x
Skip to main content
Golf Logo
InsideGolf Join Now  / Log In
Golf, as ever, opens up worlds you could never anticipate
SHARE
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share by Email
Golf Logo
  • News
    • Latest
      • News
      • Features
      • Shows
      • PGA Tour Schedule
    • Series
      • Tour Confidential
      • Monday Finish
      • Hot Mic
      • Rogers Report
    • Shows
      • The Scoop
      • Subpar
      • Seen & Heard
  • Instruction
    • Game Improvement
      • Driving
      • Approach Shots
      • Bunker Shots
      • Short Game
      • Putting
      • Rules
      • Fitness
    • Series
      • Top 100 Teachers
      • Rules Guy
      • The Etiquetteist
      • Emergency 9
    • Shows
      • Warming Up
      • Play Smart
      • Short Game Chef
      • Pros Teaching Joes
  • Gear
    • Clubs
      • Drivers
      • Irons
      • Hybrids
      • Fairway Woods
      • Wedges
      • Putters
    • Other Gear
      • Balls
      • Shoes
      • Apparel
      • Golf Accessories
    • Series
      • ClubTest
      • Winner’s Bag
    • Shows
      • Fully Equipped
  • Travel & Lifestyle
    • Travel
      • Course Finder
      • Courses
      • Resorts
    • Lifestyle
      • Accessories
      • Celebrities
      • Food
      • Style
      • Betting Advice
    • Shows
      • Super Secrets
      • Destination Golf
  • Shop
    • Shop
      • Clubs
      • Shafts
      • Training Aids
      • Balls
      • Bags
      • Technology
      • Apparel
      • Accessories
      • Our Picks
      • Shop All
    • Collections
      • The GOLF Collection
      • The Birdie Juice Collection
      • The Fully Equipped Collection
      • Shop All
  • Newsletters
    • Sign Up for GOLF’s Newsletters
      • Hot Mic
      • Monday Finish
      • Play Smart
      • Our Picks
      • Top Stories
      • Sign Up for All
  • News
    • Latest News
    • Features
    • Shows
    • PGA Tour Schedule
  • Instruction
    • All Instruction
    • Driving
    • Approach Shots
    • Bunker Shots
    • Short Game
    • Putting
    • Rules
    • Fitness
  • Gear
    • All Gear
    • Drivers
    • Irons
    • Hybrids
    • Fairway Woods
    • Wedges
    • Putters
    • Balls
    • Shoes
    • Apparel
    • Golf Accessories
  • Travel & Lifestyle
    • All Travel
    • All Lifestyle
    • Course Finder
    • Courses
    • Resorts
    • Accessories
    • Celebrities
    • Food
    • Style
    • Betting Advice
  • Series
    • Tour Confidential
    • Monday Finish
    • Hot Mic
    • Rogers Report
    • Rules Guy
    • The Etiquetteist
    • Emergency 9
    • ClubTest
    • Winner’s Bag
  • Shows
    • The Scoop
    • Subpar
    • Seen & Heard
    • Warming Up
    • Play Smart
    • Short Game Chef
    • Pros Teaching Joes
    • Fully Equipped
    • Super Secrets
    • Destination Golf
  • Shop
    • Clubs
    • Shafts
    • Training Aids
    • Balls
    • Bags
    • Technology
    • Apparel
    • Accessories
    • The GOLF Collection
    • The Birdie Juice Collection
    • The Fully Equipped Collection
  • Newsletters
    • Hot Mic
    • Monday Finish
    • Play Smart
    • Top Stories
    • Our Picks
    • Sign Up for All
InsideGolf Join Now  / Log In
InsideGolf
Lifestyle

Golf, as ever, opens up worlds you could never anticipate

By: Michael Bamberger
July 8, 2021
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share by Email
royal cinque ports

Royal Cinque Ports, by the English Channel.

Getty Images

Golf shrinks the world, or it can. I just finished reading a book called A Course Called America, by Tom Coyne. Most enjoyable, and it completes his Course Called trilogy, following Ireland and Scotland. Or not. Maybe Coyne has Australia and Malta on deck, I don’t know. This Tom Coyne — good golfer, easy manner — discovers courses while looking for people and vice-versa. He captures these discoveries for posterity in 12-point type. You likely do about the same, minus the detailed write-ups. Maybe you use Instagram.

