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ARNO LDPALMERDES IGN. C O M

SUMMER 2018

00

Reade Tilley

Matthew Squire

Robin Barwick

Matthew Halnan

m a n a g i n g e d i to r

a r t d i r e c to r

e d i to r

publisher

 founding director

Arnold Palmer

cov e r i m ag e

le golf national , france

special thanks & contributors

9th Hole (Photo by Steve Carr / © Le Golf National)

special contributors

Cori Britt, Doc Giffin vp , operations

Joe Velotta head of advertising sales

Jon Edwards advertising sales

Brian Lynch designer

Kieron Deen Halnan contributing photographers

Steve Carr, Patrick Drickey, Dan Murphy / stonehousegolf.com, Getty Images, Meghan Glennon, Evan Schiller / golfshots.com

Tony Abou-Ganim Donato Annessa Thomas Bjorn Suzanne Bouhia Chris Bova Steve Browett Scott Crockett Andy Farrell Nick Gammon Kelly Grier Vicente Guaita Rai Legnar Diana Mayes Douglas Nowicki Don Orlando Mark Roman Dave Shedloski Patrick Star Andy Thorn Paul Trow Tiger Woods

executive advisor

Carla Richards

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Editor’s Letter

A

In Town

lbert Einstein was quoted as saying that “coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous,” and certainly there will be people who credit divine intervention for what happened in Latrobe, Pennsylvania at the end of the 1920s when not one, but two world-changing men were born in a town not three miles wide with a population near 11,000. Arnold Palmer and Fred Rogers (“Mr. Rogers,” to the tens of millions who knew and loved him) picked wildly different career paths, and both men were wildly successful. But the reasons they excelled and the ways that they manifested their success were quite similar: humility, kindness, empathy and love. We take a quick look at how the charming town just east of Pittsburgh produced two legends, and find out if it’s something in the water on page 94.

Palmer saw plenty of small towns beyond his own, especially during his early playing days before he’d taken to the skies. We join him on a few road trips on p102 and find a few arguments for traveling on four wheels—which is not to say that we don’t still enjoy winging it. In fact, we head across the drink for a British Summer (p38), a bit of golf in

Ireland (p28), a stop by Paris (p78) and a tour of some Ryder Cup venues (p72).

Back here at home we fire it up and cool it down with a couple of summer favorites: brilliant BBQ (p130) and summer cocktails (p124), pausing with the Folds of Honor Foundation to honor the brave men and women who paid the ultimate price (p128).

There’s plenty more in here as well, all of it designed to give you something to do when it’s too late in the day to play another round. We hope that you enjoy all of it, and that your sun-filled hours are spent aiming high, scoring low and enjoying as much time on course as possible. Not coincidentally, that’s where we’ll be, too.

See you on course,

Reade Tilley

SUMMER 2018

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Publisher’s Foreword

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On Course

elcome to this special European Issue of Kingdom. Alongside our lifestyle and golf stories, I hope that you also enjoy some of the travel features we’ve offered, which aim to take you far with places near and dear to us. Ireland in particular has always occupied a special place in my heart, not just because of its magnificent courses like Tralee and The K Club, but also because of the genuine warmth and hospitality of the Irish people on both sides of the border— and the chance to drink proper Guinness!

Europe will, of course, also host this year’s Ryder Cup, and as summer turns to fall all eyes will turn to Paris. I am expecting an incredibly hard-fought and tight contest with the level of play at an all-time high. Even as a two-horse contest it is tough to predict a winner, so much so that I might even place a small wager on a tie.

Closer to home, I am looking forward to a trip to play U.S. Open venues Erin Hills and Whistling Straits soon, and how I just hope these two magnificent courses are not going to match Shinnecock Hills in terms of setup difficulty.

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The USGA attracted a fair amount of criticism over it being incredibly hard, but if it was a tough exam—and it undoubtedly was—it was the same for every student, and as a deserving champion I can’t imagine Brooks Koepka will have anything other than happy memories of the test.

Lastly, I’m still amazed at the fact that this is the 15th anniversary year of Kingdom. To that, I would like to take this opportunity to thank our loyal readers and advertisers, many of whom, like our co-founder Arnold Palmer, I have become honored to call friends.

Have a great summer,

Matthew Squire

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Contents

Kingdom Magazine ISSUE 43

54 59 60 66 72 78

Q UA R T E R LY

SUMMER 2018

28

38

48

Small Island, Big Golf

Old Country Summer

The Silver Scot

Golf knows no boundaries on the Emerald Isle

Cricket, strawberries & everyone goes racing

Tommy Armour’s tale of tanks, trophies & cocktails

Centurion Club GolfSixes and verdant vistas in Hertfordshire The Ryder Cup Looking ahead to a French duel Taking the Opportunity How Thomas Bjorn broke golf’s boundaries Tiger Suit Selection Tiger’s Ryder role still to be confirmed European Selections The drama of European Ryder Cup course selections Paris Where to go and what not to miss in the French capital

SUMMER 2018

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Contents

Kingdom Magazine ISSUE 43

98 102 107 115 128 130 134 138

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SUMMER 2018

84

94

124

Team spirit

Good Neighbors

Bright Summer

The best homes away from home for your own golf team event

One small town, two confirmed legends: what are the odds?

Colorful concoctions to quell the coming calefaction of summer’s cruel conduct

Driven From golfing in a small town to leading EY, one of the world’s great companies On the Road Palmer and the miles he traveled (on the ground) Emotional Exposure History making moments Gift Guide Cool offerings for a hot season Folds of Honor Honoring our best and bravest Fire it Up Two grills, one mission: the best summer ever No Man is a No.17 Island greens, from the famous to the infamous Last Page Remembering the inimitable Doug Ford

KINGDOM 43

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The 6th hole at Old Head Photo: Evan Schiller / golfshots.com

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IRELAND

A

rnold Palmer always remembered his first trip to Ireland with great fondness. It was 1960, he was the reigning Masters and U.S. Open champ, and before making his debut in the [British] Open at St Andrews, Palmer and his wife Winne travelled to Dublin, where Palmer represented the United States with Sam Snead in the Canada Cup (the tournament that would become the World Cup) at Portmarnock GC. Despite it being the first time Palmer had set foot on a links golf course, and despite the fact Snead was generally critical of links golf and many things British and Irish (Snead once said that traveling to that side of the Atlantic “was like sleeping in the rough”),

the pair won the Canada Cup and Palmer’s affection for Britain, Ireland and links golf began then and would last his lifetime.

“I was immediately impressed by the rough links I discovered at Portmarnock,” Palmer once said, and Winnie loved her first trip to Dublin. Palmer added: “While I was trying my best to figure out the mysteries of linksland putting, Winne was happily gallivanting through Dublin’s famous linen shops and woollen mills, and taking afternoon tea at [the] Gresham Hotel.”

Some things have changed in Ireland since 1960, but there is an awful lot that has remained enchantingly the same too.

Feature on page 28

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RYDER CUP

E

Brooks Koepka leads from the front at the 2016 Ryder Cup at Hazeltine National GC

very other year the Ryder Cup gives tournament golf a heightened lease of life.

Nothing against the years in between—we are usually occupied by plenty of golfing intrigue—but there is an extra energy around the game as the Ryder Cup approaches, another level of anticipation. That is where we are now, three months away from the 42nd Ryder Cup as the presses roll on this summer issue of Kingdom. The team rankings are beginning to solidify and at the time of writing the US team is looking as strong as the man at the top of the rankings, U.S. Open champion Brooks Koepka. US Captain Jim Furyk must be loving his Monday morning perusals of the ranking list—enough to make the worst morning coffee taste just fine, thank you—with Koepka followed by Dustin Johnson, Patrick Reed, Justin Thomas, Bubba Watson, Jordan Spieth, Rickie Fowler and Bryson DeChambeau. They occupy the eight automatic spots now and Furyk must hope the final ranking does not deviate very far from this list at all.

That is not to suggest that the European team is looking weak. Justin Rose, Tommy Fleetwood, Rory McIlroy and John Rahm will form the nucleus of a dynamic group, desperate to win back the precious gold that is the Ryder Cup. We can’t wait to see what happens.

Ryder Cup section begins on page 59

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PARIS

T

he Ryder Cup is heading to the City of Lights for the first time and we have paid a visit too, all in the name of research, you understand.

There is so much to see and do in the French capital that we could have devoted an entire issue of Kingdom to its multi-cultural diversity, to its layer upon layer of history, but our single feature offers a few ideas if you’re heading to Paris. In the 19th century the

French nearly demolished the magnificent Notre Dame cathedral—Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame is said to have re-ignited public affection for it—and once the city had invested in renovating Notre Dame, visitors noticed that one of the new gargoyles is peculiar in as much as it depicts the face of an angry woman in a hat. They say it represents the mother-in-law of Eugene-Emmanuel Violletle-Duc, who masterminded the restoration.

Feature on page 78

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Small Island, Big Golf Golf Photography by Evan Schiller / golfshots.com

The 15th hole at Tralee

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More than half a million golfers visit Ireland each year, a significant number of them from the United States. Some are oblivious to the historic rivalries that shape the island socially and culturally, but nearly all are keen to debate the merits of the courses on offer across the various regions. With the Ryder Cup match at the K Club now a dozen years in our rearview mirrors, Paul Trow looks at the game that knows no boundaries, as played by some of the friendliest people on Earth.

Welcome, then, to Irish golf

W

When intergalactic aliens finally visit our planet, it won’t be long before they’re scratching their heads (or wherever their brains are kept) at the conflicts humans have created, and the north/south division of Ireland might puzzle them most of all.

Nowhere are the natives friendlier and more blessed with a sense of humor than on the Emerald Isle, one of the most fitting monikers ever. “The craic,” as Ireland’s general culture of sociability is called, does indeed bind people together across the generations and factions. And yet... Well, four centuries of sociopolitical/religious/territorial conflicts don’t get resolved overnight.

The whole island is a mirrored paradox—a place with more than enough room and hospitality to go round, and yet nowhere to hide, a kind of small-town atmosphere even in the wide-open spaces. Ireland’s attributes are remarkable, from a hauntingly brawny coastline, a mastery of brewing and distilling, and exceptional musical and literary creativity to the ideal climate for livestock and crop farming, and a wide range of banking facilities and acumen And then there’s the golf.

Currency Exchange Ireland uses two currencies; the British Pound to the north of the border and the Euro to the south. Either way, the US Dollar is currently riding high everywhere meaning excellent value for American travelers across Ireland, and following Brexit the pound is at a record low meaning there has probably never been a cheaper time to visit the North in particular.

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A

As far as golf in Ireland is concerned, there is no north and south divide. The game across the entire island falls under the jurisdiction of the Golf Union of Ireland (for men) and the Irish Ladies’ Golf Union. The only borders the GUI and ILGU recognize, for tournament and match purposes, are between its 410 courses, 32 counties and four provinces: Leinster, Munster, Connacht and Ulster.

Nothing in Irleand, not even the remotest cove or lighthouse, is further than a few miles from a golf course.

For this reason, and for the fact that visitors, almost without exception, are universally welcome, we’ll discuss the golf possibilties in geographic terms even as we leave any hint of conflict at the clubhouse door. After all, whatever your politics, there’s no arguing with a beautiful course, sunbeams cutting through the clouds to fall on verdant fairways and a pint of Guinness at No.19.

Several travel companies specialize in transporting American golfers across the Atlantic, many on a pilgrimage to their ancestral homes. Managing director of one such, David McMahon, states he is constantly tweaking schedules to cater for his clients’ curiosities and desires.

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“The southwest is by far the most popular with golfers, especially for the first time,” he says. “Not only because it’s so convenient in that it’s an easy flight from the east coast and a short drive to the courses, but also because of the incredible links there, such as Ballybunion, Lahinch and particularly [the Arnold Palmer-designed] Tralee.”

But with the [British] Open Championship returning in 2019 to the Dunluce Links at Royal Portrush after an absence of 68 years, he is acutely aware of the growing popularity of Northern Ireland. “The courses there are as good as any in the world,” he acknowledges.

“What makes Ireland tours unique are the history that is prevalent everywhere, the panoramic views, especially over places like Donegal Bay, and the glorious surrounding countryside.”

Inevitably, these pan-Isle tours take in iconic landmarks like the Giant’s Causeway, a volcanic concoction of some 40,000 interlocking basalt columns near Portrush, the fabled Book of Kells and the verdant St. Stephen’s Green in Dublin, and the ocean-hugging Ring of Kerry and Dingle Peninsula in the southwest. The Blarney Stone and gourmet-famed town of Kinsale near Cork also feature on trips-of-a-lifetime.

Giant’s Causeway [below] and Tralee’s 17th [above right]

F

For golfers, there is no better place to start than Tralee in County Kerry. In October 1984, after completing his commission to move the club from its previous incarnation at Mounthawk to the Barrow West promontory, Mr. Palmer declared: “I have never come across a piece of land so ideally suited to the building of a golf course. I may have designed the first nine, but surely God designed the back nine.”

From heaving sand dunes covered with wind-whipped Marram grasses to sheer cliffs that defy the oft-angry sea, Tralee can’t fail to bring out the poet in the saltiest of souls.

The club dates back to 1896 when nine holes were laid out on what is today a sports field. During the First World War, a Captain Lionel Hewson, hired to design a new course, became suspicious of the men who sat on the demesne walls watching him while he measured and made notes. He recorded that “bullets used to fly in those days on little provocation” and a Major McKinnon in the auxiliary division of the Royal Irish Constabulary was shot dead on the course in 1921 while playing golf.

But Tralee’s historic pedigree goes back much further.

A tower built in the 1190s stands behind the 3rd green overlooking the harbour, and one of the ships in the Spanish Armada of 1587 is reputed to have run aground behind the

16th green. And it was at Banna Strand beside the 15th tee that aristocratic revolutionary Sir Roger Casement was arrested in 1916, an event that led to his execution in London for treason later that year.

The modern course has a split personality. The front nine offers stunning views of pink beaches, turquoise sea and castle ruins though the golf challenge is quite forgiving unless the wind blows hard. Meanwhile, the ‘divine’ homeward half is often cited as the hardest nine in Irish golf—at the par-3 13th alone, where short is simply not an option, many a card has been wrecked by Brock’s Hollow.

Tralee’s other strength, as far as visiting golfers are concerned, is its proximity to a cluster of similarly challenging and distinctive courses. A bench at Ballybunion proclaims “this is the closest to heaven I’m ever going to get”, Lahinch was founded by the Black Watch regiment and shaped by ‘Old’ Tom Morris and Alister MacKenzie, and nearby also lies Waterville and the Greg Normandesigned Trump Doonbeg. One other potential stop-off is Killarney Golf & Fishing Club, home to two classic, parkland courses that run beside Lough Leane in the shadow of the MacGillicudy’s Reeks mountain range.

Following the coastline south and east towards Cork, the clifftop links at the Old Head of Kinsale is, according to the club’s brochure, “from the eons of time, spectacular beyond belief.” Yet this is no hyperbole—the Old Head is set on a diamond-shaped headland that juts dramatically into the Atlantic. Eight holes perch on the cliff ’s edge while all 18 offer ocean views.

Golfers regularly drop in by helicopter, but, naturally, the club forbids searching for balls beyond the hazard lines.

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The ever-changing sea breezes ensure a fair test, much as intended by the ‘committee’ of five designers (including Eddie Hackett, Joe Carr and Liam Higgins).

Before the course opened in 1997, this 220-acre site was already popular with ramblers, rock-climbers, ornithologists and whale watchers, and its imminent creation met with considerable local opposition. Now, more than two decades later, it seems the Old Head is regarded as a welcome source of employment and revenue by the indigenous population.

By arrangement, the public has access to the site today.

“They know us and we know them and there’s never any problem,” says Jim O’Brien, the club’s long-serving general manager. “They’re always welcome.”

Complainers aside, the links’ other hostile opponent is salt water from high waves stripping grass off the greens, especially during the winter period when the course is closed (from the end of October to the end of March). But this problem has been largely resolved. “We eventually found a grass, developed in nurseries here, that was salt tolerant,” explains O’Brien. “Now we can look at the cosmetics of the place more.”

The Old Head is also one of few north European landmarks featured in a map by Greek astronomer Ptolemy in 100AD. An early lighthouse was established during the 17th century and the present version was built in 1853 and continuously manned until it became automated in 1987.

Nearby, the quaint harbor town of Kinsale, selfproclaimed as the ‘gourmet capital’ of Ireland, is a welcoming hub that’s well worth a couple of nights’ lingering.

Heading inland, north from Cork and east from Tralee, the golfing highlight near Limerick is Adare Manor where the original course, designed in 1995 by Robert Trent Jones Sr. (his last completed project), has been remodeled by Tom Fazio and bankrolled by billionaire J.P. McManus.

Reopened in April by an exhibition match involving McIlroy, Padraig Harrington, Paul McGinley and Shane Lowry, it is set in an 840-acre estate surrounding the medieval ruins of an Augustine abbey and Franciscan friary, and traversed by the meandering River Maigue. Continuing towards Dublin, our next port of call is the K Club.

Straddling the River Liffey, which ultimately flows through the city of Dublin and into the Irish Sea, this is the elite home to two Palmer-designed layouts. The first course, which opened in 1991, was originally named the North while the second, the South, was completed in 2003. They hosted

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the European Open between them from 1995 to 2007 while in 2006 the Ryder Cup was staged over the North, by then renamed the Palmer Ryder Cup Course. The South was also rechristened as the Smurfit, after industrialist Dr. Michael Smurfit who owns the property.

The Palmer is a glorious parkland creation with an abundance of mature trees while the Smurfit has a contrastingly open, linksy appearance, rollercoaster undulations, wild grasses and gorse. Housed within Straffan House, which dates back to 550AD, the hotel is a hive of culture. After all, where else, while enjoying an aperitif, can you thumb through a copy of the Book of Kells or gaze at paintings by Jack B. Yeats, brother of the poet W.B. Yeats? In addition to golf, horse riding and fishing are other popular activities with guests of the K Club.

The K Club was in the vanguard of golf developments that sprang up around restored stately homes near Dublin during the final two decades of the past millennium, other notables being at Carton House, Druid’s Glen, Mount Juliet and Luttrellstown Castle. However, Mr. Palmer’s fond connection with this region dates back to 1960 when, as the reigning Masters and U.S. Open champion, he partnered Sam Snead to victory in the Canada Cup (now the WGC-World Cup of Golf) at Portmarnock Golf Club, a mighty links stationed on a peninsula just north of the Irish capital. The following week, he moved on to St. Andrews to make his debut in the [British] Open.

But the Republic is not the only proud possessor of a links pedigree in Ireland—just consider Ulster, in general, and Northern Ireland in particular.

In terms of scenery and hospitality, Northern Ireland has it all and golf, with apologies to the whiskey trade, is now the principal ingredient in this intoxicating cocktail.

Old Head’s 16th

S

Straffan House

traffan House is the private residence of K Club owner Dr Michael Smurfit, but the palatial 10-bedroom home is available for rent for $20,000 a night, with the service of the in-house butler, chef and domestic staff thrown in. Attention to detail is faultless to ensure this is the ultimate golfers’ retreat, with all meals, laundry and green fees included in the daily rate.

