many years as an amateur— and it looks like he’s really changed his body shape.

“I said to Arnold I would give anything for his backswing—he’s just in the perfect position and he can hit any shot from there.

“Actually Arnold took satisfaction from that because he reckons he got him in that position. So he’s obviously working with his grandson and that must be a lot of fun.”

Palmer presents the trophy to Els and coaches grandson Saunders

Photo: Brian Mills

Inland G Ice fishing, da Bears and lots and lots of wind come to mind when one thinks of the Great Lakes, but the same breezes that give Chicago its Windy City nickname also tickle many a fairway across the Upper Midwest. Both the P.G.A. and the U.S.G.A. chose Wisconsin to host several recent championships. The state with the most golf courses per capita is not Florida, California or South Carolina, it’s Michigan. And the Ryder Cup is coming to the Chicago area in 2012—though whether or not it will attract the same fans that fill Soldier Field every NFL season remains to be seen. Either way, there’s golf here. To find out where it is, we asked kingdom correspondent chris rodell...

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olympia fields C.C.

olympia fields C.C.

Olympia Fields, Illinois, ofcc.info One of the giants of midwest Great Lakes golf and on the play list of every serious golfer, Olympia Fields was where Jim Furyk won the 2003 Open and overcame the distraction of a voluptuous streaker making friendly with him as he marched to victory. Up until that moment, the only blushing ever done at Olympia Fields was over all the well deserved compliments the Chicago-area course earned for hosting another fabulous major. The course has been host to 16 championships, including two U.S. Opens, two P.G.A. Championships and five Western Opens. The North course is an American rarity in that it was designed by a fancy import: two-time British Open Champion Willie Park Jr. If you get the opportunity to play Olympia Fields do not on any account miss it.

Photo: Patrick Drickey/stonehousegolf.com

Game Geneva national Golf Club

the boG

Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, genevanationalresort.com This elegant resort community near Lake Geneva is known as the Hamptons of the Midwest, about an hour and 40 minutes northwest of Chicago. The Grand Geneva Resort was once the playground for the original Playboy: Hugh Hefner. He built and ran the place as the Playboy Club from 1968-91, but today it’s a wholesome family friendly resort with a trio of great golf challenges. Tracks by Player, Trevino and Palmer (his first in Wisconsin) are each worthy of praise. Both Palmer and Trevino were on hand for gala openings in 1991.

When Palmer heard that Trevino shot a 66 on the Trevino course (Palmer’d shot a par 72 on his), he joked, “I guess that must mean his course is six shots easier than mine.”

Sauksville, Wisconsin, golfthebog.com Devotees of this secluded APDC design will say it’s one of the best, and experts agree. Golf Digest annually ranks it among the best in the state, and no wonder. The shot-making requirements are as varied as the lush landscape, with 7,221 yards winding through meadows, past clattering creeks and up hills that give views of the largest and purest peat land in southern Wisconsin—hence, “The Bog.” The dainty par 4 12th hole is just 318 yards, but is studded with hazards that foil even the best golfers. Palmer himself carded a triple-bogey seven on 12 on his way to a 74 during a ceremonial opening round in 1995.

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The AmericAn club

erin hills

Kohler, Wisconsin, destinationkohler.com Along with Bandon Dunes, no courses have done more to insinuate themselves in the psyche of American golfers than Pete Dye’s Kohler courses, especially The Straits at Whistling Straits. With spectacular scenery and excessive bunkering that borders on psychedelic, The Straits is on pace to become the pre-eminent major-hosting golf course in America. It’s already hosted two majors (the 2004 P.G.A. Championship and the 2007 U.S. Senior Open) and will add the 2010 P.G.A. again in August. If that’s not enough, the course that opened in 1998 will hold its third P.G.A. in 2015 all in a march to 2020 when it will be home to the granddaddy of them all, the 43rd Ryder Cup. The buzz about The Straits is so all-encompassing that it tends to suck all the air out of two outstanding Blackwolf Run courses along the Sheboygan River and The Irish course up the coast. Along with the golf, the accommodations, dining and amenities presented by plumbing impresario Herb Kohler Jr. combine to make this one of the most splendid golf resort towns in the world.

Hartford, Wisconsin, erinhills.com Superlatives dangle from Erin Hills like ornaments on a Christmas tree. Golf Magazine said it was America’s best new course in 2007. Highly regarded Milwaukee Sentinel golf writer Gary D’Amato said it was “destined for greatness.” American golfers usually have to book a trans-Atlantic flight to enjoy a golf experience of such sublime purity. This is a layout so compelling and of obvious grandeur that the nitpickers at the U.S.G.A. awarded it the 2008 Women’s Amateur Public Links—before it had even been seeded, much less opened for play. It didn’t stop there. The organization then lined it up for the 2011 U.S. Amateur.

With distinctions like those, look for this modern design to host a venerable U.S. Open while it’s still in its golfing infancy.

hArbor shores resorT

Photo: Nile Young Photography

St. Joseph, Michigan, harborshoresresort.com Located near the southwestern shores of Lake Michigan, the month’s-old Jack Nicklaus course at Harbor Shores is already making plenty of grand waves all its own. Three of the holes offer dramatic vistas of the lake, while 10 others offer a beguiling track along Ox Creek and the Paw Paw River. The 530-acre development boldly balances the need to protect the pristine environmental beauty of a wetlands site with reclaiming used up brownfield property to make it a compelling residential development that is destined to be one of Michigan’s elite playgrounds.

medinAh c.c.

Medinah, Illiniois, medinahcc.org The eyes of the golf world rarely stray far from this fabled 76-year-old golf Mecca, an apt term for an all-American named for a sacred Islamic city in Saudi Arabia. The No.3 course, built by devoted Shriners, has hosted three U.S. Opens (1949, 1975, 1990) and two P.G.A. Championships (1999, 2006), both of which were won by Tiger Woods. It was at Medinah where Woods in 1999 defeated a dashing, in every sense of the word, Sergio Garcia, who famously ran up the 16th fairway in an exuberant trot to watch a ball cozy up to the flag. The match seemed to herald a rivalry that would endure; alas, like Garcia, those hopes were dashed. Look for more history to be made at this Chicago landmark with the Byzantine clubhouse when the Ryder Cup comes calling in 2012. harbor shores

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TreeTops resorT

The resorTs of Tullymore and sT. Ives

Gaylord, Michigan, treetops.com Stanwood, Michigan, tullymoregolf.com There is a greater concentration of quality resort golf centered For those who appreciate great architecture—both golf and within a two-hour radius of Northern Michigan than structural—Tullymore and St. Ives offer the best of both. anywhere else in the U.S. Michigan (michigan.org) also Both the Tullymore and St. Ives courses have earned rafts ranks first in America for most golf courses per capita. of praise for their course designers, Jim Engh and Jerry That combination of quality and competition keeps prices Matthews respectively, and now the $6 million Tullymore affordable and golfers satisfied. Flying into Gaylord and clubhouse has been named by Golf Inc. magazines as the staying at either Treetops or the nearby Ostego Club Resort best facility among daily fee clubs in America. It’s the kind of provides a central base from which to access the northern part place where even non-golfers would enjoy luxuriating while of the lower Upper Peninsula. Plus, Rick Smith’s “Threetops” dedicated duffers enjoy a constructive round. A mingled mix course is a great starter for any golf splurge. The par-3 course of traditional and futuristic design elements have led Golf is consistently ranked as the No.1 par-3 course in the country. Digest course critic Ron Whitten to describe Tullymore as It is one of three Smith layouts that are joined by stellar tracks “Art Deco” course design. St. Ives brings the robust landscape contributed by Robert Trent Jones Sr. and Tom Fazio. into play with challenging shot requirements that take golfers on elevation changes as dramatic as 80 feet.

shanTy Creek resorTs Bellaire, Michigan, shantycreek.com This year-round wonderland enjoys four-season compliments with skiers gushing about it being a really great place to hit the slopes. It’s also a fabulous place for golfers more concerned with an entirely different sort of slope. The resort features three distinct villages, four golf courses, two ski mountains, indoor and outdoor pools, a spa and fitness center, conference facilities and four dining options. Golf Digest gave Shanty Creek’s A.P.D.C. course, The Legend, the golf equivalent of a black diamond run. The course is consistently ranked among the best in Michigan, and that’s high praise indeed.

arCadIa bluffs Arcadia, Michigan, arcadiabluffs.com The porch of the scenic clubhouse is 245 feet above the shores of Lake Michigan, and if you had a telescope and a really tall ladder you could see struggling golfers flailing directly due west at Whistling Straits. The two stellar courses are roughly across from one another at the waist of the 150-mile wide body of water. And they share many of the same characteristics. The 11-year-old Bluffs enjoys 3,100 feet of uninterrupted Lake Michigan shoreline. The course website posts a mission statement announcing its intention to be nothing less than the finest daily fee course in America. For any fair-minded golfer, it’s ‘mission accomplished’.

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ravInes Golf Club Saugatuck, Michigan, ravinesgolfclub.com The A.P.D.C. course directory lists five courses in Michigan, including this, The Ravines. We consider Ravines one of Michigan’s “must plays” and among the best conditioned courses in the state. Automotive recreation experts at A.A.A. say the scenic course is one of the best driving destinations in the state.

Besides golf, the club is the site of many weddings and gatherings.

Clearly, it’s a special place to many people. The same could be said for the whole state of Michigan and Arnold Palmer. It was at the Detroit Country Club in 1954 that Palmer won the U.S. Amateur Championship, to this day the one Palmer cites as the most pivotal victory in his life. So if you do venture to golf-mad Michigan, be sure to check out any of the Palmer venues or other great golf throughout the Great Lakes region. Chances are it’ll mean as much to you as it means to Palmer. n arcadia bluffs

Photo: Patrick Drickey/stonehousegolf.com

J AC K NICK LA US JOHNNY MILLER A R N O L D PA L M E R T O M WAT S O N

AUGUST 10TH, 2010 The Golf Club at Harbor Shores Benton Harbor | St. Joseph, Michigan

For Tickets and Event Information

HarborShoresChampions.com 269.927.4653

JOIN JACK & FRIENDS AT HARBOR

SHORES

CELEBRATE THE GRAND OPENING OF THE FIRST JACK NICKLAUS SIGNATURE GOLF COURSE ON LAKE MICHIGAN WITH A HISTORIC DAY OF GOLF AND PREVIEW HARBOR SHORES RESORT’S FIRST REAL ESTATE OPPORTUNITIES.

This advertisement does not constitute an offer to sell real property or a solicitation of offers to purchase real property. Prior registration or other advance qualification of real property may be required before offers may be made or received. Actual development may not be as currently proposed. No guarantee is made that the features, amenities and facilities depicted by artists' renderings or otherwise described herein will be built or, if built, will be of the same type, size or nature as depicted or described.

Equal Housing Opportunity is our policy. The scenes represented in this advertisement depict The Golf Club at Harbor Shores which abuts the Harbor Shores communities.

Obtain the Property Report required by Federal law and read it before signing anything.

No Federal agency has judged the merits or value, if any, of this property.

shores of redemption

Michigan is home to many of the Midwest’s finest courses; it is also home to a groundbreaking rejuvenation project that is using an exciting new golf offering to restore a community’s pride and self-belief. paul trow reports

Golf courses are often constructed from landfill or brownfield sites, but rarely can such a project have been as welcome as one nearinG completion on a stretch of southwest michiGan coastline, 100 miles east of chicaGo. the hub of the harbor shores resort, located in the communities of st. joseph, benton harbor, and benton township, is a jack nicklaus signature course that makes maximum use of one of the most significant watersheds in north america, involving the paw paw river, the saint joseph river, ox creek, and lake michigan itself. this 530-acre project balances the opportunity to enhance the environmental beauty of a wetlands site while reclaiming brownfield lands to create a residential resort development seeking to become one of michigan’s most family friendly playgrounds. ten holes opened for play in july 2009 and these, as well as the remaining eight, will be officially unveiled during a charity skins game in august featuring nicklaus, arnold palmer, tom watson and johnny miller. the terrain is diverse and the four are sure to enjoy the variety of playing holes that vary from the dunes along lake michigan, through rolling hills and forest and along the wetlands of the paw paw river. nicklaus, who started work on the design back in august 2005, said: “it’s not only a good golf course, it’s beautiful as well. it plays nicely. it flows nicely. it’s something this community is very proud of, and very happy to have here.” not only will the Golf club at harbor shores be a source of local pride and enjoyment, it is seen as the long-needed lifeline to pull the area out of the morass into which it sank when more than 5,500 jobs dried up during a disastrous 18-month period in the 1980s. mark hesemann, managing director of evergreen development, master developer of harbor shores resort, said: “harbor shores is a classic example of the revitalization

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and rejuvenation of a community. eventually, we’ll probably need more than one course to accommodate local folks, residents and resort guests. the daily fee course is also home to the local high school teams and the first tee of benton harbor. we expect to have 13,000 rounds on the course in this, our inaugural summer, and 20,000 once we’re up to full speed—and that’s all we want to have.” between 50 and 60 people are currently employed at the course, but there will be more once the clubhouse is completed next year. other plans for the development include a hotel, spa and conference center, shops, marinas, and biking and walking trails. the property will comprise almost 800 residential units—a mix of cottages, custombuilt homes, condominiums and townhouses, many with golf or waterfront views. by 2020 the project will be nearing completion and generating lots of permanent jobs for the community. benton harbor began in the 1830s with the purchase of 160 acres of land by eleazar morton, who planted orchards and prospered from the sale of fruit. to establish a farmers’ market on the east side of the st. joseph river, a mile-long canal was channeled through the wetland between the river and what eventually became benton harbor. by the 1870s ships were loading more than 300,000 packages of fruit per year while sawmills and basket factories lined the canal. tourists were soon flocking to the numerous hotels that offered mineral baths, and eventually automotive support companies and other manufacturing sprang up in the area. in the 1960s, though, benton harbor went into decline. companies, as they did all across the midwest, moved out, and the population began to shrink, too. the first attempt to arrest this depressing trend came in 1986 when benton harbor was designated a michigan enterprise Zone, offering substantial incentives for businesses to relocate and participate in its renewal.

Photo: Nile Young Photography

A long-term, non-profit plan was implemented. Changes began in downtown Benton Harbor and then spread to the neighborhoods—one street, one home at a time. Once the transformation was under way, the next stage was to focus on redeveloping the land. Vacant industrial buildings were acquired, and the pollution and waste on these sites expunged.

To date, some $80 million has been invested in Harbor Shores through the Cornerstone Alliance, the largest per capita privately funded development organization in the country.

Hesemann is in no doubt of the area’s potential.

“Tourism is growing again,” he said. “We have five beach parks along five or six miles of sand and dunes, and some of the best freshwater fishing in the world. There are festivals here year-round as well.”

Two other Michigan reclamation projects with golf at their heart are Bay Harbor and TPC Dearborn, but Hesemann also acknowledges the inspiration provided by Whistling Straits and Blackwolf Run across the lake in Wisconsin.

“We expect the golf course, once it’s established, to be the catalyst for community development,” he said.

“Harbor Shores should be an example to the rest of the world that the game of golf and golf development is far more than just a sport. It can be truly transformational.”

A huge bonus for Harbor Shores was that Nicklaus could draw on his experience of turning a similarly derelict site in Anaconda, Montana into one of his earlier Signature courses, Old Works Golf Club.

Perhaps the final word, though, should rest with Palmer, who has built a few courses on landfills in his time. “There’ve been places we’ve used to create a more pleasant environment than what had been there previously,” he says. “It’s very satisfying. It’s a wonderful thing to restore to the environment something of beauty.”

HarborShoresResort.com

Champions for Change

Four of golf ’s greatest champions—Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Johnny Miller and Tom Watson—will raise $1 million for charity when they tee up for the official opening of the Golf Club at Harbor Shores on Tuesday, August 10.

The main event will be an 18-hole skins game using a scramble format that enables all the players to partner each other at some stage during the round.

Mark Heseman said: “We’re expecting as many as 3,000 people to come along and watch. There’ll be an instructional clinic involving the stars in the morning before the game.

“They’ll be playing for a purse of $1 million to be donated to the Boys & Girls Club of Benton Harbor. In the evening, Palmer, Nicklaus and Watson will take part in a round-table discussion with Jaime Diaz of Golf Digest in front of an audience of 1,500 people.

“CBS will produce a half-hour highlights package of the entire day which will be shown before the Saturday round of the 2011 Masters. There will also be local TV coverage on the day.”

Palmer is particularly looking forward to the occasion, as it will be the first time the four legends have all played in the same four-ball. “I’m sure we’ll have a lot of fun together,” he said. “It should be a special day.”

Watson, a tireless supporter of charity, said: “I’m grateful for continuing to have the opportunity to help those less fortunate through golf.”

Nicklaus summed up the ethos of the initiative, saying: “Doing things in the right way and leading your life accordingly is very important to me. As you get older you look back on what you’ve done and you want to hold your head up.”

For more details and to book tickets, see harborshoreschampions.com

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Dear

Seventeen For the 17th edition of kingdom, we thought it would be an interesting idea to put together a special golf course featuring some of the leading 17th holes on the planet.

We drew the line at making it a 17-hole course, if only so we could get one extra hole into the mix

Received opinion among touR-haRdened pRoFessional golFeRs says that it ain’t oveR till the veRy last putt dRops on the veRy last gReen.

The four major championships of 2009 seemed to confirm this truism—remember joy for y-e. yang and lucas glover; heartache for tom Watson; brute bravery from angel cabrera? The excitement that can be generated on the 72nd hole in a major administers a tingle that few other sports can match. yet history suggests that more often than not the pivotal hole in these great contests is the 17th, not the 18th. standing on the 17th tee with a slender lead is perhaps the most uncomfortable feeling a would-be champion golfer can experience. so much can still go wrong, both on a selfinflicted basis and via the exploits of others. come the final tee shot, many of the extraneous variables in the overall equation have been all but eliminated and the destination of the title has boiled down to a question of individual fortitude. take Watson, for example. two of the championships in which he was a central figure were clearly decided on the 17th hole. at pebble Beach in the 1982 u.s. open, he dashed the hopes of Jack nicklaus by chipping in for a title-clenching birdie two. But two years later at st. andrews, he fell foul of the ‘Road hole’ and missed out on his sixth claret Jug by two shots to seve Ballesteros.

The 17th hole at augusta national has seen its fair share of excitement over the years—indeed, had arnold palmer

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not birdied it in the final round of The masters in 1960, his chances of a second green Jacket would have been virtually non-existent. it was also the scene of the birdie that appeared to have put Roberto de vicenzo into a playoff with Bob goalby eight years later—only for the veteran argentine to lose by one after failing to check his card carefully enough. two 17th holes also had a significant influence over the outcome in recent Ryder cup matches—at valderrama in southern spain and at the palmer-designed K club in ireland. as this is the 17th edition of kingdom, we have decided to celebrate some wonderful 17th holes that have delivered ecstasy, drama and distress over the years. as is often the way with these eclectic exercises, there is insufficient space to include every ‘great’ 17th hole. so some subjective selection was required, especially as we wanted to create a golf course that would stand on its own merits as a balanced test of skill.

The result is a par-72 layout with five par-3s and five par-5s that stretches just beyond 7,000 yards. The trick, though, has been to come up with an order of play that makes use of the challenges posed by each hole at the most appropriate place in the round. in our view, there can only be one 17th hole on this particular card and that honor falls to the oldest 17th of them all—the aforementioned ‘Road hole.’ all the other 17th holes, therefore, fall in line behind this timeless monument. no doubt every reader will have a view about the rectitude of our selection—we don’t expect everyone to agree, but we sure hope you all enjoy the journey…

Photo: Evan Schiller / golfshots.com

The island-green 17th at TPC Sawgrass

hole no. 1 Lower Course, Baltusrol Golf Club, Springfield, New Jersey 650 yards, par-5

hole no. 2 Stadium Course, TPC Scottsdale, Arizona 332 yards, par-4

Where better to start than with the shoulder-opening challenge of the longest hole ever to feature at a major?

Designed by A.W. Tillinghast, the Lower Course opened in 1922. However, it wasn’t until the 1993 U.S. Open that John Daly became the first competitor to reach the green in two shots—covering the 623 yards it measured at the time with a driver and 1-iron. After that ‘humiliation’, it was stretched to 650 yards by Rees Jones for the 2005 PGA Championship.

Not surprisingly, this hole is now treated universally as a three-shotter. The tee looks down on a long, straight fairway flanked by trees and the second must clear a group of crossbunkers known as the Sahara Desert at around 450 yards to leave an approach into a small, circular, elevated green encased by seven bunkers.

After the exertions of the 1st, our 2nd poses an entirely different question. Designed by Tom Weiskopf and Jay Morrish, this drivable ‘risk and reward’ hole delivers almost as many bogeys as birdies—just ask Korea’s Y-E. Yang who led this year’s Waste Management Phoenix Open before pulling his drive into the water hazard that runs to the left and behind the green. Desert separates the tee from the fairway which undulates towards the front of a long, raised green. The putting surface narrows increasingly between several run-off areas as it moves back towards the ‘Sunday’ pin location. With a large trap waiting to gather the bail-out tee shot short and right, laying-up isn’t exactly a danger-free option—in effect, it turns the hole into two short par-3s where both shots must be struck with exemplary precision.

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hole no. 3

hole no. 5

Palmer Ryder Course, The K Club, Ireland 424 yards, par-4

West Course, Winged Foot Golf Club, Mamaroneck, New York 449 yards, par-4

Named ‘Half Moon’, this demanding right-to-left dogleg requires accuracy and commitment from the tee. This is the second successive hole on our card that presents a watery grave (in this case the River Liffey) to a pulled or hooked drive—and little solace for those who choose to bail-out right towards woodland that has thickened considerably since the introduction of several trees for the 2006 Ryder Cup. Arnold Palmer, the hole’s designer, says: “The ideal drive is down the left side of the fairway, but this is very risky. Much easier is to hit a long iron or rescue club to the middle right of the fairway, but this can leave a lengthy shot into the green.” With the putting surface also sloping sharply from right to left towards the Liffey, a delicate touch is essential around the green.

Another Tillinghast creation, Winged Foot opened in 1923 and has a deserved reputation for the brutality of its finishing stretch.

The most recent major staged over this demanding parkland layout was the 2006 U.S. Open, and the 17th played a crucial part. Australia’s Geoff Ogilvy, the eventual winner, looked dead the moment he thinned a chip out of some wiry greenside rough. His ball was scurrying through the green towards similar cabbage the other side when it hit the flagstick and dropped for a three. Jack Nicklaus described this hole as “one of those textbook tests that really pits the player against the designer.” It is a slight dogleg to the right, round a crook consisting of four large bunkers. On either side of a narrow, curving green are long, deep bunkers amidst clusters of tall, overhanging trees.

hole no. 4

hole no. 6

Originally designed by Dick Wilson and revised by Palmer and Ed Seay in 1989, this intimidating par-3 underwent one of the more pronounced re-jigs overseen by Palmer last year when he upgraded the course’s general layout. It is played across an expanse of water to a raised, table-top green which is guarded by a deep bunker that eats into the front right and two shallower sand traps to the left. The conservative tee shot is aimed at the front left portion of the green, but the pin is usually positioned at the back or in the shallow part on the right. Another word of warning—anyone long off the tee can expect to bounce down a steep slope into the stream which feeds from the lake and runs round the back of the green.

This classic hole, into the prevailing wind, was played as a long, uphill par-4 for each of its four U.S. Opens. Olympic dates from the 1920s, but needed a facelift from Robert Trent Jones Sr. prior to its first Open in 1955 when the unheralded Jack Fleck beat Ben Hogan in a playoff. In 1966, Palmer led by seven shots standing on the 10th tee, but by the time he holed out for a bogey five at 17, after finding thick rough with both his drive and second shot, he had been caught by Billy Casper who went on to win the playoff. A severe left-to-right slope halves the width of the fairway while the second shot is aimed at a heavily-bunkered green which has a small bounce-in area at the front but also severe left-to-right and front-to-back slopes.

Bay Hill Club & Lodge, Orlando, Florida 219 yards, par-3

Lake Course, Olympic Club, San Francisco, California 522 yards, par-5

hole no. 7

Champion Course, PGA National Resort, Palm Beach Gardens, Florida 190 yards, par-3

Everyone playing the Champion Course, home to the Honda Classic for the past four years, must shudder when, after leaving the 14th green, they are greeted with a sign bearing the words: ‘You Are Now Entering “The Bear Trap”.’ This stretch of three water-infested holes, redesigned by Nicklaus in 1990, consists of two par-3s and a left-to-right dogleg par-4 shaped around a piece of real estate where H2O outranks dry land by a ratio of 2:1. The 17th might be the Champion Course’s shortest hole, but it’s by no means the easiest. Water guards the front and right of the green while a long, diagonal bunker eats tight into its left side. If the wind is against, or blowing left to right towards the water, the only policy is to take dead aim at the green.

Photo: Evan Schiller / golfshots.com

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hole no. 8

hole no. 11

Augusta National Golf Club, Georgia 440 yards, par-4

Pebble Beach Golf Links, Monterey Peninsula, California 218 yards, par-3

This right-to-left dogleg is another hole where extra distance has been added—25 yards in 1999 and a further 15 for 2006.

Ike’s Tree, which stands in the middle-left of the fairway about 150 yards from the tee, was named after former President Dwight D. Eisenhower because he invariably drove into it. His fellow Augusta National members were convinced they would wake up one morning to find the offending loblolly pine sawn down, but it never happened. The fairway then curves round to the left on an adverse, left-to-right camber. The bunker at the right front of the green catches numerous approach shots and makes it particularly awkward to get at the flag when it is only a few paces onto an often rock-hard putting surface which slopes sharply left-to-right with a drop-off at the back right.

In the 1982 U.S. Open, Tom Watson’s chip from thick greenside rough rattled the pin and dropped into the cup for the birdie two that consigned Jack Nicklaus to yet another runners-up spot. The irony of this act of ‘fairway robbery’ was that in the final round 10 years earlier Nicklaus produced one of the most extraordinary shots of his illustrious career at the same hole to seal victory. Taking a 1-iron into the teeth of a stiff wind and blinking into the setting sun, his ball flew laser-like into the green, struck the flagstick and finished five inches away for a tap-in birdie. This scenic hole has the Pacific Ocean down its left as well as behind a long, two-level green that slants diagonally from front right to back left and is surrounded by a cluster of deep traps.

hole no.9

hole no. 12

Royal Lytham & St Annes Golf Club, Lancashire, England 457 yards, par-4

Oakmont Country Club, Pennsylvania 313 yards, par-4

At driving distance, this right-to-left dogleg narrows between a nest of bunkers on the left and a bank of sand hills. The correct strategy is to drive down the right of the fairway before firing at an open but deep green sandwiched between traps. Bobby Jones pulled off an immortal shot en route to winning the 1926 British Open after hooking his tee shot.

