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EDITOR’S LETTER

Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car at night? — Jack Kerouac

y the time I read Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, I’d already put 255,000 miles on my car, most of them while I was meant to be in class. In a stretch of five or so years after high school, whenever the mood struck I’d head out to see some part of the country, but the destinations were always pretexts for the drives, which were the point (and why someone suggested I might like Kerouac). Sometimes I’d take a girl—“Ever seen the St. Louis Arch? Me neither! Let’s go”—sometimes a friend, but often times I traveled alone, driven by a combination of wanderlust and curiosity. And there was more to it. One evening, in my freshman year at college, I ran into a friend in the dorm who looked a little blue. Didn’t know the guy so well but I asked if he’d ever seen the beaches in Destin, Florida, eight hours away. He said no, I said c’mon, and away we went. We made it by sunrise and spent the next few days bothering the coast, eating gas station food, swimming, looking for cheap beer, talking til late and sleeping on the sand or in the car. When the pennies were gone we coasted back to school on fumes. Years later he told me the trip had saved his life, and I understood. As a young man I mostly found the road to be healing, and the education I received on the road gets as much credit for any successes I’ve had as time spent in class (I did manage to graduate, if you’re wondering). I lived in Europe for a time during those years and, though I did a fair amount of driving there as well, it was different. For a take on why, in a world covered with roads, road trips might be distinctly American, see page 26. For ideas on some great American cars to take should you care to get behind the wheel, try p82. We cover a lot of America in this issue, visiting Lana’i (p68), The Landings Club in Georgia (p88), Wisconsin (76) and even your backyard BBQ (p142). We also take a look at a few Americans who make us proud (p44). One of Kingdom’s favorites, of course, is Arnold Palmer, whose relentless pursuit of putting perfection was the stuff of legend (p102). He grew up on, and learned the game at, another great American destination: the storied Latrobe Country Club, which celebrates its 100th anniversary this year (p98). Maybe we’ll drive out there soon—it’s only 15 hours; we can be there by morning if we leave now. Be well, and well-traveled, Reade Tilley

SUMMER 2020

PUBLISHER’S LETTER

Toasting friends old & new

t was only a short while ago that I wrote my publisher’s letter for the previous issue. It was a time of quiet excitement in anticipation of the upcoming season (one that included a Ryder Cup over my birthday weekend) and I was looking forward to enjoying that and more with a Ketel One in hand. I don’t need to tell you what happened next—the world changed, and seemingly overnight. Today, looking over the first half of 2020, my heart goes out to all of those who are facing challenges due to the current state of things, and especially to those who have lost friends and loved ones. It is with great sadness I report that Kingdom and the wider Arnold Palmer Group also lost a close partner and good friend, to cancer, Century Golf’s Mark Murphy. As anyone who knew him would tell you, Mark lived a life larger than most. He spent his career in the golf industry, having received a second chance after spinal tumors nearly took his life 20 years ago. Surviving those cost him some motion, but his solid skills on course from his younger days persisted and, more than a decade after the surgery that got him through, he won the Kingdom Cup at Bay Hill. Mark loved the game and he loved to share it with others (he was one of the founders of the Palmer Advantage program, after all). His health challenges always gave him a true appreciation of life and his spirit inspired all in his orbit, including everyone at Kingdom. In these challenging COVID times he inspires us still, as he doubtless would have celebrated golf being such a positive part of life for so many just now. Clubs have adapted, and with the sport played safely outdoors it is a pursuit that has brought peace, companionship and exercise to many. I have long been an advocate of walking the course, and so we look at the benefits of ambulatory golf and varied carry, pull and ride options on page 132. Despite the turn the world has taken, I am excited all over again for the upcoming majors—and for one additional reason: The timing of this year’s Masters will coincide with Kingdom’s Holidays issue, which sees us reach a new landmark with our 50th edition. To all of you who have been here with us for so long, we couldn’t ask for better playing partners. And for those who are more recent fans, we look forward to the rounds we’ll enjoy together. Until fall, then, hit ’em straight—and if you are so inclined, try one of the amazing Tiki cocktails outlined on page 138. I will be raising a glass to friends remembered and to those here now, which includes all of you. Be safe, and I’ll see you on course.

KINGDOM 49

Mark Murphy with Arnold Palmer at the Kingdom Cup in 2012

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CONTENTS

Kingdom Magazine Q UA R T E R LY

ISSUE 49

SUMMER 2020

FEATURES

Road Trips

Caddies

50 56

How America invented the road trip Carrying the game, today & since the beginning

CLUB

The story of two Ryder Cup captains from one school TRAVEL

Putting

Call it art or science, putting remains elusive either way

Made in Dublin

Custom Fit

An earnest search for love at first putt

Inspiration

American pros who bring out the best in the game

Landings

Liberating Spaces

Lanai

The pineapple isle holds the past and future of Hawaii

Wisconsin

How America’s Dairyland reached the golfer’s radar CAR

INTERVIEWS

American Cars

Our Top 10 list of red, white, and blue motors

The model for modern clubs moving forward Self-isolate with these big skies and broad views LEGACY

Latrobe

102

Palmer’s Putters

108

Harry Frye

The club the Palmers built reaches 100 Remembering a life-long pursuit for perfection Capturing a legend as it unfolds

SUMMER 2020

CONTENTS

EDITOR

PUBLISHER

Reade Tilley

Matthew Squire

ART DIRECTOR

MANAGING EDITOR

Matthew Halnan

Robin Barwick

FOUNDING DIRECTOR

Arnold Palmer

VP, OPERATIONS

132

138

GIFT GUIDE

115

FOOD & DRINK

Silver Lining

Gifts to glimmer in the summer light WGJ

126

Highland Tiki

142

Low & Slow

Donna Hoffman

The Women on Course founder changes the game

Tropical delights made better with Scotch Boston butt, a Big Green Egg and nowhere to be LAST PAGE

CLUB

132

138

Autonomous Spirit

New York Classic

The U.S. Open heritage of Winged Foot

Single riders emerge as golf adapts to new reality

Joe Velotta

HEAD OF ADVERTISING SALES

DESIGNER

EXECUTIVE ADVISOR

Kieron Deen Halnan

Carla Richards

Jon Edwards

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

Getty Images, Meghan Glennon, Tom Miles Evan Schiller / golfshots.com SPECIAL THANKS & CONTRIBUTORS

Oli Briggs, Cori Britt, Juliane Buvelot, Rocco J. Carbone, Paula Creamer, Simon Cooper, Gary Dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Amato, Adam Drummond, Scott Edwards, Jason Falstrup, Doc Giffin, Padraig Harrington, Angus Hay, Donna Hoffman, Phillip James, Leslie Kendall, Sandro Lorente, Paul McGinley, Michael Reid, Sean Russell, Mark Stewart, Paul Trow

ENQUIRY ADDRESSES

COMMERCIAL ENQUIRIES

advertising

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FOUNDERS

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John Halnan, Matthew Squire and Steve Richards

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COVER IMAGE

JOHN D OMINIS The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images

Arnold Palmer, holding golf ball in hand

PUBLISHED BY SOCIAL MEDIA KingdomGolf

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Kingdom magazine was first available to friends & associates of Arnold Palmer, members & guests of his designed and managed courses. Now it is available at distinguished private clubs and for discerning golfers everywhere. Printed in the USA

KINGDOM 49

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SCENE SETTER Putting

BOSSING THE MOSS

rnold Palmer’s game was unorthodox and that extended to his putting. As he put it: “The way I hunched over the ball, knockkneed and leaning, and gave the ball a firm, wristy rap that often sent it speeding 10 feet past the hole seemed to trouble some people”. Palmer’s great friend and mentor on tour, George Low—a revered putter of the ball—gave Palmer the pep talk he needed. As Palmer recalled: “George growled: ‘Listen to me, Arnie.

There’s not a damn thing wrong with the way you putt. You putt great. Don’t ever let anybody fool with your putting stroke or you’ll be damned sorry’.” Putting is among the great, timeless enigmas of sports. You can hole a putt, think putting is your friend, before it bites back without a shred of remorse. In this issue we consider putting in all its forms, and putters, and how to be fitted for one. We also delve deep into the Kingdom archive for some wonderful pictures of Palmer’s putter collection.

Putting p50 — Custom-fit p56 — Palmer’s putters p102

KINGDOM 49

SUMMER 2020

KINGDOM 49

SCENE SETTER Travel

WISCONSIN

he Sand Valley golf resort has the Ice Age to thank for its stunning, natural landscape that lends to golf so beautifully. The land was once the bed of a glacial lake that covered much of central Wisconsin. Some time around 16,000BCE the ice dam protecting the lake is thought to have burst, causing a dramatic flood that saw the entire lakeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;that is thought to have been as deep as 150

feetâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;empty in the space of two days. The flood created the Wisconsin Dells and the sandy lakebed left behind eventually shaped into the striking dunes and valleys that exist to this day, 1,700 acres of which are now carefully managed by Sand Valley. The evolution of Wisconsin into one of the finest golf destinations in North America over the past three decades demands attention. Little wonder Wisconsin has been rewarded with the Ryder Cup.

Feature on page 76

SUMMER 2020

SCENE SETTER Cars

T H E R OA D

ure, you’ve seen roads all over the world covered in cars from all over the world. You might have been in some of those cars on some of those roads. But if you’re talking about road trips, about the wind in your hair, the adrenalin-soaked feeling of having hundreds of horses and thousands of pounds of steel at your beck and call with a wide-open horizon and the unfettered roar of an engine crashing through the silence of a hot desert wind,

well then you’re talking about American cars on American roads, and nothing to get in your way. This issue of Kingdom gives you two ways to take a [driver’s] seat: a piece on how America invented the road trip and a Top 10 list of some of the greatest cars ever built—in America. The tires might be black and the exterior color can be anything you like, but at heart these motors are all red, white and blue. Turn up the radio, add a double cheeseburger and the smell of gasoline to our order, and we’ll take it—to go.

Road Trips, p26 — American Cars, p82

KINGDOM 49

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SHORT GAME

We decided to put the origins of America’s 50 greatest golfers on the map. Mapping was the easy bit, the hard part was cutting the list down to 50… (golfers listed by state) Billy Casper Tony Lema Mickey Wright Johnny Miller Nancy Lopez Juli Inkster John Daly Phil Mickelson Tiger Woods Glenna Collett Vare Julius Boros Brooks Koepka Bobby Jones Louise Suggs Francis Ouimet Pat Bradley Donna Caponi Patty Berg Lawson Little Hale Irwin Tom Watson Amy Alcott Payne Stewart Jerome Travers Walter Hagen

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24 June 1931 25 Feb 1934 14 Feb 1935 29 April 1947 6 Jan 1957 24 June 1960 28 April 1966 16 June 1970 30 Dec 1975 20 June 1903 3 March 1920 3 May 1990 17 March 1902 7 Sept 1923 8 May, 1893 24 March 1951 29 Jan 1945 13 Feb 1918 23 June 1910 3 June 1945 4 Sept 1949 22 Feb 1956 30 Jan 1957 19 May 1887 21 Dec 1892

San Diego, CA Oakland, CA San Diego, CA San Francisco, CA Torrance, CA Santa Cruz, CA Carmichael, CA San Diego, CA Cypress, CA New Haven, CT Fairfield, CT West Palm Beach, FL Atlanta, GA Atlanta, GA Brookline, MA Westford, MA Detroit, MI Minneapolis, MN Fort Adams, MS Joplin, MO Kansas City, MO Kansas City, MO Springfield, MO New York, NY Rochester, NY

Gene Sarazen Carol Mann Raymond Floyd Charlie Sifford Mark O’Meara Jack Nicklaus Arnold Palmer Betsy King Cary Middlecoff Jimmy Demaret Babe Zaharias Byron Nelson Ben Hogan Kathy Whitworth Lee Trevino Sandra Haynie Ben Crenshaw Jordan Spieth Betsy Rawls Patty Sheehan Sam Snead Lanny Wadkins Curtis Strange JoAnne Carner Fred Couples

27 Feb 1902 3 Feb 1941 4 Sept 1942 2 June 1922 13 Jan 1957 21 Jan 1940 10 Sept 1929 13 Aug 1955 6 Jan 1921 24 May 1910 26 June 1911 4 Feb 1912 13 August 1912 27 Sept 1939 1 Dec 1939 4 June 1943 11 Jan 1952 27 July 1993 4 May 1928 27 Oct 1956 27 May 1912 5 Dec 1949 30 Jan 1955 4 April 1939 3 Oct 1959

Harrison, NY Buffalo, NY Fort Bragg, NC Charlotte, NC Goldsboro, NC Columbus, OH Latrobe, PA Reading, PA Halls, TN Houston, TX Port Arthur, TX Waxahachie, TX Stephenville, TX Monahans, TX Dallas, TX Fort Worth, TX Austin, TX Dallas, TX Spartanburg, SC Middlebury, VT Ashwood, VA Richmond, VA Norfolk, VA Kirkland, WA Seattle, WA

1 TN 1

3 VA 3 NC

1L F

TX Moving West

By mapping out the birthplaces of the United Statesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; 50 best golfers we can trace the geographical origins of American golf back to the north eastern states, where many of the earlier great players were born. Texas stands as a clear stronghold throughout changing generations, while California evolves as a cradle for exceptional talent in the second half of the 20th century, once the American golf culture has migrated to its mild and sunny climes.