Sat squarely next to the 10th green of the K Club’s Ryder Cup course, Straffan House is superbly well equipped and presented, combining contemporary luxury and amenities with a classic French design influence, which subtly complements the character of the K Club’s main hotel (which is the original Straffan House, and itself

inspired by a Parisien chateau).

Built over four stories (including basement), Straffan House has been created with fine living and entertainment at its core, from the stunning entrance hall, reception rooms and dining room, to the top-floor movie room, games room and spa.

The basement swimming pool is embellished by a hot tub and bar and decorated with hand-painted murals, with the house gym next door and climate-controlled wine cellar across the corridor.

The first floor, with the spacious dining and reception rooms, is characterized by high ceilings, tall windows, beautiful stucco work and glittering chandeliers. kclub.ie/straffan-house

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M

Moving north and across the border from Dublin, the first port of call has to be Royal County Down, 30 miles south of Belfast. Abutting Dundrum Bay and the town of Newcastle—“where the Mountains of Mourne sweep down to the sea”, according to songwriter Percy French—the Championship links was established in 1889 by ‘Old’ Tom Morris for the princely fee of four guineas (less than $6 at today’s conversion rate). Despite more lucratively rewarded changes in subsequent years by the two Harrys—Vardon and Colt—it still bears the hallmarks of its rustic origins, as does its shorter sibling, the Annesley Links.

Tight lies, imposing sand dunes, deep pot bunkers, gleaming heather and small undulating greens are not exclusive to the Championship layout, but few courses present so many blind shots and intimidating carries to such narrow fairways. White rocks are deployed as markerposts to show the line and any waywardness is usually punished by thick rough. Factor in a fierce wind that often blows from off the Irish Sea and it’s clear keeping the ball in play, let alone in the right position, is a far-from-simple task.

The signature hole is the par-four 9th (486 yards). The drive is uphill and blind to the highest point of the course.

Portrush, certainly, but also Portstewart, Castlerock and Ballycastle... there are so many options here

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K Club [above] and Royal County Down

Reach that and not only do you have a chance of hitting the plateau green in two but also a grandstand view of Slieve Donard, the highest of the Mourne mountains.

But despite its magnificence, Royal County Down must, temporarily, take a back seat to Royal Portrush in golf-mad County Antrim where it seems every coastal inlet and estuary is dotted with flagsticks.

As mentioned, the Claret Jug will be up for grabs next year over the narrow fairways and elusive greens of Portrush. The only previous occasion the Dunluce Links (or anywhere else in Ireland, for that matter) has staged golf’s oldest Major was back in 1951, when the winner was England’s Max Faulkner, so it’s not surprising the locals are quite excited by its long-overdue return.

“This is a fantastic place to play golf and the people here are friendly and fully committed to the success of Royal Portrush,” said the club’s manager-secretary Wilma Erskine. “When I came here in 1984 we had many problems, but now we have more than 1,600 members, we attract a lot of visitors and we’ve got the [British] Open.

“We had to fight tooth and nail to bring it back, but we knew our infrastructure could cope. We have fantastic roads in and out of Portrush from all directions and there are 225,000 guest bedrooms, mostly within half an hour’s drive—more than enough to cope with the Open.”

Touching Royalty

As Northern Ireland is a province of the United Kingdom it comes under the reign of the British Royal family and therefore its golf courses are eligible for Royal patronage, such as Royal County Down and Royal Portrush. The Republic of Ireland is not part of the UK and so Royal patronage is not applicable.

With legwork, it is perfectly possible to book hotels and tee times individually but if you are looking for an experienced specialist to take the strain and maximize precious vacation time NI Golf Tours are one of the best. Based a few miles from Royal County Down they offer bespoke itineraries to suit and are more than capable of securing tee times, arranging transport, and booking anything from accommodation to tours of distilleries and tables at Michelin star restaurants. nigolftours.com

Four decades after the club teed off as County Antrim Golf Club in 1888, Colt created the Dunluce Links.

Overlooked by the ruins of the 13th century Dunluce Castle, it stretches across a triangle of giant sand hills with views of County Donegal to the west, the southern Hebrides to the north, and the Giant’s Causeway to the east.

Portrush’s other 18-hole layout is the Valley Links, home to Rathmore Golf Club which has its own clubhouse and boasts McDowell and 1947 [British] Open champion Fred Daly among its alumni. The signature 14th here is a 210-yarder known as ‘Calamity’ because the tee shot has to bore through the prevailing wind to carry a yawning pit that falls dramatically away to the right.

Beyond Portrush there are plenty of other opportunities to play nearby, not least on the Strand course at Portstewart where Jon Rahm won the Irish Open last year.

The 1st tee on the Strand, high above a par-4 that doglegs right towards a green hidden behind rolling dunes, is as good as it gets—framed by a backdrop of windswept mountains. The view to the right towards the ocean takes in Harry’s Shack, a beachside seafood eaterie crowned Ireland’s restaurant of the year in 2014.

Other excellent courses nearby are Castlerock, on the mouth of the River Bann, and Ballycastle, where Scotland’s Mull of Kintyre is visible on a clear day.

As Ms Erskine stressed, there are accommodation options aplenty. Coleraine is the largest conurbation while Portrush and Portstewart are busy seaside towns. However, many visitors opt to stay in Bushmills, home to a famous whiskey distillery, a sumptuous selection of restaurants, headlined by the eponymous Bushmills Inn, and an array of Olde Worlde craft and clothes shops.

But golf north of Belfast is by no means confined to the coast. A few miles from Ballymena there’s Galgorm Castle, laid out in 1997 on the banks of the Maine and Braid

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KINGDOM 43

The 13th at Royal Portrush

Over the next 12 months, all eyes scanning Irish golf will be focused on Royal Portrush rivers on an estate that dates back to 1618 when the castle— the ruins of which overlook the 10th green—was built by the quaintly titled Sir Faithful Fortescue.

Pride of place in the west of the province, though, must go to Lough Erne Resort near Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, a uniquely beautiful piece of golfing scenery.

This resort occupies a 600-acre peninsula between Lower Lough Erne and Castle Hume Lough, and is home to the Faldo links, a superb, waterside design (2009), and Castle Hume course which opened in the late 1990s. On the Faldo in particular, the views are stunning from every vantage point and water comes into play on at least 11 holes.

In such a short amount of space it has not been possible to mention every one of Ireland’s golfing jewels, but a tip of the hat is definitely due to an old journalist colleague, Pat Ruddy, who built and owns The European Club overlooking Brittas Bay, 20 miles south of Dublin in County Wicklow. Also in the early 1990s, Ruddy ventured into Donegal (the part that’s in the Republic) to design two mesmerizing links—the delightful Glashedy at Ballyliffin and the more rugged Sandy Hills at Rosapenna.

But over the next 12 months, all eyes scanning the Irish golfing paradise will be focused on Royal Portrush. As the hallowed week approaches, there will be no north-south divide or envy—just pride across the board that such a small island can punch so majestically above its weight.

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OLD COUNTRY SUMMER

With what is usually a pretty dismal winter, the Brits like to make the most of their summer when it arrives and while it lasts. But when those summer rays do beam down, things have a habit of falling into place in the Old Country Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, at Royal Ascot, June 2018

Glyndebourne

Photos: Leigh Simpson

May 19-Aug 26

“BROADWAY CAN’T COMPETE WITH IT actually. It can’t,”

says set designer David Hockney. It’s not to say the quality of performance is better than at the Met in NYC, but Glyndebourne is a one-off, bringing together world-class opera within the tranquil realm of one of southern England’s grand old landed estates. Glyndebourne sits amid the famous South Downs, near the Sussex town of Lewes, where wooded hills connect to rolling, green fields with grazing sheep in a peaceful tapestry of English countryside, lying much the same as it has for centuries.

The festival was founded by the Christie family in 1934, with performances staged in a purpose-built theatre that sat 300 people, next door to the 15th-century manor house. As the festival has grown, so the theatre has been remodeled and re-built, today seating 1,200.

A trip to Glyndebourne is a half-day countryside

extravaganza, with picnics abounding the lawns of the house before each performance (and when British summer weather permits). The clinking of glasses filled with Pimms, Proseco or gin and tonic accompany oven-baked sausage rolls. There is no official dress code at Glyndebourne although the convention is to dress up in dinner suits and evening dresses. It’s a treasured annual tradition to some or a pompous promenade to others.

“But it’s not just eccentric aristocrats’ play thing,” claims Sir Andrew Davis, Glyndebourne Music Director from 1989 to 2000. “This has become a festival that is second to none.”

Leading the 2018 programme is a production of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly with the London Philharmonic Orchestra (May 19-July 18), for which limited ticket availability remains as the presses roll.

G LY N D E B O U R N E . C O M

Alternatively, “The Proms” are on at the Royal Albert Hall in central London from July 13 to September 8, with a number of £6 “Day Promming” tickets held until the day of each performance.

ROYAL ALBERTHALL.COM

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Stonehenge Solstice Festival June 18-21

THEY RISE BEFORE DAWN ON mid-summer’s day at the

Solstice Festival—by 4:00am to beat sunrise—and the revelry will last 24 hours without intermission.

Different explanations for the creation of Stonehenge abound—the world’s only surviving lintelled stone circle, with origins dating back 4,500 years. Was it a druid temple, place of healing or an astronomic instrument? Contemporary interpretations center on a prehistoric temple aligned with solar movements. Take your pick but one way or another this is sacred ground.

In the 1970s a free Solstice festival evolved, thanks to a so-called “Peace Convoy”—which numbered 600 people and 140 vehicles by 1985. But it was too lawless for the authorities in an occasionally brutal Thatcherite Britain. In June ’85 the “Battle of the Beanfield” unfolded, when police truncheons smashed the convoy into smithereens. 500 arrests were made although Wiltshire police were later forced to pay £24,000 in damages.

Today, the more convivial event centers at nearby Stonehenge Campsite. Ticket holders can take a rare walk inside the Stonehenge ropes, while spirit-enhancing workshops include reiki healing and morning yoga.

S O L S T I C E F E S T. C O . U K

Alternatively, join Nobel Prize-winners and novelists in a dynamic exchange of ideas at the Hay Festival, at second-hand book capital Hay-on-Wye, on the Welsh border (2018 dates were May 24-June 3). Bill Clinton spoke in 2001 and described it as “Woodstock of the mind”.

H AY F E S T I VA L . C O M

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KINGDOM 43

Royal Ascot June 19-23

BRITAIN’S UNDISPUTED THERMOMETER FOR FASHIONABLE hats, Royal Ascot combines aristocratic

glamor with horse racing like no other. The Ascot racecourse is just six miles from Windsor (you saw Windsor’s last wedding right?) and its famous Gold Cup is the first date down in the Queen’s diary each year, a day in which Her Majesty and the Royal party traditionally arrive by horse and carriage.

Ascot’s royal connections go right back to its founding in 1711, when Queen Anne was instrumental in its establishment on royal land which today still belongs to the Queen.

Dress code for the invitation-only Royal Enclosure at Royal Ascot is uncompromising: women must wear a day dress of a minimum length and hat, while midriffs and shoulders must be covered. For men, “morning dress” and top hat are compulsory.

Royal Ascot is Europe’s best attended race week, with over 300,000 piling through the turnstiles, with Thursday—“Ladies’ Day”—the highlight and on which the Gold Cup is held. First run in 1807, the Gold Cup is a relatively long flat race, measuring just over two miles and three furlongs, for horses aged four and over. A race for “stayers”.

A S C O T. C O . U K

Alternatively, Epsom Downs holds The Derby on June’s first Saturday. GB’s other great flat run and its richest race with $2 million prize money, it is pronounced “Darby” in the UK. This is the world’s original “Derby”, inaugurated in 1780 and named after the race-going Earl of Derby.

E P S O M D E R BY. C O. U K

Wimbledon July 2-15

THE BIGGEST GRIPE OF THE British summer—particularly among the tennis-viewing middle classes of south-east England—used to be the price of the traditional “Strawberries & Cream” at Wimbledon. £2.50 in pounds and pence for a modest bowl of this classic British summer duo was once pricey, but not any more. The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club—which runs and owns the Wimbledon Championships on its peerless lawn courts in south-west London—froze the price of “Strawbs” at £2.50 in 2011, and maintained that same price through the 2017 championships. Inflation caught up while complaints dried up.

“Wimbledon” is one of Britain’s most famous and upright sporting institutions. The Championships were

inaugurated in 1877, making it the oldest tennis tournament in the world. It is the only one of the sport’s four Grand Slam championships played on grass—a tennis surface that is notoriously painstaking to maintain to championship level—and Wimbledon is the only world-class championship that insists all players wear white, in keeping with one of the sport’s earliest traditions.

Wimbledon has one foot firmly planted in Great British antiquity, while the other, by contrast, strides into the future and leads innovation, in terms of stadia, media facilities, line-judge technology and more besides. The combination of old and new—drawing parallels with Augusta National Golf Club—sees Wimbledon sustain its status as the world’s pre-eminent tennis championship.

WIMBLEDON.COM

Alternatively, the Queen’s Club in exclusive West Kensington in West London hold’s the annual lawn tennis men’s warm-up to Wimbledon each June, the Queen’s Club Championships. An ATP World Tour event, tickets for Queen’s are easier to come by than those for Wimbledon itself.

LTA . O R G . U K / M A J O R- E V E N T S

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Goodwood Festival of Speed July 12-15

FIRST STAGED AT THE ARISTOCRATIC Goodwood estate in 1993, the Goodwood Festival of Speed celebrates its Silver Jubilee in 2018. Keanu Reeves is a fan of the event held outside cathedral city Chichester and near England’s south coast, describing the eclectic festival as “motoring Heaven”, adding, “I don’t think there is anything like this anywhere else in the world.”

Goodwood bills its keystone event as “motorsport’s ultimate garden party”, and staged on a western, rolling swathe of the South Downs and surrounding the stately home of the Duke of Richmond, that’s a fair description. Over four days only, the tranquillity of the estate’s “Hillclimb” track is driven out by racing cars and bikes, some that reach far back to the formative days of motor-racing, and others at the vanguard of 21st century innovation.

Unlike a Grand Prix, Festival goers are invited up close to the cars and drivers, into the paddocks and onto the trackside. The Ferrari racing team has been a regular fixture at the Festival for more than 20 years, while the 2018 chapter will include the auction of the 1965 Aston Martin DB5 driven by James Bond (Pierce Brosnan version) in the 1995 movie “Golden Eye”. The car is expected to sell for more than £1.2 million.

GOODWOOD.COM

Alternatively, head to Silverstone in Northamptonshire for the British Grand Prix on July 8. The original Formula One race, 2018 will see the track’s 52nd British Grand Prix.

S I LV E R S T O N E . C O. U K

The Open July 16-22

YOU CAN SIP CHAMPAGNE AT Glyndebourne and

savor strawberries at Wimbledon, but when The Open heads to Carnoustie it is seldom any kind of picnic.

Carnoustie is the longest of The Open golf courses, it is the most northerly and with often unrelenting, icy winds whipping off the North Sea, it has staged some of the toughest championships the game has seen. But seriously, be warned, as Carnoustie treats the summer season with contempt. The Open on this stretch of Angus coast in eastern Scotland is a cold-blooded test of stamina, pushing golfers to their limits and often reducing them to tears, some of joy, but most of despair.

The Open is golf’s oldest major championship, having first been played in 1860 at Prestwick, on Scotland’s west coast. Carnoustie joined the select band of links courses that host The Open—as anointed by championship governors the R&A—in 1931, when Tommy Armour won, and this summer sees the Claret Jug heading north of the River Tay for the eighth time.

Golfers don’t often list Carnoustie among their favorite courses to play yet Gary Player, nine times a major champ, rates his Open victory at Carnoustie in 1968 as his greatest triumph.

THEOPEN.COM

Alternatively—or additionally—the Senior Open presented by Rolex follows The Open itself, 20 miles down the coast on the Old Course, St Andrews. From July 26-29, defending champ Bernhard Langer will be in a field including Tom Watson, Nick Faldo and John Daly.

EUROPEANTOUR.COM

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Cowes week Aug 4-11

SOMEHOW, BRITAIN’S PRE-EMINENT SAILING REGATTA is not based on the Thames Estuary or beneath

the White Cliffs of Dover or even at the British Naval hub of Portsmouth (although it’s nearby). No, every year since 1826, and usually in the first week of August (depending on tides) the center of the sailing oceans is Cowes, a small harbour town on the north side of the sleepy Isle of Wight. The Solent waterway separates the Isle of Wight from England’s south coast and the major shipping points of Portsmouth and Southampton, and every August around 8,000 sailors on 1,000 yachts of all shapes, sizes and speeds converge on Cowes for a week of racing and revelry.

Cowes Week fires the gun for up to 40 races each day, both professional and amateur, and typically attracts 100,000 visitors, and the festival traditionally closes with a firework spectacular.

“Cowes” was inspired by a love of sailing of King George IV, and many royal connections have followed, not least with the establishment of the Queen’s Cup in 1897, which was first presented by Queen Victoria to mark her Diamond Jubilee.

LENDYCOWESWEEK.CO.UK

Alternatively, the UK’s Armed Forces Day is June 30, marked by a festival at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. Royal Navy ships there, past and present, include the HMS Victory, Admiral Nelson’s flagship in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.

HISTORICDOCKYARD.CO.UK

Lords Test, England v India Aug 9-13

JUST AS MOST BRITS DON’T get baseball, let alone

“American football”, most Americans don’t get cricket—a game which is sometimes played over five days and at the end of it you might not even have a winner…

But if you want to experience cricket in its spiritual home, with a large crowd and plenty of atmosphere, a Test Match (test matches being those five-day epics) at Lords is a highlight of the cricket season.

Lords is the headquarters of English cricket and many consider it the home of cricket worldwide. Located in the leafy St. John’s Wood neighborhood of north-west London, Lords celebrated its 200th anniversary in 2014, and the stately Pavilion of this 28,000-seater cricket stadium houses what is thought to be the world’s oldest sporting museum.

The England cricket team will generally play two test matches at Lords each summer (in addition to other matches of shorter formats), one early in the season and the second in August. India will be touring England this summer and will take on England at Lords in August (spectators do not have to buy tickets for all five days— take your pick).

ECB.CO.UK

Alternatively, cricket’s short-format game, called T20, has given the sport a new lease of life and the T20 Blast Finals at Birmingham’s famous Edgbaston cricket ground will be packed out and raucous on September 15, with many spectators attending in fancy dress. Four English county teams will compete in semi-finals and a final all in one day.

EDGBASTON.COM

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KINGDOM 43

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For further information, please talk to your healthcare professional and see Brief Summary of Prescribing Information for Myrbetriq® (mirabegron) on the following page.

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All rights reserved.

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December 2017

• angioedema. Myrbetriq may cause an allergic reaction with swelling of the lips, face, tongue, throat with or without Myrbetriq® (mirabegron) extended-release tablets 25 mg, 50 mg Brief Summary based on FDA-approved patient labeling Read the Patient Information that comes with Myrbetriq® (mirabegron) before you start taking it and each time you get a

Myrbetriq for a condition for which it was not prescribed. Do not give Myrbetriq to other people, even if they have the same symptoms you have. It may harm them.

