It began as an innocuous and unrelated conversation in the winter of ‘06. It lead to Perry Dye hiring me to conceive and execute a major book that details the incredible highlights of his dad’s unprecedented career as a golf course architect. The book, so long in the making, is a reality. PETE DYE—GOLF COURSES is a 300+ page, 4 pound, full-color celebration of the master’s best - a highlight reel, as it were. Early reviews are stellar, as you can see by the following link to Golf World: http://www.vagabondgolfer.com/Golf%20World–review.pdf Anyway - it’s time to celebrate. In honor of the book’s ...

Crossed an important milestone last week in Michigan’s leafy Upper Peninsula. Played course no. 600 on my lifetime list - an absolutely stellar and challenging venue in the town of Iron Mountain called Timberstone, as lovely a walk in the woods as a golfer will find. Backtracking down Memory Lane, the 500 course barrier was crossed in March of 2007, at the Dye Course at Mission Hills Country Club in Palm Springs, California. Number 400, sometime in 2005, was much closer to home - the ultra-exclusive Cherokee Plantation in Yemassee, South Carolina, where the initiation is seven figures, the annual dues are ...

Had the distinct pleasure of playing Oakland Hills about six weeks ago. The golf course is a wonderful combinations of roller coaster terrain, thoughtful bunkering and puzzling greens. It was plenty to handle from 6,500 yards, and the pros about to tee off at the PGA Championship will be equally challenged from the tips. Just as memorable is the venerable Townsend Hotel,not even 20 minutes from the golf venue, not only the best digs in posh Birmingham, but truly one of the best boutique hotels you’ll find anywhere in the nation. Oakland Hills is only available ...

There’s an expression that’s become common in Jackson, Wyoming over the last couple of decades. The billionaires are pushing the millionaires out of town. The incredibly rustic terrain, the soaring drama of the Tetons, the accessibility to Yellowstone National Park, the world-class skiing, climbing and fishing in an hard-to-get-to location have combined to make Jackson one of the most sought-after, and consequently priciest locales in the west. The golf scene is also getting richer by the day, and the unquestioned heavyweight is the remarkably attractive, meticulously conditioned Snake River Sporting Club, about a dozen-odd miles south of town, hard ...

Played a very worthwhile muni, in the downtrodden Catskill Mountains of New York, of all places, that was an extremely pleasant surprise. Tarry Brae in the village of Loch Sheldrake is well-conditioned, with lots of interesting elevation changes, modestly priced, uncrowded, and an excellent option for a half-day’s worth of golf entertainment. And here’s a better option if you have the profound misfortune of booking a cottage at the generically-named “Guest House” in the nearby burgh of Livingston Manor. Sleep on a park bench instead. ...

When my hometown of Savannah becomes a late-spring steam bath, there is nowhere I’d rather stray to than the cool and refreshing grandeur of the great Northwest. Oregon’s Bandon Dunes Resort has become one of the game’s most desirable destinations in the last decade. Washington’s year-old Chambers Bay is the “new new thing,” an amazingly authentic links course near Tacoma, future host of both the US Amateur and Open. But from a pure golf perspective, neither venue has anything on the remarkably capacious and totally thrilling Circling Raven Golf Club, in the Idaho Panhandle, just east of Spokane. Circling Raven is ...

I had the good fortune of enjoying a wonderful golf course I’d never before seen on Georgia’s St. Simons Island not long ago. The Hampton Club was once home to Hampton Plantation, an 18th century, antebellum plantation where cotton, indigo and rice dominated. This Joe Lee-designed beauty doesn’t get the attention it should, considering the thousand-pound gorilla of Golden Isles golf is undoubtedly the Sea Island Golf Club, with their triumvirate of great resort courses—Retreat, Plantation, and most notably, Seaside. But the Hampton Club, located on the northern end of the island, and affiliated with the King and Prince Resort, ...

24 of the first 28 winners of the Players Championhip were also Major winners. From Jack Nicklaus in 1974, through Tiger Woods in 2001. These include a passel of current or future Hall-of-Famers named Floyd, Trevino, Norman, Price, Couples, Sutton and Love, among other luminaries. But that stellar roster of champions has slowed to a crawl in recent years—only two of the last six champs have hoisted Major hardware, though the resumes of several of these latter victors like Fred Funk and Adam Scott are impressive regardless. Not so Craig Perks, who followed Tiger to the winners circle at Sawgrass by ...

I’ve had every nickel in the Wachovia Bank since they gave me a free toaster some eleven years ago when i opened my first account, and times are looking tough. It’s not enough that their one-year stock chart resemble a ski slope. But now the world’s best golfer, and the defending champion of this week’s Wachovia Championship, isn’t in the field. Tiger is nursing his bum knee, and Wachovia is nursing a stock price barely half of what it was a year ago. Hopefully the bank and the game’s most bankable superstar will be in much better ...

The Tour has moved over to beautiful Harbour Town Golf Links on Hilton Head Island—a welcome, mellow respite after the crucible of Augusta. Pete Dye’s Lowcountry classic will test the shot-making skills of the world’s finest players this week, and serves as a prelude for other Dye designs (or Dye influences, as the case may be) that will be taking their place on the event schedule as the year progresses—The Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass, TPC River Highlands near Hartford, Connecticut, and Q-School in the autumn, which will be partially contested at the Stadium Course at PGA West. ...

