Kingdom 25

$20 where sold Issue 25—Spring 2013

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ARNOLD

PA L M E R

FOREWORD

Brandt Awareness We are now well into 2013 and already the new golf season has thrown up a few surprises. While I’ve been concentrating on putting the finishing touches to the Arnold Palmer Invitational Presented

by MasterCard, which will take place here at the Bay Hill Club & Lodge in March, I have also had an eye on the early events out on Tour.

Undoubtedly, Brandt Snedeker, last year’s $10 million jackpot winner at the FedExCup Playoffs, has been the star of the show so far, winning the AT&T Pro-Am at Pebble Beach and finishing runner-up to Tiger Woods at Torrey Pines and to Phil Mickelson at TPC Scottsdale.

Before February was out, Brandt had netted almost $3 million in prize money, something that prompted me to smile and reflect on how times have changed. I made one or two fast starts to seasons in my time, but the accompanying financial rewards were nowhere near the scale of this fortune, even allowing for half a century or more of inflation.

There have already been good wins for Dustin Johnson in Hawaii and Matt Kuchar in the Arizona desert in the WGC match-play tournament, but so far we have had barely a glimpse of the world No.1, young Rory McIlroy. The potential pitfalls of switching to a new club manufacturer after the year he enjoyed in 2012 have been extensively dwelt upon by the media, but I am not convinced that this is the reason for his slow start to the year. After all, it surely can’t be beyond the ability of his new club company to replicate virtually the exact specifications of last year’s equipment, which should be enough in the hands of a player as talented as McIlroy.

Anyway, Rory doesn’t turn 24 till May and I expect he will soon be back on the radar.

Meanwhile, I look forward to welcoming a healthy proportion of the PGA Tour’s headliners to our tournament, including Tiger, who will be trying to win his eighth at Bay Hill, Brandt, Mickelson and our Orlando neighbor Ian Poulter, among others.

Ian, who lives across town in Lake Nona, had another wonderful Ryder Cup for Europe at Medinah last fall and I expect him to do well in the big championships during the course of 2013.

With that in mind, I’m delighted that he’s the subject of our lead interview in this issue of Kingdom, conducted by our two editors in his new home. He has certainly had a lot of interesting things to say and I’m looking forward to meeting up with him at Bay Hill.

In April, I’ll be heading to Georgia once again to team up with Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player as honorary starters for the 77th staging of the Masters. It’s a marvelous annual gathering up there at Augusta National, and it’s always great fun renewing old and valued friendships in such a great setting, not to mention taking part in the Par-3 competition on the Wednesday afternoon. Is any golf setting in the world more beautiful than that one?

Not long afterwards, I’ll be going back to Latrobe, PA, my summer home and where I began my long and privileged journey through life nearly eight and a half decades ago.

In the meantime, it gives me great pleasure to wish all of you a happy and memorable golfing year in 2013.

Yours in Golf

Arnold Palmer

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My Favorite Things They say good things come in threes. Last week in Scotland, three of my favorite things—golf, single malt whisky and course design—combined in a highly pleasurable way at the launch of Glenmorangie’s Unnecessarily Well Made campaign with Tony Jacklin and Robert Trent Jones, Jr., amongst others. We all have our “greatest courses” list, but now, and for the next few months, every golfer will get a chance to vote on their favorites and compare their list with that of some of the biggest names in golf on glenmorangie.com/golf. I am still contemplating my own top 10, but I know for sure that Scotland’s Kingsbarns, Ireland’s Tralee, Portugal’s San Lorenzo and America’s Pine Valley and Bay Hill Club & Lodge will be somewhere on my list.

Talking of Bay Hill, I was there this January where, along with Mr. Palmer, we had the pleasure of hosting the Kingdom Cup. It was great to see so many friends, clients and colleagues enjoy themselves. Most pleasing of all was that Kingdom received an award from the Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children as recognition of the fact that, in total, the Kingdom Cup has raised over $500,000 for the hospital. A massive thank you, then, must go to all our clients and advertisers for helping us raise so much for such a worthwhile cause. After all, today’s kids are the pros of tomorrow, and the Arnold Palmer Hospital does a tremendous job looking after them.

The next event at Bay Hill I will be looking out for is the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented

by MasterCard. You may well know the result of the tournament by the time this issue is fully distributed but, at the risk of making myself look even more stupid than normal, I am going to say I have a strong hunch that Tiger is going to win the tournament for a record 8th time—and what an achievement that would be.

Needless to say, the main talking point with Tiger still is whether he will win another Major.

And with the Masters just around the corner, I am again going to stick my neck out and say “yes,” he will win another Major, and it will be this year. Tiger repeatedly wins on tracks that suit his game, as proven by his incredible records at Bay Hill and Torrey Pines, and Augusta National provably suits his game. I believe Merion, Muirfield and Oak Hill will also suit golfers who can control their irons and putt brilliantly. As such, these tight but storied Major venues are also likely to suit the games of players like Luke Donald, Brandt Snedeker, Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter, all of whom are due a Major—and that’s without even mentioning the newly-swooshed one. But I still think Tiger will prevail at least once this year, and my big hope is that it will be at the PGA Championship, which is being hosted near our U.S. office (so it’s easy for me to attend). Also, as they have just signed Belvedere as their official vodka, I will be able to celebrate with one of my favorite tipples. All of this just leaves me to say that, whatever your favorite drink, whoever your favorite player and whatever your favorite course, I hope you have plenty of reasons to celebrate your own great golf moments this year.

Kingdom Cup 2013 winners Chris and Rob from Team Arnold Palmer Tee

Matthew Squire—Publisher

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What’s In a Name Everyone knows the picture: a naked little girl burned by napalm, crying and running down a road in Vietnam with other children as her village burns in the background. Few people know her name*, but the composition and context of the image made it an iconic photograph—a scenario that will likely never happen in sports photography.

For all we know, the greatest golf photo ever taken was shot on the back nine at last year’s Puerto Rico Open. Because that event isn’t the Masters, and because the picture might have included a relative unknown who ended near the bottom of the field, the photo—no matter how well-composed, dynamic or inspiring—will disappear forever, never to be seen.

There are a number of reasons golf photographers have it rough, and a dependancy on the performance of their subjects is just one. Still, the best among them keep getting the job done, amazing us with incredible images on the pages of Golf Digest and Sports Illustrated, among others.

We celebrate their work on p53—and, in a new twist for Kingdom, we soon will be sharing their thoughts, tips and anecdotes online at arnieskingdom.com, where you’ll also find our Course Guide, formerly a fixture in the back of Kingdom. These are just two examples of a new wave of cooperation between our print and online editions. Look for more to come.

Because he was such a good student, we sent our intrepid golf editor Paul Trow to Germany’s WINSTONuniversity, a new effort that will teach course and club management to future industry professionals. It looks to be an amazing program, ensuring a quality future for golf (p178). While Paul was weathering winter in Deutschland, I was driving Maserati’s new GranTurismo Convertible Sport around California’s wine country (sometimes it’s good to be the editor) with friends, even, as the car has four usable seats (p72). Following that, I had a fantastic conversation with photographer Harry Frye, who’s responsible for this issue’s Life in Pictures (p109) and spent some time reminiscing about my time in Japan (p34), a trip that saw plenty of picture-taking. Like Harry, I appreciate certain hard-to-describe aspects of shooting film as opposed to digital. But unlike Harry—or Fred Vuich, Dom Furore, Stephen Szurlej, Ross Kinaird and Evan Schiller—photography isn’t my career. I have the utmost respect for those guys, and all the others who are out there shooting every day. They’re responsible for immortalizing the best moments in sports and thus, in a way, for preserving one aspect of humans reaching their greatest potential. For inspiration in reaching our own, we need only look at their work—or to the men themselves. Here’s hoping you reach yours.

Photo: Stephen Szurlej

Visibly impressed,

Reade Tilley—Editor

*The name of the girl in the Vietnam photo is Phan Thi Kim Phuc, she’s a Canadian citizen, and she’s doing fine.

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Kingdom magazine Issue 25—Spring 2013

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AP Q&A—Paul Trow drops by Bay Hill to get the Palmer perspective Narrow Road—The editor travels through time in Japan and returns refreshed Ian Poulter—Kingdom visits the Ryder Cup superstar in his new Lake Nona home Shot—A showcase and advice from golf photographers Peter Bevacqua—Meet the new man in the hot seat at the PGA of America Red Hot—The editor sees the light in Maserati’s GranTurismo Covertible Sport Golf on the 6th—A selection of the best 18 holes on offer a third of the way round James Ingles—The arms-maker handcrafts tools for shots of a different kind Bob Beamon—The iconic long jumper turned Olympian art gallery curator Sicily—Home to a volcano, the ancestors of many Italian-Americans, and now golf Life in Pictures—A trip down Memory Lane with Harry Frye’s shots of the King Billy Casper—Serial winner who gave the Big Three a run for their money Plugged In—Top games-maker EA Sports are reinventing golf with TW13

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Kingdom magazine Issue 25—Spring 2013

126 126 132 138 142 144 150 154 158 163 173 178 182 186

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Western Open—Historical look at the age-old tournament that was nearly a major PNC Park—A salute to the best park in Pittsburgh—and in baseball Spirits of the U.S.—Traditional distillations that speak with an American accent Donald Trump—Kingdom’s outspoken columnist extols the importance of vision Walt Disney World—Make your own magic on this kingdom’s courses Allergies—Advice for those of us who (ah-choo!) hate spring Sun Sense—Warming up to the sun but avoiding its ill effects In Motion—Products to keep you moving in the right direction Spring Gift Guide—A dip into the luxury world of lifestyle accessories to die for Instruction—Bay Hill’s head professional leads the way out of the woods Nurturing Golf’s Roots—A new golf university will soon be opening in Germany APDC Update—More essential course design principles from APDC’s experts Last page—Delaware’s Wilmington Country Club will stage the 17th Palmer Cup

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Taking a View With preparations for the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by MasterCard already under way, Kingdom’s editors caught up with the King in his office at Bay Hill and chatted about family, equipment changes, his tournament and the evils of the broomhandled putter. As always, we learned a thing or two.

Here’s a look at what was on Mr. Palmer’s mind…

Kingdom: At the PNC Father/Son Challenge this year, you played with your grandson Will Wears. How’s his game and what are his plans for the future?

Arnold Palmer: He’s a senior in high school, has a great golf swing and can really hit it.

But it has no zip code. He’s working hard and really focusing on his golf, and that’s really the best I can tell you. He plays on the golf team at Latrobe High School, the same school I attended. A number of colleges have invited him to visit and he’s taking his SATs, and when that’s determined he will [choose a college]. He can play pretty consistently to par—and sometimes better.

K: You played with Jack Nicklaus in the PNC. Do you golf with him often?

AP: We don’t play [often] but maybe a couple a times a year is about the size of that.

K: How’s your grandson Sam doing?

AP: He’s a regular on the Web.com tour, and he will play fairly consistently on that. He is also eligble to receive sponsors’ exemptions on the PGA Tour and his first start will be at the AT&T Pro-Am. K: Are you headed to that tournament [at Pebble Beach]?

AP: No sir. I’ll be in Palm Springs at the time, but I’m not going for the tournament there.

My wife likes her month in the desert, so we’ll stay put.

K: When you’re in Palm Springs, where do you play?

AP: I play at Tradition.

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K: We thought Rory McIlroy promised to come to the Arnold Palmer Invitational?

AP: I asked him to come and he has responded, and I told him if he didn’t come then he wouldn’t have to worry about world’s No.1 because I’d break his arm! [laughing] I’m kidding, of course. I’m sure it comes down to scheduling and if he is open, he will come.

K: Do you play other courses in Orlando?

AP: No I don’t. I play Bay Hill when I go out and that is not as frequent as it once was. I play in the Shootout two to three times a week and that’s about it.

K: You don’t really play the Disney courses?

AP: No, but I hope to do some design work on them. That’s what most of our business is now: renovating and refreshing.

We’ve got several active projects internationally, including one in China that is about to break ground. It will be in full swing shortly.

K: Have you seen it?

AP: I’ve been to China but not to this [course].

K: Wasn’t there a suspension of golf course developments in China?

AP: The suspension is on again and off again and influenced by local politics and policies. We’re anxious to move forward on a few projects in China.

K: What do you make of the new ruling regarding broom-handled or “belly” putters, which now won’t be allowed?

AP: Well, I think it’s long overdue. Having any part of the golf club anchor to the body is something that they really need to look at very seriously. Unless I miss my guess, that will eventually go away totally. According to the rules, players will not be allowed to anchor a putter or any other equipment on their body, and I think that’s a good call.

They stopped Sam Snead from straddling the line when he putted, and they did that immediately. So I think it’s necessary.

K: Do many people here at Bay Hill play with the belly putter?

AP: We have a lot. A lot of them I play with, use the long putter. One of the best amateurs in the club uses it, and putts very well.

K: Webb Simpson and Keegan Bradley already won majors, both with the aid of the long putters. Will it be easy or difficult to adjust?

AP: Well, it’s psychological. I think if they got going with a good putter they could putt as well with anything. But if there is something anchoring it, that gives you a little more security. You know, I’ve been asked when I first started playing the Tour, if I kind of rested my gloved hand on my upper leg. Someone asked me that question just the other day. I can’t say that I actually did, but I can’t say that I didn’t at times either.

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K: Have you heard anything about a move to limit the distance the ball can fly for pros?

AP: I know this is an ongoing debate but haven’t heard anything about it recently. I hope they do. I would love to see them cut the distance down.

K: This is coming from the USGA… AP: And the R&A. When it comes to the Rules of Golf the USGA and R&A are in complete unison. They agree on all the rules now, which is a good thing.

K: Who are the current contenders in major championships, in your view?

AP: Immediately you look at the guys who are leading on Tour: McIlroy, Tiger, Luke Donald…

K: Donald’s not doing well in majors…

AP: You’re right. He hasn’t had a lot of success in the Majors, has he? I’m surprised because he’s a great player. As are Justin Rose and Adam Scott. Adam’s one of those guys who will be affected by the long putter rule, but he’ll figure it out. I would think Lee Westwood is going to break through somewhere.

Brandt Snedeker has also proven he’s a good player.

“Having any part of the golf club anchor to the body is something that they really need to look at very seriously” Palmer admits that his gloved hand sometimes might have rested on his leg

Dawn patrol: Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer are looking forward to teaming up as honorary starters again at the 2013 Masters

“At some point they [the USGA] will likely bring it [the U.S. Open] here [Florida]. I hope it’s to Bay Hill”

K: Does he play in your tourney?

AP: He usually does.

K: Another broken arm?

AP: [Laughter] K: Dustin Johnson?

AP: He’s a good player too. And you can’t dismiss Bubba Watson. Stricker’s getting to the age where he’s becoming less of a factor, but he’s still good. Dustin Johnson, Ian Poulter… there are a lot of good guys out there today.

K: Regarding Poulter: Is his Ryder Cup success—but lack of majors—due to the way the courses are set up?

AP: I don’t think so. The personality is more a factor than the way the golf courses are set up. It’s how they look at the championship they’re playing in, like the PGA, Open, British Open and Masters. Of course the Masters sometimes sets the pace for what these guys do the rest of the year. If they have a good start, then the potential is there to continue.

K: Is that how you felt about the Masters?

AP: Get the momentum and keep it going, yes.

K: You’re going to be an honorary starter there again?

AP: I am, yes sir.

K: With Gary Player?

AP: He joined Jack and me last year, and I know Billy Payne has invited us all back, so I assume he will be there.

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K: Last year’s Masters, the final round, one of the most exciting days in golf ever. What did you make of Watson’s shot out of the trees in the playoffs?

AP: Well now that was a stroke of good fortune, that he was in there and able to hit that ball out. He has got a lot of leverage to start with, which is certainly in his favor, but the fact that he was in a position in there where he had room to swing the club and make that big of an arc and get away with it is amazing.

K: Oosthuizen looks a good player to me…

AP: Yeah! I hope he comes to Bay Hill. [for the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by MasterCard]. Good player.

K: Will Bay Hill stage a major, perhaps the US Open?

AP: I started that conversation about 30 years ago, I renewed it the other day with some of the USGA. We’d love to have it, but the chances aren’t very good.

K: Is it the hot weather?

AP: That was the reason they didn’t play in the South before, but now I think that’s gone. It was probably as hot at Oakmont in ’94 as it was in Orlando that same summer.

At some point they’ll likely bring it here somewhere. Maybe not Bay Hill but somewhere south—I hope it’s Bay Hill.

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way I would. I still spend time in my shop a few days a week, maybe changing some lies or lofts or replacing some grips.

K: When did you start working on clubs?

AP: In high school. I always liked to have the lines on the club edges where I thought they should be, and that was very important. When the lines slant too far forward when you set up, that shapes the way the club goes into the ball, so I always tried to get them so that they were perpendicular to the line of flight of the ball.

K: It makes you more comfortable?

AP: Much more. I was a hooker, and I didn’t like that hook.

K: Did your dad work on clubs?

AP: No, I started fixing clubs for him in the pro shop during World War II when they were still using wooden shafts. A lot of people were playing with wooden shafts in the early ’40s; they were holdovers from the earlier days. Hickory.

K: What about the Western Open?

AP: I started playing in the Western Open when I started playing the tour. At the time the Western Open had great history and seemed to be on its way to being a major championship, one of the majors on the tour. It never happened, but I remember it. I went there with the thoughts of winning that championship in Blythefield in Grand Rapids. I beat Sam Snead by two shots. That was ’61. And then in ’63 at Beverly in Chicago, Nicklaus, Boros and I tied. We shot 280, and in the playoff I shot 70, Boros shot 71 and Nicklaus shot 73. That was my second Western Open win. Needless to say I enjoyed it.

Mr. Palmer tweaks his clubs in his workshop to get them the way he wants them

K: What’s your take on McIlory?

AP: So far he looks pretty doggone good. He could be a major factor in the game of golf, such as Tiger Woods.

K: Will his equipment change be a big deal?

AP: Depends on individuals again. Some guys can just pick up clubs. Hell, I won the Houston Open one year and used two different sets of clubs through the tournament. They were both Wilsons.

K: Really! Why? AP: I was looking for a blade, an iron head that pleased me, and I couldn’t find it, so I just changed sets of irons.

K: And there have been two bags on the cart ever since!

AP: [laughing] Yeah, I’m gonna stop that. Everybody’s giving me the business about all the clubs I still take with me to practice.

K: You tinker with clubs a lot, but have you ever made your own from scratch?

AP: Years ago, my club guys would send me the rough head and then I’d finish it. I’d shape it to get the lines the way I want them to look. Up until recently, I would assemble most of my woods and irons, to get them exactly how I wanted them. But now my guys at Callaway have looked at my clubs enough that they’re starting to make them the

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K: How did it go from being almost of the same stature as the Masters to being nonexistent?

AP: Well you never know. Walter Hagen, Bobby Jones and all those guys played it, but it just never materialized. I don’t know why. The Canadian Open was another one.

Looked like it was going to be a major also, but it never quite developed into it.

K: Switching gears, have you considered building a course in Istanbul, which is bidding to host the 2020 Olympic Games?

AP: We talked to some people about that, but nothing’s ever transpired. But Turkey’s a pretty good country, isn’t it?

K: It is a good country. A bit like Spain in terms of golf…

AP: I won the Spanish Open there in 1975 at La Manga.

K: About the U.S. PGA Championship…

AP: I haven’t won the U.S. PGA. I won the British PGA and I won the Canadian PGA, and no one ever talks about that; they only ever mention that I didn’t win the U.S. PGA.

“When I started playing on the tour, the Western Open had great history and seemed on its way to being a major”

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K: You won the British PGA at Royal St. George’s…

AP: Wind blew like hell. I had a great week!

K: You have 19 courses in Japan. How often have you visited?

AP: I went every year for a lot of years. I went and played the tournament, but then I kind of stopped. Golf-wise it was great. It was very interesting. They’re very industrious people and the Japanese golfers were very good players.

But then it sort of slowed and for some reason it hasn’t really picked up, hasn’t gotten back to that intensity and level that it was at in the ’60s and ’70s. Why, I don’t know.

I don’t think the economy had that much to do with it.

“He [Billy Casper] was a good player, a great player actually. He was a great putter and played his fade beautifully”

K: You have quite a history with the country in terms of branding as well…

AP: Oh my, yes. We started licensing products in Japan in the 1960s when I was traveling there so frequently. We then spread the program to South Korea and Taiwan and now it is everywhere from Hong Kong, Malaysia, China, you name it. There are over 320 stores that carry nothing but Arnold Palmer products.

K: Did you ever get into baseball? I know you’re a Pirates fan. Did you know Roberto Clemente?

AP: Oh yeah. I didn’t know him well, but I knew him. He was one hell of a player and what a shame his life and career was cut short. I played a little baseball growing up, but not very seriously. I was too wrapped up in golf.

Mr. Palmer celebrates after winning the British PGA Championship in 1975

K: Any great Pirates moments?

AP: I was at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh on the last game of the 1960 World Series. Bill Mazeroski was at bat and hit that home run to win the ballgame, and I was there. The Pirates are going to come back. That’s what they’ve been saying since…

K: Back to golf: Did the choice of Tom Watson to be U.S. Ryder Cup captain surprise you?

AP: Watson’s a good friend and I think he’ll be a great captain. I don’t have any question in my mind about his ability to take charge of the team and do the right thing, but can’t figure why the PGA passed on guys like [David] Toms and Larry Nelson. They are two guys who have never been captain but have records that qualify them to be captains.

K: Have you had any recent correspondence with St Andrews where the university is celebrating its 600th anniversary in 2013?

AP: I am working with St Andrews right now on matters involving the anniversary. I’m very pleased and proud to have a degree from St. Andrews and we are discussing the possibility of establishing an Arnold Palmer scholarship there.

K: What do you remember about Billy Casper?

AP: He was a good player, a great player actually. And he was a great putter and played his fade beautifully. He won the Masters and two Opens. I came close to beating him at Winged Foot in 1959. And you know what happened in San Francisco in’66. I had him seven shots with eight holes to play, and we tied and he beat me in a playoff.

K: Does that still annoy you?

AP: How can you not think about it? It looked like I was a cinch. On one hole he said to me, ‘Hey Arnie, y’know if I don’t get goin’ Nicklaus is gonna beat me for second!’ I said ‘Aw don’t worry Bill, I’ll help you.’ And I helped him right on to the Open championship. But you’ve heard that before. There were too many factors there.

K: Who was the best putter and who’s the best today?

AP: I think Bobby Locke was the most astounding putter…

I remember Demaret and Mangrum talking about who were good putters… Demaret said, ‘I’ll take Locke over anybody in the world.’ As I said Casper was a great putter.

Holed just about everything. I always liked [Brad] Faxon’s putting, but I’m not out there so I’m not current.

K: Woods must be good…

AP: You don’t win championships without being a good putter.

K: Do you believe Woods will catch Nicklaus?

AP: Do I now? I think he’s still capable of winning four majors. But if I had to bet, I wouldn’t bet much.

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At the ryokan, full of sake and good food, my wife saw a ghost. Or rather, she said she knew a ghost was there. I was across the table, sitting on the floor as well, contemplating the kaiseki meal we’d just finished—fourteen works of art, served one at a time over several hours—and drifting in a soft, shimmering sound that could have been the leaves outside, shaking like so many paper dimes, or the moonlit river below, running since long before ghosts were born, before our inn was built, and before I’d ever considered Japan.

Japan, a simply decorated but exquisitely crafted box that opens to reveal so many more, each a different size and of increasingly rich design, all fit together so perfectly there’s hardly room for water between them. Next to the brightly colored and widely scattered pieces of America, there’s a real cohesion to the culture here, and I believe it has something to do with perfection.

That perfection is impossible is entirely the point, and something of which we were immediately reminded upon arrival in Tokyo.

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Tok yo After three hard weeks camping in Mongolia, we needed showers. And from the looks we were getting from the hotel’s reception staff, we’d been smart to ship clean clothes ahead from the States. Sadly, however, at check-in the smiling concierge produced only one suitcase—and it was not my wife’s. So what, I said, ordering champagne to the room. It was a honeymoon after all. And anyway reception tracked her bag to Hainan; we could expect it in two days or so. In the meantime I saw no problem staying in the room. The 26th floor of the Cerulean Tower Hotel, overlooking Tokyo’s glittering Shibuya district, is not a bad place to get stuck.

In the early and mid 1990s, the kids were all over Shibuya. On any given afternoon, hip young things could be seen sipping cold strawberry milk and other pretty drinks at over-designed cafés, watching the steady line of trendy girls filing into the 109 Building, a still-glossy giant candy box that holds more than 100 designer boutiques. Shibuya gave birth to kogal gyaru—the now iconic photo-booth-addicted Japanese schoolgirls with short skirts, dyed hair, loose socks and stuffed animals pinned to cartoonish shoulder bags. The area still offers great people-watching, though most of the youth have moved north to the Harajuku fashion district and prefer to dress as characters from Japanese comics rather than as hypersexual coeds. Still, there were a few kogal milling around Shibuya’s train station when my wife and I set out on an impossible mission, one that I should have seen coming.

It was disappointing, but perhaps not surprising, that my wife regarded a missing suitcase as an excuse to shop rather than as an opportunity to stay in. And so we set out, away from the bed and into the fray, down a crowded, winding labyrinth of women’s clothing stores, ready to confront the obvious.

The first shopgirl balked, shaking her head as she looked my wife up and down. At 5’11” my formermodel wife looks me in the eye—an unlikely customer for Shibuya’s boutiques. The second shop came up short as well. But after some digging (and a pair of lifesaving iced coffees; it was August and the sun wasn’t shy) we eventually found a large, trendy boutique that had racks of Western-sized potential. An hour or so later, with the wife smiling and freshly appointed, and me following behind holding bags of women’s clothes, we finally set off to enjoy Japan. It occurred to me that I was married.

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China and Mongolia had been the “adventure” part of our honeymoon: hauling backpacks, eating blocks of yogurt dried on yurt roofs, camping by golden sand dunes and not showering for weeks. From here on out it was to be an elegant ride of diamond-colored cocktails, long hours in hot springs, old-style inns with tatami-mat floors and—something we were both eagerly anticipating—clean, beautiful food.

The first of that was had in a robata (grill) restaurant on the top floor of one of Shibuya’s large department stores. The name of both the restaurant and the building are forgotten, left on one of the many elevators or escalators that I rode that day, but the food was lovely. The next evening is easier to recall: tapas in a basement restaurant. The décor was sufficiently Spain-feeling, with dark red bricks in the tall walls around us and a large painting of a clown-collared someone who might have been Prince Philip II. The food and wine were good enough and the service friendly, if not educational.

“Why’d you come to Japan?” asked our Japanese waiter in perfect Spanish. “Para practicar mi Español,” I replied. One of the best conversations I had in Tokyo.

Kyoto We left Tokyo on a morning Shinkansen (bullet train) bound for Kyoto. It’s been overwritten, but the punctuality of Japanese trains is indeed amazing; it’s as if you could set your watch by their arrivals and departures, and they’re clean and fast to boot. A horrible crash in 2005 was blamed on the rail authority’s relentless pursuit of timetable perfection, but our journeys in the country were uneventful. And as much as I was enjoying the air conditioning and the views on the way to Kyoto, that trip could have lasted longer. When we did arrive, still road-weary from Mongolia, it was all we could do to pull ourselves together and get to the Hiiragiya Ryokan, our first ryokan and one of the finest in Japan.

They’re not standard hotels, ryokan. Hailing from the Tokugawa period (1603-1868, also called the Edo period, a mostly stable era that saw the end of the samurai, the introduction of the geisha, and the beginning of a highly formalized Confucian social structure in Japan), the inns today still look the part: tatami mats on the floors, sliding doors, formally organized rooms, communal baths and often meals included. Service is top notch, yakata (cotton robes) are provided and acceptable to be worn around the premises, and good behavior from guests is a given.

The Hiiragiya Ryokan has been particularly lauded since it opened in 1818. Nobel Prize winning novelist Yasunari Kawabata painted this picture during one of his many stays: “On a drizzly afternoon in Kyoto, sitting by the window, I watch the falling rain, listen to its calming sound. It is here, at Hiiragiya, that I wistfully recall that sense of tranquility that belonged to old Japan.”

Ryokan cost more than hotels, but it was a special occasion trip and we wanted the experience, especially proper kaiseki meals. Of the ones we enjoyed, our first was an experience that everyone should have.