Lying in sand 175 yards from a green he couldn’t see, he took his hickory-shafted mashie iron, picked the ball clean and flew it over gorse, scrub and thick rough into the heart of the green. His playing partner and rival Al Watrous, on the green in two, muttered: “There goes a hundred thousand bucks,” and promptly three-putted. The host club installed a plaque at the spot where Jones executed his miracle shot.

Every inch of our second ‘risk and reward’ par-4 goes uphill.

A relatively wide fairway doglegs from right to left around a mass of six bunkers and up to the narrowest of openings onto a raised green surrounded by five more traps. It was here that Jim Furyk’s chances of winning the 2007 U.S. Open were dashed. Unsure where he stood on the leaderboard in relation to eventual winner Angel Cabrera, but buoyed by his two-putt birdie in the third round, Furyk opted for driver again on the final afternoon. He struck it solidly, but it flew 20 yards further left than intended into rough the U.S.G.A. had grown especially thick. Short-sided and faced with an awkward flop shot to a pin tight to the back left of the green, he ended up with the costliest of bogeys.

hole no. 10

Ailsa Course, Turnberry Resort, Ayrshire, Scotland 559 yards, par-5 Known as ‘Lang Whang’, this man-sized par-5, lengthened for the 2009 British Open, provides the ideal start to the back nine.

It remains a birdie opportunity, even for those who can’t get up in two, but there is little margin for error as far as the big hitters are concerned. Following the redesign, most drives now land on the upslope of a fairway which looks from the tee like a long

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valley stretching almost into infinity. Even after a kind bounce, a fairway wood is usually required to reach a green that is framed by dunes and guarded at the front by a pair of bunkers on both sides. The difficulty entailed by this shot generally persuades even the better players to lay-up and take their chances with an uphill pitch to a raised and often firm green.

hole no. 13

hole no. 15

Cypress Point, once a host course for the AT&T Pro-Am in its clambake days when Bing Crosby ruled the roost, is now a fiercely private club. When asked to compare Alister MacKenzie’s masterpiece with its neighbor Pebble Beach, Julius Boros said: “Pebble has six great holes—all those that lie on the coastline. Cypress has 18 of them whether they lie on the coast or not.” Of Cypress’s holes, the 17th, a 90-degree left-to-right dogleg, is the most admired by professionals. The drive, from an elevated tee above the steep cliffs behind the 16th green, carries across the Pacific to a wide fairway. Then the approach must bypass a tangle of cypresses around 50 yards short of a green that is backed and flanked by massive bunkers and fronted on the ocean side by a stone retaining wall.

Trailing by seven shots after 54 holes in the 1960 U.S. Open, Palmer unfurled a closing 65 for a two-shot win. Even though he chalked up a routine par-5 at the long 17th, it was to prove the championship’s pivotal hole. “Its design forced even long players like me to go with an intelligent drive, careful lay-up and safe pitch,” Palmer says. “The pin in the final round was dangerously close to the front of the green, and the slope that led to a watery doom.” The false front duly drowned the challenge of Ben Hogan, who just failed to get up in two when tied for the lead. The fairway is relatively wide apart from a row of trees down the left, but the second shot is the conundrum. It involves a carry upward of 230 yards to a small, undulating green.

hole no. 14

hole no. 16

Straits Course, Whistling Straits, Sheboygan County, Wisconsin 223 yards, par-3

Cherry Hills Country Club, Englewood, Colorado 555 yards, par-5

Stadium Course, TPC Sawgrass, Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida 132 yards, par-3

The closing stretch on Pete Dye’s cutting-edge homage to Described by one writer as bringing a dash of Evel Knievel to Irish links golf on the shoreline of Lake Michigan is one the most genteel of sports, this is golf ’s most nerve-wracking of golf ’s most exhilarating experiences. From the bluff-top hole. We all know what it looks like: Tee, water, island green; green at the 13th, the ride home to the clubhouse is the dropping zone, water, island green; bunker, island green, ultimate roller-coaster between the lake and millions of tons water—the permutations are Satanic, especially when there’s of imported sand—which take the form, seemingly in equal a breeze blowing. Interestingly, its creator—Pete Dye—only measure, of hundreds of traps (some not really in play) and envisaged it after being forced to dig out tons of dirt to fill almost as many drifting, man-made dunes. The 17th, though, other pits and chasms around the layout. With no land left, dominates this sequence of holes. Named ‘Pinched Nerve,’ the hole had to be 90 percent water. In fairness, at least the its green, larger than it looks, is angled right to left along a green banks up toward the back with a tier across the middle. bulkhead precipice that plunges left toward the lake. The right “It’s great,” former Players Championship winner Sergio side of the green, obscured by traps carved into a steep hillside, Garcia says. “Any hole where you get to the tee and think, ‘just provides some bail-out room, but not enough for comfort. hit it on to the green,’ has to be good.”

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Image supplied by Kohler Co.

Cypress Point Club, Monterey Peninsula, California 393 yards, par-4

Photo: Patrick Drickey / stonehousegolf.com

hole no. 17

hole no. 18

The R&A have built a new tee to extend the ‘Road Hole’ to almost 500 yards for the 2010 British Open, but this might not be used if a strong wind is blowing directly against the players. However, it is probably irrelevant which tee is adopted because nothing can detract from the sheer majesty, and complexity, of this incredible hole. It is, without question, the ultimate double-dogleg. Off the tee, the drive needs to be fashioned as a slight fade over the hotel wall to hold the fairway; then a second shot shaped gently from right to left is the best way into a long, tantalizing green protected to the right by the ‘eponymous’ road and the wall beyond. To the front left lies the sheer-faced bunker that has spoiled more cards than any other in the game.

Designed by Trent Jones Sr., this left-to-right dogleg with a fairway sloping the other way was toughened up by Seve Ballesteros prior to the 1997 Ryder Cup. Seve’s efforts were not universally appreciated but he unquestionably increased the hole’s difficulty. He shortened it—from 570 to 540 yards—so why the complaints? The reason is the potentially glass-like state of the putting surface. Quite shallow but with a significantly raised (and shaved) front, the green is guarded by a huge pond with two cavernous bunkers at the back.

Bail-outs to the right have been blocked off by steep banking toward a stone wall that is part of an ancient fortification.

Come tournament time, the bank in front of that wall provides the perfect amphitheater for spectators. n

Old Course, St. Andrews Links, Fife, Scotland 495 yards, par-4

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

OUT

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

650

332

424

219

449

522

190

440 467

36

559

218

131

393

223

555

132

495

540 36

5

4

4

3

4

5

3

4

4

3,693

5

3

4

4

3

5

3

4

5

TPC Scottsdale (Stadium Course)

K Club (Palmer Ryder Course)

Bay Hill Club & Lodge

Winged Foot Golf Club (West Course)

Olympic Club (Lake Course)

PGA National Resort (Champion Course)

Augusta National Golf Club

Royal Lytham & St Annes Golf Club

Turnberry Resort (Ailsa Course)

Pebble Beach Golf Links

Oakmont Country Club

Cypress Point Club

Whistling Straits (Straits Course)

Cherry Hills Country Club

TPC Sawgrass (Stadium Course)

St. Andrews Links (Old Course)

Club de Golfe Valderrama

68

1

Baltusrol Golf Club (Lower Course)

Hole yards par

Club de Golfe Valderrama, Andalucia, Spain 540 yards, par-5

kingdom 17 summer 2010

9

in

total 72

3,428 7,111

Palmer hurls his visor skyward as he holes out for 65 in the final round at Cherry Hills

Courtesy USGA Museum

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FI F t y

Arnold Palmer could do almost no wrong during the summer of 1960. After claiming his second Green Jacket at The Masters in April, he won the U.S. Open after starting his final round seven shots behind. paul trow turns the clock back to golf ’s ultimate feat of derring-do at Cherry Hills Country Club

yeARS

CAn It ReAlly HAve Been HAlF A CentURy AGO? IMAGeS OF ARnOlD PAlMeR HURlInG HIS ReD vISOR SkyWARD AFteR HURDlInG 14 OF HIS FellOW COMPetItORS tO WIn tHe U.S. OPen lOOk AS tHOUGH tHey COUlD HAve Been tAken yeSteRDAy, SO MUCH ARe tHey BURStInG WItH eneRGy AnD vItAlIty. tHe ReD vISOR SURvIveS tO tHIS veRy HOUR—A PRIzeD exHIBIt At tHe U.S.G.A. MUSeUM In FAR HIllS, n.J.—AnD SO, JOyOUSly, DO tHe MeMORIeS OF One OF tHe MOSt exCItInG vICtORIeS In tHe HIStORy OF MAJOR CHAMPIOnSHIP GOlF.

AGO

Palmer’s red visor is now a museum piece

Courtesy USGA Museum

Cherry Hills Country Club on the outskirts of Denver in the Colorado Rocky Mountains was the scene, and Saturday 18 June, 1960 the appointed date with destiny.

Up till then Palmer had had a patchy relationship with the U.S Open: In seven previous tilts at the coveted old silver trophy he had missed the cut three times and recorded only two top-10 finishes—seventh at Oak Hill in 1956 and tied fifth at Winged Foot in 1959.

“But almost from the beginning, 1960 had a different feel about it,” writes Palmer in his autobiography, A Golfer’s Life. “My confidence level had never been so high, my desire to go out and play the golf course so intense. Cherry Hills stretched 7,004 yards, but because of the added distance a ball would carry on a course that is located 5,280 yards above sea level, some believed [Ben] Hogan’s 12-year tournament record might be in jeopardy.”

As it happened Hogan’s landmark was safe, but as the dust settled on perhaps the most dramatic day the U.S. Open has ever witnessed his pride most definitely was not—more of which later.

At the midway point of the competition, after the first two days, 30-year-old Palmer, the tournament favorite after winning The Masters for a second time that April, trailed 36-hole leader Mike Souchak by eight shots.

t O D Ay

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Hole number 4, Co-Design by Jack Nicklaus and Jack Nicklaus II, Peninsula de Cortes Golf Course.

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Located on the shores of the Sea of Cortez, Puerto Peñasco (La Jolla de Cortes) is one of the most beautiful destinations in the world – where the desert meets the ocean and a tidal pool forms a one-of-a-kind estuary. The golf on the Peninsula de Cortes provides stunning views as far one can see. This golf course, designed by the father and son team of Jack Nicklaus and Jack Nicklaus II, delivers all one expects and more. Situated in the five-star Mayan Palace Resort, the clubhouse lives up to the challenge with gourmet food and a lounge. We recommend bringing a fishing pole along as some of the world’s best fishing is found here.

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LeAding SCoreS (June 16-18, 1960) Yards: 7,004 280 Arnold PAlmer 282 JAck nicklAus (amateur) 283 Julius Boros dow FinsterwAld JAck Fleck dutch hArrison ted kroll mike souchAk 284 Jerry BArBer don cherry (amateur) Ben hogAn

Par: 71 (284) 72 71 72 65 71 71 69 71 73 69 68 73 71 69 70 73 70 70 72 71 74 70 70 69 72 69 75 67 68 67 73 75 69 71 70 74 70 71 71 72 75 67 69 73

This was still the era when the final two rounds were crammed into the third and last day. While this tradition gave players and spectators alike little time to reflect on what was going on, the potential for wild fluctuations in fortunes, and excitement levels, was considerable. Souchak, who tied for third the previous year, still led by two shots after round three despite hitting his tee shot out of bounds at the 18th, having been unnerved by the clicking of an amateur photographer.

Palmer, who shot a lackluster third-round 72, was seven Arnold Palmer sizes up a short putt during his final round at Cherry Hills

Courtesy USGA Museum

behind, having advanced just one stroke on the leader. Then in the locker room between rounds, one of golf ’s most famous conversations took place—between Palmer and his friend and longtime Pittsburgh sportswriter Bob Drum. On 215 (two over par), Palmer pointed out that “280 traditionally won the Open” and asked Drum what he thought a 65 might do for his chances. Drum responded: “For you, nothing. Two-eighty won’t do you one damn bit of good. You are too far back.”

His answer angered Palmer, who was dead serious even though only one player had ever posted a 65 in the last round of the U.S. Open—Walter Burkemo at Inverness in 1957.

Palmer used the final 20 minutes before his starting time to unleash his anger and frustration on the range. All week, he had tried to drive the 318-yard par-4 1st hole, only to double-bogey via the creek to the right of the fairway on day one and three-putt for bogey in the third round.

Finally, he achieved the feat, his ball rolling on to the front of the green. “There was an explosive cheer from the gallery on the tee and around the green,” said Palmer.

“Marching off the tee, I felt a powerful surge of adrenaline.”

That adrenaline had an instantly counterproductive effect because he needed to hole, in his own words, “a lengthy comebacker for a birdie.” Whatever, he was up and running and duly birdied five of the next six holes en route to an outward half of 30. Despite the fireworks, though, Palmer was still only tied on four under with Souchak, Hogan, Julius Boros, Jack Fleck, Dow Finsterwald, Jerry Barber and the distinguished amateur and cabaret singer Don Cherry; and all of them trailed 20-year-old amateur Jack Nicklaus by a shot.

After bogeying the long par-3 8th, Palmer spotted Drum in his gallery. “I asked him, ‘Well, well, what are you doing here, since I have no chance?’” he said.

Palmer cooled off on the back nine, but his steady play got him home in 35, thus enabling him to set his declared clubhouse target of 280. Meanwhile, Souchak and Nicklaus both missed several putts down the stretch, though the latter still claimed second place—the best by an amateur since 1933, and a portent of stunning achievements to come.

Hogan, gunning for a record fifth Open at the age of 47, sealed his own fate at the par-5 17th when his third shot spun back into water (a birdie would have given him a one-shot lead over Palmer). Alas, he followed that bogey with a triple at 18, and his challenge was drowned. Hogan, who died in 1997, told CBS a few years earlier: “I find myself waking up at night thinking of that shot right today. There isn’t a month that goes by that that doesn’t cut my guts out.”

For Palmer, though, it was a source of endless happiness.

A true gentleman as ever, he credited his success to caddie Bob Blair, who was championship chairman Harold R. Berglund’s regular “looper.”

A day later, Palmer, with Drum in tow, flew to Europe for, first, the Canada Cup in Ireland which he won for the U.S. with Sam Snead, and then on to St. Andrews for the centenary British Open in which he came second, a shot adrift of Australia’s Kel Nagle. Perhaps his proudest moment from the whole Colorado experience came a short while before that Transatlantic expedition. He placed a call to his wife Winnie, who had not been at Cherry Hills, and greeted her with the words: “Hiya, lover. Guess what? We won!”

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A CHAmPion Club Cherry Hills Country Club opened in 1922 to a design

by William Flynn, who charged $4,500 for his services, a considerable sum in those days but one that has ultimately repaid itself many times over.

It has hosted two P.G.A. Championships and eight U.S.G.A. events, the most recent being the 2005 Women’s Open, won by Birdie Kim. Along with Winged Foot and Hazeltine National, Cherry Hills is one of only three clubs to have held the Open, Senior Open, Amateur and Women’s Open championships. This tradition will continue in 2012 when Cherry Hills stages its second Amateur. Apart from Palmer at the 1960 Open, other ‘major’ winners at Cherry Hills were Jack Nicklaus (1993 Senior Open), Phil Mickelson (1990 Amateur), Jay Sigel (1983 Mid-Amateur), Hubert Green (1985 P.G.A.), Andy North (1978 Open), Vic Ghezzi (1941 P.G.A.), Lewis Oehmig (1976 Senior Amateur) and Ralph Guldahl, the last person to win the Open wearing a necktie in 1938.

Prior to that year, no course west of Minneapolis had ever hosted the Open, so the U.S.G.A. awarded it to Cherry Hills with a caveat: The club would have to raise $10,000 as a bond to assure a profitable return.

Will F. Nicholson Sr., who had served on the U.S.G.A. executive committee and whose son, Will Nicholson Jr., later became president of the U.S.G.A., complained: “There’s never been a guarantee before. We don’t have enough in our treasury to buy a case of ketchup!”

At the time America was still recovering from the Depression, and Cherry Hills had only survived the foreclosure of its land-holding company because several members personally assured the interest on its mortgage. However, the 1938 Open proved to be the turning point. Nicholson and Clarence Daly, a veteran Denver insurance broker, sold $500 shares to business associates to meet the guarantee and then secured city-hall cooperation. A season ticket cost $6.72

(including tax) and total attendance, including practice rounds, was 37,000, netting $23,000 for the club.

For the 1960 Open, championship chairman Harold R. Berglund published a program featuring descriptions of the golf course, profiles of the leading players and articles on the history of the game. Exceeding expectations, he sold 210 pages of advertisements at $1,000 per page. Ticket sales were also brisk, with $65,000 already banked prior to the week. Club member Marcus Bogue built the largest scoreboard ever seen at the time, five miles of special fencing was erected by the State Highway Department, and squads of private detectives were hired to provide security.

Eighteen years on, the club hosted its third and most recent Open. Total attendance for the week exceeded 132,000 and Bob Kirchner, the championship chairman, had to convince the U.S.G.A. to let the club sell an additional 5,000 tickets for the weekend.

Palmer and Ed Seay had oversen the design renovations, building eight bunkers and five new tees which stretched the layout to 7,083 yards. The 1st was 58 yards longer, thus preventing anyone from driving the green as Palmer had done in 1960. North finished last man standing with a one-over-par total of 285 for a one-shot victory over J.C. Snead and Dave Stockton.

Six weeks before the 1990 Amateur, a violent hailstorm severely damaged the course. Some craters were 4 inches wide and 2 inches deep, requiring greens staff, volunteers and caddies to spend long hours on their hands and knees repairing the divots to ensure the course was ready to showcase Mickelson’s victory.

The 1993 Senior Open brought back many of the game’s greats. Hoping to replicate Palmer’s charge of 1960, Tom Weiskopf carded five birdies in the first eight holes of his final round, but he ended up one short of Nicklaus, who closed with a 70 for 278, six under par. n

A round at Cherry Hills Country Club begins with the short, downhill par-4 which Palmer drove in 1960

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Photo: Patrick Drickey/stonehousegolf.com

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Pebble’s R i P P l e s

Pebble beach was an elusive hunting ground for Arnold Palmer as a player, but he has since found peace there as an owner and course designer.

His victory thrusts all foundered, yet his love for this idyllic stretch of Californian coastline has never dimmed. chris rodell charts the Quixotic bond between the King and one of his least obedient subjects Photography by patrick drickey stonehousegolf.com

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Arnold PAlmer hAs enjoyed success At courses Around the globe. but there’s only one mAjor tournAment course thAt PAlmer cAn sAy he truly “owns,” even though it’s one of the few fAmous venues where he’s never won. too bad, too, because it’s a dandy: Pebble beach golf links, the fabled course Palmer partnered in purchasing in 1999.

Palmer owning Pebble is like bill gates owning silicon valley. it’s a magnificent pairing—one of the only combinations that could confine co-owner clint eastwood to second billing.

Palmer, eastwood and former major league baseball commissioner Peter ueberroth were the marquee names from an investment group that included 100 partners that purchased the Pebble beach co. for $820 million. company ownership

“in over 20 appearances palmer failed to win once at pebble beach”

includes three other renowned golf courses—spyglass hill, The links at spanish bay and del monte golf course—along with The lodge at Pebble beach and The inn at spanish bay.

The group also owns the spectacular 17-mile drive. buying the property must have been sweet vindication for Palmer, who for more than 40 years couldn’t buy a win there. he’s been close. in one of many episodes in their epic rivalry, he finished third to jack nicklaus in the 1972 u.s. open—the first major staged at Pebble beach.

Palmer’s best finish in the Pebble beach national Pro-Am, for years informally known as crooner bing crosby’s clambake, came when he was a shot shy of don massengale in 1966. but Palmer’s failures at Pebble were so striking that neal hotelling devotes several pages to the subject in the course’s official history, Pebble Beach Golf Links (1999). “in golf circles there is often talk about the greatest golfer to have never won a major,” he writes. “The Pebble beach national Pro-Am list of winners contains most of the top golfers of the last half-century. sam snead, ben hogan, lloyd mangrum, byron nelson, jack nicklaus, tom watson, johnny miller, tom Kite and Payne stewart [and, later, tiger woods and Phil mickelson] are just a few of the tournament champions. A name glaringly missing from the list, however, is that of Arnold Palmer.

Many believe the 9th is the hardest hole on the course

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“In over 20 appearances, including an unbroken run from 1958 through 1971, Palmer failed to record a win at Pebble Beach. During that same period, he had four wins at The Masters, one U.S. Open victory, and two wins at the British Open. It’s not that Palmer had no luck at Pebble Beach, but rather that the luck he had was all bad.”

A less gracious man than Palmer might have purchased Pebble Beach and out of vengeance turned the pristine property into a cow pasture, thus preventing the public from ever seeing what all agree is some of golf ’s most scenic territory. The course’s reputation is as legendary as that of its most famous golfing owner. In 2001, Golf Digest named it the first public course to be selected as the No.1 course in America.

Despite green fees of $495 (plus $35 cart fee for non-resort guests), among the highest in the world, Pebble Beach is still on every golfer’s bucket list of places they must play before they die.

Palmer’s often played it well, though his efforts during the 1972 U.S. Open still haunt him, his challenge scuppered by an opening 77 and closing 76. His second-round 68 tied rookie pro Lanny Wadkins for low round of the tournament and electrified a Palmer-leaning gallery that was primed for a charge. “It was a great round,” Palmer said, “but it could have been better. I missed makeable putts at 5 (15 feet), 6 (12 feet) and 7 (six feet). And I missed a little two-footer on 8.

The final round featured a standoff that remains among televised golf ’s most dramatic split-screen moments. It showed Palmer and Nicklaus each facing 8-foot putts (Palmer for birdie on 14; Nicklaus for par on 12). If Palmer made and Nicklaus missed, it would put Palmer ahead. Instead, the reverse happened and the momentum was drained from Palmer. Five holes later,

Nicklaus struck one of the signature shots of his career when his 1-iron hit the stick on 17 and finished six inches from the cup. He duly won his second U.S. Open while Palmer fell to third, four strokes adrift, and his fans left crestfallen.

It wasn’t the first time Palmer and his fans had left Pebble disappointed. In the third round of the 1963 Crosby tournament, Palmer hit his tee shot long at the par-3 17th and watched it disappear, apparently into the ocean beyond.

He then played a provisional ball from the tee, but upon arriving at the green he saw his first ball on the beach below the bluffs. After declaring it unplayable, he holed out with his provisional when the rules stipulated he should have returned to the tee to put another ball into play. The error came to light a day later and he was disqualified for an incorrect score.

One group that was never disappointed with Palmer’s often ill-fated exploits at Pebble Beach were sportswriters. A generation of great sports wags honed their skills on Palmer adventures at Pebble. In 1964, he again hit long on 17. Rather than risk another DQ, he found and played the ball, opting for a risky shot instead of taking a one-stroke penalty for an unplayable lie. As golfer and commentator Jimmy Demaret explained it to the television audience, Palmer had the option

“pebble beach is still on every golfer’s bucket list of places to play”

The beautiful short 5th sits on the bluffs overlooking Stillwater Cove

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“palmer was so far out in the ocean he looked like robinson crusoe” of dropping along a line behind the original position of the ball.

“In that case,” Demaret said, “his nearest drop would be Honolulu.”

So Palmer gamely played the ball and was joined on the rocks by a wandering dog (See Life in Pictures).

Famed sports writer Jim Murray of the Los Angeles Times was watching from home on his television and later wrote: “Palmer was so far out on the moor in the ocean he looked like Robinson Crusoe. His only companions were a dog and a sand wedge. I thought for a minute or so we had switched channels and Walt Disney was bringing us a heartwarming story of a boy and his dog, but a companion, peering closer, had a better idea.

‘Shouldn’t that dog have a cask around his neck?’”

Even more confounding was what happened on the par-5 14th in 1967 after Palmer had hit a strong drive. Reacting to a telltale roar that Nicklaus had birdied, Palmer sent a 3-wood soaring toward the green. As the ball drifted down, a gust sent it into a greenside tree. The ball barely nicked the lone branch that sent it caroming out of bounds. With the pressure on, Palmer needed to recover with a spectacular shot. Again, he drew the 3-wood, and again he suffered the same result. The same branch on the same tree sent another ball OB. He took a 9 on the hole.

Palmer lost the tournament, but the offending tree got the worst of it. That very night a storm blew the tree out of the ground. That next day, it was sawdust and the world was left to wonder just how high up the fans in Arnie’s Army reached. n

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Tweaked, TighTeR and TOugheR In preparation for the fifth staging of the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, Arnold Palmer was invited to suggest a few tweaks to the course in places which had been identified as in need of tightening up.

The result, no doubt, will be a devilishly difficult layout that asks probing questions of even the most gifted ball strikers.

“I’ve been working on the golf course quite a lot over the last few years and in particular we’ve changed some of the bunkering and moved a few tee positions,” explains Mr. Palmer. “One of the ideas has been to make players aim a little more towards the sea off the tee, to ask questions of their accuracy if you like.

“For example, we’ve enlarged the traps and put in more trees at driver length on the right of the 18th fairway, and anyone who messes with those will most likely have to come out sideways with their second shots.

“But a few other changes could prove to be significant.

On the 3rd we’ve put some traps down the right side of the fairway that could push the drives more towards or across the corner of the dogleg to the left, depending on which way the wind’s blowing. And on the 8th we’ve built a new tee to the right which lengthens the carry over the rocks to the fairway. This could be a very dangerous hole at the Open. There are also new tees at 13, which is now way back, something like 35 yards, and at 15 where more drives are likely to be pushed.

“Pebble Beach is always a test for the players, but I think it will be especially tough at the U.S. Open when the U.S.G.A. can be relied upon to do their usual job in growing up the rough.”

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Jaguar’s XFR is powerful, luxurious and unbelievable value —our editor wakes up to the stuff that dreams are made of

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Early onE morning, i was flying down thE Pacific coast highway toward malibu, thE sunrisE filling thE ocEan mist with light, a mozart Piano concErto blasting in my Ears. as i rounded the turn at mugu rock and saw a perfect set of waves peeling toward the beach, it occurred to me that the concerto sounded especially good, that my seat was remarkably supportive and comfortable, and that the rich smell of a good leather interior is the best ‘new car’ smell there is. driving a luxury british auto on the Pacific coast, waves crashing against the rocks, listening to mozart and marveling at the sun breaking through a chilled morning mist, could potentially be seen as a clichéd way to start a movie (or an article, for that matter). but clichés be damned; i can tell you from experience that if the car is a Jaguar Xfr, it’s a beautiful way to start a day.