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Overactive bladder occurs when you cannot control your bladder contractions. When these muscle contractions happen too often or cannot be controlled, you can get symptoms of overactive bladder, which are urinary frequency, urinary urgency, and urinary incontinence (leakage).

Rx Only PRODUCT OF JAPAN OR IRELAND – See bottle label or blister package for origin Marketed and Distributed by: Astellas Pharma US, Inc. Northbrook, Illinois 60062 Myrbetriq® is a registered trademark of Astellas Pharma Inc. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. ©2012 - 2017 Astellas Pharma US, Inc. Revised: July 2017 17A004-MIR-BRFS 057-2250-PM

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General information about the safe and effective use of Myrbetriq Medicines are sometimes prescribed for purposes other than

Carnoustie 1931

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KINGDOM 43

The Silver Scot As The Open returns to Carnoustie for the eighth time, we look back to the golfer who first raised the Claret Jug at there, in 1931, the enigmatic ScottishAmerican Tommy Armour

T

Tommy Armour wanted to play golf but having been born in Edinburgh in 1895, he first had to negotiate his way through the First World War. 20 million people did not make it through the “Great War” (1914-18), military and civilian lives combined, and having been sat inside a tank as it was shelled, Armour was extremely fortunate to be among those who lived to see peace restored in 1918.

Armour rose to the rank of Major in the Tank Corps and suffered serious injuries to his left arm and head when the shell hit. He would require metal plates to be inserted in his head and arm but as if that were not enough, Armour was also caught in a mustard gas attack in the dreadful Battle of Ypres in Belgium which left him blinded.

Hospitalized for months, he eventually regained the sight in his right eye although his left would remain blind for the rest of his life. Armour did not skirt around the edges

of war and in his book The 100 Greatest Ever Golfers, Andy Farrell—a regular Kingdom contributor—writes, “It was also said that he strangled a German soldier with his bare hands”.

Having sustained such serious injuries, few would have predicted a post-war career in golf for Armour but he would prove time and again that when he could work his way into a title challenge, he was hard to stop. Celebrated writer Herbert Warren Wind would describe Armour as, “singularly unaffected by the pressure of the last stretch. His hands were hot but his head cool”. Perhaps the perspective given to Armour by his military service became a weapon of his own on the golf course.

Representing the now closed Lothianburn Golf Club at Edinburgh’s southern reaches, Armour claimed the French Amateur title in 1920 and played for Great Britain & Ireland in the 1921 Walker Cup against the United States.

Like so many other Scottish golfers before Armour and after, he then emigrated to the United States, turned pro in 1924, took American citizenship and soon played for the American team in a match versus GB&I at London’s Wentworth Club in 1926 in what would be the precursor to the Ryder Cup. Thereby Armour achieved the unique distinction of having played for both sides in matches between the US and GB&I.

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[Left] Harry ‘Light horse’ Cooper congratulates Tommy Armour at the 1927 U.S. Open; [Below, l to r] Tommy Armour, Bobby Jones, the Duke of Windsor, Gene Sarazen and Walter Hagen enjoy tea car refreshments during the 1935 Masters

Sarazen was there, like a shadow, as Armour stole golf ’s most coveted prizes from his reach

Soon after, at the 1927 U.S. Open at Oakmont, Armour birdied the final hole to tie with Harry “Lighthorse” Cooper, with Gene Sarazen left out of the play-off by a shot. Armour would defeat Cooper by three shots over the 18-hole decider. Three years later, while Bobby Jones was putting together his “Impregnable Quadrilateral” of titles, Armour succeeded in the tournament for which amateur Jones was ineligible, the 1930 PGA Championship, when Armour ultimately defeated great rival Sarazen 1-up in what was then a match-play final.

Sarazen’s success would eventually eclipse Armour’s, with the Italian-American New Yorker accumulating seven major titles and becoming the first golfer to complete what would later be recognised as the career Grand Slam

of all four majors. Yet for a spell, before he surged ahead of Armour in the 1930s, Sarazen was hugely frustrated by the grit and finishing quality of Armour and for all three of Armour’s major triumphs Sarazen was there, like a shadow, as Armour stole golf’s most coveted prizes from his reach.

When The Open arrived at Carnoustie for the first time in 1931 Armour again timed his challenge to perfection.

Jose Jurado from Argentina shared the second-round lead with England’s Henry Cotton before Jurado took a three-shot lead into the final round. Three shots back was Carnoustie-born Macdonald Smith—who like Armour had emigrated to the United States as a young man—with Armour and Sarazen a further two strokes back.

Local favorite Smith faded in the final round while Armour came to life. He tied the course record of 71 with a 3-4-5 finish, leaving Jurado in need of a modest 75 to claim the Claret Jug. But this is the back nine at Carnoustie—a teasing, ruthless stretch of golf when pressure mounts.

Jurado’s composure slipped down the closing stretch but even so, by the 18th hole he needed a birdie-four to take Armour to a play-off. But in the days before electronic scoring and scoreboards, the Argentine mistakenly thought he needed a 5 to tie. He played the notorious par-5 18th

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[Left]: The Earl of Airlie presents the Claret Jug to Tommy Armour at Carnoustie in 1931; [Below] Armour offers putting advice to model Joan Gordon at Boca Raton

cautiously, realising only as he was about to putt for birdie that he needed the nine-footer to tie, and he missed.

Jurado’s despair was allegedly matched by his personal friend, HRH the Prince of Wales (later to become King Edward VIII briefly in 1936, before abdicating to marry Wallis Simpson), who had followed Jurado throughout the final round and was openly disgusted that the Claret Jug went to fellow Brit Armour.

Sarazen shot 73 to finish two shots back in a tie for third. He would later say of Armour: “He made himself into a magnificent professional. Some of his other distinctions are that he says more words per round than any other golfer and is the slowest player in the entire world.”

Two years later, in the build-up to the 1933 PGA Championship, Armour told a reporter that Sarazen “was all washed up as a championship contender.” Sarazen got the last laugh, winning the PGA for the third and final time.

Known as the “Silver Scot” for his prematurely grey hair, the putting yips put an end to Armour’s competitive career before he became what was thought to be the most expensive teaching pro of his generation, charging $50 a lesson while spending summers at Winged Foot, New York, and winters at the Boca Raton Club, Florida.

After a long lunch and cocktails they say Armour earned even more money in the afternoons, playing for high stakes. Then he would return to the clubhouse to regale his playing partners–the losers picking up the tab–probably with stories ending with Sarazen in second place.

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“He says more words per round than any other golfer and is the slowest player in the entire world”

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On the Roman road When Kingdom headed to the European Tour’s GolfSixes tournament at Centurion Club, not only did we find an innovative tournament format that can roll out to the wider golfing population, but also a fantastic young golf club breathing new energy into an enchanting old city

The Cathedral and Abbey Church of Saint Alban is the oldest site of continuous Christian worship in Britain

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A

As cities go, St. Albans is about as small as they come, with a population not yet reaching 150,000, yet this city of Roman origins—they called it “Verulamium” back then— sitting just 20 miles north of central London, has links to two of the most progressive ideas to benefit professional golf over the past century.

The first was thanks to local seed merchant Samuel Ryder, a member at the local Verulam Golf Club, who established the Ryder Cup and donated the gold cup for the inaugural matches in 1927.

The second was thanks in part to the European Tour, who collaborated with St Albans’ exclusive Centurion Club to create the GolfSixes tournament, which began in 2017 and became firmly entrenched in the UK’s golf calendar this year, under beautiful spring sunshine in May. GolfSixes is a pairs, match play tournament with each match played over just six holes. Each pair plays a series of group games before the field is halved for the final day knock-out rounds. The format debuted at Centurion Club in 2017 to immediate acclaim with pairs from the European Tour, before expanding for this year’s event with two pairs joining the action from the Ladies European Tour, along with a mixed pair of European captains, Thomas Bjorn from the Ryder Cup and Catriona Matthew from the Solheim Cup. The family-friendly event was packed out and broadcast live on TV, and now the GolfSixes format is rolling out to golf clubs in the UK for amateur play.

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And could the LET women compete with their male counterparts? Both women’s pairs—Carlota Ciganda with Mel Reid, and Charlie Hull with Georgia Hall (all from the 2017 Solheim Cup team)—reached the Sunday quarter-finals, so reaching the last eight from 16 original pairs, before the Irish duo of Paul Dunne and Gavin Moynihan—who brought shared Walker Cup pedigree with them—surged through to take the title.

“It’s been a huge success,” said Reid, 30, a six-time LET tournament winner. “We’ve hopefully opened a few more eyes to women’s golf and to the fact that we can compete.

Hopefully it’s inspired not just a few more young girls but young guys and men, women, all over to take up the game.

That’s ultimately what we want to do. Loads of the girls in America have been saying how much they have enjoyed watching it and Lydia Ko has already messaged us saying she’s absolutely desperate to get on a team next year.”

Bjorn, 47, and Scotland’s Matthew, 48, did not qualify for final-day action but for them it genuinely was the participation that counted.

“GolfSixes is great,” Bjorn told Kingdom over a drink in the clubhouse at Centurion Club, with the 18th green and adjacent lake as an idyllic golfing backdrop. “It is fun, interesting and hopefully people will take to it. It is amazing that golf clubs are picking up on the GolfSixes format for amateurs. Clubs need to get different kinds of events going to get people thinking a little bit differently. Golf does not need to be the traditional 18 holes of stroke play, and tournaments don’t need to be four rounds over four days.

“I say this all the time; in professional golf there are too many 72-hole stroke play tournaments. They can disappear into each other. Sometimes tournaments need to stand out and GolfSixes certainly does that.”

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“Golf does not need to be 18 holes of stroke play, or four rounds over four days”

Mel Reid tees off on the 1st hole during day two of the 2018 GolfSixes at Centurion Club

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SETTING NEW STANDARDS The golf club only opened five years ago, yet Centurion Club has become fast established in the highest echelon of golf clubs in Greater London. The championship golf course swings through ancient pine woodlands and rolls over undulating Hertfordshire countryside to offer golfers an array of shot-making opportunities and inevitably, the occasional predicament. At 7,100 yards from the back tees Centurion Club can challenge the mighty, yet with five sets of tees this is a golf course built with the enjoyment of all abilities in mind. The golf course is spiced with variety and it is little wonder the European Tour came knocking.

What takes this golf course to another level, though, is the attention to detail at every turn, from the service in the pro shop and clubhouse, to the practice balls stacked in pyramids on the range, to the practice green that genuinely reflects the pace of putting found on the golf course. Then there’s the halfway house, which could state a case for

inclusion in the UK’s famous “Good Pub Guide”. These are the details that elevate an excellent round of golf into an exceptional, premium experience. This is what puts Centurion Club members in a hurry to arrive in the morning and slow to depart at the end of the day.

“It’s brilliant,” confirms Bjorn. “I love it here. It is just a nice club. This is a lovely golf course and a lovely place. It is fantastic.”

And that is before you have savored the Galvin restaurant from Michelin-starred London chefs, brothers Chris and Jeff Galvin. To a relaxed countryside setting, the Galvin brothers have transported West End sophistication of the highest order. Private dining options are also available, as well as regional wine pairing evenings.

Yet with the golf course occupying a tract of such natural tranquility, one of the club’s greatest attributes is its location. From the gates of Centurion Club, within

Galvin at Centurion Club [right], the 18th green [far right] and 17th green [below]

Attention to detail elevates a round into an exceptional experience 40 minutes members and their guests can be swishing down Park Lane, or within 40 minutes from the exit gates of Heathrow, they can be enjoying breakfast in the exclusive Members’ lounge on the upper level of the clubhouse, overlooking the 18th green (and yes, a limited number of international memberships are available at this members-only club).

Centurion Club is a country retreat near the city. It is attracting a new audience to golf yet also protecting the privacy of its members. These are fine balancing acts and herein lies the secret to success at Centurion Club; it reaches the best of both worlds.

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The nd 42 Ryder Cup We interview European captain Thomas Bjorn, consider whether Tiger Woods might be the first vice captain to play in the Ryder Cup, take a whistle-stop tour around Paris and more...

RY D E R C U P R E CO R D

1927 Worcester Country Blub, MA

1957 Lindrick, England

1929 Moortown, England

1959 Eldorado Country Club, CA

GB & IRL 2½—USA 9½ GB & IRL 7—USA 5

1931 Scioto Country Club, OH GB & IRL 3—USA 9

1933 Southport & Ainsdale, England GB & IRL 6½—USA 5½

1935 Ridgewood Country Club, NJ GB & IRL 3—USA 9

1937 Southport & Ainsdale, England GB & IRL 4—USA 8

1947 Portland Golf Club, OR GB & IRL 1—USA 11

1949 Ganton, Yorkshire, England GB & IRL 5—USA 7

1951 Pinehurst, NC

GB & IRL 2½—USA 9½

1953 Wentworth, England GB & IRL 5½—USA 6½

1955 Thunderbird Golf & CC, CA

GB & IRL 7½—USA 4½

GB & IRL 3½—USA 8½

1961 Royal Lytham & St. Annes,

1977 Royal Lytham & St. Annes, England GB & IRL 7½—USA 12½

1979 The Greenbrier, WV Europe 11—USA 17

England GB & IRL 9½—USA 14½

1981 Walton Heath, England

1963 East Lake Country Club, GA

1983 PGA National Golf Club, FL

GB & IRL 9—USA 23

1965 Royal Birkdale, England GB & IRL 12½—USA 19½

1967 Champions Golf Club, TX GB & IRL 8½—USA 23½

1969 Royal Birkdale, England GB & IRL 16—USA 16

1971 Old Warson Country Club, MO GB & IRL 13½—USA 18½

1973 Muirfield, Scotland GB & IRL 13—USA 19

1975 Laurel Valley Golf Club, PA GB & IRL 11—USA 21

Europe 9½—USA 18½

Europe 13½—USA 14½

1985 The Belfry, England Europe 16½—USA 11½

1987 Muirfield Village, OH Europe 15—USA 13

1989 The Belfry, England Europe 14—USA 14

1991 Kiawah Island Golf Resort, SC Europe 13½—USA 14½

1993 The Belfry, England Europe 13—USA 15

1995 Oak Hill Country Club, NY

1997 Valderrama, Spain Europe 14½—USA 13½

1999 The Country Club, MA Europe 13½—USA 14½

2002 The Belfry, England Europe 15½—USA 12½

2004 Oakland Hills CC, MI Europe 18½—USA 9½

2006 The K Club, Ireland Europe 18½—USA 9½

2008 Valhalla Golf Club, KY Europe 11½—USA 16½

2010 Celtic Manor Resort, Wales Europe 14½—USA 13½

2012 Medinah Country Club, IL Europe 14½—USA 13½

2014

Gleneagles, Scotland Europe 16½—USA 11½

2016

Hazeltine National GC, MN Europe 11—USA 17

Europe 14½—USA 13½

GB & IRL 4—USA 8

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CAPTAIN

Taking the Opportunity Thomas Bjorn has always relished breaking down barriers. He was the first Dane to win on the European Tour, the first to play in the Ryder Cup, the first to do most things in pro golf. Now captain of the European Ryder Cup team, Bjorn spoke to Robin Barwick about his emergence from golf’s hinterlands

T

homas Bjorn was not ranked inside the world’s top 200 when he pitched up to the Loch Lomond World Invitational in September 1996.

The Dane, 25 years old at the time, was not completely unknown as he had won the European Challenge Tour’s overall title in 1995—the European Tour’s minor league—with four wins from what Bjorn today remembers to be “probably some of the best golf I played in my entire career”, but it was a new level upon the tranquil shores of Loch Lomond, in terms of the quality of the golf course, the competition and the money. They played for first prizes of £5,000 on the Challenge Tour in the mid-nineties, where a scorer and a referee was a crowd, while the first prize at Loch Lomond was £125,000.

Also, a Danish golfer had never won on the European Tour. Englishman Nick Faldo was favorite to win; he was world number four at the time, the reigning Masters champion and loved the golf course, or Scotland’s own Colin Montgomerie, who was in the middle of his run of seven straight European Order of Merit titles. But Faldo shot 77 in the final round before Monty drove into a peat bog on 14 to sink his hopes.

As for the rookie from Silkeborg in central Denmark, he kept his cool, beat Frenchman Jean Van de Velde by a stroke and pocketed a check worth virtually more than all the prize money he had won up to that day.

So, 12 months ahead of the 1997 Ryder Cup at Valderrama in Spain, European captain Seve Ballesteros was landed with a young Danish firebrand to contemplate.

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“That win at Loch Lomond put me right up at the top of the rankings,” starts Bjorn, now 47, as we sit inside the clubhouse at the Centurion Club, just north of London, where Europe’s 2018 Ryder Cup skipper played in the European Tour’s innovative, mixed Golf Sixes tournament.

“After my win I became part of that group of golfers who could play in the 1997 Ryder Cup and Seve started speaking to me. All of a sudden I was in the mix with golfers who had been my heroes, and not from 10 years before but just two years before that point. There I was with Langer, Woosie, Faldo, Ollie and all those greats I had watched on TV winning the Masters, The Open and the Ryder Cup.” Having broken into the European Ryder Cup conversation, don’t imagine that Bjorn was welcomed into the fold with open arms. Ballesteros was one of the most intense competitors in world golf and his determination to lead a winning team—when the Ryder Cup was played in his home country for the first time—consumed the Spaniard entirely. Ballesteros did not see it as his responsibility to nurture Bjorn but to push him, and he probably expected to push Bjorn out of contention.

“Seve did everything to test me, to see if I was good enough,” adds Bjorn. “Seve was not the kind of man to just take you in because you are a young golfer on tour. I was

“Looking back, I think Seve was looking for an excuse not to have me in the team” near the top of the rankings so he had to take an interest. In the beginning it was probably not something he wanted to do but he had to. He looked at me, he messed with me and he did everything to try and put me off, to see what kind of character I was, but I just saw it as an opportunity. Every time I was in his company it was an opportunity to learn and to impress.

“When you were on the first tee with Seve on the European Tour in 1997 it was not out of co-incidence. It happened about seven times and he put me in that position to see if I could prove myself. It was a continuous test for me. Looking back, I think Seve was looking for an excuse not to have me in the team.”

In the fortnight immediately following his win at Loch Lomond Bjorn notched two top-10 finishes to secure Rookie of the Year honors ahead of Padraig Harrington, and while his form was inconsistent in 1997, he comfortably qualified for the eighth of 10 automatic places on the 1997 team.

“I qualified so Seve couldn’t get around it,” adds Bjorn.

“Over my whole career, whenever I have been paired with

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the best players in the world I have seen it as an opportunity.

I could still get nervous, probably more than people think, but in professional golf you need to take opportunities when they are presented to you. That is hugely important for me. Some people might get scared in a big moment instead of thinking that you have earned the opportunity, that you belong in that situation.”

Bjorn made the most of his opportunity to play in the 1997 Ryder Cup, whether Ballesteros wanted him in the team or not. In a Ryder Cup era before captains planned in advance every detail and consideration they could, Bjorn, Ian Woosnam, Darren Clarke and Ignacio Garrido did not learn they were sitting out the opening series of matches until Seve announced his line-up to the media.