Kaiseki has evolved into an art form in which the food, the preparation and the presentation all come together to reflect

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both the season and the regional character. Color, taste and texture factor into the selection and preparation of ingredients, usually local, and carefully chosen dishes are adorned with real flowers, leaves or other garnishes to further enhance the experience. There’s no way for me to know what, exactly, we ate that first night, but as the nakai (attendant) kept bringing and preparing courses, it was as if we were dining in a dream that lasted exactly as long as it should.

The Next Day God, it was hot. The kind of hot that makes you want to give up. We’d moved to a cheaper ryokan and forced ourselves out of the room to do some touristing, but it was useless. There was a shrine and a park and more old things, but it all blurred by in a fevered hallucination.

At the bottom of some stone steps, through heat and exhaust clouding a busy intersection, my wife found a parlor that served kakigori, a shaved ice for which Kyoto is famous. Parfaits of that covered in condensed milk and served with anko (sweet bean paste) and a scoop of matcha (green tea) ice cream saved our lives, I’m sure.

In better spirits, we wandered past the Gion district and crossed the bridge to Pontocho, a narrow alley one block off the Kamo River. Like much of Gion, famous for the disciplined and beautiful geisha entertainers, the businesses here are designed like safety deposit boxes.

Taxation used to be based on exposed street frontage, so buildings were built narrow and deep. We ducked into such a place when the heat started getting to us again and happily discovered Asahi Extra Cold beer (served at 28˚F). For the second time that day: lives saved.

There’s a lot to see in Kyoto, and we missed most of it. But we didn’t care—the heat was just that bad. In a dripping mess of stuck shirts and flushed skin, we left the ancient city behind and headed for the mountains.

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Takayama Leaving Nagoya, the train tracks rolled out softly like a black ribbon. Small clouds of whitewater folded back onto perfectly smooth rocks in a river that darted and played along our path, springing into view one moment before disappearing the next behind a bend or stand of trees.

Pushing north into the Hida Mountains, quite suddenly a boy appeared in the distance flying a kite. The kite, the wind, the string and the boy holding it were all equally important to the scene, and now I’m not sure that any of them really existed. In Japan you move within a crowd of ghosts so thick that you’re forever passing through walls built over graves dug within roads that lead to the present, the future and the past at the same time. Who you meet and what you see along the way are almost impossible to find again, even if you only look away for a moment. And that’s how I came into Takayama.

I knew the town would be my favorite stop in Japan the instant we stepped off the train, but I didn’t know I’d soon be eating the greatest steak I’ve ever had (and that from a man with family in Nebraska). Restaurant Le Midi is a French-style bistro owned by the French-trained Chef Tagami Katsunori. Expertly preparing dishes of local Hida beef, which is so beautifully flavored, so sumptuous and so emotionally satisfying that I’d be terrified to show it to my grill at home for

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fear of ruining it, the chef and his team are doing something special in the mountains, and I’ll leave it at that.

The Ryokan Tanabe was charming and clean, the staff beyond friendly and the entire town a manageable size and layout. It was a short walk to the Miyagawa River and the quaint Kaji Bridge decorated with, among other things, two curiously grotesque statues of characters, perhaps spirits protecting the city: Te-naga zuchi zou, stretching ridiculously long arms above his head, and Ashi-naga zuchi zou, perched forever on preposterously long legs. Beyond them, ignoring time, blocks of low, Edo Period wooden buildings are lined up along Sannomachi Street. Former merchant and artisan rooms, they now hold sake breweries and tourist shops. As we walked around smitten by it all, rickshaws occasionally pounded past us, the runners sweating torrents under their straw hats. Again I lost track of reality and wondered if the old town would be there tomorrow or if we’d look across the river in the morning to see a shrine or a modern building in its place.

Back on today’s side of the Miyagawa at the Gallery Yoshimoto, I had a lovely, if broken, conversation with the owner/artist, whose paper cuttings look like paintings. After much deliberation I purchased two of his works, with my wife looking on somewhat disapprovingly. Her frustrations, though, were soon drowned in margaritas, if you can believe it, at the Chapala restaurant, a closet-sized piñata tucked off the main drag. The enthusiastic and friendly owner/waiter/chef, who speaks enough English, spent some time in California several decades ago, fell in love with Mexican food, and decided to return East and give it a go. Enchiladas, curious bite-sized treats and surprisingly good salsa make this a reasonably priced good idea, if only for the opportunity to eat tacos with chopsticks. Across the street from our ryokan a different night, a robata bar served great food but delivered frustrated looks from a few residents. In tourist towns the locals like to keep a few doors closed, and that’s fair enough.

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Shuzenji Out of the mountains, we headed to Mishima to catch a train south. We were bound for the onsen (hot springs spa) town of Shujenzi on the sand-and-surf-covered Izu Peninsula, our last stop before returning to Tokyo and then home.

In the way that surf towns let you know you’re near the sand and waves even before you smell the sea, the small train from Mishima felt beachy, its lightly colored interior wide and bright. In memory, it seems like there was sand scattered on the floor, but in fact the train, like all of our Japanese trains, was nearly spotless. The kids onboard looked healthy and tanned, chattering away in an array of flip-flops, hats and popular shorts. For the first time on the trip we saw Japanese casual, and this, too, was executed to code: hair perfectly mussed, sunglasses hung on crisp T-shirts printed with waves or colored shapes, loose shoulder bags revealing magazines and towels. Happy and clean. Clean clean clean. I wondered if we should have gone to the beach instead, but I was eagerly looking forward to the next ryokan, an Edo-era lodge advertised as long having been an artists’ hideaway. And so we rode the train to our stop and caught a taxi to the Arai Ryokan.

Set on the Katsura River amidst a bamboo forest, the ryokan dates to 1872. Like one of upstate New York’s grand old lodges it wears its age gracefully, if somewhat apparently, demurely choosing to ignore the damp smell in discolored corners, a well-traveled carpet in the main hallway and furniture installed when Miki Obata and The Out Kast shared the airwaves with The Beatles. But I didn’t mind. I found a cold bottle of sake in our room, we put on our yakata and settled in.

Ty p ical Or der of a K a i sek i M e a l amuse-bouche season-establishing course seasonal sashimi s i m m e r e d i n g re d i e n t s a lidded dish, typically soup flame-broiled food (often fish) palate-cleanser chilled, lightly cooked vegetables light, acidic soup hot pot or similar rice dish with seasonal ingredients p i c k l e d ve g e t a b l e s m i s o - b a s e d o r ve g e t a b l e s o u p

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I descended the stone steps into the same waters that had soothed the muscles of some of Japan’s greatest artists

Hours later, after the last kaiseki meal of the trip, I went to the ryokan’s main onsen. It was relatively late, with less than an hour of “men’s time” remaining. There’d be a women-only block of time soon, and then the spa would close for cleaning. The only other people around, what looked to be a father and his young son, were fixing their robes and preparing to leave. For a split, frozen second when I entered the changing area, both locked on me with the same startled expression, obviously surprised to see a foreigner there, and at that hour. The father looked away first, and with a quick nod in my direction put a hand on his son’s back and hurried him out of the room, shuffling behind in sandals that were not quite on. The site of a naked, hairy monster from the West is no way to end a day. Alone, I removed and folded my robe, quietly placed it on a shelf, washed myself as is customary, and then descended stone steps into the same waters that had soothed the muscles of some of Japan’s greatest writers, painters and actors.

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The Tenpyo Dai Yokudo is the centerpiece of the ryokan’s four spas. It was built in 1934 and designed by master painter Yasuda Yukihiko to evoke the spirit of the 8th century Tenpyo era. A considered arrangement of large boulders sit half-sunk in the hot spring under wood beams that stretch high across the ceiling. Resting neck-deep, absolutely still on a submerged stone, water trickling into the main pool the only sound, I felt that I, too, should remain silent, and so I did, drunk in contemplation, feeling the weight of the immense space, sitting in a painting.

When I finally rose, steam pouring off me as if I’d just been born into winter, I found my way to my robe and a glass of water, put on my sandals, then returned to my room and fell into a deep sleep, drifting in a shimmering sound that could have been the leaves outside, shaking like so many paper dimes, or the moonlit river below, running since long before ghosts were born, before our inn was built, and before I’d ever considered Japan.

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Ian Poulter has been defined as a golfer by the Ryder Cup. With 12 wins and just three defeats in his four appearances for Europe, he has by far the best record in the biennial match of any modern player.

Not only is he a perpetual thorn in the United States’ side but, in true Trojan Horse style, he now resides in one of Florida’s most exclusive communities. Kingdom’s editors dropped by for a cup of tea...

Mission As Ian Poulter sPeaks, shooting from the hip in a clipped, almost strident middle-england accent, the thought springs to mind that if he’d been born 200 years ago he could easily have become a missionary. and if he’d been born a century ago, his skills, tenacity and courage under fire might have made him a Battle of Britain pilot.

Sitting with Europe’s Ryder Cup “go to” man—by the pool at his new home alongside the 18th fairway in the high-security Lake Nona estate a few miles east of Orlando’s international airport—was indeed a Spitfire experience, stimulating but also slightly scary. Still, we’d gone along for the ride expecting a rollercoaster, if only because it’s rare these days to meet anyone with unshakable convictions and a clear focus.

First impressions can be the most accurate, and ours as we pulled up outside were that this is very much “the house that Ian built.” To the untutored eye, it resembles a bright white fire station with a faux art deco façade and a driveway flanked by numerous garage doors. “I had everything to do with [the design of] this house,” he insists.

“I have very strong opinions and I designed it from the ground up. I worked with an architect to customize it in a way I felt was appropriate.

“I designed the house around my lifestyle. The gym overlooks the kitchen and the pool so if I’m in the gym I can keep an eye on the kids in the pool. If I’m in my games room [where there’s a snooker table, pool table, bar and cinema], I can still look into the pool. It’s all about lifestyle.

“It’s a family-orientated house, yet it’s all open-plan.

As big as this house is, downstairs there are still only three rooms on the entire ground floor and that to me is open, relaxed living space. I don’t like confined spaces, I don’t like feeling claustrophobic.

“Every detail—the handles on the kitchen doors, the design of the table in the kitchen, the design of the kitchen itself, the wine storage areas, picking the stone—I designed everything.”

Frank Lloyd Wright he may not be just yet, but, as realtors are wont to say, location is everything. And whilst a home in a sybaritic corner of central Florida cuts him off from the luxuries of his homeland, Poulter has already adapted effortlessly to the indigenous way of life. “I’m a fan of most sports but my two favorite teams are [London soccer club] Arsenal and Orlando Magic,” he says. “Since moving to America, I’ve become a huge basketball fan. The Orlando Magic arena is only 20 minutes from here, so we’ve got a suite there and go to every game we can with family and friends.”

Finding time to relax with family and friends is important to Poulter, but ironically the last place he wants to socialize is on the golf course. “I played five rounds of social golf last year. Golf days when I entertain sponsors are business to me. I practice all the time, but I have to juggle my family life and my corporate stuff, day-to-day.

I’m so busy I don’t have five hours for social golf. I spend two hours on the range which allows me the other three hours with my kids. They go to school close by. This is a nice neighborhood, the school’s very good, it’s January and they come home afterwards and jump into the pool.”

The vehicles housed behind the garage doors, of course, comprise Poulter’s burgeoning collection of classic cars, another key lifestyle facet. As luck would have it, that very day we visited he was awaiting delivery of his latest acquisition—a Ferrari 288 GTO. “The 288 is one of the most iconic Ferraris ever made and I wanted to treat myself,” he explains. “It’s an absolutely stunning car and happens to be the first 288 ever made, the first one off the production line. It’s had one

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owner from new, so it’s a pretty special machine. They held In the case of someone who makes his living playing it in customs for a couple of days for the paperwork and it professional golf this is no small handicap, though it was released this morning. perhaps provides a partial explanation for the motivation “I’ve had a Ferrari California for a couple of years, and drive that have propelled him against staggering odds again one of their really nice cars—great in this weather to the very pinnacle of the game. as you can get the roof down and tune into your iPod. The staging posts in Poulter’s story are already part of Then there’s the Ferrari FF I picked up last August at the golf’s folklore. How he sold balls, tees and Mars bars from Concourse show at Pebble Beach—it was flown in from the age of 14 at a modest club in the semi-rural, semi-urban Italy and the boss handed me the keys in front of 300 VIPs. hinterland half an hour north of London. How he had to pay That was pretty special. when he wanted to play despite the pittance he was paid.

“I had a Bentley a few years ago but I traded it in for How he became an assistant pro in 1994 when he told the a Rolls Royce Ghost, a lovely car, not as big and bulky, but PGA his handicap was four though it was actually quite a bit more comfy than the Phantom.” higher. How through sheer bloody-mindedness he dragged He still has a Bentley, actually, though one blessed his game up by its bootstraps to claim a European Tour card with four legs rather than wheels. Bentley and Enzo [as in on his fourth attempt. How he won the 2000 Italian Open Ferrari], the family pets, are labradoodles, a crossbreed in his rookie season. How he invited ridicule in 2008 by favored by asthma sufferers because they’re hypoallergenic. stating the only player who might be better than him was To discover that Poulter suffers from asthma comes Tiger Woods. How he won 16 tournaments around the world, as a surprise, but it put paid to his initial ambition to including two WGC events. And how he bent the 2012 Ryder become a professional soccer player. “I come from a Cup at Medinah to his will when Europe were seemingly out. very sporty family.

As careers go, My dad and uncle Poulter’s sounds both played football like the archetypal [soccer] before “rags to riches” story. they took up golf It’s doubtful he was and as a teenager I ever in rags, though really wanted to be he did grow up a footballer. I was sharing a bedroom a centre-forward with his older but my last couple brother Danny, also of years of playing 2012 Ryder Cup, Final Day a professional golfer.

I moved back to But the riches are in centre-half. When I evidence today. was 15, I had trials At 37, he has with Tottenham perhaps reached Hotspur, which a crossroads. He’s didn’t work out, so achieved more than I moved on to golf. most dream about, “I got asthma yet the major victory when I was 13 that would seal his and that slowed place in history things down, which remains elusive. was frustrating. I Married to still suffer, hence Katie, a former nurse, the reason I have and the proud father labradoodles—cat of four children, and dog hairs affect Poulter has cut back me, pollen, grass, his schedule in 2013 and there are only to 24 tournaments a couple of forms to spend more time of tree I’m not with family. And allergic to… it’s an business interests, absolute disaster so headed up by his I suffer pretty much role as proprietor all season. The of flourishing golf allergies kick off the apparel brand, IJP asthma but I try to Design, are eating control it as much further into his time as I can.” each year. The trick to

“I PLAYED FIVE ROUNDS OF SOCIAL GOLF LAST YEAR. GOLF DAYS WHEN I ENTERTAIN SPONSORS ARE BUSINESS TO ME”

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“LOOKING AT THE TOUR SCHEDULES, WITH SOMETHING LIKE 70 PERCENT OF THE QUALIFYING EVENTS BASED HERE IN AMERICA, WHY WOULD YOU LIVE IN EUROPE?”

balancing his complex lifestyle, it seems, is time management—a concept that could have been invented with him specifically in mind.

“If there’s going to be a year to do it [cut back his schedule], it’s a non-Ryder Cup year,” he says. “The eight majors and the WGCs have been a priority for the past few years, so that leaves 16 other events. If you want to play in all the FedExCup tournaments, that takes you down to 12. If you want to play at Bay Hill, Wentworth, the Players, you then have to ask ‘which other nine tournaments do I want to play?’ I’d love to play 30 events a year, but it’s just not possible.

“Having six weeks off now [at the start of 2013] is the right thing to do to recharge my batteries, get fit, take care of any niggles, aches and pains, and refresh myself for the Masters. I really feel that’s a tournament I can win. And of course I’ll be playing in the Arnold Palmer Invitational— after all, Bay Hill’s just down the road from here.”

Permanently basing himself in America is a key component of this strategy, despite concern back at the European Tour’s Wentworth HQ that they are being deserted by their star players. “I don’t see it as a European Tour-PGA Tour issue,” he retorts, almost indignantly. “I see myself as a global player. I want to play the best possible tournaments with the best possible fields. I want to commit to two tours for as long as my body will let me. I’m 37 now and working to make sure I’m in the best shape to compete as long and as well as I possibly can.

“Looking at the PGA and European Tour schedules, with something like 70 percent of the qualifying events based here in America, why would you live in Europe? Been there, done that,

tried it, it’s too difficult.

But nobody’s leaving Europe or going away.

Look at where the guys are going to play golf and understand what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to maximize their rest periods between tournaments and that isn’t about getting sleep on a plane, it’s about sleeping in a bed that’s in the right time zone. They’re still going to play the same amount of tournaments in Europe, but it just means they’re based somewhere else. Everyone’s still going to play in Europe, but they might live in America. It’s very easy to do it from here.”

And it’s probably a lot easier to run his business interests from an American base as well, though this is a far cry from his first encounters with the commercial world.

“My first job as an 11-year-old was working on a market stall selling trendy jeans and T-shirts. I guess my love of fashion developed way back then. Like anybody else, if I go to a shop and buy a new pair of shoes, or a nice suit or shirt, when I put them on I feel good. I like to be different. I loved the old pictures of Jack Nicklaus, Payne Stewart and Johnny Miller with flares, big collars, tartans.

I thought they were cool. And they still are.

“A few years ago I looked down the driving range and realized that all the golfers were wearing exactly the same clothes. Golf style had become very bland and boring.”

So Poulter decided to shake things up during the 2004 [British] Open at Royal Troon by donning a pair of Union Jack trousers. The public response was huge.

“I then thought ‘why not establish my own brand?’

IJP Design strives to create high-quality, unique, funky and distinctive apparel. I have a great team of designers

Poulter in just one of his Ferraris

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“IF ANYONE SAYS NO YOU CAN’T DO IT, THAT’S RUBBISH—COMPLETE, UTTER NONSENSE. IF YOU BELIEVE YOU’RE CAPABLE THEN GO AND DO IT”

and I’m extremely proud of what we’ve achieved.

“We keep trying to get the business bigger, better and more profitable.

I’d like to think the business will become self-sufficient and allow other opportunities to arise. Like golf-course development—I’ll be doing a joint venture in the next 18 months but I can’t talk about it at the moment.

“In the long run, IJP’s an extension of Ian Poulter the golfer and might lead to lots of potential spinoffs, like the wine industry or designing courses, clubhouses and interiors. The bottom line though is if I look good out on the golf course, then I’ll feel good.

“I’d like to be secure enough to do what I want to do.

For me, it’s all about having confidence. Anything is possible in any field of business, work or sport as long as you apply yourself. I don’t care who you are, you’ll achieve big things.

If anyone says ‘no, you can’t do it,’ that’s rubbish—complete, utter nonsense. If you believe you’re capable of doing something then go and do it. As long as you work hard and apply yourself to the things that really interest you and switch your brain on, then anything’s possible. Educated or uneducated, it doesn’t matter. It’s irrelevant to me. Some of the most fascinating people I’ve ever met are uneducated but have unbelievable self-belief and common sense. That’s why they’re successful in business.”

At times like this, you could close your eyes and feel you’re listening to an English version of Donald Trump, preaching the principles of hard work and self-help. Yet none of this messianic zeal would be possible without an abiding bond with where he came from and the experiences

that shaped his life.

One tale, in particular, is a microcosm of the whole pageant.

“I went to the Ryder Cup when I was 17 at The Belfry in 1993. I stayed in a tent three miles down the road with two other assistants. We had a fabulous time, it cost us three pounds a night to stay in someone’s back garden. She let us come in to do the washing up as we were cooking on a little camp stove. I had an absolutely fantastic time—the whole atmosphere, the electricity, the passion and what it meant.

That was when I said ‘this is what I want to do. I want to be a pro, I want to do my PGA exams and I want to play. I want to win tournaments on the European Tour and I want to win tournaments around the world.’

“Why do I play so well at the Ryder Cup? I go back to when I was 17. The inner burn is still there today as it was in that tent. When I get excited and motivated to do something then I switch my brain on. That happens in the Ryder Cup because I’m passionate about it and I believe in it. I’ve seen what other players have committed to it and that inspires me.

“I’ve always had a passion for match-play. I love headto-head competition and I hate to lose! It’s always been in me. My dad instilled it in me from an early age—play to win, do not play simply to take part.

“That’s not to say I don’t get inspired other times, but there are different intensity levels in sport. Different things inspire different people, and the Ryder Cup inspires me. I want to walk away from it knowing I’ve represented my teammates, vice-captains, captain and a whole continent and not disappointed anybody. There’s no other atmosphere like it in golf.

Flying the flag at the 133rd Open Championship, 15 July, 2004 at Royal Troon

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“With the golf I play week in, week out, the only person I can disappoint is myself—because if I haven’t performed I’ve let myself down. I’ve got myself to answer to, no one else, and I’m hard on myself when I disappoint myself.

“But you can’t fist-pump and create that level of intensity and inner burn in a stroke-play event at 7:15 on a Thursday morning when you’ve rolled in a 10ft birdie putt. You cannot recreate that. You can try, but you can’t outwardly express it like you do in a Ryder Cup. There, you’ve got 25,000 travelling European fans waiting with bated breath to see you hole that putt and when you do, you feed them and they feed you. You don’t get that in stroke play.”

Deep down, though, and perhaps this is the most endearing feature of the force of nature that is Ian Poulter, for all the posturing, attitude and bling, his heart is entrenched in the right place. His commitment to charity, especially when it comes to improving the lives of children, is exceptional, despite placing further strains on his time.

“If kids need looking after, it’s in my nature to help out,” he says, self-effacingly. He doesn’t want to make a big deal about it, but, just as the child is father to the man, the 17-year-old golf fan in the tent with a camp stove can never be divorced from what he is today.

“I was an excited sports fan for so long—until I was 20 and then I guess it became my business. But before then I was one of those kids asking Seve, Faldo and Monty for a golf ball, and I still have them today. Guys I’ve played with—beaten, socialized with, gone toe to toe with—I have their memorabilia sitting in my trophy cabinet. It reminds me of my whole journey from day one to where I am today.

“I will build an office at some stage soon and it will be a full timeline from day one because I believe it’s the right thing to do to tell a story—timeline it. I’ve still got my first binder in which I used to save weekly golf instruction articles when I was nine or ten years old. I’ve kept it all because it’s a timeline. I’d like my kids to do the same. It’s been an amazing journey. If I can’t play golf tomorrow, I’ve still got a great story and I don’t care. Well, I do care, but it doesn’t matter if I’m happy. And I am!”

IAN POULTER, in a nutshell… » Is married to Katie with four children, aged 10, 8, 3 and 1. Son Luke, 8, is already a keen golfer » Has been leading European points scorer over the last three Ryder Cups » Has had six top-ten finishes in major championships, including three in 2012 » Underlined his liking for head-to-head combat by winning the WGC Accenture Matchplay in 2010 and the Volvo World Matchplay in 2011 » Supports numerous charities, including Nemours Children’s Hospital (Ian Poulter Charity Classic), IJP Invitational (supporting UK junior golf), Dreamflight (flying sick children on holiday to Orlando) and the Willow Foundation » Is the tour professional attached to Woburn Golf Club, near his family home in England » Passed his PGA exams before venturing out on tour— not many players do that these days » Addressed 600 PGA of America golf pros during the 2013 PGA Merchandise Show » Has in his bag… Cobra ZL Encore driver, Amp fairway wood, Amp hybrid, S3 Pro irons, Trusty Rusty wedge, Odyssey White Hot XG7 putter, Titleist ProV1x ball » Hangs out with racing drivers Hans Stuck, Nigel Mansell, Heikki Kovalainen and Rubens Barichello

WGC-HSBC Champions 2012

» Will fly by helicopter to attend the British F1 Grand Prix at Silverstone the Sunday before the 2013 British Open at Muirfield in July

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Shot The vests, the hats, the awkward array of monopod legs and deck gun-sized lenses hung around their necks... They move faster than the players—except when they’re holding absolutely still—and they easily walk twice as far, running all over the course in search of the action. And when it gets down to the wire, on the 18th green on the last day, they take their positions, crouching low in a hidden competition of their own, the odd elbow or shoulder making some space as they angle for position, until finally, after days of preparation, if the weather’s right and if the golfer does his job and if the crowd is good and if some idiot in the background doesn’t mess it up, if after rolling forever, at the end of it all, the ball just drops into the hole, then, with a little luck, they get the shot.

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Steve Szurlej

2008

2005

Tobiano

Tiger Woods

One of Canada’s best tracks, the Thomas McBroomdesigned Tobiano is showcased beautifully in this Szurlej photo.

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Tiger took the Masters with a dramatic chip-in on 16 and a playoff birdie; Stephen Szurlej took one of the best photos ever made at Augusta.

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“Shooting tournaments is about being in the right place at the right time—and trying to figure out where the right place is going to be”

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Dom Furore “With golf, I can’t believe the places I’ve been to and the things I’ve gotten to see”

2013

2010

Himalayan GC

Phil Mickelson

Golf Digest Senior Photographer Dom Furore spent a month in the mountains of Nepal and China creating amazing images like this one, of the Himalayan Golf Course near Pokhara, Nepal.

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Mickelson’s second shot on #13 en route to his 2010 Masters victory was called the golf shot of the year; Furore’s was just as good, immortalizing the moment.

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FreD vuich “You get the dew on the grass that creates a little highlight, the course is pristine, the bunkers are raked, everything’s just there for you... If you get a perfect morning, you can get twice as much done as you can in an afternoon”

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1998

Nicolas Colsaerts

Arnold Palmer

On the first few days of a tourney, Vuich says he looks for “spots to put the players in” for photos. Here, Nicolas Colsaerts stands out during the Ryder Cup at Medinah CC.

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Vuich had to bring Arnie’s green jacket to Hawaii for this SI shot, taken 40 years after Palmer’s first Masters win.

“I wanted to have it handcuffed to my wrist,” he said.

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roSS KinnairD The Getty Images photographer throws some light on the workings of the professional mind and provides a few examples of his own to remind us all why the pros get paid to take pictures—and the rest of us don’t.

EquipmEnt Although you can get great results with pocket cameras today, the arena in which a pro golf photographer works presents a number of problems... Working distances from the subject means a long lens is a must. Also, today’s high performance SLRs deliver up to 14 frames per second, enabling the photographer to capture the golfer’s swing at full speed.

A high-speed camera gets Poulter’s ball in the perfect position.

timE of Day The golf course is not the place for the work-shy photographer. Early morning or late evening light give you the best chance to show the golfer and the golf course at its best. When the sun is low in the sky the contours of the golf course come to life, every hill and hollow is highlighted. Harsh mid-day sun does the course no favors.

Late afternoon light brings shadows to Grey Hawk and the Tallon Course’s No.11.

composition One of the biggest differences between many professionals and amateurs is that the amateur photographer generally only has the subject in mind when taking a picture.

They often fail to see all the other things going on around the subject that are also in the viewfinder.

Positioning behind the action and using the foreground offer a new perspective.

iconic imagE The moment I’ve taken a picture I know if it’s a “winner” or not. Over the years I have covered hundreds of events and taken many thousands of images, but some images are by their very nature more important than others. An image of a player celebrating a big win or holing a crucial putt may in time become an iconic image.

Such images are normally defining moments, the moments in tournaments that affect the outcome or the result. Players in time can also become icons, and then certain images of a player become iconic.

Capturing the moment with a clean background and a euphoric Martin Kaymer.

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Instruction by Evan Schiller You may not be publishing a book of course photography any time soon or have your work celebrated by myriad publications like photographer Evan Schiller, but that doesn’t mean you can’t snap a likeable shot of your favorite track now and then. Here, Schiller gives the rest of us some advice on how to make a course photo look like a course photo—not a picture of your front yard.

gEt gEar Camera: There are a lot of great cameras now, it depends on what you want to spend. I shoot with a medium format camera, with a sensor that’s 2 ½ times bigger than a 35mm sensor, but I’ve seen good pictures taken on more basic setups. Get the best you can afford.

Lens: You’ll need something wide, in the 24mm to 35mm range. Quality lenses will minimize distortion at the edges of the frame, which is important.

Tripod: Very important to keep things straight and steady. gEt informED Early in the morning is best, and know where to be, know when the light will hit the hole you want to photograph.

You won’t want the sun directly behind you; it makes for flat light. You’ll want it from the side if possible.

ElEvatE I travel with a ladder, but you can get on top of a cart or hill. Any time you can get elevation it’s always better. framE it If I stand in the middle of the fairway and take a picture, I guarantee you’re not going to like the photo. This is a big landscape and you’re putting it into a little frame, you have to make it interesting. I don’t like it when photographers cut things off, like the edges of tees or bunkers. There are ways to compose it where the lines of the bunker or tee lead into the shot. lEvEl it One of my pet peeves is when people don’t get horizons straight. Make sure the horizon is straight.

stEaDy now Use a tripod; you can set it up on top of the cart if possible.