SUMMER 2020

FEATURE The Road

Road

TRIPS Top down, pedal down. America might not have invented roads, but it’s fair to say she invented road trips. Here, the editor checks the mirror to see how we got rolling

volved out of the dust tracks and wooden crosses left along countless miles by settlers, immigrants and refugees, the American road trip was a consequence before it was a purpose, before it had a name. Today it’s on the radio, in the windows down, in the rise and fall of a hand surfing over the warm rush of tires on asphalt. Not gifted like before, no longer inevitable, the road trip today must be sought out, fought for through the haze in modern vehicles, quiet cool air spilling into clean cabins, pretty lines on screens, ETAs, advance bookings, alerts and the falsely reassuring voices of hands-free loved ones too far away to do much good. No more hissing hot spit junk metal, ruined shirt wrenching the cap off the radiator, sprung parts or sad little

KINGDOM 49

pops before a roll to the shoulder. Not often, anyway. The best stretches were slow easy miles, new smells and familiar rattles, long hours with friends or alone, skipping past the preachers in search of a song. Even now it’s never through the windshield, always to the sides in wax paper-wrapped chiles, racks of keychains and gas station toys, beautiful oddities and wide vistas, glimpses of possible loves, possible lives, then leaving it all behind to drive on. The road trip is as American as the wanderlust from which it grew, and as charged with possibility as America herself. And whether the engine is running or long dead, the truth is that road trips never end, they only begin. “What I can tell you is that every trip, in the beginning, was a road trip,” says Leslie Kendall, Chief Historian at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. “Anything could happen. You were never guaranteed to get where you were going, and so road trips are about the journey, not the destination. Ideally they allow you to experience America at your own pace, at ground level, with the top down and with people you love.”

SUMMER 2020

America The first known roads were found near Jericho and date to 6000 BCE, just animal paths that humans followed. People started building roads themselves 2,000 years later, as evidenced by ancient stone-paved streets in Iraq and timber roads in England. Then came the Romans in 312 BCE with their Via Appia, Appian Way, from the Middle English word for road, wey, itself from the Sanskirt vah, which means “carry,” “go,” or “move,” according to Britannica. The Appian Way was the first 162 miles of a nearly 53,000-mile network of well-engineered highways that connected the world to Rome. Highways as the roads often were elevated roughly three feet to help with drainage and to mitigate undulations in terrain. There was the Silk Road (130 BCE to 1453), Japan’s Gokaidō “Five Highways” (1603 to 1868), a Siberian highway completed in the mid 19th century and more than 24,000 miles of Inca roads in South America, many of them paved with stones. Millions of travelers over nearly 8 millennia and yet the term “road trip” paints a distinctly American picture. The reason why has to do with Kendall’s “top down” image and a frontier culture that left trains and cowboys behind once Henry Ford’s assembly line started rolling and America started building roads.

Build It The American road trip’s evolution has roots in the Good Roads Movement, a lobbying effort between the late 1800s and the 1920s to get the U.S. government into the business of road improvement—and in fact roads at the time were godawful, especially in-between cities. Of his 1909 car trip in Wyoming, one early motorist later reflected: “Roads? Yes. The state had plenty of roads, such as they were, but most of them for long and frequent stretches were worse than none. Deep ruts; high centers, rocks, loose and solid; steep grades; washouts or gullies; stumps; sage brush roots; unbridged streams; sand; alkali dust; gumbo; and plain mud were some of the more common abominations.” And so it was across the country. “It used to be that if you were going 20 miles you had to have a spare tire,” says Bob Toth, Director of Industry Relations for Goodyear, a company that began operations in 1898. “On a road trip you had to carry two tires minimum, and really as many spare tires as you could, otherwise you were going to be stranded.” Tires weren’t the half of it. Vol. 1 of Motoring West: Automobile Pioneers 1900-1909 quotes various early guides as recommending drivers bring items such as (but not limited to) extra food and warm clothing; an evaporative water bag; an axe; shovel; 100 feet of rope; a three-foot iron pin and a block and tackle; extra electric light bulbs; spark plugs; tire patches; a fire extinguisher; a supply of annealed

KINGDOM 49

Buick Roadster driving then stuck in upstate New York, 1909; roadside refreshment on the Lincoln Hwy, San Francisco, 1934; [opposite] Goodyear Wingfoot Express caravan on the Lincoln Hwy, 1918

wire; a pair of side-cutting pliers; tent; duffle bags; a gasoline stove; aluminum kettles; a coffee pot; and (because you can never have enough) tape. The Good Roads Movement sought to take some of the adventure out of motoring, or at least lessen the pain. Perhaps ironically it was founded mostly by bicyclists, who championed improved roads via demonstrations, conventions and pressure on political candidates. There was even a Good Roads Magazine with a circulation of 1 million, but the cyclists were pushed to the side once the car crowd arrived, the latter’s superior transit potential immediately obvious to anyone within earshot of a combustion engine— and earshot was as close as many Americans got at the time. Cars were wildly expensive, as was maintaining them, especially given the dearth of filling stations and garages outside of metro areas. But then along came Henry Ford and his moving assembly line, and everything changed. When the Ford Model T debuted in 1908 it cost just over $23,000 (in 2019 money), roughly 18 months of an average salary. But by 1925 a new “tin Lizzy” (as they were called) could be had for $3,790, just three months’ average salary, because of improved production efficiencies and volume. By 1918 half of the cars in the United States were Model Ts, with a total of 16.5 million sold before the model was phased out in 1927.

With the Model T the middle class finally had their cars; now they just needed Good Roads—and those, to use a terrible pun, were just around the corner.

On the Road Thanks to the efforts of the Good Roads crowd and to the obvious need for better roads, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Aid Road Act of 1916, getting government into the roads business. By then, the Lincoln Highway and Dixie Highway had opened, in 1913 and 1915 respectively. Both backed by Carl G. Fisher, an early auto industry champion and founder of Indianapolis Motor Speedway (among other things), the former connected Times Square in New York City with Lincoln Park in San Francisco while the latter connected Miami to Canada. Though both were important, it was a different road that would capture the country’s—and even the world’s—imagination: U.S. Route 66. Running from downtown Chicago to Santa Monica, California, Route 66 opened in 1926 and was instantly popular, joining many farms and small towns with metropolitan areas for the first time. Due to its timing it became the road of the Great Depression, the “Mother Road” of Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath that delivered desperate families out of the Dust Bowl and to the West Coast. It offered hope and adventure in the

It used to be that if you were going 20 miles you had to have a spare tire —more if you were traveling further SUMMER 2020

Post Office in Watkins, Iowa, on the historic Lincoln Highway, 1992; boy on concrete rabbit in Joseph City, AZ, 1958; Tomahawk Trading Post near Albuquerque, NM, 1963, both on Route 66

Experiences and wonders were out there, not at home, and so for the first time in America, the road was a destination

KINGDOM 49

same trip, and perhaps that is one of the reasons why it became so beloved. But if the migrants and refugees were focused on getting to their destinations, somewhere along the way the road became more than a means to an end—it became an experience and then, in some senses, it became a movement. In delivering rural Americans to big cities and freeing urbanites into the wilds, Route 66 created an entirely new demographic of those who traveled its 2,448 miles. No matter their backgrounds or economic situations, Route 66 travelers all could discover their country anew, or for the first time. More importantly, they all were having shared experiences. The Meteor Crater and Petrified Forest in Arizona; Brush Creek Bridge in Kansas; the art deco U-Drop Inn Café in Texas and so many other points of interest, some natural and some quite unnatural. Neon signs, giant balls of yarn, hotels comprised of wigwams and an everchanging landscape out the windows—there was so much to see. And so, for the first time, “the road” was a destination. This notion really landed after WWII, when a generation of GIs came home in search of new adventures. They found them on the road, which now had a soundtrack as well. (Get Your Kicks on) Route 66 was released by Nat King Cole in 1946 and was an instant hit on the Billboard charts, charting again the same year in a version by Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters. Songwriter Bobby Troup had written the piece during a 10-day road trip on the title highway and hardly could have imagined it would go on to be covered by such artists as Chuck Berry, the Rolling Stones, punk band The Cramps and electronic group Depeche Mode, among many others. And if the song or others like it didn’t compel one to hit the highway, Jack Kerouac’s seminal work, On the Road, probably did. Published in 1957, it documented cross-country road trips Kerouac had taken with friends in the early 1950s, and with pronouncements such as “the road is life,” On the Road was the journey motif redefined by America. No longer did heroes have to go after a specific objective to find honor, revelation or redemption. Kerouac and the Beat Generation said it was enough simply to go, that the epiphanies would come, and that direction wasn’t the point. It might have been the only option for a restless people who, after a century of moving west, finally had hit the Pacific Ocean. Bob Dylan said On the Road “changed my life like it changed everyone else’s,” but there were other inspirations as well. Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley in Search of America came in 1962. Songs like Roger Miller’s King of the Road (1965) and Simon & Garfunkel’s America (1967); and the movie Easy Rider in 1969. A popular Route 66 TV series ran from 1960-64, with two restless youths finding adventure on the road, and since then there’s been no shortage of road trips in media. But as for the road trip itself... Top down, wind in your hair, turn up the radio, put down the pedal, and the whole thing is so American, so rock ’n’ roll romantic, that you just knew it couldn’t last.