The mozart concerto was an accident. i’d been so intently captivated with driving Jaguar’s new 2010 Xfr— the hotter version of its stately and already powerful Xf four-door—that i hadn’t really bothered with the audio or navigation systems yet. after pushing the smart-key enabled “start” button and hearing the Jag’s 510 horses roar to life, the rotary gear selector knob rose from the center console, an “r” appeared on the dashboard’s display screen (reminding me this was no ordinary ride) and the classical music came on. it seemed to fit nicely with the interior’s fine wood, beautifully finished leather seats, suede-covered headliner and pillars, and elegant metal appointments, and so i left the radio alone. anyway, with all due respect to the excellent bowers & wilkins audio system, i was more interested in the noise coming from under the hood, which was absolutely spectacular.

ower

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The engine The engine is a monster. The XF and the XFR both use Jaguar’s third generation AJ-V8, but the two engines could hardly be called the same. In fact, the only bits the XFR’s 5.0 liter V8 carried over from the XF’s was the tappets and the cylinder-head bolts. Otherwise, the XFR uses a newly designed die-cast block and heads, and other lighter and higher performance parts. These, along with a sixthgeneration, Roots-type twin vortex supercharger and a redesigned air intake (which reduces flow loss by more than 30 percent) are responsible for the fact that while the new XFR achieves 510 horses and 461lb-ft of torque, it does so quite efficiently, maintaining the same 15/23mpg that the XF’s heavier 4.2L 416hp mill manages.

With a 0-60 time of 4.7 seconds and so much horsepower on tap, it’s incredible that the XFR makes the mileage, but it does—and thus avoids the gas-guzzler tax.

Jaguar says the engine is electronically limited to 155mph, but a few unofficial tests posted online have coaxed the XFR well beyond that. Whether or not you test the alertness of your local constable and his radar gun, this Jag is a thriller to drive anywhere at any speed. Quick as a whip with an accelerator we would call ultra-responsive, there’s almost nothing between you and the power under the hood.

That said, in such a well-built car it can be tough to appreciate the engine’s roar. Jaguar ensures you don’t miss out by piping the sound of the engine into the well-insulated cabin via an acoustically filtered duct that’s electronically controlled to allow the growl to interrupt the cabin’s quiet only under specific circumstances—say, powering out of a turn on the PCH, for example. Not surprisingly, Mozart sounds great when 510 horses are added to the orchestra. By the way, we enthusiastically support piping the engine sound into the cabin.

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handling Keeping hold of the XFR’s power is easier than you might believe, thanks to some sophisticated engineering from Jaguar’s suspension and transmission folks. Two new systems—Active Differential Control and Adaptive Dynamics—get the power from the engine to the 20-inch Nevis alloy wheels and help control what isn’t exactly a light auto, weighing in at just a hair over 4,300 lbs. The first system monitors the road’s surface and conditions and varies the torque accordingly, limiting slip on acceleration but not as much on braking, meaning stuntman-style slides and drifts are possible. Adaptive Dynamics controls body movement on three axes: Up and down, back and forth, and side to side, making for incredible stability in almost any circumstance. The system is all the more impressive because it can sense driver inputs in a flash, then preemptively adjust in response to moves like abrupt braking, quick turns of the wheel or hard stomps on the gas (the last, by the way, will yield a tremendous head-snapping surge forward).

An automatic 6-speed transmission with Jaguar Sequential Shift handles shifting duties, with paddle shifters in easy reach of fingertips for manual control in the twisties, should you desire. Response with this, both up and down, is excellent as one would expect. As mentioned earlier, drive modes are selected via a rotary shift knob that sits recessed in the center console while the car is off, then rises when the illuminated “Start” button is pushed. Standard drive mode is lively enough, with quick off the line acceleration and firm handling. But in sport mode, and with the press of a button that bears, of all things, a checkered flag (fantastic!), the XFR undergoes a noticeable transformation. The engine gets a kick in the rear, with RPMs nearly doubling at 60mph, and the suspension stiffens up substantially. Incredibly, while the ride becomes definitely sport-oriented (you’re absolutely stuck to the road), the luxury doesn’t suffer.

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Two new systems transfer the engine’s power to 20-inch Nevis alloy wheels (left) to help control 4,300 lbs of magic (above)

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Niceties aNd style

2010 JAGUAR XFR

On the subject of luxury, the amount of wood inside the XFR rivals that of the Mark II sedan of the late 1960s. A full soft-grain leather interior is standard, as is a handful of sophisticated electronics, including a good sound system and electronic climate controls. Optional upgrades are available for navigation and improved audio. Suede is simply everywhere, covering the entirety of the headliner, posts, pillars and the visors. The beautifully finished leather seats, as mentioned before, are supportive, which is perfectly in line with the XFR’s performance-car stats, but incredibly comfortable as well. I personally wouldn’t hesitate to take it cross-country. In any case, they’re multi-way electronically adjustable for comfort and fit, and optionally offer both heating and cooling. Lastly, they feature “R” logos in the headrests, which underlines the attention to detail found throughout this vehicle. The dash is rich with wood and lovely metal, offers great sightlines to the instruments, is ergonomically intelligent with all controls easily within reach and is overall better organized than some. A rear-view parking camera with proximity sensor and side-lane sensors in the rear-view mirrors are available as well, making lane changing and reversing safer, and easy as pie.

Two details we loved: Air vents for the climate system are concealed until the car is turned on, at which point they rotate around to expose the vents proper. Second: A small, shiny, silver British “target” logo, like those that adorn RAF aircraft, subtly adorns the dash, flush with the dark wood trim. Looking like a reserved bit of decoration, it’s actually an electronic sensor that, when touched, opens the glove box. Nice.

The exterior is aggressively, though classically, styled, as befits a car with this heritage. A lower front fascia with large inlets, deeper side skirts, a quad exhaust system, “R” badging in several places and a small spoiler on the trunk—not to mention the air intakes in the hood—all add to the overall impression of performance.

eNGiNe: 510-horsepower 5.0-liter V-8 tRaNsMisiON: six-speed automatic dRiVetRaiN: rear-wheel driVe FUel ecONOMy: 15 city/23 highway Base PRice: $62,000

The interior is all leather, suede, silver logos and dark wood trims

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Note: Crashing waves and ClassiCal musiC optional

FiNally As an editor, I’m not often fond of clichés or clichéd situations.

That said, many of them have their roots in some kind of reality, and quite often those realities are rather nice: Caviar and champagne, a cigar and cocktail at the 19th hole, etc.

In the case of my morning drive, there’s no question that it was right out of a car commercial: Classical music, sunrise illuminating the Pacific waves alongside the highway, no other cars around, just me in my luxury British auto. But I submit this: Even if the setting and experience reads like a cliché, the Jaguar XFR is anything but. Incredibly powerful, sensationally appointed and more fun to drive than many two-door sports coupes, Jaguar’s XFR sits at the top of its class. And when you consider the price for all of the power and attention to detail you’re getting, nothing else comes remotely close. n

Wild Audio The Bowers & Wilkins Premium Sound System in the Jaguar XFR is much more than a simple upgrade option. It’s the result of a significant relationship; one that started with the Jaguar C-XF concept car, and continues to this day. A relationship that involves unprecedented levels of co-operation when it comes to speaker design and placement, and where Bowers & Wilkins engineers are involved from the start of the design process, allowing them considerable input into the interior of the car, resulting in an un-matched audio experience for the driver…. and passengers, of course.

In fact, it’s just like having a Bowers & Wilkins home audio system, but in your car. The XFR’s system utilizes many of the same design and development techniques that Bowers & Wilkins has perfected for its home and recording studio loudspeakers to meet the challenges of recreating great sound in a car.

For example Kevlar, a Bowers & Wilkins signature material, is used for the all-important midrange drive units, while aluminium tweeters provide a detailed, expressive high-frequency performance.

And Bowers & Wilkins’ legendary attention to detail was taken to new levels with this in-car system.

Painstaking system adjustments to determine the best possible EQ for the XFR mean the performance is truly Bowers & Wilkins quality.

No matter where or how you drive the Jaguar XFR, the Bowers & Wilkins Premium Sound System will ensure you always take the music with you.

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F i r s t

CitationAir goes beyond fractional aircraft ownership with a range of services that makes private air travel not only attractive, but also accessible

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Just as aircraft technology continues to evolve, so does the business of aircraft ownership. private aircraft are essential tools for many companies with large areas of operations and widespread clientele, but the costs of ownership and maintenance can be daunting. fractional ownership programs, which allow customers to purchase portions of an aircraft—or even just flight hours—have become a mainstream way to reap the benefits of private flight without incurring the associated burdens. not surprisingly, one of the best examples of such offerings comes via a company that has been in the business for over a decade.

C l a s s

CitationAir is a division of the Cessna Aircraft Company, and exclusively flies Cessna Citation aircraft.

While others have come and gone, CitationAir has been in the fractional share business since the beginning and is now the premiere provider, offering products and services that go far beyond basic fractional ownership.

“The fractional share industry really began to blossom in the 1990s,” said former Cessna CEO Russ Meyer in an interview with kingdom last year. “It made business jets available to people who could not buy a whole airplane.” Today, CitationAir offers individuals and businesses the advantages of private jet travel through several options, including Jet Cards that start

at $100,000; Jet Shares that allow you to purchase a fraction of an aircraft starting at 1/16th of a share; a Jet Management program that allows you to purchase a whole aircraft and earn revenue when other CitationAir customers use your aircraft ; and most recently, Corporate Solutions. The last product aims to ensure a smooth operation for flights needed outside of a company’s fleet through their Supplemental Lift product. This program gives companies access to CitationAir’s fleet of Citation CJ3s, Citation XLSs, and Citation Sovereigns, without the financial commitment required by traditional programs.

CitationAir’s other programs are incredibly flexible, offering a range of options to fit all needs with great

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savings. For example, their new Jet Card offers non-peak hourly rates that are up to 24% less than the competition, with peak days limited to only 10 per year.

Of course, the benefits of fractional ownership aren’t limited to costs, as Meyer—who was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame last year—explained. Avoiding the major airports and airlines is another plus. “The hassle of getting to the airport early, security, transportation on the ground,” he said. “I never go to LAX; but I might land at Van Nuys, John Wayne, Santa Monica… There are so many general aviation airports, even in cities like Wichita.” As a matter of fact, the small airport benefit—which can both save time outside of larger cities and get flyers into areas not otherwise serviced by the bigger airlines—is part of a promotional effort Meyer and Cessna put together with Palmer. The King has been working as an industry spokesman, lauding the benefits of business aircraft. Specifically, Palmer has talked about the fact that he’s been able to compete in both golf and business and still live in Latrobe, “an area not serviced by the airlines,” Meyer pointed out.

For many businesses and individuals, private air travel isn’t a luxury—it’s a necessity. The benefits are numerous, and with CitationAir, they’re completely within reach. And, whether you’re a business or an individual, CitationAir can provide a solution to all of your private travel needs under one roof, while reducing costs and improving service to get you Where You Belong. No one does it better. n Visit CitationAir.com or call 1.877.MY.CITATION (1.877.692.4828) for more information.

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Just some of the ways Citationair Can help your business meet its flight needs: Jet Card with a fully refundable $100,000 minimum purchase, you’ll enjoy an unsurpassed experience on the industry’s youngest fleet of business jets, the highest safety levels, and innovative jet card pricing that provides substantial savings.

Jet shares traditional fractional programs allow flights on any day of the year. what they don’t do is differentiate between the cost of flying on the slowest days versus the busiest days. with Jet shares, you simply choose which option best fits your needs. The full-access 365-day option allows you to fly any day of the year without paying a premium. The 335-day option offers you the ability to save money based on your travel day flexibility, while giving you the comfort of knowing you can fly any day of the year.

Jet management Citationair’s Jet management program provides all the benefits of owning a whole aircraft with none of the usual management and maintenance responsibilities, relieving customers of the burdens associated with owning and maintaining an aircraft. by placing an aircraft into the Citationair fleet, enabling the aircraft to be used for charter for other Citationair customers, a revenue stream is created for Jet management aircraft owners that significantly defrays their costs.

Corporate solutions with innovative products like supplemental lift, Citationair provides solutions for corporations looking to reduce capital expenditures and operating costs while ensuring a smooth operation for flights needed outside of a company’s fleet. The supplemental lift program gives you access to the entire fleet of Citationair aircraft without the financial commitment required by traditional programs.

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Visit arnoldpalmerhospital.com or call 407.841.5114 to make a gift to support the Arnold Palmer Medical Center. Together we can change the lives of our future’s most valued hope... our children.

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a r nold p a lmer ’ s

life in pictures Glimpses from behind the scenes of the most celebrated career in the history of the game part 17

Arnold Palmer plays a second shot to the 1st green on the Old Course at St. Andrews during the centenary British Open in 1960

When it comes to flying Mr. Palmer has always enjoyed the thrill of speed. Here he climbs into cockpit of a U.S. Air Force fighter jet

Mr. Palmer intently follows the flight of his ball during his victory in the 1960 U.S. Open Championship at Cherry Hills

Mr. Palmer attracts a canine spectator when he finds himself on the beach beyond the 17th green at Pebble Beach in January 1964

Photographer Brian Morgan hired this Tiger Moth Trainer from the RAF for Arnold Palmer to fly a few days before the 1976 British Open...

...and Palmer clearly had a ball as he flew over the Royal Birkdale links, smiling at the camera Morgan had mounted above the cockpit

Arnold Palmer chats during a round at Latrobe Country Club with his father Deke, the club’s professional and course superintendent

Arnold Palmer bonds with his young grandson Sam Saunders during the mid-1990s at Bay Hill Club & Lodge

Honorary starter Arnold Palmer hits the opening tee shot in the Masters Tournament at Augusta National on April 8, 2010

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S a lvat i o The British open received a shot in the arm from the man who more than any other was responsible for the evolution of the modern game. paul trow explores Arnold palmer’s historic relationship with golf ’s oldest championship A mAjor lAndmArk in the history of golf—the 150th AnniversAry of the British open—will tAke plAce At the gAme’s spirituAl home, the old course At st. Andrews, from july 15-18. golf ’s oldest championship was first played on 17 october 1860 at prestwick golf club in Ayrshire on the west coast of scotland. it was restricted to professionals and attracted a field of eight scottish golfers, who played three rounds of prestwick’s 12-hole course in a single day. willie park sr. won with a total of 174, beating the favorite, tom morris sr., by two strokes. A year later, the event was opened to amateurs—and eight of them took on ten professionals at the same venue. originally, the trophy presented to the winner was a red moroccan leather belt with a silver buckle, and there was no prize money for the first three opens. in 1863, a prize fund of £10 (then $50) was shared between the professionals who finished second, third and fourth while the champion had to console himself with keeping the belt for a year. t in 1864, tom morris sr. won the first champion’s cash prize of £6 ($30); by 2009, the winner’s check had inflated to more than $1.22 million!

The champion’s belt was retired in 1870 because tom morris jr. was allowed to keep it for winning three consecutive times. And after a year of playing for a medal (1872), the belt was replaced for ever after by the claret jug. prestwick g.c. administered the tournament from 1860-70 before agreeing to organize it jointly with The royal & Ancient golf club of st. Andrews and The honourable company of edinburgh golfers. in 1920, full responsibility for the championship was handed to The r&A. The early winners were all scottish professionals, who in those days worked as greenkeepers, clubmakers and caddies, as well as teachers, to supplement their modest winnings.

The open has always been dominated by professionals, with only six victories by amateurs. The last of these came in 1930 when Bobby jones achieved his celebrated ‘grand slam,’ winning the open and Amateur championships of both the British isles and united states in one year.

Then came the ‘doom and gloom’ years, when purses were non-existent and many of the leading u.s. players decided they had better things to do with their time and money than spend a week and a half on transatlantic cruise liners for the privilege of being treated like second-class citizens. sam snead and Ben hogan made winning appearances in those dark years after w world war ii, but that was pretty much it—until, of course, the championship’s centenary in 1960.

As the world’s leading players assemble at st. Andrews for the third of the four majors to be staged on hallowed golfing soil in 2010, they should all pause to reflect on why they are contesting a prize fund upward of $9 million. in terms of prize money, global status, media profile and on-course infrastructure, the 139th version of the British open is light years ahead of its 89th staging, also over the old course at st. Andrews.

The only good thing the event had going for it in 1960 was that it was the centenary edition of golf ’s oldest championship. As it proved, this was the allure that teased an Palmer didn’t hole every putt when he won at Royal Birkdale, but he still celebrated lifting the Claret Jug with wife Winnie

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entry out of a 30-year-old American who had already started to rewrite the history books at a whirlwind rate.

Arnold Palmer had won The Masters for a second time that April at Augusta National and followed up two months later with a thrilling, come-from-behind triumph in the U.S. Open at Cherry Hills Country Club in Denver, Colorado.

At the time, the only ‘Grand Slam’ concept to have entered the sport’s thinking was Jones’s 30 years earlier. But as the professional game grew stronger in the wake of World War II, the two great amateur championships took a back seat.

The old Grand Slam concept had thus faded into sepia-tinted obscurity and a new, Palmer inspired, version—consisting of The Masters, the U.S. Open, the British Open and the PGA Championship—was crystallizing in the public consciousness.

For this reason, entering the British Open at St. Andrews in 1960 appealed to the magnetic Palmer’s swashbuckling inclinations; and the feeling from Scottish golf fans, who had been waiting for him, or his like, for generations was thoroughly mutual.

“I came for numerous reasons,” Palmer says. “One was the fact that I didn’t feel you could ever call yourself a great champion if you didn’t play internationally. And the most attractive tournament to me was the Open, which was the one I had to come and play, and hopefully win.”

On this occasion, though, his trademark final-round charge for a closing 68 was not quite sufficient to dislodge the 54-hole leader, Kel Nagle of Australia, and Palmer came up a stroke short of forcing a playoff.

Five-time champion Peter Thomson, for one, saluted Palmer’s decision to take part. “The fact of his coming to St. Andrews was a blessing,” the Australian, now 80 like Palmer, recalls. “Arnold dragged the U.S. media with him and it led to a new wave of U.S. participation. It ultimately also led to the change of ball size [to 1.68 inches, the American norm, from the 1.62 inches, which still prevailed in Europe].”

When the R&A counted the gate receipts, they found they’d almost doubled the previous year’s profit of $10,000!

Palmer didn’t win, but the financial gain reported by the R&A was but a fraction of the true value of his participation. Within five years (and two Palmer wins later), the British Open had been commercially transformed, and thanking its lucky stars that it somehow had appealed to the man known as the King. n palmer’s scores were updated in chalk at Royal Troon in 1962

Champions’ Challenge On Wednesday 14 July, the eve of the 2010 Open Championship at St. Andrews, most of the 32 past champions still alive will play four holes on the Old Course—the 1st, 2nd, 17th and 18th—in celebration of the 150th anniversary of golf’s oldest major. The Open Champions’ Challenge will tee-off around 4pm and conclude by 6pm, with the winners receiving nearly $80,000 to donate to a charity of their choice.

In 2000, 22 former champions celebrated the Millennium Open in the same format. On that occasion, large galleries were entertained to a tap-dance on the Swilcan Bridge by 88-year-old Sam Snead and watched Tom Weiskopf, Tom Lehman and Paul Lawrie win with a score of two under par. The event also raised more than $60,000 for charity.

The invited Champions and their victory years are: Peter Thomson (1954-56, ’58, ’65), Gary Player (1959, ’68, ’74), Kel Nagle (1960), Arnold Palmer (1961-62), Bob Charles (1963), Jack Nicklaus (1966, ’70, ’78), Roberto de Vicenzo (1967), Tony Jacklin (1969), Lee Trevino (1971-72), Tom Weiskopf (1973), Tom Watson (1975, ’77, ’80, ’82-83), Johnny Miller (1976), Severiano Ballesteros (1979, ’84, ’88), Bill Rogers (1981), Sandy Lyle (1985), Greg Norman (1986, ’93), Sir Nick Faldo (1987, ’90, ’92), Mark Calcavecchia (1989), Ian Baker-Finch (1991), Nick Price (1994), John Daly (1995), Tom Lehman (1996), Justin Leonard (1997), Mark O’Meara (1998), Paul Lawrie (1999), Tiger Woods (2000, ’05-06), David Duval (2001), Ernie Els (2002), Ben Curtis (2003), Todd Hamilton (2004), Padraig Harrington (2007-08) and Stewart Cink (2009).

Ticket enquiries: see Opengolf.com or call 01144-1334-460010.

150-Year landmarks 1860—Willie Park Sr. wins the first Open, at Prestwick over 36 holes 1862—Tom Morris Sr. wins Open by largest margin, 13 strokes 1870—Tom Morris Jr. completes a hat-trick of Open wins, keeps the Belt 1873—St. Andrews hosts first Open; Claret Jug is the new trophy 1879—Jamie Anderson completes a hat-trick of Open wins, at St. Andrews 1882—Bob Ferguson completes a hat-trick of Open wins, at St. Andrews 1890—Open won for the first time by an amateur, John Ball Jr., at Prestwick 1892—Open extended to 72 holes, staged at Muirfield for the first time 1894—First Open staged in England, at Royal St. George’s, Sandwich 1910—James Braid wins his fifth and final Open, at St. Andrews 1913—J.H. Taylor wins his fifth and final Open, at Royal Liverpool 1914—Harry Vardon wins his sixth and final Open, at Prestwick 1920—George Duncan wins the first Open after World War I, at Deal 1929—Walter Hagen wins his fourth and final Open, at Muirfield 1930—Bobby Jones wins his third and final Open, at Royal Liverpool 1946—Sam Snead wins the first Open after World War II, at St. Andrews 1948—Sir Henry Cotton wins his third and final Open, at Muirfield 1953—Ben Hogan wins the only Open he ever entered, at Carnoustie 1956—Peter Thomson completes a hat-trick of Open wins, at Royal Liverpool 1957—Bobby Locke wins his fourth and final Open, at St. Andrews 1960—Centenary Open at St. Andrews; Arnold Palmer plays in his first Open 1961—Arnold Palmer wins the Open at Royal Birkdale 1962—Arnold Palmer wins the Open at Troon 1965—Peter Thomson wins his fifth and final Open, at Royal Birkdale 1971—100th Open takes place at Royal Birkdale, won by Lee Trevino 1974—Gary Player wins his third and final Open, at Royal Lytham & St. Annes 1977—Duel in the Sun between Tom Watson and Jack Nicklaus, at Turnberry 1978—Jack Nicklaus wins his third and final Open, at St. Andrews 1983—Tom Watson wins his fifth Open, at Royal Birkdale 1992—Sir Nick Faldo wins his third and final Open, at Muirfield 2006—Tiger Woods wins his third Open, at Royal Liverpool

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2009—Tom Watson beaten in a playoff, aged 59, at Turnberry

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pa l m e r

s

showbiz has the rat pack, sports has arnold palmer. no wonder GQ and Esquire magazines have named him one of the best dressed men ever

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In the mId 20th century, fashIon was somethIng you found on runways In mIlan and parIs, and style was defIned by hollywood. no one looked to the sports pages for aesthetIc InspIratIon. enter arnold palmer. on his athletic physique, golf ’s old school looks gave way to form-fitting trousers and polo-style shirts with sharp, clean lines, tight collars and practical sleeves.

There was usually a sporting cardigan around as well, for cool days or the clubhouse. more than just his look, palmer’s personality, class and charisma are what helped him define athletic fashion and what established him as a true style icon. of course, winning didn’t hurt, either.

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Gary Player told Golfweek that, in his prime, Arnie would have beaten Tiger in an arm wrestle. Seen here in a practical, short-sleeved polo, we don’t doubt it

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Arnie’s sharp, modern threads held wide appeal, compelling generations of golfers to adopt his look and style

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Palmer, his father and early Latrobe Country Club member Harry Saxman relax in “Rat Pack” style

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The cardigan During the 60s and 70s, Palmer’s signature cardigan was produced in an alpaca/wool blend by the brand Robert Bruce, and became the number one selling sweater in America. Collars look sharp, but Palmer occasionally did without, usually classing up a mock turtleneck or tee with a cardigan

co o l co l o r s Arnie defined casual American elegance by wearing not only bold colors, but also more subdued shades like yellow and pink

T i m ele s s s T y le Class never goes out of style, and Palmer wears it as well today as he ever did

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Bella golf in Italy is booming thanks largely to the exploits of two talented brothers and the arrival of several high-class courses, three of them designed by arnold palmer. paul trow and steve killick take a look at what’s on offer both on and off the fairways

Italy remaIned resolutely aloof when golf tourIsm became bIg busIness throughout the medIterranean a generatIon ago. whIle spaIn and portugal were makIng hay from theIr faIrways and greens, Italy’s golf courses contInued to be run maInly as retreats for wealthy and wellconnected IndIvIduals from theIr busy day-to-day lIves.

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It is no exaggeration to say that visitors, on the whole, were not encouraged; but all that has changed in recent years with the number of courses throughout the country rising from the low two hundreds to 380 at the last count. In addition, several new hotels and resorts have been located at or near many of the clubs.

This development has already sparked a rise in golfing visitors from northern europe, but even more importantly the game is now an increasingly popular recreation with Italy’s sports-mad general public.

Italia The start of this process was perhaps Francesco Molinari’s stunning triumph in the 2006 Italian Open at the Arnold Palmerdesigned Castello di Tolcinasco course on the outskirts of Milan.

However, the true turning-point in galvanizing public interest in golf probably came last November when Francesco teamed up with his brother Edoardo to win the Omega Mission Hills World Cup for Italy in China. Never before had Italy occupied such a prominent place on golf ’s world stage; and never before had golf banished soccer from the front pages of the country’s three daily sports newspapers.

Francesco, now 27, has not won since his maiden Tour victory but in the past three seasons he has displayed a level of consistency that has taken him to the brink of qualifying for the European Ryder Cup team, highlighted by top-ten finishes in both the PGA and Players Championships over the past 12 months.

Like Edoardo, who is 28 and won the 2005 U.S. Amateur Championship at Merion, Francesco is likely

to appear more frequently in America over the next few years. Indeed, having shown what he is capable of by tying for second in the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by MasterCard at Bay Hill Club & Lodge in March, it is not inconceivable that Edoardo will also figure in the Ryder Cup matches in Wales this October.

Both brothers still live in Turin, the city of their birth, just 50 miles to the west of Milan, but Francesco admits they will both eventually try to establish themselves on the PGA Tour. “I would like to try to play on the PGA Tour sooner or later,” he said.” Trying to improve is my long-term goal and my aim is to make sure I improve from year to year.”