You’ll want maximum depth of field and quality, which will mean a low ISO, a small aperture and thus a slower shutter speed. I like to shoot at ISO 50 or 100, which typically offers the best quality and smoothest photo possible, and I’m usually shooting at f19, f22, f27...

Sometimes though, if you’re elevated and the wind is blowing, things are rocking back and forth, even a little bit, and so you have to go with a faster ISO. I’ll go with a faster ISO so I can keep my depth of field. shoot Use a cable release or your camera’s self timer. This keeps your hands off the camera while the picture is being taken, eliminating at least one cause of camera shake. The most work goes into the scouting, the anticipating and the prepping. Pushing the shutter is the easy part. aDjust it Most of the time, what comes out of the camera never comes out the way you want it, it seems a little flat. Using Photoshop or other software, you want to bring out what’s there, make it look like what it looked like, which means maybe you have to brighten up a shadow a little bit, sometimes take out divots or a cart track or rope. Be careful because you don’t want it to look unnatural.

BE DiffErEnt There have been thousands of photos taken of the 7th hole at Pebble Beach with the waves crashing and a beautiful sunny sky. It’s nothing unique. I go to Pebble Beach once or twice a year to shoot, and people will think I’m crazy because it’ll be a beautiful sunny day and I’ll say I’m not going out. Sometimes what makes the shot is an unusual circumstance, something different or unnatural where weather is concerned. I was at Ballyneal [Golf Club] in Colorado and there were thunderstorms all over the place.

There were these little breaks, and these sunbeams would come through the dark clouds. I just sat at this one place and after a while, just like God calling or something, this beam of light comes down and hits the green. I was out there for, I don’t know, a couple of hours, and I got five minutes of that. It made the shot.

More of Evan Schiller’s course photography can be found at golfshots.com. His ebook, “Golf’s Unfolding Drama,” is available via his website and from the iTunes store.

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The Contributors

stEphEn szurlEj Long the photographer of Golf Digest’s “Best New Courses,” Stephen Szurlej’s resume is a sort of album of golf’s greatest shots. His work at the Masters, in particular, a tournament he’s covered for over two decades, is sublime. The iconic 1986 picture of Nicklaus raising his putter on 17, his. Norman falling to his knees on 15 in 1996 after failing to chip in, his again. Tiger in 1997, Tiger in 2005, and so on and so on. If the respect of one’s peers is a true measure of status, Dom Furore’s assessment of Szurlej says it all: “If my kid’s life depended on somebody coming back with the shot, I’d send Steve.”

Dom furorE To call Dom Furore well-traveled is understatement indeed. He’s hitched a ride in Burundi, stayed at the Hotel Rwanda and, more recently, spent a month in China and Nepal shooting remote golf courses—just to name a few adventures. As a Senior Staff Photographer at Golf Digest for more than two decades, Furore has covered nearly every aspect of the game, shooting portraits, tournaments and golf courses all over the world, in addition to side projects of his own. A winner of Life Magazine’s prestigious Alfred Eisenstadt Award, we’d happily carry his photo gear if he ever needed an assistant.

frED vuich A thoughtful image-maker who’s able to discuss the how and why of what he does—and to make it understandable to the rest of us—Vuich’s images speak volumes on their own. No wonder, then, that so many have graced the cover of Sports Illustrated, to which Vuich frequently contributes, and not just with golf. The World Press Photo Gold Medalist’s work can also be found in Golf Magazine and other publications, along with, we’re guessing, appearing on the walls of numerous photo fans’ rooms.

ross KinnairD A common sight at top golf tourneys and soccer events shooting for Getty Images, Ross Kinnaird is amongst the top imaging professionals in the industry. Kinnaird has been with Getty for more than 15 years, shooting photos that publications around the world depend on to satisfy their readers. More than that, as a former director for a different photo agency, he understands the sports photo business at all levels.

Evan schillEr Former PGA professional Evan Schiller competed in pro golf from 1983 to 1989, making appearances in professional tournaments around the world and on the PGA Tour, including the U.S. Open. He brings that perspective to his work as a photographer, which has been showcased in a number of publications, including Golf Digest and Travel & Leisure Golf. Known for precise and dynamic course photography with incredible attention to detail, Schiller’s work is showcased in a number of books, an ebook and innumerable prints of some of the world’s best courses.

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Kingdom’s series of articles about golf’s leading administrators continues with this profile of Pete Bevacqua, recently installed chief executive officer at the PGA of America.

Already with a stellar business career behind him though barely into his 40s, he tells Paul Trow how he is prioritizing the important role the PGA has to play in growing the game It is no exaggeration to suggest that Pete Bevacqua, a young man long earmarked for stardom amongst the higher echelons of the game, has had an eventful past couple of years. Early in 2011, this high-flying law graduate from Georgetown University, Washington D.C. was chief business officer at the USGA and by general consent the favorite to succeed the outgoing David Fay as executive director. Since 2007, he had been responsible for all the USGA’s revenue and commercial activities, including major sponsorship agreements. And with a c.v. that includes being named to the “Forty Under 40 Class” by Sports Business Journal in 2009 and one of the “40 Most Influential People in Golf” by GOLF Magazine in 2010, his continued climb up the ladder seemed guaranteed.

Then the USGA executive committee threw a curve ball by handing the top job instead to Mike Davis, its senior director of rules and competitions, and the man responsible in recent years for setting up the U.S. Open courses. Bevacqua, who had originally joined the USGA as an in-house counsel in 2000, duly headed off to CAA (Creative Artists Agency) Sports’ golf division, where he helped look after the interests of, among others, Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson and Greg Norman.

Then came another curve ball in April 2012 when Joe Steranka announced he would retire as chief executive officer of the PGA of America at the end of the year, his seventh at the helm and his 25th with the organization.

Bevacqua, whose name had also briefly been linked with the vacant LPGA commissioner’s position, was eventually unveiled as Steranka’s successor at the PGA’s annual meeting last November, and it has been ‘all systems go’ ever since.

“It’s an unbelievable honor and literally a dream come true to be given the opportunity to lead the PGA of America staff as we support our members in their efforts to grow the game through Golf 2.0 [more of which later] and as we count down to the association’s centennial [in 2016],” Bevacqua told the assembled staff and representatives of the PGA’s 27,000-plus members. “I decided years ago that I wanted to dedicate my professional life to the game I love

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and grew up with, and can think of no better way than to join the organization that supports and enhances the critical roles that PGA professionals play in our industry.”

He hit the ground running as his next major public appearance came just two months later at the PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando in January, an event attended by more than 1,000 exhibitors and over 43,000 golf professionals and retailers.

“The first few months have been spent learning the business and getting to know the staff,” he said. “The show came at a very early stage in my time with the PGA, but what an unbelievably energetic way to kick off the golf season! The merchandise and technology on display was incredible and the ‘state of the industry’ forums with people like Ted Bishop [PGA president], Tim Finchem [PGA Tour commissioner], Mark King [president and CEO of TaylorMade] and Jerry Tarde [editor-in-chief of Golf Digest] were inspirational. And it was great to have someone like Ian Poulter with us as well. He’s one of the most charismatic players in the game right now, and how he performed at the Ryder Cup was awesome.”

First and foremost, as is obvious to anyone he engages in conversation, Bevacqua, now 41, remains as passionate about golf as he was as a 10-year-old caddie in his home town of Bedford in Westchester County, New York.

He continued working at Bedford Golf & Tennis Club through From Georgetown University, Washington D.C. (below) to the PGA Show in Orlando (above) has been a 15-year journey for Bevacqua

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Growing the game is golf’s biggest mission, says Bevacqua (second from the left). Davis Love III, 2012 U.S. Ryder Cup captain, fully concurs

his college years, rising to caddie master and eventually golf shop manager under the late PGA professional Walt Ronan.

“The things I learned from Walt are things I still apply every day in interacting with people,” Bevacqua said. “A pro working at a club has to be different things for different people. Maybe he’s just a friend one day and a kind of psychologist the next. I always made it a point to watch how Walt dealt with different situations involving members and their guests or vendors and the business aspect of golf.

“I got my handicap down to scratch while I was a student, but that was the best I’ve been in my life. I’m off 2.4 at the moment. Since my move to PGA HQ, I’ve been playing a bit at Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter [recently acquired by Donald Trump from Ritz-Carlton].”

Bevacqua was a three-sport standout at Brunswick School in Greenwich, Connecticut where he was valedictorian, senior class president and earned nine varsity letters. During his senior year, he was named all-league in football (he was a quarterback), basketball (despite being barely 6ft tall) and golf, captaining the teams in the latter two sports. He was also an enthusiastic baseball performer in his spare time. After graduating magna cum laude in English from the University of Notre Dame, Indiana in 1993, Bevacqua earned his law degree from Georgetown four years later and then worked for international attorneys Davis Polk & Wardwell before joining the USGA. Given such a pedigree, the PGA clearly has high hopes for its new leader. “Pete’s combination of experience, leadership skills and broad understanding of the golf industry really stood out among several excellent candidates,” said Bishop.

Bevacqua is certainly clear about his priorities.

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“Pete’s experience, leadership skills and understanding of the golf industry stood out among several excellent candidates” “We’re here to serve our 27,000 members, to work for their benefit, to act as their voice and to tackle their issues.

We always need to be aware we are here for them, to communicate with them and work on the relationship between them and HQ. Primarily through the PGA Championship and the Ryder Cup, we need to continue to explain our brand to the world. We have to keep elevating these great championships and make sure the PGA is as good as it can be, operationally and financially. In many respects, given the quality of the field, it’s the best of the four majors. Also, we must ensure the Ryder Cup remains the most exciting event in golf, indeed the whole of sport.”

Then we come to Golf 2.0. “The purpose of Golf 2.0 is to grow the game through a number of initiatives. Get Golf Ready is a program to bring people into the game on the basis of five lessons for $99. In 2012, we had 75,000 people take up this offer at 3,100 facilities across the country. Sixty percent of these were women, a figure that compares favorably with the proportion of golfers overall who are women—currently 18 percent. Furthermore, 82 percent of those who went through the program stuck with golf beyond the five lessons. Our great advantage is the quality of our members. They’re the tangible line of communication, and we leave them to explain to their employees how this should work at their facility.”

Bevacqua has no doubt that growing the game is golf’s biggest long-term challenge. “The competition for disposable income is increasingly difficult. Golf has

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to combat the hurdles. It takes too much time to play a round, it’s too expensive and it’s an awfully hard game to learn. Golf has to recognize these challenges if it’s to have a healthy future. We need to get more women and minorities into the game, also the 30-45 age bracket. The culture of the U.S. family has changed. The 1960s model of Dad playing 36 holes with his friends at weekends is outdated. So how do you start to accurately position golf with children, wives and friends? Certainly not by the pool at the country club any more. This is all an educational process and it has to be a driving force in attracting the next generation of players.

“So what are my targets as I tackle all these issues? I don’t want to find myself thinking I’ve got it all figured out because I won’t have. It has been a great three months of learning but I would say we are probably two months away from drafting with the Board the long- and short-term strategic plans for the PGA. “I will sit down soon with Daniel Crall [newly promoted from managing director of strategic development to chief operating officer] and Kerry Haigh [managing director of championships and business development] and the three of us are going to take the lead in drafting these plans. We will confer with other senior staff until we are comfortable with what we’ve got.”

Despite this constructive approach to the nitty-gritty Is Bevacqua on a collision course with the USGA over long putters?

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of running the PGA, there is one elephant in the room that simply can’t be ignored—long putters, or rather the recent USGA/R&A decision to outlaw body-anchored strokes from January 1, 2016. A huge row is brewing at the professional end of the game, and it’s not just the multi-millionaire PGA Tour brethren who are taking umbrage.

“We polled our members about this so we could come up with a position and 63 percent of them said they did not favor the ban,” Bevacqua reports. “So we wrote a letter to the USGA letting them know about this. We have great respect for the USGA and the R&A and the role they perform with the rules of the game, but we’d hope serious consideration is given to the impact this could have on people’s enjoyment of the game. We probably agree with the USGA on 99 out of 100 issues, but occasionally we’re going to see things differently as we’re coming from different angles. Our members are all about growing the game so people can enjoy it.”

Bearing in mind his recent history with his former employers, the listener could be forgiven for detecting an element of ‘tongue in cheek’ in these comments. But ever

“He’s bright, a creative thinker and an excellent manager with a unique ability to relate to people on every level” the enthusiast, Bevacqua refuses to say a bad word about the USGA, even in this context. Attempts to prompt him to make comparisons between the USGA and PGA are also batted away with a diplomacy that will surely stand him in good stead for the boardroom battles and commercial negotiations that await him over the coming years.

“The USGA and PGA have tremendous similarities.

They both have the best interests of the game in mind, first and foremost. In essence our mission is the same [as the USGA’s] but we are coming at it from a different angle. My experience at the USGA was invaluable in preparing me for this role [at the PGA].”

Fay, his former boss at the USGA, has no doubt about his merits: “Pete’s involvement in so many aspects of golf has provided him with an opportunity to develop a wide base of friendships and relationships throughout the industry. He knows all the players, and I mean the people who are players in boardrooms. He knows the people it’s important to know.

He’s bright. He’s a creative thinker. He’s an excellent manager with a unique ability to relate to people on every level.”

With such a testimonial in his back pocket, Bevacqua appears truly to be that rare beast, a lawyer and a sportsman.

Sport certainly runs in the family as his wife Tiffany, mother to their two children Samantha and Arthur, was a college athlete in both basketball and softball. And as recently as 2004 and 2005, Bevacqua ran the New York Marathon, recording respectable, and near identical, times of 3hrs 53mins 51secs and 3:53.52. “I’d love to run another one if I could find the time to train properly,” he says. Somehow, one feels he won’t find the time, though PGA members will no doubt be hoping he displays similar consistency in the discharge of his duties, year on year.

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The Georgetown University Community

Congratulates Peter Bevacqua

Georgetown Law Alumnus Class of 1997

Named new CEO of PGA of America

georgetown.edu

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It’s beautiful, of course—it’s a Maserati, after all. But beyond the molten body and whip-sexy leather interior, the new GranTurismo Convertible Sport is also solid and well-considered, making for a relationship that easily can go the distance

If Italian automotive design has traditionally presented sensual hips, full lips and performance in the bedroom, it’s fair to say that less has been offered in the way of morning-after conversation.

But should a fit of passion see you taking the new Maserati GT Convertible Sport home one night, and you wake to find yourself standing in the shower contemplating what you’ve just done, relax.

It won’t be long before you smell coffee and breakfast being made in the kitchen. Beyond lust, this car was built for love.

NOT JUST FOR SHOW The convertible version of Maserati’s 2013 GranTurismo Sport has as much going for it under the hood as it does in the body. The brand optimism instilled in Maserati fans by the marque’s 2003 quality upshift, evidenced in the debut of the Quattroporte (which just enjoyed a redesign), finds more sustenance here in a wellconsidered sports exotic properly designed to share the fun, and what a lot of fun it is.

Zero-60 in 5 seconds, a hair-messing top speed of 177mph and an engine note that puts tickles in your tummy all come from a re-tuned

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4.7-liter V8, assembled by Ferrari and used in all trims of the GT. Eschewing the now seemingly ubiquitous push-button start, the Maserati invites you to turn a key, which we rather prefer. Startup produces a head-turning roar from the engine’s 444 horses, which sound that much better with the top down. (The car looks great either way, and with the sky in view buffeting is minimal and conversation is easy.) Wrap your hands around the redesigned, race-inspired steering wheel, press down on the brilliantly styled aluminum accelerator pedal and prepare to have your day improved, no matter how well it was already going.

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A sophisticated six-speed ZF-built transmission gets the power to the wheels in one of five available modes: Normal, Auto Sport, Manual Normal, Manual Sport or Ice. (Being in California’s wine country for our test drive, we didn’t try the last, which is meant to effectively deal with the slippery cold stuff.) Using the column-mounted paddle shifters (we found them a touch big, though they are reachable at any wheel position), manual shifts are sublimely precise and smooth, while either automatic mode is amazing, thanks to the company’s “MC Auto Shift,” which includes satisfying throttle blips and double de-clutching during downshifts. The actual sound produced by all of this is incredible coming into turns, and even better flying out of them.

Keeping the 4,400-lb GT from literally flying, the “MSP” (Maserati Stability Program) intelligently controls potentially expensive shenanigans and holds the tires where they belong; we found it rather transparent, and anyway it can be switched off. Along with the MSP, the Sport Skyhook suspension does an amazing job of keeping things stable and comfortable in its default mode, while Sport mode sees it stiffen by roughly 10 percent to more directly translate driver input. Steering in either mode is well balanced, crisp enough and offering plenty of feedback. Between the wheel and the pedals, the car kept us well informed. And when you’re tired of moving or just want to pull over and admire the GT, slotted disc Brembos bring everything to a stop in a smooth, controlled fashion.

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SHARE THE LOVE There’s the usual array of electronics and amenities you’d expect at this price point (heated seats, electronic lumbar support, headlights that track the steering wheel up to 15 degrees, full-service climate controls, custom wheels and the like) and all of it looked great and functioned flawlessly on our test car. The navigation system remains basic compared to some and we

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could have used a rear-view camera, but you don’t—or you shouldn’t—buy a car like this for electronic geegaws and cup holders (though the cup holders on the GT are quite functional). As beautiful as Maseratis are, they’re ultimately about performance, and proper drivers will absolutely appreciate the GranTurismo Convertible Sport.

More than that, they’ll enjoy being able to share the experience of the car with friends.

Behind the rich and supportive front seats, there are two actual, real, adult-sized rear seats with functional headrests and enough room for people with calves on the backs of their lower legs. We’re not talking

a Rolls Royce-sized back cabin—this is a sports car, after all, not a sedan—but we found the rear seats honestly usable, and that’s better than most so-called four-seaters near this class. Even with the extra room, weight distribution stays at a performance-friendly 49/51 and overall length is somewhat surprisingly trim at just a hair over 192 inches.

There is a consequence to the GT’s usable cabin, and you’ll find it in the trunk, further impinged upon by storage for the automatic top and ultimately measuring a shallow 6.1 cubic feet.

But who cares. The GranTurismo Convertible Sport isn’t for hauling boxes, it’s for driving. And part of the fun of a car like this is showing it off and sharing the experience. Now, instead of taking people for rides one at a time, you can put another couple in the back and have a proper sports experience, racing out of town on a quick day trip or just bombing through turns en route to lunch.

Overnights with friends are basically out unless you ship your luggage ahead, but as a quick escape vehicle for two the GT is ideal. We found that a couple of weekend bags and a bottle of wine fit just fine, and there’s always the custom luggage option.

Like all Maseratis, the GT Convertible is customizable, ensuring owners get a car that’s truly theirs. On the interior, the colors of the fine leather

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2013 Maserati GranTurismo Convertible Sport Engine: 4.7L V8 Power: 444hp Torque: 376 lb-ft at 4,750rpm 0-60: 5 seconds Top Speed: 177mph Price: Near $142,000

upholstery, the carpets and edge trims can all be selected, as can the colors of the stitching and seat belts. Mouldings can be ordered in an array of fine woods or varnished finishes, and the craftsmen who hand-work on the cars will do everything they can to accommodate customer requests. Likewise, just about everything you can see on the car’s exterior can be custom selected, including the body paint, the color of the fabric top (interior and exterior colors) and even the internal finish of the front light assemblies. Also, chrome trim can be chosen to add a bit of bright elegance, or an MC Sport package can be selected, increasing both the sportiness of the car’s look and the actual performance.

Like a fine suit or pair of top shoes, this car will be tailored by Maserati to fit you like a glove and to make you look—and feel—your best.

FINALLY It should be obvious from this article that we loved the 2013 Maserati GranTurismo Convertible Sport. We drove it around California’s Central Coast wine country for a few days, took another couple out for a joy ride or two and otherwise enjoyed alternating between roaring down twisty mountain highways and cruising pleasantly past vineyards. There are faster, stiffer cars with higher performance numbers, and there are cars that are more plush with steamer-trunk sized storage, but in terms of striking an ideal balance between a thrilling driving experience and a comfortable, usable machine in which you’d happily spend an awful lot of time, the GT Convertible Sport nails it for us. Add in Maserati’s heritage and culture, the kind of looks that make you weak in the knees and the fact that you can take your friends with you, and we’re not sure this isn’t one of the company’s best offerings ever.

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EXQUISITE AUDIO This year, in a move sure to please motoring audiophiles, Maserati announced a new partnership with top audio firm Bowers & Wilkins. The all-new Maserati Quattroporte will get a Bowers & Wilkins sound system specifically integrated into the car’s design. Fifteen speaker units made of high-tech materials are built into the cabin’s internal architecture, strategically placed to ensure the best possible acoustics. Additionally, the same engineers responsible for Bowers & Wilkins’ flagship 800 Series speakers (which are used by Abbey Road Studios in London) expertly tune the audio system in the Quattroporte, meaning that along with an exquisite driving machine and the roar of a Maserati V8, drivers will get an immersive concert experience. An extraodinary car and an extraordinary audio system from Bowers & Wilkins. We wouldn’t expect anything less from Maserati. bowers-wilkins.com

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We got ahead of ourselves when we featured 18 dream 10th holes in the 10th anniversary issue of Kingdom, but we are now back in numerical sequence with a selection of the finest 6th holes in the game. In general, holes 2-5 tend to be the toughest on most front nines while holes 6-7 often present the by-nowloosened-up golfer with the opportunity either to build on a solid start or to repair any early damage they may have inflicted on their scorecard. Many 6th holes, therefore, are designed to provide attacking options and for this reason they can be responsible for some of the most memorable moments in any round of golf, as this sample hopefully demonstrates

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1

Par-4, 421 yards

Castle Course, St Andrews, Scotland

Par-5, 548 yards

NCR Country Club (South), Dayton, Ohio

In keeping with the National Cash Register Corporation’s policy of providing recreational facilities for its employees, the NCR Country Club opened in 1954 on a rolling, 350-acre site with two tough but contrasting courses designed by Dick Wilson. Now owned by the NCR employees’ benefit association, the North has an open, prairie-links feel while the South, scene of Ray Floyd’s 1969 PGA Championship victory, is a woodland treasure. The long 6th on the South is difficult to reach in two under any circumstances due to a narrowing fairway and a tight ring of six bunkers that makes it hard for a long approach to hit and hold the green. With thick woods and two bunkers encroaching on the right as the fairway nears the green, and a severe slope kicking shots coming up short into trees on the left, the smart play is to lay up to around 100 yards and float a short-iron onto the putting surface.

Patrick Drickey / stonehousegolf.com

Appropriately enough we start our round at the birthplace of golf, St Andrews. Opened in 2008 to a David McLay Kidd design, the Castle was a longoverdue addition to the Links Trust’s portfolio, headed up, naturally, by the Old Course. The seventh publicly owned course at the Home of Golf, the Castle enjoys breathtaking views from its rugged Kinkell Ness clifftop setting overlooking the ‘auld gray toun.’ It is an eminently playable layout but its greens, unfortunately, have met with mixed reactions due to their excessively undulating nature and it seems a program to make them less capricious is already under way. However, the 6th, a glorious starting hole for our purposes, offers a wide fairway target from the tee, though the view is semi-blind. Anything aimed down the left half will kick back right toward the middle. The sea and the town are not as close as they might appear from tee or fairway, so the dangers of going long are exaggerated.

The best line into the green is from the right side.

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Par-3, 160 yards

Whistling Straits (Irish), Sheboygan, Wisconsin

Par-4, 420 yards

Merion (East), Ardmore, Pennsylvania

The course that resulted from Hugh Wilson’s visit to his native Scotland in 1910 will stage its fifth U.S. Open this June. Wilson fitted the 18 holes of the East together like a jigsaw puzzle across a mere 126 acres, so it’s unlikely the USGA can stretch it much beyond 6,800 yards this summer, or accommodate more than 25,000 spectators per day— half the normal U.S. Open attendance. The 6th hole appears to be a straight par-4, but the teeing ground slyly aligns the golfer right—Tommy Armour, no less, sliced out of bounds here in every round of the 1934 U.S. Open. However, a drive down the left will bring two large bunkers into play or leave a lie below the feet. The elevated green, protected by bunkers left, right and behind, has a false front that demands one club more on the second shot. Meanwhile, anything that flies the green leaves a slippery downhill chip.

Patrick Drickey / stonehousegolf.com

The shop window of Herb Kohler’s four courses at the American Club Resort on the banks of Lake Michigan is the Straits at Whistling Straits, host venue for the 2004 and 2010 PGA Championships and already inked in for 2015 as well as the 2020 Ryder Cup. However, the second course at Whistling Straits is the Irish, an inland grass-and-dune layout that, like the Straits and the two courses at nearby Blackwolf Run, was designed by Pete Dye. The Irish, which opened in 2000, is hazard-filled with forced carries over gnarly rough, ponds, ravines and numerous meandering streams, not to mention the innumerable waste bunkers. The short 6th, known as Mulligan’s Watch, looks a fearsome challenge from the tee, surrounded by dunes and bunkers. But the relatively flat putting surface of what is, in effect, an island green should yield birdie chances, though par will be welcome whenever a tee shot finishes off the putting surface.

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5

Par-4, 431 yards

Kingston Heath, Melbourne, Australia

When Kingston Heath opened in Melbourne’s sandbelt area in 1925, it was the longest course in Australia at almost 6,400 yards with a par of 82. The primary influence over its design was Dr. Alister Mackenzie who happened to be ‘down under’ laying out Royal Melbourne at the time. The elaborate bunkering he oversaw has certainly stood the test of time and the 6th, a long, uphill par-4 heading back toward the clubhouse, showcases the good doctor’s work in this regard, both at driving distance and around the green. The tee shot has to split a nasty grouping of bunkers to the right and a large trap to the left, though the left side of the fairway should be favored as the contoured green, which has a large ridge toward the back, is protected by another intimidating array of traps to the right and front. A horseshoe bunker also awaits those who lay up down the left side.

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Par-3, 161 yards

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Par-5, 601 yards

Royal Dornoch (Championship), Sutherland, Scotland

Aptly named Whinny Brae, this beguiling one-shot gem encapsulates the essence of links golf at Royal Dornoch.

‘Old’ Tom Morris ‘signed off’ the original 18 holes alongside the Dornoch Firth across the bay from the Glenmorangie distillery on the northeast Scottish coast in 1866, but the 6th only dates back to the late 1940s when George Duncan built six holes (611) at the far end of the Championship course on a two-tiered parcel of land sandwiched between a magnificent white-sand beach and a hillside of gorse bushes that produce brilliant yellow flowers in the spring. In keeping with Morris’s use of plateau greens, the putting surface is slightly raised, although it also tilts sharply from left to right. The tee shot must carry into the middle of the green across a shallow valley. Anything left will disappear into bushes, anything right or long will fall 12 foot below the green, and anything short is likely to catch a large, deep bunker guarding the front right.

Royal Troon (Old), Ayrshire, Scotland

Until the R&A extended the 14th at St Andrews to 618 yards for the 2010 championship, the 6th at Royal Troon was comfortably the longest hole on the [British] Open roster. Troon, which will stage its ninth Open in 2016, was the scene of one of Arnold Palmer’s most emphatic victories in a major, by a margin of six shots back in 1962. On the 6th, an arrow-straight tee-shot is required to split the fairway bunkers—two left and one right. The second shot, struck slightly left to avoid the bunker on the right, should leave a soft pitch to a long, narrow green guarded by a bunker to the left, sand dunes on both sides and out of bounds at the back.

The rough on the right of the hole should be avoided as it is often punitively thick. Generally, those wishing to go for the green in two can only do so when the hole plays downwind.

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Par-3, 217 yards

Bandon Dunes Golf Resort, Bandon, Oregon

Designed in 1999 by Scotland’s David McLay Kidd, the first of four, full-sized, 18-hole courses at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort is perched on a bluff high above the Pacific Ocean. Bandon Dunes unfolds along natural dunes, from which expansive sea views can be enjoyed on virtually every hole, and is routed through extensive and varied indigenous vegetation. Winds are ever-present and the forever-changing elements create a new experience each time. The par-3 6th measures 217 yards off the tips but is usually played from a teeing ground some 50 yards nearer the green. The tee shot is aimed across an expanse of heather, whin and gorse at a raised green that seems almost the last stop for an airmailed ball before the Pacific beyond. Tee shots have a surprising tendency to hold up on the slope right of the green, though it is certainly better to miss right than left where the ball kicks down toward the beach.