When Bjorn did get his chance he partnered Woosnam to a 2&1 victory over reigning Open champion Justin Leonard and Brad Faxon in the second round of fourballs with Bjorn dominating the back nine.

“That fourball with Woosie really stands out for me,” admits Bjorn. “I was in the action and I was in it with someone who was brilliant at what he did. He showed me so much about what it is to be a great golfer and how to play in the Ryder Cup. That whole day gave me the feeling that I really, really wanted to be part of the Ryder Cup.”

The 1997 European Ryder Cup team: [back row, l to r] Johansson, Garrido, Parnevik, Montgomerie, Westwood, Olazabal, Rocca, Woosnam, [front row] Langer, Bjorn, Ballesteros, Faldo, Clarke [Left] Bjorn wins the Loch Lomond World Invitational in 1996

In the singles Bjorn lost the first four holes to Leonard before fighting back to take a half, as Europe prevailed 14 ½ to 13 ½ overall, with an American revival in the singles making the score look closer than the matches were. Bjorn proved his Ryder Cup caliber by bringing 1½ points from two matches back to the team room.

“One thing I have always done with the Ryder Cup; I have left my ego at the door,” adds Bjorn, who ultimately played on three European teams (1997, 2002 and 2014, all victorious) and served as vice captain four times (2004, 2010, 2012, 2016), with the only losing campaign being the last one, on Clarke’s team that lost in Hazeltine two years ago.

“The Ryder Cup is a team event and it is about one result. I know that not all golfers can function from that way of thinking. Golfers have different personalities but for me it was a decision I made and it still stands today now that I am captain. The Ryder Cup is all about the 12 golfers who are playing. When I went to Detroit as a vice captain [in 2004] there were four players in the team with lower world rankings than me but you have to leave your ego at the door.

We are there to provide the players with a situation in which they can play their best, rather than wasting time wondering why you are not playing.”

Toe to toe with Tiger At the Emirates Golf Club in March 2001 for the Dubai Desert Classic, Bjorn was in good form but then Tiger Woods was five weeks away from completing the “Tiger Slam” of holding all four major titles at once.

“Tiger and I got drawn together and we both shot 64 in the first round,” recalls Bjorn, who was aged 30 at the time and working towards his second Ryder Cup appearance, in 2002. “I was playing really well but I thought Tiger was going to win. That is what everybody thought back then: when Tiger was playing well the question was not if he was going to win but by how many shots.

“I thought to myself: ‘I am going to enjoy playing with Tiger, I am going to enjoy watching the best golfer in the world play as well as he can,’ and then I was just going to try to hang on to his shirt-tails, and hang on and hang on.”

Bjorn and Woods shared the first-round lead, then Woods shot another 64 to take a two-shot lead over Bjorn at halfway. They were paired again for the third round, when Bjorn edged Woods by a shot, 67 to 68, so Woods took a one-shot lead into the final round.

Recalls Bjorn: “My caddie Ken said, ‘Just see if you can stay somewhere with him until the last few holes on Sunday, and then whatever happens will happen’. That is what I did, and then I eagled the 10th hole in the final round and the tournament became a ding-dong between the two of us. The

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question then was: could I still be in contention on the 18th tee? And I was. Then Tiger made a rare mistake and I walked away with the win.”

The pair were tied on the 18th tee, but Tiger drove into trouble and then hit into water to lose the 72-hole tussle, although it took a tournament record score of 266, 22 under par to beat the golfer who was firmly world number one at the time.

“It was a fantastic four days for me,” adds Bjorn, “and more than that, it started the really good relationship with Tiger which I still have today.

“One thing I will say about Tiger: he has always had a high respect for people who go out on the golf course, look him in the eye and take him on. With Tiger it is better not to talk about beating him, but to go out there and see if you can do it. I have played a lot of golf with Tiger over the years and I have learned a lot from him. Dubai was the one moment when I beat him, unlike the other 150 times when he beat me!”

And what about today, 17 years later; does Bjorn expect to face Woods as an opposing player or vice captain in Paris?

“What I am as a captain is the product of past Ryder Cups and by the impact these people had on me”

“There are a lot of things that can happen between now and the Ryder Cup,” offers Bjorn. “Tiger has made some really good starts since coming back and I am delighted to see that, and to see him on the golf course looking like he is not in pain and looking like the golfer we know him to be. We should all be grateful for that. Whether he makes the Ryder Cup team or not, I just want to see him healthy and happy.”

From Seve, Sam Torrance and Bernhard Langer, through to Montgomerie, Jose Maria Olazabal, Paul McGinley and Clarke, Bjorn has enjoyed box seats for seven Ryder Cup captaincies.

“All those captains, all those Ryder Cups and all those moments have formed me as a person,” he says. “The Ryder Cup provides some of the biggest moments of a tour golfer’s career, and so they form you as a person. When you sit in those team rooms you listen, you listen to what they say.

Each captain thinks long and hard about what he wants to say when he sits at the head of that table, so you give him your full attention.

“My ideas and my thoughts are all influenced by what has happened at past Ryder Cups. I believe in me and in what I stand for as a captain, but what I am as a captain is the product of all these past Ryder Cups and by the impact these people had on me.”

Bjorn won’t be swinging a club in Paris later this year, not a single shot, yet his dedication to the unified effort will course through his whole being. We don’t know who will win in Paris, but we know Bjorn will have his players ready to take up the opportunity.

Bjorn and Woods forged an enduring friendship at the 2001 Dubai Desert Classic

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Tiger Woods during the first round of the 2018 U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills

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VICE CAPTAIN

Tiger Suit Selection His performance in the U.S. Open did nothing to warm the speculation, but the big question surrounding the US Ryder Cup team this summer is whether Tiger Woods should become the firstever playing vice captain. From Shinnecock Hills, Dave Shedloski considers Tiger’s chances

T

iger Woods, for all his records and accomplishments, has been an enigma when it comes to the Ryder Cup. Unarguably the most dominating golfer in a generation, Woods from 1997 to 2008 won 14 major titles but was a member of just one U.S. team that defeated the Europeans.

And that one victory, in 1999, was made possible because Ben Crenshaw convinced his squad that an epic comeback was possible in Sunday’s singles matches after they fell behind 10-6. Sure enough, Woods corralled one of the 8½ points the Americans needed that day in a 14½ to 13½ thriller at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts.

This is balanced against losses in 1997, 2002, ’04,

’06, 2010 and ’12. Only twice, in 2006 and ’12, did he finish the week with a winning record. Overall, his career record is 13-17-3.

Further complicating Woods’ value to the U.S. cause is its victory in 2008 at Valhalla Golf Club, near Louisville, Kentucky. The host Americans, led by their enthusiastic captain, Paul Azinger, mounted an inspired performance against a European squad that was heavily favored. Woods wasn’t on that team that won 16 ½ to 11 ½. He had undergone knee surgery in June after gutting out a playoff victory over Rocco Mediate in the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines Golf Club in La Jolla, California, despite a damaged knee and stress fracture in his left leg.

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Coming in 2019

by Tiger Woods

Vice-captains Furyk and Woods celebrate victory in the 2016 Ryder Cup at Hazeltine National

This sets up a quandary for U.S. captain Jim Furyk ahead of the 42nd Ryder Cup in Paris this fall. Unable to play competitively for two years because of prolonged back problems, Woods finally got a taste of victory again in the 2016 matches at Hazeltine National Golf Club—as a vice captain under Davis Love III. Furyk retained him as a vice captain for the proceedings in Paris and the PGA Tour decided that Woods is at a stage of his career where serving as Presidents Cup captain for the US in 2019 in Australia makes sense.

Woods accepted the post after also being an assistant captain to Steve Stricker in a runaway victory in the Presidents Cup at Liberty National in New York.

But only after confirming that he would be permitted to act as a playing captain. This sets up the very real chance that later this year he might become the first playing assistant captain in Ryder Cup history.

“Of course I want to play,” Woods, 42, said without hesitation when asked if competing in the Ryder Cup was among his goals for his first full season since 2015. “I want to be there as a player. I haven’t played [in the Ryder Cup] in a while. I have a lot of work to do between now and then to

be part of the team as a player.”

Indeed, he has a lot of work to do in order to be among the top eight American players to earn automatic berths on the U.S. squad. But should he continue to exhibit the level of golf he has shown in the first half of the season—as much a surprise to him as to anyone following the game—Furyk said he is of a mind to consider Woods for one of his four wild-card picks.

“Sure, he’s on the radar. I don’t look at the past or precedents or whatever,” said the U.S. captain, who at 48 made a run at a second U.S. Open title in the 118th championship at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club in Southampton, N.Y. “My job is to fill out the team with the 12 best guys.

Guys that are compatible with the players already on the team. Filling in the gaps, whether that’s a guy who can hit a lot of fairways, add some power, make some putts. Leadership in the team room. Try to round out the team and add the four best players we can.

“I’ve seen enough to know that [Tiger] is definitely trending in a direction that might be helpful to the team as a player. But right now he is an assistant captain and that’s great for us too.”

Woods got out of the gate with surprising steam this year after missing most of the last two seasons. He started with a tie for 23rd at the Farmers Insurance Open and in March he had consecutive top-5 finishes at the Valspar Championship, where he finished joint second, and at the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard, where he tied for fifth.

At the Memorial Tournament in suburban Columbus, Ohio, Woods worked his way into contention but then failed to wrangle a disobedient putter and ended up tied for 23rd at Muirfield Village, a venue where he has won five times. The performance, though disappointing to him, was his sixth top 25 in just nine starts in his comeback from spinal fusion surgery.

“Last year in September I didn’t know. I just didn’t know if I would ever be able to do it again,” he mused. “I was just hoping to be able to walk again without hurting, be able to sit down again without having this burning pain down the leg. That went away, but I didn’t know if I would

“Tiger is trending in a direction that might be helpful to the team as a player” - Jim Furyk

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be able to play golf out here. My surgeon said, yeah, I would be able to play golf and play weekend rounds with my buddies, but whether or not I could play on tour would be another story, and that was a big leap. To somehow be out here now doing it again, it’s a blessing.”

Quite incredibly, given his relative lack of real tournament time, expectations on Woods have been rather high in the major championships. Granted, he does own 14 of them. He was installed as one of the favorites for the Masters and certainly was considered a threat at Shinnecock Hills, even though he hadn’t played in a U.S. Open for three years and had won the last of his three titles 10 years earlier in that playoff win over Mediate at Torrey Pines.

In the former, he ended up tied for 23rd place at 1-over 289, not exactly the kind of high-level golf he hoped to produce. In the latter, he started with a triple bogey on the first hole of the championship to set the tone for his short stay on Long Island. He went on to open with an 8-over-par 78, his second-highest score in 20 U.S. Open appearances.

He blamed his continued struggles with the putter for his fifth straight start without being in serious contention (and suffering his second cut of the season) since his spirited run at Bay Hill in Orlando, where he has won eight times.

Though Furyk outplayed both Woods and his other potential veteran stalwart, Phil Mickelson, at Shinnecock Hills, he was not inclined to change his mind about where Woods might fit into the picture. Which is to say, for now, that he will be given an opportunity to prove his value to the squad should he not be among the top eight qualifiers

on the U.S. points list.

“There’s still a lot of golf to be played,” Furyk said.

“There’s no reason to talk about anyone right now. We have plenty of options [for picks].”

“I think he’s playing good enough to be part of that team,” said Jason Dufner, the former PGA champion. “I’ve always contested with the Ryder Cup that you could take any of those guys that are in the top-25 or so, plug them in and probably have the same results. If he keeps trending the way he is and having good finishes, I think he should be in the mix. He’s got pretty good history.

“Obviously, you would love to have him be a part of that event for a lot of different reasons, but I think if he’s in the top-25 as far as the points go, I think that’s a realistic opportunity for him to play. He can contribute to the team and be part of it. And he brings some experience that they probably need. We got a lot of young guys that are on that team and I think a little bit of that mix will help out the team.”

Every year the Memorial is the event on the PGA Tour schedule where prospective Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup players get fitted for their uniforms, and this year was no different as U.S. hopefuls and assistant captains convened in the Bobby Jones Villa. Only one man there, however, had to be fitted twice. That was Woods.

“I’m going to be part of it either way, since I am an assistant captain,” Woods said. “And I know that the players and the captains wear different outfits as part of the Ryder Cup, and I would really like to screw that up.”

Tiger started with a triple bogey on the first hole of the U.S. Open to set the tone for his short stay on Long Island Woods has only played on one winning Ryder Cup team, at Brookline in 1999

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National pride, tourism revenue, personal egos and self-interest ensure there is never a dull moment when the European Tour needs to select a Ryder Cup venue. Andy Farrell, former golf correspondent for The Independent newspaper in the UK, has followed the soap operas via multiple transport modes

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Novo Sancti Petri had a few drawbacks as a potential Ryder Cup venue. Getting there, firstly. It would have been quicker to get to the Australian Masters than the 1993 Turespana Masters. Almost 24 hours after leaving the office in London on the Docklands Light Railway—via a flight to Malaga and then overnight trains to Cadiz, doglegging up to Cordoba in the process—I arrived just in time to see Seve Ballesteros miss the cut and discover the new airport at Jerez was less than an hour away.

This was the first tournament staged on a golf course designed by Seve Ballesteros to separate “the men from the not so manly”. The man turned out to be Andy Oldcorn, defeating a field that included Bernhard Langer, Jose Maria Olazabal, Colin Montgomerie and Darren Clarke.

The term field is used advisedly. The course was flat, long—the shortest par-three was 197 yards back in the days when that was a four-iron—and had bunkers as big as greens. Gale-force winds off the sea battered the golfers.

There was virtually no gallery.

Nevertheless, two years after opening, club president Salvador Moll announced he wanted to host the 1997 Ryder Cup. “I have spoken to Seve and he has been encouraging,” Moll said. For the first time, the match was leaving its British base and heading to Spain in honor of Ballesteros.

Valderrama, owned by Bolivian tin billionaire Jaime Ortiz-Patino and home of the season-ending Volvo Masters, was the likely venue. So he was taking on Patino, Moll was asked? “No, Señor Patino is fighting me.”

In fact it was Seve who was fighting anyone and everyone. “It seems incredible to me that these people who have done nothing for golf are arm-wrestling me when it is I who brought the Ryder Cup here,” he fumed. His ire was mainly directed at the Royal Spanish Golf Federation which he called a “cancer” and more of a “social circle”. The president, Emma Villacieros, retorted: “We believe Seve is the person who has contributed most to the development of golf in Spain. That does not mean he says logical things.”

Under the singular captaincy of Seve Ballesteros, Europe won the 1997 Ryder Cup at Valderrama in Spain

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Kenna Campbell Folds of Honor Recipient Daughter of Major Shawn Campbell

When you participate in Patriot Golf Day, this is who you are playing for.

If they hadn’t answered the call to serve, volunteered to lay down their lives and leave everything they love behind to defend a nation they believe in, we wouldn’t be granted the privilege to enjoy the life we live each and every day. In honor of their sacrifice, will you pick up your clubs and dedicate one day, one game, to say ‘Thank you’ to our nations heroes? Participate in Patriot Golf Day. Learn more and get involved at patriotgolfday.org

At first Ballesteros had wanted the match to be staged in the capital but once he was denied planning permission for a new course in Madrid, he insisted the Ryder Cup should be played in the tourist areas of the south. He had helped redesign the controversial par-five 17th at Valderrama but then supported Novo Sancti Petri’s bid, even after being invited onto the six-man Ryder Cup Committee.

Yet a month prior to the crucial vote in 1994, Seve resigned his position, having failed to sway the committee to his desired outcome.

Other venues in the running were La Moraleja in Madrid, where Bing Crosby collapsed and died walking off the 18th, La Manga, El Saler, Royal Seville and Montecastillo in Jerez, which was designed by Jack Nicklaus. In a novel pitch, Nicklaus said: “Europe won on the course I built at Muirfield Village, so perhaps they should choose the one I have built here.”

Valderrama inevitably got the nod as the “best course in Spain”, according to Ken Schofield, executive director of the European Tour. It was certainly the best-conditioned

K Club owner Michael Smurfit had sneaked over the wall of the estate as a child to steal apples

course this side of Augusta National and, thank goodness, as it coped with the Ryder Cup week’s torrential rain to provide a happy ending on Sunday evening for Europe, Spain and Captain Seve.

Once the European Tour took over as managing partner for the Ryder Cup in Europe, supporting regular tour events became crucial for hosting the transatlantic match. The Smurfit European Open ran for 13 years from 1995 at the K Club, owned by Dr Michael Smurfit, who had sneaked over the wall of the estate as a child to steal apples. He returned to turn it into a luxury hotel with two golf courses, both designed by Arnold Palmer. The Ryder Cup Course provided a fitting stage for the event in 2006, memorable for the Guinness flowing as freely as the tears for widower Darren Clarke.

Terry Matthews, who made his money from electronics in Canada, returned to Wales to buy the nursing home in which he was born on the outskirts of Newport. He turned it into a boutique hotel, then built a huger hotel nearby and added several golf courses. He staged the Wales Open for a decade and a half at Celtic Manor and with local government chipping in to fund events on the Seniors tour and the LET, Celtic Manor claimed the 2010 Ryder Cup, even though it meant rebuilding most of what became the TwentyTen course. Its positioning on the banks of the River Usk meant it could not cope with more torrential Ryder Cup rain and the match went into an extra Monday but what a finish it provided, with Graeme McDowell saving the day for Europe, and his captain Colin Montgomerie, in the anchor match.

Seve Ballesteros cradles the Ryder Cup at Valderrama in 1997 [left] and the club’s former owner, the late Jaime Ortiz-Patino [above]

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Photo: Steve Carr © Le Golf National

Scotland had missed out in the bidding for 2010 so, to save face, were awarded the 2014 match that eventually was played at Gleneagles. Part of their bid was to promise that all under-nines in the country would learn to play golf, a policy that is yet to bear fruit. After back-to-back UK matches in 2010 and 2014, the Continent was promised the 2018 edition and this year’s match will be played at Le Golf National in Paris.

The home of the French Open since the early 1990s bar a couple of years, the Albatross course has long been considered an ideal potential Ryder Cup venue with its spectator mounding and dramatic, water-strewn closing stretch. It is also close to Versailles and on the outskirts of one of the world’s greatest cities.

More of a surprise was Marco Simone, near Rome, emerging as the venue for the 2022 match. The Bid Evaluation Committee also scrutinized venues in Germany, Spain and Austria on an exhaustive range of technical details from the site itself to the development of the game in each country and backing at governmental level.

“The Italian bid was consistently strong and impressive across the board in terms of infrastructure, commercial structure and government support,” said Ryder Cup director Richard Hills. It did not hurt that funds were found to quadruple the purse for the Italian Open to make it a $7m Rolex Series event.

Across the Atlantic, where the PGA of America does not have to juggle competing nations and can deal directly with venues, the roster is full up to 2032 with the likes of Whistling Straits, Bethpage Black, Hazeltine National— where the USA regained the Cup most recently—and Olympic Club to come.

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Le Golf National in Paris [right], and Rome’s Marco Simone [below]

It was a surprise when Marco Simone near Rome emerged as the venue for 2022 Europe is next looking for the 2026 hosts. Germany, backed by BMW, itself an important supporter of the European Tour, was disappointed to miss out for 2022.

