My golf links

For at least five years, I've daydreamed about making my own golf course. It would (naturally), be a links (or, at least, links-style) course. Ideally, it would be walking distance from my house, and open to me whenever I wanted to play.

There's an obscure sub-genre of golf called pasture golf, which takes on some of the tenets of the fabled Scottish shepherds who allegedly invented golf: take the land as you find it, add a hole, and get the ball into the hole in as few strokes as possible. Fortunately for the Scottish shepherds, their fields were beautiful, rolling linksland. Unfortunately for most Midwestern pasture golfers, their fields are dry, dusty, flat-as-a-pancake hayfields. So, that's a bit of a loss.

There's a vacant lot I pass every day, twice a day, on my train to work. It's, oh, I don't know, 100 yards wide and maybe 300 yards long. There are pipes sticking up here and there, and it's very hilly, overgrown with native grasses and weeds. For years I've envisioned a course laid out on that property. Here's how it would work:



A green in every corner, with tee boxes on either side. From each tee box, you could play to the three other greens (blue lines). This, essentially, makes a 24-hole course over a very small area. The down side is that every hole criss-crosses every other hole, making play by more than one or two groups extremely dangerous.

But, the good side: no waits on the tees.


The ultimate, of course, would be to do this on a patch of linksy ground near a large body of water. Lake Michigan, while not an ocean, has proven itself worthy of passing for one with the much-vaunted Whistling Straits just up the road apiece.



And I've found a stretch of undeveloped (or, at least, at-one-time-developed-but-now-apparently-abandoned) land on the shores of Lake Michigan, just south of Chicago:

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I'd love to take that piece of land and turn it into a links-style course on the edge of the lake.

It is not big enough for a regulation course, I think (although 9 holes would probably fit quite well). And I wouldn't have $300 greens fees, either, to play there. It would be a private club, for members only, but the membership dues would only be enough to cover the expense of maintaining the course (most of which would be done by sheep, anyway). No, the exclusivity would be based upon the golfer's appreciation of links golf. You'd have to write an essay to join. And you'd have to convince the committee (the committee would be me) that you are a true links lover. No carts. No cart paths. No beer girls. No clubhouse and grille.

Just golf.

Leaving that for the moment in the pie-in-the-sky dreamland where it belongs, I do so happen to have a big vacant lot/flood overflow basin just down the hill from me, a two minute walk. Driving past it this morning, I see it's all dirt and knee-high weeds. I doubt there's a square foot of what you could describe as "fairway" turf on the entire property. But, on the plus side, it's THERE.

I'd guess at it's longest diagonal it's maybe 130, 140 yards. Which is long enough to practice a short game. I may just head down there this weekend with a bag of grass seed and a spade. I'll stick in a couple of holes, seed around a few spots, and wait.

Maybe my personal golf links is closer than I think.

Askernish

My particular friend Fred recently asked me if I had read the article about the newly-rediscovered Askernish golf course in the April 20th New Yorker magazine.

(Two side notes: a) he didn't so much ask as say "I presume you read . . ." I'd like to be cool enough to read the New Yorker, but b) Have you seen the New Yorker? Every article is like 15 pages long. Dense, typewritten pages. And it comes out every week. I just don't think I have the time to keep up with that much text.)

I finally - after much wailing and gnashing of teeth - secured a copy of the magazine in question, and . . . wow. I went from an apathetic "meh, my golf trip is never going to happen, so what?" to "oh-my-god-I-have-to-plan-every-detail-about-my-trip-right-this-second".

A well-written article, it follows the uncovering of a Tom Morris gem on the tiny island of South Uist (off the west coast of Scotland), which seems to be everything I would want in the a golf course: original, natural, as-you-found-it linksland. I'm smitten.

Completely.

So, it's gotten the juices flowing, and once again I'm dying to set off on my adventure. Over the last couple of days, I've been researching the kind of old-school, true links courses I want to play. Askernish is, of course, the top of that list. And Machrihanish has never left the list. But, just like last summer when I was planning this trip, more and more times I find a Scottish course I want to play, it turns out to be in Ireland.

One other thing I had forgotten is my home-base/cottage idea. A stroke of genius, that. So, here's my new plan:

Fly into Dublin (or Belfast, if that's cheaper). the home-base for the first week is County Donegal, which is on the northwest coast of Ireland. There are a heaping handful of courses to play there: Connemara, Carne, Rosapenna, Ballyliffin, Nairn&Portnoo . . . the list goes on and on. Home base in a cottage in County Donegal, equidistant from all courses.

Then a drive over to the east coast to play Ardglass, which is technichally in Northern Ireland, but a not-to-be-missed course nonetheless. Then a quick pop up the coast to Larne, where we catch the ferry to Troon, in western Scotland.

From here, it's a series of bed-and-breakfasts as we hit Machrihanish, on the Mull of Kintyre, from where there is another ferry to the island of South Uist, on which lies the aforementioned Askernish.

After that? Maybe a drive down the west coast to Glasgow to see the sights and then across the M8 to Edinburgh. I think the trip culminates on the east coast of Scotland, with a late afternoon round at St Andrews. It seems silly to go all that way and not see the Home of Golf. And, while playing the Old Course typically requires a papal injunction, from everything I've read, that typically applies to a foursome, trying to book on a specific day, in the morning, in high season. I have read in multple places that a single can sign up in the morning and it is rare indeed that he does not make it out that afternoon. I'll take my chances.

The down side to this plan is that for any non-golfers in attendance, that first week is relatively uneventful. Across the country from Dublin, the most interesting non-golfing attraction is the potato famine museum. Which, you know, sounds thrilling and all . . .

Maybe I should go for a week, and then meet up with the others for a week or two? That way I get some unencumbered golf, and then we can do the more touristy parts of Scotland together? Hmmmmm.