Downshift Right as the road trip was hitting its stride, its golden age ended. President Dwight D. Eisenhower had authorized the creation of America’s Interstate Highway System in 1956, a year before On the Road was published, and whether or not anyone saw it at the time it marked a downshift in the road trip’s inevitability. The new system was about being able to move military equipment with straight-line efficiency across the country. The journey was a necessary evil, and so roads like Route 66 were absorbed and all but disappeared, the small towns and farms through which they passed mostly left alone again, their boom businesses mostly shuttered. A few originals remain, like the Blue Swallow Motel in Tucumcari, New Mexico. It opened in 1939 and still welcomes travelers today to its charming rooms with attached garages. On the Lincoln Highway as well, there are monuments and old attractions, diners and such still there to be discovered, but fewer people today take the time. “You think of a 1922 Studebaker or something like that,” Kendall says. “You are going to have an adventure, it will break down, you will have interesting problems. Hopefully you turned that ordeal into an adventure and learned a little something. It was about seeing the sights, seeing the desert—look at the saguaro cactus, look at the other desert plants. Then go through the heart of America and look at the wheat wave back and forth in the breeze, go a little farther north and you experience lakes, different terrain, different foliage, doing it at your own pace and with whom you want. “Hopefully you don’t get killed along the way or wreck or something like that. It’s about the adventure, but today it’s less so. People have road trips, but you’re essentially in your isolation chamber on wheels, windows rolled up. Convertibles aren’t practical anymore; people go too fast for it to be fun. It’s one thing to have the wind in your hair, another to be beaten to death by your hairdo. You think of cruise control or autonomous vehicles, what’s coming; you watch the world go by at 60, 70, 80 miles per hour and you just can’t wait to get where you’re going. It’s a little bland.” Steven Hileman agrees. The VP of Marketing for the TOGO Group and the Roadtrippers app says his company is trying to resurrect the classic road trip—using the same technology others might blame for helping to kill it. “Roadtrippers was founded based on this idea of ‘The Great American Road Trip’—Route 66, really,” says Hileman, with his company dedicated to creating “the leading technology platform for road-based travel and outdoor tourism.” Plot your next road trip into Roadtrippers and it will highlight points of interest, some quite obscure, along the way. “All of the amazing stories of Route 66, the small towns and interesting things to do along the route… We’ll show you where they are and how to get there. So many

SUMMER 2020

Large concrete bull in Iowa on the historic Lincoln Highway (1992); I-44 in St. Louis in 1967, originally part of Route 66

of today’s mapping and navigation solutions are optimized to get you somewhere as efficiently as possible—that’s the antithesis of a road trip from our perspective. Sometimes we say that Roadtrippers makes your trip longer. We’re helping you have an amazing trip, not an efficient trip.” More than just helping travelers to find many of the classic road trip stops, the people at TOGO are considering if those stops can be transformed, perhaps into charging oases for electric vehicles, not only saving the stops from extinction but also elevating them past their original purpose as roadside curiosities. “Think about the ability to one day create charging stations around points of interest like The World’s Largest Thimble or the Longerberger Basket Headquarters [a giant basket]. You need between 15 and 45 minutes to charge an electric vehicle, depending on your needs. Pop up electric charging stations in front of these sites, add dining and facilities, and suddenly the future of vehicle refueling is actually a series of micro-experiences scattered all over the U.S.” Looking further down the road (sorry), Hileman wonders if the road trip could come to define how we live, not just how we travel, with RVs such as the iconic Airstream—“maybe the ultimate road trip vehicle”— effectively making the road trip a lifestyle. “It’s a little bit chaotic but possible, right?” he says. “There’s actually a growing movement of nomadic folks today, and yes you’ve always had nomadic people, even going back to 1970s’ songs about ‘the guy living in a van down by the river,’ you always had that group, but it was particularly painful from a lifestyle perspective. There are more conveniences to that now, a lot more that technology enables. You can work from anywhere, so why not? I’ll always believe that there’s a certain section of the population that is willing to be explorers 100 percent of the time.”

KINGDOM 49

Finally For anyone who’s taken one, road trips linger, their miles are traveled over and over long after the engine is shut off, for a lifetime even. Perhaps they are the American mantra, the American meditation. Once a consequence, then a purpose, their future likely will be more about awareness than motion for, depending on one’s vehicle of choice, travel itself no longer guarantees adventure. But for those who keep the windows down, the road trip remains the best way to find the country, and perhaps yourself—at your own pace, with people you love or alone, top down, the wind in your hair. “We exist for experiences, we don’t exist just to exist,” Kendall says. “And it’s not that everyone is hedonistic, but we want to have good experiences and we have a whole lifetime to accumulate them. That’s why people travel, and this is a way to do it. As long as you don’t die or get arrested and you end up with a good story, it was all worth it.”

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On the Bag

Lee Trevino [left] swaps roles with caddie Herman Mitchell in 1981

KINGDOM 49

FEATURE Caddies

Golf’s great tapestry would be void of much color were it not for the caddies. Many of the greatest players of all time would never have lifted a golf club had they not been attracted to the sport to earn their first dollars caddying. It has become a profession today that can be lucrative to a few, yet all the while the grassroots of caddying are being left in the shade

t is not a point of history to relay to your teenage children and grandchildren if they are aspiring golfers, but neither Ben Hogan nor Byron Nelson finished high school. Hogan left Central (Paschal) High in Fort Worth early and on the other side of town, Nelson ducked out of Poly High without a diploma. But they still gained an education, on the golf course at Glen Gardens Country Club, where they had both caddied and played from the age of 13, in the late 1920s. Hogan and Nelson were contrasting personalities but they grew up together at Glen Garden where their games were honed in the furnace of their rivalry, firing each other on, and where they went at each other in the annual caddie tournaments. Without wishing it to become a theme, Lee Trevino didn’t finish high school either. A difficult and deprived childhood saw Trevino picking cotton in Texas fields from the age of five, and he started caddying at Glen Lakes Country Club in Dallas (no relation to Glen Gardens) pretty much as soon as he could carry a bag without it dragging on the ground behind him, aged eight. The caddie master there was called “Cryin’ Jesse” and he took Trevino under his wing.

“Always tell the player that he’s swinging good, make an excuse for him, keep him positive,” says Trevino on caddying for club golfers. “Just get in the game with him, give him a little information.” Jaime Diaz once wrote of Trevino on ESPN.com that, “No golfer has ever come farther on industriousness and grit”. Trevino won six major titles and it is anyone’s guess how many more he could have won had his back not been injured by a lightning strike in the 1975 Western Open. Late in Trevino’s career he forged a close relationship with his caddie Herman Mitchell, who carried Trevino’s bag from 1977 until the mid-‘90s, when Mitchell’s health began to fail. Mitchell once admitted that he wasn’t sure how much money he made from carrying Trevino’s bag. Trevino paid the money into Mitchell’s bank account and Mitchell knew it was there. “That’s the kind of friend he is,” said Mitchell. “I think me and Lee are as close as any caddie and player have been in the history of golf. He’s better to me than I am to myself. I love him like a brother.” Not one to forget his own roots, Trevino continued to support Mitchell until his death in 2004. Arnold Palmer was eight years older than Trevino and when Palmer was 12, in 1941, the United States entered the Second World War. “The supply of local labor was so diminished that there [was] no shortage of jobs around the golf course my father wanted me to do,” wrote Palmer in his great

SUMMER 2020

Golfers and caddies at Royal Portrush [left]; Angus Hay and his golfer Joakim Lagergren [right] on the 17th, the “Road Hole”, the Old Course, St Andrews in the 2019 Alfred Dunhill Links Championship

autobiography, A Golfer’s Life, in recalling his childhood at Latrobe country Club in western Pennsylvania, where his father Deacon was the boss. “In the summers I worked at the golf course full-time, days that started before dawn and ended after dark, cutting fairways with the gang mowers and greens with a push mower in the morning, then working in the pro shop in the afternoons. I also served as the club’s caddie master and often caddied for the members myself.” Palmer would earn a quarter for 18 holes (and one lady member would pay him a nickel for hitting her ball over a particular ditch) and it meant he could play against the other caddies on Mondays when the course was closed to members. It got his game sharp in a hurry and even though he won the annual caddie championship five years in a row from the age of 11, Palmer’s father Deacon never let the young buck take the trophy home. Palmer stewed over that for years. Deacon once admitted that his son was the worst hire he ever made, because if the pro shop and golf course was quiet Palmer would run down to the first tee to hit balls. There was a slot machine in the pro shop too, and Palmer would “borrow” dimes from the pro shop till when no-one was looking to play the machine. “Once, to my complete astonishment and sudden horror, I hit the jackpot and $20 of dimes flooded out,” admitted Palmer. “I waited nearly 40 years to tell my father this story, and he was not too pleased to hear it even then.” In Germany a generation later, Bernhard Langer was eight years old, like Trevino, when he started caddying at Augsburg Golf Club, a five-mile cycle ride from home. In Germany in the late sixties and early seventies golf was far out on the sporting fringe. Langer was drawn by the opportunity to make pocket money as a caddie and his older brother Erwin showed him the ropes. The future Masters

KINGDOM 49

champ and Ryder Cup star would caddie and practice every day after school, all weekend, and in the summer vacations he would sometimes camp near the golf course to save the daily cycle commute. Notorious for his attention to detail as an adult, Langer showed the same commitment to caddying and gained the nickname “Adlerauge”, meaning “Eagle Eye”. The Augsburg caddies were allowed on the practice ground when it was empty and they shared a 2-wood, 3-iron, 7-iron and a bent putter given to them by a member. You learn how to strike a golf ball when splashing out of a bunker with a seven-iron, clubface opened wide. It took four years of caddying before Langer, a bricklayer’s son, could afford his own clubs. The only instruction he had received by the age of 14 was from a sequence of eight pictures of Jack Nicklaus’ swing, stuck up on the wall of the caddie shack, but it didn’t stop Langer from finishing second in the caddies tournament with a 73. As an aside, soon after that Langer sat in front of a local careers advisor and told him he wanted to become a golf professional. There were hardly any German professionals at all at this time—the one at Augsburg was a Trinidadian import—let alone any German role models on tour. The advisor said to Langer: “I have never heard of that [profession],” and walked out to see if the department had any information on being a golf pro. A few minutes later the advisor returned and said to Langer, “There is no such thing. Find something else to do.” Thankfully, Langer’s stubborn streak was well developed at a young age. Many of the game’s greatest players emerged from the caddy shack and there is an organic quality about kids earning their first quarters and Deutsche Marks on the golf course—or Euros and crumpled Abe Lincolns in today’s

FARRELL’S CADDIE

John Updike’s take on Scottish caddies in “Farrell’s caddie”, as first published in the New Yorker (1991): Hunched little men in billed tweed caps and rubberized rain suits, they huddled in the misty gloom as the morning foursomes got organized, and reclustered after lunch, muttering as unintelligibly as sparrows, for the day’s second 18.

money. Carrying an adult’s golf bag is hard work for a kid, when they have to keep up while also raking bunkers, tracking down wayward tee shots and keeping the clubs clean. Young caddies learn manners in no time when a tip is on the line and they pick-up course management too. All that sweat stokes the desire to be the one striking the golf balls, rather than just finding and polishing them, and to one day show the old fogeys how it’s done. Those shadowy old caddie shacks, stocked with dog-eared golf magazines and some other types of magazines, are occupied by electric cart generators these days. “Golf clubs selling cart hire on top of every green fee has killed caddie programs,” was the blunt assessment of Tiger Woods in an interview with Kingdom magazine in 2014. “Young kids who want to make some money over the summer can no longer go and caddie and get introduced to the game of golf like they used to. When I was growing up I caddied in every mini tour event that I could; we’d ‘show up, keep up and shut up!’ The golf cart has changed that part of golf culture.” Added Palmer in one of his regular Kingdom interviews: “Caddies have always been a very important part of the game. I learned so much from growing up being a caddie here at Latrobe. You learn how the game is played and how to behave on a golf course.” In terms of managing a golf course, caddies were an inefficient factor where the hassle out-weighed the profit. Golf carts, on the other hand, are never late, they never fall out of line, they are genuinely low maintenance, they don’t expect tips and they bring in upwards from $25 a round. Easy money. Out the gate went personality, tradition and community spirit, and in came profit and efficiency. Deacon Palmer never liked the idea of cart tracks on his beloved golf course but he couldn’t halt the rise of their popularity.

The caddies would build damns along the Swilcan Burn to deepen the water and increase the rate of lost balls SCOTTISH ROOTS

Ever since golfers have trodden the links, so have caddies. The gentleman golfers of the mid-19th century in Scotland didn’t have golf bags and were happy to part with a couple of coins to pay a local boy for carrying his clubs, and so the caddying craft evolved from there. The business of re-selling lost-and-found golf balls dates right back to these times too, and the young caddies of St Andrews would trawl the Swilcan Burn to recover the relatively expensive and handmade feathery balls, and then the more durable gutta percha golf balls that succeeded them. Entrepreneurial caddies were known for muddying streams as they “searched” for balls to ensure they could trick golfers into thinking it was gone for good. When Old Tom Morris served as Links Superintendent in the late 19th century he would occasionally need to admonish the mischievous caddies for trying to build damns along the Swilcan Burn, so as to deepen the water and increase the rate of lost balls they could retrieve. It’s a far cry from caddying on the St Andrews Links more than a century later. Angus Hay, from Cupar, near St Andrews, is a caddie on the European Tour today, yet begun as a trainee at the Home of Golf at the age of 17 and he didn’t have to concern himself with re-selling lost balls.