Sweden deserves a turn but they have been reluctant to bid recently with the date of the match pushed back to late September and even into October—meaning weather and daylight are issues in Scandinavia.

Adare Manor in Ireland has expressed an interest in 2026, while there have long been rumors of a purpose-built venue near the M6 in Lancashire—a notion boosted by the record crowds for The Open at Royal Birkdale last summer.

And Spain is keen to finally bring the Ryder Cup to Madrid.

The journey to staging the game’s biggest contest is long and winding—and expensive—but more than worth it as Paris will discover later this year.

The Great Dunes of Scotland

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“A walk about Paris will provide lessons in history, beauty and the point of life.� So wrote Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States and author of the Declaration of Independence. Few truer words have been penned about the attraction the capital city of France holds for generations of Americans.

Ernest Hemingway, Henry Miller, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein and Man Ray are among many cultural giants who came here to find (or lose) themselves, and millions of compatriots have followed in their footsteps, as we have done

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I

Insouciance… that’s the word! Definition (with poetic license): A carefree attitude that owes much to culture, heritage, style and fashion. This, surely, is Paris in a nutshell.

The city that attracts more tourists than any other in the world is both a cornerstone of medieval history and the cutting edge of modernism.

Hemingway lived here, ditto Picasso and Chopin.

Artists like Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec certainly made an Impression while Louis Vuitton, Thierry Hermès, Christian Dior and Coco Chanel helped fashion the future.

Paris has seen revolutions galore and even more Michelin-starred chefs, since the Belle Époque spread its grandeur and largesse across the four decades that preceded World War One. And yet, it’s the light touch that really counts, the pretense that nothing matters when in fact everything is riding on the slightest shrug of the shoulders or the merest twitch of a moustache.

Whether Paris has a sense of humor is open to question; it does, however, have more punch lines than any other city in the world.

The Arc de Triomphe and [above] a city view from the top of the Arc

The pretense that nothing matters, when everything is riding on the slightest shrug of the shoulders...

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For those seeking hauteur, let’s start with the world’s most famous wrought-iron edifice—the Eiffel Tower. Gazing watchfully over the left (south) bank of the River Seine and the Champs de Mars, one of Paris’ many classical parks, it was built to a height of 1,063 feet by the eponymous engineer Gustav Eiffel as an exhibit for the 1889 World Fair. For the next 41 years, until completion of the Chrysler Building in New York City, it was the world’s tallest man-made structure. Visible from most vantage points across the city, especially at night when its girders sparkle hourly like fairy lights on a Christmas tree, it seems hard to believe the original plan was to dismantle it in 1909.

Ultimately, that proved impossible and its permanence is underlined by its standing today as a social center as well as a tourist attraction. Not only is it home to a panoramic champagne bar, but also a popular brasserie and the Jules Verne restaurant.

Running the Eiffel Tower close as the city’s iconic skyline image is the Arc de Triomphe war memorial, at the apex of the Champs-Elysées avenue that begins a couple of miles to the east at the Louvre Museum on the right (north) bank, before marching through the Place de la Concorde, the city’s largest square. This is a journey televised worldwide each year on the last Sunday in July when the Tour de France cycle race reaches its ceremonial conclusion.

There can be no more fitting climax to this sporting ordeal than the Arc de Triomphe which took more than 30 years to complete having been commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte to mark his 1806 victory at the Battle of Austerlitz.

Today it predominantly commemorates the fallen of two World Wars with the symbolic grave of the Unknown Soldier located below the center of the arch. At the heart of a configuration of 12 radiating avenues, it also provides a window on Parisian driving techniques. The unmarked traffic island creates anarchy—have an accident here and it’s automatically 50/50 on the insurance claim, no matter who’s at fault!

Those pursuing other architectural gems could easily spend their entire time ticking off the plethora of churches and museums with which the city abounds. At the top of Montmartre, a hill in the northern part of Paris much beloved by pavement artists, coffee drinkers, time-warp hippies and, incongruously, night-clubbers, stands the magnificent Sacré-Cœur, a Roman Catholic church topped off by a gleaming white basilica and the largest bell in

France, the 19-tonne La Savoyarde. Begun in 1875 after the Franco-Prussian War and the chaos of the Paris Commune, the Sacré-Cœur was seen as a symbol of the former struggle between the conservative old guard and secular, republican radicals. Finally consecrated in 1919, it certainly provides a stark contrast to the bohemian lifestyle that surrounds it.

The city’s dominant religious establishment, though, is the Notre-Dame, a Catholic cathedral completed in 1345 and brought vividly to life by Quasimodo, the central character in Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. Built on the Île de la Cité, an island in the middle of the Seine, to its north is the Pompidou Centre, a modern-day cultural complex named after former president Georges Pompidou, and to its south the Latin Quarter and Sorbonne University. The views from Notre-Dame’s 220ft towers are especially evocative on a cloudy day when the skies spin a moody hue across the Seine.

One other church that cries out for attention is SainteChapelle, also on the Île de la Cité, but it is best saved for a sunny day, when Paris’ oldest stained glass is at its dazzling best. This exquisite Gothic monument was completed in 1248, just six years after the first stone was laid.

Museums are everywhere in Paris but few feel like mausoleums. Leading the way is the Louvre, home to two of the art world’s greatest treasures—Leonardo da Vinci’s enigmatic Mona Lisa portrait and the armless Greek marble Venus de Milo sculpture—along with a security system to match.

Montmartre [left] and Notre-Dame

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Across the river, on the left bank, the old Orsay train station was converted into the Musée D’Orsay in 1986 to house Impressionist paintings and Art Nouveau baubles.

The best vantage point here is the café behind the museum’s giant transparent clock.

Meanwhile, The Thinker can be found in contemplation just south in the gardens of the Musée Rodin while other “culture vulture” ports of call include the Opera Garnier, Grand Palais and Petit Palais on the right bank, near the Place de la Concorde and its defining Luxor Obelisk, and the Hôtel des Invalides, built in the 1670s by Louis XIV to house 4,000 disabled war veterans. A mob broke into this building on July 14, 1789 and seized 32,000 rifles before heading to the prison at Bastille and triggering the start of the French Revolution.

The serious sites aside, Paris is universally recognized as a gastronomic, sporting and shopaholic paradise, and, of course, a bastion (if not Bastille) of light entertainment.

Where else would the can-can ladies of the Folies Bergère and the warblers of the windmill-coiffed Moulin Rouge rub shoulders harmoniously with the world’s pre-eminent opera singers and orchestras? Indeed, all work and no play really would make Jacques a dull garçon, and Paris certainly isn’t in the business of being dull.

Sport is one business of special interest to Parisians as they await the 2024 Olympic Games and all of the spin-off legacy benefits. Between now and then, though, the Stade de France in the north of the city will continue to host soccer and rugby union internationals and Roland Garros in the west the annual grand slam tennis championship.

Golf National, venue for the 2018 Ryder Cup, will remain the home of the French Open while Longchamp in the Bois de Boulogne park, also to the west, hosts one of the world’s greatest horse races—the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.

For visitors keen to explore beyond the city limits, a short drive west brings you to the palace at Versailles, where Louis XIV moved his court in 1682, while, for visitors with kids, a similar journey to the east leads to EuroDisney.

Shopping in Paris these days goes beyond couturelined boulevards, Printemps high-street stores, produce markets and centers like the Montparnasse tower in the south (the city’s second tallest building) and the Galeries Lafayette on Boulevard Haussmann. Much of the good stuff is to be found in emerging shopping neighborhoods like Marais, Rue du Château d’Eau in the 10th arrondissement (boroughs are called arrondissements in Paris), and Les Halles in the center.

Parisian dining may have become more casual in the last few years, but dinner for two at Michelin-starred spots like Le Clarence, Dame de Pic and Restaurant Sylvestre at Hotel Thoumieux will still set you back at least $400. More sensible is a table for lunch when the same establishments rarely stretch their charge beyond $150.

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Hôtel des Invalides [top]; Château de Versailles [top-right]; Rue Saint Antoine à Paris in the Marais neighborhood [right]

Other culinary attractions include Roger la Grenouille on the Rue des Grands Augustins where frogs can be seen in the window, Fromagerie Quatrehomme which is famous for its goat’s cheese, the Ladurée patisserie just off the Champs d’Elysées, and Alain Ducasse’s chocolate factory near Bastille.

The chicest watering hole has to be the Bar Hemingway behind the Hotel Ritz while those with literary pretensions can lose themselves for a few hours in La Belle Hortense in Marais where the walls are lined with bottles, books

For artists or art-lovers, authors or readers, there is a Paris for all

and manuscripts. Les Deux Magots on the Boulevard St. Germain, a beloved haunt of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, is also recommended.

For those of a more morbid disposition, Paris is choc-a-bloc with cemeteries, though the Catacombs, laid out some 60ft below the south of the city to stop disease spreading, are by far the spookiest attraction. Those who

embark on this chilling stroll along miles of tunnels are warned not to steal any of the bones: Yorrick might look good on the mantelpiece but guards check your bags on the way out.

But it’s not just Parisians who are buried in Paris.

Oscar Wilde once wrote: “When good Americans die, they go to Paris.” That might not apply to every good American, but Jim Morrison, the lead singer of The Doors, is buried at Père Lachaise cemetery in the northeast and his grave has been a shrine for mourning rock fans since his demise in 1971.

Paris is a city that resonates with ghosts and memories, transcends the ages and sets the world’s cultural agenda. As Humphrey Bogart said to Ingrid Bergman, with grim insouciance, at the end of Casablanca: “We’ll always have Paris.”

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No “I” in TEAM You don’t have to be a Ryder Cup golfer to play team golf on the finest courses. Here are some of the world’s stand-out venues for team golf, whether you are playing a for a gold cup or wooden spoon, and some critical advice before you go

T

he best teams are the ones in which individual parts are encouraged to let their natural strengths flourish. It is obvious yet easier said than done. And on a team golf vacation, the off-course strengths are probably more important than driving accuracy, GIR or putts per round.

For instance, there might be one player in particular who is great at pairing wines with meals. If that is the case, don’t clip their wings, let them fly, and if there are two wine lovers on the team, give them separate nights, whatever you do. Just like you need to take care mixing wines, combining wine connoisseurs can quickly become corked.

And hopefully, if you are self-catering in a team house with an outside area in a pleasant climate, the team will have at least one member who can take charge of the grill [and if you are looking for inspiration on that front, look no further than our feature on pages 130-132]. And again, manage your personalities, don’t push two golf balls into one pocket; let there be one head chef at a time and give him or her

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unhindered responsibility.

And if you want to make a checklist that’s fine, attention to detail is all-important. Senior responsibilities include cigar selection, cocktail making, management of ice stocks and preparation of the evening playlist, and this one can be a bit delicate. There is usually the guy who thinks he has the superior playlist when in fact it is a compilation made very much to his own taste and lacking appeal to an audience broader than one person. He thinks his list is so good that everyone else is inferior if they don’t love and admire his discernment. Make this guy the wood gatherer for the fire pit and give the passcode for the Bluetooth speakers to someone who can, to borrow the words of European Ryder Cup skipper Thomas Bjorn earlier in this issue, “Leave your ego at the door”.

There are obvious appointments: an accountant or business owner for team finances (at the bar, mainly), while airline pilots or the military can usually handle day-to-day scheduling without missing your slot for a $1,000 four-ball.

CHAMPIONS RETREAT GEORGIA Just to the northeast of Augusta, where the state line between Georgia and South Carolina follows the meandering Savannah River above the town of Evans, Champions Retreat is a private golf club hidden among Georgia’s famous pine forests. Champions Retreat is the only club in the world that can offer three nines of golf designed by Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player. The Big Three collaborated to create 27 holes that blend unobtrusively into this riverside wilderness. Palmer designed the Island Nine, Nicklaus created the Bluff Nine and Player masterminded the Creek Nine.

The luxury cottages at Champions Retreat are available to rent or purchase and vary in size between three and six bedrooms. Rustic and woven into the landscape, the Arcadian cottages are complete with all modern amenities and finished to the highest standards with hardwood floors, vaulted ceilings and panoramic windows.

With its Grille House, Sports Bar, night-lit putting green and driving range, Champions Retreat provides the complete package to fan the flames of team rivalry.

Championsretreat.net

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TREVOSE GOLF & COUNTRY CLUB ENGLAND

This classic links, designed by Harry Colt, opened in 1925 and occupies a landscape of rare, natural, peaceful beauty, halfway down the northern shoreline of Cornwall, in England’s southwest. It rolls downhill from the clubhouse towards towering sand dunes that rise and dip before flattening into Constantine Bay. At the north end of the bay, the rocky Trevose Head juts out into the Atlantic Ocean, and from there the next, distant stop is North America.

Trevose offers self-catering accommodation in a broad variety of shapes and sizes, but the pick of the lodgings are seven Fairway Lodges, the result of a $2.5 million project completed in 2010. These strikingly innovative ‘eco-lodges’ are nestled unobtrusively beneath the 18th hole and just 100 yards from the clubhouse. Partially subterranean, the beautifully appointed, three-bedroom lodges were built with local materials and feature ground-source heating and rainwater harvesting for golf course irrigation, while ‘green’ turfed roof space boosts biodiversity.

And therein lies the secret to success at Trevose Golf and Country Club, seamlessly combining the old with the new, an age-old links golf course with the best of 21st century hospitality.

Trevose-gc.co.uk

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Photo: J. Lovett

ERIN HILLS WISCONSIN The U.S. Open’s first visit to Wisconsin last summer took it to Erin Hills, a modern course with a traditional feel— having opened in 2006—and which was built with the specific ambition of hosting major championships. The design saw collaboration between Michael Hurdzan, Dana Fry and Ron Whitten, and the trio made spectacular use of this 652-acre expanse of Kettle Moraine post-glacial terrain, which is hemmed in by wetlands and the Ashippun River, 35 miles to the northwest of Milwaukee. What is more, Erin Hills is refreshingly a walking-only golf course, partly to protect the fine fescue, partly to strip the game back to the way it was originally played.

The club offers five beautifully appointed, fourbedroom, Irish-style cottages, complete with antique furnishings yet also modern technology. Golfers need to book early, with September particularly popular, and bear in mind the course closes for winter at the end of October.

Erinhills.com

MACHRAHANISH DUNES SCOTL AND Machrihanish Dunes was designed by David McLay Kidd and was the first golf course built on a Site of Special Scientific Interest in Scotland in over 100 years, opening in 2009.

Yet “built” was not the operative word. The conditions of creating the course were that no heavy equipment could be used on this precious duneland whatsoever, so McLay Kidd reverted to an “Old Tom Morris” style of design. He located 18 natural greens, found 18 areas for tees and that was about it.

Machrihanish Dunes literally feels and plays as promised, just with some mown areas between the tees and greens to serve as fairways. And true to the old designs of Morris, there are plenty of blind tee shots over dips and dunes; strikes of the golf ball for which the golfer just hopes are fairway bound as they fly over the crest of a dune and out of sight.

The nearby Ugadale Hotel was originally built in 1871. A small hotel with 22 beautiful rooms, its Kintyre Club restaurant offers a steakhouse theme, while its Old Clubhouse Pub is also excellent. Self-catering cottages are also available in “The Village”, just a few steps from the pub.

Machrihanishdunes.com

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Fasano Punta del Este

Hotel Fasano in Punta del Este has a nine hole golf course designed by the legendary golf player Arnold Palmer.

www.fasano.com.br

LATROBE COUNTRY CLUB P E N N S Y LVA N I A

Latrobe Country Club in western Pennsylvania is the golf course Arnold Palmer’s father Deacon built, it is where Palmer grew up and it remained home base throughout his life. Eventually, in 1971, Palmer bought the club too and continued to invest in improving and updating the golf course and facilities for the rest of his life, whether it made economic sense to do so or not (Deacon thought his son was crazy to buy the club in the first place and tried to talk him out of it). The result is not only one of the finest country clubs in western Pa., but also a fantastic, home-spun tribute to Palmer, his family and his hometown.

Golfers can stay in one of four guest homes at the club—Deacon’s View, the Barn House, Winne’s Retreat and the Spring House. These unpretentious homes are filled with Palmer memorabilia and guests can enjoy full club membership benefits during their stay. latrobecountryclub.com

TRUMP INTERNATIONAL GOLF LINKS SCOTL AND

In the small town of Balmedie, just outside Aberdeen on Scotland’s north-east coast, Trump International Golf Links is another in a line of excellent new links courses in Scotland to have been created by American developers over the past 25 years.

Stretching out to a mighty 7,400-yards, this par-72 championship golf course was designed by Martin Hawtree (the man who also renovated the historic links at Trump Turnberry, on the opposite Scottish shoreline, with sheer brilliance) and is both spectacular to look at and offers a fantastic golfing test.

Completing what might be Scotland’s most luxurious golf experience would be to take over the estate’s MacLeod House. The 16-bedroom baronial mansion has everything you could want for a traditional Scottish shin-dig, with secret staircases, traditional log fireplaces, bathrooms in Italian marble and lavish guestrooms.

Trumpgolfscotland.com

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VILLA PYRANEES S PA I N It’s a long way from home but this might just be the finest golf villa we have ever seen. Nestled deep in the heart of Cerdanya, in the Catalan Pyrenees, in the north-eastern corner of Spain, Villa Pyranees is the prime property surrounding the exceptional Real Club de Golf Cerdanya.

A one-hour drive from Barcelona, the incredible 10-bedroom villa was designed by renowned Spanish architect Don Antonio Bonet Castellana in 1960, with renovations and modernizations made discreetly over the past decade that ensure the villa maintains the highest standards of contemporary hospitality and comfort, in keeping with its original intentions.

Spacious reception areas inside and outdoors, at ground level and on the second-floor veranda, ensure that even when the full complement of 20 guests are staying, luxury comfort is never compromised. The villa features an expansive outdoor swimming pool and garden and games room and full service is available as required.

Sarm.es/en/villa-pyrenees

BANDON DUNES OREGON

Patrick Drickey / stonehousegolf.com

Bandon Dunes on the Oregon coast boasts some of the finest links-style golf in the United States, and while the accommodation is unfussy and perhaps plain in comparison to some of the alternatives amid this feature, here it is unapologetically all about the golf. The resort’s four-bedroom Grove cottages are set back with subtle consideration for their stunning woodland surroundings and are designed with striking floor-to-ceiling corner windows to grant residents fantastic views and a strong connection to the surroundings. Each cottage is equipped with an indoor fireplace and outdoor patio, and they are conveniently positioned for golf and the resort’s central Lodge and its range of bars and restaurants.

Rolling through the sand dunes of the Pacific coast, Bandon Dunes offers four 18-hole golf courses of the absolute highest caliber. Inspired by the sport’s original Scottish links, Bandon Dunes was the first golf club in America to create an authentic links golf experience, while embracing the natural attributes of this remarkable stretch of coastline. Other clubs and resorts have followed suit but Bandon Dunes remains one of the essential golf destinations to play in the world.