The sibling rivalry has clearly spurred both brothers to become high achievers.

“We give each other advice on our swings and when we’re both in Turin we play a lot together, almost always. We took up golf because our parents play and we grew up together on golf courses even during our holidays. Our teacher is

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Sergio Bertaina, a local pro at our home club [Circolo Golf Torino], but in the last few years we have also worked from time to time with [English coach] Denis Pugh.”

Edoardo, now attached to another Turin course, Royal Park Golf, is less well recognized in his native land than Francesco, but it might not be long before both brothers have to take a back seat behind Italy’s latest golf phenomenon.

Matteo Manassero has just turned pro at the tender age of 17 after a stellar final year as an amateur. Not only did he become the youngest ever winner of the British Amateur Championship last summer, but he also topped the World Amateur Rankings and won the amateurs’ Silver Medal for tying 13th in the British Open at Turnberry before, in April, beating Bobby Cole’s record by becoming the youngest player to make the cut at the Masters, at 16 years and 11 months.

With a pedigree like this, it seems only a matter of time before Manassero is challenging for major championship and Ryder Cup honors as well.

Professional golf in Italy is indeed in very good hands and with participation levels rising sharply across the country it will not take long before many other exciting talents are unearthed.

Arnold Palmer has also played his part in the awakening of Italian golf, thanks in particular to three course designs which are each located near to one of the country’s most historical cities.

Castello di Tolcinasco Golf Club

A few minutes from the center of Milan, this prestigious and elegant golf club is situated at the foot of an imposing, fourtower castle that dates back to the 16th century.

The club consists of 27 holes divided into three interchangeable nine-hole loops across essentially flat terrain.

None the less, it is an attractive and colorful setting thanks to the presence of many lakes and ponds, and bunkers covered with “wild” broom.

In addition, there are state-of-the-art practice facilities which include three putting greens, a pitching and bunker play area, and a driving range with 15 covered bays.

Once the golf is finished, Castello di Tolcinasco’s clubhouse provides an elegant and relaxed atmosphere with many opportunities for golfers to unwind. Located on the first two floors of the ancient castle, the clubhouse consists of a restaurant, bar, grand ballroom and also houses television, games and billiard rooms, all of which can be used for business conferences.

The country club provides those who wish to spend time away from the golf course with swimming pools, tennis courts and other leisure facilities, and there is also an impressive courtyard community of weekend homes. golftolcinasco.it

Royal Park (left) is now Edoardo Molinari’s home course while the Palmer-designed Castello di Tolcinasco (above) was the scene of his brother Francesco’s Italian Open victory in 2006

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City of the Night

Milan, famous for its fashion and nightlife, is the engine-room of Italian commerce and industry.

Shopping in Milan is on a par with New York, Paris, and London, and the place to visit for this purpose is the Quadrilatero della Moda, home to many high-fashion outlets.

Milan is a cosmopolitan city with restaurants that provide local delicacies and fine cuisine from around the world. It also boats a bewildering wide range of bars and nightclubs, and the Brera Art Gallery and Navigli areas are the most popular for those seeking a late night and a headache in the morning.

Many of the bars in Milan feature live music, with Jazz especially popular, and there is something to cater for all tastes as the early hours loom.

For those interested in a quieter, more relaxed pace, Milan has many beautiful palaces, churches and museums that are often overshadowed by the vibrant fashion and nightlife scenes, and its city centre is dominated by the Duomo, the world’s largest Gothic cathedral.

With a strong sporting tradition, Milan is home to one of the world’s most impressive sporting arenas—the San Siro stadium where soccer clubs Internazionale and AC Milan play in front of crowds of almost 86,000 people.

Golf Club Le Pavoniere

Located 12 miles outside Florence, this course has ‘safe’ and ‘aggressive’ strategies on most holes. Le Pavoniere can be enjoyed by golfers of differing abilities, and the abundance of water and other hazards is offset by the fact that the course is relatively flat—and, at 6,711 yards, not the longest.

Le Pavoniere is surrounded by holm-oak woods, cluster pines and cypresses that make the walk a joy to the eye. In addition, it has first-class practice facilities with a driving range, putting green, pitching green and practice bunkers.

The clubhouse is built within a magnificent 18th-century villa and has first-class non-golfing facilities. A swimming pool, sauna, gymnasium, tennis courts, and even a ‘five-a-side’ soccer pitch can be used during the day whilst at night a friendly bar and elegant restaurant serve delicious local specialties.

Le Pavoniere allows resort golfers to enjoy their time both on and off the course, and will attract many return visits due to the quality of its golf and its warm, friendly atmosphere.

To coincide with the Approach Challenge in Florence in December, Le Pavoniere is hosting the final of a new international competition for amateurs from four countries.

Entertained and hosted by local wineries and hostelries, golfers from eight countries will take part in 2011 and the number will rise in 2012 to 12, including the U.S. golfclublepavoniere.com, toscanagolf.net

City of the Arts

Florence is generally considered the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance. Its best-known site is the domed cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore. Along with the nearby Campanile tower, it provides sweeping views of this beautiful, artistic city which has, at its centre, a working Roman aqueduct running to the majestic marble Fountain of Neptune.

The old part lies on the Arno River, which is spanned by many stunning bridges such as Ponte Vecchio, a thoroughfare that has played as colorful a role in Florentine history as many of the people who lived there. One of its other functions is to act as the tee box each December for the annual Approach Challenge sponsored by Conte of Florence apparel in which Tour players fire iron shots at three floating greens (see below).

Florence also has many art galleries and museums, the most famous being the Uffizi, the original home of Michelangelo’s David. On the other side of the Arno, the Pitti Palace houses many works by Raphael and the elaborate Santa Croce church contains the monumental tombs of Galileo, Michelangelo, Machiavelli and Dante.

Fine cuisine is also a feature of Florentine life, with hundreds of restaurants inside the ancient city walls.

Traditional cuisine is a feature of dining out in Florence with its unique combination of breads, pastas and sliced meats, complemented, of course, with exquisite local wines. pontevecchiochallenge.it

Jan Are Larsen of Norway has picked up the approach challenge trophy the last 2 years running

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Ca’della Nave Golf Club

Golf in the South

Seven and a half miles northwest of Venice, this club has two While the courses in the north can be snowbound during the courses laid out around a villa that was originally built circa winter, southern Italy has the ideal climate for year-round golf.

1500. The 18-hole course measures just under 7,000 yards and The outstanding golf on the Adriatic coastline of Puglia, there is also a nine-hole executive layout. the country’s southeast region, is the 18-hole San Domenico The course has lakes on 12 holes along with a plethora course (pictured below) beside the ruins of the ancient city of of large greenside bunkers that protect the fast, undulating Egnazia and near the fishing village of Savelletri. putting surfaces. This provides a stern test, with accuracy and The Borgo Egnazia resort, which has a spa modeled on a distance through the bag necessary along with a steady putter. Roman bath house, opened in April and is destined to become The 18th green, set at the heart of a natural amphitheatre a major tourism magnet. One of its striking features is the within the property’s internal park, is a spectacular finale. village within its grounds consisting of 72 Apulian townhouses The villa and surrounding park provide an historic around the central piazza with private Arab gardens, balconies setting, with work in evidence by renowned 16th century and roof terraces overlooking the sea and the golf course. architects Andrea Palladio and Simon Godeau. Ca’della Nave San Domenico, which will host the European Challenge also has a modern clubhouse with restaurants and offices Tour’s Grand Final tournament in late October, is a thoughtlocated in buildings surrounding the villa. The property’s first- provoking test in a breezy setting with strategic bunkering, class facilities also include swimming pools and tennis courts. definitive fairway shaping and intricate green designs.

Ca’della Nave, one of Italy’s premier golf venues, offers a With its southern boundary as close to the sea as warm and relaxing ambience in beautiful surroundings. the road and rocky coastline will allow, it has a beautiful cadellanave.com backdrop to the north provided by centuries-old olive groves.

Distinctive local plant life and vegetation occupy large areas of City of the Islands natural habitat between the fairways which are adorned with One of the world’s instantly recognizable cities, Venice has a indigenous granular rock to give the course an Apulian feel. unique atmosphere thanks to its 150 canals and the 400-plus sandomenicogolf.com, borgoegnazia.com n bridges that connect the islands on which it is built. Even though most of the residents travel on motorized boats, no visit to Venice is complete without a ride in a gondola.

Beautiful ancient structures seemingly line every street, but the most popular tourist destination is San Marco Square, which is surrounded by museums and churches with architecture that dates as far back as the 6th century.

The centerpiece of the square is the Doge’s Palace, which houses many precious paintings and the ancient prison where the notorious womanizer Casanova was incarcerated.

Beside the Doge’s Palace is St Mark’s Basilica church, a marvelous Gothic design bedecked by a square mile of mosaics.

In addition, the Marciano and Correr museums provide a fascinating insight into Venice’s rich history. Near San Marco Square are some of Italy’s most atmospheric and intimate restaurants. Traditional Venetian restaurants serve fish and meat, and many hidden gems wait to be unearthed within the city’s labyrinthine streets.

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The Big Green Egg is a piece of outdoor cooking genius that grills, smokes and bakes at exact temperatures that will remain consistent for hours. Using natural lump charcoal, you can grill at 750 degrees for steakhouse searing, or smoke low-and-slow for pit barbecue-tender meats. Roast vegetables or bake a crispy-crust pizza or a golden apple pie.

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in a world where surfing is online and mail doesn’t require a stamp, kingdom’s editor wonders if model aircraft still fly. with glue, duct tape and a pile of spare parts, two ends of the hobby spectrum offer a resounding “yes”

“You could get killed in that place.” MoM Fast said it More than once as we walked “it’s kind of odd now that i think about it, but radio controlled planes are what got me on a real plane,” says travis flynn, out of house of hobbies. she wasn’t a 30-something californian who happens to be one of the kidding. located near the old section best—and fastest—pilots of radio controlled aircraft in the of downtown in clearwater, fl, the world. “The first time i ever flew commercial was from la shop was the kind of place that scares to dallas for an rc competition when i was about 20 or 21.

Mothers and, accordinglY, thrills it was rough, a huge texas storm; all i remember was the Young boYs. dust-covered stacks of boxed model kits stewardess getting sick.” clogged every shelf and aisle, precariously balanced piles since then, flynn has traveled extensively, circling the almost touching the landing gear of the numerous planes globe for rc competitions as a member of team usa (yes, and helicopters hung from the ceiling. a large hedge maze of we have a team), piloting models that are a far cry from the ships, cars, planes and rockets, the bottoms of the stacks held plastic-and-glue assemblies most of us built as kids. models dating back to the store’s opening, sometime near while entry-level rc kits retail for near $200 and 1960, while the latest offerings sat out of reach on top. might include a radio, engine and foam rtf (“ready to fly”) a man named bob presided over the whole mess, often plane, competition-level aircraft like flynn’s are handmade suffering my seemingly endless questions with a scowl. for from carbon fiber by a limited number of builders, and sell some years in my youth, bob and his store absorbed the better for between $500 and $700. a radio, engine, propeller and part of my small allowance and my free time while i built a other bits needed to fly will set you back more cash, but as pile of ships, cars and aircraft. as the allowance gave way to hobbies go the top end of rc is accessible by most standards. an income, my cash and time were spent on a real car, which needed almost as much glue as the models i’d built. My last The level of focus needed to control these things, however, is visit to house of hobbies coincided with my first girlfriend, intense. They fly near 200mph, which means things happen quickly. competitions often include 10 laps, roughly 2.5 miles, and eventually the paints dried up and the X-acto knives were put away. decades passed without me ever thinking of models. in the air around three pylons set into the ground, and are over in roughly a minute. competitors work in teams of two, Then, last year, i saw a bbc program in which James May with a caller helping the pilot to time his turns. Judges watch (of “top gear” ) revisited the plastic model building of his youth to see if it held any interest for kids today. it got me thinking, for those who cut corners flying inside pylons—easy to do since the planes are, as we mentioned, screaming. no wonder and i too began to wonder if models had a place in our electronic one member of the san fernando Valley radio control world. as it turns out, they do. and for a few people i met, that flyers club (of which flynn is a member) called this kind of place is quite close to the heart—even if their definitions of rc flying, “the cheapest, fastest motor racing sport there is.” modeling are worlds apart.

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Clockwise from right: Travis Flynn, Fred Burgdorf, Tom Hegland and Jim Padelt at a San Fernando Valley Radio Control Flyers Club event

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The Valley Flyers are in their 60th year as a club.

They meet at the Apollo XI field in Los Angeles, and the membership might surprise you—these guys aren’t exactly kids, though you wouldn’t know it from the smiles on their faces. Tom Hegland, 54, is a NASA wind tunnel engineer at the Ames Research Center. He grew up near the club’s field and says he used to come out and watch them fly when he was a kid. Fred Burgdorf, a senior member of the club, has a history in plastics and fabrication, and now manufactures APC Propellers, which are used by virtually everyone in RC competition. As Flynn told me, “The great thing about this is you see a professional guy, then you have a guy who wears a hardhat all day… It doesn’t matter because everyone comes out and has a good time.”

Slow Travis and his friends are flyers, in it for the speed and fun.

On the other end of the spectrum are the builders. After spending hours carefully assembling their planes, these guys aren’t likely to toss them into the sky.

“Our customers are hobbyists,” says Rick Haas, director of marketing for Revell, the leading brand (and one of the oldest names) in the business. “Children, yes, but a lot of them are adults—people that started out making model kits in their youth and have stayed with it or come back to it.”

As builders are often concerned with accuracy, creating kits isn’t as simple as molding some wings and a fuselage.

“It’s a science,” says Haas. “It’s tremendously accurate. In many cases our engineers are working off the blueprints from the original manufacturer of the aircraft, and build the scale down to the scale of the model we’re selling. If they don’t have it accurate, there are avid historians who will contact us and say they didn’t get this or that right. But we get it right, down to the squadron decorations.”

Baby Boomers and historians aside, Revell admits that getting kids into modeling today is another thing altogether.

“That is a challenge,” says Haas.

Bob Rosenbaum, Revell’s vice president of sales, agrees, but explains that the company’s outreach programs are The X3 Stiletto (below) and the beloved Sopwith Camel (right) from Revell, my first model plane kits in decades

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working. For example, Revell hosts “Make and Take” events at races, air shows and other such venues. Kids are given a model to build, which can then be autographed by a professional driver or pilot. Then the kid gets to take the model home.

Additionally, Rosenbaum says Revell and its sister company Monogram donated thousands of kits to kids last year at trade shows and the like, and that the kids loved them.

“It’s not something like a video game, where it’s in the box; you can’t see it,” says Haas. “At the end, they have the model.”

Also: “They learn to follow instructions, they’re doing things with their hands, and there’s a sense of accomplishment, a pride and satisfaction, when they’ve built their model.”

And there’s something else, perhaps even more important, says Stuart Wagner, Revell’s director of sales.

“Models help to build a bond between a son and his father or his grandfather.”

Wagner touched a point with me, as some of my favorite memories of my childhood involve dad and I building models together. Model-building made for countless good hours as a kid, and as an adult it’s something to reconsider. There’s research that shows making models keeps the mind sharp and helps to maintain dexterity. For those reasons and a million others, it seems models are as relevant now as they ever were.

House of Hobbies shut its cluttered doors in 2004, though I read it may have moved to a more organized location in a nearby town. The hobby store I recently visited in Burbank, California, was as busy as ever, and I decided to give them a little more business. For the first time in more than 20 years, I chose a model airplane from a shelf and took it to the register.

“Ah, the X-3 Stiletto,” said the shopkeeper. “This one never gets old.” n

Fashion brands may come and go, but the name of the store that sells the best of everything remains: Bloomingdale’s. From its humble beginnings on new York’s Lower east Side to its position of prominence today with more than 40 locations worldwide, the iconic store continues its tradition of premiere selections and forward thinking. Perhaps it’s funny, then, that the story behind Bloomingdale’s rise to be one of the most fashionable and even avantgarde institutions in retail begins firmly braced in tradition, with a hoop skirt

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Patented In the U.S. In 1846 BUt In USe For Some YearS BeFore that, the hooP SkIrt maY have Looked and SoUnded LIke Some kInd oF tortUre devIce (ItS ProPer name IS the “cage crInoLIne”). In Fact, It waS a reLIeF to the women who wore It, aS It rePLaced aS manY aS Seven LaYerS oF Starched PettIcoatS wIth jUSt one or two over a Frame oF concentrIc hooPS. The must-have fashion item of its day, it supported women’s garments and retail outlets alike, being the sole item for sale in many stores of the mid and late 1800s. no surprise, then, that the hoop skirt was the first item stocked by retailers joseph and Lyman Bloomingdale in their Ladies’ notions Shop on new York’s Lower east Side. Unlike other retailers, however, they were thinking beyond single-item shopping. when the brothers opened their great east Side Bazaar in 1872 on 56th St., they stocked a variety of european fashions, using strong buying contacts to delight women with a one-stop shop for fashionable items and create a blueprint for what would eventually become the modern department store.

E B A G Birth of the Modern

retail art

1886 was a big year. President Grover Cleveland welcomed the Statue of Liberty to New York Harbor; Karl Benz patented the first gasoline-powered automobile; Sigmund Freud opened his practice in Vienna; Geronimo surrendered, ending the last of the Indian wars; and the first Coke soft drink was sold (and yes, it did contain cocaine). In fashion there was big news with two major events: Pierre Lorillard IV wore a sharp, tailless black suit to the Tuxedo Club, and Bloomingdale’s moved to 59th St. and Lexington Avenue.

With expansion (Bloomingdale’s opened an office in Paris the same year) came an emphasis on profile. Lyman’s splashy ad campaigns appeared on billboards, delivery wagons and even ladies’ beach umbrellas with signs like “All Cars Transfer to Bloomingdale’s,” and with the new subway stop at 59th and Lexington opening in July 1918, it wasn’t long before Bloomingdale’s filled the entire block. Already known for its highprofile ads—and its elaborate displays that reinvented window shopping as early as 1880—the store embraced “retail theater” in the 1940s by using specialized music and lighting for fashion shows and gala events, including 1947’s “Woman of the Year” event.

Bloomingdale’s success to this point was incredible and its reputation as a top retailer secure. The next few decades saw some major leaps forward, like moving Bloomingdale’s beyond New York and cementing its role not just as a store, but as a destination. Bloomingdale’s had always sought to offer consumers one-of-a-kind items and fashions, but in the 1960s it moved beyond acquisition and into creation, not just leading trends but actually starting them. Case in point: The designer shopping bag. From artist Jonah Kinigstein’s bags bearing re-creations of French tarot cards in bold colors (and omitting the Bloomingdale’s name) for an “Esprit de France” promotion in 1961, to the iconic “Big Brown Bag” of 1973, Bloomingdale’s bags created an industry. With a host of architects, artists, photographers, graphic designers and fashion designers creating bags for Bloomingdale’s, it’s no wonder the retailer’s bags have been featured in museums all over the world.

The innovations weren’t limited to accessories. In fashion, Bloomingdale’s launched numerous careers and helped already known designers to get their first footholds in the U.S. Names like Perry Ellis, Ralph Lauren and Norma Kamali can be

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counted as Bloomingdale’s discoveries, while Calvin Klein, Yves St. Laurent and DKNY all had their first in-store boutiques here.

It was a “see and be seen” destination, with events and openings attracting the likes of Elizabeth Taylor and even Queen Elizabeth II. As a quick aside: Because royal protocol declares Her Majesty may only exit her car from the right, traffic was reversed on Lexington to facilitate her visit (it’s usually one way southbound, and Bloomingdale’s is on the east side of the street). Throughout the period, Bloomingdale’s was influencing not just fashion and trends, but the way we see them. With creative use of “model rooms”—specially built and tailored spaces within the store that show off products and designers’ visions and were first used in 1947—Bloomingdale’s erased the distance between retail, art and fashion. The best example of this may be 1971’s “The Cave,” an intricate, multi-level frame sprayed entirely in white polyurethane.

It was an incredible effort, more akin to a gallery than a retail space.

Bloomingdale’s now The landmark 59th St. store received a massive renovation in 2009, adding new offerings from Giorgio Armani, Bumble and bumble., Jo Malone, Sisley and others to the expanded and restructured space. The Art Deco sign above the entrance is still intact, as are the dedicated entrance off the subway stop and the service and selection once you’re inside. Bloomingdale’s hasn’t slowed down with events or forward thinking, either. An initiative with the Natural Resources Defense Council in April saw the opening of Little Green Boutiques in Bloomingdale’s locations across the country, featuring such exclusive merchandise as a green water bottle, reusable tote bag and sustainable umbrella. And the brand went global with its first Dubai locations this summer, adding to 40 stores spread across New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Illinois, Minnesota, Georgia, Florida, Nevada and California. The City of Santa Monica gets its first store this August, bringing the grand total to 41 stores.

Wherever you find your Bloomingdale’s, the service and selection are impeccable, the brand’s place in retail history continues to be written and the story so far is undeniably engaging. With personal shoppers available, so many locations and online shopping made easy, there’s something for everyone at Bloomingdale’s. n For more information, or to shop any time, visit bloomingdales.com

Top desTinaTion Bloomingdale’s selection of menswear and accessories is unparalleled, and that means there’s plenty on offer for golfers and for those who enjoy the finer aspects of the golfing lifestyle—namely: kingdom readers.

Bloomingdale’s is currently showcasing a selection of fine sportswear from RLX Ralph Lauren and others. Visit the store in person or online to find your next outfit for a day on course, evening attire for dinner at the club, or house wares and accessories for any place in-between. bloomingdales.com

Want to improve your game? Sleep on it.

Dreaming of a better game? Then get a good night’s rest. Research proves concentration and focus are negatively effected by lack of sleep. When you’re sleep deprived, your body responds with changes to metabolism and hormone levels, leading to decreased performance. To learn what supplements can help you get a better night’s sleep and improve your game, visit us.cpoliquin.com/sleep

Poliquin Supplements. To Improve Your Game.

Spend $75 or more on our sleep products, or any Poliquin products of your choice, and receive a free Poliquin golf umbrella! $25 value!

Use coupon code GOLF1 at checkout. Umbrella must be added to cart and coupon must be used at checkout to redeem.

CharlesPoliquin.com

Dreaming of a Better game?

Sleep on it Practical tiPs for Putting insomnia to rest

By Charles Poliquin

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1.

Last night did you have trouble getting to sleep or staying asleep? If so, you have lots of company: A National Sleep Foundation poll indicates that one in five Americans experience insomnia every night or two.

Because it’s such a common complaint, you might consider shrugging it off as a minor inconvenience. Bad idea. Left untreated, sleep disorders will affect your health, your quality of life, and…wait for it…your game BeSIdeS hAvINg AcceSS to Better courSeS ANd coAchINg, oNe dIFFereNce BetweeN todAy’S pLAyerS ANd theIr predeceSSorS IS they Are Better AthLeteS. Many golfers hire personal trainers not only to help them build strength to hit the ball farther but also to improve overall athletic fitness, achieve optimal swinging biomechanics and prevent injuries.

But being in shape doesn’t mean much if you’re exhausted. when you’re sleep deprived, your endocrine system may respond with changes that negatively affect your metabolism and hormone levels. two hormones affected by poor sleep are cortisol and growth hormone; with poor sleep, cortisol levels increase and growth hormone levels decrease. So why is that a bad thing? high levels of cortisol lead to insulin resistance, which can contribute to diabetes and Alzheimer’s. Low levels of growth hormone promote body fat and decreases in strength and muscle mass. other hormone-related issues include metabolic problems such as accelerated aging, memory loss, increased storage of abdominal body fat, and impaired absorption in the digestive tract. excess body fat is especially significant in respect of the high rate of obesity in this country. The causal relationship of insomnia to obesity is well established: The less sleep an individual gets, the more likely they are to be obese.

Another health problem associated with poor sleep patterns is inflammation, which is an immune response characterized by swelling, redness, increased heat, loss of function and pain in the affected tissues. getting only six hours of sleep at night can increase inflammation in the human body by 20 to 40 percent. Although short-term (acute) inflammation promotes healing and helps the body combat infections, chronic inflammation may result in many serious health risks such as asthma, cancer and atherosclerosis.

Sleep disorders cost the u.S. health care system more than $15 billion annually, along with an estimated $50 billion in lost work productivity. The most common medical treatment for sleep disorders is, unfortunately, drugs. Although drugs do have their place, I’ve found several natural treatments that are effective with most sleep disorders. here are my top four.

Fill out a “grateful Log” before going to bed. This is my top tip for sleeping properly. It’s very simple—all you need is a pen and some paper or a journal. write down at least 10 things you are grateful for. every sentence should begin with either “I am grateful for…” or “Thank you for….” This activity is very calming for the mind, and it helps you look at the world in a positive light before falling asleep.

It prevents the mind from racing all night and enriches the quality of your sleep.

2.

Avoid eating grains and refined sugars before bed. These substances ruin sleep by raising blood sugar, which produces a hypoglycemic response that wakes you up and makes it difficult to fall asleep again. refined grains often contain allergens such as gluten that stimulate the body to make cortisol, which inhibits sleep.

3.

Sleep in a “Bat cave.” you should sleep in complete darkness, or as close to pitch-black as possible. even the tiniest bit of light in the room can disrupt your circadian rhythm (a type of biological clock) and can interfere with the production of melatonin (a sleep hormone) and serotonin (a mood elevation hormone).

If you can’t achieve a Bruce wayne-level of darkness in your room, try a sleep mask—I always pack one in my suitcase when I travel. The minimal-light rule applies to the bathroom too. If you need to get up in the middle of the night, keep the light off. turning the light on will instantly interrupt melatonin production. In fact, in some studies researchers report that being awake longer than three seconds during the night is enough to interrupt melatonin production.

4.

Minimize the electrical environment around your bed. Before going to sleep you can turn off the circuit breaker for your bedroom. Lowering the amount of electromagnetic field radiation, or eMF, around you will amazingly improve your sleep. If you must use an electric alarm clock, keep it at least a yard away from you.

Also, keep all clocks in your room away from view—if you are a worrywart and have difficulty falling asleep, watching the clock will make it worse.

Although impaired sleep plagues many Americans today, the good news is there are natural alternatives that can help. For more natural tips to achieve sounder and more restorative sleep, go to charlespoliquin.com/improveyoursleep. In the meantime, try these four tips to get a good night’s sleep! n

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Trump talks Clubs Trump National holds some of Southern California’s most beautiful Pacific views

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What makes a good golf club?

What kinds of services, amenities and courses do members expect?

What’s often missing? What’s a waste of a club owner’s time and money? What will define the great golf clubs of the future?

What makes a golf club extraordinary is having every component being superb.