SUMMER 2020

ON ARNIE’S BAG

Cori Britt caddies for Arnold Palmer in the Par 3 Contest before the 2013 Masters at Augusta National

“The first incentive to caddying was the money,” admits Hay, who currently carries for Sweden’s Joakim Lagergren. “It is quite motivating when you can earn upwards of £150 a day, cash in hand [or $190 at current exchange rate]. As a 17-year-old that was a lot of money. You would work two rounds a day and take a fee of £40 per round but if you did a good job you would often get tipped well. It was luck of the draw each day.” In the Scottish off-season, Hay spent a couple of winters caddying at Old Collier Golf Club in Naples, Florida, and at other local high-end clubs that persevered with caddie programs, and hooked up with former PGA Tour golfer Mark Lye, who needed a part-time caddie for senior tour and local tournament appearances. Hay was fast-tracked through the ranks at St Andrews and Lye picked him from a squad of caddies at Old Collier where Lye was membership director, so there must be something about him that works. “People say about me that I am always in the same mood,” admits Hay, “whether we are five over par and missing the cut or 15 under par and in with a chance of winning. I try to stay level-headed and not to get ahead of ourselves. The caddie has to be the same as a golfer in that regard, taking one shot at a time. If you start thinking ahead too much a tournament can get away from you. “Certainly compared to 15 years ago, caddies are becoming a lot more professional. There is a lot less drinking on tour than there was and you don’t get caddies

KINGDOM 49

Cori Britt, former vice-president at Arnold Palmer Enterprises, tells Kingdom what it was like to be on the bag for his long-time boss Aged 12 to 16 I caddied at Latrobe Country Club, and then the next time I carried a bag was when I was 25, at the Bay Hill Invitational in 1999. By now I was working for Arnold Palmer in his executive offices. Arnold was considering who would caddie for him so I offered my services. He said: “I’m going to need a caddie for Bay Hill and then for Augusta so you’ve got to do both”. At Bay Hill, the admiration of the crowds for Arnold was something else. I also remember from the practice round that Arnold had about 25 clubs in the bag. It felt twice as heavy. He’d rotate, try different drivers, different putters, extra wedges. The priority in my mind was not to do anything to embarrass Arnold, but he was great and he coached me through. On the tee I would hand him the driver but otherwise he told me not to hand him clubs. Pulling the club was part of his process. On shot yardages he said: “If you give me a number, make sure the number’s right. If you don’t know it, don’t be afraid to say you don’t know it; I can eyeball it. But you’re going to do worse for me if you give me a bad number as opposed to no number at all.” On club selection I would mainly try to give him confidence in his pick. “Is this a 6?” he might ask. For Arnold Palmer? “Of course it’s a 6. That’s a perfect 6.” Just walking on those grounds at Augusta National in caddie uniform with Arnold was amazing. I remember distinctly on the second hole that Arnold pulled out a wedge and I’d forgotten to wipe the club from his warm-up; it had grass in the grooves. Arnold stood over his shot, saw the clubface, walked back and wiped it off. He just gave me a wink and I never made that mistake again. Arnold’s lessons were simple and often punctuated with a smile and a wink. In the Senior Open in Des Moines we were debating a par-3 over water and he grabbed a 5-iron. I said, “That’s too much club.” Arnold said, “It’s over water!” But I said, “Look at the wind, it’s a 6.” My sister was watching on TV and she later told me that the commentator said something like, “Arnold and his caddie can’t seem to agree on the club here…” Ultimately, Arnold went with the 6 and I was thinking, “Oh, please hit it good…” He hit a great shot close to the pin and gave me a wink. I took a risk but Arnold was hitting it good that day.

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“If a golfer says, ‘I want to take a 5-wood but it might be too much’, tell him to hit it fat”

Oli Briggs [left] and Nicolai Hojgaard at the 2020 Commercial Bank Qatar Masters

turning up to the golf course hungover anymore. I can even see the difference between now and when I started seven or eight years ago. I mean, we know how to celebrate when the time is right, don’t get me wrong, but if you are going to caddie on tour today you have got to be on time every day.” There is considerable evolution separating Hay and his fellow countryman “Mad Mac”, who caddied for England’s Max Faulkner when he won The [British] Open in 1951. Mad Mac would always wear a long raincoat with no shirt, and a pair of binoculars hung from his neck, without lenses, with which he would read putts. He would say to Faulkner: “The putt is slightly straight, sir”. Hay found his own pathway to tour caddying, whereas his friend Oli Briggs found a more circuitous route. Briggs, an Englishman, was caddying at a club in Melbourne, Australia, when Kevin Rhoderick, a former relief pitcher with the Chicago Cubs, asked him to become his caddie as Rhoderick tried his hand on mini tours. They worked together for a few months, based in Scottsdale, but when Rhoderick’s golf lost steam he left Briggs with the appetite to work on the main tours. Briggs found work with Australian journeyman Terry Pilkadaris on the Asian Tour, before finding his way back home to the European Tour, where Briggs now plies his trade. “Terry helped me more than anyone,” starts Briggs. “He has been on tour for years and he’s won countless times. We never missed a cut together and he helped get my confidence up and when I came back to Europe it helped me get a job because I had worked for Terry.” Briggs has won on the European Tour, carrying for Sweden’s Alex Bjork, and he is now working for Nicolai Hojgaard of Denmark. “To be a caddie you need a good spine on you,” says Briggs. “These pros are relentless. This is their livelihoods and their ‘everything’. You need to be very sure on the golf

KINGDOM 49

course because the pros will question everything you say. If you doubt yourself as a caddie then the pro sees that and that is when they start to worry. “If a caddie fluffs his lines you can see the golfer’s body language drop immediately. If the golfer loses confidence in their caddie they can begin to lose confidence in their own decisions.” The best club caddies can find their way onto the tours these days, where there is a lot of money to be made by a fortunate few. It is often reported that at the height of Tiger Woods’ playing career, his (former) caddie Steve Williams was the top-earning sportsman in New Zealand, his homeland, as he would earn up to 10 percent of Woods’ prize money. There are less opportunities for caddies to make a living working at clubs in the 21st century and the sport is poorer for it, even if the clubs are making more from carts. Rocco J. Carbone is in his early 70s now and retired, but he was a renowned caddie at Pine Valley GC, New Jersey, for 36 years. He even had a business card that read: “Wind and Yardage Consultant”. Rocco is old school and didn’t always worry about propping up his golfer’s confidence. According to Rocco when we called him recently: “If a golfer says, ‘I want to take a 5-wood but it might be too much’, tell him to hit it fat.” Rocco carried the bags of some of America’s highest rollers at Pine Valley, including Michael Jordan. “Michael Jordan, really nice guy,” shares Rocco. “Let me tell you something; he said he was going to play on the seniors tour but I had more chance of dunking a basketball and I’m 5-5.”

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In clinical trials, those taking Myrbetriq made fewer trips to the bathroom and had fewer leaks than those not taking Myrbetriq. Your results may vary.

USE OF MYRBETRIQ Myrbetriq® (mirabegron) is a prescription medicine for adults used to treat overactive bladder (OAB) with symptoms of urgency, frequency and leakage. IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION Myrbetriq is not for everyone. Do not take Myrbetriq if you have an allergy to mirabegron or any ingredients in Myrbetriq. Myrbetriq may cause your blood pressure to increase or make your blood pressure worse if you have a history of high blood pressure. It is recommended that your doctor check your blood pressure while you are taking Myrbetriq. Myrbetriq may increase your chances of not being able to empty your bladder. Tell your doctor right away if you have trouble emptying your bladder or you have a weak urine stream. Myrbetriq may cause allergic reactions that may be serious. If you experience swelling of the face, lips, throat or tongue, with or without difficulty breathing, stop taking Myrbetriq and tell your doctor right away. Tell your doctor about all the medicines you take including medications for overactive bladder or other medicines such as thioridazine (Mellaril™ and Mellaril-S™), flecainide (Tambocor®), propafenone (Rythmol®), digoxin (Lanoxin®) or solifenacin succinate (VESIcare®). Myrbetriq may affect the way other medicines work, and other medicines may affect how Myrbetriq works. Before taking Myrbetriq, tell your doctor if you have liver or kidney problems. The most common side effects of Myrbetriq include increased blood pressure, common cold symptoms (nasopharyngitis), dry mouth, flu symptoms, urinary tract infection, back pain, dizziness, joint pain, headache, constipation, sinus irritation, and inflammation of the bladder (cystitis). For further information, please talk to your healthcare professional and see Brief Summary of Prescribing Information for Myrbetriq® (mirabegron) on the following page. You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit www.fda.gov/medwatch or call 1-800-FDA-1088. Myrbetriq and VESIcare are registered trademarks of Astellas Pharma Inc. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. ©2019 Astellas Pharma US, Inc.

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057-3432-PM

August 2019

Myrbetriq® (mirabegron) extended-release tablets 25 mg, 50 mg Brief Summary based on FDA-approved patient labeling Read the Patient Information that comes with Myrbetriq® (mirabegron) before you start taking it and each time you get a refill. There may be new information. This summary does not take the place of talking with your doctor about your medical condition or treatment. What is Myrbetriq (meer-BEH-trick)? Myrbetriq is a prescription medication for adults used to treat the following symptoms due to a condition called overactive bladder: • Urge urinary incontinence: a strong need to urinate with leaking or wetting accidents • Urgency: a strong need to urinate right away • Frequency: urinating often It is not known if Myrbetriq is safe and effective in children. Who should not use Myrbetriq? Do not take Myrbetriq if you have an allergy to mirabegron or any of the ingredients in Myrbetriq. See the end of this summary for a complete list of ingredients in Myrbetriq. What should I tell my doctor before taking Myrbetriq? Before you take Myrbetriq, tell your doctor about all of your medical conditions, including if you: • have liver problems or kidney problems • have very high uncontrolled blood pressure • have trouble emptying your bladder or you have a weak urine stream • are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. It is not known if Myrbetriq will harm your unborn baby. Talk to your doctor if you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. • are breastfeeding or plan to breastfeed. It is not known if Myrbetriq passes into your breast milk. Talk to your doctor about the best way to feed your baby if you take Myrbetriq. Tell your doctor about all the medicines you take, including prescription and over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements. Myrbetriq may affect the way other medicines work, and other medicines may affect how Myrbetriq works. Tell your doctor if you take: • thioridazine (Mellaril™ or Mellaril-S™) • flecainide (Tambocor®) • propafenone (Rythmol®) • digoxin (Lanoxin®) • solifenacin succinate (VESIcare®) How should I take Myrbetriq? • Take Myrbetriq exactly as your doctor tells you to take it. • You should take 1 Myrbetriq tablet 1 time a day. • You should take Myrbetriq with water and swallow the tablet whole. • Do not chew, break, or crush the tablet. • You can take Myrbetriq with or without food. • If you miss a dose of Myrbetriq, begin taking Myrbetriq again the next day. Do not take 2 doses of Myrbetriq the same day. • If you take too much Myrbetriq, call your doctor or go to the nearest hospital emergency room right away. What are the possible side effects of Myrbetriq? Myrbetriq may cause serious side effects including: • increased blood pressure. Myrbetriq may cause your blood pressure to increase or make your blood pressure worse if you have a history of high blood pressure. It is recommended that your doctor check your blood pressure while you are taking Myrbetriq. • inability to empty your bladder (urinary retention). Myrbetriq may increase your chances of not being able to empty your bladder if you have bladder outlet obstruction or if you are taking other medicines to treat overactive bladder. Tell your doctor right away if you are unable to empty your bladder.

