Last month I read a most interesting column in Links Magazine penned by George Peper. Peper was the longtime editor of Golf Magazine. In retirement, he started writing a monthly column in Links. He also relocated to Scotland, purchasing a house alongside the 18th fairway at the Old Course at St. Andrews. The gist of Peper’s column was that he has always kept a record of the rounds of golf he’s played throughout his long life and that he had recently played his 750th different golf course.
When I first read the column I was minorly perplexed. I figured someone like George Pepper would have played several thousand different golf courses by now in light of the fact that he has played the game for some 60 or more years. After all, I assumed that I have probably played at least 1,000 courses in the 52 years that I have been an avid golfer. Well, it turned out that I was way off in my assessment. I’m just not in George Peper’s league.
I started to do the math and it occurred to me that if an avid golfer were to play 1,000 different courses during the course of 50 years, then that would pencil out to playing 20 new courses each and every year. Someone like Peper, who lived most of his life in the suburban New York City area, had to deal with four to five months of inclement weather. It’s difficult to play Baltusrol in New Jersey in January when the fairways and greens are beneath a foot of snow. On top of the weather issue, there is also the timing issue. When you begin to golf as a teenager, you probably aren’t taking very many trips to neighboring states to play some fancy resort golf course, nor can you afford it. During those middle years, you’re probably missing some degree of golf for family and kids. As you enter the golden years, convenience becomes more of an issue. Yes, playing Pinehurst is on my bucket list. However, putting together a trip to North Carolina to play a past United States Open site is something of a bit of a stretch. Maybe I’d rather just drive to Monterey and play Spyglass Hill for the 50th time.
The online version of Peper’s Links article included commentary from readers. A man named Nicholas Aguilano stated that he had played more than 1,800 different courses. He added that “several hundred” of the courses he had played were the result of him being a golf course rater for his state association. While I have no reason to doubt Mr. Aguilano’s arithmetic skills, I do actively acknowledge that 1,800 different golf courses is a lot of golf. If George Peper, who’s major source of employment was to write about great golf destinations for Golf and Links, has only played 750 golf courses, then it’s hard to imagine someone else playing twice as many.
In my formative years as a golfer, I probably averaged about 200 rounds per year from 1980 through 2005. However, most of the time I was repeating my golfing schedule from year to year. If I played in the State Fair Amateur one year at Haggin Oaks in Sacramento, I was probably going to play that tournament at that course the following year. The only times I seemed to add new courses to my list was because of golf vacations to places like Wisconsin or Ireland or single one-day jaunts of obscure places, benefiting from travel on Creecy Airlines.
In the early 1980s, I started up a very enjoyable golf friendship with the late George Hoberg Jr. and his running mate Ron Garcia. Hoberg and Garcia were the ultimate golf buddies, going off for weeks at a time to Long Island, Myrtle Beach, Scotland or some other interesting golf destination. It was Hoberg who first talked to me about his golfing goals. He simply wanted to “collect” golf courses, hence those trips to play the National Golf Links, Arcadian Shores or the New Course at St. Andrews.
During the past month I’ve done my personal part to add to my golf course collection. I went to visit my dad in the Midwest last month and teed it up at Harborside in Chicago and Arrowhead in Grand Rapids. As an aside, I also ventured to Cog Hill in the Chicago suburb of Lemont. I have played Cog Hill’s Dubsdread Course more than 100 times and yet I hadn’t teed it up there since Rees Jones re-did the course in 2008. My high school golf team played there. Cog Hill is no longer a site for the PGA Tour’s BMW Championship, and on that seasonably cold day in Chicago (we had snow flurries that afternoon), I understood why. Cog Hill is a whole lot harder than it used to be for the Western Open and the BMW. I know the PGA Tour prefers player-friendly setups for its events, and yet I couldn’t help but think that playing Cog Hill every year just might make American players a little more mentally tough. That just might help in those years when they play the Ryder Cup at those punitive European sites.
Two weeks ago I ventured to Southern California to visit my son Nick as well as former Kelseyville High School golfer Matt Wotherspoon. I was able to add Skylinks, Monarch Beach Resort and Recreation Park to my new course list. Nick and Matt were a bit of a surprise to the locals on that crowded Sunday at Recreation Park in Long Beach. Recreation is a city-owned municipal course, the home course for the Joe Six Packs of the game. Playing from the tips, Nick and Matt were an eye-opener to the groups around us as they pounded out 300-yard drives and knocked downs pins with their approach shots. It was like I was paired with Jordan and Justin from the perspective of the Rec. Park regulars.
I started the task of counting my own golf experiences several weeks ago. Even though I am one of those all-time wandering golfers, I figured out that I have played just 381 different golf courses. A total of 193 of them have been in Northern California while 75 of them are located in Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. Another 16 were in Ireland and Scotland, 17 were in Alabama (all on the Robert Trent Jones Trail), 11 were in the Carolinas, 11 were in Oregon, and 24 were in Southern California. At the rate I’m going it will take me another three years to get to 400 different courses. Unlike bowling or basketball, the playing field in golf varies from site to site. As I age and my game starts to fade, my real joy is getting to experience new courses, such as my summer rounds this year at the San Francisco Golf Club and Berkeley Country Club (Mira Vista). However, because of age, fading golf game, money, and travel, I have no intention of playing the great golf courses of northern Maine or the Texas Panhandle. I guess I’m just not one of those ultimate golf course collectors, just a fairly active regional one.