The course itself has to be of championship quality, which means having the best designers and the finest locations. i would emphasize location in the sense of the exhilaration that can be experienced when playing alongside the pacific ocean, for example. my trump national golf club in los angeles fronts the pacific ocean and having that as a backdrop is hard to beat. my golf links course in scotland will provide the beauty of the north sea as well as tremendous sand dunes. The natural beauty along with expert design equals an unforgettable combination. services and amenities include everything a club can offer—which in short, is everything. The experience of golf is not just the game, but the social aspect, and anything that can expand that sense of camaraderie should be employed. my courses and clubhouses are known for their service and every detail is taken into account. i very much cater to the individual, and since i am an avid golfer myself, i am the criterion for what is to be expected—and my personal standards are very high. it’s not easy to please me, and i extend that attitude to the members of my clubs. The results are clubs that are award winning and highly esteemed among golfers.

What i find missing at some golf clubs is a sense of cohesion. golf is a comprehensive game on many levels and the gestalt, the shape, of the course and club should be thoroughly intact. There should be an infrastructure that makes it all work. When an owner doesn’t know this, there will be something lacking. spending time and money on a design that isn’t perfect will give haphazard results.

The only holes in the overall design should be the ones you find on the course. my clubs are an indication of what will define the great clubs of the future. They are full service and without equal when it comes to design, location, challenge and pleasure.

They will provide the ultimate experience for golfers for many years to come.

With all of the above being said, a long time ago a great golf architect, very well known but whose name i will not mention because i don’t want to embarrass him, stated to me that he would rather have a very good course with a great superintendent than a great course with a bad superintendent. over the years i have begun to realize how true this is. i have seen many great properties that weren’t properly maintained and they really seemed to blend into the average. on the other hand, i have seen some properties that were good but not great, but were maintained meticulously and it brought them to another level. so, we can talk location, we can talk design, we can talk service, and we can talk great food, but the conditioning of a golf course is imperative to success. one of the things that so impressed me recently when i played with arnold palmer at bay hill was arnold’s incredible attention to detail. any time he saw something that was even a little bit out of place, he would have it taken care of immediately. arnold is a great champion who knows what he wants and i think he agrees with me how important the conditioning of a course is in order to bring it to the highest level.

When you have a great golf course superintendent, therefore, be very thankful and never let him go!

happy golfing

donald J. trump

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RibeRa del DueRo Just three words, iambic in rhythm. Say them once and you’re speaking Spanish. Say them again and you’re reciting poetry—and just wait until it’s poured into your glass. kingdom’s john halnan practices his verse…

There’S SomeThing SynonymouS in The pouring of wine and The flow of a river. indeed, for many greaT wineS (loire and moSelle immediaTely Spring To mind) The relaTionShip goeS even furTher, Taking aS They do Their very nameS from The riverS ThaT define Their provenance.

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But while there can be no doubting the quality of viticulture along the banks of those great french and german waterways, there is perhaps a case for iberia’s river duero to become known as the greatest wine river of them all.

new Old wave The Duero’s story (or “Douro,” as it is called in Portugal) begins high in the Sierras of Spain. From these epic mountains, the river continues across the Iberian Peninsula before finally unwinding with mouth agape on Portugal’s Atlantic coast. In one 70-mile section, the river forms the boundary between Spain and Portugal. From there, it flows into “Alto Douro”, the heart of the modern Portuguese wine industry. Here, vines cling to steep terraces in improbable fashion and the schist-hard soil produces few—but deeply powerful—grapes.

Not much further downstream the river passes Pinhao, the center of Port production, before finally exiting into the Atlantic.

Port, with its British heritage and unique flavor, is still Portugal’s most famous libation and naturally, the Douro played its by forming and irrigating the terroir (or terruño, in this case) and by being the principal route to market. Today though, the wines produced along this great river that are

attracting the most attention are not Portugese Douro’s or the great fortified ports, but a new wave of high quality wines from the rhythmically named region further back upstream in Spain: Ribera del Duero.

It was not until the arrival of Benedictine monks from France in the 12th century that viticulture as we would recognize it today was established in the area. Despite this, the Ribera del Duero region was producing wine for many hundreds of years before the monks’ arrival—a fact that makes it even more odd to refer to its bottled products as part of a “new wave” of wines.

After all, the region’s history is measured in thousands of years, and for the last 150 or so Ribera del Duero has been the home of Spain’s most famous winery: Vega Sicilia.

Yet, for most of the 20th century the area was largely ignored. It wasn’t until 1982 that “Ribera”became a Denominación de Origen (DO), an officially defined area and part of a classification system that guarantees authenticity and quality.

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small batch and superbly balanced, this Crianza from lopez Cristobal is great with food—or all by itself

Regional Champion No movement is ever the product of a single individual—and it would be an exaggeration to say that one man single-handedly put Ribera on the wine map—but there was certainly a catalyst that formented the region: Alejandro Fernandez.

Fernandez founded his Pesquera winery in 1972 at a time when many locals were pulling up vines to plant other crops.

Working on a small 16th century winepress, he began to develop his magic ways with the classic Spanish grape Tempranillo. The grape had been seen as the bedrock of Rioja wines, then the only Spanish region of note. But by the 1980s Fernandez was pushing that definition, starting to make wines in a far more concentrated and fruit-driven style than most Riojas of the day.

As a Rioja aficionado I clearly remember first tasting Pesquera in the early 1990s and being astonished by the sheer juiciness and approachability of the wine. I was delighted to find a new Spanish wine that maintained the power, elegance and finish of a classic Rioja yet fair danced in the mouth with fruit and berries. Not unsurprisingly I wasn’t alone; Pesquera was gaining critical acclaim around the world, but perhaps most importantly for the region as a whole, Pesquera’s success enabled other area wineries to open in the region. Today, that success continues with the help of Alejandro’s wine-making daughter, Eva Maria.

Pesquera has added a few new wines as well: Condado de Haza, el Vinculo and—an excellent value—Dehesa la Granja.

Dane’s maRque While a determined Spaniard provided the platform for other Ribera winemakers to build upon, it is a great Dane whose star is currently in the greatest ascendancy. Peter Sisseck came to Ribera to make his mark on the world of wine. He spent a few years working for others, but soon struck out in search of his own vision: a wine that was pure Tinto Fino (Ribera’s variety of Tempranillo). In the village of La Horra, he found what he was looking for in five hectares of old vines.

The yields were tiny but the perfectionist Sisseck thinned

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the crop even further, weeding out uneven clusters to ensure consistency in ripening. He fermented his wine in new oak barrels, reportedly twice on some occasions. His first vintage in 1995 became an almost instant hit when the star that is Pingus was born. Wine critics raved, Robert Parker fell in love with it and the price just kept rising. Today Sisseck has three wines that bear his name: Domino de Pingus; his second wine, Flor de Pingus; and his latest and more reasonably priced offering, “PSI.” We sampled the 2006 Flor de Pingus and although it surely won’t be at its best for a few more years yet, it is already powerful, full of fruit and with a complexity that will only improve. The tannins provide a tremendous finish and one that will undoubtedly beautifully soften and lengthen with time.

like FatheR, like DaughteR One of the first wineries to become part of the DO and, at 840 meters above sea level, one of the highest in the region, is Valduero. It was founded in 1984 by Don Gregorio Garcia Viadero and his daughter Yolanda. Their approach is slow, traditional and extremely careful, using only grapes grown on the estate. The yields are small and they use no irrigation system or artificial fertilizers. The result is a wine that is true to the region and its soil, and powerful enough to age slowly.

Temperatures this January fell to 1˚F but such extreme cold is not exceptional. In the summer it can reach over 100˚F but it is this wide range of temperature that produces many of the distinguishing features of Ribera wines as, to protect themselves against the climate extremes, the grapes grow particularly thick skins that create the richness in tannin, length of finish and deep velvet color typical of a good Ribera.

We tasted Valduero’s Reserva 2004. It is aged 30 months in oak barrels and is wonderfully rich in color, the fruits are slightly darker than typical for a Ribera with blackberry and traces of coffee. The overall effect is of a rich, oak-paneled wine, controlled with an excellent depth and lingering finish.

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There’s a place where the finest wines are made perfect by nature.

Ribera del Duero

www.drinkriberawine.com

Well DresseD

Heavenly

Located close to Peter Sisseck’s small parcel of land in La Horra but founded 10 years prior to the first vintage of Pingus, is the Marques de Velilla winery. They produce Tinto Joven, Tinto Barrica, Crianza and their flagship wine, Doncel de Mataperras. The Tintos are excellent value for money but we can’t praise the superb 2004 Doncel de Mataperras enough.

2004 was an excellent year throughout Ribera Del Duero and, although the yield for the Doncel was down 50 percent due to hailstorms, come harvest time the grapes that remained were in excellent health. If anything, the wine will improve still with age, but we found it superbly balanced, precise and, like the perfect dinner guest, immaculately dressed. The fruit is immediate but the tannins are long and lasting, and the wine is an excellent representation of why Ribera del Duero is a region to be both drunk and collected.

In English it translates to “land of the chaplains,” but I have never drunk a wine in church that could remotely compare to the excellence that is produced by Pago de los Capellanes.

Located near the village of Pedrosa de Duero, the winery comprises more than 250 acres of vineyards grown in the modern style of trained vines. All the wines marketed under the Pago de los Capellanes brand are carefully constructed, and rightly deemed some of the best wines of Spain. Their top marque, Pago de Los Capellanes Parcela El Picon, is a particular standout that is priced accordingly. The 2004 vintage was released last year and while it will undoubtedly be great for many years, it is drinking perfectly now. The wine comes from a small parcel of land on the estate that is treated entirely separately from the rest of the grounds, and produces a mere 3,000 bottles. Aged for 26 months in new French oak barrels, the wine is built on tobacco, leather, licorice and oak, but with an immediate floral aroma and intense blackberry fruit in the mouth. The tannin is remarkably smooth, almost sweet, and so integrated into the wine as to produce an almost perfect finish.

Destination Winery Next up on our tasting menu is a winery by the name of Arzuaga. Founded by Florentino Arzuaga, the winery not only produces amazing wine but is a destination in its own right. The estate, named La Planta, boasts a superb Hacienda style hotel, a restaurant and a reserve amidst the vines in which wild boar and deer roam free. The winery produces a young wine, La Planta, and under the Arzuaga labels a Crianza, Reserva and Gran Reserva. All are exquisite but we were particulary impressed with the 2005 Reserva. It is rich, powerful, wonderfully colored with aromas of leather and oak on the nose giving way to dark berried fruit. In the mouth the wine has a concentration that suggests it will be good to drink for several years yet and provides a finish that makes you want to immediately reach for your glass to sup a second time.

Big time While Rioja has built its reputation on Tempranillo and Ribera del Duero on the Tinto Fino variation one newcomer, Vinas De La Vega del Duero has taken a different path. Their 2007 Quinta Sardonia marque comprises 52% Tinto Fino, 26% Cabernet Sauvignon, 9% Merlot, 5% Syrah, 4% Petit Verdot, 2% Cabernet Franc and 2% Malbec. The result is a massive wine that probably won’t peak until 2020. Purple in color and with 15.5% alcohol content the wine is crammed with espresso, cherry and blackberry fruit and yet also subtly blends in a complex perfume of spice and incense. The wine is like no other Ribera Del Duero I have ever tasted, and its newness and sophistication has had the critics fawning. If you buy wine as an investment as well as for pleasure my guess is that the value of the 2007 will only go in one direction.

stanDs alone Located in the heart of Ribera country is Lopez Cristobal.

They produce a Roble, Crianza and Reserva and a superb small batch wine from old vines under the name of Bagus.

The 2006 Crianza comprises 90% Tempranillo, 5% Merlot and 5% Cabernet with all the grapes originating from the estate. The wine has a fresh and appealing aroma, and bursts with wild fruit and berries. There is sufficient tannin for balance and finish and the Cabernet adds body but the result is a Crianza that is great to drink with food or just by itself.

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more in a moutHful We finish this article close to where we started it with Vega Sicilia, Spain’s first “stellar” and most storied winery. They offer three cuvees, with Unico (“unique”) being the flagship wine, only produced in very special years. Sadly I didn’t have the opportunity to review it for kingdom, but if you have the chance to drink the 1991 vintage then I guarantee it will say more about Ribera del Duero in one mouthful than I could possibly achieve in a whole series of articles. n

Quinta sardonia is huge, intense and, we hope, an indication of things to come from the ribera Del Duero region

His name is on tHe course, as well as His signature.

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J

e

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Summer’s sunny skies inspire wanderlust in all but the laziest among us, and with a host of modern classic offerings from established names and new designers alike, today’s jet setters have all the tools they need to take the world in smooth fashion. Here are our must-have stylistic basics for those on the go. See you in the first-class lounge Photos by James Gannon • Styling by Mimi Rae

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S

eye Shade

A jet setter without sunglasses is… Well, it never happens. Aviator frames are the obvious choice and Carrera’s take on the genre—the Champion, seen here with the Havana frames—is a new classic.

Near $129

e

Well Suited

t

Paul Smith’s jacket will get you in anywhere, be it the best club in London or a beach party in Saint-Tropez.

Good with a button-up or a simple tee, like this one from Alexander Yamaguchi.

Mineral-washed T in black, $120 Velvet Jacket by Paul Smith, $1,035

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Forward step Beat-up sneakers were great in school but casual shouldn’t be sloppy anymore. Prada’s Sport Linea Rossa in black is great with shorts, jeans or your most comfortable suit.

Near $495

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Smooth RolleR They flew through Big Bands, the Rat Pack and the swinging ’60s, survived disco and are still going strong today. Zero Halliburton’s distinctive aluminum cases, like the Zeroller seen here, are the best.

From $695

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Media Monster There’s no better portable way to enjoy media and to organize your life (not to mention read kingdom online) than the Apple iPad. Paired with a set of Monster Turbine Pro Copper earphones, it becomes an aural powerhouse as well. The clarity and separation are astounding, and the ability to block out crying babies make these a must-have on the plane.

Apple iPad, from $499 Monster Turbine Pro Copper, $399

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A BETTER ROUND IS ONLY TWO FEET AWAY.

Mark Twain said, “Golf is a good walk spoiled.” Too bad he never knew about Kentwool golf socks, specifically engineered for superior performance and comfort. Because in a pair of these socks, the walk isn’t spoiled. You are.

In celebration of Arnold Palmer’s 80th birthday, enter the promo code PALMER at KentwoolTour.com and take 20 percent off your order.

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A gAme of golf is plAyed one shot At A time. it consists of mAny decisions thAt, when Added together, produce A finAl score. the choices you mAke Along the wAy might depend on mAny fActors: lie of the bAll, weAther conditions, the clubs in your bAg, hunches About whAt other plAyers Are going to do And your own experience And self-confidence. Some factors you can control, many you cannot. In dealing with them, you may choose to take risks and play aggressively or you may take a more conservative approach. These same basic principles apply to the fundamentals of investing.

One thing many investors learned during the economic turbulence of the last few years is that their tolerance for risk is lower than they once thought.

Accordingly, like smart golfers, they are changing the way they play the game. To help revise their investment strategies and prepare for their financial futures, many investors are choosing full-service securities firms with a track record of putting clients ahead of profits—firms like RBC Wealth Management.

RBC Wealth Management, which is a division of RBC Capital Markets Corporation, Member NYSE/FINRA/ SIPC, is a boutique investment firm with a national footprint that has helped generations of America’s most financially successful families build, preserve, enjoy and share their wealth. In fact, its beginnings can be traced back to St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1909 when a gentleman named Oscar Kalman started a small brokerage selling stocks and municipal bonds to local investors.

Over the ensuing years, the enterprise steadily grew as regional firms joined together to expand their geographic range and enhance the capabilities they offered to their clientele. In 2000, recognizing the opportunities associated with being able to deliver the world-class resources of a global leader in diversified financial services, the firm agreed to be acquired by Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), adding the letters R-B-C to its name in 2001.

community stewardship: rbc-sponsored pgA golfer Anthony kim participates in rbc wealth management’s “shot for college” youth scholarship event

Today, RBC Wealth Management is the sixth largest full-service investment firm in the country (as measured by number of registered representatives), with more than 2,200 financial consultants working in 209 branch locations in 42 states from coast to coast.

While it has become one of the biggest, it has managed to retain the service-oriented culture and pragmatic “Midwestern values” that are hallmarks of its heritage— characteristics many investors are seeking these days.

Adding to its momentum, after the economic turmoil of 2008-2009, RBC Wealth Management has emerged in an enviable position in the U.S. securities industry, in part because of its relationship with RBC. The financial strength, sound risk management policies, strong balance sheet and diversified business mix of RBC have allowed the firm to withstand numerous market shocks and pressures that have pummeled many of its competitors. As a result, RBC’s performance relative to its peers has been—and still remains—a source of confidence for shareholders and clients, as well as a source of pride for employees.

Together, RBC and RBC Wealth Management attribute their ability to thrive when other firms have faltered to a steadfast focus on their stewardship mission: To responsibly manage the financial assets entrusted to their care by clients. By putting client needs first and staying true to their primary duties as financial institutions—which is to bring people with capital together with people who need capital in a way that helps them all achieve their specific goals—RBC and RBC Wealth Management have been able to avoid the missteps that have tarnished the reputation of Wall Street and contributed to the downturn many are calling the Great Recession.

This stewardship mindset is integral to the way RBC and RBC Wealth Management conduct business.

In fact, RBC Wealth Management goes several steps further, embracing a broader, more holistic definition of stewardship. In addition to serving the best interests of its clients, RBC Wealth Management is committed to the global community and to making the world a better place.

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RBC Wealth ManageMent in the gaMe Who is that carrying golf bags with the blue and gold RBC lion and shield emblem? It’s world-class golfers Anthony Kim, Fred Couples, Luke Donald, Stephen Ames, Mike Weir and Morgan Pressel representing “Team RBC.” You may see them at tournaments throughout the golf season. RBC is also Official Patron of the PGA of America, delivering educational information and access to resources to golf professionals throughout North America.

enviRonMental steWaRdship: RBC Wealth Management supports the RBC Blue Water Project™: a 10-year, C$50 million worldwide commitment to promote watershed protection and provide access to clean drinking water.

Chief Executive Officer of RBC U.S. Wealth Management John Taft has even coined a phrase for this commitment to stewardship: “The second golden rule.” RBC Wealth Management lives the second golden rule in three ways:

first

, it is committed to helping improve the quality of life in the communities it serves through event sponsorship, charitable giving, employee volunteerism and corporate partnership with worthy causes, supporting youth education, human services and the arts.

second, it is committed to helping people from all

walks of life accomplish their career and financial goals by recognizing the important role diversity plays and by promoting an inclusive atmosphere that welcomes all to contribute.

third

And , it is committed to operating an environmentally sustainable business for the benefit of current and future generations.

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Living by the second golden rule isn’t just the right thing to do: it also makes good business sense. As individuals and as a corporation, the choices and positive impact we make in our community ultimately define our character—and good character is good business. Football coach Lou Holtz may or may not have been on the golf course when he said, “Life is 10 percent what happens to you and 90 percent what you make of it.”

The same could be said about investing. And just as in golf, even as the game changes and adjustments are made, patience, discipline and sound fundamentals are at the heart of any winning strategy. RBC Wealth Management knows this, and with old-fashioned values and an eye on the second golden rule, that’s why they’ve succeeded where others have struggled. n

Erik thE GrEEn

Arnold Palmer Design Company was honored earlier this year when Erik Larsen was elected President of the American Society of Golf Course Architects, following in the footsteps of his mentor Ed Seay. paul trow caught up with APDC’s Executive Vice-President recently at Bay hill

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Erik LArSEn PErSonifiES thE oLD SAyinG: “if you wAnt SomEthinG DonE, thEn ASk A BuSy PErSon.” inDEED, whEn it ComES to GoLf AnD itS PrESSinG iSSuES thE PhrASE ShouLD PErhAPS rEAD: “if you wAnt SomEthinG rEALLy imPortAnt DonE, thEn ASk An ExtrEmELy BuSy PErSon.” The Executive Vice-President of Arnold Palmer Design Company seems to be constantly on the move. if he isn’t inspecting future sites, visiting projects in progress or running APDC’s busy office at Bay hill Club & Lodge in orlando, florida, he is probably winging his way round the country fulfilling his commitments as President of the American Society of Golf Course Architects.

Spare time would seem to be at a premium, yet Larsen, the father of three grown-up daughters, still manages to play off a handicap of 4 at Bay hill, take the occasional skiing holiday in Colorado with his wife Paula and play his prized bass guitar. most of all, though, he is a man on a mission—a mission to challenge and ultimately change the way golfers see their game and its most prized asset, its land. “my main priority for the future of golf is to look at ways of promoting shorter versions of the game,” he said when i stepped into his office for a chat during the recent Arnold Palmer invitational presented by masterCard. “here in the united States people aren’t playing courses. Looking forward, we have to establish in golfers’ minds that a course is green space for everyone to use, not just golfers.

“tHE OLD COUrSE At St. ANDrEWS WAS A PArk USED By tHE WHOLE tOWN”

Course photos: Dick Durrance II

Eagle Ranch in Colorado is one of Erik Larsen’s favorite course designs from the APDC portfolio

“Apart from anything else, this is an economic imperative.

At the moment we have a real issue with distressed properties.

A lot of courses have been let go and turned back into fields—300 have closed in the last two years and another 600 could go in the next five. So the question is, do you let this trend continue or do you perhaps find some other use for the land? After all, these are valuable pieces of green land, so why shouldn’t they be used for other activities when no golf is being played over them?

“Cart paths can become walking, riding or hiking trails.

When golfers are teeing off the 1st tee, people could walk the course from the 10th where no one is playing. Who knows, perhaps these people might enjoy themselves so much they become interested in playing golf.

“Driving ranges can easily be used for large outdoor gatherings (movie nights with a “blow-up” screen, maybe).

They are natural amphitheaters—the right shape for crowds to gather when people aren’t out there beating balls. Also, the lakes on the course can be used for fishing.

“This is all about bringing people to your facility who wouldn’t normally visit it. I’m cautiously optimistic this can be workable, even though there would be liability and maintenance issues.

“But let’s face it—the precedent was set in the 1700s with St. Andrews. The Old Course was a park and was certainly used by the whole town for more than just golf. It’s had all sorts of different uses over the years.”

Not every senior figure in golf is known for his (or her) capacity for visionary thinking, but it seems the ASGCA has hit the jackpot with Larsen, a member of the association since 1989 and a protégé of the late Ed Seay, one of its former Presidents.

Now 56, Larsen, a graduate in landscape architecture from North Carolina State University, got into the coursedesign business because he wanted to combine two of his life’s passions—golf (he played off scratch as a young man) and landscaping.

“I’d worked on courses as a kid, since I was 14— specifically on Veenken Golf Club which belongs to Iowa State University in Ames [Larsen’s grandfather, a Norwegian immigrant, was emeritus professor of forestry there].

“Then I had my own landscape company in south Florida, working on ornamental gardens, nothing to do with golf, but I sold that and moved back to Iowa. In 1983, I decided I’d like to get into golf so I called the ASGCA at their headquarters in Chicago and spoke to the executive secretary, Paul Fullmer. He said to call Ed Seay, the head architect at APDC, because he was looking for someone.

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“His philosophy is simple: To design beautiful golf courses that are fun to play while maintaining the utmost respect for nature.”

In April, Larsen teamed up with ASGCA executive director Chad Ritterbusch and other golf industry leaders in Washington, D.C. for “National Golf Day.” The purpose of this gathering was to flag up the “We Are Golf ” campaign to help government leaders understand the economic, environmental and human benefits the game of golf and the golf industry have on the United States. Based on 2005 figures, the quantifiable value of golf to the U.S. economy exceeds $195 billion.

“Many people don’t appreciate how big an industry this is,” he says. “But it faces some tough decisions. The 25-45year-old age group is largely getting out of the game because playing golf takes up too much time.

“But you don’t have to play 18 holes every time you play.

Nine is perfectly okay, maybe even six holes. So how do we get our program going? Models for doing this can be initial solutions for the distressed courses I’m talking about. It’s a new difficulty for the U.S., but we need to talk about what golf is all about.”

Leaving aside APDC’s natural professional interest in designing the course that will be used when golf returns to the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2016, Larsen believes that the event represents a huge opportunity for the game as a whole.

“I remember the exact date to this day—August 14, 1983! I drove down to Ponte Vedra Beach where they were based at the time with my wife and our two children [the third came along a while later] and they waited in the car while I had my interview.

Ed hired me there and then, though no doubt he was wondering why! He was a master with people. There was no bull about him— if someone had a problem his reaction was ‘let’s fix it.’

“Ed was very keen on people who had field experience, even if they couldn’t draw. He turned out to be the most influential man in my life apart from my father. He was my second father as well as my friend. He was unique in golf—an overlord who really liked taking time on the job.

“My personal favorite of all the courses we worked on together was Eagle Ranch in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado—a beautiful setting and a very fair golf course to suit all playing standards.

“Like him, I go to every site we work on—in fact, I’m usually one of the first guys in so I can see for myself what fixes are needed. It also enables me to get a flavor for the land, the owner and any other relevant factors.

“It was a huge shock when he got sick with lung cancer.

He was larger than life and people gravitated to him. With Ed the work always got done. People made problems and he would fix them. I was an infant in management when I started working for him.

“At the time, the company got its work mainly because of Arnold Palmer and the integrity that his good name guaranteed. Nobody I know can play that role. He’s a special guy and that’s not a lie. He’s all he sounds—he’s always let us get on with it. He’s given me a lot of respect and trust from the first day I started working for him.

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“ARNOLD PALMER’S A SPECIAL GUy. HE’S ALWAyS LET US GET ON WITH IT”

Larsen, in his ASGCA President’s blazer (right), and above with his colleague David Couch

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“I LIkE pLAYING thE BLuES, But MY WhOLE fAMILY IS MuSICALLY INCLINEd” “They have got to build it by 2013, and we’re very interested in designing it,” he says. “But I feel it should be light on using up land and moving dirt, and it should be affordable to play for local golfers long after the Games have finished. It should serve as a model for sustainable golf and it has to be successful if the game is going to spread to countries and regions where it’s never been embraced before.

“It doesn’t have to be some powerhouse of a course with 5-star facilities all over. As these will be the first Olympics with golf [since 1904], I feel it should be simple and economically successful—now and for the future.”

When not thinking creatively about golf courses and their sustainability, Larsen likes to indulge his love of music when the time comes to relax.

“I’ve been playing bass guitar for about 10 years. I love music but I don’t think I’m particularly gifted,” he admits. “Why bass guitar? Well, the piano has too many notes for me, and the wind instruments are real hard work. And compared to the normal guitar, the bass only has four strings—that suits me just fine. I like playing the Blues, but my whole family is musically inclined.