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Par-4, 439 yards

Saint Nom-la-Breteche (Red), Versailles, France

Where better to finish the front nine than in the spacious, undulating grounds of a 17th century French chateau on the outskirts of Paris? Saint-Nom-la-Breteche Golf Club, a near neighbor of the Palace at Versailles, home of the ‘Sun King’ Louis XIV, has provided a regal setting for numerous tournaments since opening in 1959. Most notable was the Trophee Lancome, played over the Red course from 1970 until 2003. Arnold Palmer claimed the title in 1971 and other winners include Johnny Miller, Lee Trevino, Billy Casper, Gary Player and Seve Ballesteros.

With a relatively benign appearance from the Tee, the treelined 6th, a right-to-left dogleg, poses unexpected problems.

It is best to favor the right side of the fairway, taking care to avoid the bunkers on either side at driving distance, in order to have a view of a long, treacherously sloping green surrounded by deep bunkers, rough and pines. Putting from above the cup here is no bargain.

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Par-5, 543 yards

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Par-5, 583 yards

Bay Hill Club & Lodge, Orlando, Florida

Bay Hill’s main course was designed by Dick Wilson in 1962, but Arnold Palmer, the owner for nearly four decades, has stamped his authority on a layout that seriously examines a Tour golfer’s skills, especially when the rough is up and the fairways are narrow. But the long 6th is a law unto itself and needs no artificial stimulation. It’s played across the largest lake on the property to a fairway that runs from right to left toward the green, narrowing markedly in the process. A few inlets plus bunkers right and just over the back reduce the bail-out options for those aiming at the green in two. But the big question off the tee is how much carry to take on. Some long hitters think they can clear everything and reach the green—like John Daly in 1998. Yet after continually clattering his ball on the rocks, and back into the drink, he eventually signed for an 18.

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Par-3, 169 yards

Wildcat Run Golf & Country Club, Estero, Florida

Laid out by Arnold Palmer and Ed Seay in 1985, the 18-hole golf course at Wildcat Run is the centerpiece of a mature and genteel gated community in Estero, a few miles inland from the Fort Myers coast in southwest Florida. “There isn’t a weak hole on this course,” declares long-serving head professional Pete Beringer, and he is not wrong. Like many other holes at Wildcat Run, though, the short 6th looks relatively innocuous from the tee, but therein lies the skill of its design. It appears to be a straightforward mid-iron to a wide, conventionally-shaped green, albeit surrounded symmetrically by a pentangle of bunkers but with the water hazard beyond posing absolutely no threat.

However, the contours on the green, by no means apparent from the tee, are a real tease with the ball inclined to fall away on all sides as it transpires that the putting surface is a little like an upturned pudding basin.

Baltimore Country Club (East), Five Farms, Maryland

Patrick Drickey / stonehousegolf.com

Baltimore CC was founded in 1898 and hosted the U.S. Open later that year, but it really came of age in the mid-1920s when A.W. Tillinghast designed a second layout just north of the city. The East course, bedecked by back-tofront pitched greens, undulating fairways and mature trees, has since hosted the PGA Championship (1928), U.S. Amateur (1932), Walker Cup (1965), U.S. Women’s Open (1988) and Senior Players Championship (2007-09). The long 6th, the “Barn Hole,” is one of only two par-5s on the course. To reach the green in two, a drive must cut the left corner of the dogleg by carrying 240 yards over a big red barn fitted with reinforced windows (it’s out-of-bounds even though only 10 yards of rough separates it from the fairway). About 160 yards from the green, a group of bunkers cuts through the middle of the fairway. Typically Tillinghast, the green is small, narrow and guarded by deep, high-lipped bunkers.

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Par-5, 537 yards

Highland Links, Nova Scotia, Canada

They only play around eight months a year at Highland Links but that doesn’t stop Canadian golfers from voting it consistently their favorite course. The National Park Service hired Canada’s foremost golf architect Stanley Thompson to build this “mountains and ocean” course in 1939; but even though Highlands Links began as a nine-holer, Thompson felt a second loop was essential and changed the routing to follow the Clyburn River. The 6th, a picturesque par-5, is known quaintly as Mucklemouth Meg after a loudmouthed woman from Scottish folklore. “As the green [has] a yawning opening with cavernous traps on either side, we thought this name described the hole,” Thompson said. The hole gently doglegs right with thick rough to the left and the Clyburn meandering down the right, but the line off the tee should still be right to decrease the yardage on a second shot that must be threaded between bunkers left and water right.

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Par-3, 177 yards

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Par-4, 467 yards

Muirfield Golf Course, East Lothian, Scotland

Muirfield, home of the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers on the east coast of Scotland, was the first course built specifically to stage a major championship.

Designed by ‘Old’ Tom Morris, it opened in 1891 and within 12 months played host to the [British] Open. Exactly 121 years later, its 16th Open will take place this July. In 1923, Harry Colt reconfigured the links so the front nine ran clockwise around an anticlockwise inward half. The par4 6th, rated by the club’s website as “probably the most demanding hole on the course,” is a right-to-left dogleg.

Almost always played in a crosswind, the tee shot has to clear the crest of the fairway. Then the hole sweeps down and left to a climbing green in front of Archerfield Wood.

This unusual backdrop and the hidden hollow short of the green create the impression the pin is closer than it really is, thus making the second shot tough to judge.

Oak Hill Country Club (East), Rochester, New York

Montana Pritchard/The PGA of America

This year’s PGA Championship in August will be the third staged at Oak Hill, scene also of three U.S. Opens and the 1995 Ryder Cup. The East course was carved from a farmed-out field in 1923 by Donald Ross, but an equally significant contribution was made by local physician and amateur botanist John R. Williams who planted upward of 75,000 seedlings, many of which grew into the mighty oaks that characterize today’s layout. The short 6th is fun to play and deceptively easy, but it cannot be taken for granted nor attacked gung-ho. The green is protected by a large, heart-shaped bunker front-right and a creek winding diagonally across the front, round the left side and behind before running under the stone bridge that frames the center-back of the putting surface. In the 1989 U.S. Open, four players— Jerry Pate, Nick Price, Doug Weaver and Mark Wiebe—holed-in-one during the first 90 minutes of the first round!

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16

Par-3, 180 yards

Augusta National, Augusta, Georgia

Named Juniper, after an evergreen commonly known as Red Cedar and often used for a Christmas tree in the South, this downhill par-3 usually requires no more than a mid-iron from an elevated tee to a large, undulating though unusually shaped green. The green has three distinct tiers with the highest ledge, on the right side, some five feet above the rest of the putting surface. The back of the green, which tilts diagonally from left to right, also presents an awkward target. The easiest pin placement is probably on the flattest and lowest level front left, but getting close to the hole, wherever it might be located, is never easy and three-putts are commonplace, especially during the Masters. In the 1930s, the green was fronted by a stream and in the 1950s by a pond. But the hazard rarely came into play and was removed in 1959. The hole hasn’t been changed, or lengthened, since 1975.

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Par-4, 388 yards

Seminole, North Palm Beach, Florida

This Donald Ross masterpiece, southern Florida’s first great course, is set within sand ridges near the Atlantic Ocean. Dating from 1929, it remains an outstanding risk-reward test and a classic example of how to route a course through unusual terrain. Unlike most Florida layouts, it plays firm and fast like a links with numerous elevation changes and small, crowned, tilted greens that can be especially difficult to hold. Though fairly short for a par-4, the 6th was a particular favorite with Ben Hogan, who was a member and used to practice at Seminole each spring in preparation for the Masters. It doglegs slightly to the right while playing uphill to a long, narrow, well-bunkered green offset from left to right. Apparently, Hogan used to draw the ball off the tee across the diagonal line of bunkers that eat into the right side of the left-to-right sloping fairway and then fashion a cut for his approach.

Par-5, 499 yards

Royal Birkdale, Lancashire, England

David Cannon/Getty Images

Royal Birkdale, where nine [British] Opens have been staged to date, including the 1961 version won

by Arnold Palmer, is a magnificent and extremely challenging course laid out on an often inhospitable stretch of northwest-English coastline. The 6th, a left-to-right dogleg, is usually played as a par-4 during the Open, despite its length, but for club members and amateur guests it is a genuine par-5. None the less, this is a hole that calls for both good distance and sound judgement. The drive, threaded through a valley crossed by a ridge just beyond halfway, must avoid the bunkers on each side of the fairway before being followed by a long second shot to an elevated green protected by a small cluster of three bunkers to the front and surrounded to its sides and back by dunes. The green is large and well contoured, and offers the possibility of various interesting and, usually, difficult pin positions which should mean a close contest won’t be decided until the very last.

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SHOT PUTTING Kingdom has always championed craftsmanship—traditionally expressed through the hands-on approach. But in our computerized age, such arcane skills are seen at best as a quaint anachronism or at worst have died out completely. Golf, once played with featherie balls and hickory-shafted clubs, is no different, but fortunately some equipment is still being made by hand. Paul Trow (words) and Leon Harris (photographs) meet a young man quietly making a name for himself with his unique brand of putters Incredibly, the idea doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone before. Why not use gun-making machinery and craftsmanship to create the perfect putter?

After all, there are few activities involving metal where precision can be of greater necessity than in shooting and putting. In the world of micro-exactitude, you have to hit your target; otherwise a miss by even the tiniest fraction of an inch might as well be a mile wide. Golfers since the dawn of the game have been brutally aware of this fact. A putt that goes in is worth one shot less than a putt that lips out.

One 29-year-old Englishman, seemingly raised in a sporting-gun workshop and imbued with a love of golf, made the connection a few years ago and has since been carving out a more-than-interesting niche for his state-ofthe-art products.

The eponymous James Ingles of James Ingles Putters, formed in 2010 to make high-quality, hand-made, customized putters, is the son of the man who owns Charles Hellis & Sons, one of England’s most prestigious gun-makers, based a few miles north of London in the town of Harpenden.

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“Putters have always fascinated me since I started playing golf at 14, and being around gun-making from childhood gave me an insight into things made from hand the old-fashioned way,” James says. “I’d been a few times to the United States where the golf stores are amazing.

My first putter was a Scotty Cameron limited edition and that was when the whole idea of putter collections as a showpiece started to come to me.

“The idea to mesh gun themes into putters came very naturally. Having grown up around guns and golf, there’s actually a huge amount of crossover. For example, large-bore rifle actions have to be made from a forging to ensure they can take the pressure of large bullets.”

Hellis dates back to the early 19th century (David Ingles, James’ father, bought the company in 1994), yet it still makes everything completely by hand. In terms of gun-making, though, this is no dinosaur. The company invented spring-opening, over-under shotguns, one of very few bespoke innovations over the last 50 years, and its techniques and crafts are to this day cutting edge.

As a consequence, the company’s craftsmen are the most revered in the industry, modern-day artists if you will.

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The common denominator between guns and putters is metal—their mantra is, ‘give a Hellis craftsman a piece of steel and anything is possible,’ whether it be a hand-made screw for a lock plate, a shotgun, a rifle or now a putter.

“The idea for the putter company came about effectively by me challenging Paul Willis, our head gun-maker at Hellis, to make me a putter,” James says.

“He did, I was very impressed with the result and the idea was born. By the time I completed an MA in Business at the University of St Andrews [where he got his handicap down to 4], I knew I wanted to work in golf.

“Paul makes the patterns on the very same milling machines that painstakingly fashion the exceptional Hellis shotguns. He turns all the metal into works of art, complete with a full range of ornamentation—anything from gold engraving to gold screws. For instance, a bespoke putter ordered online requiring small scroll engraving can take up to 40 hours to complete because it really is down to customer choice.

“A big influence on me when I started out was the Arnold Palmer Wilson blade putter. At the time in the U.S., there were a lot of putter collectors, and many of them were into hand-made putters—there was a massive premium put on forged wedges and putters because of the feel.

“Milling was very fashionable during the 1940s and ’50s, and it still works. I love the old story about Mr. Palmer taking a grinder to some of his old putters to make them how he wanted. And after all, if that’s good enough for Mr. Palmer it’s more than good enough for me.

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“Learning about making putters is very much about trial and error. I think that by taking a putter, using it, working out what you like, or don’t like, about it, modifying it and then repeating the previous steps, you’ll get to a final putter you’re much happier with.

“Having used, tried and picked up a huge variety of putters over the years, I’ve learned about the different designs, what specific designs can help or hinder, but more importantly I have an open mind and will experiment moving weight around to see if something works. After all, we aim to provide the same quality and options to every customer, Tour professional or Sunday golfer.

“As an aside, traditional putter designers are fortunate to have had Karsten Solheim [of PING fame] work out and design all the really difficult ideas. I would say 99 percent of the ‘designs’ we produce are some kind of variation on Solheim’s original ideas.

“When I started out, I thought, ‘the gun industry is making metal objects by hand. A large bore rifle has to be made from forging otherwise it could blow up in your face, and putters could be made the same way.’ So far I’ve made several hundred hand-made putters.

“There are many different definitions as to what constitutes ‘hand-made.’ We work from the same principles as the best gun-makers. Starting with a raw forging or billet of steel, we use a hand-operated mill, then, using chisels and files we finally shape the head before polishing and buffing. Every putter is unique and made one at a time; we do not use any computer controlled machinery.

“All our production putters are made from highquality forgings from a forging house with awards from Rolls Royce Aerospace, amongst others. We take a lot of pride in being able to offer almost anything; all putters are made bespoke.

“But if we don’t have the model of putter you want, there’s no need to worry as we can make it.” Some of them can be made from Damascus steel, no less, used originally in India for sword-making. “Whether you draw it, show us pictures or simply talk us through your needs we can sculpt it from a material of your choice,” James confirms.

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“Our bespoke putters have greater lead times than our other putters due to the more complex nature of them.

However, we can guarantee the wait will be more than worth it. We have two forging set-ups—the traditional blade (28g) and heel-toe weighted like a PING Anser (12g).

“There’s always the bespoke option, actually there’s no limit to the number of styles within the rules of the game—in terms of weight, lie, loft, finish, etc. I’ve probably done about 40 different models, but that’s all down to orders. I get on the machines during some down time in the gun production process. There’s a lathe at the center, two benches plus files and chisels.

“Anyone making a $50,000 shotgun knows it hasn’t simply come out of a machine. Because all our putters are hand-made, I can’t compete on margin. Even someone like Bob Bettinardi sells his putters for between $125-200. I can’t compete with those figures. We haven’t borrowed anything from a bank, it’s financed by what I’ve put in and what comes in through sales. But we’re busy.

“When you talk about putters, they can be broken down into more categories then you could imagine. First and foremost, [there are] putters for the masses (nothing wrong with these models) and then [there are] putters for collectors out there—the guy who has over 25 flat-sticks in his collection. He’s the guy looking for something unique, something with artistic value. Similar to art collectors, putter collectors express their love of a boutique brand through the putters they own and collect.”

But hand-made putters, in today’s world, don’t pay the bills by themselves, and one of Ingles’ problems over the next few years is going to be building up his clientele.

“The one thing I have noticed slightly to the detriment of the industry is the complete lack of interest in any small fledgling companies,” he observes. “It seems that the smaller bespoke guys within the golf industry are solely concentrated on independent internet forums. While it is fantastic to have such a great platform as the Internet, outside of the Internet with magazines and other traditional media you can’t, as a fledgling company, help but feel a bit like the caddy invited into the members’ bar, every right to be there but not very welcome all the same.”

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The big question, having listened to young Ingles is how successful this venture can be in the face of modern CNC [computer numerical control] methods of production.

“You can’t turn around the same numbers as you could if you were making putters on CNC machines. They’re capable of producing far more items in a faster time than human labor, but what they can’t do is modify their actions halfway through a process, or completely change course.

However, I’m not averse to CNC as long as the starting point is a high-quality piece of metal. Indeed, having a CNC range... would allow more people to try our putters.”

So, what’s going to happen longer term? “It would be good to have a studio fitted out. Not making bespoke putters from forgings any more, just from a solid block of steel.

“My career in putter making has only just begun but it’s already full of many points of massive excitement for me personally—from getting the first forging back from the factory and putting a shaft on it to going to a golf exhibition and seeing people’s responses.”

Jamesinglesputters.com

Ingles Down to scratch At least 90 per cent of James Ingles’ putters are sold to American clients via the Internet. Just before Kingdom went to press, James announced that he’d signed an agreement to make bespoke putters for Scratch Golf of Chattanooga, TN, for distribution throughout the world.

In 2013, James estimates he will produce around 200-250 bespoke putters on a first-come, first-served basis with all orders being handled by Scratch Golf.

Working for Scratch Golf are Don White, who once put together a set of clubs for Arnold Palmer, and Jeff McCoy. They will be opening an outlet in Detroit later this year.

Scratch Golf are specialists in up-and-coming niche brands. “Their CEO, Ari Techner, bought three of our putters before he came to me with a deal to be our U.S. partners,” James says.

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Dubbed “the man who saw lightning,” Bob Beamon produced one of the sporting performances of the 20th century with a long jump that took gold for the United States at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City. Paul Trow visited Fort Myers, FL, to reminisce and to hear about where the great man’s leap has taken him

Paraphrasing the late Neil Armstrong’s pronouncement as he stepped from Apollo 11 onto the Sea of Tranquility, it was indeed a giant leap for a man.

On October 18, 1968, at the Estadio Olímpico in Mexico City, a raw-boned 22-year-old New Yorker, dipped his head low, set off down the long-jump runway and soared through the air, seemingly forever.

Bob Beamon, who before that day had been regarded as a bit of a rebel unlikely to amount to much, had just done the extraordinary. Like a modern-day Icarus, he went where no man had been before, but unlike the Greek mythological hero whose wings of wax melted as he flew too close to the sun, Beamon fell to earth in one piece and conquered history in his stride.

As moments in the sun go, this was vastly preferable to that of Icarus. And despite the grainy, flickering, black-and-white TV screens that conveyed news to the wider world back then, it was a stunning sight to behold—just as Armstrong’s moondance tiptoe proved to be nine months later, on July 21, 1969.

The leap was metaphorically out of this world, and among other things triggered the launch of the world’s biggest sports photographic agency, Allsport, now part of Getty Images.

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Beamon collapsed when he realized the enormity of his achievement

But the story of Bob Beamon doesn’t start and end with this snapshot of history that Sports Illustrated named as one of the five greatest sports moments of the 20th century. Far from it. Even to get to the starting line in Mexico City was in itself a Herculean effort, and beyond the length of the jump there has been much more. Since setting the record, Beamon has moved through 44 and a half years of quiet endeavor and achievement as a sports coach, a tireless worker and mentor in underprivileged communities, and most recently as CEO of the Art of the Olympians gallery in Fort Myers, FL. Born and brought up in South Jamaica, an impoverished suburb of Queens, Beamon was raised by his grandmother from the age of 8 months, following the death of his mother at 25 from tuberculosis. He attended Jamaica High School where the track & field coach was Larry Ellis, who went on to serve as head coach for Princeton (for 22 years) and for the U.S. athletics team at the 1984 Olympics.

In 1965, Beamon ranked second in the long jump in the United States and received a track & field scholarship to the University of Texas at El Paso. But in early 1968, he and eight other teammates had their scholarships revoked

by UTEP for refusing to compete against Brigham Young University in protest against Mormon doctrines about blacks.

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“Brigham Young had no African-American or Hispanic athletes so I refused to compete against them,” Beamon says. “They were all church worshippers, and it was a time when we were still discriminated against—in restaurants, private clubs, etc. I lost my scholarship, but the basketball coach wanted to keep me, so I stayed.”

This still left him without a long jump coach at a critical stage in his build-up to the 1968 Games, but his U.S. teammate Ralph Boston, the 1960 gold medalist in Rome and one of his main rivals, generously offered to coach him, unofficially of course.

Despite this glitch, Beamon went to Mexico City as the favorite, having won 22 of his 23 meets that year. But the historic events that unfolded came close to never happening when he overstepped on his first two attempts in qualifying.

With only one chance left, Beamon had to re-measure his approach run before making the jump that advanced him to the final. There, he faced the two previous champions— teammate Boston and Great Britain’s Lynn Davies (1964)— along with two-time bronze medalist and world-recordholder Igor Ter-Ovanesyan, of the Soviet Union.

In the final, Beamon ended the contest with his first jump. At 29ft 21/2 in, it bettered Ter-Ovanesyan’s record by a full 213/4 inches. When the announcer called out the distance for the jump as 8.90 meters, Beamon, unfamiliar with metric measurements, still didn’t realize what he’d done. But when Boston told him he’d broken the world record by nearly two feet, he went into shock and collapsed to his knees. In one of the more enduring images of the Games, his fellow competitors then helped him to his feet.

Davies told Beamon, “you’ve destroyed this event,” and a new superlative, “Beamonesque,” instantly entered the sporting lexicon. Not even Usain Bolt or Michael Johnson can claim that distinction.

“The first time I heard it I didn’t even know how to spell it,” Beamon jokes. “There have been some great performances at the Games, and during my time we had an incredible U.S. team that pretty much dominated every track & field event in ’68. But what happened was very special. It was a great experience for me; not only did I win the gold medal but I wrote my name in history. But I had no real understanding of my performance, of what had happened. I certainly couldn’t have prepared myself for it.”

To demoralize his rivals even further, a rainstorm blew through the stadium shortly after his jump, which made it impossible for the rest of the competitors to challenge him.

A lot was made at the time of the advantages Beamon had enjoyed from Mexico City’s high altitude (more than 7,300ft above sea level), but statisticians reckon it cannot have made a difference of more than two inches. The fact that Klaus Beer of East Germany came second with 26ft 10 7 16 / in somewhat bears this out.

Beamon, now a trim 66-year-old, has no doubts. “I don’t think the high altitude was of any significance,” he insists. “It was just a matter of time before I put together all my abilities and talents. The word at the time was, ‘watch out if he really gets himself ready for a serious jump.’ But it was a record I didn’t expect. I was completely in awe, and I’m still celebrating the accomplishment.”

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“For that jump, I was definitely in the zone and focused, and as a result I felt very confident. After I’d completed the jump I was only concerned about the flag color, ‘was it white or red?’ But they were having problems measuring the jump with the electronic device they had by the pit because I had gone beyond its scope, so it had to be measured manually with the use of a tape.

Actually, this whole process held up the final of the men’s 400 meters, which was eventually won by my friend Lee Evans [in a then worldrecord time of 43.86 seconds].”

Until fellow American Mike Powell broke it in 1991, Beamon’s world record stood for 22 years, 316 Art of the Olympians showcases original works from sporting’s greatest days—not quite eclipsing the 25 years Jesse Owens held onto it, from 1935–1960. Perhaps more as Olympic champion. I was aware of the Black Power significantly, his jump is still the second-longest ever and movement in our country but I did not associate with it.” he still holds the Olympic record.

One of the other gold medalists from Mexico had Curiously, after winning gold in Mexico City he more influence over Beamon’s subsequent life—namely never again jumped over 26ft 113⁄4in, though distractions, Al Oerter, who in 1968 won the discus for a fourth including a short-term drafting by the Phoenix Suns successive Games. Oerter founded Art of the Olympians basketball team, must have been part of the reason. in 2005 as a tribute to the excellence that Olympians In due course, he graduated from Adelphi University strive for in all avenues of life, and in a building that is in Garden City, NY, with a degree in sociology, “then to this day known as the Al Oerter Center for Excellence. something happened and it was a question of what do I What started with one man’s vision grew into a traveling want to do next? exhibition of eight Olympian artists, including Oerter’s “I took a job working at a savings and loans company. own abstract fantasies, Beamon’s digital creations and They understood the importance of giving me time off to former Australian swimming champion Shane Gould’s train, but it wasn’t easy and for some reason I lost interest breathtaking underwater photographs. in training. I didn’t feel guilty about it because I wanted to “All the artists are ex-competitors, and we have find my way in the world of business. brought together work from some of the legends of the “I enjoyed working with people in the community, so Olympic Games,” Beamon says, bristling with pride.

I went to San Diego for two years. I left briefly and then When Oerter died in 2007, his widow, Cathy, turned went back to study at San Diego State University. I had this to her late husband’s great friend, and Beamon was happy notion that I would sign on for professional track & field, to help. “It’s a tremendous honor to carry on the legacy of but then I decided the motivation wasn’t there any more the great Al Oerter,” he said. so I didn’t go to the 1972 Olympic Games. It was difficult In the first week of December, Beamon also runs the trying to mix two main parts of my life, a job and athletics. annual Bob Beamon United Way Golf Classic at the Colony Reading for my Masters degree required very serious Golf & Country Club in nearby Bonita Springs, where concentration, so I retired from competition in my late 20s.” the former jumper—whose handicap is now down to 16 After being hired by the brother of Mexican President some dozen or so years after he took up the game—plays José Lépez Portillo, Beamon moved to Mexico City for a regularly. The event has raised around $200,000 for the year to work in sports and to help train youth. Later, he gallery, and he’s looking to raise more. became the track coach at San Diego’s Alliant International “Like it or not, what we do does need funding. For University from 1974-1976. After that came Spain for a bit example, we exhibited at University College, London, before he eventually returned to New York. during last year’s Olympics. It was a huge undertaking Given his commitment to the socially deprived and transporting the entire gallery over there. issues of natural justice, one topic that intrigued me was “The IOC is very interested in what we’re doing and why he hadn’t emulated the infamous Black Power salute we’re now working on our relationship with them in terms exhibited on the podium by his teammates Tommie Smith of their Olympic museum in Lausanne [Switzerland].” and John Carlos after they had respectively won gold and Meanwhile, is retirement looming on the horizon? bronze in the men’s 200 meters two days earlier.

“I’ve put no time limit on my doing this job. At present, I’m “I felt at the time that my responsibility as a role model just happy to do it.” lay with continuing my training and fulfilling my dream ArtOfTheOlympians.org

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Many Italian-American families originated from Sicily, and their journey across the Atlantic and into the heart of American life has been the subject of numerous novels and films. But as Paul Trow discovers, this volcanic island off the south coast of Italy is now a serious tourist destination and is particularly keen to roll out the welcome mat to visiting golfers

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ne of the most significant migrations in history saw four and a half million Italians leave their homeland, cross the Atlantic, pass through Ellis Island and settle in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A quarter of these newcomers, most of them bereft of property and possessions if not hopes and dreams, came from Sicily.

This influx from the Mediterranean’s largest island has since had a profound impact on the cultural evolution of their adopted country. Famous Americans with Sicilian ancestry include talents as diverse as New Jersey governor

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Chris Christie, Supreme Court judge Antonin Scalia, sports personalities Joe DiMaggio, Gene Sarazen and Joe Montana, entertainers Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Frank Zappa and Lady Gaga, film giants Frank Capra, Al Pacino and Martin Scorsese, and talk show host and chef Rachael Ray. On the darker side, the likes of Charles “Lucky” Luciano and Giuseppe “Joe” Bonnano were among those who imported an altogether less appealing Sicilian tradition into the heart of urban America—that of organized crime.

A direct by-product of the Mafia “families” that wielded huge influence in their native land through protection rackets and political corruption, this ugly yet charismatic

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Verdura Golf & Spa Resort

underworld was brought to wider public attention by The Godfather films of the early 1970s, based on the iconic novel by Mario Puzo, himself the scion of a poor Sicilian family raised in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood.

One is led to believe that things are very different in Sicilian-American communities today. Certainly, Sicily has transformed itself over the past half-century—partly through funding from the Italian government, partly through suppressing the Mafia, partly through showcasing its rich heritage and culture dating back almost a millennium before the birth of Christ, and partly through the growth of tourism, with the invaluable support of related bedfellows: good food and fine wine. The fact that Sicily is as autonomous as it’s possible for a region to be

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without being a separate country has clearly not checked this upward spiral.

Another increasingly prominent bedfellow of the island’s ambitious tourism program is golf. A generation ago, when golf tourism mushroomed into big business around the Mediterranean, Spain and Portugal cashed in while most Italian clubs were run as gated retreats for the country’s social elite. It is no exaggeration to say that visitors, let alone tourists, were discouraged, but a more welcoming attitude is now in vogue. The number of courses in Italy has doubled over the past decade to approach 300, several attached to new hotels and residential developments, and has contributed to a sharp rise in golfing visitors.

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Donnafugata Golf Resort & Spa

Leading the way in southwest Sicily, near the port of Sciacca and the ruins of an ancient Greek temple at Agrigento, is Sir Rocco Forte’s luxurious Verdura Golf & Spa Resort. Opened in 2009, Verdura is home to a hotel with 203 bedrooms, a spa, three restaurants and two 18-hole courses—the East and West, both designed by American architect Kyle Phillips, creator of Kingsbarns Golf Links near St Andrews on the east coast of Scotland.