Bandondunesgolf.com

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DISMAL RIVER NEBRASKA

Despite a perturbing name, like a signpost that sends you away in the opposite direction, this is actually a place of sublime beauty in western Nebraska, where isolated and proud runs the Dismal River. Beavers, deer, turkey, coyotes and rattlesnakes have long been found asides its meandering banks, but the latest arrival comes in the form of a Golden Bear.

The Jack Nicklaus signature Dismal River Golf Club is superb, the amenities rustic-luxurious, and the service first class. Situated near Mullen—population 551—when Nicklaus first set eyes on the land having driven the 17 single-lane miles to get there he proclaimed: “The experience arriving at the Dismal River site was like stepping back in time and seeing what the dunes of Northeast Scotland must have looked like a hundred years ago. In every direction I looked I saw great golf holes.” And today great golf holes there are.

In construction only one hole was touched by a bulldozer, with the sand hills giving lie to natural bunkering. Despite being about as far from the ocean as it’s possible to get, the whole feel is one of classic links—golf in windswept tune with nature.

The cabins blend into the wilderness and are built from rough-hewn timber and with up to four guestrooms in each, yet they are also equipped with smart TVs, wifi and all the contemporary amenities you might need. Each cabin is complemented by an outdoor terrace, fire pit, swimming pool and hot tub. dismalriver.com

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FASANO LAS PIEDRAS U R U G U AY

Fasano Las Piedras is probably the finest residential golf venue in Uruguay. Located 15 minutes from the beaches of south-eastern resort town Punta Del Este, Fasano Las Piedras offers calm and tranquillity away from what is a usually hectic pace in Punta Del Este itself, particularly during the winter peak season. Fasano Las Piedras is a retreat that feels as if it is cut adrift, far into the depths of the Uruguayan Interior.

Complementing a beautiful Arnold Palmer designed golf course—where the original 11 holes are being extended to 18 this year—is one of the finest hotels in Uruguay, at which accommodations include state-of-the-art cabanas.

The contemporary designs of the full-serviced cabanas are characterized by square angles and clean edges, combining beautifully hand-crafted woodwork with cooling stone walls. Each cabana has its own private, fully furnished patio, surrounded by views over the surrounding lakes and woodlands, offering a genuine sense of escape.

Thad Layton of the Arnold Palmer Design Company tells us the golf course is “by far the most natural we’ve ever built. The only shaping done was the tees, greens and bunkers”.

Laspiedrasfasano.com

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great wine

is rooted in a healthy vineyard To make great wines successfully, we must create a self-sustaining, self-nourishing ecosystem in the vineyard.

Our commitment runs so deep that we founded Eco Terreno Wines to bottle that vision of a healthy, natural future.

Four years ago, we set out on a journey and transformed our farming to support our commitment. The process took hard work and new approaches, and this year we were rewarded with Demeter USA Biodynamic and Stellar Organic Certifications for Eco Terreno Wines’ estate vineyards.

Biodynamic viticulture is a step beyond sustainable and organic, to a system of regenerative farming where the influences of the seasons, the dynamic interplay of life above and below ground, and the use of self-made composts, compost teas, and cover crops coalesces in the grapes grown.

Our continuing goal is to be good stewards of our lands and express the unique flavors derived from the exceptional Alexander Valley terroir through our wines.

Learn more at www.ecoterreno.com

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IT COVERS ONLY A FEW SQUARE MILES, THE POPULATION HAS NEVER BEEN GREATER THAN 12,000 AND IT’S NOT EXACTLY ON THE MAIN DRAG ; OFF THE HIGHWAY AN HOUR OR SO EAST OF PITTSBURGH.AND YET IN THE SPAN OF JUST OVER A YEAR, LATROBE, PENNSYLVANIA, PRODUCED TWO INDIVIDUALS WHO QUALIFY AS “LEGENDS.” IT’S AN EXTRAORDINARY THING

F

red Rogers (“Mister Rogers” to his many millions of fans) was born here in February of 1928, and all-around legend Arnold Palmer was just behind him, born in September of 1929.

Rogers was a year ahead of Palmer at Greater Latrobe High School, Rogers’ home on Weldon St. was less than 5 miles from Palmer’s near Latrobe Country Club in Youngstown, and they would have visited the same places, known the same people, watched the same fireworks each Fourth of July and so on.

Their achievements in their respective fields—television in Rogers’ case, and [primarily] golf in Palmer’s—cannot be overstated, but their true greatness came in the manner in which they manifested success: that is, with humility, affability, determination and empathy. These were good men, they were remarkable men, and in some ways they were more alike than their jobs would suggest, impacting their country and the world at large with a nearly incomprehensible strength of effect, which started in Latrobe. “‘Is it something in the water…?’ That’s an interesting question,” says Chris Bova, laughing. The Environmental Control Supervisor for the Latrobe Municipal Authority says he can’t say for sure whether Latrobe’s [very] clean drinking water, which he’s charged with overseeing, had anything to do with both men’s greatness, but he’s not ruling it out.

“The chemistry of the water, the levels being what they are, I don’t think any of those things in particular might have led to the birth of two such exceptional individuals. Maybe the lack of things? The water is very clean.”

Latrobe’s Municipal Authority didn’t come into existence until 1942, so who knows; but it’s far more likely, Bova admits, that the men’s character and drive were more influenced by their family-oriented hometown and its shared traditional values.

“I think the common element for both of them is that Latrobe is very much a neighborhood,” says Douglas Nowicki, Archabbot of Saint Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, who knew both men well. Nowicki, who has a doctorate in child psychology, worked with Rogers for 24 years. He also worked with Palmer’s first wife, Winnie, when she joined the board of Saint Vincent and he became good friends with the Palmers. Also, the Archabbot was with Palmer and Rogers shortly before each died.

“I think a neighborhood, both for Fred and for Arnold, had fundamental values and I don’t think it’s by accident that Fred Rogers ended up with one of the major themes of his program as ‘Won’t you be my neighbor?’”

A key lyric in the theme song to the Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood children’s show, that line is also the title of a well-received documentary on Rogers that was released this June. Nowicki explains that the sentiment goes deeper than it might seem.

“A neighbor, you know, was very much a part of their upbringing, their characters,” he says. “With Palmer, really, everybody felt that he was their neighbor. He was humble and open to everyone, so he didn’t make distinctions with regard to religion or race or age or gender; those were never categories that he ever thought in. For him the question was

‘Is it something in the water?’

That’s an interesting question...

Maybe the lack of things; it’s very clean

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not ‘Who is my neighbor?’ The question I think for both him and Fred was, ‘How will I be a neighbor?’ ‘Neighbor’ wasn’t a geographic location for either of them. It was more a moral understanding they experienced.”

Just one example: In 1968—just months after Martin Luther King was killed—Rogers cast African American opera singer Francois Clemmons as a police officer on his show, establishing Clemmons as the first African American to have a recurring role on a children’s TV show. A few months later, during the country’s sometimes violent conversations on desegregation, which involved clashes with regard to sharing public swimming pools, Rogers filmed an episode in which he talks about how hot the day is and how nice it would be to put his feet in some cold water.

He fills a small plastic pool with water, removes his socks and shoes, rolls up his pants and is enjoying the pool when “Officer” Clemmons comes by. Rogers invites Clemmons to join him, Clemmons rolls up his uniform pants, kicks off his shoes and socks, and there, suddenly, brown and white feet are together in the pool. No big deal today, it was a dramatic and controversial image at the time.

“In our world today we tend to categorize people in terms of religion, race, age, gender,” says Nowicki. “We tend to differentiate and to discriminate often on the basis of those, but Fred and Arnold both felt ‘forget all that, just be a neighbor.’ And I think each was able to call forth that unique particular response from whomever they had come in contact with because they embraced everyone as a neighbor.”

There’s not a lot of evidence that Rogers and Palmer spent much time together, but in a town as small as

Latrobe it was inevitable that their lives overlapped. Both were involved in school activities, Nowicki says: Rogers was the editor of the yearbook, Palmer obviously was into sports. Palmer’s father, who was his golf coach, also gave golf lessons to Rogers, “but Fred said Arnie turned out to be a much better golfer than he did,” Nowicki remembers, chuckling.

“Both of their fathers were quite discipline-oriented, but it was a discipline that was responsible and wanted the best for each of them; it wasn’t abusive, it wasn’t done in a demeaning way.”

Latrobe social life often involved the church, and Nowicki says both the Rogers and the Palmer families were longstanding members of the community, Presbyterians who knew the leadership at Saint Vincent, the seminary and college that has been in Latrobe since 1846.

Rogers’ father received an honorary degree from Saint Vincent, as did both Fred Rogers and Arnold Palmer. In fact both men received numerous honorary degrees, with Rogers getting something like 40 over his lifetime. Both have statues of themselves in towns beyond Latrobe; both were awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom; and both appeared on The Tonight Show—again, rather astounding as both come from a place that wasn’t formerly incorporated as a city until 1999 (Latrobe was technically a borough from its founding in 1854).

Both men also personally answered all of their fan mail. Palmer famously spent six figures per year mailing signed memorabilia back to fans who’d sent it in hoping for an autograph (which they always received) while many of the numerous examples of letters Rogers sent to fans are

Greater Latrobe High School alums and legends Rogers and Palmer

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Amazing Latrobe Frank Resnik was at Latrobe High School with Arnold Palmer and Fred Rogers, and went on to become the Chairman/CEO of Philip Morris

Kennametal company began in Latrobe in 1938 and is today a publicly traded global supplier of tooling and industrial materials with annual revenues of more than $3 billion and offices around the world.

It’s global headquarters are still located in Latrobe

The famous and much-loved Rolling Rock beer was founded here, at the Latrobe Brewery. The brand was purchased by Anheuser-Busch in 2006 and moved elsewhere, but the brewery continues to be utilized for various beers such as local favorite Iron City Beer

The banana split was invented here in 1904 by David Strickler of Strickler’s Drug Store

Palmer statue at the airport in Latrobe; statue of Fred Rogers in Pittsburgh; Palmer with Joanne Rogers at a concert to benefit The Fred Rogers Center at Saint Vincent College

posted online. One user on reddit.com recalled writing to Rogers as a 6-year-old and getting a response. His father wrote to Rogers and thanked the TV star for responding to his son—and Rogers sent a response to the father as well.

That kind of behavior, Nowicki explains, was indicative not just of simple friendliness but of an inner strength and conviction to be the best person—the best neighbor—each could be.

“You could be the owner or the janitor or the car attendant; both Fred and Arnie gave each one the kind of respect that it was as if they were his personal neighbor.

They had that humility and never felt, never arrogated into themselves, the sense that they were better than anyone else. That spirit made everybody feel that Fred and Arnold were their friends, and I think that’s why they both had such universal appeal.”

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From a small American town to an industry-leading powerhouse, EY’s new Americas chief has made quite the journey

T

he Dairy Queen is close enough to the first green at Albany Golf Club that you could grab an ice cream cone while your foursome putts out. You have to wonder if that doesn’t happen on steamy summer days here in Albany, Minnesota.

Tucked against the north side of I-94 an hour and a half northwest of Minneapolis, the municipal course serves the roughly 2,500 people around Albany. But outside of town, the fairways end, and thin ribbons of rural roads wind through miles of green fields and disappear over the horizon, seemingly able to take you as far as you can go.

For Kelly Grier, a former Albany neighbor whose family claimed the golf club as its home course, those roads led all the way to the top ranks of one of the world’s most renowned companies. This July, Grier took over as US Chairman and Americas Managing Partner for EY (Ernst & Young), becoming the first woman to lead the global professional-services powerhouse—perfectly in line with EY’s inclusive culture, she says.

Grier herself brings diverse leadership experience to her new role. She spent several years in Europe, working in Germany and Switzerland. She was the firm’s vice chair of talent for the Americas, charged with strengthening EY’s culture and ensuring the engagement of more than 70,000 professionals. Most recently, she was managing partner of one of EY’s largest regions, central.

N Along the way, EY expanded beyond its powerful core businesses of audit and tax into strategy and transaction consulting, helping large and entrepreneurial companies alike transform and thrive in this era of disruption. EY has achieved outsized success with 2017 revenues of $14.5 billion in the Americas, becoming the industry’s fastest growing firm in the Americas, with the top brand.

“Professional services has become incredibly complex.

But at its heart, it’s a relationship business, and that means we need to be inclusive,” says Grier. “We thrive on the quality of our people. Because EY is one of the world’s top employers, we have the privilege of attracting the leading professionals in our industry. But it’s not enough to have great talent. We have a responsibility to make sure everyone at EY feels that they belong, is able to contribute their talents fully and have opportunities to excel. The combination of our extraordinary people and our culture of belonging is what fuels the tremendous value we deliver to clients and allows us to fulfill our purpose of building a better working world.”

She points out that EY’s leadership in diversity and inclusion isn’t just better for business, it’s essential for a $31 billion global firm that employs 250,000 people around the world and that operates in more than 150 countries, 30 of which are now under Grier’s purview.

“Our clients expect us to bring a diverse team to the table, because they know that a broad range of backgrounds and experiences will enrich the perspective, insights and advice that we bring as we serve them,” explains Grier. “I’ve experienced this myself. The richest dialogue and the most insightful advice inevitably come from the teams that are the most diverse. But diversity is one part of the equation— the other is inclusiveness, empowering all team members, valuing everyone’s perspective. That’s where leadership comes in. When leaders can instill a sense of belonging, people know they matter, and contribute accordingly. It’s

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Kelly with family, and with EY

central to EY’s culture, and it’s pretty powerful to see that in action.”

Over her 27 years at EY, Grier has led scores of engagement teams, building deep and productive relationships with top global companies. In her new role, she says, empowering EY’s culture of inclusive teaming will be key. EY calls this dynamic “high-performance teaming,” and it enables EY teams to deliver exceptional service to clients.

“It’s what makes us extraordinary,” she says. “Clients tell us our team-based approach defines us. We’re ranked No.1, the most attractive professional services employer— full stop. We bring in the very best talent, and then we ask them to put their personal ego to the side for the greater good and focus as a team on bringing the best solutions and services to our clients.”

It requires a particular mindset, someone who can temper their personal ambition and commit their efforts and their dedication to the team mission. “It requires a level of humility and an appreciation of the excellence that comes when you combine your efforts with others. I’ve always felt passionate about this, and that passion will amplify in my new role.”

Grier’s passion clearly extends from the executive suite to the tee-box: “I come from a big golfing family. Dad put clubs in our hands before we could walk. We used to play a little municipal course a few miles away from our

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Clients tell us that EY’s team-based approach defines us—it’s what makes us extraordinary

home when we were kids—Albany Golf Club—that’s what we did all summer long. We’d golf as a family, and frequently we were the last ones out. It would be pitch black!

“Those memories and experiences are very special to me,” Grier says. “Golf continues to be a passion for my family today.” In fact, the golfing bug has firmly embedded itself in her son, Jack. “Before he was born, my dad made a couple of clubs for him. Now, he’s about to play golf for William & Mary!”

Perhaps one reason Grier has remained so attracted to the sport throughout the years is the excellence it engenders. “You can learn a lot about a person on a golf course,” she concludes. “Fundamentally the game is about respect, integrity, and certainly, competition. Combine those dimensions in a productive way, and you can achieve far more than you ever imagined.”

Every stroke. Every tap-in.

Every fried egg. Every birdie.

Unforgettable, by design.

Presenting a collection you’ll definitely want to add to your scorecard: The Salamander Golf Collection.

Showcasing nine of Florida’s most iconic courses, designed by greats including Nicklaus, Packard, Palmer and Watson. Now it’s your turn to tee up a legend.

TAMPA BAY, FL | ORLANDO, FL | PALM COAST, FL

As part of our upcoming series on road trips brought to you by class-leading company Hertz— a longtime partner of Arnold Palmer— we celebrate life on the road with Arnie...

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Professional golfers travel—a lot. And while we mostly know Arnold Palmer as a guy who loved to take to the skies, he covered a fair number of miles on the ground as well.

Long before the planes and the fame, Arnold Palmer was a guy on his way, another member of the tour hitting the highway from event to event, small town to small town, seeing the country from sea to shining sea. Some of those miles are well remembered in his autobiographies, some were recounted us to during interviews, and countless others live only in the memories of his daughters.

Here, then, we take a quick look back at life on the road with Arnie:

From A Golfer’s Life: the Palmer wedding (1954): I had a plan in mind. We would call my sister Cheech and her husband Ron in Alexandria, Virginia. Cheech would arrange the church and the party afterward… We would drive down and be married before Thanksgiving Day. “My father will never let that happen,” Winnie promised me.

“Then we won’t tell him,” I said.

We did inform her mother that night, though. I think Mary was alternately thrilled by the romantic haste of the plan and worried sick what her husband, Shube, would do when he found out what we were up to.

The next morning, when Shube was already safely out of the house, Winnie and I quietly hustled our bags out to my Ford, bid goodbye to her mother… and hit the road

for Alexandria. … We had a brief little ceremony at Falls Presbyterian Church and a nice little party at Cheech and Ron’s house afterward, and then we climbed into my car and started up the highway as man and wife. We spent our honeymoon night at a trucker’s motel off the Breezewood exit of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. … [Winnie] would tell you it was no big deal, honeymooning that first night in a trucker motel off a lonely turnpike. But I know it was, and I also know we’ve done all right ever since.

On tour in 1955: Winnie and I had a great time driving across America in my old Ford... the trip west to join the Tour in California amounted to a perfect honeymoon. It’s worth remembering that Winne and I had known each other less than four months, and if you ever want to learn a lot about somebody fast, good and bad, driving across the country with them is one way to do it. I drove, and Winne navigated… We really didn’t know a soul along the way so we drove leisurely through the days and slept in inexpensive motels and motor courts, stopped wherever and whenever the spirit moved us, ate in cozy roadside diners and cafes, saw a few sights, talked about children and plans for a house, and held hands like the runaway lovers we were, falling more deeply in love.

From Arnie’s opening letter, Kingdom #31, Spring 2015:

An enduring partnership

What a moment that was for me in 1955 when I first drove up Magnolia Lane at Augusta National and played in the Masters. It was my rookie year and I drove to the tournament with Winnie, with our trailer hooked up on the back of the car. That was the only way we could afford to live on tour in those early days. We off-loaded our homeon-wheels in a trailer park next to the railroad tracks near Augusta airport, and then we drove up Magnolia Lane in my little old two-door, coral pink Ford, which believe me, had seen better days.

But that didn’t matter at all. All that mattered to me was that I was playing in the Masters, and my love for that special tournament began that day. It has never dulled.

For more than three decades Arnold Palmer worked in partnership with Hertz, pitching the company—the world’s largest general use car rental brand—and appearing in television ads, sometimes with O.J. Simpson in his better days and by himself in plenty of print and radio spots as well. In 2014, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the relationship, Hertz donated $30,000 to the Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children along with renewing its associate sponsorship of the Arnold Palmer Invitational Presented by MasterCard.

“Hertz has long been one of my most treasured associations and I am delighted to know that the company will be with us for years to come,” Palmer said at the time. “Hertz has been a vital supporter of the tournament from its early years and I enjoyed my personal involvement with Hertz in advertising and promotional roles back then as well.”

From A Golfer’s Life: After the 1955 Masters & Sam Snead Festival in Greensboro, N.C.: …We needed some rest. We headed on north for home.