“My oldest daughter, Minda, who is 29, is a professional singer and she was recently in the finals of the prestigious Lotte Lenya competition in New York. She didn’t win even though she was the crowd’s favorite, but she still won a great prize—I think it was free travel somewhere.”

Minda’s singing style has been described by some observers as reminiscent of the late Eva Cassidy. If she comes remotely close to fulfilling such promise, then she’ll travel far and often throughout her career—just as her father has done. And she’ll be a very busy person—just as her father has been, and still is. n

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the world is erik larsen’s oyster when it comes to designing courses

A BeAutiful thing Erik Larsen’s golfing values are eloquently summarized in this ‘Leading Thoughts’ column he recently penned for the ASGCA website, asgca.org “A golf course… it is a beautiful thing. But aside from the obvious aesthetic beauty, its true beauty can be found in the many ways it gives back to the community.

“Courses can increase the economic value of a local community, often times raising the property values of surrounding areas. They also provide planned locations for green space development. The flexible nature of a course helps transition spaces between the natural environment and community neighborhoods. Courses serve as smart contributions to the preservation of natural wildlife and habitats. In this regard, golf courses are living brochures for environmental awareness.

“Golf courses also offer alternative recreation venues. For those looking for an increase in exercise and aerobic activity, a 4-hour round of golf can burn more than 1,200 calories. Elect to play without the cart and one can burn well over 2,000 calories while on the course. But courses can offer more than a simple round of golf. Land within and around a golf course can complement scenic walking trails, relaxing fishing holes and even stretches of beautiful beach property.

“It's often said that golf builds character. I'd like take that one step further and remind everyone that golf also helps build camaraderie. The golf course is a brilliant place to cultivate business relationships, fuel a competitive itch or simply a place to have fun swinging the clubs with your family and friends.

A golf course serves as a natural gathering place and prime hosting venue for a variety of social functions and organized events.

“From tee to green, from fairway to bunker, from clubhouse to nature preserve... a golf course truly is a beautiful thing.”

SOME BEDS CAN CHANGE THE WAY YOU SLEEP. ONLY ONE CAN CHANGE THE WAY YOU LIVE.

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Dealer inquiries: dealer@vispring.ca or call 877.484.7774

the summer’s hottest technology is here.

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Gifts on the go

Summer is the time for open-top cars, bold vacations to far-away places and plenty of top accessories.

conte of florence

bionic glove

From the excellent Conte of Florence company comes a new line of distinctive summer menswear and a bold new Golf collection. Vivid green is joined by the marque’s signature red, navy blue and ecru.

Classic check trousers and argyle motifs join top-quality technical garments in Conte’s fashionable and high performance clothing and accessories. conteofflorence.com

The new Performance Series gloves from Bionic are designed by an orthopedic hand surgeon to maximize comfort and performance. Elongated 3-D flexion zones offer enhanced feel, a Triple-Row Finger Grip System allows a lighter grip, and a mix of leather, Lycra and “mini Terrycloth towels” inside the glove make for a durable and moisture-managed bit of kit. bionicgloves.com

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sheaffer writing instruments

the garia Manufactured at the same factory as Porsche’s Boxster and Cayman, the luxury, quality and attention to detail in the Garia golf car are amazing. A fridge, hand-stitched seats and a comprehensive personalization program are all available on the Garia, built to the highest automotive standards with design and components from top suppliers. garia.com

Those with an uncompromising zest for celebrating life now have a writing instrument to help them do so. Sheaffer Intensity features a smooth twist-action mechanism to retract the ballpoint and carries the renowned Sheaffer White Dot of quality and prestige. Offered in six finishes and packaged in a luxury gift box with a limited three year warranty, Intensity’s clean, unwavering lines bring sleek balance and comfort to provide pure pleasure in writing. sheaffer.com

Druh Belts Daphne’s heaDcovers Daphne’s Headcovers has been producing top quality headcovers for more than 25 years. Ernie Els regularly sports Daphne’s lion headcover, and it was protecting his driver when he won this year’s Arnold Palmer Invitational Presented

by MasterCard. With a creative array of custom designs and attention to detail, Daphne’s will protect your top clubs as well—and in fun style. daphnesheadcovers.com

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Newly established Druh Belts & Buckles has added some seriously eye-catching designs to its stellar lineup. The belts are already a fixture on Tour, with fans among the likes of Paul McGinley, Robert Karlsson and John Daly, for whom Druh has just created the Lion buckle range. Joining that, the new diamante “db” buckles and belts feature diamond-shaped patterns and represent the company’s glitziest offerings.

They’ll make a stylish addition to your on-course look. druhbeltsandbuckles.com

IntroducIng dna golf’s alpha 610 drIver DnA’s remarkable drivers are tuned to the highest face flexibility allowed by the USGA, and are shipped with a USGA-conforming face (they’re legal for all USGA governed tournaments). However, the face is detachable, and increased performance is possible with aftermarket faces, maximising distance for slower swinger speeds.

DnA Drivers also come in three distinct acoustic profiles, from the loud “hollow” sound of modern titanium drivers to the classic “solid” sound of persimmon. Players can select the sound of their driver at impact, critical to the overall “feel” of the club. Every driver is also “co-branded” with a distinct logo. Over 30 percent of rounds played are business-related, and DnA offers corporate customers the chance to add a logo to each driver. DnA Golf partnered with kingdom to provide customised DnA drivers for the 2009 Kingdom Cup, which means special pricing is available for all kingdom readers at dnagolf.com/kingdom.html

l.v. harkness Anything by sculptor Grainger McKoy is a must-have—and these Quail cufflinks from L.V. Harkness & Co. certainly qualify. The style is available in sterling silver and 14K gold. L.V. Harkness was founded to offer an extensive array of the world’s finest products under one roof. The store is located in downtown Lexington, Kentucky, and offers custom engraving, and interior design services as well as fine gifts. lvharkness.com

sweet wood golf Sweet Wood Golf believes the clubmakers of the early 20th century really understood the “soul” and fine art of golfing instruments, and the company carries that belief strongly and proudly in their unique offerings. A self-described lifestyle company with a deep focus on artistic craftsmanship, Sweet Wood Golf revives the look and feel of traditional clubs with a performance the old masters could only have dreamed about. Their exotic hickory putters come in a range of styles, including exemplary

limited editions that are unmatched in craftsmanship and innovation. Likewise, Sweet Wood Golf ’s hickory irons are top examples of Old World style and modern playability, using classic designs with modern technology and construction.

Additionally, Sweet Wood offers high grade leather golf bags, a collection of unique divot tools and “vintage” items, and even a full range of retro apparel.

True appreciation of the game, Sweet Wood Golf can be found online at sweetwoodgolf.com or call 301 296 4426

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garland truffles Garland Truffles is the oldest and first successful grower of truffles in the Western Hemisphere, and it is the only nursery in the U.S. that has grown and sold trees in production for the “black diamond” Perigord truffle. Additionally they offer real truffle oil, truffle juice, truffle butters, and many other temptations, including a chocolate truffle infused with the black truffle. garlandtruffles.com

bloomingdale’s Fashions come and go, but the store that sells the best of everything remains: Bloomingdale’s. Long a leader in offering a great selection and great customer attention, the store’s At His Service personal shopping program is yet another way Bloomingdale’s is tops. With the assistance of a stylist, you’ll be well kit in elegant club-appropriate clothing like these buttondown collar heathered checks from Façonnable. bloomingdales.com

Handmade Golf SHoeS from napleS, Italy Nothing says “style” more than a pair of handmade Italian shoes. Driven by pure passion for over 50 years, the Scafora family has been making theirs with attention to detail and with love. They can even fit and create made-to-measure shoes for individual clients, under the direct supervision of Paolo Scafora. Also: They offer a superbly elegant golf collection in the finest of materials, including custom leather golf bags. paoloscaforanapoli.it

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bowers AnD wilkins Top audio company Bowers & Wilkins offers a pair of audio tools to satisfy the most demanding audiophiles. The sleek body of the Zeppelin houses five speakers that deliver unbelievable sound from iPods, iPhones, computers or any other sound source. For personal listening, the company’s P5 Mobile Hi-Fi Headphones have a closed-back design with rigid metal faceplates and sealed-leather ear pads, ensuring clarity and comfort with less interference. bowers-wilkins.com

tAG TAG Heuer Eyewear has long been known for quality sunglasses, now they add a bit of elegant sports fashion to their look with the Maria Sharapova Sunglass Collection. The “TAG Heuer woman” collaborated with the top company to design eyewear that is comfortable, protective, durable and crafted from the highest quality materials. tagheuer.com/eyewear

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Nickel Putter, the highly engineered putter producer, adds a little something to every golfer’s main club for the greens with its Ball Pick-Up. Far superior to suction pickups, the Nickel Putter Ball Pick-Up fits any putter grip, attaches easily with no drilling required and enables ball retrieval following a putt without bending over. Like all good design, simple and effective. Marvelous. nickelputter.com

Roll consistency, realistic breaks, genuine skill development and beautiful—the DreamGreen line of fully adjustable indoor putting greens has it all. With up to 3 million possible combinations of breaks, you can practice almost any situation you might find on a golf course. PLUS, it is ready for your use ANY TIME YOU WISH in the comfort of your home or office regardless of weather, season or time of day. dreamgreen.com

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Bid Now for ArNie’s portrAit

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kingdom is auctioning Nespresso’s Arnold Palmer portrait to benefit the Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children (arnoldpalmerhospital.com). From now until the end of October, enter a bid at arnieskingdom.com and you could win a stay in Orlando and meet the man himself. At the end of October, the winning bidder will be invited (with a partner) to the Kingdom Cup at Bay Hill Club & Lodge—an invitation-only event, hosted by Arnold Palmer. All expenses will be paid (minus flights and incidentals) and his or her bid will serve as the reserve price at a live auction to take place at the tournament. Naturally the lucky recipients will be included in the bidding process!

Once an ultimate winner is determined, Arnold Palmer will sign and present the portrait. For more: arnieskingdom.com/ nespresso

a portrait of arnold palmer offers a big shot of art and a chance to win a trip to meet the king himself at bay hill. nespresso pours it on...

If the expressIon “smell the coffee” Is street code for takIng a realIty check, then how about “see the coffee” for a surrealIty check? art, as we all know, comes in many shapes and forms, and takes on many meanings depending on the eyes and senses of the beholders. In recent years, much cutting-edge creativity has originated from that most energetic of environments— the city that never sleeps, new york! so it possibly isn’t too much of a surprise to discover that a new art form has evolved, based on pixilated coffee capsules. presented by brazilian entrepreneur and artist ricardo bellini at nespresso’s capsule art exhibit and tasting bar at 92 prince street, hundreds of thousands of the company’s colored coffee capsules were mounted on 2-metre-square canvases to create the facial images of almost a hundred famous people from the worlds of art, politics, music, entertainment and sport. lining up alongside the likes of John f. kennedy, mahatma gandhi, marilyn monroe, ray charles, oprah winfrey, president obama and James taylor at a public exhibition at nespresso’s soho bar last year was none other than arnold palmer.

The term for this style of art is neo-iconography, hitherto territory occupied by another of bellino’s subjects, the late andy warhol. american icons don’t come much bigger than warhol nor, indeed, mr. palmer. bellino was originally inspired by the palette of 12 shiny colors in which the capsules come while sipping an espresso with his wife marina, an interior decorator and visual artist, at nespresso’s flagship madison avenue bar. he noticed the beauty and graphic power of the capsules displayed on the wall and immediately came up with the concept of transforming them into pixels, and art. The plan was to produce 50 panels from a total of 125,000 capsules! getting hold of that many items was the first problem, so even before leaving the nespresso store, he called his friend Ivan Zurita, ceo of nestlé, brazil, and he put bellino in touch with u.s. nespresso’s vice-president, michelle mcfault.

within a few weeks, 130,000 capsules were delivered to the bellino’s key biscayne home. as their expiration date had exceeded, they were meant to be recycled anyway. bellino, now 45, contemplated the fast-paced world of digitized images and envisioned a concept representative of functional object and celebrity defined as a reinterpretation of our cultural process. up close the panels are a myriad of perfectly aligned colorful shapes, but step back and the iconic faces materialize. from simple object to techno, if the artwork is viewed through a cell phone it is no longer a micro view, but a clear image staring back. “for ages, man has used art to honor and pay tributes to muses, gods and heroes,” bellino says. “nespressions is our humble form to express our respect for a few special individuals who occupied significant space in recent history and have inspired many generations. nespressions is meant to be a continuing work in progress. we will keep creating new portraits in celebration and appreciation of talent. nespressions It is our tribute to excellence.”

The idea of cultivating challenging concepts goes along with bellino’s background as an individual who sees opportunities where others may not. before his 21st birthday, he partnered with John casablancas to open elite models in são paulo, brazil which ultimately launched the careers of giselle bundchen and adriana lima. years later, donald trump told bellino he had three minutes to give his pitch for a prospective brazilian real estate development, and the result was a record for the world’s fastest deal. bellino was so impressed he created a portrait panel of trump from 2,500 capsules, which the property tycoon liked so much he installed it in his new york office. nespresso will donate all proceeds from the tasting bar exhibition to four partner charities: the british memorial garden (britishmemorialgarden.org), The princess grace foundation-u.s.a. (pgfusa.com), prince albert II of monaco foundation–u.s.a. (fpa2.mc) and musicians on call (musiciansoncall.org). and a coffee table book depicting the entire nespressions collection will be released by the end of this year, following a series of exhibitions around the world.n

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In the AI r Piper Aircraft’s legacy of excellence is providing a launch pad for an exciting future in the shape of its new PiperJet. Here’s a quick look at the company that’s done more than most to get people in the air

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William Thomas PiPer found his firsT forTune underground in oil, buT iT Was in uP The sky Where he made his name. by building small, reliable, inexPensive and easy-To-fly Planes, his PiPer aircrafT corP. inTroduced counTless PiloTs To The joys of flighT— including mr. PiPer himself, Though he didn’T Take over a cockPiT unTil age 50. Long known as the only plane manufacturer to offer a truly complete line of aircraft, helping just about any pilot to realize his or her flying dreams, Piper’s reliable trainers and high-performance aircraft are about to be joined by the new PiperJet. The PiperJet will not only add a new dimension to the world of business and private jet travel, it will continue Piper’s legacy as the company that creates the freedom of flight, ensuring pilots at every level have access to quality aircraft and all the benefits that come with them.

PiPerJet TIME magazine once called it “private aviation’s most durable and legendary plane,” soldiers in WWII called it a flying Jeep, and countless pilots and passengers have called it just plain fun. The Piper Cub—in all of its boxy, yellow glory—epitomized the company’s goal of building high-quality, inexpensive, easy-to-handle planes.

Today, the new PiperJet is a world away from the original Cub—it is a true 21st century aircraft—but it also remains true to Piper’s core values in terms of quality and accessibility.

“This is a revolutionary jet, with a world-class package of performance capabilities and features,” says Mark Miller, Piper’s chief corporate spokesperson. “You can make it almost anywhere in the States with one fuel stop. And it’s a great plane for small hops as well.”

In fact, the PiperJet will make approximately 1,300 nautical miles without refueling. Fully fueled, it will carry an additional 800 lbs of people and equipment, which makes it an incredibly usable addition to the VLJ (“Very Light Jet”) category.

“We’re seeing people who had bigger business jets and in this new climate are saying, ‘Maybe I’ll downscale.’

Usually it’s the other way around,” says Miller. “Of course, quite a number of people are moving up as well, out of turbo props and high performance piston-powered aircraft.”

Piper has had more than 200 orders for the PiperJet already, despite the fact that the aircraft is still going through standard design reviews and refinement and is scheduled for delivery in 2013. The company has been able to keep the projected price of approximately $2.2 million and the advance customer base steady despite the world’s recent financial turbulence, which is a testament to the integrity of both the project and the Piper name.

Design-wise, the PiperJet is equally solid, with its 44-foot (and 3-inch) wingspan stretched out before its tail-mounted engine. Measuring 35’ 8” in length, the PiperJet seats up to seven people and will offer a number of possible customizations in its elegant and comfortable cabin including a fully enclosed lavatory.

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Full Range Although the PiperJet is the latest addition to the Piper line, it is by no means the company’s only comfortable and effective business option. Piper offers a number of high performance cabin class aircraft such as the pistonpowered Piper Mirage and Piper Matrix, as well as the Piper Meridian—the company’s flagship turbo prop.

Additionally there’s the Saratoga, a hot performance aircraft; the Seneca, one of the premiere twins in the world; the twin trainer Seminole; and a number of other great planes. And, while the company is planning further expansion into jets, Piper is also looking to fill business and general aviation needs further afield, particularly in the nascent markets of Asia. They’ve recently introduced the PiperSport, which Miller describes as “a true entry level aircraft. You don’t need a full pilot’s license; it’s a whole different category.”

It’s important because, Miller says, individuals in the East are looking at the sky and it has them thinking.

“In Asia, there’s long been a sophisticated business jet market with a discerning clientele, but only recently have we seen a proliferation of interest in entry level aircraft from flight schools and flying clubs. People are learning how to fly.”

Wherever Piper is flying, the company will no doubt continue its tradition of excellence in building high-quality, affordable, and capable aircraft. After all, along with its comprehensive collection of top planes and the new PiperJet on the way, there’s still one of the original Cubs at the company’s headquarters in Vero Beach, Florida—and it’s still flying strong. n

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Food Airplane food used to be the stuff of ridicule, now it’s the stuff of myth.

With in-flight meals a thing of the past—and with airports stepping up their gastronomic games—eating before you fly makes more sense than ever To A young generATion of flyers, The noTion ThAT your AirplAne TickeT once enTiTled you To A free meAl—hoWever meAger—is unbelievAble. one WAy or AnoTher you pAy for mosT of TodAy’s AirplAne food, And unless you’re flying on your oWn jeT WiTh A privATe chef, or going commerciAl in business or firsT clAss, “lunch” Will mosT likely be An overpriced plAsTic-WrApped sAndWich And A couple of cookies. The soluTion: eAT before you fly.

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While airport dining used to consist of bar snacks or fast food, today’s terminals are starting to take on the patina of gourmet food courts, with restaurants from the likes of Todd english and gordon ramsay surrounded by name steakhouses, seafood restaurants and even sushi bars.

We at kingdom travel a lot, but there’s only one member of staff with his own citation (that would be mr. palmer, of course). We’re old enough to remember the days of stewardesses—before they were flight attendants—asking, “chicken or beef ?” and we’ve suffered more microwaved airport burgers and quesadillas than we care to remember. Thus, we’re thrilled with the current trend of improved terminal eating.

As a bit of advice to fellow foodie travelers everywhere, here are some of our favorite excuses to arrive at the airport early— and hungry.

New York, JFk JetBlue’s terminal 5 It’s difficult to pick just one restaurant in JetBlue’s new Terminal 5, which is as aesthetically pleasing as it is spoiled for dining options.

The numerous culinary venues are housed in a cutting-edge setting that features sweeping curves, vividly modern lighting and elegant nooks and crannies. Tucked into one of them: 5IVESTEAK, offering beautiful steaks, including a dry aged porterhouse, bone-in rib eyes, sumptuous filets and a black angus New York strip. Tiger prawns, applewood smoked bacon, truffle fries and a host of other top steakhouse offerings are complemented by a raw bar and satisfying wine list. Next door, Piquillo, the first tapas restaurant in a U.S. airport, offers authentic Spanish fare like Berenjena Rellena (Menorcan-style stuffed baby eggplant) and a fine selection of imported ham and sausages from Spain’s famous acorn-fed black pigs. There’s also Deep Blue Sushi from Buddakan’s Michael Schulson, La Vie, a proper NYC French bistro, and a classic Italian trattoria called Aeronuova— along with many more foodie delights. And if you’re nervous about missing an announcement, Revive offers state-of-the-art touchscreen monitors that allow you to order high-quality bistro food (e.g., artisanal cheese plates; stuffed olives and feta; prosciutto, fig and sweet onion Panini, to name a few) that can be delivered directly to your gate.

JetBlue really has set the culinary and design standard for the pre-flight experience.

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Los AngeLes, LAX

AtLAntA HArtsfieLd

EncountEr rEstaurant, airport ExtErior

onE FlEw south, tErminal E

If you’ve flown into LAX, you’ve seen the Theme Building. The remarkably varied “Southernational” menu at this travelLooking like a UFO that landed smack dab in the middle inspired restaurant offers a wide array of culinary directions of the airport, the Disney-designed Jetsons-esque structure mostly sourced from local farms and fisheries. The Hamachi has been looming over the center of LAX since 1961, an and Unagi on the sushi menu are hardly local, but the architectural celebration of the jet age. Encounter restaurant, restaurant’s shrimp are caught right here in Georgia, even inside the Theme building, continues the party with a décor if their preparation—Shio Yaki with preserved lemon and a that has to be seen to be believed. Offering “California Fresh” wasabi tomato sauce—has a decidedly non-Southern flavor. cuisine, including organic market salads and a selection of Not so for the Herbs & Spices Crusted Breast of Quail with Pacific seafood, options range from fairly straightforward (Ahi ham hock, white beans, turnips and sarsaparilla reduction, Tuna Tartare with Pacific Rim Seaweed Salad and California and the Ashland Farms Chicken Breast with celery root Avocado) to the somewhat boisterous ( Jumbo Shrimp tossed and bourbon mushroom sauce. A Teriyaki NY Strip, Hoison with Fresh Roma Tomatoes, Roasted Garlic and Penne with “Pulled Duck” sandwich and Clam & Miso Chowder are Basil White Wine in a Citrus Sambucca Pomodoro Sauce). other fusions of the exotic and the down-home, but the Because it’s LA, the lounge is far-out, man, and even managed dessert menu lets you know exactly where you are: A Baked the accomplishment of being a trendy locals’ spot in the early Pecan & Honey Sticky Bun with pecan brittle and mulled 2000s. The “Intergalactic-themed” interior includes moonstone milk-cider could only come from the Peach State. quarry walls and a crater-shaped bar adorned with guns that fire lasers and make “futuristic” sound effects when bartenders pour a drink. Important note: The restaurant is outside of the terminal, meaning you’ll still have to check in, check your bags and get through security before you fly—on a plane. Despite its levitating appearance and potential zero-gravity sensations rendered by the lounge’s “Black Hole” martinis, Encounter will not lift off and get you to your destination.

newArk Liberty Airport GallaGhEr’s stEakhousE, tErminal c This storied New York eatery has been serving up quality steaks since it was established as a speakeasy more than 80 years ago. Its in-house dry aging room and hickory coal grilling are the stuff of local legend, and its reputation as a celebrity favorite is well established. The main restaurant on W 52nd St. is great if you’re in the city, but when it’s time to fly and you cross the river into New Jersey, Gallagher’s Terminal C location is a lifesaver for hungry flyers. Straightforward, high quality, old-school New York steaks and cocktails.

seAttLe-tAcomA internAtionAL ivar’s, cEntral tErminal Ivar Haglund opened his now-famous Seattle waterfront restaurant in 1938 because the aquarium he ran needed a food stop. Today, Ivar’s moniker adorns a massive number of cafés, full-service restaurants and stadium concessions in the Northwest, delivering hearty, tasty seafood to millions. The Sea-Tac Airport location, in the airport’s Central Terminal, serves true cod fish and chips, halibut, salmon, prawns, calamari and a wide selection of grilled seafood, chowders and other Northwest fare. They even make breakfast sandwiches consisting of sausage, egg and Dungeness crab, salmon or shrimp. Though the bold maritime odors will hardly make you a popular seatmate, all menu items can be carried onto your flight.

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Boston, Logan InternatIonaL Two excellenT choices Anyone’s who’s had seafood for dinner in Boston knows about Legal Sea Foods. Started in nearby Cambridge’s Inman Square in 1950, the chain now has more than 30 locations around the country. Good for travelers: One of them is in Logan Airport’s Terminal C. The menu features beautifully prepared, no-nonsense fresh seafood. Order what you like, but if you don’t try the chowder, you’re doing yourself a disservice. One terminal away in Terminal B, Chef Todd English opened a Bonfire location. A fusion of Argentine, European and American steakhouses, Bonfire offers diners meats and seafood with a little spice. Try the tacos, and don’t miss the bar’s Caipirinhas and Margaritas.

stuttgart aIrport, germany Top Air, TerminAl 1

CharLotte-DougLas InternatIonaL aIrport Brookwood FArms BBQ, in The ATrium

With the number of airport restaurants in cities like Paris, London and New York, it seems a bit surprising to us that there’s only one airport eatery to ever earn a Michelin star: Stuttgart Airport’s Top Air, which has done so every year since 1992. A calm oasis in the midst of the beautifully designed but somewhat hectic Terminal 1, Caludio Urru’s Top Air is a proper gourmet stop. Offerings like Arctic Char with glazed winter asparagus and speck, various preparations of American beef and a refined selection of wines and desserts make this more than just a pre-flight snack. Top Air is a full-on European dining experience, so make sure you leave enough time to enjoy it.

North Carolina is famous for its barbeque, so it shouldn’t be surprising that there’s a BBQ restaurant in the Charlotte airport. What is surprising is that this pre-flight café, which serves up pit-cooked sweet pulled pork, basted chicken and sumptuous BBQ beef, isn’t just a good airport restaurant—it’s been rated among the top BBQ restaurants in the state. And last year, Frommers put it among the top BBQ in the entire country. If you’re on your way out of the South, this just might be your last chance for some down-home flavor. Just don’t forget the wet naps.

LonDon heathrow plAne Food, TerminAl 5 Clean, attractive and boasting all the well-lit sharp lines and industrial nods common in modern London design, Gordon Ramsay’s Plane Food is anything but. You won’t find Smoked Salmon and Haddock Fishcakes with harissa mayonnaise on your next Delta flight out of Topeka, nor are you likely to be served Braised Lamb with honey and cloves and mustard mashed potatoes on United any time soon. Nothing crazy on the menu, just brilliantly prepared elegant standards with the occasional twist. The à la carte menu is long, the wine list well-chosen, the bar’s cocktails lovely and the prix fixe “Plane Fast” menu a great idea—two courses, 25 minutes, near $30, ensuring you make your flight well-fed and on-time. How efficient, delicious, and so very British. n

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If a man’s home is his castle, then the bedroom is the castle keep. Secured away from the rest of the world (and the family), it’s where we sleep at night, but it’s more than that. The bedroom is where we store some of our most valuable possessions, where we hold intimate conversations, where we relax, unwind and ultimately, where we let it all hang out.