Meandering from mountain foothills through olive, lemon and orange groves down to the Mediterranean, these layouts, a composite of which hosted the European Tour’s Sicilian Open last year, are a joy to behold, and play.

The West incorporates more coastal land, but a number of its early holes stretch consecutively along the eastern boundary and a few fairways are a little tight given the exposed nature of the site. The beachside holes are its star attraction—the first glimpse of the sea comes at the 8th and 9th before a four-hole encore from the 15th. It’s these final holes with their uninterrupted views that really steal the show. The 16th and 18th are beautiful two-shotters, the 18th routed right along the shoreline, while the 15th and 17th are short holes dominated by watery backdrops.

There are other standouts as well, including the strategic par-5 4th and the strong par-4 5th, where the approach is played partly across a pronounced natural depression.

The first coastal hole, the two-shot 8th, is also outstanding.

The more undulating East is equally memorable.

Its finishing holes don’t have quite the same glamor, especially the front-nine par-5s that link the central

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area to the southern beach holes, but there are more directional changes here and plenty of design surprises as well. Highlights include the short par-4 3rd, early water holes at the 5th and 6th, each with stunning outlooks, the intimidating ridge-top par-3 12th and the semi-sunken 13th green. From there the course turns seaward. Both the 14th and 15th are long holes that plummet across glorious linksy ground while the 16th is a short hole played into a wickedly shallow target. The finishing duo are particularly strong—the penultimate hole rises gently into the foot of a Sicilian hillside and the breathtaking par-4 18th crashes from an elevated tee right along the craggy coastline.

The island has certainly warmed to golf in recent years and the other 36-hole newcomer well worth a visit is Donnafugata Golf Resort & Spa. Located in the southeast, near the Baroque town of Ragusa, Donnafugata opened in the summer of 2010 and less than a year later hosted the inaugural Sicilian Open. An hour’s drive south of the airport

Modica

The SToRy of Sicily Mountainous, triangular in shape and ridiculously fertile, Sicily is separated from the southern tip of mainland Italy by the Strait of Messina (less than two miles at the narrowest point) and is less than 100 miles north of the African coast.

The earliest archeological evidence of human dwelling on Sicily dates back to 8000 BC. Around 750 BC, it became a Greek colony, and a few centuries later it was annexed by Rome. Ancient sites such as the Necropolis of Pantalica and the Temples of Selinunte date from this period when the island was caught up in seemingly endless wars with Carthage.

From the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century AD, Sicily was ruled in turn by Vandals, Ostrogoths, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, the crowns of Aragon and Spain, the Holy Roman Empire and the Bourbons. Then came the Expedition of the Thousand, led by Giuseppe Garibaldi during the Risorgimento, and Sicily duly became part of the newly constituted Kingdom of Italy in 1861.

But over the ensuing decades Sicily’s economy remained rooted in poverty, prompting a wave of emigration, mainly across the Atlantic to the New World.

One of Europe’s greatest natural disasters, the Messina earthquake of December 1908, killed over 80,000 people and shortly afterwards the Mafia, the crime syndicate

The Parkland course features rustic stone walls and runs alongside an ancient Greek cemetery

also known as Cosa Nostra, emerged as the local opposition to the federal government.

The Mafia originated during the 18th century as private enforcers hired to protect the property of landowners and merchants from the bandits who frequently pillaged

at Catania, Sicily’s second city at the foot of Mount Etna, the resort is located within a nature reserve near the beautiful beaches of Camarina, Punta Secca and Marina di Ragusa, and the UNESCO world heritage sites at Modica, Scicli and Noto.

At the heart of the resort are two 18-hole courses—the north (Parkland), designed by Gary Player, and the south (Links), laid out by the great South African’s Italian protégé Franco Piras—along with a 202-bedroom hotel, spa, three restaurants and a growing colony of holiday homes.

The Parkland, within the walls of a local castle and measuring just under 7,200 yards from the back tees, is a joy to play even though its awkwardly sloping, bent-grass greens are defended by sometimes cavernous bunkers.

Spread out across an age-old olive and carob grove, the Bermuda-grass fairways seamlessly blend into the natural environment to create the effect of a golf course that is anything but man-made. The last three holes are protected by two lakes that make for an exciting trip back to a clubhouse overlooking the 9th and 18th greens in the style of an ancient amphitheatre. There is also an historical element to the course—some of the holes are defined by rustic stone walls while the 18th runs alongside an archaeological site and the 6th flanks a Greek cemetery that dates back to the 6th century BC.

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the countryside and towns. Certainly, official attitudes toward the Mafia were ambiguous, with the harsh approach of the Carabinieri (the military police) and army undermined by a weak judicial system and local government collusion.

In 1925, the Fascist regime mounted a stronger and more effective military campaigan against the Mafia, led by the “Iron Prefect” Cesare Mori. Not surprisingly, with the fall of Benito Mussolini imminent, the Allies enjoyed considerable support from the Mafia when they invaded Sicily in July 1943. After the birth of the Italian Republic in 1946, Sicily and its smaller, surrounding islands became one of five regions to be given special autonomous status and they have been largely self-governing ever since.

Post-war funding from the government led to a gradual improvement in the island’s economy and, in parallel, a weakening of the Mafia’s power. As a consequence, between 1990 and 2005 the unemployment rate fell from 23 to 11 percent. Today, despite its turbulent history, Sicily remains one of Europe’s powerhouses in terms of art, music, literature, architecture, cuisine and, in recent times, wine.

The actual population of Sicily is approximately five million, but there are an additional ten million people of Sicilian descent living elsewhere around the world.

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Malta can be seen from vantage points on both courses, but the view is much clearer from the Links where, contrastingly, the holes meander back and forth across two undulating valleys, each with its own lake. The sea is more of a backdrop, but the olive trees, ubiquitous on the Parkland, are surprisingly scarce on the ground here.

Indeed, the main arboreal interest on the Links is provided by several lines of palm trees and a few, strategicallypositioned pines that offer welcome shade on hot days—of which there are many in this part of the world—and shelter to the migrating birds with whom this stretch of land is a popular stopover. There is also an abundance of indigenous birds to be spotted in the wetlands between the 2nd and 3rd holes.

The environmentally friendly Donnafugata has the ideal climate for golf: dry in winter, breezy in summer

MounTain of aSh Mount Etna, a giant of 10,890 feet that dominates the eastern side of the island, has been luring visitors to Sicily for centuries, and to this very day it never fails to surprise.

Our helicopter hovered like a mayfly just a hundred

Despite their differing characteristics, the Links is a similar length to the Parkland and both courses are flanked by mounds of white sand. But with the ever-changing Sirocco and northeasterly winds, each game on either course is a new and exciting challenge.

Donnafugata has the ideal climate for golf—dry in winter, breezy in summer—and its courses are irrigated with recycled, purified water. Indeed, sustainability is at the core of the resort’s operations: the hotel reduces carbondioxide emissions by using solar energy to produce hot water, employs air-conditioning to heat its kitchen water, and halves its electricity consumption with LED lighting.

Sicily has two other 18-hole clubs worthy of note.

The older, Il Picciolo, home course of the Etna Golf Resort & Spa just north of Catania, was laid out in 1991 through oaks, hazels and vineyards on the eastern slopes of the eponymous mountain. And on the north coast, a few miles east of the capital Palermo, Il Picciolo’s designer Luigi Rota Caremoli followed up in 2003 with Le Madonie, sculpted imaginatively around five lakes and framed by stunning views of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Golf, of course, is still only a small part of the equation in Sicily, but these days, for people who “have clubs, will travel,” the welcome is, thank goodness, as warm as the weather.

feet or so above the southeast crater at the summit. For a

links 13th

nervous about living so close to an active volcano, she

few moments we found ourselves floating above Europe’s largest and most active volcano, with a view into the punctured skin of planet Earth. There was no fire below, only black ash and the yellow brimstone that formed a nicotine stain around the wrinkled mouth of this smoking giant. Peering deeper, all we could see was a swirling fury of sulfuric and phosphoric gases.

Like the Aurora Borealis, Etna’s eruptions are not a scheduled spectacle. The volcano, locals say, is like a diva that performs only when she wants to; sometimes with a playful show of pyrotechnics and occasionally with devastating outbursts, as in 1669 when she released a black snake of lava that smothered the city of Catania.

It is topped with four major craters, like a steaming heap of black molasses on the verge of collapse. Indeed, Sicily’s mountainous interior beyond looks sun-dried, brittle and parchment-yellow in contrast to the mineral-rich soil in the foothills of Etna where so many of the island’s fruit groves and vineyards flourish.

Two and a half thousand years ago the Greek philosopher Empedocles threw himself into Etna’s crater, believing its volcanic gases would keep him afloat. Legend has it that all that remained of him was a single sandal, spat out by the contemptuous giant.

When a near neighbor was asked whether she felt replied: “Of course not; it’s bellissimo, so appealing, so magnetic. Don’t you know that the first thing every person in Catania turns to in the morning is not the sea but Etna?”

Wherever you journey in the vicinity, the scenery is punctuated by physical reminders of Etna’s capacity. There are earthquake-damaged churches with baroque façades propped up with giant girders, homesteads twisted asunder on black lunar landscapes, and major roads truncated and isolated by fresh streams of lava.

So Etna is still potentially volcanic, but more in the way of a grumbling grandparent than an explosive toddler.

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SICILIAN FOOD Forget your meatballs and red gravy, Sicilian cuisine is far more complex than many of Italy’s mainland offerings. A beautiful and bold mix of Mediterranean, Aegean, Spanish and Arab influences, Sicily’s kitchen culture adds apricots, raisins, nutmeg, clove, cinnamon, citrus, sweet melons, rice and more to the already rich Italian pantry. Subsequently, Sicilian tables offer flavors as exhilarating as the

island’s culture. As the Greek philosopher Diogenes wrote about the inhabitants of Sicily, “They eat as if they were to die, and they build as if they were to live forever.” Sit down for a “mangiata” (a long lunch), and you’ll be forgiven for similarly ravenous behavior. Look for any of the following dishes on your favorite Italian restaurant’s menu, then sit back and mangia, mangia, mangia.

Alivi acciurate Basically, black olives baked in the oven with salt then immersed in extra-virgin olive oil with a variety of herbs, including rosemary.

Simple, straightforward and delicious.

to the 10th century. Literally translated, the name means “little orange,” which describes the most common appearance, though certainly not the flavor. Often filled with a tomato and meat sauce, they’re available with a wide variety of fillings, most of them not likely to appear on your diet’s list of approved foods.

Arancini These fried rice balls have been around for a while, potentially dating

Bucciddatu A favorite holiday dessert in Sicily, this cookie-ish/cake-ish sweet is good any time. Essentially a fig cake, it also contains raisins, orange peel, cocoa, black pepper, cinnamon, cloves, almonds, sugar, honey, vanilla and even red wine—a perfect example of Sicilian cuisine’s multicultural origins.

Cannoli Ubiquitous and delicious,

Nectar & Ambrosia Legend has it that Ulysses pacified the cannibalistic Cyclops by offering wine from Mount Etna, a drink so divine and intoxicating that the one-eyed monster likened it to consuming “nectar and ambrosia all in one.” More realistically, Mycenaean traders are believed to have first cultivated grapes here, perhaps as early as 1500 BC. But the trend really took off when the Greeks settled, and their Phoenician enemies were far from averse to a glass or two of ambrosial nectar whenever they dropped by for a scrap.

Today, Sicily’s wines are absolutely top shelf, evidenced in offerings like the Kheirè from Tenuta Gorghi Tondi.

Intensly floral with a bit of fruit, it’s a perfect complement to any of the island’s seafood or light pastas. The winery itself is an integral part of a picturesque World Wildlife Fund Nature Reserve, meaning the source is as beautiful as the creations it bottles. Visit gorghitondi.com to find out more, and Saluté!

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these sweet “little tubes” are found in nearly every Italian bakery and restaurant in the United States. Sicilian in origin, the homeland still serves the biggest versions, delivering fist-sized rolls (as opposed to the finger-sized “cannulicchi” commonly available). Traditionally filled with sweet, creamy ricotta, Stateside cannoli can be found holding flavored custards, mascarpone or other fillings.

Minestra con i tenerumi A soup unlike any you’ve likely had, this is made from the leaves of the long zucchini (not the actual zucchini themselves, though a similar soup utilizes them). Cooked with fresh tomatoes, a hard caciocavallo cheese, basil, garlic and salt and pepper, it’s a simple summer favorite in Palermo.

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Panella Straight-up street food from Palermo, these chickpea fritters are a delicious Sicilian staple. Similar to a fritter traditionally made in Tunisia, they’re available a number of ways, both savory and sweet. Most commonly, panella are made by frying a dough of chickpea flour and lightly salted water, then spritzing a bit of lemon juice on top and serving the resulting fritter hot.

Pasta alla Norma Sicily’s east coast gave us this one, which is from the city of Catania. Fresh tomatoes, fried eggplant, grated ricotta salata cheese and a bit of basil on top add up to this wellknown dish, supposedly named after the Bellini opera “Norma.”

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Rianata A favorite in Trapani, it’s most commonly made with oil, tomatoes, salt, anchovies, pecorino cheese and the aromatic herb “origanum,” a Mediterranean native. Big flavors and a typically thick crust make this a tasty meal indeed (not to mention beautiful).

Salame Italy is famous for its salami, and Sicily has some beautiful options. Look for the Soppressata from Chiaramonte Gulfi, a small town near Ragusa in the south, which presents a solid garlic flavor. Likewise, ask for the salami from Sant’Angelo di Brolo, famous since the 11th century. As Norman reaction to the end of Arab rule, which forbade eating pork products, it presents a floral, rich

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flavor. A protected “designation of origin” product, it’s not to be missed.

Sarde e Beccafico Popular in Sicily’s Trapani and Agrigento areas, these stuffed sardine rolls surprise with a rich mix of bread crumbs, pine nuts, raisins, garlic, sugar, onion, olive oil and lemon juice. The people of Catania add wine vinegar, cheese, eggs and flour to the mix, but you’ll get a bold, reassuring mouthful however the dish is offered.

Vucciddrati Another simple-yetdelicious offering from Sicily, this leavened bread seasoned with salt, oil and rosemary typically appears in March for the festival of St. Joseph.

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PART XXV

U.S. Open 1960 Palmer play-fighting with Nicklaus [previous page] Clubs in the trunk Arnie loading up his Cadillac [opposite] On the range A young Amy Palmer picking up a few tips from Dad [top] Santa watch How will he fit down the chimney? [above] Christmas at Latrobe Cheer abounds for the holiday Palmers [right]

Latrobe home Arnie putts between daughters Peggy (left) and Amy [left]

With Deacon Palmer Augusta National Golf Club, GA [below]

All lined up An attentive audience [bottom]

Out of the woods Arnie getting back in play at Augusta [right]

On a high note Palmer’s iconic finish [left]

Oakmont Country Club Arnie leads his army at the 1960 U.S. Open [below]

In trouble But able to power out [right]

U.S. Open A long putt on the 10th at Oakmont [bottom]

The 1960 Masters A relaxed Arnie puts his feet up [left]

Taking a break Palmer entertains the press [below Left]

1960 U.S. Open Palmer and Nicklaus at the microphone [below]

Augusta The King holds court with the media [bottom]

www.mcdermottcue.com

Out Of the shadOws From the early 1960s through the mid-1970s, “The Big Three” of Arnold Palmer, Gary Player and Jack Nicklaus dominated the game, not just from a playing perspective but in commercial terms also.

Throughout this era, though, a fourth musketeer called Billy Casper handed out some serious drubbings to the gilded trinity. Jack Ross catches up with him for a bit of a history lesson

B

illy Casper, by common consent the deadliest putter on the PGA Tour during the peak of his career, developed his exceptional touch with the flat stick at age nine while putting in the dark at the San Diego Country Club when he had the greens to himself. “I would memorize in my mind where the hole was and putt from various spots on the green completely blind. It helped me develop at an early age a kind of sixth sense for the unseen parts of putting, the roll of the ball, the texture of the green, the importance of keeping the putter blade square, of getting the ball started in the right direction.”

Perhaps it is fitting that Casper, who parlayed the skills honed in the darkness of his youth into one of the brightest careers in golf, ultimately toiled in the shadows of more luminary competitors and to this day occupies a shrouded niche in golf history that belies his accomplishments.

During the 1960s and early ’70s, golf was dominated by Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player. They became legends with their great play, but also through the marketing genius of Mark McCormack, who coined the term “The Big Three.” Casper had earlier parted company with McCormack due to philosophical differences, a decision he later regretted.

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Anyone who followed golf at that time was intimately familiar with the dominating games and personalities of the aforementioned triumvirate: Palmer’s swashbuckling style, which brought millions of new fans to golf; Nicklaus’ power and intense competitiveness as he racked up victories, especially in majors; Player’s fitness regimen and affinity for wearing black as a symbol of the struggle against apartheid in his native South Africa. All have remained visible statesmen of the game of golf since their retirement from competition, as well as major players in golf-course design and management. And now, of course, they are honorary starters at the Masters.

But ask most golf fans about Casper, and they’ll probably remember him as a steady player, maybe a great putter, who won his share of Tour events. They certainly won’t rank him with “The Big Three” in terms of accomplishments or impact—until you show them the statistics, that is.

Casper ranks seventh in career PGA Tour wins (51), behind only Byron Nelson (52), Palmer (62), Ben Hogan (64), Nicklaus (73), Tiger Woods (75) and Sam Snead (82).

Player, by contrast, racked up only 16 PGA Tour wins, but played a more restricted schedule in the United States and in many more international events.

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Casper grooves his silky putting stroke on the practice green at Augusta National as he prepares to play a round in the 1957 Masters

Casper won at least one tour event in 16 consecutive years, a record bested only by Nicklaus and Palmer, who both had 17-year streaks. He won three majors (two U.S. Opens and one Masters) and five Vardon Trophies (player with the lowest scoring percentage), second only to Woods.

From the eight consecutive Ryder Cup matches he appeared in between 1961 and 1975, Casper amassed more points than any U.S. player before or since. Indeed, his total of 23½ puts him half a point ahead of Palmer.

He looks back on the Ryder Cup as one of the most meaningful facets of his career. “It’s unbelievable. There’s nothing like it,” he said. Perhaps because of their different styles, Casper and Palmer proved to be congenial and effective Ryder partners. They were first paired in 1961 at Royal Lytham & St Annes in an alternate-shot format,

Casper won at least one tour event in 16 consecutive years, a record bested only by Nicklaus and Palmer with 17-year streaks kingdom

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and came to No. 17—a par-5 with a narrow driving area— leading 1-up. “I said ‘Arnold, just take that 1-iron and hit it in the fairway and I’ll knock it on the green.’ He stared at me, threw down his cigarette, gripped his driver, let it rip, and missed the fairway by maybe six inches. I hit an iron six feet from the hole, he holed the putt and we won.”

Of players now retired, Casper has the second-best lifetime winning percentage (9.2%). Nicklaus is first at 12.3%, Palmer is third at 8.2% and Player is tenth at 5.5 %.

So it’s little wonder, in light of these accomplishments, that Johnny Miller described his fellow Mormon in Golf Digest as “the most underrated golfer of all time, hands down.”

When Casper sat down to write his autobiography, he chose an apropos title: “The Big Three and Me.” In a joint foreword, Palmer, Nicklaus and Player concede that “The Big Three” should have been “The Big Four.” “Simply put, Billy Casper was a threat to win any golf tournament he entered,” they wrote. “He beat us as many times as we beat him.” They speculate that his lack of notoriety might have been attributable to his conservative play, or a “consistency that could almost lull you to sleep,” and conclude: “His stature as one of the all-time greats, whether widely heralded or not, is beyond doubt.”

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Casper would seem to have cause for resentment that he was largely eclipsed by the spotlight that shone incessantly on “The Big Three.” But spend time with this modest man who grew up in a broken home, learned the game by playing with an unmatched set of clubs on a homemade course and later as a caddie, took but one formal lesson in his life and found spiritual harmony in the Mormon church, and you’ll find that he displays nothing but tranquility, humility and gratitude at being able to accomplish his sole objective in golf: to provide for his family. In this respect, it’s good Casper kept winning, with 11 children, 34 grandchildren, and 15 great-grandchildren—at last count!

Casper hit his first golf shot at age four with his father’s 5-iron (he refused to play with a cut-down club) on the family’s 3-hole course in New Mexico that featured sand greens, cups fashioned with tomato cans, and fairways of pastureland. His parents had moved back to New Mexico from San Diego in 1934 when Casper was three years old searching for work during the Depression. In his book, Casper expresses admiration for his parents’ work ethic, but the necessity of grinding out a living during the Depression apparently left little time for nurturing their only child. “I can never recall my mother giving me a hug,” he reflected. The family moved constantly, and Casper has described himself as growing up in a “broken home.”

Finding little fulfillment at home, Casper turned to sports: baseball and golf. After his family returned to San Diego, he discovered a place down the street that would change his life: the San Diego Country Club. He started hanging out at the club at age nine, and it became his home—“the one place I could count on that was solid and stable and wasn’t going anywhere.” He made friends, hit balls, putted in the dark. He began caddying at age 11, which provided the only money he’d ever received. By age 12, Casper was shooting in the mid-90s at the club with a 24 handicap. When he shot an 80 (net 56) in a local tournament, officials assumed the handicap was padded and returned his father’s entry fee. “We hadn’t padded anything,” recalled Casper. “I guess I was just on that day.”

Ironically, Casper thought he would end up playing professional baseball, but the pivotal decision came when the American Legion schedule conflicted with his caddying, which was his only source of income. Following further family moves to New Mexico and Utah, Casper returned once again to San Diego at age 15 in 1946, resumed caddying at the club and achieved notoriety in the junior golf community.

A watershed event in Casper’s life occurred when Ben Hogan played in an exhibition at the San Diego Country Club. He watched Hogan play a practice round in which he methodically hit shots from various parts of the fairway to the green. “I had no idea what he was doing,” Casper remarked in an interview. “Later I realized he was exercising course management. He was like a pool player, always setting up the next shot with the current one. I incorporated that into my own game.”

Hogan’s obsession on a controlled pre-shot routine and course management remained deeply embedded in Casper throughout his career. At tournaments, he eschewed long sessions on the range and preferred to play solo practice

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rounds where he could learn the best angles into each green and the nuances of the putting surfaces. “My feeling was that you always had a perfect lie on the practice tee, so what was the sense of practicing there?”

By age 16, Casper had never had a formal golf lesson, and gripped the club like a baseball bat. A wealthy businessman for whom he caddied paid for a series of five lessons with the pro at the club. Casper learned the Vardon grip and his game soon reached a new level. He skipped school to enter the qualifying round of the county amateur tournament and took low medalist honors with a 72. The following day, the school principal congratulated him on his performance and handed him five detentions. Soon he racked up victories in a number of junior tournaments, but could never beat his arch rival, Gene Littler, with whom Casper developed a lifelong friendship.

Casper received a golf scholarship to Notre Dame, but didn’t take to college life. He enlisted in the Navy, where he played on the golf team and managed the course at the San Diego Navy Training Center. While on leave he entered his first PGA Tour event—the 1952 San Diego Open—and made the cut. When Shirley, his high school sweetheart, graduated, Casper wasted no time in tying the knot. They were married in June 1952. “We were broke, in debt, in love, and living the American Dream,” recalled Casper.

The framework for that dream was scrawled on a napkin at the San Diego Country Club in 1955 after Casper played a round of golf with a Navy friend, Don Collett, and two local businessmen. Casper was confident he could make it on the PGA Tour, but he lacked the financial resources.

Collett drew up a rough contract on the napkin, and the businessmen agreed to front Casper a car, house trailer,

“I was sorry because I understood how devastating it can be to play that well, climb that high, and fall just short” $650 per month for expenses, and the $5,000 bank reserve required by the Tour. In exchange, they would receive 30 percent of Casper’s earnings. “It wasn’t a great contract,” recalled Casper, “but it was my ticket out of San Diego.”

In the spring of 1955, Billy and Shirley hit the road with their new Buick Roadmaster and 28-foot Spartan trailer, and drove the circuit of the PGA Tour. Casper’s first paycheck was a whopping $33.33 for his 30th place finish in the Western Open. While paltry, Casper said no paycheck was psychologically more important. “I came away knowing that I could play with these guys.” He soon proved that he could more than keep pace. Casper notched his first win at the Labatt Open in 1956 ($5,000), won two times the following year, and in 1958 recorded four wins and finished second (to Palmer) on the money list with $41,324. He returned to San Diego, paid off his sponsors and ripped up the napkin.

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Casper and Palmer give a joint interview after tying for the 72-hole lead in the 1966 U.S. Open at San Francisco’s Olympic Club

Casper’s career tracked the transformation of the PGA Tour from a low-profile, modestly-remunerative avocation to glamour and big bucks. He reflects nostalgically on the early days when he, Palmer and Nicklaus would travel between tournaments with trailers and family in tow, staying at the same trailer parks and breaking out their grills. “We were close. We had great camaraderie,” he said. Though Casper credits Palmer’s dynamic style with changing the golfing landscape, he wasn’t inclined to emulate it.

“He was aggressive; I was conservative. He aimed for pins; I aimed for position. He thrived on crowd interaction; I tried to shut out the crowd. But we were after the same thing and it wasn’t to perfect our mechanics or shoot a good score. It was to win.” Casper’s conservative style was probably best epitomized at the 1959 U.S. Open at Winged Foot, where he laid up each day on the treacherous par-3 3rd hole, recorded four pars with deft chipping, and went on to win the championship.

Stylistic differences with Palmer emerged as a major factor in the historic 1966 U.S. Open at San Francisco’s Olympic Club. Palmer had a three-stroke lead over Casper as they teed off together in the final round, and shot a sizzling 32 on the front nine to Casper’s 36.

As he stood on the 10th tee, seven strokes behind, Casper remarked to Palmer that his objective was to hold

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off Nicklaus for second place. “I’ll do everything I can to help,” quipped Arnie, who had his eye on Ben Hogan’s 72-hole U.S. Open record of 276 and was not about to shift into a conservative mode. His aggressive play backfired, and he stumbled to a 39 after gnarly encounters with the punishing rough. Casper, meanwhile, remained patient and fired a 32 on the strength of his putting to tie Palmer.

A shaken Palmer could not rebound in the 18-hole playoff, and Casper captured his second U.S. Open. As they walked off the 18th green, Casper put his arm around his frequent Ryder Cup teammate and said “I’m sorry Arnie.”

He later reflected that “I was sorry because I understood how devastating it can be to play that well, climb that high, and fall just short.” Palmer would never again win a major.

If Billy Casper never attained the recognition he was due, he seems at peace with the manner in which he approached golf and life. He achieved his sole goal: providing for his family by excelling at the game he loves.

He held his own with “The Big Three” on the course, if not commercially. The record book speaks for itself. Perhaps one day the Lords of Augusta National will see fit to make the honorary starting group at the Masters a four-ball, not a threesome. Casper has surely earned that distinction.

And if they held a putting contest in the dark following the Champions’ Dinner, he would probably win hands down.

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TuNe IN, TurN oN & puTT ouT Somewhere in a haze of lasers, satellites and alternate realities, golf is still about getting a ball into a hole—though whether or not you have to stand on a real course to do it is a different question.

Make no mistake: golf’s switch has been flipped

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outh in the 1960’s wanted to “turn on, tune in and drop out,” but today’s crowd couldn’t be more different. It’s a digital world, and nearly everyone and everything is connected to something else 24 hours a day, golf included. Virtual reality simulators, computer trainers, GPS-equipped carts and a bag of gadgets straight out of Star Trek are now integral parts of the sport. Furthermore, video games—and EA Sports’ Tiger Woods PGA Tour game franchise in particular—are changing the way people come to golf, and even redefining what it means to play the game.

To put all of this in perspective, consider that Arnold Palmer (who appears in EA’s new TW13 video game) turned pro the year after color television was introduced, and 22 years before the first home computer went on sale. Rayovac was about as close as golf got to being plugged-in back then, but oh how times have changed.

“If it’s there, I use it,” Palmer offered recently when asked about in-cart GPS and other technological aids. “You take all the advantage you can of what you can see and what you can learn from those things, and they’re very accurate.

“I started out playing and there was no ‘yards’ or anything. You played according to what you could see, and I enjoyed that. Jack [Nicklaus] is the guy that really brought along the yardage measurements with the books and all that, but I played according to feel and sight in my early days, and I loved it. I wasn’t a big advocate of the books and all this stuff that you do now.”

