TRURO, Mass. – All roads eventually lead to a golf course. Pretty much, that is a truism that encapsulates my world and on a road that stretched for approximately 102 miles the other day, there was much time to reflect upon the treasure that would greet me at the end of the ride.
Highland Links.
It is nine holes of unfiltered golf enjoyment, a links-like experience that when played twice provides 5,349 yards of a tidy challenge. Short on real estate, perhaps, but oh, how it is long on mystical aura that might let you go when your round is complete but will effortlessly pull you back on future days almost without question.
Isn’t that the essence of visits to special golf courses that stir our emotions? That we are attracted to them purely for the golf because nothing about our passion for the game is connected to dreaded Calcuttas, fudged handicaps, scrambles or gift bags or all the ancillary side dishes that dwarf the landscape.
Lengthy commutes and extra efforts are made for those golf courses that have a hold on us. We don’t expect everyone to understand; we value that there are many who do.
Confirmation that my 102-mile drive wasn’t crazy came from a gentleman who explained why it is important that we return to golf courses that entice us. “It gets to the heart of the discussion, that we have the confidence to trust in our own beliefs . . . that it isn’t about where courses are ranked, it’s that we say, ‘I think understand what the soul of the game is,’” said David Normoyle.
A former assistant director of the USGA Museum, Normoyle is the founder of a historical consultant group that helps educate golf club enthusiasts on the importance of preserving and documenting their treasured collections.
Ask him what golf course has a pull on him and he’ll tell you it’s Royal Worlington and Newmarket Golf Club in Suffolk, England. It’s the home to Cambridge University Golf Club (Normoyle got a postgrad degree at Cambridge and is a member of the Oxford & Cambridge Golfing Society) and it’s where he feels golf at its warmest.
“It’s just a simple nine holes in a farm field,” he said.
Equally simple, though far from a farm field, Highland Links is perched atop majestic sand dunes high above a stretch of unspoiled wonderland that has long attracted surfers and beachgoers who leave the madness behind and embrace serenity. With every visit, Highland Links is more magical and validates my love of golf.
Golf has lost its way in various manners, but not here.
Should you like your courses with character, it checks box after box – fairways that are bouncy; blind shots often played into the wind; a green with two tiers, only they are not front and back but right and left; touches of Scotland that guard the fairways, wispy brown grass and gnarly heather; and the oldest and tallest lighthouse on Cape Cod, an active one, in fact, is located alongside the par-3 seventh hole.
That you often have lighthouse visitors stopping to form a gallery as you play the seventh hole is one of the indelible delights to a visit to Highland Links, though it’s surely not the only one.
Such a joy, is it not, to have a golf course that tickles one’s fancy as Highland Links does mine? Or Royal Worlington does Normoyle’s?
Are there better courses? Undoubtedly, but that’s not the point. These are courses that require an extra effort to get to, courses that help you connect to golf at a realm that is personal and satisfying.
Brad Faxon understands, and he circles a place that helped introduce him to golf – Eastward Ho! in Chatham, Mass. He ignores that other courses might be better and insists “I would definitely go out of my way to play (there).” Why? “Because it’s insanely good and it’s fun, too.”
It's also because the course put a spell on him more than 50 years ago. As a 12-year-old he played his first tournament there and as a caddie he saw the crazy lies – downhill, sidehill, uphill – and loved that when the wind blew with fury, “there was no shelter from the elements.”
That intrigued Faxon and he’s forever remembered how he explored different shot-making methods based on those Eastward Ho! lies. “It’s the prettiest setting you can imagine,” said Faxon. “But (those lies) made you work to figure out how far irons would travel.”
To a golfer who concedes that the huge majority of his golf is played in competitive arenas, Todd White, an elite mid-amateur from South Carolina, said his special course is wherever the simple elements are in play. “I like to play where you put the flagstick in, put your bag on your back, and walk a few steps to the next tee,” he said.
Wannamoisett in Rumford, R.I., comes to mind (White won the Northeast Amateur there in 1990). So, too, does Palmetto in Aiken, S.C. Paris Mountain in Greenville, S.C., is another.
But it would have to be a course, said White, where you’d be likely to see “golf bridge generations,” perhaps a son playing in the same group with his father and grandfather.
“That’s one of the glories of golf,” he said, “that it can happen.”
Indeed, it can, and there on a day that blessed us with pulsating sunshine high atop the beach dunes, our second nine at Highland Links was played behind a foursome that featured just that – three generation of golfers.
Yet another of those indelible delights that are predominant at Highland Links, where you never fail to be enriched by the golf experience.