• angioedema. Myrbetriq may cause an allergic reaction with swelling of the lips, face, tongue, throat with or without difficulty breathing. Stop using Myrbetriq and tell your doctor right away. The most common side effects of Myrbetriq include: • increased blood pressure

• dizziness

• common cold symptoms (nasopharyngitis)

• joint pain

• dry mouth

• headache

• flu symptoms

• constipation

• urinary tract infection

• sinus (sinus irritation)

• back pain

• inflammation of the bladder (cystitis)

Tell your doctor if you have any side effect that bothers you or that does not go away or if you have swelling of the face, lips, tongue, or throat, hives, skin rash or itching while taking Myrbetriq. These are not all the possible side effects of Myrbetriq. Call your doctor for medical advice about side effects. You may report side effects to the FDA at 1-800-FDA-1088. How should I store Myrbetriq? • Store Myrbetriq between 59°F to 86°F (15°C to 30°C). Keep the bottle closed. • Safely throw away medicine that is out of date or no longer needed. Keep Myrbetriq and all medicines out of the reach of children. General information about the safe and effective use of Myrbetriq Medicines are sometimes prescribed for purposes other than those listed in the Patient Information leaflet. Do not use Myrbetriq for a condition for which it was not prescribed. Do not give Myrbetriq to other people, even if they have the same symptoms you have. It may harm them. You can ask your doctor or pharmacist for information about Myrbetriq that is written for health professionals. For more information, visit www.Myrbetriq.com or call (800) 727-7003. What are the ingredients in Myrbetriq? Active ingredient: mirabegron Inactive ingredients: polyethylene oxide, polyethylene glycol, hydroxypropyl cellulose, butylated hydroxytoluene, magnesium stearate, hypromellose, yellow ferric oxide and red ferric oxide (25 mg Myrbetriq tablet only). What is overactive bladder? Overactive bladder occurs when you cannot control your bladder contractions. When these muscle contractions happen too often or cannot be controlled, you can get symptoms of overactive bladder, which are urinary frequency, urinary urgency, and urinary incontinence (leakage). Marketed and Distributed by: Astellas Pharma US, Inc. Northbrook, Illinois 60062 Myrbetriq® is a registered trademark of Astellas Pharma Inc. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. ©2012 - 2018 Astellas Pharma US, Inc. Revised: April 2018 206813-MRVS-BRFS 057-3385-PM

PROFILE Inspiration

INSPIRING GAME You’ve heard the stories a million times, and they continue to be told: Ben Hogan’s comeback from a car crash; Arnold Palmer’s selfless philanthropy and good character; Bobby Jones landing at Normandy at the age of 40; Byron Nelson’s gentlemanly demeanor; Walter Hagen’s workingclass beginnings; Charlie Sifford breaking barriers; and there are so many more. But while lauding history’s best is important, it’s no less important to recognize the inspiring stories happening now. There are many pro golfers deserving of recognition, but as we’re limited by space in this American issue here are four incredible people currently on course, each of them an American story and just one more reason we love this game so much

KINGDOM 49

GARY WOODLAND AMERICAN HEART

n January 29, 2019, on the iconic par-3 No.16 “Coliseum” at TPC Scottsdale, in a practice round at the Waste Management Phoenix Open, Gary Woodland and Matt Kuchar were joined by Amy Bockerstette. The then-20-year-old golfer is the first person with Down syndrome to receive an athletic scholarship for college, and as a representative of Special Olympics Arizona she’d been invited to play the hole with the pros. Unexpectedly affecting, her performance has become part of golf history: Amy struck a solid drive that fell into a greenside bunker, she played out of the trap with striking composure, and then, uttering her now iconic “I got this” under the mayhem of the No.16 crowd, she rolled in an 8-foot putt for par. Woodland (and everyone else there) was overwhelmed, but it’s what he did next that transformed what could have been just a viral video—more than 40 million views so far, making it the PGA Tour’s most engaged video—into a

meaningful effect. He kept in touch with Amy and, when he won the 2019 U.S. Open he FaceTimed her and told her that her “I got this” had inspired him to victory. Later he joined Amy on the Today show, handed her the U.S. Open trophy and told her, “We won this together.” The attention Woodland drew then and the support he’s shown since to Amy has ensured that the incredible girl’s story has had far-reaching impacts, according to her dad, Joe Bockerstette, who told Forbes magazine that other parents of kids with Down syndrome have reached out after hearing Amy’s story. Joe said it’s changed the way others view people who live with the genetic disorder. Beyond that, Amy and her family have used her newfound fame as a springboard to create the I Got This Foundation, promoting golf instruction and playing opportunities for people with Down syndrome and other intellectual disabilities, meaning that Woodland’s amplification of Amy’s determination and achievements has inspired millions.

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T O N Y F I N AU AMERICAN STORY

ot all tour pros are the products of country clubs, certainly, but by any measure Tony Finau’s journey to a PGA Tour card is a remarkable story, perhaps especially in the modern era. Born to mom Ravena and dad Kelepi, Tony was one of seven children in the Finau family. Growing up in Salt Lake City’s Rose Park neighborhood (described as an “up and coming neighborhood” by a number of area realtors) Finau told Kingdom that basketball was the local sport of choice—but then Tiger Woods happened. “The 1997 Masters kind of changed everything for me,” Finau told us last year. “That is the reason I started playing golf. The ’97 Masters drew my eyes to the game. It was very special for my dad, me and my brother [Gipper] to see someone like Tiger win, not only with how classy he was and with what he brought to the game, but to see that guy have the same skin color as ours. It was very meaningful because at that moment we realized that maybe we could have a place in this game.” Tony’s dad, a baggage handler at the nearby airport, set up a mattress down the center of the family’s garage; Tony would hit balls into one side while Gipper hit into the other. Kelepi also sourced clubs for the boys, always keeping an eye out at local garage sales. Range practice was a luxury, but occasionally they’d have the money for a bucket of balls and get to see their ball flight, and both turned out to

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be gifted golfers. The Finau family has Polynesian heritage. Kelepi was born in Tonga while Ravena’s parents were from Tonga and Samoa, and Ravena would organize traditional Polynesian celebrations—luaus—at which Tony and Gipper would perform dances with flaming knives to raise money to fund trips to golf tournaments. “We would hold the luaus once or twice a year and they would help to fund all the travel and tournaments,” Finau explained. “It was a cool thing and serves as testament to my parents: they had two boys who wanted to play golf and they put a lot of time and resources into enabling us to pursue our dreams.” In 2018 Tony slipped into the world’s Top 10 for the first time during the FedEx Cup Playoffs. He stood out as one of the few bright spots in Paris on the American Ryder Cup team, and, with a nod to Tiger’s inspiration in 1997, he finished in the Top 10 in his Masters debut last year—after dislocating his ankle during an ace celebration in the par-3 contest. It was a long way from the luaus and the garage mattress, and with a bright future ahead Tony Finau is an inspiration to countless other kids who dare to dream. “When I look back, we didn’t have the money to play golf,” he said. “Golf is an expensive game and we came from very humble beginnings. Golf shouldn’t have been an option for us but our parents sacrificed quite a bit and I am always humbled by the thought of what they did for us.”

PAU L A C R E A M E R AMERICAN PATRIOT

nown as the “Pink Panther” for her colorful fashions, Paula Creamer is also a tough competitor, taking 12 tournaments, with 10 LPGA Tour events and a major, the 2010 U.S. Women’s Open. Beyond being stylishly driven to win, Creamer is also an inspiring ambassador for the country, a patriot who’s worn an American flag pin on her shirt over her heart since the day she turned pro. As she told LPGA.com in 2017, “My cousin is a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Marines and he has deployed several times. He and his wife have four boys. Part of the reason I’m so passionate about the military is I see how hard they work and how strong they all are.” A quick winner with two victories in her first year on Tour (2005), Creamer became the first LPGA Tour rookie to qualify for the U.S. Solheim Cup team. During the team’s honorary visit to the White House, they were asked if they wanted to visit Walter Reed Medical Center, the first stop for all casualties returning home from conflict. She accepted, and later met with soldiers her own age whose lives had been completely upturned. “I think I saw a different person when she returned from the 2005 U.S. Solheim Cup Team’s visit to the White House,” her father, a retired U.S. Navy Captain, told LPGA. com. “She visited dozens of soldiers, witnessing first-hand the horrors and result of war.”

Her time at Walter Reed compelled Creamer to double down on her advocacy on behalf of military families. She’s regularly gone out of her way to visit bases and hospitals near LPGA Tour events, and she often invites military families inside the ropes with her during practice rounds. In 2008 she also started the Paula Creamer Foundation to help active, reserve and retired military and their families with educational, emotional and financial support. “I have the utmost respect for these men and women who serve our country and I want them to know they aren’t forgotten,” Creamer told LPGA.com. “It’s very hard on these families when they’re apart. I hope they can feel the passion I have to try to make their lives easier in any way I can.” She’s trained with new recruits, been onboard a nuclear submarine, flown with the Navy Blue Angeles and the Air Force Thunderbirds, parachuted with Special Forces and done far more than the average golf fan might realize to support our country’s bravest. And every time she tees it up in the Solheim Cup, just as she did her rookie year, she’s playing for far more than just the win. As she told CNN some years ago: “I’m very patriotic. I love wearing red, white and blue, and when you’re sitting on the first tee and you hear ‘Paula Creamer representing the United States’ it gives me chills. You’re part of a team, you’re playing for your country, there’s no money on the line and I just love it.”

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Originated for friends, by Tommy Dewar in New York, 1892

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e’s not a pro golfer, but when we’re thinking of inspiring people in the game it’s hard not to mention Lt. Col. Dan Rooney, founder of the Folds of Honor Foundation. As the F-16 fighter pilot told Kingdom, he was returning home from his second tour of duty in Iraq when the true cost of sacrifice hit him. When the flight landed, the captain asked passengers to respectfully remain seated as the remains of Corporal Brock Bucklin were carried from the plane. Rooney watched as Bucklin’s brother walked alongside the flag-covered casket to join his family, including the deceased’s young son, but then he noticed that nearly half of the passengers had ignored the captain’s request and had deboarded. The result was a commitment by Rooney to be a living reminder that the sacrifices of those who preserve the freedoms we all enjoy should not be taken for granted. He founded Folds of Honor Foundation, granting scholarships to children of fallen and disabled soldiers so that the next generation can move forward and honor their family member’s legacy. Since 2007 Folds of Honor has awarded approximately 24,500 scholarships in all 50 states, including 4,500 scholarships in 2019 alone. The Foundation operates out of a headquarters at Patriot Golf Club in Oklahoma and runs Patriot Day, a joint fundraising campaign with PGA Hope hosted on Labor Day Weekend. “It’s the most dark situation you can imagine for these families,” he said, “and we are committed to be a light of hope that helps them move forward to pursue their dreams… We don’t tell them what the dream is, just that we’re committed to helping them. The sacrifices these families have made for freedom... If we’re not free, then none of this exists. Freedom is the underpinning of everything in America, and so it is our duty to take care of these families.” Foldsofhonor.org

FEATURE Putting

THE 50

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LINE

TING T U

Paul Trow writes that putting is a confluence of art, science and fortitude, but a successful putting stroke is as elusive as it is prized, no matter how much time golfers spend on the practice green, putting on a strip of carpet in the basement, receiving tuition or how much they spend on the latest game-changing putter

hey call it a game within a game. But to elite golfers it’s far more than that. It’s the difference between success and failure. In a world where everyone habitually drives 320 yards and pitches to within a few feet of the pin, only the finest of margins separates the superstar from the also-ran. That dividing line is, and always has been, the flat stick. There’s nothing new about the search for golf’s Holy Grail—a putting stroke that works. But like the biblical original, this quest remains in perpetuity both elusive to mere mortals and in the sole gift of the gods. The deities, by whose whims we must all abide, are in this case the Royal & Ancient Golf Club and the United States Golf Association. Their tablets are the Rules of Golf, and their mindset is to preserve the game’s innate difficulties. Any relief provided by advances in technology or technique is routinely cancelled out by technicality. In the 1960s, Sam Snead, though past his prime, still played superbly only to be let down time and again by his frailties on the green. The dominance then enjoyed by the Big Three—Arnold Palmer, Gary Player and Jack Nicklaus— hinged more than anything on their precocious putting jabs. After the usual preamble, these assassins would step up, take a couple of cursory glances, and pull the trigger. Pop,

the ball would jump up; thud, it would hit the back of the cup; rattle, it would drop with a swirl. Simple as that! Except for poor old Sam, such gusto was but a distant memory. During the 1966 PGA Championship at Firestone he double-hit a two-foot putt and in desperation changed his style mid-round. According to playing partner Billy Farrell: “On the very next hole, it’s Sam’s turn to putt and this time he straddles the ball, he goes croquet style.” It worked and he stuck with it for the rest of the tournament en route to a share of sixth place. After a winter of hibernation and honing, Snead began 1967 by winning the PGA Seniors’ Championship by nine strokes at PGA National and tying 10th in the Masters. But it didn’t take long for his croquet method to come under scrutiny. The USGA and the R&A met just before the Walker Cup in England and decided to outlaw it from January 1, 1968 (Rule 16-1e). Joe Dey, the USGA’s executive director at the time, said: “We felt it was the only way to eliminate the unconventional styles that have developed in putting. It was some other game—part croquet, part shuffleboard and part the posture of Mohammedan prayer.” Far from downhearted, Snead insisted: “I might be able to alter my stance and still putt my way.” And he did just that by improvising a sidesaddle stance and swinging the putter through the line towards the hole in the style of slow-motion ten-pin bowling. Aged 62, Snead putted sidesaddle to finish tied for third in the 1974 PGA Championship at Tanglewood Park. Appropriately, this feat and the implement with which it was achieved are enshrined, along with his trademark pork-pie hat, in the World Golf Hall of Fame.