Rangefinders, GPS-equipped carts and golf simulators are now common examples of the marriage between golf and technology (see sidebar), but nowhere is golf’s electronic side more exciting than in the parallel universe presented by video games, and specifically by the Tiger Woods games. Created by EA Sports, a division of Electronic Arts that also makes the well-known “Madden” football game, the TW series launched in 1998 as a fairly straightforward golf game.

Today a worldwide community enjoys playing it, taking advantage of the great gameplay and camaraderie it offers along with a highly evolved feature set that now includes, for the first time, playing as—or against— Arnold Palmer. Where the game is taking these players, and where it’s taking the game of golf as a whole, remains to be seen, but the possibilities are astounding.

Many TW fans play on their home computers, manipulating their virtual golfer with a mouse and keyboard, but others play on dedicated game consoles like Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Microsoft’s Xbox 360, which offer the chance to get physically involved.

For the uninitiated, video game systems traditionally used buttons and joysticks on hand-held

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controllers to effect action on screen. All of that changed in 2006 when Nintendo introduced the Wii, a game system that tracked the motion of a “wand” of sorts. When gamers wanted to swing a golf club in the Wii version of the TW game, they had to swing the controller through the air in a fashion similar to a golf swing. Since the Wii’s debut, motion-sensing technology for games has improved greatly, with Microsoft’s Kinect sensor being particularly good.

And as the systems get better at analysing real-world motion, games like TW13 are demanding better performance from players, offering increasingly accurate—and thus more difficult—experiences.

GaMe & More “The Kinect allowed us to start delving into the full golf swing, including hips and shoulders,” says Brent Nielsen, an executive producer at EA Sports who’s worked closely on the TW franchise. Even using the standard game controller, he says, “we wanted to give users the ability to create any kind of shot. If you could think of a shot in golf, we wanted people to execute that, put the ball forwards or backwards in your stance, opening and closing your stance to influence a draw or fade. We introduced the notion of tempo to your swing being tied into power, accuracy and execution of a golf shot. If you need to punch-hook a shot under the trees and around a lake to get it on the green, you can close your stance, move the ball back in your stance and execute a draw swing. You can actually execute the draw swing Bubba did from the trees in the Masters.”

That is, you can execute the shot if your form is good enough. Good form is especially important in the new game, which introduces Palmer, Nicklaus and other luminaries as part of a “Legends” challenge. The challenge as a whole takes players through various eras of golf, offering an interactive history lesson that starts with a sepia-toned Tom Morris playing St Andrews and continues through the ages with Bobby Jones, versions of Palmer from the early 1960s and the late 1970s, various incarnations of Nicklaus and a few other legends as well. The players’ swings, the courses and even the physics of the equipment have all been painstakingly modelled to be as accurate as possible, with EA Sports developers doing a lot of math and poring over hours of old footage to get it right. Arnie’s putting looks particularly realistic, and if you’re playing against him, well, let’s just say you’re in for a tough round.

All of this poses the interesting potential of staging virtual match-ups of players across the eras, pitting a 60’s-era Palmer against today’s Rory McIlroy, for example. Likewise, players can challenge the Legends in iconic moments from various majors, potentially rewriting the history books (at least in their own living rooms).

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In terms of the courses, the attention to detail created a special situation regarding one exclusive track: “We recreated the 1934 version of Augusta National,” Nielsen says, pointing out that the full 1934 course is available in a special “Masters” version of TW, with only a few holes available to play in TW13. “We worked with a couple of golf historians and folks from Augusta National, and looked at blueprints and aerial photography to recreate that course. The first 9 and the second 9 were actually reversed back then. One of the first holes we did a test of was the modern day 16, which back then was hole 6. Back then, those trees, which are such a big part of how the hole plays, were then, what, three feet tall?

It’s a different example of bringing the technology into play.

Most people won’t get a chance to play Augusta, but even some of the current members can appreciate getting to play the course as it was originally designed.”

Connected to the Internet, TW gamers have the option of joining “Country Clubs,” online communities that hold their own tournaments and get-togethers. Likewise, gamers can play along with actual PGA Tour events in real time (with weather in the game reflecting real-world conditions). In TW13, EA has also introduced an accurate time-of-day feature, “so if you start playing, the day will advance, with shadows getting longer,” explains Nielsen. “You turn on [the game] at say, 3 in the afternoon in Florida, but you go to play St Andrews where it’s 8 at night, and it will be dark in the game.”

Course Map In blurring the line between real and virtual, reawakening long-disappeared courses, staging matchups of players across golf’s timeline and integrating gamers into live-action PGA tournaments from their homes, EA Sports is compelling us to reconsider the potential of golf itself. And if that sounds bombastic, consider the case of Lucas Ordóñez, who won a car racing video game and changed his life. Jointly sponsored

by Sony and Nissan, the “GT Academy” contest aims to take video gamers with no real-world racing experience and turn them into actual race-car drivers. In 2008, as part of the contest, Ordóñez won a PlayStation game called “GranTurismo.” Last year, at the age of 27, he took second

Fully fashionable 1930s golf in 2013

place at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, winning in the secondhighest category of car at the most prestigious endurance race in the world—and he’s now a professional race driver.

“It’s unbelievable,” he told the New York Times after the race, “coming from PlayStation three years before, being a normal student from Spain, and three years later being on the Le Mans podium. It’s incredible, and you cannot believe it. But it happened.”

Will we one day hear a similar story from someone slipping on a green jacket, someone who mastered a precision-demanding future version of the Tiger Woods game before ever setting foot on a real golf course? We at Kingdom wouldn’t bet against it. And if that person can virtually beat accurate computer models of Jones, Nicklaus, Tiger and perhaps even Palmer himself, would he or she then be the greatest golfer of all time? Food for thought, and something to consider next time you tell the kid in your life to switch off the computer and go play outside. For now our advice is to stay tuned—and flex your knees slightly.

poWer GaMe

If all the talk of vIrtual realI ty and hIgh tech has you frantI c, calm down. as the followI ng three examples show, just because golf Is plugged I n doesn’t mean you should be turned off. rangefinder

Golf simulator

Driver app

Callaway’s X Hot Rangefinder uses a laser to measure the distance of different targets in succession up to 550 yards away. Yardage is displayed in half-yard increments on an LCD inside a Nikon monocular, and it’s unbelievably precise. A far cry from “guestimating,” and useful at that. callawaygolf.com

Full Swing Golf simulators offer indoor golf with your clubs—and without breaking mirrors (hopefully).

Their installers make sure the 12’ screen and projection system fit your home perfectly; performance on any of the included 15 championship courses is up to you. fullswinggolf.com

In showcasing its new R1 driver, TaylorMade took the original step (for golf) of first introducing a smartphone/ tablet app. The app allows you to make adjustments to a virtual R1 on an iPad or similar device and then see the effects played out in an animated swing. Tech communicating tech. Nice. taylormadegolf.com

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Th T he Maj Maj ajo or that Never Ne W s Wa The register of its multiple winners reads like a Who’s Who? of golf.

Walter Hagen, Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, Arnold Palmer, Billy Casper, Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, Nick Price and Tiger Woods are among those who have won this particular title at least twice. In its heyday, it was almost as prestigious as the U.S. and British Opens, so what happened to the Western Open? Did it die, or is it alive and kicking but dressed up in disguise? Paul Trow investigates

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T

his is the tale of an eminent golf tournament that for much of its long and fruitful life not only aspired to be a major championship, but was actually treated by most people as if it was one. however, the status this venerable landmark on the golfing calendar once enjoyed, and how it has evolved into what it now is, must first be put into an historical context.

The concept of major championships in golf has embraced many variables since the first British Open was played out over 36 holes at Prestwick on the west coast of Scotland on October 17, 1860. For the next quarter of a century, this tournament, initially for the prize of a Moroccan belt and since 1873 for a claret jug, was pretty much the only title of significance that good golfers could contest. Otherwise their playing skills were confined to exhibition or “money” matches that amounted to little kudos beyond the satisfaction of victory over their rivals and at a job well done on behalf of their backers.

With only modest financial rewards on offer for professionals, at least half the leading players over the final two decades of the 19th century were, not surprisingly, amateurs. Some of them were gentlemen of independent means, but most were tradesmen, shopkeepers or artisans. Thus in 1885, the inaugural [British] Amateur Championship took place at Royal Liverpool, the home club of the two outstanding amateurs of the time—John Ball, Jr. and Harold Hilton. Hilton won both the Open and the Amateur twice while Ball was Open champion in 1890 and eight times Amateur champion.

The next staging-post in the growth of elite golf

The USGA described top U.S. amateurs as lawyers, doctors and clergy came in October 1895 when the newly-formed United States Golf Association held the first U.S. Open and Amateur championships at Newport Country Club, Rhode Island. The U.S. Open was won by English émigré Horace Rawlins, who also happened to be the host club’s resident professional, while Charles Blair Macdonald, the father of American golf-course architecture and eventual creator of the National Golf Links on Long Island, romped to victory in the Amateur. The demographic profile of the leading American amateurs of the time, though, was decidedly different to that of their British counterparts, with the USGA website describing them as mainly “lawyers, doctors, clergy and businessmen.”

It was these four great championships that all the fuss was about when Bobby Jones claimed his “impregnable quadrilateral” in 1930, winning the Opens at Royal Liverpool and Interlachen Country Club in Minneapolis and the two Amateur titles at St Andrews and Merion. Fast forward 30 years, and a different quadrilateral of ‘majors’

Palmer, who finished runner-up to Mike Souchak, entertains his hometown galleries in the 1959 Western Open at Pittsburgh Field Club

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Julius Boros, Jack Nicklaus and Palmer pose for the cameras prior to their playoff in the 1963 Western Open at Beverly Country Club

was conceived by no less a figure than Arnold Palmer, who felt the most viable version of the Grand Slam should consist of the two Opens, the Masters, which Jones had been hosting at Augusta National since 1934, and the PGA Championship that dated back to 1916. It didn’t take long for Palmer’s blueprint to find favor, not just with the media but also golf’s governing bodies. By this time, though, one prestigious event long regarded unofficially as the equivalent of a “major” was already beginning to find itself on the outside, looking in.

For decades before Jones completed his clean sweep and went on to create the Masters, the Western Golf Association (WGA) Open Championship, open to professionals and amateurs, had attracted most of the leading players from across America, to such an extent that it was widely regarded as almost equal in importance to the U.S. Open. Now restyled as the BMW Championship and currently scheduled as the final FedExCup Playoff before the Tour Championship, the Western Open made its grand

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entrance as a 36-hole tournament at Chicago’s Glen View Golf Club in 1899, just four years after the first U.S. Open and Amateur championships. Willie Smith duly chalked up the first of 16 Scottish victories in the event, which was extended to 72 holes in 1902 when the winner, Willie Anderson, posted the first-ever four-round total of under 300 at Euclid Club in Cleveland, Ohio. The final act of this longrunning dominance by Scottish professionals was Tommy Armour’s demolition of the field in 1929 at Ozaukee Country Club near Milwaukee. The Silver Scot’s seven-under-par total of 273, on a course that measured well in excess of 6,600 yards, is one of the outstanding 72-hole performances of all time and left Horton Smith, who went on to become the first Masters champion, a distant second on 281.

Founded in 1899, the WGA was originally set up as a rules-making body because western golf clubs (the Midwest was referred to as “the west” back then) felt they weren’t properly represented within the New York-based USGA. But after a 20-year stand-off, the WGA formally recognized

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GOiNG TO GOlF The WGA’s headquarters are located in the village of Golf in Cook County, just north of Chicago, where Glen View Golf Club, host course for the first Western Open, was laid out in 1897.

When

one

of

the

club’s

early

members, Albert J. Earling, president of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad, took a private rail car from his downtown offices to Glen View, he would tell people he was “going to golf.” Earling arranged to have his car and those of other members switched to a special siding, which soon became known as the “Golf Stop.”

In 1925, Edward R. Diederich, another prominent

Chicago

businessman,

bought 30 acres of land between the station and the golf club. He installed streets,

sidewalks,

sewers,

water,

gas and electricity, and within three years the village of Golf was fully incorporated.

One of the WGA’s key roles is to administer the Chick Evans Scholarship Program,

which

has

awarded

full

tuition and housing scholarships to nearly 10,000 caddies. The program was started in 1930 by Charles ‘Chick’ Evans, Jr., the first American-born winner of the Western Open in 1910 and also the 1916 U.S. Open champion.

Evans is one of only two amateurs to have won the Western Open (the other was Scott Verplank in 1985 after a playoff with Jim Thorpe).

Today,

Armour demolished the field in 1929 with a total 273, one of the best 72-hole performances ever

and

Evans

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than

golfers

Scholars

400

clubs

support

the

Foundation, which

is also funded by 23 affiliated golf associations

and

proceeds

from

the BMW Championship. To qualify for the scholarship, students must have

the USGA’s authority as the rules-making body in the United States and commuted its own role to overseeing the Western Open, Amateur and Junior championships.

Up until the first of Palmer’s two victories, at Blythefield Country Club near Detroit in 1961, the Western Open had been far from an Illinois-only tournament.

Indeed, between 1899 and 1961 it was only held 16 times in Illinois. During that time, it also made nine appearances in Ohio, eight in Michigan, five in Missouri, three in Wisconsin, two each in Iowa, Tennessee, Minnesota, California, Indiana and Arizona, and one each in New York, Pennsylvania, Utah, Oregon and Texas. That’s a total of 16 states, an impressive geographical spread for an event

more

100,000

outstanding

academic

and

caddie records, along with proven good character, leadership skills and financial need. The 14 participating colleges are: Northwestern University, University

of

Illinois,

University

of Michigan, University of Wisconsin, Michigan State University, Marquette University, University of Minnesota, Ohio State University, Purdue University, University of

of

Colorado,

University

Indiana

University,

Missouri,

Miami

University

and

Northern

Illinois University.

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“The Western Open was on its way to being a major... I don’t know why it never happened”

More Palmer action from the 1959 Western Open

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run out of one location. From the year of its inception until 1961, the U.S. Open, the national championship remember, visited just 13 states.

From 1962-73, the Western Open was based in the Chicago metropolitan area and staged across seven venues, including Beverly Country Club where Palmer won the title for a second time in 1963 after beating Julius Boros and Jack Nicklaus in a playoff. From 1974-90 its exclusive home was in the western Chicago suburb of Oak Brook at Butler National Golf Club, founded by local entrepreneur Paul Butler and designed by George Fazio and his nephew Tom. But Butler National eventually fell foul of the PGA Tour’s policy not to associate with golf clubs that refused to admit women and minorities as members, so the tournament was moved a few miles south in 1991 to the Dick Wilson-designed Dubsdread course at Cog Hill Golf & Country Club. It has been won there on five occasions by Tiger Woods, matching Walter Hagen’s tournament record, but it seems Cog Hill’s role as host course has ended for the foreseeable future.

Upon the advent of BMW and the tournament’s absorption into the FedExCup Playoffs’ series in 2007, the name ‘Western Open’ disappeared from the title and even though the WGA continues to have some input into the running of the event, which is restricted to a 70-man field and is no longer open to amateurs, the PGA Tour has the final say.

The BMW went to Bellerive Country Club in St. Louis, Missouri in 2008 and last year it was staged at Crooked Stick Golf Club in Carmel, Indiana. This year’s tournament returns to the Chicago area and will be played from September 12-15 at Conway Farms Golf Club, Lake Forest, but in 2014 it will travel west again to Cherry Hills Country Club in Denver, Colorado where Palmer claimed his only U.S. Open crown in 1960.

Ironically, this process of zigzagging across the country brings the BMW a little closer to the traditions established during the early days of the Western Open, yet the tournament couldn’t be further than it is today from its long-cherished identity as a major in all but name. Its transformation from one of American golf’s most finelytuned engines into a functional cog (or Cog) in the giant nexus of the FedExCup baffles Palmer for one.

“When I started playing on the Tour, the Western Open was on its way to being a major championship, but it never happened,” he said. “I don’t know why. I always enjoyed playing in it.” What better testimonial, and more informative context, can any championship possibly enjoy?

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Despite 20 years of losing seasons, Pittsburgh has the best ballpark in the game

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The late Kansas City Star columnist Bill Vaughn once opined that it’s never safe to be nostalgic about something until you’re certain that it’s not coming back, but that doesn’t stop baseball fans in Pittsburgh from getting a little misty-eyed come October. You can hardly blame them. In 1960, ’71 and ’79, the month saw Pirates teams featuring the likes of Bill Mazeroski, Roberto Clemente and Willie “Pops” Stargell bring home World Series titles to the Steel City, adding to victories earned in 1909 and 1925. Since then, aside from a fluttering trifecta of NL East titles from 1990-92, the Pirates and their fans have been on a long, rough voyage. They’re currently navigating 20 years of losing seasons, the longest losing streak in any of the four major professional North American sports leagues. But if the fans are suffering on game days—and it’s tough to believe that they are not—at least they’re doing it in the best field in baseball: PNC Park.

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This statue of Honus Wagner, one of the heroes of the Pirates’ 1909 World Series win, greets visitors to the home plate entrance

The game has its old-school shrines, like Fenway and Wrigley, and it has its high-tech wonders, like San Francisco’s PacBell Park, but perhaps no field of dreams is as well balanced, fan-friendly and endearing as PNC Park—and we’re not the only ones who think so. Referencing Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural masterpiece “Fallingwater,” Jim Caple of ESPN.com wrote that the iconic house, near Pittsburgh, “is regarded as the perfect blend of art, architecture and environment… Or at least it was until PNC Park opened.”

There’s no doubt the place is easy on the eyes. Built over 24 months at a cost near $220 million, its exterior is covered in the rough limestone that defines the nearby countryside, itself in full and stunning view. Inside the park, large archways and plenty of steel create a grand, if nostalgic, feel. In fact, there’s a lot of vintage vibe here, some of which is due to the fact that there are only two spectator decks.

The two-deck design (as opposed to multiple configurations of seating areas, as seen in ultra-modern “mega stadia”) is definitely old school; PNC Park is the first U.S. park to utilize the layout since Milwaukee’s County Stadium, which opened in 1953. Subsequently, the highest seat is just 88 feet from the field, and every fan in the house has a fantastic sight line.

For the Fans A few years ago, those fans would have had an excellent view of a promising new pitcher. Arnold Palmer says he attends at least one Pirates game per year at PNC Park, but for his 80th birthday celebration—attended with good friend and PNC Financial Services chairman Jim Rohr—Palmer Palmer prepares for his 80th birthday pitch actually managed to get down on the field. “I threw out the first pitch to the ballgame, and I called it,” Palmer recalled. “I said to the guys on the mound, ‘Now, I’m going to pitch a strike right across the center of the plate at about 80mph,’ and they looked at me and laughed, and of course that became a

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big deal because I did it. And then they put the real pitcher in and the first eight pitches were all hits by the opposing team. The big joke was they should have left me in.”

The first official game at PNC Park, played on April 9, 2001, saw the Pirates lose (8–2 to the Cincinnati Reds).

Still, the fans likely didn’t care too much. A preseason warmup against the New York Mets was played March 31 and, though it was also a loss, the fan experience yielded rave reviews.

“I’m so thrilled to be here, I’m just trying to keep the tears back,” fan Jane Windhorst told The Pittsburgh PostGazette the day after the first game. The paper also spoke with an usher who’d worked for 30 years at the Pirates’ former home at Three Rivers Stadium. He described the view of downtown and the riverfront as “breathtaking…

People are walking in just saying, ‘Wow.’ Before the game started, we had a few hundred people down here lined up like a drill team taking pictures of the skyline.”

The park sits on the Allegheny River, in the Northside district. Getting to it is easy, with pedestrian access via the Roberto Clemente Bridge, bus services, a free light rail service (known as the “T”) and even the possibility of arriving by boat. The last route puts you in the river, 443 feet, 4 inches from home plate—which was a dangerous place to be on July 10, 2006. That year, at a home run derby held the night before the All Star Game, both Ryan Howard of the Phillies and Boston’s David Ortiz put balls in the water (with Howard eventually winning the derby). No Pirate has yet matched the feat, but there’s always next year, as they say.

For fans arriving by foot, the Clemente Bridge makes a grand entrance indeed. Locals originally wanted the park itself named for the Pirates’ famed right fielder, but settled for the honor going to the bridge when PNC Financial Services stepped up with park funding. Closed to vehicles on game days (as it is for Steelers games at nearby Heinz Field), the bridge deposits fans on the southeast corner of PNC Park, where they’re greeted by a statue of Clemente just outside the centerfield gate. He’s not alone. In fact, the park is surrounded with reminders that the team used to be a force in the game. Near Clemente is a statue of Stargell,

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the legendary Pirates first baseman and left fielder who played his entire 21-year career in Pittsburgh and helped the team take the Series in both 1971 and 1979. The statue was dedicated just two days before his death, which just happened to be the date of the first official game in PNC Park. At the home plate entrance, the great Honus Wagner stands looking skyward as if he’s watching his ball fly over the fence. In addition to being an all-time great, Wagner helped the Pirates to their 1909 World Series win at the age of 35, batting .333 and stealing six bases. Likewise, fans entering at right field get to see a statue of Mazeroski celebrating “the greatest home run in history,” which Arnold Palmer is thrilled to have witnessed. “I was at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh on the last game of the World Series,” Palmer remembered, with some pride. “Mazeroski was at bat and hit that home run to win the ballgame, and I was there.”

It was Monday, October 10, 1960, and the World Series between the Pirates and New York Yankees was tied at three games each. Game 7 was played at Forbes Field, the Pirates’ home since 1909, where Palmer and a capacity crowd watched Pittsburgh’s finest hold off the likes of Roger Maris, Yogi Berra and Mickey Mantle for eight innings. Coming into the ninth with a two-run lead, the Pirates quickly lost ground and let the Yankees tie it up. But any apprehension about going into extra innings disappeared when Mazeroski stepped to the plate, the Pirates’ first at bat. With a count of one ball and no strikes, the second baseman crushed a pitch from the Yankees’ Ralph Terry over the left field wall to become the first player to win the World Series with a gameending home run in Game 7. It’s a moment to which Pirates fans cling tightly, and the statue is an inspiring reminder.

Once you’re inside the park, the history continues— even if it’s not as obvious. The steel arches and overall design harken back to the city’s days as the top steel town, while the right field wall rises to a height of 21 feet, another homage to the Pirates’ Clemente, who wore #21.

Of course PNC Park isn’t all old-school. While the design offers a look back, the park is positively modern.

Plenty of technology comes into play, most obviously with scoreboards that are absolutely cutting edge. The out-of-town scoreboard, specifically, offers the requisite score, inning and pitchers, but also shows how many outs, how many runners on base and their locations, which is tremendous. There are 69 luxury suites offering top amenities, numerous modern lounges and—during and after the games—a host of shopping and dining opportunities. And when we write “dining,” we mean serious chow, Pittsburgh style. We mean Primanti Bros.

Food Joe Primanti started selling sandwiches from a street cart in Pittsburgh in the 1930s. At some point, he moved his operation into a small restaurant on the city’s 18th Street, fried up some potato chips, threw them on a sandwich, and created one of the city’s most emblematic edibles: The Primanti Sandwich. Today, in addition to locations around the city, Primanti Bros. has a location at PNC Park, and fans couldn’t be happier. If that wasn’t local enough for you, the park’s “Manny’s BBQ” concession stand is owned

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Bill Mazeroski celebrates the home run that sealed the 1960 World Series

and operated by the Pirates own legendary catcher, Manny Sanguillen. Not only can fans land, among other things, the ridiculous and amazing Pulled Pork and Pierogi Stacker (potato-filled pierogis over pulled pork with carmelized onions on a soft pretzel), but Manny himself often cruises the line of people waiting for food and signs autographs.

These two food spots, in addition to other Pittsburgh institutions like Quaker Steak and Lube and Mrs. T’s Pierogies, reinforce PNC Park as a locals’ arena, while the usual array of pizza places, burgers, Mexican food, ice cream and beer (including a few microbrews) will leave you no doubt you’re at a ballpark. If you’d rather not leave your seat, ESPN’s Caple notes that hot dogs are delivered to fans in the stands via a contraption resembling a T-shirt cannon, like the types used at concerts. The hot dogs are actually fired at you through the air, giving you one more good reason to bring a glove to the game. If you can’t make up your mind (or you just really, really like food), there’s an all-you-can-eat section on the lower level where a ticket gets you unlimited hot dogs, pretzels, and the like.

Lastly—and amazingly to any baseball fan who doesn’t live in Pittsburgh—fans can bring their own food into PNC Park, something that’s rarely allowed in Major League ballparks, which often put a premium on getting your concession dollars. This ballfield is for the fans, no question.

Finally Jay Ahuja, who wrote “Fields of Dreams: A Guide to Visiting and Enjoying All 30 Major League Ballparks,” ranked PNC Park near the top of the list, as did Men’s Fitness and ABC News at various times. The latter said PNC “combines the best features of yesterday’s ballparks—rhythmic archways, steel trusswork and a natural grass playing field—with the latest in fan and player amenities and comfort.”

The views and food are wonderful, the building’s beautiful, the field is natural grass and everything’s great— except the team. But Pirates fans, including Arnold Palmer, aren’t worried. “They’re going to come back,” Palmer said.

For now, he added, “The stadium is one of the best I’ve ever been in.”

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Spirits

America

of

S

tone Age beer jugs, a jar of Neolithic Persian fruit hooch, Chinese wine jars dating to 7000 BC… We’ve been putting a little kick in our steps almost as long as we’ve had feet, and certainly since we stepped on American shores.

The world may have stocked the shelves with absinthe, amaretto, ouzo and other spirits, but (just as we did with the English language) we Americans added a few improvements of our own to the mix. Here, Kingdom looks at a new twist on old potions, a New York love story, a well-traveled mystery and a top-shelf manifestation of a bottom-shelf sauce that’s been used to strip paint almost as long as it’s been tipped and swallowed—four reasons to celebrate our country’s independent spirits.

Root

Art in the Age of MechAnicAl reproduction PhiladelPhia, Pennsylvania

Under the “Art in the Age” brand umbrella, Steven Grasse set out to defy existing spirit categories. What better way, then, but to travel to a time before those categories existed?

Grasse’s “Rhubarb” was inspired by Ben Franklin (who brought the ruddystalked plant to America) and a recipe for rhubarb tea that Grasse’s mom used.

His “Snap” came from his grandmother’s old Pennsylvania Dutch recipe for ginger snaps, while his Thomas Jefferson-era “Sage” recipe drinks like gin, though it’s not gin exactly. Most famous among his offerings so far is “Root,” which tastes something like root beer, but better. It’s based on a Native American recipe from the 1700s that was eventually modified by colonists. “Digging into the origins [of root beer], it was actually alcoholic.

They only took the alcohol out during the temperance movement,” Grasse told us. The man behind Hendrick’s Gin and Sailor Jerry Rum is onto something, we think. Working with Chef Rev. Michael

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Alan, the two mine history and hand-mix organic ingredients from small, local farms to create recipes, which are then given over to a distiller for the magic bit.

“We steep and infuse the ingredients like tea, the old fashioned way,” Grasse says. “Each batch is slightly different.”

Which means each batch is perfect, as far as we’re concerned. artintheage.com

Root Old Fashioned

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2 parts root

4 dashes Angostura bitters

1 part simple syrup

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Absinthe Verte

St. george SpiritS alameda, California

With a French-sounding moniker, a founder named Jörg Rupf and a home base in California, St. George Spirits couldn’t be more American. While many current craft spirit brands are hipsterish (though worthy) late arrivals to the party, Rupf brought his artisan skills to the genre before the genre even existed, launching an eau de vie way back in the ancient days of the early 1980s. You might know his Hangar One series of vodkas (which he eventually sold), but it’s his craft spirits that really shine, and that certainly includes the Absinthe Verte. St. George distiller Lance Winters spent 11 years perfecting the recipe, “taking a number of loud botanical ingredients and making them sing in harmony.” St. George couldn’t sell it until 2007, when the U.S. ban on absinthe was lifted, but since then it’s been a stunner, impressing just about everyone who’s made the sensory journey from black licorice through citrus and grass to sarsaparilla. As the company has it, “You won’t hallucinate when you drink our absinthe, but you might fall in love.

Everyone else has.” We certainly did. stgeorgespirits.com

Perfect Pour a few drops water

1 cube ice

a few drops of water added to a pour of absinthe will increase some of the spirit’s botanical oils, intensifying the floral aroma. likewise, a single large ice cube will reveal more of the flavors.