Our old Ford needed a rest too—perhaps a permanent rest. That much became clear when we got off the Pennsylvania Turnpike at the Donegal exit to take a familiar shortcut to Latrobe out of the mountains. Big mistake. The road was narrow and steep, and we’d not even reached the summit when the radiator began to spew. We had to pull off and wait for the engine to cool down before we could add more water. Then we resumed our crawl to the top. The trailer was so loaded down with our stuff, Winnie and I had to get out and push the car at times. So much for shortcuts.

What should have taken a few minutes required several hours’ worth of work and worry until, mercifully, we reached the top. It didn’t dawn on us until we had started down the mountain into Latrobe that the final five miles (down the same road where Cheech and I used to ride a toboggan) could be an even bigger problem. Within minutes of starting our descent, the Ford’s brakes were smoking, and it was all I could do to keep the car from running away and the trailer from running over us. We finally got stopped on the shoulder and basically had to inch our way that last mile down. Wheezing and exhausted, car and owners, we crept

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into my parents’ driveway by the 15th hole at the club. As long as I live, I’ll never forget Winnie’s reaction.

She got out of the car, shut the door, turned and looked at me with her jaw set and calmly declared, “That’s it. I’m never going anywhere in that trailer again.”

I knew she was dead serious about that, and I didn’t disagree. The novelty and charm of traveling America in a trailer had run its course. …We took our Sam Snead Festival money down to Forsha Motors in Latrobe and purchased a brand-new, beige-and-tan Chrysler New Yorker, a real sweetheart of a car, and a few days after that, we loaded up and hit the turnpike headed west…. The big difference was that this time the car was a sheer joy to drive. Winnie wasn’t crazy about the fact that I got the New Yorker up to 120 miles per hour while crossing the Great Salt Lake, but that evening in Elko, Nevada, we put up in an inexpensive casino motel. We didn’t have enough money to risk gambling, but returning from a hamburger and a beer, just for fun, I dropped our dinner change on the roulette table—double nought and hit the jackpot, collecting thirty-five silver dollars!

Talk about a couple of naïve kids; we hustled straight back to our motel room… clutching our winnings.

THE NEW BENCHMARK FOR DESIGN AND LUXURY Streetrod builds the world’s finest golf and leisure vehicles by hand in the USA. This year, Streetrod upped the ante with the all new LUX: a vehicle of unforgettable class, convenience, and craftsmanship.

All Vintage and LUX models are available in Street Legal LSV packages. From fairway to roadway, Streetrod delivers.

Visit the website to learn more (below).

www.streetrodgolfcars.com info@streetrodgolfcars.com | (641) 623-5201

Follow-through is everything

Success in business, just as in golf, is all about follow-through. Working hard. Minding the details.

Keeping your commitments.

Insperity’s pledge is to follow through for our clients, every time. We do that by providing the leading HR, payroll, benefits and business performance solutions to America’s best small and mid-size businesses, and doing it better than anyone else in the industry.

What kind of follow-through is your HR provider giving you? insperity.com | 800-465-3800

Emotional Exposure The Ryder Cup touches emotions like nothing else in golf.

It began as an act of trans-Atlantic unity and it remains so today, yet it has also become so much more

The American hosts were victorious in the inaugural Ryder Cup at Worcester CC, Massachusetts in 1927. [l to r] Al Watrous, Bill Melhorn, Leo Diegel, Johnny Golden, captain Walter Hagen, Al Espinosa (who did not play), Gene Sarazen, Johnny Farrell and Joe Turnesa

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The 1937 American team was the first team from either side of the ocean to win the matches on away soil. The team is pictured [above] on their return to New York aboard the S.S. Berengaria. [l to r, back row] Byron Nelson, Denny Shute, Henry Picard, Horton Smith, Tony Manero; [front row] Sam Snead, Ralph Guldahl, Ed Dudley, Johnny Revolta

Jack Nicklaus [right] makes the most famous concession in golf ’s long history, to Tony Jacklin to conclude the 1969 Ryder Cup at Royal Birkdale. Conceding Jacklin’s two-foot putt in the final singles match halved the point and left the final score for the ‘69 Ryder Cup at 16-16, so the matches were tied for the first time

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Sam Torrance holes the putt that clinched victory for Europe at The Belfry in 1985. It was Europe’s (or GB&I’s) first Ryder Cup win in 28 years, since 1957, and heralded the first era of European dominance

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Tony Jacklin was architect of the European Ryder Cup revival in the 1980s.

Here he is held aloft

by Ian Woosnam after Europe had won in the United States for the first time, at Muirfield Village, Ohio, in 1987

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Bernhard Langer [left] misses the six-foot putt in the final singles match against Hale Irwin at Kiawah island in 1991, which would have retained the Ryder Cup for Europe. The German tried to putt around two spike marks, missed and halved the point to give the United States victory, 14 1/2 13 1/2, to conclude an ill-tempered encounter remembered as “The war on the shore�

Justin Leonard, engulfed by American team-mates and caddies, celebrates holing a 45-foot putt on the 17th green in his singles match against Jose Maria Olazabal at Brookline, Massachusetts in 1999. The putt was not the winner but when Olazabal missed his own 20-footer Leonard secured the half point to give the US team a winning total of 14 1/2, to complete the biggest final-day comeback in the history of the Ryder Cup to that date.

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Darren Clarke [with his arm raised by European captain Ian Woosnam] was the emotional fulcrum of the 2006 Ryder Cup at the K Club in Ireland, his home country. Six weeks prior to the matches his wife Heather, 38, died, yet Clarke maintained unshakeable composure throughout the matches, taking three points from three matches as Europe bounded to a recordequalling 18 1/2 - 9 1/2 victory

Sadly a golfer who has fallen into the “Where are they now” cabinet, Anthony Kim [left] was the youngest player on the 2008 US Ryder Cup team and the star of the show. His performance was capped with a remarkable 5&4 destruction of Sergio Garcia in the opening singles match on the Sunday, to cap the greatest week of his career. Paul Azinger’s inspired home team romped home to a 16 1/2 - 11 1/2 victory at Valhalla, Kentucky

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With two fourball matches left on the course on the Saturday afternoon at Medinah in 2012, the United States held a 10-4 lead. It already looked unassailable, until Ian Poulter [left] singlehandedly switched the momentum. He birdied the final five holes to partner McIlroy to a 1-up win over Jason Dufner and Zach Johnson. Europe would complete the “Miracle of Medinah� the next day

Patrick Reed has become the fire starter of the American team over the past two Ryder Cups, and never more so than when he defeated Rory McIlroy in the opening singles match at Hazeltine to contribute to a comfortable home win two years ago.

Here Reed celebrates after winning 1-up on the 18th green

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GIFT GUIDE

Cooler Climate

Dewar’s 25 Year Old Scotch A wit, a raconteur and a buccaneering adventurer, Tommy Dewar was the man who turned a small Scottish distiller into a global success story.

Dispatched to London in 1885 at the age of 21 with introductions to just two industry contacts, he was not perturbed when he discovered one bankrupt and the other newly dead. He set to work with signature gusto and soon had Dewar’s in all the capital’s top establishments. No doubt he would be proud of the current, fantastic 25-year-old, not least as he coined the maxim “we have a great regard for old age, when it’s bottled.”

Never shy when it comes to enjoying life’s finer things, here are a few of Kingdom’s favorites for late summer and early fall

dewars.com

Castangia 1850 Italian Tailoring There are luxury Italian fashion brands and then there is the world of bespoke tailoring. Founded in 1850 and with showrooms around the globe, at the pinnacle is Castangia. Be measured and fitted in the USA, and then know that back in Sardinia Castangia have seventy master tailors who will shape fabric to create your custom made suit—a time-honored artisanal process involving thousands of stitches, clever patterns, careful application, precise handmade finishings and patient hours of ironing, so that when all the single pieces are joined you will be the owner of, not just “a suit,” but your perfect suit. castangia1850.com

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GIFT GUIDE

Smythson Burlington Card Holder Put aside your bulky wallet and opt for this stylish card holder, from the leather-goods brand that holds three different Royal Warrants and which many perceive as quintessentially British.

Holding five cards in top style, it slips nicely into a pants or coat pocket and helps accentuate the cut of your tailoring, if not the cut of your jib. smythson.com

DeepSea Watch

August Grooming

Rolex

Vanity Comb

New from Rolex is the superlative Oyster Perpetual DeepSea. A professional diver’s watch, it’s architecture features a patented ringlock system, allowing the DeepSea to withstand the colossal pressures of extreme depths, so much so it is waterproof to 12,800 feet. The 44mm case surrounds a stunning face that graduates from deep blue to pitch black, ensuring the DeepSea looks as good on dry land as it does under the waves.

This vanity comb from August Grooming is handmade in Italy from a rich, blue Italian acetate with hints of grey and white hues that create a marbled pattern throughout. An August logo is discreetly stamped in gold on the top corner and the teeth profile ranges from small to large tooth for thin or thick hair. Comes in a custom designed box, with the soft suede fitted case offered separately.

rolex.com

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augustgrooming.com

GIFT GUIDE

Leisure Society Savoye Individually numbered and handmade in Japan, the Savoye is the latest release from Leisure Society. Featuring innovative reverse-rimless floating lens technology, the Savoye is a seventies-inspired silhouette that features bold geometric and angular attributes to create a hi-tech hybrid look of sophistication and sport. Every frame purchase comes with a premium cleaning cloth and in a case with a rich brown full-grain leather exterior and a suede interior in seafoam green. leisure-society.com

LEICA Q The compact camera redefined

Roller Duffle

The new Leica Q, a camera that maintains the company’s position as one of the sector’s premier marques, comes with a full-frame sensor and a fixed focal length. The built-in Wi-Fi module on the Leica Q makes it easy to share your pictures and videos, while the company’s epic attention to detail makes it easy to love shooting them in the first place.

Stitch Golf

us.leica-camera.com

As you’d expect, the headcover supplier to Arnold Palmer doesn’t produce just average-quality products.

This innovatively designed Roller Duffle comes with a “drop the top” feature to allow you to see everything inside without having to unpack. Made from Stitch® Golf ’s vintage, luxe, water repellent fabric and designed with a base so you can stand the duffle up without it falling over, a handy hanging garment bag inside will be well appreciated and never be left behind thanks to a handsome pop of orange. stitchgolf.com

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GIFT GUIDE

GX5 Peakvision sunglasses Match winning is all about gaining an edge and Peakvision can give golfers a sharp-sighted edge this summer. Their new GX5 sunglasses feature a full wrap-around design with adjustable nose pads, along with comprehensive protection against harmful ultra-violet rays. The GX5’s uncompromised sight clarity is thanks to proprietary technology in the lenses and, as confirmed by former Ryder Cup Star Chip Beck, they come with zero distortion. As he said: “Peakvision is the only sunglass that I’ve ever used playing golf because they have no distortion on the putting green, they are truly the best.” peakvision.com

Cleveland CBX Cavity back wedge

COOLSHOT PRO STABILIZED Exclusive image stabilization technology keeps things steady while ranging and results in faster, more consistent distance measurements for increased club-selection confidence.

Feature-rich, the COOLSHOT PRO STABILIZED integrates quality 6x optics for clear viewing, a red OLED display that automatically adjusts brightness for the surrounding ambient light and a LOCKED ON Technology green circle display that visually confirms that your measurement is to the flag.

At least 84% of golfers play with cavity backed irons, and for good reason: the clubs are forgiving, easy to swing and lighter than tourdesignated irons. So why forego those advantages when it’s time to take out the wedge? The Cleveland CBX is forgiving, but it also has all of Cleveland’s lauded wedge spin tech, offering control and serious playability in the same club.

NikonGolf.com

clevelandgolf.com

Nikon Rangefinder

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GIFT GUIDE

Interchangeable Shoes

Socks

Jack Grace

prince + pete

Golf fashion has moved to fast-forward mode with Jack Grace USA’s innovative premium golf shoes with changeable saddles.

Adjust your look mid-round without even visiting the locker room by instantly swapping one set of saddles for another— although with the Ryder Cup approaching we would keep these Stars and Stripes in place for a while yet...

prince + pete created a new breed of stylish men’s dress socks that are soft, moisture-wicking and eco-friendly.

Made from bamboo, the socks are designed with padding along the sole and with extra support around the arch, making them snug but not tight. There are six collections, each containing ten patterns in the same color family to wear as a pair or to mismatch. There’s even a small pocket inside the left sock for a credit card, a golf tee, or you name it. prince + pete’s luxurious, eye-catching socks are great for golfers or anyone who enjoys being comfortable and stylish.

jackgraceusa.com

princeandpete.com

Streetrod LUX Golf Car Streetrod golf cars are the most exciting, wellbuilt cars on course these days, and the LUX is amazing. Built with superior materials by dedicated American craftsmen, an all-aluminum I-beam chassis, heavy-duty hand-built fiberglass body, premium marine-grade upholstery, LED lighting and many custom options mean it’s no surprise that the LUX outlasts and outshines other vehicles in the genre. Check out Streetrod’s options and inject some automotive style into your life—on and off course. luxgolfcars.com

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Kitchen Aid Cold Brew Coffee Maker Just in time for summer, KitchenAid innovation comes to coffee with this brushed stainless steel Cold Brew Coffee Maker. Steep your brew, then dispense rich, smooth and balanced cold coffee from the built-in stainless steel tap. Pair this with a KitchenAid grinder to ensure your coffee is perfectly ground for cold brewing, and keep it in your KitchenAid refrigerator to ensure your coffee is ready when you are. kitchenaid.com

Cool Beer Corkcicle Chillsner Why drink warm beer when with this in-bottle, drink-thru beer chiller from Corkcicle, cool refreshment is always at hand? Called Chillsner, just freeze, insert into your standard 12 ounce beer bottle and never suffer warm beer again. corkcicle.com

Portable Espresso Machine Wacaco Nanopresso One of the smallest, quality, hand powered espresso machines on the market, the Nanopresso will help you brew a perfect cup with a wide choice of espresso styles, from ristretto to single shot and cold brew. Offered in a variety of colors to match your mood, style or favorite cup. wacaco.com

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GIFT GUIDE

David Norman Design The Trunk Fully 12 Louisville Golf Persimmon-headed clubs on authentic hickory shafts are housed in four signature David Norman-design solid mahogany bags to form the eye-catching base to this stunning table. Each bag is finished with African Water Buffalo hide trim, hand-crafted by master leathersmiths. Named “The Trunk,” it’s a representation of your car trunk as you head to the club for a round with friends, finished off with steam-bent Black Walnut legs and supports accompanied by Walnut trim. A standout piece for any club or a discerning golfer’s home.

Eco Terreno

davidnormandesign.com

Old Vine Cabernet Sauvignon

Epperson Mountaineering Climb Tote Constructed with DWR-coated 1000 denier Cordura nylon fabric and military-grade tubular nylon webbing, the Climb Tote with seam-sealed inner compartments is as robust as they come.

Made in the USA, available in a range of colors, and styled with usable rockclimbing “daisy chain” loops, we like it for picnics and quick getaways alike.

Swirl a glass of double Gold-winning Eco Terreno’s Old Vine Cabernet Sauvignon 2013 and its dark crimson color with a bright purple rim hints at the depth of flavors contained within.

Exclusively from 43-year-old vines, flavors of cassis, black cherry and spice combine seamlessly with notes of dark chocolate and espresso. This lush, fruit driven wine is as smooth as silk with a lingering finish rooted in the flavor palette of the famed Alexander Valley terroir. Enjoy now or cellar for delayed gratification over the next five years.

Only 612 cases were produced by the renowned winemaker Mark Lyon. ecoterreno.com

eppersonmountaineering.com

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Bright Summer We’re fans of summer libations, citrus-tinged elixirs poured over ice that take the edge off the heat and help to liberate the senses. Much like chucking off a winter coat and feeling the warmth of the sun on your skin, there’s a freeing quality to a well-mixed summer cocktail, and Tony Abou-Ganim only mixes well. The master mixologist is one of the world’s premiere cocktail artists, responsible for the craft cocktail menus and speciality drinks at such luminary venues as Bellagio, The Lobby Bar at Caesars Palace and Libertine Social at Mandalay Bay, all in Las Vegas, as well as Harry Denton’s Starlight Room at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco and others. One of only two Americans to win the Bacardi Martini World Grand Prix, Tony’s abilities at the bar are complemented by an affable disposition and a great way with words, which he puts to use in his book The Modern Mixologist, from which the following recipes are excerpted. Visit him online at themodernmixologist.com for more recipes and inspiration and to purchase his book—the best kind of summer reading, as far as we’re concerned.

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Bar Fly — + 1 1/2 oz Tanqueray No.Ten gin + 3/4 oz Maria Brizard Parfait Amour* + 1 1/2 oz pineapple juice + 1 1/2 oz fresh lemon sour — Inspired by the International Bar Flies (IBF), a fraternal group founded by Harry MacElhone of Harry’s New York Bar fame for the “uplift and downfall of serious drinkers,” this cocktail is a gem of Tony’s. It contains Parfait Amour, a liqueur popular before Prohibition that’s flavored with violets, oranges and vanilla. The best on offer is from the Marie Brizard Company, founded by a nurse in 1755 and perfectly flavored for a colorful summer in any century.

Shake all ingredients with ice until blended, then strain into an Old Fashioned glass filled with cracked ice. Garnish with a lemon wedge or spiral. * Crème de violette can be substituted for Parfait Amour.

Don Facundo — + 2 oz Bacardi 8 rum + 3/4 oz Marie Brizard orange curaçao 1/4 oz Fee Brothers pineapple + syrup + 2 oz fresh lemon sour + 2 pineapple spears, one with skin removed for muddling, and one with the skin intact for garnish — Long before a world of mixers were available at the local grocer’s, people added fruit syrups to their spirits when they wanted a bit of flavor.

In celebration of a classic Victorian cocktail known as a “Fix,” Tony uses pineapple syrup to great effect with Bacardi 8 rum, the brand’s sophisticated classic blend. Named for the brand’s founder, Don Facundo Bacardi, this cocktail offers a lightly sweetened bouquet of curaçao and fresh lemon sour, which mixes beautifully with the complex tones of the rum.

Muddle the skinless pineapple spear with the syrup. Add the rum, orange curaçao and lemon sour then shake with ice until well blended. Strain into a cracked-icefilled Old Fashioned glass and garnish with the remaining pineapple spear and a swizzle stick.

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Joy Ride — ++ 1 1/2 oz Ketel One Citroen vodka ++ 3/4 oz Campari ++ 3 oz fresh lemon sour* ++ 1 tsp egg white ++ Chilled soda water

Tony likes the lemon in Ketel One Citroen, and clearly it’s the forward flavor among the citrus. Its boldness handles the relatively deep and complex Campari in this bracing classic, which Abou-Ganim named after a time in life that saw him performing in a play called Joy Ride with a San Francisco theatre group. A dedication to cast and crew, this makes for a fine summer outing indeed.

Shake vodka, Campari, fresh lemon sour and egg white with ice and strain into an ice-filled goblet. Spritz with the chilled soda water and garnish with three lemon slices fanned.

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* Fresh Lemon Sour Mix two parts fresh, filtered (to remove pulp and seeds) lemon juice with one part simple syrup.