THE LONG ONE

In 1995, Costantino Rocca needed a birdie on 18 in The Open to take John Daly to a play-off at St Andrews. He fluffed his second shot, leaving a 60-ft putt that had to drop. Rocca struck the ball hard and fast, down and through the “Valley of Sin” and remarkably, straight into the heart of the cup. The crowd erupted, Rocca dropped to his knees, pounded the turf in joy... only to lose the ensuing play-off.

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Interestingly, hardly any golfers, professional or amateur, emulated sidesaddle Snead, testimony perhaps due to its difficulty when attempted by ordinary mortals. The only comparable intervention by the authorities since came on January 1, 2016 with the controversial ruling against anchored putting strokes. If the idea was to banish the long putter, then this change to Rule 14-1b can only be branded a partial success. In reality, few club golfers used the method anyway, again largely because they lacked the skills. And many of the high-profile exponents of the broomhandle—think Webb Simpson, Keegan Bradley and Adam Scott—continue to use it, albeit unanchored, or so they believe and maintain. These players are still thriving on the short grass, though possibly not to the extent of half a decade ago. Inevitably, all sightings of long putters are accompanied these days by mutterings from rival competitors that anchors are far from away. The two leading lights on the Champions Tour— Bernhard Langer and Scott McCarron—similarly come under this grudging spotlight each time they are in contention. Both are adamant they have adjusted their methods and are operating within the law. Langer, just four victories shy of Hale Irwin’s record tally of 45 on the PGA Tour Champions, is surely the go-to lab rat for students of putting and its innumerable vicissitudes. In many respects, the 62-year-old is the modern equivalent of Snead. Both players struggled with the yips and overcame them through radical surgery. The difference between them is that Langer was 30 years younger than Snead when first afflicted. In his case, the slow, mossy greens on which he learned his trade in Bavaria back in the early-to-mid 1970s were the diametric opposite of the putting surfaces he would encounter on tour. At that time, a combination of Bermudagrass, creeping bentgrass and Poa annua was becoming the norm on championship greens and required a more delicate touch than a generation previously. As Langer began to rise up the world’s leaderboards the long putter wasn’t even a twinkle in the German’s piercing blue eyes but he knew that drastic measures were required if he was to putt efficiently enough to come near to fulfilling his prodigious talent. Not possessing the exquisite touch of contemporaries Ben Crenshaw and Seve Ballesteros, he would always have to rely on mechanics to narrow the gap. He knew most errors stemmed from movement in the wrists, so he turned his left arm into a rigid extension of his putter and pivoted only from the shoulders. All seemed well for a while, most emphatically in 1985 when he collected his first Green Jacket at slippery, undulating Augusta National. But the demons soon returned to haunt his otherwise immaculate game, so it was back to the drawing board. “I

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THE SHORT ONE

Doug Sanders, who died in April aged 86, had a threefooter to beat Jack Nicklaus in The Open 50 years ago. On 18, the Old Course, St Andrews in 1970, Sanders pushed the tiddler with a horrible jab and lost the playoff. He never won a major.

had to take my wrists out of the putting stroke completely. That’s why it didn’t work in the long run, because there was still movement in them,” he told me shortly after winning the Masters for a second time in 1993. “I had to do something as I couldn’t have another year like 1988.” But instead of abandoning his method, Langer turned it almost into a self-parody. His left hand crept further down the shaft and the right gripped the club and left forearm like a brace. The honeymoon didn’t last and by 1997 the broomstick had flown into Langer’s bag where it has resided ever since. To be fair to Langer, he experimented with his old left-hand-below-right method and also with the claw grip and left forearm vice, favored respectively by Phil Mickelson and Matt Kuchar, as D Day for anchoring approached, but neither worked. Despite his travails, it’s a fair bet Langer is too cultured to have ever been tempted, as the famously irascible 1958 U.S. Open champion Tommy Bolt once was, to tie his putter to the back bumper of his truck as punishment for misbehavior as he drove to the next tournament.

ARNIE’S PUTTING TIP FOR JACK

“I used to chip the ball all the time from around the green,” said Jack Nicklaus. “During my first year on tour I was playing with Arnold Palmer and I’ll never forget this: he asked me, ‘Why are you chipping that ball?’ I said, ‘I think it is the right shot to play.’ Arnold said, ‘I have always putted from off the green when I can. I always feel my worst putt will be as good as my best chip’. “Arnold was right. If you putt a ball to four feet from the hole you probably feel that was a pretty bad putt, but if you chip to within four feet, you feel like that’s a good chip. From a mental standpoint you feel you are going to get the ball closer to the hole with a putter. I’m not always trying to hole the ball from off the green although I find I hole a lot more putts from off the green than chips.”

The durable gutta percha ball triggered the arrival of ironheaded putters

FEATHERIE TOUCH

Bobby Jones [above] so loved Calamity Jane that when its face wore out he had six exact replicas made, all called Calamity Jane II. Jones won his 1930 Grand Slam with Calamity Jane II. Bernhard Langer [top left] looks as if he must have hurt his arm in 1994

From the 16th century to the 19th, golf was played with wooden-headed clubs and ‘featherie’ balls. The putter, or ‘putting cleek’, had a face fashioned from a hard wood like beech and a shaft made of ash or hazel. In 1848, the more durable gutta percha ball was introduced, made from the rubbery sap of a tropical tree, triggering the arrival of iron-headed putters that delivered improved accuracy and feel. A typical putter from the late 1800s would comprise American hickory wood shafts, grips of padded sheepskin, and thin, bladed heads made of brass. Despite gradually divergent production methods, it wasn’t until the 1930s that an individual putter acquired celebrity status—when Bobby Jones completed his ‘impregnable quadrilateral’ of Grand Slam titles in 1930 with a wand known as Calamity Jane II. Measuring 33½ inches in length with a goose-necked design, 8 degrees of loft on an offset blade and a hickory shaft, the original Calamity Jane was made in Scotland around 1900. When it became too worn, replacements were commissioned from Spalding, one of which is now on display at the Arnold Palmer Center for Golf History in Far Hills, New Jersey. Steel shafts, introduced in the late 19th century, were officially legalized by the R&A in 1929 after being made fashionable by the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII), and remain the standard fit to this day. The next R&A intervention came in 1951 with its approval of center-shafted putters. Previously, the shaft was attached close to the heel, as with all other clubs. Consequently, a variety of bent and offset shafts have since come into vogue. Seeking tempo, John Reuter, a teaching pro from Phoenix, Arizona, came up with a putter that “swung like the pendulum of a clock” in the late 1940s. Reuter’s first models,

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‘the sweet strokers,’ were adapted and given a new name: Bulls Eye. Lou Worsham won the 1951 Phoenix Open with it and a few years later Reuter teamed up with Acushnet to mass produce the Bulls Eye. Made from soft brass for feel at impact, with a fluted shaft, the Bulls Eye has stood the test of time, spawning many worthy copies along the way, including Scottish brand John Letters’ iconic Golden Goose. In 1959 in his garage in Redwood City, California, Norwegian-born engineer Karsten Solheim invented the Ping putter—named for the distinctive pinging sound it made when the ball was struck. After moving to Phoenix, he created the Anser putter in 1966 (the ‘answer’ to putting, according to his wife Louise) and soon had a hold on the market. In the 1980s, 26 of the 40 men’s Majors were won by golfers using Ping putters, and at the last count the brand had secured well over 500 tour victories. Technological advances have revolutionized all clubs over the past four decades, but with putters the changes were made almost exclusively to the head. When Jack Nicklaus won the 1986 Masters at the age of 46, he did so brandishing a Clay Long-designed MacGregor Response putter with an oversized milled head and cavity back. Not surprisingly, sales figures sprang from the previous year’s doldrums to an estimated 350,000. The next striking innovation was the Odyssey 2-ball putter from Callaway which dominated the market in the early 2000s, when balata balls reigned supreme. Like the Bulls Eye, it was much imitated. Nowadays, the market is more diverse than ever. Putters, from a generation of talents like Scottie Cameron, Bob Bettinardi and Austie Rollinson, run the gamut from conventional blades to mallets to wild-looking heads that feature a variety of attachments and inserts. These inserts are intended to deliver a soft contact and prevent the head from twisting even if the strike misses the center. Since prize-money became the main issue for tour pros, demand has rocketed for putting coaches who can deliver results—from George Low, Jr., who influenced Palmer’s methods during his prime, to modern-day luminaries like Dave Pelz and Brad Faxon. Truth is… their worlds were entirely different. Low’s mantra, having been raised on slower greens, was to keep your head down and commit to the line while Pelz and Faxon believe in tracking putts, hit with top-spin on the upstroke, on slick surfaces with borrows determined not just by topography but grain and grass type as well. In their world, there is now much more to analyze— hence the recent arrival of green-reading books replete with contours and 3D profiling. The silky strokes of U.S. Ryder Cup stars Steve Stricker and Rickie Fowler are glowing examples of the efficacy of this approach. Gary Player still relishes the halcyon days of Jabberwocky. “When I hear commentators say it was a bad

KINGDOM 49

CUP OR SAUCER?

The great Gene Sarazen, a winner of seven majors and inventor of the sand wedge, lobbied for the golf hole to be enlarged from a diameter of four inches to eight, claiming that putting carried too much influence. The bid failed.

Tiger Woods [left] and Steve Stricker practice their putting during the Ryder Cup at Medinah Country Club in 2012

putt because he jabbed it, I don’t know what to think,” he said. “It’s debatable if Tiger or Bobby Locke was the best. Locke? He was a jabber. [Billy] Casper? Big jabber! Casper had his hands fixed and he chopped it. Look at [Brandt] Snedeker. Take out the unnecessary movement. The average player? There’s so much movement in the putting stroke, they’re spaghetti wobblers. It’s still [all about] a good eye and great feel. Putting and the mind win golf tournaments.” This dogmatic view lacks the nuances enunciated by comedian and golf enthusiast Larry David. “I have four styles of putting,” admits the man behind Seinfeld. “The long putter will work for a round or two, then I move to side-saddle. That will work for a while, then I switch to a regular-length putter. Then my last resort is looking at the hole instead of the ball. You have to keep rotating the system and be ready to switch the second things stop working.” For the befogged tour pro this will obviously not do. Too much hangs on every putt and the tension seems inescapable. But perhaps David’s multi-faceted approach can at least ease the pressure on some of us, maybe even elicit a chuckle. After all, it is only a game, within a game.