You spend nearly a third of your life sleeping, and unless you’re travelling or have been relegated to the doghouse, that third will be spent in the bedroom. So whether you’re grabbing some shuteye, watching a film or just kicking back with a good book, your bedroom should be comfortable. To help you make it thus, here are a few suggestions on how to pad your inner sanctum. Sweet dreams.

UltraKing

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Modern homes have grown in terms of both size and luxury, and that means larger bedrooms and master suites. When a king-sized bed just won’t do, ULTRAKING Bed & Linen Company has regal options for the discerning sleeper. The original ULTRAKING expands the traditional king with an extra foot of length and width. The Super ULTRAKING offers even more space, with an additional six feet. And the Extreme ULTRAKING offers an extraordinary sleeping surface of 120 square feet. All ULTRAKING beds are made to order using the finest top-quality materials, can be customized with a range of finishes, and can even be appointed with complete luxury linen packages. No wonder ULTRAKING is the choice of such greats as the NBA’s LeBron James, Plaxico Burress of the New York Giants, and Yankee Jorge Posada—just to name a few. Even Mr. Rich & Famous himself, Robin Leach, has an ULTRAKING bed. If you’re king of your castle, you should too.

UltraKing.com

The Hakutan Coal Air Purifier is a natural enigma.

Made from Korean oak, this functional art in black is actually white charcoal, a glass-like material that’s clean to the touch and naturally purifies the air. Used in Asia for generations, white charcoal absorbs odors, regulates humidity and even reduces the potentially harmful effects of electromagnetic waves, thanks to its ability to create natural anions. Available at Design Within Reach (dwr.com) for $130

art Alan Brassington’s works, specifically his portraits of horses, are exceptional. With endorsements from the likes of the Duke of Devonshire, this impeccable artist should be on your must-visit list for any commissioned work to adorn your walls. alanbrassington.com for more.

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Tailored lounge Whether you sleep in your business suit or your birthday suit, there’s no harm in dressing up a bit before you lie down. Excellent British designer Paul Smith has you covered with his Striped Towelling Robe. Knitted quality cotton with exactly what you’d expect: two front pockets and a waist tie. Add a pair of Cole Haan Zermatt Clog Slippers and you’ll have a comfortable twist on Hugh Hefner’s favorite attire. Slippers at Sak’s for $120; robe near $380

Vi-Spring Can a mattress change your world? Vi-Spring hopes so. The company, which has beds in many luxury hotels, believes that while a Vi-Spring bed is utterly luxurious, it shouldn’t be a luxury. That is, a Vi-Spring bed is the one perfect bed for you, the place you return to every night for deep and restful sleep.

Hand-built to order, each bed is an original. The spring count, fillings, ticking, stitching… Every vital component of your Vi-Spring bed is exactly as you demand it, making for a lifetime of blissful dreams.

And as Vi-Spring has it: If you’ve never slept like that before, it can be a life-changing experience.

ViSpring.com

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Mood Light Philips LivingColors lamps use LED technology to cast a glow that can be tailor-made to fit your mood. A remote control features a color ring that, when touched, can dial-in any one of 16 million colors across a wide spectrum that includes soothing pastel shades and rich, intense glows. Two or more lights can be linked with the same remote control, meaning your room can experience a dramatic shift with a single touch.

Near $250

ALArMing BeAuty Bang & Olufsen’s BeoTime alarm clock may still perform the necessary but annoying task of breaking up your slumber, but at least it doesn’t disturb the harmony of your bedroom aesthetics.

Looking much like a flute but sounding like a high quality audio instrument from B&O (which it is), the BeoTime features a motion sensor and subtle backlighting, includes a sleep timer that lets you doze off to music, and can wake you with a discreet chime, radio or other media. Visit bang-olufsen.com for more info.

Near $375

3d BedtiMe StorieS Samsung’s new line of 3D televisions brings the cinema’s latest trend home. Imagine cozying up in bed and watching the machete-wielding psychopathic star of a horror movie actually jump right off the wall and onto your bed! Well, perhaps a film where you’re flying through a tranquil meadow would be better near bedtime— but you get the idea. The action and beauty are more vivid then ever before, the excitement of television is increased dramatically and the glasses don’t look anywhere near as goofy as they used to, so why not give it a shot? For more info visit Samsung.com. Otherwise, the UN55C7000 55” 1080p 3D LED HDTV is available in select stores for approximately $3,300

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Guide to Pebble beach head pro chuck dunbar lets kingdom in on how to beat a course that’s so beautiful, we might just let it win anyway…

I’m goIng to let you In on a lIttle secret: I know how to wIn the 2010 us open. really, I do. my frIend chuck dunbar told me how to do It, and as the head pro at the stunnIngly beautIful pebble beach he knows a thIng or two. he certainly knows how course updates designed by the arnold palmer design company are going to factor into play, and how some dramatic fairway cut and layout changes from the usga are going to throw a few wrenches into some well-laid plans. but not our plans. we know all the tricks the course will throw at us. we know because chuck told me, and I’m going to tell you. and whether you’re trying to win the open or just playing for bragging rights, pebble beach can be one tough monkey. so without further ado, in chuck’s own words, here’s your guide to getting around one of the most beautiful courses in the world. (but let’s just keep this among ourselves, shall we...) first of all, just to preface the first few holes, I feel pebble is seven holes of offense and 11 of defense. The first seven allow a lot of scoring opportunities. but after you make the turn on arrowhead point and enter into the cliffs of doom on 8, 9 and 10, if you don’t give any strokes back you’re ahead of the rest of the field. Throughout tournament history, a lot of people get off to really hot starts and come back to earth when they get to 8, 9, 10 and 11. now it’s also worth noting that on at least one day, the starting hole for every player will be no.10, which is going to affect the ebb and flow of the round. If you’re staring off at no.1 in the morning, think a cool, crisp morning. The sun’s not in your eyes. on 10, in the morning, the sun is in your eyes, and the way you start will be really different.

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No.1 If they’re starting on no.1, a good start is important. It plays about 380 yards, same as it was in 2000. It’s not a super-long par 4, but it’s a position hole. since 2000, we’ve renovated the green and made bunker changes around the green complex.

It’s a short dogleg right, and most players are going to keep driver in the bag for this opening tee shot. from the us open tee box, the best play is to put it 230 yards off the tee, trying to put it down the middle of the fairway. It’ll tend to bounce little to the right. If you hit it 230 off the tee from us open tee box, it gives you 135 or so in. you’ll have an opportunity to play aggressively into the green. how successful you are in putting has to do with getting the ball in the right position.

I don’t think they’ll look at the first and think birdie. They’ll determine that once they get into the landing area.

No.2 on normal resort play, this is a par 5. It plays about 502 yards, which is a short par 5. It played 484 yards in the last us open as a par 4, and this year it will play as a 502-yard par 4. In 2000 we moved the tee box up a little bit from the blue tees, and now we’ve adjusted our tee boxes and distances so the hole is 18 yards stronger with a really generous landing area. because it’s such a long par 4, the usga has widened the fairway out a little. driver is definitely the play. It’s a pretty large green, one of our larger greens. larger landing area, larger fairway, larger green, to mitigate the fact that this is a lengthy par 4. It’s a straight hole, but because of the length they’re not looking at this as a birdie opportunity. If it was a par 5 they’d be licking their chops for a birdie.

There’s a little more peril; we added some bunkers and did green renovation since 2000, though it’s the same shape and size, we’ve pinched the greenside bunkers since 2000, tightened up that opening.

The hole has been a little more challenging since 2000, but I don’t expect this to be a tough hole. There’s a generous landing area and a pretty big green with quite a bit of slope (but it’s not back to front like no.1). also, this is where players will first see the ocean pulling that ball toward the green from left to right. If it looks straight, you err toward the ocean.

No.3

No.5

We extended the hole and added an additional tee box since the last Open. Now it’s 404 yards (it played 390 in last Open). Not only did it get longer, but there’s a set of three fairway bunkers with this sharp dogleg left. Also, we moved the tee box a little to the left so players didn’t just try to bomb it over the trees. Now, you have to hit the ball into the fairway and try to move it from right to left.

It’s kind of like No.1: you’re playing for position, and depending on how successful you are, you can be aggressive and go right at the pin. The only caution is when the pin is stuck to the right. The three bunkers that surround the green are very deep. If you’re in there to the right… Well, you remember the 2000 Open. Tiger was in there, and he ended up making triple.

There’s an opportunity to make par or birdie, but most will be thinking birdie.

Assuming you’re starting from No.1, this is the first par 3. In 2000 it played 188; we’ve got it a little longer at 195. It’s only seven more yards but with extension of tee box it can play 200, and when it was moved back it was also moved a little left. It’s one of the larger greens on the golf course, and there’s lots of slope from left to right—hillside to oceanside. It’s more like two greens, not as big as a double green but I think of it as a back/right green and a front/left green. If you can hit the center of the front/left green, the ball moves back and to the right of the next section.

This is a tough hole, especially with the farthest tee box.

Typically the wind is from right to left, an onshore breeze, and there’s lots of wind on this hole. Nicklaus designed it to hit a high cut (his forte anyway). With an onshore breeze, you hit the cut and let the wind help control it. But it’s not a hole that really sets up for the guys that hit the big draw into the green, because if it’s breezey, it makes it hard to control. Now you’re in the back bunker and you’ve probably short sided yourself into the pin.

No.4 On the shorter holes rough is more treacherous, and this is a really short par 4. It plays the same yardage as in 2000: 331 yards.

It gives you the opportunity to say, ‘Hey, you know what? This might be driveable. What the heck, let’s give it a rip.’

Since 2000, the rough will be a lot longer. We moved one fairway bunker left to right to further pinch the fairway.

An expansive bunker on the left-hand side of the fairway was enlarged and lengthened toward the green, and we added two additional pot bunkers on the left-hand side.

There are nine bunkers on this hole, all of them come into play with the exception of one, which is the cross bunker.

This is where the Pacific Ocean first gets introduced to the players. If you miss a little bit right… The fairway cut is pushed to the right more on all of the coastal holes, going right up to the edge. Typically you’d say you’d hit to the right and get a couple of bounces in the rough to get saved from the hazard, but you’re not going to have that luxury.

The fairway cut on holes 4, 6, 8, 9, 10 and 18 are cut right up to the hazard line, meaning all coastal holes will bring in the Pacific more than they used to.

If you play conservatively off the tee, then you can play with a different dynamic once you’re on fairway. It’s such a small green that anyone hitting to the center will have a birdie putt—as long as you can stay below the cup.

No.6 We got 10 more yards out of No.6. And the difficulty here is the second shot. It’s another generous fairway, but a fairway that’s going to encroach up to the hazard line on the right hand side, right up to the ocean. A big grass bunker was taken out and replaced with five bunkers, relocated more into the fairway. As the player hits a longer shot, the fairway starts to narrow down.

The landing area becomes smaller as the ball goes farther. The bunkers are in succession, all five of them, and the furthest is the deepest. The longest hitters trying to reach this green in two have the opportunity to be in more penalized positions.

The second shot is up the hill, so if the wind is blowing it’s a pretty tough par 5. If it’s benign conditions, you can be aggressive, pound the second shot and try to make birdie; 523 is easily reachable in two by many players. →

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No.7 I think this is the most photographed hole in golf. No.18 is up there, and the Swilcan Bridge #2, Amen Corner #3 maybe… In terms of updates or changes, not a lot has changed with No.7, It’s our trademark 100-yardish par 3 down the hill, usually dead into the wind. We reconfigured the tee box and overhauled tee complex. Basically it’s now just a larger tee ground in front and a higher tee ground in back. As far as the rest of the hole goes, No.7 is what it is. Messing with the 7th green complex would be messing with the Mona Lisa. The green is entirely surrounded by bunkers, and you don’t have to miss the green by much back or right to bounce into the hazard and then be toast.

In 1992, Tom Kite made US Open history here chipping in with a lob wedge. He hit a 6-iron to the green, like 105 yards.

I’ve personally hit a 4 to the center of the green with a superstrong breeze dead in my face. The wind can get to you. If you miss it a little, and without the wind you think you’re off by five yards left or right, when that breeze is dead in your face you’ll miss it by 25 yards left or right because it just pushes the ball.

Also at the 1992 Open, Ian Woosnam called No.7 ‘a practice hole,’ then I think he made bogey every single day.

No.8 This hole has one of the most difficult greens on the course. It’s the most difficult to negotiate on the front nine, without a doubt.

There’s a lot of slope from back to front, and there’s no way you want to be above the hole on this one. Being five feet above the hole is almost essentially a three-putt. Put another way: five feet above the hole means you’ve got a seven-footer coming back.

We’ve hardly touched the hole, but it’s going to play very differently because of the fairway cut. It played 418 yards in 2000, and it’s going to play 10 more yards in 2010. I don’t think it got longer, I think we re-measured it with better technology.

However, the fairway cut is vastly different. Nobody hits driver off the tee, and I don’t even think half will hit 3-wood. It’ll be hybrids and long irons. You want to position it off the cliff as close as possible to the right-hand side. The funny part about

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the right-hand side of this fairway is that it slopes off to the right. If you hit to the landing area, the ball will bounce to the right. There’s some ice plant, the hazard, then it drops off into the ocean. In regular resort play we’ve got a wide-open left-hand side, which is really the ideal way because it lines up to the hole. But that’s all rough now. Deep rough. You get nestled down and now you’ve got to carry 100 yards of ocean.

Players in the Open will be forced to hit it shorter right off the tee and make a more difficult route to the green. You could walk away with a 4 here, and most will want to. Someone could steal a 3—but they could also make a 7.

No.9 This is definitely a lot longer than it used to be; it was 466, now it’s going to be 505. The whole idea is that players are hitting it longer, and with the slope on the fairway, if you can get it over the crest of the hill with the drive, the player that can hit it five yards longer gets another 45 yards; basically, five gets you 50. The extra 40 yards or so is the difference between catching the downslope. There’s a lot of room to the right, but it slopes dramatically and the grass is gnarly. Long hitters that go down into the slope can get a kick and roll to a flat spot, and they can roll through the fairway into the hazard. We never had it that way. There was a little bit of rough to help stop the ball, but now that rough is taken out and so you can hit a perfect shot and be too far. You really have to be cautious.

Here’s a par 4 where you’re going to have to hit a long iron in, generally off a sloped lie. On the green, we’re definitely going to see a tucked left pin on one or two days. With good putting, players could have a 3 or 4 in their hands.

No.10 For at least one round of the championship, this will be the starting hole for the whole field. It’s a lot harder than starting at No.1. We added a tee box, increasing the length from 446 to 495. The fairway cut is encroaching on the right as well. On the fairway, if you hit it into the center it will bounce to the

right. On a typical day the ball usually finds the rough, but there’s not a lot of rough out there right now. So the play is to the left half of the fairway. Just about the whole fairway and landing area is sloped from left to right and back to front.

You have this 7-to-1 o’clock lean to your shot; it slopes down and away from you, and that means towards the Pacific Ocean.

The three fairways bunkers to the left were almost irrelevant because people were bombing it past them, but with the extra 50 yards they’re relevant again.

It’s a pretty flat green, and so if you can find the center of the green you’ve got a good chance at birdie. Hitting the green in regulation will be the trick.

With No’s 9 and 10 being 505 yards and 495 yards, there’s 1,000 yards between those holes. They’re the longest back-to-back par 4 stretches in US Open history. If you start on 10, you’ve got to be firing on all cylinders right out of the gate. Not only that, but your finishing hole is 9.

Then again, if you really think about it, you’re going to have to play back-to-back par 4s that are monsters, or you split them up. There might be an advantage there. Would you rather split up two ball busters or play them back-to-back once you’re warmed up?

No.11 This will play a bit longer, from 380 to 390. There’s a new US Open tee box, which we moved to the left (facing the fairway). The fairway cut and rough cut have changed; the entire left-hand side of the fairway is now rough. Typically you’d play it up left, like No.8, to get the best angle, left to right to the green. The way the USGA has set it up and with the length, you must play up the right-hand side. On the second shot everything is going to be tucked. A pretty big bunker protects the green, and as opposed to going to the left and taking the bunkers out of play, you’ll have to go over the bunkers—and directly behind that shot there’s another bunker. You’re not given the luxury to shoot it straight up and run it up there. The green is not subtle; it’s heavily sloped back-to-front. There’s no way you want to get above this hole.

It’s kind of like No.8: anyone above this hole is going to be breezing it, with maybe a 10-footer coming back.

I was watching Davis Love at the AT&T in 2003, he was 8 under after 7 holes— that’s a hell of a start, but it’s like I said: seven holes of offense and 11 of defense. When he got to No.11, I walked over. He hits above the hole and I said, ‘He just three-putt.’ An assistant who was standing there was like, ‘What?! The guy is 8 under for 7 holes and you’re talking about a three-putt?!’ But sure enough, he three-putt.

No.12 A 202-yard par 3. Four bunkers surround the green, there’s five on the hole but one is real short and doesn’t come into play for the US Open. We shaved down the approach area in front of the green, made a little throat so players can run up the right-hand side. Most pin positions will be on the left-hand side, but a large bunker protects that. If players go over the green, which slopes from back to front, they really short side themselves. There are two small bunkers beyond the green on the downslope, after the green kind of crests over. If they go in those bunkers, I don’t see any way they can make par. The play is to cut the green in half, so the target becomes the mid right-hand side. If you can hit it there, lots of times you’ll get a little roll and bounce to the left, which will help if the pin is anywhere on the left-hand side. Very few birdies will be had on this hole, and par’s a good score.

In ’92 Tom Kite was on even par and the 72 he shot was one of the best scores of 72 ever played in tournament history, with the way the wind was howling. But on 12 he purposely hit to the front right of the green to try and roll it on. It gave him the best opportunity to make par. This is one of the hardest par 3s on the golf course. Throughout the year, one way to gauge the difficulty of a par 3 is that when you hear of players making holes-in-one, typically they’re always on par 3s.

I see the fewest holes-in-one on this hole. No.17 is the hardest par 3 here when the pin is back left, but it’s the easiest when the pin is front right. No.12 is just always hard.

No.13 This is going to be a beast. It’s a lot longer: it was 399 in 2000 and it’s 445 now. It went from a mouse to a lion. There aren’t a lot of changes to the green, no changes really. But it’s a very tricky green. It slopes from 1 or 2 o’clock in the back to 7 or 8 o’clock in the front, and it’s super fast. It usually breaks about twice as much as people think. There are crazy breaks on that green. But the length is the game changer. The farther you go back, the more you have to shoot through these trees. We did some creative tree trimming to make sure players had an open shot. I’m not going to be surprised if this ends up becoming the hardest hole in the tournament. It will definitely be among the top three or four. →

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No.14

No.18

This is a long par 5, dogleg right. It will play 580 yards for this Open.

Since 2000 we’ve added some bunkers in the landing area, one deep and large bunker on the right-hand side. Those trying to cut off yardage on the dogleg too aggressively can find themselves in a treacherous bunker, but players playing it safe can still hit a pot bunker to the left. There are two other small bunkers that probably won’t come into play. The fairway is super narrow. It’s a very long hole but a three-shotter to the green. If you miss the green to the left, you’re toast. You just brought a big number into play. If you miss to the right, the ball will come back and roll off the front.

I think really the only place you can miss it and give yourself a chance to save par is long. I would say that the area you can hit into to give yourself a good putt on No.14 is really the smallest usable square footage for a green on the golf course, without a doubt.

Since 2000 we’ve made, I would say, three significant changes: We added a fairway bunker to the right because players were hitting it so much further, so the existing bunker was obsolete for Tour players. Additionally, we started from 40 to 50 yards down the fairway with some gnarly grass around the bunker. It’s no picnic.

The second change: two small Pine trees in the middle of the fairway were dying, and they’ve been replaced with Cypress now. They’re a little heartier, and we moved them 25 yards down the fairway so they become relevant. Now the bunker on the right, 40 or 50 yards further down, comes into play and pushes you to the left. The trees are generally going to be around the same distance. Longer hitters can get past it, but medium and shorter players can get stymied behind the trees.

The third change: We re-planted the tree that protects the front right portion of the green. It fell shortly after the 2000 Open. It was a Monterey Pine, 80 feet tall. It died from a lightning strike and has been replaced with a fully grown Cypress. For a couple of years there was no tree there. We played two AT&Ts without it, and there was no protection around the 18th green. Now it’s back.

A significant part of this hole is the coastline to the left-hand side of the fairway; it’s what brings everything into perspective. You can’t go left, so we’ve created more obstacles to the right-hand side. I think it’s going to push everybody to think, ‘I’ve got to push the envelope on the left-hand side.’ It’s going to be exciting.

In the end, I’m hoping for a Tiger/Phil Monday playoff. Is that too much to ask? n

No.15 Lots of bunkers on the left-hand side of the fairway are going to make this hole a little craftier than it once was. Before the last Open we used to have trees in and around a ravine, but the trees got washed out during El Niño. We added trees to the right now and five bunkers to left; one is a deep pot bunker in middle of the fairway, and the fairway cut runs all around it. Driver or 3-wood can easily find that pot bunker. This is not going to be one of the most difficult holes but it’s another that falls into that 397 category. As long as you put yourself in the right position and play conservatively off the tee, then you can go for it with an aggressive second shot. There are slight subtle breaks to the green but nothing crazy.

No.16 Exact same yardage as 2000, because if we lengthened out the tee box we’d be on 17-Mile Drive. We lost the entire left-hand side of this fairway, so everything is being pinched to the right.

It’s a fade from left to right, a slight dogleg if you want to call it that. It’s kind of like No.15, play conservative off the tee. The landing area on an aggressive tee shot hit into the bottom is so small, I just don’t see that it’s worth the risk because even if they play it into the most generous part of the landing area, they still have 150 yards in, which is a short iron for those guys.

This is one of the most underrated greens in terms of difficulty. There’s a heck of a lot of slope to this green, not so much from back to front as from 2 o’clock to 7 or 8 o’clock.

It’s another green you don’t want to get above the hole. Four greens—No’s 8, 11, 13 and 16—are going to have the most three-putts throughout the week.

No.17 Like No.7, you don’t mess with the Mona Lisa. This is 208 yards and shares portions of the tee box for No.4; one goes toward the ocean and one parallel. Lots of history has been made here: Nicklaus in ’72 and a 1-iron that hits the flagstick for birdie, and Watson chips-in for birdie in ’82… Making birdie on 17 is good karma, but this hourglass green is almost like two greens with a spine in the middle that connects them.

This can become one of the easier par 3s with a front/right pin, and one of the most difficult with a back/left pin.

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summer’s here, and the excellent team at the arnold palmer design company is in the dirt, crafting new masterpieces to challenge and thrill golfers all over the world Like good food, music and Love, goLf is a Language known the worLd over— and no group trans transLates it better than the top-notch course designers at the arnoLd paLmer design esign company ((apdc). he firm is working on projects in such the ung destinations as china, south outh far-fLung merica and eastern europe (and stiLL america managing to find time to do a bit of work here at home). more ore than just course designers, the people at apdc are ambassadors of the game, bringing golf to people abroad who are mostly unfamiliar with its joys (and occasional frustrations). as pioneers, apdc sets the bar for what golf should be. and for territories already familiar with the game, apdc introduces them to golf at its finest. The work is difficult, highly technical, and often political. but ut when the job is done and a new course opens, the golfing world is better for it. ake, for example, bay ay hill. as close to home as take, apdc can get (it’s headquartered at the storied course), the recent renovations designed and put in by the firm have been tremendously well received. updated pdated greens and an overall tidying up (including the addition of some serious beachfront on a couple of the holes) have invigorated the already spectacular orlando rlando landmark, and people are talking— although, for the moment, the main topic of conversation among golfers has been the weather. while florida lorida has gotten off relatively easy this year, the rest of the country is all too aware that winter long overstayed the party. many any ski mountains were still open and getting new snowfall even as the calendar was turning over to may, and that means many golf bags were sitting sad and forlorn in garages and offices. of course, it’s always summer somewhere, and few people appreciate that more than the sun-loving aussies. with all their great weather, at least one course down under is taking a page from the bay hill playbook and looking for an update of its own.

“sanctuary cove in australia is talking about doing a remodeling,” says apdc architect david couch. “They’ve redone the clubhouse and added a bunch of amenities, now they want us to come in and renovate their pines course like we did at bay hill—rebuild ill—rebuild tees, greens and bunkers. having ay hill ill model here helped because it’s the same scope the bay of work: about bout 15 or 20 years old, maintenance has rounded everything off, the bunkers aren’t that visible, etc. we could make a splash there like we did here.” ack in the sunshine state, the bay hill renovations back are as lauded, with another course—this one a palmer course, just down the coast from orlando rlando in d delray beach—looking for similar treatment. The course at the mizner country club, which palmer almer built nearly a decade ago, will soon benefit from some body work. ““it’s t’s a remodel of a golf course we did about 10 or 11 years ago,” says apdc architect eric w wiltse. “we’re doing a little facelift, redoing the bunkers and the practice area. it should be really nice.” noo doubt the members and guests will appreciate their “new” course. several years ago south carolina’s reserve at Lake eowee planned for an ambitious expansion, with a palmer keowee premier project (the top drawer of apdc’s offerings, incorporating white-glove project design and management), along with additional facilities and increased lifestyle eserve managers weren’t alone in putting their amenities. reserve plans on hold for a bit, but in accordance with the uptick in recent positive economic news, the project could be adding lace development and a short an apdc designed palmer place course to their property soon. n the other side of the world, there’s no slowing down on at all. The chinese are continuing the tradition that arnold hina in 1985. palmer started when he built the first course in china in n 2007 beijing welcomed apdc’s cascades ascades course, which has become the middle kingdom’s ingdom’s finest, and the rest of the country is scrambling to follow suit. a project at huizhou, uizhou, which would offer views of hong kong, ong, is in the works, while The golf club lub at kunming unming could be open as early as the end of this year. That one is going to be a high-flying stunner, with serious elevation changes occurring above a striking lake. raggy cliffs and a few forced carries will add a little drama to craggy this already impressive gem, especially on numbers 12 and 14, ohnson, who’s been according to apdc architect brandon johnson, working on the project since the beginning.

“There are big ravines in front of them and it’s dramatic,” he says. “There’s room for error but, yeah, if you miss it there, wide in the right spot, you fall off into oblivion.”

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→

course and development could begin this year, with a little cooperation from the rainy season.

“We took cues from the existing natural jungle terrain,” Johnson said. You don’t want to hit it into the rough—read that, Tarzan territory—but Brandon does offer a bit of hope: “There’s big, bold movement in the fairways that will allow people to play, and a lot of strategy around that, too, because your angle of approach could be better from one side of the fairway versus another.” Set on the edge of a national park, and with planned hotels, a casino and entertainment, this one should be a prize.

