The allure of golf in exotic and historic places is undeniable, but for me, meeting new and interesting people is part of the golf-travel experience. After all, golf is a social game as much as it’s a competition against par.
Some of the people I’ve met stand out, like the member my friend and I were paired with at Tain Golf Club, near Dornoch, Scotland. We’d been briefed by our PerryGolf airport greeter: No caps in the clubhouse, no rowdy behavior at the bar or on the course. Basically, mind your Ps and Qs.
So, it was a shock when on the second hole, our playing partner shouted at the group ahead, “You’re f—ing slow! Move your f—ing arses!” They yelled back. He yelled back at them, and the yelling continued for another hole, where they did indeed pick up the pace — probably to escape the racket.
And there’s the Japanese man I met on the first tee of the old Bayshore Golf Course, a throwback that, in its prime, was Jackie Gleason’s favorite course in Miami Beach, Florida. My partner, who lived in Osaka, told me that he was in town for a business meeting and this was his only opportunity to play. But the airline had lost his golf clubs, which is why he had just rented clubs and bought shoes, a glove and a dozen golf balls.
Because golf in Japan was so expensive, he told me, Bayshore was the first real golf course he had ever set foot on. For years he’d only hit balls after work at a lit, multi-story driving range, and he was excited to actually be playing golf.
And he was awful, topping the ball or shanking shots deep into the bushes. When he hit a bad shot, he would make a low, guttural growling sound that I’d only heard in Samurai movies. But there he was, on a real golf course, playing real golf, and appearing to enjoy himself.
There were many others: the Carnoustie caddie whose ship chased the German battleship Bismarck across the Atlantic in World War II, and the wise-cracking Irish caddie, Paddy, at the Old Course, whose wife had kicked him out of the house the night before our round.
But no one I’ve met in 50-plus years of playing golf was as memorable as Archie Baird. Like countless other golfers, I met Baird at the Gullane No. 1 course, east of Edinburgh. It was the late 1990s and I arrived as a single. Read More