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FEATURE Custom Fit

PUTTING WITH PRECISION

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Continuing our editorial focus on custom-fitting, Kingdom publisher Matthew Squire returns to London’s Precision Golf (prior to the UK’s Coronavirus lockdown, honestly) to review his putting arsenal, and yet a hot holiday romance was uncovered Pictures: T O M M I L E S

his is written in the hope that Matthew Squire’s old Evnroll ER3 WingBlade putter doesn’t read it. A jilted putter is a sad sight at the best of times, no longer snugly installed in the putter well of the golf bag but cast into the cold, dim, damp corner of the garage, left to gather cobwebs. There is pain enough without the discarded putter having to learn the sordid details of our publisher’s holiday liaison with another model, a Scotty Cameron GoLo 5—a putter past its sell-by date, out of production and part of a rental set no less. A putter cast from one golfer to the next, all chipped and marked, without a real home of its own, yet with a putter face shimmering with fine-milled, soft summer sensitivity, a clubhead built with attractive curves, beautiful balance, just the right weight and with a honeysuckle sweetspot. With the ER3 waiting at home yet without a shred of remorse, Matthew enjoyed so much fun with the rental GoLo 5 that he tried to buy it from the pro shop, but was denied. “I fell in love with the GoLo 5,” admits Matthew with brutal honesty, “but Scotty Cameron stopped making them years ago and ever since I have been searching for the next best thing.” So six-handicap Matthew and his forlorn Evnroll ER3 arrived together at Precision Golf near London for a session of analysis to see if their relationship was reparable or irretrievable.

THE PROCESS

Readers of our Spring issue may recall Kingdom’s first visit to Precision Golf, which offers a custom-fitting service akin to rolling all the tour trucks at the U.S. Open into one building. “There are very few sites that can offer our experience, our range of options and also the ability to build the clubs properly,” explains Simon Cooper, director of Precision Golf and a former tour pro on the European developmental circuits. “A good build on top of the good fitting is absolutely vital. We build every single club for our clients and then we take full ownership of the club’s performance. That way we can also know if there is a slight problem with one

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The laser treatment [left] illuminates alignment issues while CAPTO analysis appears on-screen after every stroke

component or another and we can get that rectified. We are in total control of the entire process, from fitting the golfer to providing a fully built set of clubs.” This second visit takes Matthew to Precision Golf’s indoor putting studio. Explains Cooper: “When a golfer comes in for a putter fitting we start with their existing putter. We measure its length, loft, swing weight and dead weight.” Precision Golf uses the CAPTO putting analysis system, which features a very light and compact sensor that attaches to the putter shaft without affecting swing weight. “CAPTO provides a host of measurements and essentially provides a 3D image of how the putter moves,” says Cooper. “It measures angle of attack, clubhead path, face rotation, strike point and it shows how the grip end of the putter and the clubhead are moving in relation to each other. It gives a complete picture of how the putter is delivered so we can see if a putting stroke is adding loft or taking loft away through the putt. We can focus on the data that is relevant to each golfer and display it on one of our big screens.” Then the Precision Golf professionals can recommend different putterheads and shafts. The studio has over 50 putterheads in stock and offers 50 different shaft and grip combinations, and a Club Connects system for easy interchanging of components. Adds Cooper: “If we want to isolate one particular parameter—such as head weight, hosel style, shaft weight, shaft length or grip size—then we can build putters accordingly in moments. “Ultimately we want to find out how the style of a putter effects consistency of putting stroke and delivery and we can gauge what loft and lie adjustments a golfer needs.”

A FRESH START

The Evnroll ER3 WingBlade gets a tough ride in this article but it is an excellent putter. It is almost a classic blade with heel and toe weighting, but the flare from the back of the clubhead is designed to boost stability and momentum through the putting stroke. It also features the “Sweet Face” Evnroll technology designed by the renowned Guerin Rife, with closely spaced grooves running across the clubface to expand the sweetspot and give greater consistency to off-centre strikes. Simon could identify very quickly though, that the ER3 was not set-up to Matthew’s advantage. “At 35 inches long the Evnroll ER3 was a little too heavy and a touch long for Matthew, and so pressed his elbows into his side and created a more rotated and flipped face through impact. 34 inches is a better length for Matthew; it suits his posture and set up more.” Says Matthew: “Once I had tried the 34-inch shaft I realized that I had not been getting my eyes right over the ball at set-up with the 35-inch shaft.” With slightly less weight and an inch off the shaft length, the key remaining issue with Matthew’s arcing putting stroke was to find the right toe flow. “Toe flow is how the center of mass in the clubhead reacts with the balance around the shaft,” explains Cooper, getting down to the real detail, and the truth is that when custom-fitting gets into genuine precision there is no avoiding a dose of physics. “As the golfer starts down towards the ball from the top of the backswing, the toe flow—the weight in the toe—creates a bit of a lag. It means that golfers who putt with an arc do not have to steer the putter to the ball. If there is no resistance to the toe coming back in, it is easier to flip the face left and pull putts.”

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The opposite of a ‘toe flow’ putter is ‘face balanced’, which suits golfers who keep their hands and wrists quiet in the putting stroke, and they need the putter face to return to the ball with a minimum of resistance. Matthew and his arcing putting stroke need toe flow. Scotty Cameron’s current equivalent to the old GoLo 5 is the Phantom X 5.5, which features a compact head, solid aluminum face, simple dot alignment, wide topline and tapered wings. When Matthew tried this at 34-inch length the lighter weight meant it did not pull his putting stroke inside on the way back like the ER3 did, and its toe flow boosted a more stable path. “When I tried the new Phantom X 5.5 my heart leapt!” says Matthew, as his pining for the GoLo 5 faded rapidly. “The Phantom X 5.5 is quite similar in overall size and shape to the GoLo 5 and for me it sets up and swings beautifully.” Observes Simon: “A slight toe flow and balance helped get the head tracking on a good plane back and through with the face matching the arc. With a face-balanced putter Matthew loses the feel for the face and picks up the putter away from the ball, because he is missing the weight. A light putter head saw Matthew lose natural acceleration through impact, so the slightly heavier weight of the Phantom X 5.5 enables Matthew to take the putter through the ball more efficiently and helps distance control, tempo and swing flow.” Matthew also tried the Toulon Design Atlanta Stroke Lab putter from Odyssey, which has a similar feel to the Phantom X 5.5. It is a mid-size mallet with deep, diamondmilled cross-hatch grooves on the face, while a 20-gram steel soleplate promotes the toe flow Matthew needs. A moody Charcoal Smoke finish completes a very appealing look. “The Atlanta Stroke Lab suits my arcing putting stroke and it is simply beautiful,” reports Matthew. “It swings as well as the Phantom X 5.5. In fact, I went from one to the other but it was impossible to choose between the two.” Said Simon: “The Atlanta has a little bit more toe flow because it has a shorter neck but the addition is minimal. This putter is on the stronger side of toe flow that works for him. It gave Matthew lots of feedback in terms of tempo and timing yet it did not disrupt the clubface through impact.” Matthew tests the Toulon Design Atlanta putter [right] while Simon Cooper [far right] searches for the perfect fit

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CHAMPION SERVICE USA Stateside of the Atlantic, a trusted fitting option is Club Champion, with over 70 expertly staffed studios spread across the United States. Replete with Trackman launch monitors and SAM PuttLab ultrasound putting systems, Master Fitters methodically take golfers through all facets of their equipment. Crucially, golfers receive a fitting free of any brand bias, with over 50 brands available including Cleveland, Callaway, TaylorMade, XXIO, and Club Champion is one of few fitters qualified to fit PXG clubheads. Like Precision Golf in this article, Club Champion builds every club it fits. clubchampiongolf.com

THE OUTCOME

Matthew walked into the Precision Golf putting suite with an Evnroll ER3—a very good putter for a different golfer— while dreaming of the old Scotty GoLo 5. The great thing about custom fitting at this level is that the application of science enables a golfer to find the right feel. Matthew found the right feel twice over, and placed orders for both the Scotty Cameron Phantom X 5.5 and Toulon Design Atlanta Stroke Lab, both with 34-inch shafts. Matthew has found the putting solution he was looking for yet his devotions remain split between two new models. As long as the putts drop—and Matthew is a decent putter, as much as it pains us to put it in print—it is a new emotional conflict he will happily bear.

M e a n s

m o m e n t o u s

From lavish grounds groomed for wedding receptions and date nights with private sunsets to VIP parties with panoramas, luxury is more than a home—it’s about creating memorable moments. Luxury is our language.

INTERVIEW Captains

e Boys from Ballyboden There is only one high school that has produced two Ryder Cup captains, the Colaiste Eanna Christian Brothers School in Ballyboden, Dublin. The two golfers are Paul McGinley and Padraig Harrington and they both spoke to Robin Barwick

Padraig Harringtonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s full attention is on retaining the Ryder Cup for Europe

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n the south Dublin suburb of Ballyboden in the late 1970s and early ’80s the Harrington boys had a reputation. There were five of them, sons of a policeman who had represented County Cork at Gaelic football (a sport which is similar to soccer but different), and the sons were pretty handy themselves. “The brothers were well known at school—we all went to school together—and we called them the ‘Harrios’,” starts Paul McGinley, who was four years ahead of Padraig Harrington at the Colaiste Eanna Christian Brothers School, the only high school in Europe or the United States to have produced two Ryder Cup captains. McGinley led Europe to victory over Tom Watson’s American team at Gleneagles in Scotland in 2014, while it is Harrington’s turn next year at Whistling Straits, Wisconsin. “Padraig was the whipper-snapper, the baby of the family,” adds McGinley, who like the Harrios, applied his athletic ability to Gaelic football and golf. “I knew of Padraig because he was the youngest Harrio and my first recollections of Padraig are of him playing as a goalkeeper in Gaelic football. When I was a senior player he was a junior and we would sometimes train together and Padraig, in his red tracksuit, would throw himself around the goal, loving having all these shots fired at him.” The young Harrington played in goal in soccer and in Gaelic football, growing up in a typically tight-knit Irish community that revolved around the church, school and the local Ballyboden St. Enda Gaelic football club. Gaelic football consumes young Irish athletes, and all of Harrington, McGinley and Shane Lowry—the 2019 Open champion at Royal Portrush— are sons of men who excelled at the game and played at senior county level.

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You need courage to be a decent goalie—in soccer and Gaelic football—as the player is expected to lunge head and hands first into tight spaces crowded with swinging, studded boots. To this day, Harrington’s fingers bear the scars of years spent between the posts and he is fortunate the battering didn’t damage his prospects in golf. “If you had asked me at 14 years of age what sport I was going to be successful in, I would have said Gaelic football or soccer, as a goalkeeper,” says Harrington, now aged 48. “I captained my school team all the way through secondary school and that was my best sport as a young boy.” Harrington and McGinley grew up at the same school and the same Gaelic football club, but a highway separated their respective golf clubs. McGinley’s dad, a travelling salesman, couldn’t afford the upmarket Grange GC with its beautifully maintained James Braid golf course to the north of the highway, but he knew the right people and Paul was offered a junior membership. Harrington, despite showing similarly prodigious promise a few years on, was turned down and so he stuck with the less selective Stackstown GC, on the southside of the highway. Yet their paths were destined to converge sooner rather than later. “We both played for Leinster Juniors,” adds McGinley, referring to their home province. “That is when I came across Padraig as a golfer for the first time. We started playing in the same amateur events and then we started getting paired together in foursomes and fourballs, so that would have been in the late ’80s. “Then we played for Ireland together and evolved to play in the Walker Cup and eventually the Ryder Cup. It was kind of a stairway.” Harrington and McGinley were part of the 1991 Great Britain and Ireland Walker Cup team that played the United States on a golf course the Dubliners knew intimately, Portmarnock, just to the north of the city. But this was a visiting team featuring Phil Mickelson—already a winner on the PGA Tour as an amateur—and David Duval, and the Americans prevailed 14-10. It was a different story in the Ryder Cup. Harrington played for Europe six times and was on the winning side four times, with McGinley joining him in the blue and gold three times, all successfully, in 2002, 2004 and 2006. Harrington made his Ryder Cup debut at Brookline in 1999. He won his singles point against Mark O’Meara, and with Jose Maria Olazabal comfortably up against Justin Leonard, for a fleeting moment Harrington wondered if he had won the Ryder Cup. “I was on such a high,” recalls Harrington, before he learned how Leonard was fighting back. “I ran back to the 17th green, my team-mates congratulated me and then Justin Leonard holed that putt. I got what felt like about one minute’s glory from winning my point, before feeling quite a significant low.”