Blue Dewey — ++ 2 oz Dewar’s 12 ++ 2 oz club soda ++ Homemade blueberry simple syrup to taste* ++ Squeeze of lemon juice

The first part of Tony’s book, The Modern Mixologist, encourages amateur bartenders to experiment, and we found ourselves inspired. Specifically mentioned is Dewar’s Scotch, which Abou-Ganim suggests for “fresh fruit variations on drinks like the Collins or Sour. Dark fruits such as Bing cherry, blackberry, and blueberry will absolutely shine.” Sounds good to us, especially because Dewar’s features raisins, citrus and vanilla flavors alongside a buttery apple/honey texture that’s well complemented by berries— and so here we are with our attempt at a brilliant cocktail, fresh off the drawing board, and staff-tested for drinkability…

We poured the Dewar’s and club soda over ice and then stirred-in the blueberry simple syrup, adding some muddled blueberry bits as well “just because” before hitting it with a quick squeeze of lemon for some acidity. We’re sure Tony could do it better, but really, it was pretty good, and we give ourselves an “A” for effort. Try your own variation and enjoy.

* Blueberry Simple Syrup Mash 1 cup of blueberries and add 1 cup of sugar and 1 cup of water. Boil the mix and wait 15 minutes or so until it reduces.

Strain through a fine mesh strainer, pour into a jar, and you’re good to go. Refrigerate what’s left for future use.

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With Honor

Folds of Honor Foundation honors those who paid the ultimate price by helping their families to achieve their educational dreams

A

s the final tones of the bugle calling Taps sounded over the Patriot Golf Club in Owasso, Oklahoma, this Memorial Day weekend, the Folds of Honor Patriot Cup got underway and, once again, our country’s best and bravest were honored with golf, fellowship and a respectful acknowledgement of the price of freedom.

Held every year at the club founded by Maj. Dan Rooney, a USAF fighter pilot and Iraq war veteran, the tournament helps to raise money for the Folds of Honor Foundation, which Rooney established in 2007 to provide scholarships to spouses and children of fallen or disabled service members.

To date the Foundation has handed out some 20,000 scholarships, making a huge impact on the lives of family members of those who paid the ultimate price.

“Everybody involved, it’s amazing what they do for these families,” said John Daly, who attended this year’s Patriot Cup, speaking to FOX News. “It’s dear to my heart.

It’s like Major Dan says: it’s about golf, family and our military. You just can’t beat what they’re doing. I’m just proud to be a wingman and part of it.”

Also in attendance this year were celebrities like former Chicago Bears quarterback Jim McMahon, country

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music star John Rich, and others, proudly supporting a tournament that regularly draws VIPs like actor Craig T. Nelson, country music legend Vince Gill and NFL quarterback Brandon Weeden, to name just a few. PGA TOUR pros are proud supporters as well, with the likes of Zach Johnson, Corey Pavin, Bo Van Pelt and Rickie Fowler making appearances, among many others.

“The impetus is revitalizing the meaning of Memorial Day,” Maj. Rooney told Kingdom. Maj. Rooney was unavailable to chat with us for this article, but we’ve spoken with him numerous times and have been honored to feature Folds of Honor in our publication for years. “[Memorial Day] is just such a special moment in our country that has been relegated to ‘the day the pool opens’ or ‘the family BBQ,’ and that’s not what it’s about,” he said.

“Most of the country wakes up and they’re going to hang out. The realities are, if you’ve been there and you’ve seen firsthand the price of freedom and the fact that it’s not free, if your loved one has lost a brother, a child or a parent, it’s a really tough day, and that is the spirit in which we come together.”

The Folds of Honor Foundation—named for the 13 folds it takes to get the American flag to its triangle shape— is all about helping veterans and their survivors, as well as

reminding us all of their service. Through scholarships and other assistance, the Foundation gives back to the spouses and children of soldiers killed or disabled in service to America. Rooney himself is an F-16 pilot, a Major in the Air National Guard and a decorated military aviator who served three combat tours in Iraq. Returning from his second tour, he saw an irreverence toward U.S. service men and women that was unacceptable, and decided he wanted to dedicate his time to honoring those willing to pay the ultimate price.

It wasn’t long before he identified a need in support for education. Many veterans’ dependents do not qualify for federal scholarship assistance and, despite some support from the federal government, many could miss out on the American dream for which their loved ones had fought so bravely. So, Rooney created the Foundation to assist the more than 1 million dependents of soldiers killed or disabled in military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Folds of Honor Patriot Cup is part of that mission, as are the numerous Patriot Golf Days hosted at clubs across the country on Labor Day weekend each Fall.

With the Folds of Honor Patriot Cup and all of the events surrounding it, “it’s an unbelievable run of emotion,” said Rooney. “You laugh, you cry, and you party and you celebrate that you are free, but you understand that freedom comes with a real price, with a reverence, if you will…

“In my humble opinion, for the folks that come to this event, there’s no place in America to be on Memorial Day other than at The Patriot Cup. May we never forget the 1 million veterans who made the ultimate sacrifice.”

To find out how you can help Maj. Dan Rooney and the Folds of Honor Foundation achieve their important mission, please visit foldsofhonor.org

Major Dan Rooney

The Patriot Golf Club Set amidst the rolling countryside of northeastern Oklahoma, The Patriot Golf Club, 20 minutes from Tulsa in Owasso, is a special place indeed.

Headquarters to the Folds of Honor Foundation, which helps the families of veterans killed or disabled in service to their country, the club also offers an award-winning golf experience and a proud community. The golf course is a Robert Trent Jones, Jr., design that makes epic use of the area’s lowland marsh, heavy woodlands, high prairie and dramatic limestone cliffs.

“There’s no golf course like it in the world,” says Maj. Dan Rooney, a former F-16 pilot and Major in the Oklahoma Air National Guard who served combat tours in Iraq and who founded the Folds of Honor Foundation. “It has truly great golf, and a greater purpose.”

A tribute to America’s heroes, the spirit of patriotism, golf’s greatest traditions and home to the Folds of Honor Foundation, The Patriot Golf Club isn’t just a top club destination, it’s a living and active monument to this country’s best and bravest.

To learn more about membership, Patriot Golf Club and how you can help support those who serve so that all of us might live free, visit patriotgolf.com for more information.

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Fire It Up

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Summer! Finally. Chill the beer, pull the cover off the grill and get ready to fight fire with fire on the glorious sunny days in the forecast

Many years ago we were fine with a cheap metal bucket and a bag of bargain briquettes, back when it was all franks and burgers. Since we’ve graduated to quality steaks and meats (and quality franks and burgers), we’ve enhanced our backyards with grills of the highest quality, superb instruments that offer plenty of control and which yield sublime meals. Here, then, are two fantastic options (one gas, one charcoal) from two top companies. Either is sure to earn you rave reviews, so take aim at summer—and fire away.

ROCKWELL BY CALIBER

First of all, what a stunningly attractive grill. Designed

by David Rockwell of award-winning architecture/design firm Rockwell Group, the freestanding 60” beauty is built from heavy-gauge powder-coated aviation grade aluminum draped over a custom Brazilian cherry stand with a handrubbed finish. It might be the most beautiful thing in your backyard (family members and pets excluded, of course).

It’s so beautiful, in fact, that it could seem a shame to get drippings and such all over it by actually using it, except that’s exactly what you should do with it because it blows all other gas grills completely away. The 60”model (it also comes as a built-in 42” or 48” model) features three 20,000 BTU Patent pending Crossflame™ burners with radiant technology and triple zone cooking dividers. That means you can cook a range of offerings simultaneously, with complete and precise control. We toured Caliber’s operations and can tell you that Randy Rummel and Dan Nichols, Caliber’s founders, are (A) brilliant and (B) meticulous. With their expertise in gas engineering, metalwork, industrial design and appliance design and construction, it’s no wonder that the pair have earned a number of awards and accolades for their work, so magnificently on display with the Rockwell.

A superlative cooking surface is further enhanced by the 60” model’s status as being the world’s first estate-scaled 360˚ walk-around grill, what they call a Social Grill™. What that means is that the innovative design allows for the “disappearing” counterbalanced lid to be completely and easily retracted and hidden, yielding not just an elegant visual presentation but a functional surface as well that facilitates interaction with guests—no one wants to talk over a lid. There’s nothing like this, no gas grill as elegant or as competent. It’s able to be at the center of your next party, and with looks this good isn’t that exactly where it belongs? caliberappliances.com

New York Prime Beef From the Editor: Part of my childhood was spent working on my family’s farm in Florida, which included 100 or so head of beef cattle. Add to that yearly visits with family who worked in the meat industry in Nebraska and it’s safe to say that I know a good steak when I see one. Accordingly, I’ve always been skeptical of setups that ship steaks and meat products to you every month or so. Still, various friends have been kind enough to gift shipments from such services to me over the years, and while I’ve occasionally been satisfied with the deliveries I’ve never considered signing up—until now. I opened the shipment from New York Prime Beef with modest expectations. How surprised was I to discover that, not only were the steaks of exceptional quality in terms of marbling and cut, but the flavors were absolutely astounding. After grilling a beautiful (and thick) NY Strip to medium rare and letting it rest, I

sliced it open to see a steak of the highest possible quality: heavily marbled with a smooth grain, and the perfect color. The taste was rich but balanced, the meat had been impeccably dry aged and it was impossibly tender. There’s more to try, and I’m excited to dig in: Filet Mignon, a 32oz bone-in “Cowboy” Ribeye, a Wagyu Strip and even some bacon, all of which look to be of the same exceptional quality as the strip I grilled last night. I’ve had many, many good steaks in my life, and it’s rare when one stands out as particularly amazing.

You get what you pay for, and New York Prime Beef exceeded my expectations. As a subscription or as a gift for steak lovers, New York Prime Beef might even be essential to try.

For more info: (800) Steak-NY or NewYorkPrimeBeef.com

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BIG GREEN EGG

We’ve had our BGE for so long we can hardly remember what life was like without it—less juicy and less satisfying, we’re sure. This lauded kamado-style cooker is hands-down one of the best options if you’re in the market for a grill that also functions as an oven and a smoker. Made of state-of-the-art ceramics with a permanent porcelain glaze, the BGE is a modern manifestation of an ancient cooker.

The air-tight ceramic cooking chamber not only retains heat (easily generated in the BGE) but it also allows food to retain moisture, which means incredibly juicy steaks, mouth-watering chicken and brilliant BBQ ribs, among other grill-worthy creations. The interface couldn’t be simpler: a draft door at the bottom controls the amount of air that can go into the BGE, a daisy wheel on top controls both heat exit and draw. Once you get the hang of it, achieving and maintaining precise temperatures becomes incredibly easy. We’ve easily kept our BGE at 250˚F for more than six hours while smoking short ribs, and we’ve quickly ramped it up to 700˚+ for searing steaks. With a temperature gauge integrated into the top, temperature control is simple. Also, there are numerous “EGGcessories” available for the BGE, including baking stones, optimized cast iron cookware and more. We even like the BGE brand fire starters and 100% natural lump charcoal (no briquettes or chemical starters in the BGE, please; the ceramic doesn’t like those). Loins, steaks, chicken, ribs, pizza even… We’ve made it all in our BGE, and each time the result has been incredibly delicious, juicy and well received. With a range of sizes to fit any need and a fantastic online community of “EGGheads” ready to share tips and recipes, the BGE is one of the best culinary purchases we ever made. biggreenegg.com

Quick Tip on Grilling Steak There are as many tips for grilling steaks on a Big Green Egg as there are “EGGheads,” but if you’re dealing with a straightforward cut of meat and not trying to do anything fancy, here’s a basic plan for a great steak: For a 1.5-inch thick 16oz NY Strip: let the steak come to room temperature, then heavily salt and pepper both sides, massaging the spices into the meat.

Don’t pierce the steak, just press and rub the salt and pepper on. A light rub of olive oil first is good as well.

With your BGE at 600˚, grill the steak for 2 minutes per side, then completely close the vents and the daisy wheel on top and let it cook for another two minutes.

The result should be a nicely crusted juicy steak at an enjoyable medium rare temperature (add or subtract time to get the temperature you like).

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Chateau D’Esclans How does a rosé straddle the position of being both a superb aperitif and a fine wine that enjoys the versatility of successful pairings with a broad range of top cuisine? One answer would be by being the best rosé in the world, and several acclaimed writers have described Chateau D’Esclans Garrus as exactly that.

A perfect accompaniment for a summer barbecue, Garrus is refreshing in the summer heat, subtle enough to complement fish and chicken, and yet possessing the minerality, depth and range of flavor to act as an enhancing counterpoint to steak. We can’t recommend it enough. esclans.com/product/garrus/

16th hole • Sleepy Hollow Country Club • Scarborough, New York ©2018 Evan Schiller Photography

Cell: (914) 589-6045 golfshots@earthlink.net www.golfshots.com

No Man is a No.17

Image by Evan Schiller

Everyone (every golfer, at least) knows of the island green at TPC Sawgrass Stadium Course’s 17th hole. Tough as it is, there are plenty like it, all of which pose problems if the wind is up or if your mind wanders. When faced with such a challenge, do your best to picture grass between yourself and the flag, breathe deep, and bind up your ears lest ye, like so many before ye, be tempted by the siren song issuing from beneath the waves: “Come splash with me, come splash with me, come splash with me…”

Image: Evan Schiller / golfshots.com

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TPC Sawgrass Stadium Course, No.17 PONTE VEDRA, FLORIDA

The PGA TOUR estimates that more than 100,000 balls go into the water here each year (69 of them at last year’s PLAYERS Championship), but this 137-yard par-3 could have been even tougher, according to Alice Dye, wife of Stadium Course designer Pete Dye and an accomplished course designer in her own right, who’s credited with No.17: “They had to cover those fairways with sand because they were muck,” Alice told us in April, “and they’d found this great sand in that area, the best sand, and so they’d dug this huge hole where Pete had the 17th green planned. I was in Jacksonville staying in a motel; it wasn’t my favorite spot to go. It was muddy and had snakes, a horrible piece of property. But anyway Pete talked to me and he said ‘I’ve

really got a problem, can you come out and look at this 17th hole and see if you can have an idea on what to do.’ So I came out and I said why don’t you fill up that great big hole with water? He did it—but then he took the back third of the green and sloped it right down into the water. I said ‘Pete, the tournament’s in March. March is windy. They’re going to turn on the TV and hear that the first group is still on the 17th tee; nobody can get off that green!’ So he took the back of that green and put it the way it is now, but he had that whole green going right back into the water.”

[Editor’s note: The idea of landing on the green here and then watching my ball roll down a steep ramp into the water... Allow me to offer a sincere “Thank you” to Mrs. Dye for this one.]

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Apple Tree Resort, No.17 YAKIMA, WASHINGTON

Applesauce, apple strudel, apple dumplings, hot apple cider on a cold winter’s day, “an apple a day keeps the doctor away…” For millennia apples have been an incredibly pleasant part of life, and then this golf course had to go and mess it all up. It’s 180 yards to the giant apple-shaped green, and depending on how you hit it (assuming you hit it) you might be in for a roll or, perhaps, for a trip to the leaf-shaped bunker.

If it treats you well you won’t mind the rest of the round, played among the pastoral lanes of an orchard full of Washington Delicious apples. But if it sends you bobbing then the 50-foot walk down the stem-shaped bridge and the rest of your apple-scented day will probably leave you longing for a cleaver and a pie dish.

One bad apple does spoil the bunch, after all.

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Les Bordes, No.14 SAINT-LAURENT-NOUAN, FRANCE

Founded by Baron Marcel Bich of the Bic empire, Les Bordes in the Loire Valley, central France, is an uberluxury club built amongst the lakes and forest of an old royal hunting estate. Almost 50% of the holes feature water, with the long 14th finishing on a stunning island green (let’s call it an île verte) not far from some of the best wines on earth.

Les Bordes is a long and demanding track, the course record being a 71 (one under par), but if someone asks you to play it with them, ne pas hésiter. Just smile, grab your clubs and say, «allons–y!».

THE FIRST ISLAND GREEN BALTUSROL GOLF CLUB, NEW JERSEY

Founded in 1895 by publisher Louis Keller, the major-hosting historical landmark is a fine example of Tillinghast design, but it’s believed that club pro George Low had a hand in the early 1900s’ layout and that he might have been responsible for No.10, then a 330-yard downhill par-4 surrounded by a shallow moat: what’s believed to be the game’s first official island green. Curiously, pros sometimes used “floaters” at the time, floating golf balls that could be played from the water, which is just what Walter Hagen used during at least one Baltusrol tournament, according to former member Fritz Leuders. Quoted by Brendan Prunty in a May, 2011 edition of New Jersey’s The Star-Ledger newspaper, Leuders describes Hagen taking off his shoes and socks and playing his floater out of the water to get a birdie three. “I will never forget this as long as I am able to think about golf,” Leuders concludes. A Low associate named Herbert Strong went on to design golf’s next island green, No.9 at Florida’s Ponte Vedra Club in 1936, which itself is said to be among the inspirations for Pete and Alice Dye’s icon down the street at TPC Sawgrass.

The Silver Fox, No.7 MIAMI, FLORIDA

Photo: Richard Castka / sportpixgolf.com

The Silver Fox course at Trump National Doral is a tough proposition with water coming into play on 17 of the 18 holes, and nowhere more so than the 7th hole with its island green. Reminiscent of the 17th at TPC Sawgrass, with a small bunker at the front, if anything, this one-shotter looks even more intimidating with the tee raised bringing the water even more into sight and mind. The green slopes from back to front so the safe shot to the back of the green results in a deadly quick downhill putt.

An island (and a floating one at that), is there another like it in all of Asia? We don’t think so. In their early days the course designers worked with Pete Dye, whose “marooned” style seems to take with former apprentices. Credit (or curse) Lee Schmidt of Schmidt-Curley Design with the 145-yard par-3 island target, accessible only by boat. Sergio Garcia made the crossing in fine form in 2013 on his way to winning the Thailand Golf Championship; he’d found water twice at TPC Sawgrass’ 17 in that year’s PLAYERS, which is, perhaps, why the “El Nino International Restaurant” is at Chonburi and not in Ponte Vedra.

Amata Spring Country Club, No.17 CHONBURI, THAILAND

SUMMER 2018

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Doug Ford helps Arnold Palmer into the Green Jacket after Palmer won the Masters for the first time, in 1958

Farewell to a friend Doug Ford, winner of the 1955 PGA Championship and 1957 Masters, who died in May at the age of 95, was a contemporary of Arnold Palmer’s and a close friend, he was the senior attendee at the Masters Past Champions Dinner and made up one half of one of golf’s truly iconic photographs

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KINGDOM 43

Doug Ford kept golf and life simple, something that is easier to achieve when your natural sporting ability is off the charts. Ford could get to the point with a minimum of fuss too, as he illustrated with his philosophy on pro golf.

He once said that to play tour golf successfully golfers need to “learn to handle the heat...to play for your own dough...an amount you can barely afford to lose.”

There ends the lesson.

Ford—whose father changed the family name from the Italian Fortunato to help him find work—would eventually, belatedly, be rewarded with a place in the World Golf Hall of Fame, in 2011. He reacted with typical economy: “It took a little while, but I think it’s great they’re doing this while I’m still alive.”