Spectacle though it is on television, The Masters is an event that should be experienced in person, though tickets (badges, actually) are almost as hard to come by as a date with Catherine Zeta-Jones. If you’ve never been, the wonders of Augusta National go well beyond the multitudes of flowering plants, or the “TV doesn’t do it justice” quality to the steepness of the terrain, heading down the first, up the last, etc. Here are a few other items that make the in-person experience so unique: When the gates open in the morning, hundreds of “patrons” (not customers, or ...

I admire and root for Tiger Woods as much as anybody, despite the fact he brushed off my photo request at the Golf Writer’s Annual Dinner the year after he won his first Masters. But despite his recent otherworldly play, he’s as much of a lock for this year’s green jacket as was Memphis for the NCAA hoops championship the other night, despite a nine point lead with little more than two minutes to play. Sports are all about “what have you done for me lately?” And though he’s been dominating the golf world since mid-summer of last year, here’s ...

In honor of the best week on the annual golf calendar, we’ll briefly turn the spotlight off Pete Dye, and instead focus on The Masters. Regrettably, there wasn’t a single correct answer in last week’s contest, though there were dozens of entries. Perhaps the public’s fascination with the Masters will lead to greater success, and at least one person will be able to choose the right answer in this Masters-centric trivia contest. The lucky winner will be styling in a beautiful pair of Rudy Project sunglasses, sent directly to their home. All you have to do to ...

Time to give away another pair of Rudy Project sunglasses, as I continue to slowly bang the drum in anticipation of the release of my next book, due out this September– PETE DYE–GOLF COURSES—FIFTY YEARS OF VISIONARY DESIGN. All you have to do to win: visit www.vagabondgolfer.com and then click on the sunglass icon on the lower left side of the homepage, underneath the suitcase. Correctly answer the Pete Dye question that’s been posted there, and a random winner will be chosen from the correct responses received within the next week, Please—just one entry per person. Good ...

I quick shout-out to my Brother-in Law—the Maharajah of Marblehead, Massachusetts, the Sultan of Sausage, the President-in-waiting of the Hair Club for Men–the redoubtable, irrepressible Emo Harris, who turned FIFTY just the other day. I have numerous golf memories of Emo, he of the truncated backswing, and diving duck hook, but space constraints will allow just a single reminisence. Several years ago I took him out to venerable Salem Country Club, near his home on Boston’s North Shore. Emo hacked, whacked and gacked in the standard fashion, though he somehow managed to bury a 3-wood shot into the hole on a ...

Though I lived there happily for nearly a decade as a young adult, my visits to Manhattan are few and far between. But I was up there a few weeks ago to meet with the publisher and editors of my new book, and view the galleys–basically the pages in a loose-leaf form–prior to printing. The book looks fantastic, and PETE DYE–GOLF COURSES will be a handsome addition to coffee-tables all over the world upon publication this autumn. Why the confidence? Because tens of thousands have been pre-sold to private and resort courses in the Caribbean, Central ...

It’s still some six weeks away, and much golf drama awaits in the interim—Arnold Palmer’s Orlando hoedown, a World Golf Championship event at Doral, and that little Augusta dustup that takes place in early April. But on the morning of April 21st, a dozen, perhaps as many as 20 discriminating and well-heeled aficionados will be the first golfers off the tee at Harbour Town, tackling the same pin positions the pros were dealing with little more than twelve hours prior, at the conclusion of this year’s Verizon Heritage. The action-packed trip, just four days and three nights, also includes access ...

I first became aware of Tiger Woods in 1987. I was a young adult, just beginning my infatuation with golf, and I heard or read about some 12-year old California kid who had a “plus” handicap. It sounded like an urban legend to me; I could possibly believe a “scratch” handicap for a pre-teen, but not a “plus.” Of course, Tiger had been doing the implausible for a decade even then, appearing on the Mike Douglas Show and “That’s Incredible” as a two-year old. Needless to say, he has been amazing the athletic world in the ...

Years ago a Savannah neighbor was carping about all the carping taking place after the dubious results of the 2000 presidential election. He came up with a catchphrase, patented it, and sold a zillion bumper stickers, key chains, towels, etc. His phrase that pays: Sore-Loserman. I thought of him last week, when another Savannah buddy of mine came by the house with another homegrown political bumper sticker—one that he has recently patented. This Gulf War vet and entrepreneur is apparently no fan of the Clintons—either of them. So his slogan of genius, accompanied by the universal ...

The three questions I’m asked most often: 1) Why don’t you have a real job? 2) Considering how much time you spend on the golf course, shouldn’t you be a better player? 3) What’s the best destination in the world? Answering the first two questions might incriminate me, but I’m happy to respond to the third, and in a word, the answer is Cabo. The reason is simple: Perfect weather. I love playing in Scotland and Ireland, but one must pack a steamer trunk full of sweaters, Gore-Tex and waterproofs to be adequately prepared. Conversely, Cabo San Lucas, on the southern tip of Mexico’s Baja ...

It ain’t what it used to be. Orlando’s PGA Show has dwindled a bit over the years, hurt by a continued soft golf economy, and hampered by the absence of some of golf’s marquee names. (Titleist, Taylor-Made and Ping make up a “Big Three” of recent abandonment, opting to use the millions of dollars it takes to have the appropriate presence at The Show and divert the resources to other areas of their respective operations.) But what The Show will always have in spades are dreamers—entrepreneurial types, inventors, little guys with a hopefully big idea. Here’s a quick ...