GHIN
We hosted our annual season-ending event this past weekend in Arizona. I’m confident it was the best one yet. It proved that we could capture the magic that we had the first few years at Jax Beach at a venue elsewhere. The golf was fun and competitive, and while not the most thoughtful course off the tee (I realized after my first round that shipping driver off every par four and par five was the play), it offered a really interesting challenge for iron play. A confluence of factors - shaggy, wet fairways coming out of a recent overseed application (and the associated mudballs); firm, awkwardly slow greens that were very smooth and consistent; extremely sloped greens and a willingness to cut holes in provocative spots - made for a unique challenge that wasn’t just a putting contest. You had to hit the ball close to score, which had me wishing the tour would stage an event with a similar setup at some point and lean into the sort of golf that the general public often plays, instead of every week offering the same perfect surfaces and predictable hole locations. Variables!
Beyond the inherent pleasure of watching people grind on low-stakes (yet meaningful) competition, making new friends, reconnecting with old friends, and caddying for Joe Mayberry in the finals, the unequivocal highlight of the entire event was Lucas Beaudoin, the magician who Neil and Randy met at Liberty National a couple months ago and insisted we book for the event. Along with D.J., they hadn’t shut up about Lucas for months and I thought “Oh, that’s cute, a magician.” Well, two nights in a row Lucas performed and made me feel genuine joy and amazement. The humility, personality, and thoughtfulness with which he operated was a highlight - a true mastery of craft that is all too rare these days. I’m incapable of describing it all, rather I hope one day you will have the opportunity to watch and interact with Lucas, if you haven’t already.
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That NIT stuff was really stretching the bounds of “golf.” Alright, back to some other recent stuff that’s more golf-y.
I met my colleague Ben down in Palm Beach a couple of weeks ago and we played some golf, filmed, and ate some good food (more on that below) with friend of the program Nico Darras. The first stop (after Istanbul) was the Palm Beach Par 3, which is always a blast. It may lack variety (all the holes are seemingly 70, 120 or 170 yards), encourage aerial shots to a frustrating degree, and always shock to see how many people ride carts, but the piece of land is spectacular and there’s a bunch of flourishes. The next day we filmed my episode of our ServPro Game Improvement Series up in Hobe Sound in some serious conditions (stay tuned for that!) And then we played The Park, the old West Palm Beach Muni that’s been sexed up in a big way. A group of influential locals brought in Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner to re-do the golf course and it’s fantastic. The front nine plays over less interesting land on the East side of the property, with a few standout holes (the 6th hole, a rollicking par four over several ridges with a green site that wouldn’t be out of place at Royal Melbourne, is all-world) and green designs that make you want to play over and over again. And then you make the turn to the back nine and it feels like something straight out of the Melbourne Sandbelt, with holes doglegging over exceptional ground and a ton of variety. I loved it.
On the flip side, it’s quite expensive and the insistence on caddies before 9 am feels heavy-handed and out of place for a muni, especially since these aren’t local kids, but full-time caddies like you’d find at a Streamsong or well-regarded private club. I often prefer to take a caddie, but feeling like we were being descended upon in the parking lot by guys looking to pick up a loop when I just wanted to have a pushcart and explore the course on my own was jarring (and was part of the reason we booked a post-9 am tee time - any earlier and caddies are mandatory). We played on a Thursday morning, and the course was mostly empty prior to 10 am, which unsurprisingly
Source: https://nolayingup.com/blog/ghin-and-tonic-vol-24-tc