Coyne has traveled far and wide. He could throw a dart at a map of the United States and tell you something about wherever the tip makes landfall. Coyne has a whole thing about Burgerdogs, noted foodstuff of the Olympic Club in San Francisco. I was surprised to see no mention of a beloved halfway house refreshment at the Rolling Green Golf Club, his ancestral golfing home, near Philadelphia: Yoo-hoo and root beer, mixed in even proportions. Outstanding.

Most golfers are foodies and the food changes, depending on location. The Philadelphia Cricket Club, my golfing home, still serves snapper soup. I don’t think calling it turtle soup would improve sales.

The fellas will gather next week in the heart of fish-‘n-chips country, at Royal St. George’s, on the Kentish Coast of England. The Kingdom of Kent is as close as you can be to France while still under the Queen’s watch. It’s a spectacular part of England, rural here, seafaring there, with country roads that are about as wide as cart paths, lined by hedges. The locals call Royal St. George’s Sandwich, for the town in which it lies. Yes, the Earl of Sandwich. Yes, his enduring invention. A traveling golfer is a de facto history buff.

Travel
6th hole green royal st george's
The origins of the maiden hole, one of golf’s finest hole designs
By: Desi Isaacson

I was first there in 1985, caddying for a golfer on his honeymoon, Jamie Howell. Jamie qualified for the Open at a course next door to Sandwich, at Royal Cinque Ports. Maybe you’re tempted to say (nodding to your high school French) Royal Sank Port. You know, un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq (sank). There are five ports in the vicinity: Sandwich, Rye, Hastings, Hythe and Dover. But the English, being English, nod to France only when absolutely necessary. So it’s Royal Sink Ports. Just because. The locals call Royal Cinque Ports Deal, where it’s located.

The enduring pro there, Andy Reynolds, was the pro when I first played it, in ’85, and he was well-established then. (You talk about a legend. The man and his course.) I stayed for a few nights at the Chequers Inn, on Golf Road, which connects Royal Cinque (sink) Ports and Royal St. George’s. At the Chequers Inn, I met a touring caddie working the Open named Dave McNeilly. Many years later, I sat in his kitchen, in Belfast, looking out at his beautiful garden. The last time I saw him, at the Memorial last year, he was caddying for Matt Wallace. Talk about a lifer. I was wearing a club hat that made a logo nod to yesteryear. “Ah, 1854,” Dave said. “Remember it fondly.” He’s amusing and ridiculously fit. I believe he turns 40 on his next birthday.

As an Open course, Royal St. George’s is underrated. As a great Open locale, greater Sandwich is a thorough delight. The last time the Open was in Sandwich, my friend and colleague John Garrity and I made an application to play at Rye Golf Club, where the annual Cambridge-Oxford Golf Match is played. After what seemed like a half-hour vetting process in the club secretary’s office, we were casually pointed to the first tee. So British. Sec-ra-tee will see yourselves now. God save the Queen, her courses, her people. Scotland is Scotland, but England has her own charms.

It hurts, not to be going this year, but things are still settling down. St. Andrews, baby, 2022. Here’s hoping the Philadelphia-to-Glasgow nonstop American flight is back in business by then. You always get nervous about your clubs making it, when you’re dealing with connecting flights. “Have clubs, will travel,” my hero Dave Anderson (New York Times) used to say.

Christine and I were married shortly after the end of the 1990 baseball season. (Reds over A’s in four; sat beside Dave.) After a long year on the road covering the pastime, my only request for our honeymoon was to go somewhere with no time change, reachable by a nonstop flight, with some golf. Christine came up with Hispaniola, the Caribbean island which comprises the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic on one side and, over a rough border, Haiti, where people speak Creole on the streets and French in school. My car (our car) died on the way to JFK for our flight to Santa Domingo, the Dominican capital. Miraculously, we got to the airport just in time and I was permitted to bring my golf clubs on as a carryon. I’ve always had slender bags. It went right in the overhead, I kid you not.

News
open championship fans
R&A to allow significant number of fans at Open Championship at Royal St. George’s
By: Zephyr Melton

My first hole of my married life was at the Teeth of the Dog course: driver, 8-iron, grainy, hooking eight-footer for a birdie, witnessed by my wife and my caddie. (Two different people.) We bought black-market gasoline in Evian bottles from that caddie. We drove all over the country, went right through San Pedro de Macoris, the great breeding ground for middle infielders, shortstops especially. The gas supply in the Dominican was not reliable then.