Do not add sugar.

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Moonshine

KingS county diStillery Brooklyn, new york

Are the guys that own this distillery even from Brooklyn? We don’t care. Not really. After all, “authentic” should be judged by what’s in the bottle, not what’s on the label—and that’s a good thing with Kings County Moonshine, because the label is rather spare. Moonshine (firewater, hooch, rotgut, white lightning, bootleg, mountain dew, solvent, etc.) has been around at least as long as G-men, and probably longer. The name comes from the fact that most distillers worked in secret (i.e. by the light of the moon) with dubious equipment and safety.

Shine stills made from car radiators may still be out there, but mainstream popularity is producing better options, like Kings’, which is drinkable, smooth even, with just enough spark to let you know what it is. With a flask-sized bottle, we say tip it. But if you must mix, try this: kingscountydistillery.com

Atsby Vermouth Adam Ford started making his vermouth in his Manhattan apartment.

A fan of Europe’s classic bold vermouths, Ford was disappointed with the meager offerings back home and decided to take matters into his own hands. The result is one of the best vermouths to come out of anywhere, and a not-so-subtle homage to its home state. The name stems from New York’s early nightlife district, the “Assembly Theaters on Broadway in New York City.” The base wine is a Long Island Chardonnay, which is combined with an apple brandy from the Finger Lakes. Sold in two versions, Atsby Amberthorn uses Chinese anise, French lavender and basil to create a summery sting, while the Armadillo Cake is soothed with a dark caramel mix of wild celery, cardamom and Japanese shiitake, among other bits. Nice to sip neat, Atsby also mixes well: atsbyvermouth.com

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Stinging Moonie 1.5 oz Moonshine

1 spoonful honey

1 lemon, squeezed

1

⁄2 cup iced tea

shake the shine, honey and lemon juice with ice. mix with the tea, garnish with a lemon and call it a slow, southern day.

AtSby new york, new york

Amberthyst 2 oz Amberthorn

1

⁄2 oz Maraschino liqueur

1

⁄4 oz lemon juice

1

⁄4 oz crème de Violette

shake it all together, strain into a martini glass and garnish with a cherry.

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v i s i 142

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I

am very often asked for tips for success. A lot of them are obvious, such as having a strong work ethic and business acumen. But one thing that can really set you apart is having a long-term plan and vision. This is crucial, and it’s important to note that vision remains vision until you focus, do the work and bring it down to earth where it will do some good.

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Long-term vision opens you up to greater success because it will be more comprehensive than having a set list of goals. Those goals should serve as stepping stones to the bigger picture, and allow you to look beyond the present and into the future. It is partly prescience and partly planning. For example, if you were going to climb Mt. Everest, you would need to establish a solid base camp first. The same goes for business and just about any endeavor you can think of. I am constantly surprised when I hear of someone who is gung-ho about an idea or a specific goal, only to discover that they know close to nothing about this great idea they have. You have to be prepared as well as creative.

Business is, indeed, a creative endeavor. You have to keep an open mind and know that innovation comes from being open as well as well-informed. There can always be something new and better out there. When I introduced the first mixed-use hotel with Trump International Hotel & Tower on Central Park West in New York City, it was touted as being an ‘innovation,’ and it has been an amazing success and copied worldwide. Interestingly, I wasn’t trying to be innovative—it just made sense to me to combine condominiums and a hotel. But I am open to making changes, and that’s what I did. Changing the norm has resulted in long-term results.

Keep the big picture in mind. We’ve all heard that before, but it remains valid. There are always opportunities and possibilities, and thinking too small can negate a lot of them. Visionaries keep at it until they get where they want to go. Edison endured thousands of experiments before succeeding, and even Einstein said, “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” The point is that they had a vision that they refused to let go of. That vision provides strength as well as inspiration.

When I was a child, I dreamt of building skyscrapers.

It was a very clear vision, but I also started building them with my building blocks. In order to excel, you need the vision and you need the building blocks to get it all going.

Don’t skimp on any of the ingredients necessary for success and it’s likely you’ll find yourself in some great places.

Donald J. Trump

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the

Two of America’s most storied citizens, men from vastly different backgrounds, were more responsible than anyone else for putting central Florida on the map around four decades ago. First Walt Disney resolved to export his unique brand of magic from California, then Arnold Palmer established Orlando as a must-visit golf destination when he bought Bay Hill Club & Lodge

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“I’m GoInG to DIsney WorlD!” yelled victorious Super Bowl XLVII quarterback Joe Flacco in the immediate aftermath of the Baltimore Ravens’ 34-31 victory over the San Francisco 49ers in February. As confetti rained down from the rafters of New Orleans’ Mercedes-Benz Superdome, Flacco was already savoring the ultimate reward for his MVP heroics in a commercial recorded within seconds of the final whistle.

This tradition dates back to Super Bowl XXI in 1987 when the New York Giants became the first winners to enjoy a lavish trip to Walt Disney World—and put the ultimate stamp of pre-eminence on a resort that today is hugely responsible for attracting almost 60 million visitors a year to the Orlando metropolitan area.

Of course the pesky rivals from SeaWorld and Universal contribute somewhat to that figure as well, as does the Orange County Convention Center, recently expanded to over two million square feet of floor space and now the second-largest exhibition complex in the United States (after McCormick Place in Chicago). And as a consequence of all this growth, Orlando is second only to Las Vegas across the country for the number of hotel bedrooms in town.

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Disney changed the Orlando landscape forever

The process that converted Orlando and Orange County from a sleepy maze of citrus groves and freshwater lakes into Florida’s largest inland city began in earnest in 1971 when Walt Disney World opened for business. And five years later, a whole decade after initially falling in love with the place, Arnold Palmer finally gained control of Bay Hill Club & Lodge, and triggered a frenetic spate of golfcourse construction across the whole area.

It’s fair to say that Orlando certainly wouldn’t be what it is today without the input of Disney and Palmer, two giants of the modern American way of life. And the local links between Disney and Palmer remain as strong today as they were four decades ago, thanks to the role Arnold Palmer Golf Management Company plays in running the five golf courses at Walt Disney World.

The story of Orlando’s transformation, though, really dates back to 1959 when Walt Disney Productions began looking for land for a second park to complement Disneyland in Anaheim, California. Market surveys had revealed that only 5 percent of Disneyland’s visitors came

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from east of the Mississippi River, home to 75 percent of the U.S. population. Additionally, Walt Disney disliked the businesses that had sprung up around Disneyland and wanted to spread his unique brand of entertainment across a much larger stretch of land.

After considering and rejecting Miami and Tampa because of their susceptibility to hurricanes, Disney flew over Orlando in November 1963. Seeing the well-developed network of roads already in place, plus Interstate 4 and Florida’s Turnpike that were both nearing completion, and the convenient location of the McCoy Air Force Base (later to become Orlando International Airport), he selected a site near Bay Lake in Orange County, southwest of downtown.

To avoid a burst of land speculation, Disney used dummy companies with exotic-sounding names like the Latin-American Development and Management Corporation and the Reedy Creek Ranch Corporation to acquire more than 27,000 acres. To throw speculators further off the scent, some of these transactions were recorded in Osceola County, several miles south of Orlando, and nowhere near Bay Lake.

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Magnolia at the Disney Resort (above) and Orlando from the air in 1973 (above right)

Most owners were happy to get rid of their land, which was mainly swamp, but the mineral rights were owned by Tufts University of Massachusetts. Without the transfer of these rights, Tufts could have come in at any time and demanded the removal of buildings to obtain minerals. Eventually, Disney bought the mineral rights from Tufts for $15,000.

After most of the land had been bought, the owner’s identity was leaked to the Orlando Sentinel late in 1965 and Disney was forced to come clean about his plans, which included Epcot, the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, or in other words, a futuristic city.

Disney died a year later and thereafter his vision of a community of tomorrow gradually evolved into a sort of world’s fair. His brother Roy O. Disney postponed his retirement to oversee construction of the resort’s first phase, the Reedy Creek Improvement District and its two cities, Bay Lake and Reedy Creek (now Lake Buena Vista).

Drainage canals and roads were put in, and by 1970 four major airlines were providing scheduled flights to Orlando. Walt Disney World resort, with the Magic Kingdom as its first theme park and Mickey Mouse as emcee, eventually opened on October 1, 1971, and almost immediately triggered a population explosion and unprecedented economic growth. Over the years many more cradles of fun have been opened, including Epcot, Disney’s Hollywood Studios, the Animal Kingdom, Typhoon Lagoon, Blizzard Beach, and Downtown Disney.

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The resort also includes four 18-hole courses—Palm, Magnolia, Lake Buena Vista and Osprey Ridge—and Oak Trail, a nine-hole academy layout aimed at young golfers.

Magnolia and Palm opened on the same day as the Magic Kingdom and Lake Buena Vista was completed a year later.

All three were the work of noted Floridian course architect Joe Lee, who, ironically, was once a business partner of Dick Wilson, the original designer of the Championship and Challenger loops at Bay Hill back in 1961.

As soon as it opened, Magnolia hosted the inaugural Walt Disney World Open Invitational, won by Jack Nicklaus.

The Golden Bear also won in 1972 and ’73 when the event was played across both Magnolia and Palm. The tournament then continued in various guises and under different sponsorships right up till last November. For a while it was a four-ball team championship and from 1982-97 the Lake Buena Vista course was also used. The last six seasons it has supported the Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals, but it has now been dropped by the PGA Tour despite hopes right up to the end of last year that it might survive the cut and extend its run on the schedule to a 43rd consecutive appearance.

Whether the tournament ever returns to the Tour’s fall schedule, and there was talk that an alternative slot might be found for it during the springtime Florida swing, it is never a happy situation when a long-standing event drops by the wayside.

Certainly the Tour will be worse off for no longer having either Magnolia or Palm in its repertoire. Even though

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they are right next to each other, these courses could not be more contrasting. Magnolia, aptly named as it’s been shaped through a plantation of more than 1,500 magnolia trees, occupies 175 acres of thick wetlands and at 7,516 yards from the tips was one of the half-dozen longest tracks on Tour.

Water comes into play on 11 holes while the highlight of the 97 bunkers is the famous Mouse Trap, shaped like you know who, fronting the green at the iconic par-3 6th.

An abundance of water and dense woods lurk all across Palm, necessitating careful club selection and no shortage of nerve. Nowhere is the water challenge more evident than at No.6, a 412-yard par-4. The lake left of the tee and further water fronting the green on the approach must be avoided at all costs, though a thick forest on the right forces players to flirt with the water’s edge. At 7,015 yards Palm is considerably shorter, but a lot tighter, than Magnolia. Along with the 6th, 1984 and ’87 champion Larry Nelson rates the 4th, a 422-yard par-4, as the toughest hole on Palm. “For me it’s hard to find a spot to drive it in the fairway,” says one of the most accurate drivers ever to play on the PGA Tour.

Nelson is also wary of the 450-yard 10th—“especially as a starting hole.” Then there’s No.18, a par-4 that measures 454 yards from the tips. Trees to the right and bunkers down the left swallow errant tee shots, while a straight drive leaves a long approach over a canal to a green flanked by bunkers front, left and back and water right and back.

For golfers who like their challenges in shorter measurements, the Lake Buena Vista course is styled in a classic country club setting. Combining thick forests and residential areas, it stretches to just over 6,800 yards from the back tees. But don’t let its lack of length fool you: this course, with its narrow fairways and well-bunkered greens, can also be a bully. The highlights here are probably the treacherous 157-yard 16th across water and the demanding 438-yard left-to-right dogleg finishing hole.

The fourth 18-hole course on the property is Osprey Ridge, which Tom Fazio carved from a wilderness in the northeast corner of the resort back in 1992. Like many

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artists who see the finished painting before the first pigment is applied to the canvas, he instantly visualized a picturesque yet challenging layout from the varied foliage he encountered. “Some of the factors that excited us about the project were the vegetation, the water areas and the wetlands which became part of the background and framing for the holes,” he said.

Fazio used the existing land patterns and ridges to their fullest to create tees, greens and viewing areas 20-25 feet above grade. In direct contrast to these elevation changes was Pete Dye’s low-profile design for the adjacent Eagles Pines course that also opened in 1992. Whilst not exactly coming from the top drawer of Dye’s portfolio, Eagle Pines was generally well-received, especially for the exotic grasses he introduced to the surrounding wetlands. However, as the weakest course on site, it was doomed to a short life when, in March 2007, it was confirmed that Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts would develop a luxury hotel and a community of fractional ownership homes on the 900-acre site that included most of Eagle Pines and a small parcel of the original Osprey Ridge. The upshot was an upgrading of Osprey Ridge while Eagle Pines was bulldozed into extinction.

Bay Hill, only the third course to be built in the Orlando area, had been in play for four years when the owners, a consortium mainly from Nashville, Tennessee, invited Palmer, Nicklaus, Don Cherry and Dave Ragan for a winter exhibition match in 1965. To say it was love at first sight for Palmer might be an understatement—but shooting a winning 66 that day, seven strokes better than Nicklaus, certainly put a spring in his step.

Back then it was little more than a still-raw course with a tiny pro shop, small guest lodge and a handful of modest bungalows jostling with orange groves and the desolate razor brush that so characterized central Florida.

But the 640-acre tract of white sand and scrub pine, with an unusual variety of elevation changes untypical of the area, proved the ideal location for golf.

“I loved Bay Hill from the first time I saw it, and I loved the area,” Palmer reminisces. “It was near perfect, a golfer’s paradise in my book.” Indeed, he was so smitten he told his wife, Winnie: “Babe, I’ve just played the best course in Florida, and I want to own it.”

That winter, Palmer returned to Bay Hill to escape Pennsylvania’s harsh winter and work on his game, but it was not until 1970 that his efforts to acquire this golfing paradise reached partial fruition when he took an option to assume control. By then, he’d established an office at the club, played golf and cards with the gang, sipped beer in the grillroom. No question, Palmer had found the haven where he could retreat each winter with his family and relax in the warmth.

But purchasing Bay Hill was easier said than done.

“In 1969, we signed a five-year lease with an option to buy the club,” Palmer said. “We immediately set about making improvements to the course and the lodge, figuring we’d own the whole shooting match outright by the end of the lease.”

In 1974, though, the course’s owners went against their agreement with Palmer and sold the property to another bidder. But the new owner—George Powell, president and CEO of Yellow Freight transport lines out of

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Arnold Palmer Invitational

Kansas City—“turned out to be a real gentleman,” Palmer noted. “He graciously agreed to renegotiate the deal and we eventually purchased the club and course from him.

The final price we paid was a bit higher than we’d hoped it would be but at least Bay Hill was finally ours.” So in 1976, after a decade-long love affair, Bay Hill and Palmer were finally wedded, and it has been the King’s southern palace ever since.

Palmer admits to having had reservations when Walt Disney World first opened, but he soon came round. “The people at Disney couldn’t have been more gracious and the experience brought home to me what an unprecedented impact the park’s presence was going to have on Orlando and the surrounding environment,” he said.

“Thanks to those lakes to the west and north, access to our little sanctuary would remain fairly limited. With no through traffic and only small streets connecting something like 600 residential lots, I figured we would become an oasis of calm in the midst of it all.”

The next stop was the PGA Tour when, in 1979, Palmer attached his name to the Florida Citrus Open he’d won in 1971, and started hosting it at Bay Hill. “I realized this was a way I could give something valuable back to the PGA Tour, which had been so very good to me and my family. That first Bay Hill event was won in a thrilling playoff by a Wake Forest graduate, Bob Byman, and Winnie had the idea of making the local children’s hospital the principal beneficiary of the charity monies we raised.”

Thirty-four years later, now named the Arnold Palmer Invitational Presented by MasterCard, the tournament is Orlando’s one remaining competitive link with the PGA Tour, though it continues to enjoy a much-envied, prestige slot on the schedule just a short while before the Masters.

And it remains a popular stop-off, especially with players who have young families. The proximity of Disney World may well have something to do with that, of course— after all you could find yourself sitting next to Joe Flacco on the Space Mountain roller-coaster ride.

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Other Golf Offerings Apart from Disney World, golf is perhaps the primary leisure reason for visiting Orlando, and the product seems to cater for all levels of ability and budget.

At the top end of the price scale we can sample Bay Hill Club & Lodge, ChampionsGate, home to David Leadbetter’s flagship teaching academy, Eagle Creek, where the restaurant is as revered as the golf, and Reunion Resort & Club, which has an Annika Sorenstam academy and three high-pedigree courses, designed by Palmer, Nicklaus and Tom Watson.

Especially women-friendly are the Nicklaus-designed South and East Courses at Grand Cypress where for once the Golden Bear has been sparing with the amount of acreage devoted to bunkering. Also highly rated for women is the Ritz-Carlton at Grande Lakes where Greg Norman’s soothing design is built within the pristine headwaters of the Everglades and is surrounded by pines, palmettos and oaks. Measuring 5,223 yards from the forward tees, other attractions include three air-conditioned on-course restrooms and female forecaddies.

Near to Bay Hill, and eminently worthy of inspection, are Shingle Creek, the Golden Bear Club, Bella Collina, Keene’s Pointe just across Lake Tibet in Windermere and Orange County National Golf Center & Lodge.

Further afield, the Mission Inn resort is recommended. Located in Lake County, half an hour’s drive north-west of Orlando, it is home to two courses— El Campeon, which dates back to 1926, and the much newer Las Colinas.

But there are plenty of budget options as well. One course that represents excellent value is the delightful Tom Fazio design at Legacy Club at Alaqua Lakes, about 20 miles north of Orlando. This parkland gem is only a dozen or so years old but plays as if it’s well into its fifties. It and the other options mentioned here make Orlando a top golf getaway, so fly in, jump in a Hertz rental car, and get golfing. Mouse ears not required!

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Arnold Palmer’s

r’s Arnold Palme

Guide to the

Guide to the 2013

2012

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Rory

The definitive guide to the world’s greatest golf championships.

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Allergies

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While moST of uS look forWArd To The end of WinTer TreaTMenT The most obvious way to avoid dealing with hay fever is to and the colorful world that emerges in its wake, there are those who avoid going outdoors, but this is an impossibility for golfers, dread the very idea of spring. As green shoots appear, flowers bloom and warm breezes start to blow, allergy sufferers prepare to cringe, for whom spring and summer are key seasons. And even if one is indoors, there can still be exposure via open windows cry and wheeze their way into summer, visibly suffering in clouds of or poorly filtered air conditioning systems. Still, there are pollen and other allergens. Anyone who’s been imprisoned by hay ways to combat hay fever’s effects, even if we can’t exactly fever knows how frustrating it can be: It’s almost as if Earth itself is rejecting you, using all of its weapons to drive you right off the planet— eradicate it completely. The following should help: or at least off the golf course.

There are a lot of us swinging clubs in-between sneezes and * Antihistamine squinting teared-up, red eyes in vain attempts to follow our drives. In response to the introduction of a perceived threat, the body releases a protein called histamine. This protein races While allergies aren’t curable, per se, there are treatments available to help mitigate the effects. Knowing about them, and being well- to the area supposedly under attack and causes small blood informed about allergies in general, are key to staying on course. vessels to expand and skin to swell, which simultaneously brings more infection-fighting white blood cells to the area After all, green shouldn’t be a scary word.

Misery Allergies are essentially immune system disorders in which the body attempts to defend itself against substances that pose no threat. At their most basic manifestations, problems like hay fever—which affects nearly 25 percent of the U.S. Population, and primarily men—can make getting around incredibly annoying and make beautiful days downright miserable. Worse, even minor allergic reactions can trigger bigger issues, like asthma, which can be quite dangerous. Major allergic reactions to food or bee stings are a different story entirely, potentially proving fatal to allergy suffers, who should be aware of their issues and carry appropriate medications and treatments at all times.

For the purposes of this article we’re only considering hay fever, with which many of us are all too familiar. The symptoms are well-known, and can include any or all of the following: • • • • • •

Runny nose Itchy eyes Sneezing Trouble breathing Excema Hives or rash

Hay fever symptoms are caused by an allergic reaction to pollen, which is essentially omnipresent. Released as a fine powder by plants as part of their reproductive cycle, pollen is carried on the wind or by insects and distributed everywhere. The gentle spring breezes of which we’re all so fond send clouds of the stuff rolling over golf courses, driving hay fever sufferers into their own personal versions of Hades. Ironically for them, it’s often the case that the more beautiful the surroundings, the worse the experience.

while isolating the region from other parts of the body. In the case of a false threat, like pollen, histamine is a bother, causing swelling, itchiness and irritation. An antihistamine blocks the protein, which can help prevent the resulting symptoms. However, some antihistamines can also cause drowsiness, so check with your doctor before selecting one. * Cortiscosteroids These steroids do nothing to increase muscle strength and shouldn’t be confused with anabolic steroids, the oft-illegally taken drugs used by some bodybuilders and athletes. Rather, the main role of these prescription medications is to relieve inflammation. Often prescribed to people with asthma or other lung conditions, they have been used to treat the effects of various allergies. Definitely something to discuss with your doctor if you feel you’re a candidate. * Wrap-around Sunglasses It may seem silly, but wearing wrap-around eyewear can actually help mitigate the effects of allergies. This solution does the obvious: prevents pollen from getting in your eyes.

Eyewear with gaskets are available as well, and are even more protective. * Showering If you’ve been outdoors, a quick shower can help remove any pollen you might have picked up and transported home in your hair or on your body. It’s often the case that pollen collects in the hair, then later falls into the eyes while one is home, causing itchiness and tears. * Peppermint Tea Some people swear by peppermint tea as a relief for congestion and irritated mucous membranes. It’s possible that peppermint contains enough anti-inflammatory and mild antibacterial elements to make it helpful, at least. * Pet Wash They might not like it, but your pets should get a thorough (and occasional) cleaning come spring, especially if they spend time outdoors. After a dog or cat has run around the yard, he or she is a mini Trojan horse full of allergens. Running around the house afterward, they can spread pollen and who knows what else on furniture and clothing, so clean ‘em up.

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Forget bunkers and rough, one of life’s biggest hazards is what’s shining down on you. Here’s a look at how to deal with long days on the sunny side of the street…

W

ater, sand and sunshine are universally accepted ingredients for a good time, or at least a beautiful day. But the weather most of us hope for isn’t nearly as perfect as it might seem. Just as every cloud has its silver lining, so does the sun have a dark side.

The light from our favorite star breaks down fabrics, ruins expensive photos, art and furniture, damages eyesight and poses immense health risks. Too much exposure can cause a sunburn, certainly, along with premature aging, skin growths, cataracts and immune system issues. But it's the long-term risk of skin cancer that is truly dangerous. Numerous health agencies now have skin cancer as the most common form of cancer, diagnosed more than breast, prostate, lung and colon cancers combined. One in five Americans will develop skin cancer in their lifetime, and one dies every hour from it. Melanoma, the most deadly form of skin cancer, can result from a history of UV exposure, sunburns in childhood and a legacy of not protecting oneself from the sun. Non-melanoma skin cancers may not be as deadly, but they can spread if left untreated, causing their own problems. Moreover, half of us who live to 65 or beyond can expect to be diagnosed with a non-melanoma skin cancer, meaning it's important to keep an eye on your skin and get regular checkups.

If there is good news, it's that the negative effects of the sun can be mitigated. The following products offer real protection for you and your lifestyle. With a bit of foresight, you’ll have it made in the shade.

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GOLFERSSKIN Good enough for at least 189 PGA TOUR players, Golfersskin is on its way to being the most-used sunscreen in the game. This incredibly effective SPF 30+ sunscreen from sun-drenched New Zealand is made with Titanium Dioxide, Zinc Oxide and Manuka Honey. In layman's terms, that means Golfersskin reaches the highest sweat resistancy and water resistancy ratings achievable while delivering superior sun protection from both UVA and UVB rays, even after two hours of intense perspiration. Critically, the formula is non-migrating and not at all greasy, meaning your grip stays firm and you stay undistracted. Available in a variety of sizes and as a stick for quick application, Golfersskin is as important to your long-term game as the clubs in your bag. g o l fe r ssk i n .co

SUNICE CHASE POLO Known for top-quality sports clothing, Sunice offers more than just good looks with their current range of menswear. The Chase Polo, from the Silver Spring 2013 Collection, has a UV protection rating of 20, meaning that it keeps you safe even as it keeps you looking good on course. Additionally, the entire Sunice Silver collection has actual silver woven into the fabric.

Being one of the most conductive metals, it keeps you dry, comfortable, and relatively odor-free by wicking high temperatures and moisture away from your skin.

In addition to the polo, look for examples with Sunice Silver golf pants, shorts and socks. A whole new meaning to shining brightly on course. sunice.com

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SUNBRELLA Glen Raven makes a number of innovative fabrics for various applications, including high-performance fabrics for use by the U.S. military, headliner fabrics for vehicles, protective apparel fabrics that offer the best weight-to-protection ratio anywhere and more.

When it comes to sun protection, their Sunbrella brand is second-to-none in terms of covering awnings, marine and outdoor furniture. With a wide variety of colors, textures, stripes and jacquard designs, the UV-resistant and easy-to-clean Sunbrella fabrics are as comfortable as they are durable, meaning your sun-exposed furniture, drapes and awnings will remain vibrant and functional even after long periods of the bright life. glenraven.com

CALLAWAY EYEWEAR Those sporty shades you see so many pros wearing on course aren’t just for show, they’re functional as well. Callaway’s RAZR Eyewear, for example, blocks 100 percent of harmful UV radiation, which can negatively affect the health of the cornea and retina, and potentially cause cataracts in the long term. The NEOX lenses on the RAZR are also engineered to adjust to the decreased depth of field common to sunglasses, meaning your vision is as sharp as ever—and as safe. cal l aw ayg o l f .co m

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in motion With Spring in your step, the following products keep things moving in the right direction—forward Photography st e ve g alle

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FujiFilm

bowers & wilkins

XP 170

P3 Headphones

Water- shock- dust- and freezeproof, this 14mp camera from Fuji has GPS, shoots full HD video and allows wireless photo transfer to your smartphone. FinePix indeed. fujifilm.com

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London’s Abbey Road Studios uses their speakers, so you know Bowers & Wilkins headphones sound great. moreover, they’re foldable. bowers-wilkins.com

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t ay l o r m a d e

a d i das

R1 Driver

Adizero

one of the most recognizable drivers on tour (and among the most successful), the R1 offers unprecedented adjustibility and style. taylormadegolf.com

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So light you’ll hardly notice it, the adizero tour golf shoe only includes the essentials necessary for top performance. taylormadegolf.com/adidasGolf

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Spring Gifts’ Guide Kingdom samples life’s latest luxuries McDERMOTT POOL CUES Craftsmanship is a fine art. McDermott pool cues are handcrafted in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, using the finest and most exotic woods from around the world. Their cues are known for their quality construction, intricate inlays and limitless customization options. Since 1975, McDermott have consistently raised the standard for what players expect from their pool cue. These cues come with a lifetime warranty, which includes protection against manufacturing defects and cue warpage.

McDermottCue.com

FRANK CLEGG LEATHER This Signature Duffle is produced by one of the leading American leather goods designers, Frank Clegg. The piece is offered in an array of colors, leathers, and sizes. This bag is the perfect companion for a weekend getaway, a trip to the gym, or a jaunt around the world. Only the finest materials and craftsmanship are used in crafting this heirloom quality duffle. Visit the website to view the full collection of America’s premier maker of fine leather goods and accessories.

FrankCleggLeatherworks.com

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W.KLEINBERG A brand known for its sterling silver buckles and belts, W.Kleinberg has been manufacturing luxury accessories for men and women since 1984. Over this time, they have developed a strong expertise in all exotic leathers and have established themselves as the finest producer of alligator straps in America.

The company’s factory and boutique are located in the heart of Buckhead, Atlanta, Georgia.

WKleinberg.com

ZCLIP Slim, secure, functional and sexy, the ZCLIP is the last money clip or wallet that you will ever want to buy. The patent pending ZCLIP is the first single-piece construction money clip to be completely flat on both sides, yet securely hold up to 20 bills, 10 credit cards plus the included credit-card wallet. Lighter than paper, stronger than steel and guaranteed forever, the RFIDblocking carbon-fiber ZCLIP is the ultimate money clip. ZCLIP’s top-of-the-line Le Mans includes a lambskin leather credit-card wallet and a ballistic wallet, and may be used with or without them. Ranging from carbon steel to carbon fiber, find out which ZCLIP is right for you.