South AmericA

The already impressive Reserve at Lake Keowee is set to add new facilities in the near future

The course itself has been acclimating to its surroundings, with a bit of ground settling here and there. That will be addressed and the final touches put on soon, which could mean an opening by year’s end. Failing that, it could be a 2011 premier. After all, grass takes a while to grow, and APDC opens no wine before its time.

David Couch is having different issues with his project, also in Kunming. Rather than dealing with dirt settling amidst massive elevation changes, the enthusiastically named Chinese Entrepreneur Home Golf Club is rather flat. Rolling contours and hills will be added as the project gets underway, which could happen as early as this summer. With 27 holes planned along the nearly five-mile-long freshwater lake, Entrepreneur should be a good bet for all those suffering from vertigo (who don’t also happen to have hydrophobia).

Lastly in the Middle Kingdom, APDC Architect Thad Layton is working on Panda Valley Golf Course. Just 45 minutes from Chengdu, it should be underway soon and will eventually offer unique mountain play, a fast-moving river and incredible views.

“Usually mountains are arranged such that they form ridge lines that connect,” says Layton. “These look like they’re dropped out of the sky… Independent mountains, thousands of feet high.”

The project’s name comes from its proximity to a Panda reserve, near 50 miles away, and it’s part of a rebuilding effort following a massive earthquake in the area more than two years ago. When it’s done, in addition to being a source of employment and pride for many of the earthquake-ravaged locals, the overall feel of the course should be somewhat of a tribute to the agriculturally terraced slopes on site, which historically have held kiwi, rice and other crops.

Just down the road (relatively speaking) in Cambodia, Johnson is also working on a project from the Sokimex development group. Construction on an impressive 18-hole

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Back in our hemisphere, but a bit further south than Florida, Wiltse has been busy working on a course near São Paolo, Brazil, called Fazenda Boa Vista. The site reminds the architect of Kentucky’s rolling hills, and is absolutely lovely.

Whenever construction begins—and it could be as early as this June—the course will be just the first of many golfing venues coming to the land of feijoada completa. Rio de Janeiro is hosting the 2016 Olympics and with it, the return of Olympic golf. In the meantime, the sport seems to be having a carnival of its own all over South America.

Wiltse is also working on a course in Uruguay named “Las Piedras” (for its boulder-strewn landscape and original stone castle-like clubhouse/restaurant). Located near Punta del Este, the project will feature rolling hills, beautiful views and a storied atmosphere and should begin construction this summer.

APDC Executive Vice President and Senior Architect Erik Larsen said Las Piedras represents authentic golf with minimal impact, minimal changes to the landscape and a complete sense of respect for both the game and the environment.

“It’s very light-handed,” he says. “It’s core golf. Fairways aren’t aligned with houses. The golf course becomes unique with the land, and the land dictates how it is. It’s a very sensitive approach: There’s very little earth movement, wild flowers and native grasses can grow easily and will remain as features of the course. The best word for it: Authentic.”

Tourists and second-home owners across the bay in Buenos Aires, Argentina, will no doubt frequent Las Piedras, which should be a great addition to the heart of South America’s luxury holiday region.

FinAlly

No question APDC is busy as ever. Beyond its ongoing work in China, South America and in the United States, there are projects slated for action in places where golf is already wellestablished, like Hilton Head, SC, and a few others where it’s not as well known, like Hida, Romania. Mexico is on the radar as well, along with a few of our other favorite vacation destinations. Truth is, we’re happy to play a Palmer course no matter where it appears—whether it gives us an excuse to get away for the afternoon, or for a couple of weeks. n

Course Directory

Courses around the world designed by the Arnold Palmer Design Company KEY: + Remodel @ Certified Audubon Sanctuary @* Certified Audubon Signature Sanctuary

ALABAMA Craft Farms-Cotton Creek and Cypress

Gulf Shores, Alabama

www.craftfarms.com

ARIZONA Arrowhead Country Club

Glendale, Arizona

www.arrowheadccaz.com

Mesa del Sol

Yuma, Arizona

www.mesadelsolgolf.com

The Refuge at Lake Havasu

Lake Havasu City, Arizona

www.therefugegolfclub.com

Starfire at Scottsdale Country Club

Scottsdale, Arizona

www.starfiregolfclub.com

Starr Pass Resort

Tucson, Arizona

www.starrpasstucson.com

Wildfire at Desert Ridge

Empire Lake Golf Course

The Presidio Golf Course +@

www.empirelakes.com

www.presidiogolfclub.com

Rancho Cucamonga, California Four Seasons Resort Aviara

Carlsbad, California

www.fourseasons.com/aviara/vacations/golf.html

Hiddenbrooke Country Club

Vallejo, California

www.hiddenbrookegolf.com

Indian Ridge Country Club

Arroyo and Grove Courses Palm Desert, California www.indianridgecc.com

Mission Hills Country Club

The Arnold Palmer Course Rancho Mirage, California

www.rollinghillscc.com

SilverRock Resort

LaQuinta, California

www.silverrock.org

The Tradition Golf Club

LaQuinta, California

www.traditiongolfclub.net

Denver, Colorado

LaQuinta, California

www.mountainviewatlaquinta.com

Pebble Beach Golf Links

Monterey, California PGA West

Palm Desert, California

Rolling Hills Golf Club

Palos Verdes Estates, California

Mountain View Country Club

CALIFORNIA www.classicclubgolf.com

www.ranchomurietacc.com

COLORADO

www.pebblebeach.com

The Classic Club

Rancho Murieta Country Club

Rancho Murieta, California

www.missionhills.com

Phoenix, Arizona

www.wildfiregolf.com

San Francisco, California

Palmer Course La Quinta, California

www.pgawest.com

Bear Creek Golf Course

www.bearcreekgolfclub.net

Cherry Hills Country Club +

Englewood, Colorado

www.chcc.com

Eagle Ranch Golf Course @

Eagle, Colorado

www.eagleranchgolf.com

Lone Tree Golf Club

Littleton, Colorado

www.golfcolorado.com/lonetree

Pebble Beach, CA, hole #7

Gillette Ridge Golf Club

Bloomfield, Connecticut

www.gilletteridgegolf.com

FLORIDA Adios Golf Club

Coconut Creek, Florida

www.adiosgolfclub.org

Bay Hill Club and Lodge +

Orlando, Florida

www.bayhill.com

Boca West #1 and Boca West #3

Boca Raton, Florida

www.bocawestcc.org

Deering Bay Yacht and Country Club

Coral Gables, Florida

www.dbycc.com

Frenchman's Reserve

Palm Beach Gardens, Florida

www.frenchmansreserve.com

The Golf Club at North Hampton

Fernandina Beach, Florida

www.hamptongolfclubs.com/NHampton.html

Hidden Hills Country Club +

Jacksonville, Florida

www.hiddenhillscc.com

Isleworth Golf and Country Club

Windermere, Florida

The King and The Bear

St. Augustine, Florida

www.kingandbear.com

Lakewood Ranch

Cypress Links and King's Dunes Bradenton, Florida

www.lakewoodranchgolf.com

Legacy Golf Club

Bradenton, Florida

www.legacygolfclub.com

Legends at Orange Lake

Kissimmee, Florida

www.orangelake.com

Lost Key Golf Course @*

Perdido Key, Florida

Pasadena Yacht and Country Club +

St. Petersburg, Florida

www.pyccgolf.com

PGA National

Palm Beach Gardens, Florida

www.pgaresort.com

Pine Lakes at Palm Coast Resort

Palm Coast, Florida

www.lostkey.com

www.palmcoastresort.com/golf.html

Majors Golf Club at Palm Bay

The Plantation at Ponte Vedra

www.majorsgolfclub.com

www.theplantationpv.com

Marsh Landing Country Club

Ponte Vedra Golf & Country Club at Sawgrass +

Palm Bay, Florida

Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida

www.marshlandingcc.com/mlcc.asp

Matanzas Woods at Palm Coast Resort

Palm Coast, Florida

www.palmcoastresort.com

Mill Cove Golf Club

Jacksonville, Florida

www.millcovegolfcourse.com

Mizner Golf and Country Club @

Delray Beach, Florida

www.miznercountryclub.com

Monarch Country Club

Palm City, Florida

www.monarchclub.com

Naples Lakes Country Club @

Naples, Florida

www.napleslakesfl.com

Orchid Island Golf Club

Vero Beach, Florida

www.orchidislandgolfandbeachclub.com

Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida

Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida

www.pontevedragolfandcc.com

Reunion Resort & Club

The Legacy Course Orlando, Florida www.reunionresort.com

Saddlebrook Resort

Wesley Chapel, Florida www.saddlebrook.com

Sawgrass Country Club + Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida

www.sawgrasscountryclub.com

Spessard Holland Golf Park

Melbourne, Florida

www.brevardparks.com/brevard/spessardholland

St. Andrews Country Club +

Boca Raton, Florida

www.standrewscc.com

Suntree Country Club

Melbourne, Florida

Palmer Legends Country Club

www.suntree.com

www.thevillages.com

Tesoro

The Villages, Florida

Port St. Lucie, Florida

www.tesoroclub.com

Photo by Evan Schiller / golfshots.com

CONNECTICUT

Wildcat Run Country Club @

Estero, Florida

www.wildcatruncc.com

GEORGIA Atlanta Athletic Club +

Kapalua Golf Club @ The Village Course Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii

www.hawaiigolfacademy.com

Turtle Bay Resort

MICHIGAN Coyote Preserve Golf Club

Fenton, Michigan

www.coyotepreserve.com

Manitou Passage Golf Club

www.atlantaathleticclub.org

The Palmer Course Kakuku, Hawaii

www.manitoupassagegolfclub.com

Augusta First Tee

ILLINOIS

The Legend at Shanty Creek

www.thefirstteeaugusta.org

The Den at Fox Creek Golf Club @

www.shantycreek.com/golf

Champions Retreat

www.thedengc.com

Duluth, Georgia

Augusta, Georgia

Augusta, Georgia

www.championsretreat.net

www.turtlebayresort.com

Bloomington, Illinois

Cedar, Michigan

Bellaire, Michigan

Northville Hills Country Club @

Northville, Michigan

Hawthorn Woods Country Club

www.northvillehills.com

Cherokee Run Golf Club

www.hwccgolf.com

Ravines Golf Club

www.cherokeerun.com

Spencer T. Olin Community Golf Course

www.ravinesgolfclub.com

www.spencertolingolf.com

MINNESOTA

www.eaglewatchgolf.com

White Eagle Golf Club

Forest Hills Golf Club +

Nisswa, Minnesota

www.whiteeaglegc.com

theforesthillsgolfcourse.com

IOwA

Conyers, Georgia

Eagle Watch

Woodstock, Georgia

Augusta, Georgia

Landings on Skidaway Island @

Magnolia Course Savannah, Georgia

www.thelandings.com

Stouffers Pine Isle +

Lake Lanier Islands, Georgia

Hawthorn Township, Illinois

Alton, Illinois

Naperville, Illinois

Tournament Club of Iowa

Polk City, Iowa

www.tcofiowa.com

KENTUCKY Lake Forest Country Club

Louisville, Kentucky

www.lakeforestgolf.com

Whitewater Country Club

LOUISIANA

www.whitewatercc.com

The Bluffs on Thompson Creek

HAwAII

www.thebluffs.com

The Hapuna Golf Course

MARYLAND

www.hapunabeachhotel.com

Country Club at Woodmore

Fayetteville, Georgia

Kamuela, Hawaii

St. Francesville, Louisiana

Mitchellville, Maryland

Hawaii Prince Golf Club

www.ccwoodmore.com

www.hawaiiprincehotel.com

MASSACHUSETTS

Ewa Beach, Hawaii

TPC of Boston at Great Woods

Norton, Massachusetts

www.tpcboston.com

Oakmont Country Club, PA , hole #14

Saugatuck, Michigan

Deacon's Lodge

www.deaconslodge.com

Minnesota Valley Golf Club +@

Bloomington, Minnesota

TPC of the Twin Cities @

Blaine, Minnesota

www.tpctwincities.com

MISSISSIPPI The Bridges Golf Club at Hollywood Casino @*

Bay St. Louis, Mississippi

www.hollywoodcasinobsl.com/golf

MISSOURI Big Cedar

Arnold Palmer Practice Facility* Ridgedale, Missouri www.big-cedar.com

Osage National Golf Club

Lake Ozark, Missouri

www.osagenational.com

Montana

noRtH CaRoLIna

Big Sky Golf Club

Balsam Mountain Preserve

www.bigskyresort.com

www.balsammountain.com

nEBRaSKa

Birkdale Golf Club

Arbor Links Golf Course

Nebraska City, Nebraska

www.arborlinks.com

The Players Club at Deer Creek

Omaha, Nebraska

www.playersclubomaha.com

nEVaDa Angel Park Golf Club

Palm Course and Mountain Course Las Vegas, Nevada

www.angelparkgolfclub.com

ArrowCreek Country Club

The Legend Course Reno, Nevada www.arrowcreekcc.com

Dayton Valley Country Club

Dayton, Nevada

www.daytonvalley.com

Oasis Golf Club

Mesquite, Nevada

www.theoasisgolfclub.com

Red Rock Country Club

Arroyo Course and Mountain Course Las Vegas, Nevada www.redrockcountryclub.com

Sylva, North Carolina

Huntersville, North Carolina

www.birkdale.com

Brier Creek Country Club @

Raleigh, North Carolina

Loveland, Ohio

Cullasaja Club

Highlands, North Carolina

www.golfinhighlands.com/cullasaja_club.htm

Mid South Club

Southern Pines, North Carolina

www.talamore.com

NCSU—Lonnie Poole Golf Course

Raleigh, North Carolina

www.lonniepoolegolfcourse.com

Oak Valley Golf Club

Advance, North Carolina www.oakvalleygolfclub.com

TPC at Piper Glen @

Charlotte, North Carolina

Oasis Golf Club

www.oasisclub.com

TPC at River’s Bend

Cincinnati, Ohio

www.tpcatriversbend.com

Tartan Fields Golf Club

Dublin, Ohio

www.tartanfields.com

oREGon Running Y Ranch Resort @

Klamath Falls, Oregon

www.runningy.com

The Tribute at Thornburg

Bend, Oregon

www.runningy.com

www.tpcpiperglen.com

PEnnSYLVanIa

Quail Hollow Country Club +

Blue Bell Country Club

www.river18.com

Shallotte, North Carolina Scotch Hall Preserve

Merry Hill, North Carolina

Mt. Laurel, New Jersey

www.scotchhallpreserve.com

Regency at Monroe

Hendersonville, North Carolina

Freehold, New Jersey

King’s Walk Golf Course

Grand Forks, North Dakota

www.thecarolina.com

www.golfclubne.com

www.regencyatmonroe.com

noRtH DaKota

oHIo

Pinehurst, North Carolina

Rivers Edge Golf Club

www.laurelcreekcc.org

www.whiteoaktryon.com

The Carolina Golf Club

Golf Club of New England

Laurel Creek Country Club @

Tryon, North Carolina

www.kingswalk.org

Charlotte, North Carolina

nEW JERSEY

White Oak Plantation

www.briercreekcountryclub.com

nEW HaMPSHIRE Greenland, New Hampshire

www.woodlakecc.com

Blue Bell, Pennsylvania

www.bluebellcc.com

The Club at Blackthorne

Penn Township, Pennsylvania

www.theclubatblackthorne.com

Commonwealth National Golf Club @

Horsham, Pennsylvania

www.commonwealthgolfclub.com

Seven Falls Golf and River Club

www.sevenfalls-nc.com

Courtesy USGA Museum

Big Sky, Montana

Woodlake Resort and Golf Club

Vass, North Carolina

Laurel Valley Country Club +

Ligonier, Pennsylvania

Oakmont Country Club +

Oakmont, Pennsylvania

www.oakmont-countryclub.org

Treesdale Golf and Country Club @

Gibsonia, Pennsylvania

www.treesdalegolf.com

SOUTH CAROLINA Crescent Pointe Golf Club

Bluffton, South Carolina

www.crescentpointegolf.com

Musgrove Mill Golf Club

Clinton, South Carolina

King's Creek Spring Hill, Tennessee

www.kingscreekgolf.com

Ridgeway Country Club Colliersville, Tennessee

www.ridgewaycountryclub.com

TEXAS Barton Creek Resort @ Palmer Lakeside Course Spicewood, Texas

www.bartoncreek.com

Twin Creeks Golf Course

Allen, Texas

www.twincreeksgolf.com

www.musgrovemill.com

The Golf Club at Fossil Creek

Myrtle Beach National

www.thegolfclubatfossilcreek.com

www.mbn.com

Spicewood, Texas

King's North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina Old Tabby Links @

Okatie, South Carolina

http://www.springisland-sc.com

The Reserve at Lake Keowee

Sunset, South Carolina

www.reserveatlakekeowee.com

RiverTowne Country Club

Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina

www.rivertownecountryclub.com

SOUTH DAKOTA Dakota Dunes Country Club

Dakota Dunes, South Dakota

www.dakotadunescountryclub.com

TENNESSEE The Governors Golf Club

Brentwood, Tennessee

www.thegovernorsclub.com

Fort Worth, Texas

Lakecliff on Lake Travis

www.lakecliff.net

Newport Dunes

Port Aransas, Texas

www.newportdunesgolf.com

The Palmer Course at La Cantera Resort @

San Antonio, Texas

www.lacanteragolfclub.com

The Woodlands

The Palmer Course The Woodlands, Texas www.thewoodlands.com

UTAH Jeremy Golf and Country Club

Park City, Utah

www.thejeremy.com

VIRGINIA Bay Creek Golf Club @*

Cape Charles, Virginia

www.baycreekgolfclub.com

Belmont Country Club @

Ashburn, Virginia

www.belmontcountryclub.com

Dominion Valley Country Club and Executive Course

Haymarket, Virginia

www.dominionvalley.com

Fawn Lake @

Spotsylvania, Virginia

www.fawnlakevirginia.com

The Federal Club

Glen Allen, Virginia

www.thefederalclub.com

Keswick Golf Club @

Keswick, Virginia

www.keswickclub.com

Kingsmill on the James @

The Plantation Course Williamsburg, Virginia www.kingsmill.com

Signature at West Neck

Virginia Beach, Virginia

www.signatureatwestneck.com

WASHINGTON Seattle Golf Club +

Seattle, Washington

www.seattlegolfclub.com

INTERNATIONAL

GERMANY

AUSTRALIA

Hannover

Pines Golf Course at Sanctuary Cove

Sanctuary Cove, Queensland

Semiahmoo Golf and Country Club @

www.sanctuarycove.com

www.semiahmoo.com

BAHAMAS

Prospector Golf Course At Suncadia

West End Golf Club

Blaine, Washington.

Roslyn, Washington

www.suncadia.com

WEST VIRGINIA Speidel Golf Club, Palmer Course

West End, Grand Bahama Island

CANADA Northview Golf and Country Club

Cloverdale, British Columbia

Rethmar Golf Links Sporting Club Berlin

Bad Saarow

www.sporting-club-berlin.de

GUAM LeoPalace Resort—The Palmer Course

Yona

www.leopalaceresort.com

INDIA DLF Golf Club

Wheeling, West Virginia

www.northviewgolf.com

Stonewall Jackson Lake Resort

Whistler, British Columbia

INDONESIA

CHINA

Desa Tapos, Cimanggis ( Jakarta)

www.oglebay-resort.com/golf/index.cfm

Walkersville, West Virginia www.stonewallresort.com

WISCONSIN

Whistler Golf Club www.whistlergolf.com

Beijing Cascades Golf Course

The Bog

Beijing

www.golfthebog.com

Chung Shan Hot Springs Golf Course

Saukville, Wisconsin Geneva National Golf Club

The Palmer Course Lake Geneva, Wisconsin

www.genevanationalresort.com

WYOMING Teton Pines Resort and Country Club @

Jackson, Wyoming

www.tetonpines.com

Guangdong Province Kunming Piexing

Kunming

COSTA RICA

New Delhi

dlfgolfresort.com

Emeralda Golf and Country Club

www.emeraldagolfclub.com

IRELAND Kildare Hotel and Country Club

Straffan, County Kildare

www.kclub.ie

Tralee Golf Club

Ardfert, County Kerry www.traleegolfclub.com

Four Seasons Resort Peninsula Papagayo

ITALY

FRANCE

Martellago

Papagayo, Guanacaste Vignoly

Crecy–la–Chapelle

www.domainedelabrie.com

Ca'della Nave Golf Club

www.cadellanave.com

Castello di Tolcinasco Golf and Country Club

Milano

www.golftolcinasco.it

The Plantation Course, Williamsburg, VA, hole #2

Golf Club Le Pavoniere

Prato www.golfclublepavoniere.com

Japan Ajigasawa Kogen Golf Course

Aomori Prefecture Asahi Miki

Osaka

Aso Prince Hotel Golf Course

Kumamoto Prefecture

Forest Miki Golf Club

Wakasa Country Club — Suigetsuko Course

Nasugbu, Batangas

Washington Club Sapporo Golf Course

Antipolo, Luzon

Washington Club Meihan Golf Course

Orchard Golf and Country Club — The Legacy

Fukui Prefecture

Hokkaido Prefecture

Mie Prefecture

Wakasa Country Club—Hyugako Course

Kukui Prefecture

REpUBLIC OF KaZaKHSTan Zhailjau Golf Resort

Hyogo Prefecture

Almaty

Fuji Excellent Ono Club

KOREa

Hyogo Prefecture

Furano Golf Course

Hokkaido Prefecture Japan Classic Country Club

Iga Ueno

Kanegasaki Golf Course

Iwate Prefecture

Manago Country Club

Tochigi Prefecture

Minakami-Kogen Golf Course

Gunma Prefecture

Misawa Adonis Golf Club

Gifu Prefecture

Eunhwasam Country Club

Seoul

Evercrest Golf Club and Resort

Forest Hills Golf & Country Club

Dasmarinas, Cavite

theorchardgolf.com

Sun Valley

Kingsville

Sun Valley Golf Course

Antipolo City, Luzon

pORTUGaL Oceanico Victoria

Vilamoura

www.oceanicogolf.com

Muju Resort

SInGapORE

www.mujuresort.com

The Legends Fort Canning Park

Muju-Gun

MaLaYSIa Damai Golf & Country Club

Sarawak www.damaigolf.com

The Legends Golf & Country Resort

Sedenak, Johor www.legends-resort.com

pHILIppInES Caliraya Springs

Lumban, Cavinti, Laguna

www.legendsfortcanning.com

SpaIn Hyatt La Manga Club Resort

Cartagena, Murcia

www.lamanga.regency.hyatt.com

TaIWan Formosa First Country Club

Taoyuan County

Formosa Yangmei Country Club

Taoyuan County

Niseko Golf Course

www.calirayalake.com

THaILanD

Shimotsuke Country Club

Imperial Golf & Country Club (formerly Cebu Mactan)

Bangkok

Hokkaido Prefecture Tochigi Prefecture

Tsugaru Kogen Golf Course

Aomori Prefecture

Rivers Edge, NC, hole #18

Cebu

www.theorchardgolf.com

Bangpoo Country Club

Nestled at the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains in Western Pennsylvania lies one of golf’s genuine American treasures.

Photo: Dr. Thomas W. Cline

est.1920

Latrobe Country Club is much more than 18 wonderful holes of golf...

This is where Arnold Palmer and his love of golf was born.

Stay in one of our guest houses for an experience unlike any other in golf...

Arnold Palmer plays here and you can, too.

(724) 539-8585 | LatrobeCountryClub.com © 2010 Latrobe Country Club All rights reserved. Arnold Palmer® and the “Umbrella” Logo® are registered trademarks owned by Arnold Palmer Enterprises, Inc.

palmer honors Quail hollow

A few days after the Quail hollow Championship had witnessed a stunning display of golf from its young winner—reminiscent of Arnold palmer in his pgA tour heyday, perhaps—guess who dropped in to catch up with old friends at the club’s 50th anniversary dinner?

A blue-blood ‘generAtion gAme’ during the first week in mAy hAs propelled QuAil hollow in ChArlotte, north CArolinA, to hitherto unsCAled peAks. sunday, may 2, 2010 looks destined to be a landmark date in the history of tournament golf following an Arnold palmer-style charge to an astonishing maiden pgA tour victory from the very back of the field by a brilliant 20-year-old irishman who could yet prove to be the king’s heir apparent as golf ’s entertainer supreme. rory mcilroy’s demolition of a world-class field on a world-class golf course with a mere 128 strokes (16 under par) over the weekend of the Quail hollow Championship was straight out of the Arnold palmer songbook, into which, frankly, not many golfers have ever tuned. mcilroy, who turned 21 the following week, only made the cut (on one over par) because he eagled Quail hollow’s par-5 16th hole in the second round, but the manner in which he took the event by the throat thereafter was awesome, consigning masters champion phil mickelson to the runner’s-up spot a distant four shots back. mcilroy’s final-round 62 included six consecutive threes on his scorecard over the final six holes as he shattered the

194

kingdom 17 summer 2010

course record by two strokes to become the eighth Quail hollow champion and the youngest winner on tour since tiger woods in 1996. “to win this tournament as my first is something quite special,” said mcilroy. “i received so much support and this crowd is quite special. it feels quite Augusta-like here. it’s such a great tournament.” four days after mcilroy’s triumph, palmer was on the premises at the personal invitation of his long-time close friend and club president John harris.

The occasion was a dinner to honor the 50th anniversary of the club that, previous to the Quail hollow Championship, hosted the kemper open on the pgA tour from 1969-79 and the world seniors invitational from 1980-89. “it was great to catch up with a lot of my old friends.” said palmer, who is a life member of the club and has a home on the 15th hole. palmer was also part owner of Charlotte’s only Cadillac dealership for many years and his name remains on the dealership through a licensing agreement to this day.

The course was originally designed by george Cobb, who captured the beauty as well as the challenging terrain of the piedmont region. in the mid-1980s, palmer made azio also modifications to holes 3, 7, 9, and 17, and tom fazio made some changes about the same time. n

McIlroy had a cast-iron par-3 at the short 17th on Quail Hollow (left) en route to lifting the trophy (below)

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H A L F - C EN T U RY

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A proud history of savings and reliability, backed by the strength of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (Note: the above portrait is not Mr. Buffett.)

Nearly 15 years ago, GEICO became a proud part of Warren Buffett’s famed holding company. Back then, the Gecko was one of the hardworking people — sorry, reptiles — in our GEICO offices. Now he’s helped GEICO become not only the third-largest car insurance company in the country, but also the fastest growing. Which is no surprise. For over 70 years, GEICO has worked hard to save people hundreds on car insurance. So why not give the Gecko a call to see how much you could save? You’ll find he’s easier to reach than Mr. Buffett.

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