The electrical supply was not reliable in Haiti. We made a side trip there, flew into Port-au-Prince and stayed at the Hotel Oloffson, funky and gorgeous and lush, in Pétion-Ville, a hilly, relatively affluent village outside Port-au-Prince. We were in Haiti on All Soul’s Day, a voodoo holy day. Thirty years later, we’re still buying Haitian art. Our house is filled with it.

The electricity went out periodically but the hotel had a semi-reliable backup generator. Amazingly, our room had a TV. There was I believe one working channel and it was showing the movie Stealing Home and at the exact moment I stumbled onto it there was a quick scene that showed an old hatted Cricket Club member fishing for golf balls on a creek that runs through the course. Right there on a working (just then) color TV, in the Graham Greene Suite, in the Hotel Oloffson, in Pétion-Ville, Haiti. That’s all coming back to me today because of the tragic news that Haiti’s president, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated in his home in Pétion-Ville. Golf, in a manner of speaking, got me there, and I have felt connected to Haiti ever since.

Golf opens worlds.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com

Latest In Lifestyle

3 days ago

Unusual ditches at U.S. Open have players seeking rules advice

3 days ago

These 7 Scotch whiskies make great gifts

5 days ago

Oakmont membership fee: What it costs to join U.S. Open host site

6 days ago

'As penal as possible': Why Oakmont's rough is more brutal than ever

Michael Bamberger

Michael Bamberger

Golf.com Contributor

Michael Bamberger writes for GOLF Magazine and GOLF.com. Before that, he spent nearly 23 years as senior writer for Sports Illustrated. After college, he worked as a newspaper reporter, first for the (Martha’s) Vineyard Gazette, later for The Philadelphia Inquirer. He has written a variety of books about golf and other subjects, the most recent of which is The Second Life of Tiger Woods. His magazine work has been featured in multiple editions of The Best American Sports Writing. He holds a U.S. patent on The E-Club, a utility golf club. In 2016, he was given the Donald Ross Award by the American Society of Golf Course Architects, the organization’s highest honor.

Related Articles

News
zach johnson and phil mickelson at 2021 ryder cup

As Zach Johnson assumes Ryder Cup captaincy, questions already loom about successor

By: Michael Bamberger
Instruction
brian stuard at honda classic

Pro’s deliberate style at Honda Classic raises eyebrows — and questions

By: Michael Bamberger
News
tim rosaforte

Why Tim Rosaforte’s death drew such an emotional response from the golf community

By: Michael Bamberger
News
phil mickelson points

What will Phil Mickelson do next? The old question has taken on new urgency

By: Michael Bamberger
Putting
putting line

Want to hole more putts? Stop sweating the result and start focusing on this instead

By: Michael Bamberger
Travel
Sweetens Cove in Tennessee.

Does Sweetens Cove live up to the hype? GOLF senior writer Michael Bamberger investigates

By: Michael Bamberger
Travel
castine GC in Maine

Golf takes too long, you say? There’s an easy and fun solution for that

By: Michael Bamberger
News
joan didion

Joan Didion didn’t play golf, but her writing had qualities for which all golfers should strive

By: Michael Bamberger
Gear
John K. Solheim, Ping chairman-to-be, standing guard over the company’s future — and its renowned Gold Putter Vault — at HQ.

The secret to Ping's club-making success? Keeping the business in the family

By: Michael Bamberger
Sign up for GOLF's Newsletters
Get the latest news, the hottest instruction tips, new product releases, golf media insider reports and more delivered directly to your inbox. Choose your favorites now.
Sign Up
Categories
  • News
  • Instruction
  • Gear
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
Services
  • Masthead
  • GOLF Media Kit
  • GOLF Magazine Customer Service
  • TERMS OF SERVICE
  • PRIVACY POLICY
  • Opt-out of Ads/Sharing
  • Your Privacy Choices
Social
  • facebook
  • x
  • instagram
  • youtube
Membership
InsideGOLF Logo
More than $140 Value for JUST $39.99

INCLUDES 12 SRIXON Z-STAR XV GOLF BALLS, 1 YR OF GOLF MAGAZINE, $20 FAIRWAY JOCKEY CREDIT - AND MUCH MORE!

LEARN MORE

© 2025 EB Golf Media LLC. An 8AM Golf Affiliated Brand. All Rights Reserved. All of our market picks are independently selected and curated by the editorial team. If you buy a linked product, GOLF.COM may earn a fee. Pricing may vary.

Go to mobile version