ZClip.com

GLENMORANGIE EALANTA Glenmorangie’s private-edition Ealanta is a tribute to Mark Twain, the great American author and folk hero, and the majestic American oaks from Missouri which are uniquely used for this latest proprietory single malt. While staying at the Langham Hotel in London, Mr. Twain acquired a taste for Scotch, which soon became part of his daily routine. In turn, this made him the inspirational influence behind Ealanta.

Glenmorangie.com

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MATTHEW FAIRBANK DESIGN We like the Brooklyn-based Matthew Fairbank Design for a number of reasons, not least because the firm believes in itself, building products to last—not just to impress. Offerings include the Fife Tripod Lamp (left), which consists of a spun brass shade, lathe-turned, ebonized oak legs and brass feet, and this caramel leather, solid rift-sawn oak and antique satin nickel hardware table from the Barrett Casegood Series (below).

MatthewFairbankDesign.com

JACK ROW ARCHITECT FOUNTAIN PEN Inspired by the Gherkin Building in London’s financial district, this Jack Row Architect fountain pen is one of the world’s most valuable writing instruments. Each limited-edition fountain pen takes eight weeks of painstaking craftsmanship to produce, including the spiraling filigree which is so eerily evocative of the modern skyscraper’s superstructure. Available in both solid gold and silver, the top-of-the-range model (pictured) is set with nearly a whole carat of brilliant cut diamonds. So, as it retails at just under $40,000, it’s best to remember to take it out of your jacket before taking it to the dry cleaners.

JackRow.com

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LEE THOMAS PUTTERS Extremely rare and hand-crafted from the world’s tallest trees, the limited-quantity Lee Thomas Putters from California Redwood Burl are both beautiful and functional. Each putter is crafted to individual client specifications, with various customization options, and comes with a deep leather head cover and optional wall-mount plaque for display in the home or office. Having tested it on various surfaces, we at Kingdom say it performs perfectly on the greens but we also recognize that a California Redwood Burl putter is a work of art to be cherished forever.

LeeThomasPutters.com

DRUH BELTS AND BUCKLES Druh Belts and Buckles offer stylish handmade embellishments to the discerning golfer’s wardrobe both on and off the course. Sumptuous, chic and casual, Druh Belts come in classic shades of black and brown, eye-catching colors, soft pastels and smart metallics.

Available in leather and snakeskin in a variety of embossed effects from crocodile to ostrich, the belts are teamed with striking ‘db’ buckles in brushed nickel, polished silver and gold as well as in enamel and diamante finishes. Lee Westwood and European Ryder Cup captain Paul McGinley both wear Druh Belts.

DruhBeltsAndBuckles.com

SALMON COVE PITCHFIX Made from high-quality aircraft-grade aluminum with a soft-touch ABS rubber coating for pocket recognition, the Switchblade pitchmark repairer has a low-profile compact fit, is easy to clean and has a removable, customizable ball marker.

The Salmon Cove signature ladies’ Cove Collar polo is crafted with a pleasing blend of the finest cotton yarns enhanced with lycra to provide sufficient stretch, to maintain the ultimate comfort and fit. The abbreviated stand-up collar provides the perfect balance to a classic staple while the bright colors and vibrant look bring fresh energy to a timeless piece. The new Cove Collar polo is a necessity for every lady whether on the course or out and about.

SalmonCove.com

PitchfixUSA.com

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CALLAWAY HAWK EYEWEAR

SOUTHERN MARSH SHIRTS

The NEOX lenses in Callaway Hawk Eyewear are engineered to adjust to the decreased depth of field caused by most sunglasses. The result is the sharpest and most accurate vision you can get for your game. So you’ll see the angles and lines with greater sharpness and accuracy than you will with any other non-prescription pair of sunglasses.

NEOX lenses also block 100 percent of harmful UV radiation.

The frames, lightweight but durable, are semi-rimless for zero distraction and fitted with Megol rubber nose and ear tips for secure, non-slip retention.

The Monroe Performance Polo from Southern Marsh was crafted with a custom blend of poly-elastin broad pique fabric that offers protection from the elements, moisture management, mobility and comfort. The fabric’s knit was specially formulated to breath and wick moisture away keeping you cool and dry throughout the day all while resisting wrinkles to keep you looking sharp on or off the course. A slight bit of stretch in a modern stripe combined with a classic cut, elongated split back tail and custom Southern Marsh embellishments make for the perfect shirt from The Original Southern OutfitterTM.

CallawayGolf.com

SouthernMarsh.com

CALLAWAY X HOT DRIVER The X Hot driver’s adjustable speed frame face allows golfers to set the face angle in an open, square or closed position to fine tune the trajectory and appearance they seek at address. The X Hot uses excessively thin casting technology to create a lighter club configuration and an optimized center of gravity. Combined with a Project X velocity shaft, this creates an incredibly fast ball speed across the whole of the face for longer distance, less sidespin and greater forgiveness, consistency and accuracy.

CallawayGolf.com

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FULL SWING GOLF The Champion series from Full Swing Golf is definitely something to come home to. The system comes with a whole orchestra of bells and whistles for multi-use by the whole family, but for a golfer Full Swing’s infra-red tracking system that instantly and accurately measures ball speed, launch angle and direction is a must have. The realistic motion graphics and living golf environments are superb and with 15 championship courses coming as standard, and up to 80 courses available, including Pebble Beach, Bandon Dunes, Kapalua and Bethpage Black, it might be a while before you leave home again.

FullSwingGolf.com

PGA TOUR WIVES’ BOOK Beyond the Fairways and Greens provides a rare glimpse into the lives of PGA TOUR families, both on and off the “road.” This unique “family album,” includes hundreds of heartwarming stories, personal photographs and treasured recipes submitted by over 125 PGA TOUR families through the generations from Arnold Palmer to Rickie Fowler. This 25th anniversary publication compiled by members of the PGA TOUR Wives’ Association, a not-for-profit organization, will benefit childrens’ charities around the country and enable readers to get a real feel for what their lives are actually like “beyond the fairways and greens.”

PGATourWives.org

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*offer ends Jan 31 2012. Calendar ships seperately.

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Kingdom magazine has always been available on a complimentary basis, as a gift from the King himself, to the private members of Arnold Palmer designed and managed courses. Now the magazine is also available, on a subscription basis, to all Arnold Palmer fans and golfers with a taste for fine living. If you would like to subscribe, or are a member and would like to gift a subscription to a friend, then simply tear out and fill in one of the below forms.

25% of all subscription revenue will be donated equally between the Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children and the Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women and Babies in Orlando.

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Designed by ARNOLD PALMER. Defined by the LEGENDS who’ve played here.

It’s no coincidence that five of our past Invitational winners reside in the World Golf Hall of Fame.

Our Arnold Palmer Signature ORLANDO, FL course is widely known as one of the most challenging on the PGA TOUR. Now, you can follow the footsteps of legends with your own legendary vacation at Bay Hill. Experience all the benefits this world-renown private club and resort has to offer. Call 1.888.422.9445 or visit www.bayhill.com to book your stay today.

TREE TROUBLE Is Arbor Day your favorite day to golf? Can you identify all of the various species of woodpeckers at courses around the world? Do you see more squirrels than you do birdies?

If you spend an inordinate amount of time among the trees on course, trying to punch your ball past low-slung branches, then Bay Hill’s John O’Leary is the woodcutter you’ve been looking for. Reade Tilley picks his brains I’m standing under trees on a golf course, a good ten feet or so from the fairway. Shadows from the low-hanging branches are dancing across a ball sitting in the rough, and I’m not Bubba Watson. This is no bad dream, and it’s not déjà vu: I really have been here before, and not just once.

This time, however, I’m with John O’Leary, the director of instruction at Bay Hill Club & Lodge, who’s about to show me how to spend more time in the sun.

Whack!

“Reade! That was the dream one! That was the dream one right there!” John exclaims, seemingly as amazed as I am that his shot rocketed out of the rough, slipped under the low-hanging branches, arced softly to the left and landed within a duffer’s wedge of the pin, 120 yards away.

I’ve just photographed a textbook shot out of the trees.

“Well, I hope you got that one because there’s no guarantee the others will be well struck,” he offers humbly, lining up for Shot #2.

Whack!

“Hey! Not bad either! Not as much draw, but that’s actually a better spot!”

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Shot #3: “Oh that’s the one!”

Shot #4: “Now I’m in the groove! That was even better!”

Shot #5: “I’ve got this shot down pretty good.”

No kidding. In fact, all of John’s shots were incredible, landing in a neat little line just off the front of the green.

This tells me two things: One, I want John on my team. And two, this guy knows how to get out of the woods.

All of us have been there, because getting there is easy—an errant drive, careless iron or failed attack at a dogleg will do the trick. Getting out of the trees is another story. Explosive clouds of dirt and leaves, added strokes and even a bent club or two usually accompany one’s emergence from the forest.

So if your friends jokingly call you Daniel Boone, point and shout “Bigfoot!” as you stumble out of the forest or sometimes place an axe in your bag alongside your driver, take heed. John O’Leary has a few tips for clearing your head, clearing the branches and hopefully keeping your wilderness adventures to a minimum. After all, North Face doesn’t make golf boots.

(We checked.)

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ASSESS THE SITUATION The first thing you’ve got to look at (once you’ve found the ball) is what’s the situation. There’s probably going to be some longer grass. Can you see the back of the ball? How much can you see? Is it like an egg in a nest, is there a lot of stuff behind the golf ball like moss or leaves?

That really is going to help determine how aggressive you can be with it.

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DECIDE HOW TO PLAY IT The Palmer approach is to go for broke. Or you can play it safe. Or you can call it hopeless and take the stroke. You certainly need to match your approach to your skill level, and sometimes to what you feel your ability is on that day.

Golf is ever-changing, as we know.

Most of the trees here [at Bay Hill] are mature enough. They’ve been trimmed, so the branches are up a little higher. But certainly there are times when you may be in a thick stand of trees, like you get up north in places like Wisconsin, where I’m from. It could be so thick you have to play safe and hit it out sideways. You may not have enough swing because of low-hanging branches, so there’s no other way to go.

In a case like we are here [off the left side of the fairway, longish but soft rough, low-hanging branches, lots of trees with one tree blocking our line to the green], where we’re still a couple hundred yards from the green, getting to the green isn’t a realistic option. But I can get the ball down near the area where I could get a wedge onto the green, and possibly get that wedge shot close enough to the flag where I could one-putt. So I would be inclined to be a little bit aggressive with this.

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CHOOSE YOUR WEAPON You don’t want to follow a bad shot with a worse decision. There are some white stakes on the other side of the fairway, so from this particular situation a 3 wood or a long club may put me in a worse predicament and all of a sudden par isn’t an option. Double might be a good score, triple, it could be worse.

The question is, what club do I need to get it down to that 100-yard marker?

We’re probably 220 out, so I only have to hit it 120 yards. Well, a 120-yard club is going to go into that tree canopy and that’s no good, so maybe a 4- or 5-iron. Maybe some people wouldn’t have those, so they’d have to hit something like a less-lofted hybrid to just kind of nudge it down there.

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THINK BEFORE YOU SWING Consider what’s on the other side of the fairway. Up north, it tends to be the case that the fairways are bordered with thick trees. You wouldn’t want to overlook what’s on the other side.

People get too focused on, “Well, gosh, I have this tree right here. We’ll swing hard in case I don’t hit it well.” Next thing you know it misses the branches you’re trying to go underneath, and all of a sudden it’s gone through the fairway into… if you’re lucky, it’s only rough. Could be more trees, a swimming pool, a house.

When you’re trying to recover, think of where you want that ball to finish. Just like a good pool player would always think of where they want to leave the white ball for their next shot to be easiest. You need some forward thinking like, OK, a 5 is better than a 6, a 6 is better than a 7, and so on.

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STAY CENTERED, GO EASY With a less-lofted club, you use less power. A lot of people try to put the ball back in their stance. Then they’ll get antsy and try to hit it hard because maybe they’re thinking about making an abbreviated swing. Well, the problem there is that with the ball back and an aggressive swing, you tend to hit down on it, and when you hit down on a ball it tends to go up.

I wouldn’t necessarily put it back of center. Center is as far back as I would ever put it. Keep it centered, or slightly forward.

I’m just trying to make a restricted followthrough, not a full swing. Maybe back to what feels like shoulder-high on the way back and shoulder-high on the follow-through. Some people think of that as a three-quarter swing.

It’s probably a good idea to grip down an inch to make sure you’re not going to take a full swing. Then, like I said, just forward of center. I probably will lean slightly to my left to make sure, again, I limit what I’m trying to do with the swing. Your hands are slightly forward... then just hit it.

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A NOTE ON ROOTS If you’re concerned about roots then take a tee and test around the ball to see where the roots are. You’re well within the rules to do that. I managed to hit a tree root once with a 4-iron, but I didn’t know the tree root was there. The doctor told me I’d have been better off if I’d broken my wrist than stretching and doing the other things I did to it. The shaft of the 4-iron was bent right at the part that went into the head of the club. Not good.

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CALL IT HOPELESS Anytime you’re not in a hazard you could declare your ball unplayable.

You could move it two club lengths no nearer the hole. With an unplayable lie we could go back as far as we want to play the next shot under penalty of a stroke, or back to the previous spot where it was hit from, again under penalty of a stroke, and play the shot. I tell people all the time, “If you don’t think you can hit it further than you can drop it, you might not want to hit it.”

John O’Leary III, director of instruction at Bay Hill Club & Lodge in Orlando, Florida, is one of the game’s top instructors. In addition to getting you out of the woods faster than Davy Crockett, John can improve your game overall. More on John and Bay Hill can be found at bayhill.com

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There is so much ThaT can

be aTTached To The name

arnold Palmer Designers of Arnold Palmer Signature courses and architects of Palmer Refresh www.arnoldpalmerdesign.com | (407) 876–1068

An easy smile and a wicked swing A true sportsman’s style and sophistication A genuine approachability A trendsetter and a traditionalist A man of his word The gentleman athlete The father and the friend Host of the API presented by MasterCard The pilot and the businessman The Icon

The King.

Nurturing Golf’s Roots A university for potential and working golf-course superintendents and club managers is about to open for business in Germany. Paul Trow braved northern Europe’s traditionally wintry weather to meet the brains behind this initiative

Ian Butcher and Hubertus von Treuenfels have a lot to do between now and October. In a nutshell, they’re creating a university from scratch, putting together all the courses and recruiting their first pupils. It’s not a university in the understood sense, with hundreds of different subjects on offer across the whole spectrum of human learning. However, it will be as close to this definition as any establishment dedicated to the training of golf course superintendents and golf club managers can ever be.

And for the intake, its setting should be every bit as stimulating and inspirational as the “dreaming spires” of Oxford or the Yard at Harvard. Away from the classroom, students of literature tend to frequent vast libraries stuffed with ancient tomes while budding scientists develop their test-tube skills in fusty laboratories. For the pupils

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of WINSTONuniversity, their library and laboratory will be the ultimate geographical canvas—45 imaginatively designed golf holes laid out across rolling landscape for which the words “picturesque” and “unspoiled” could have been specifically coined.

WINSTONuniversity is located at WINSTONgolf near the historical city of Schwerin in Mecklenburg, a sparsely populated region in northern Germany that borders the Baltic Sea to the north and Poland to the east. Its CEO is von Treuenfels, who is based in Hamburg an hour and a half’s drive to the west, and its director of studies is Butcher, an Englishman who has moved to Mecklenburg from a similar position he held for 15 years at Elmwood College just down the road from St Andrews, the Home of Golf in eastern Scotland.

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Ian Butcher (left) and Hubertus von Treuenfels

Their objective is to provide courses of varying durations and seminars to cater for everyone from full-time students starting out on a career in golf to people already working on a green-keeping staff or in club management who might need to acquire new skills or catch up with the latest technology and techniques.

“Our aim at WINSTONuniversity is that you will receive an exceptional learning experience, one which prepares you for the best jobs in the world,” Butcher says.

“There are whole new golf markets opening up across the world—in places like the Middle East, Far East and South America, not to mention here in Europe—and our graduates will learn to take on the responsibility of guiding these markets in the right direction.

“So much can go wrong at a new golf club or course if the people in charge don’t know what they’re doing and have no experience of the practical side of running the game, or what’s entailed in managing the staff or caring for turf.

“Our executive program consists of 40 weeks of learning and is divided into two academic terms and one internship term. This will provide the ideal training for young men WINSTONgolf’s clubhouse blends well with the dunes on the links

and women who love golf and want to see parts of the world they otherwise would never visit while pursuing their chosen vocation.”

One of Butcher’s core beliefs about golf is that the sport in general doesn’t make the best use of the talent that passes through it. “Think of how many youngsters aspire to become golf professionals, propelled by an ambition to win the Masters at Augusta National or the British Open at St Andrews,” he says. “Then think about how few of them actually make it. What does the game do with them? Those that stay in the game might become club professionals and some might even work for manufacturers of golf equipment or golf apparel, but most of the time they drift into another walk of life.

“We want to tap into this pool of largely wasted talent by shouting from the rooftops that there are other fantastic lives available to them in golf—well-rewarded, healthy and enjoyable, and strategically of the utmost importance to the game.”

At present, Butcher is putting together the nuts and bolts of his proposed curriculum—structuring timetables, preparing lectures, organizing a program of guest speakers and overseeing the renovation of Gut Vorbeck, the country house at the far end of the estate that will provide the students with their accommodation.

The budget to date has been underwritten by the owners of WINSTONgolf, an estate that stretches for as far as the eye can see from its hub, consisting of a multi-bay practice range and short-game training area as well as a tasteful, low-profile modern clubhouse that spreads laterally rather than intruding on the skyline. The clubhouse, which has a pagoda-style dome as its centerpiece, is fitted with all the usual facilities plus rooms dedicated to academic purposes, from informal discussion groups to lectures presented with the use of digital technology.

Prior to the reunification of Germany in 1989, most of the land that is home to WINSTONgolf was owned by local farmers, some for crops but mainly for grazing. At the time, this location was inside the old East Germany, but “when the wall came down,” as WINSTONgolf´s managing director Jenny Elshout puts it, a westward exodus took place. It is hard to tell whether the departing residents were simply seduced by the affluence and luxury of West Germany after a straitjacketed lifetime in thrall to the Soviet Union, or whether some of them couldn’t quite believe that this new-found freedom wouldn’t be snatched from them at any moment.

One person who made the journey in the opposite direction was prominent Dutch businessman Wijnand Pon,

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whose family made its fortune distributing Volkswagen vehicles before branching out into other commercial areas, including livestock and dairy farming.

Butcher remembers: “Early on after my arrival here, Mr. Pon took me for a game of golf on WINSTONopen, and one observation he made struck me. ‘We want to grow the game,’ he said. And I thought, ‘so do I, and I know countless others in the game who do so too.’ So that´s what we will become—a centre of learning for those that care to grow the game.”

A keen golfer, Pon bought up parcels of land—sandbased with just a hint of clay in the sub-soil—and when he had accumulated enough suitable terrain he commissioned German course designer Holger Rengstorf to build 18 holes.

Thus the WINSTONopen course came about around 10 years ago.

A 9-hole, par-3 academy course, the WINSTONkranich, named after the cranes that are common to the area, followed a few years later. Then July 2011 saw the crowning glory for this ambitious golf resort, the only one for a radius of at least 50 miles, when the WINSTONlinks opened following an extensive earth-moving project that created deep bunkers, sweeping, hollow valleys and giant dunes, some of which are perhaps a little too pointed for everyone’s tastes though they will round out eventually through natural erosion.

This haven for broom, heather and fescue grasses, named best new German course by GOLF MAGAZIN, was designed by Canadian David Krause, a past president of the European Institute of Golf Course Architects whose five-man team is based in Buxtehude near Hamburg.

In September 2012, the links made its tournament debut by hosting the Pon Senior Open on the European Senior Tour which was won by Australian Terry Price.

This year, the tournament will return, from September 6-8, under the name of WINSTONgolf Senior Open but with a significantly enhanced prize fund.

Mecklenburg is known for its mostly flat countryside.

Ponds, marshes, small forests and fields are common features and deposits of ancient moraines can be found under the prevalent peat. Traditionally, the stone from these flows is cut and used in the construction of buildings.

In terms of accommodation, the complex is not only well-served by what’s on offer in Schwerin, but it also has two hotels of its own.

Built around 1890, Schloss Basthorst, a delightful mix of traditional and modern architecture, lies just two and a half miles west of WINSTONgolf. Across the original castle and the newer extensions, it offers 100 bedrooms, suites or apartments plus a state-of-the-art spa center, a high-quality restaurant that specializes in seasonal creations enriched with herbs from the on-site kitchen garden, and glorious views of nearby Lake Gambeck.

In the heart of the WINSTONgolf estate is the much-smaller Gut Vorbeck, which has 19 bedrooms and one apartment. It overlooks the River Warnow and is surrounded by lush fields and broad meadows, a canoe station and riding stables. Not surprisingly, fishing and hunting (for deer and wild boar) are popular activities in these parts and provide fantastic recreational opportunties.

Both places will be used by WINSTONuniversity when the need arises, and the conference rooms in Schloss Basthorst, in particular, will host any lectures or seminars with a large attendance.

Meanwhile, as Butcher and von Treuenfels strive to put their plans in place, they’ll be especially gratified by the ringing support they’ve received from the “godfather” of German golf, Bernhard Langer himself.

“Course management is crucial if you are to achieve a successful golf business as playing qualities are paramount.

WINSTONuniversity leads the way for the next generation of course managers,” the double Masters champion says.

How right he is, and how good for the game all concerned hope WINSTONuniversity proves to be.

Barnhard Langer, pictured below in action during the 2012 Pon Senior Open, is a highly enthusiastic supporter of WINSTONuniversity

CONTACTS WINSTON-university.com WINSTONgolf.com schloss-basthorst.de gutvorbeck.de

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APDC’s

Top 10 Design Tenets

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In issue No.24 of Kingdom, we launched a new series outlining the Top 10 design tenets that drive the work of Arnold Palmer Design Company. Last time, we concentrated on the need to create and nurture courses that are fun to play. We also stressed the importance of strategy when setting up a golf course for players of all levels of ability, and we outlined the principles involved in constructing risk-reward holes that can make or break a round.

Here in Kingdom No.25, we present shining examples of a further three essential tenets in creating a memorable golf experience—those of beauty, sustainability and preservation. APDC’s two senior architects, Thad Layton and Brandon Johnson, have worked extensively on hundreds of golf courses all around the world, but they have never lost sight of the importance of a layout being pleasing to the eye.

However, at a time when proper care of the environment and the minimizing of waste are of paramount importance, courses today have to be sustainable in every sense of the word in order to survive and flourish. Linked to this sacred tenet is the need to ensure that all the natural features and elements of a course, especially those that have existed for several generations, are preserved to protect the integrity of their character.

Beauty A golf course by its very nature is a thing of beauty. An oasis of green grass, tall trees, and silence set apart from the noise and visual chaos of urban areas. It can also be said that some courses are more beautiful than others and the perennial favorites among the various Top 100 lists bear this out. For who could walk around the grounds of Pine Valley or Pebble Beach and not be inspired by their inherent beauty? But, how do you define beauty? Furthermore, how do you create it?

APDC believes that golf courses should strike a balance between function and form. In order to do this effectively, the architect must be intimately familiar with the natural features of the site and strive to incorporate these elements into the golf course in a strategically meaningful way.

Over the years, APDC has been privileged to work on hundreds of natural canvases, each one beautiful and different from the rest. One such course is Tralee in southwest Ireland.

From the heaving sand dunes covered with wind-whipped Marram grasses to the sheer rock cliffs that defy the oft-angry sea, a trip here will bring out the poet in the saltiest of characters.

The golf links at Tralee embrace these dynamic characteristics at every turn, drawing golfers into a journey they will never forget.

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Preservation It’s not often a living legend is entrusted to curate a national treasure, but that is exactly what happened back in 2006 when Mr. Palmer rolled out the plans for Pebble Beach on California’s Monterey Peninsula prior to the 2010 U.S. Open. Needless to say, APDC was very excited about the challenge but its excitement was tempered with the weight of responsibility that comes with working on something that many golfers would contend is sacred and incapable of being improved upon.

If this was going to be received well, the architects had to be able to defend their decisions with sound strategic reasoning and an overarching approach to restoring some of the great features at Pebble Beach that had been erased over time. Fortunately, APDC had a thorough photographic archive and a great team of experts that cared deeply about the project.

Chris Dalhammer and R.J. Harper from Pebble Beach, Mike Davis at the USGA, and Arnold Palmer all gave their own unique and valuable insights.

In the case of the 6th hole at Pebble, APDC had one of the largest natural hazards in the world (the Pacific Ocean) that wasn’t being utilized. Old photographs show fairways right up to the cliff edge and an absence of trees that had sprouted up and matured over the years before being taken out by recent winter storms. APDC’s effort was to restore this hole’s strategic reliance on the water by shifting the bunkers to the right and adding fairway all the way to the edge of the cliff. This effectively pushed the centerline closer to the edge and now gives golfers of all calibers a decision to make off the tee.

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sustainaBility As golf course architects, APDC prides itself on integrating, as seamlessly as possible, one of the largest playing fields in sport into the natural environment. Working with the land by harnessing its inherent natural features is step one in creating a golf course that is economically and financially sustainable. But the complete architect will continue to push for sustainability long past these initial steps, wringing every grain of efficiency from each aspect of the project. Careful attention to turfgrass selection, irrigation, soil amendments, recycling of old materials, and unrestricted wildlife corridors are but a few of the many ways that APDC ensures its courses are successful on every level.

APDC’s newest golf course, Las Piedras in Punta del Este, Uruguay, is a great example of this holistic approach. Sensitively routed over gently rolling farmland, the native trees and watercourses were preserved and integrated as strategic elements into the design. Only greens, tees and a few bunkers were built into land that already lent itself to these corresponding features. A native Bermuda grass already dominated the landscape and was simply cultivated into an amazingly pleasant playing surface. Native fescues and wildflowers were preserved to frame the vast expanses of fairway necessary in a windy environment and for additional strategic interest. An existing vein of sand was discovered early on in the project and was utilized for bunker sand and greens mix. The par-3 8th puts all of these principles on display.

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Delaware Date for Palmer Cup The 17th annual Palmer Cup will be contested by ten-man teams of college golfers representing the United States and Europe from June 7-9 over the South Course at Wilmington Country Club in Delaware.

Designed by Robert Trent Jones, Sr. in 1959 and renovated by Keith Foster half a century later, the South, which has a par of 71 and measures 7,334 yards off the back tees, has long been recognized as one of America’s great courses.

“We’re very pleased to be holding the Palmer Cup at Wilmington Country Club,” said Palmer Cup chairman Jim Awtrey, a former CEO of the PGA of America. “The South is an outstanding match-play course and should provide a tough challenge.”

For the 2013 contest, the number of players on each side has been raised from eight to ten though the event will continue to feature 24 matches with every player required to compete at least twice—once in either the four-ball or foursomes series and once during the two rounds of singles matches.

Since the inaugural Palmer Cup at Bay Hill Club & Lodge in 1997, the matches have been played at such historic venues as Royal Liverpool, Baltusrol, Ballybunion,

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Prestwick, Cherry Hills, Royal Portrush and, most recently in 2012, Royal County Down.

The roll-call of participants is equally impressive and includes Luke Donald, Ben Curtis, Lucas Glover, Graeme McDowell, Bill Haas, Hunter Mahan, Ryan Moore, Dustin Johnson, Matt Kuchar, Nick Watney, Brandt Snedeker, Francesco Molinari, Webb Simpson and Rickie Fowler.

The United States, which leads the series 8-7-1, has named the University of Alabama’s Jay Seawell as its team coach with Jim Anderson (University of Arizona) as his assistant. “It’s a great honor to be selected as coach of Team USA—it’s a dream come true,” said Seawell.

Meanwhile, former Ryder Cup player Andrew Coltart will coach the European team in the next two Palmer Cups.

The 42-year-old Scot, who will be assisted by Englishman Philip Rowe, currently assistant coach at Stanford, said: “I’m humbled and honored to accept this invitation. There’s no greater honor as a player than to represent your continent, and for a European no bigger test than to compete against America.”

The Old Course at Walton Heath Golf Club in Surrey, England, just 20 miles south of London, will play host to the 2014 Palmer Cup from June 26-28.

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UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESIDENT DR. JUDY L. BONNER AND ALABAMA ATHLETICS DIRECTOR MAL M. MOORE CONGRATULATE CRIMSON TIDE MEN’S GOLF COACH JAY SEAWELL ON HIS SELECTION AS THE 2013 PALMER CUP U.S. TEAM COACH. ROLL TIDE!