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Padraig Harrington and Paul McGinley during the Walker Cup at Portmarnock Golf Course in Dublin, 1991 [above]. Harrington, McGinley and Darren Clarke celebrate in 2004 [right]

“Europe lost in Brookline but we drove the Americans to care about the Ryder Cup” Leonard’s putt didn’t win the Ryder Cup but it almost did, as Ben Crenshaw’s US team completed an historic final-day resurgence to win. The raucous atmosphere stayed with everyone, on both sides, but Harrington has an interesting take on the “Battle of Brookline”. “They were spectacular scenes at Brookline,” he says. “Europe might have lost that week but we drove the Americans to care about the Ryder Cup and that moment proved it, right there and then in 1999. We didn’t feel it at the time but looking back, the Americans were desperate to win the Ryder Cup that week, and that feeling and emotion and excitement would not have been there 20 years earlier, when the Americans were so much better than us. It was

LADYBIRDS IN THE CLARET JUG

Padraig Harrington clinched the first of his three major titles at The Open at Carnoustie in 2007. He defeated Sergio Garcia in a play-off and after the trophy presentation, Harrington’s son Patrick—aged three at the time—joined the champ on the 18th green. Harrington held his son in one arm and the Claret Jug in the other, and a nearby microphone picked up a brief conversation between father and son. His face lit by the gleaming silver, Patrick asked his dad if they could put ladybirds in the jug. “Yes, indeed we can,” replied Harrington, “we’ll put ladybirds in it.” This moment of unfiltered innocence was beamed around the world and it stuck with Harrington. He recalls: “Having won my first Open I bought a Rolex watch for everyone around me at the time: my family, my coaches and everyone who helped me get to that point in my career; to becoming a major champion for the first time. I got the timepieces engraved with the Claret Jug on the back and I had some ladybirds put into the design because my son asked if he could put ladybirds in the Claret Jug. They are commemorative timepieces and they are the kind of watches you value forever. It is always great for me when I see those few people wearing those Rolex watches, and every time it is a nice reminder to me of the first time I won The Open. Those timepieces will be passed down to children and grandchildren and the story of my first win in The Open goes with them.”

Padraig Harrington with son Patrick, wife Caroline and the Claret Jug in 2007

the improved European play in the Ryder Cup that pushed the Ryder Cup to become a real contest that both sides were desperate to win. I wouldn’t say 1999 was the making of the Ryder Cup but it was the week that proved just what a big deal it had become.” For the Harrington-McGinley axis, a particular highlight came five years later in 2004 at Oakland Hills, Detroit, when German captain Bernhard Langer paired the Dubliners together for the Friday afternoon foursomes. Europe was cruising after the first three sessions against Hal Sutton’s ill-fated home team. The score was 8-4 to Europe although Harrington had played poorly on the Friday morning, dropping a fourball point with Colin Montgomerie to Davis Love III and Stewart Cink. “Padraig was really down about how he played,” recalls McGinley, “Yet in the afternoon we were playing Tiger and Davis. On the first tee Tiger just smashed this 3-wood 300 yards down the middle. An absolute rocket. It was Padraig’s tee shot and he took forever because he was uncertain and his confidence was down and he backed off the shot a couple of times. In the end he made this horrible lunge at the ball and pull-hooked it to the left, up against a fence among the trees. I tried to chip out but got my club caught on a branch, knocked it about a yard, before Padraig took our third shot, hit a tree and our ball bounced back. We had played five shots before the Americans had played their second so we conceded the hole without Davis even having to play their second shot. One down after one hole. “On the second hole, Tiger hit a three-iron so high the ball went up in the air like a lob wedge and lasered down on top of the flag. Everyone in the stand behind the green stood up and cheered like you can’t believe. We were two down after two.

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“We walked to the third tee and I said to Padraig, ‘Let’s not embarrass ourselves. If we lose let’s do it right. Let’s forget about who we are playing and just play against the golf course.’ Immediately I could see Padraig coming out of his mental slumber. His body language changed. He said, ‘Hey, that’s a great idea, let’s play against the course’.” They parred the third hole for a half, steadied the boat, held their own and eventually, slowly, the momentum in the match shifted, with the Irish pair enjoying boisterous support from a crowd dominated by Irish Americans. “We were in Detroit, with Boston, New York and Chicago all within touching distance and it seemed that the majority following us were Irish Americans,” says McGinley. “Anyway, we made a few pars, then we made a birdie, then we won a hole to go one down, then we got level and all of a sudden we were one up and Tiger and Davis made a mistake, and then another mistake and before you know it we were three up. We birdied 15 to win 4&3. All the Irish around the green were ecstatic and they sung to Tiger, ‘You’ll never beat the Irish’. There was a lot of laughter, people singing Irish ballads, there were Irish flags everywhere. It took us about an hour to get back to the clubhouse because those Irish Americans just wouldn’t let us go. It was very memorable.”

The Irish Americans were ecstatic and they sung to Tiger, “You’ll never beat the Irish”

TEAM LEADERS

It was only when Harrington saw the Ryder Cup captaincy had been given to his old friend McGinley that he began to consider himself a candidate for the job. “I was still trying to make the team,” admits Harrington, who is a Testimonee for Rolex, like McGinley, “but I began to think I could do the job one day.” Just like the Swiss watchmaker, which sponsors the team, the European Ryder Cup committee places great emphasis on the transfer of knowledge and expertise in order to achieve perpetual excellence. Says McGinley, who sits on that committee: “We have a strong succession plan and each captain is brought through the system from playing to serving as vice-captain, so they are ready for the job when it is their turn. “Padraig is a major champion and he was hugely important for European Ryder Cup success. He has been vice-captain three times—for me, Darren Clarke and Thomas Bjorn—which was very important. Now he is ready. “Padraig is one of my best friends on tour and he is a guy I have always respected and I knew I could trust him as a vice-captain. There is no agenda with Padraig and that is something you get to know about him. He is not naïve, he sees all the pictures but he is very true to himself and he always does the right thing and he’ll never let you down. “He has learned a lot, he understands the Ryder Cup and the role, and it has been a natural graduation for him. Padraig is very astute, very smart, but he has a tough task ahead, leading the team away from home.”

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McGinley and Harrington at Gleneagles during the 2014 Ryder Cup

The Ryder Cup is a long way from the Gaelic football fields of Leinster, but not as far as you might think. On that fateful Friday afternoon at Oakland Hills in 2004, when Harrington and McGinley took on the might of Woods and Love, they eased the tension by counting all the different Gaelic football county shirts they could spot in the crowd. “A lot of the Irish and Irish-Americans would wear Gaelic football county jerseys to show where they were from,” recalls McGinley. “There are 32 counties in Ireland and to distract ourselves between shots we counted the different shirts. I think 17 counties in one round of golf was the highest we ever counted.” An American Ryder Cup could be home away from home for Harrington.

TRAVEL Lanaâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;i

LAN

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The world asks questions, then hides answers in its quietest places. One such place is Lana‘i, the smallest of Hawaii’s publicly-accessible inhabited islands, and the state’s sixth-largest island overall. Legend has it that Lana‘i used to be overrun by man-eating spirits, but they were long ago banished by Prince Kaulua’au. Today there is only peace and the sound of waves rolling under the holo-kaomi, Lana‘i’s wind, which keeps the heat at bay. Whether you go searching among the cliffs on its stunning oceanside golf course, on one of its many idyllic beaches, in the cool of its highlands or in the smiles of its locals, you will find answers on Lana‘i to whatever questions you might be facing, even if it’s just how to escape the noise of modern life. Healing is at the root of every great escape, and Lana‘i offers that—along with some of the world’s greatest accommodations and cuisine, and even a bit of adventure if you want it

A‘ I

Lana‘i is one of the world’s great escapes, a refuge that’s easily accessible by plane or via a ferry from Maui. Despite its rather elemental, unspoiled character, it is also among the most modern environments, an experiment of sorts in what’s possible. That’s due largely to Oracle founder Larry Ellison, who purchased 98% of the 140-square-mile island in 2012. Since the purchase he’s made bold changes but has been careful not to negatively impact the island’s culture. In fact, many of the changes seem aimed at restoring and preserving it. The island’s only movie theater, for example (in the island’s only town, Lana‘i City) opened in 1926 but had been closed for decades before Ellison and his Pulama Lanai company purchased the island. In 2014 he reopened it with a restored original “carpenter gothic” exterior but a wholly modernized interior, complete with air conditioning and a cutting-edge projection system. More subtly, he’s been moving the island toward total self-sustainability and renewable power sources, such as solar. It’s a far cry from Lana‘i’s days as the “Pineapple Isle,” a nickname earned in the 1920s when James Dole turned the island into the world’s largest pineapple plantation. If forward-looking efforts are mostly behind the scenes, Lana‘i’s wide spectrum of potential experiences across are readily visible and accessible, revealed and mostly defined by two ultra-luxury accommodations: Four Seasons Resort Lanai and Sensei Lanai, a Four Seasons Resort. The former overlooks Hulopo’e Bay and its postcard-ready beach while the latter sits among a surprising forest in the island’s elevated interior, with cooler temperatures and a lusher landscape. The two resorts offer different angles of approach to Lana‘i, and together yield the possibility for a profound personal experience.

Hulopo’e Bay

Barbara Kraft / Four Seasons

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Hawaii Tourism Authority Dana Edmunds

fourseasons.com/lanai In 1994, Bill Gates and Melinda French were married on the 12th hole of the Manele Golf Course at the Four Seasons Resort Lana‘i; they also booked out the entire hotel to ensure maximum privacy, though it’s our experience that it’s not difficult to feel as if you have the island to yourself regardless. There have been some big changes to the resort (and to Lana‘i) since then, but the compelling views and captivating beauty remain unchanged, just as they have since before the age of myths, when the now-extinct Lanaihale volcano helped to form the island. Following a massive renovation and reopening in 2016, the resort’s accommodations are, as one would expect from Four Seasons, superlative: cutting-edge clean and eminently transportive in terms of luxury experience without causing any geographic displacement. The decor and tone of the resort suit Lana‘i well, further allowing guests to immerse themselves in the island’s cultural ethos—and its peace. In addition to the golf (see sidebar: Manele Golf Course) the resort offers tennis, horseback riding, SCUBA diving/snorkeling and, seasonally, whale watching. For those inclined to fitness while on vacation, the resort also offers a range of activities such as yoga (including beach and sunset), Tai Chi and more. Honestly, though, simple explorations of the island on foot should provide sufficient exercise; the terrain is both satisfyingly rugged and perfectly accessible, and there’s not a bad view anywhere.

Four Seasons Barbara Kraft

FOUR SEASONS RESORT LANA‘I

Nobu restaurant [top]; a lovely resort room; the Dis N Dat Shop in Lanai City

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Four Seasons offers a fantastic chance to connect with the island via its “Love Lanai” program, through which Lanai Cultural Advisors offer the chance at full immersion into the island’s rich heritage. For beach-lovers, the beach at Hulopo’e Bay is the stuff of dreams and fully serviced by the resort. Spinner dolphins are often at play here, rainbows are not infrequent and the sand and water are lovely. For those who wish to explore the island, other beaches or the interior, a trip here offers a good excuse to rent an open-top Jeep Wrangler, which not only is useful for traversing some of the rockier trails but which is also great fun. Note: avoid higher quality white clothing lest you want it dyed red by clouds of volcanic sand; most roads here are not paved—though on the other hand, there’s not a single traffic light on the island. Since Ellison purchased the resorts, dining has been taken to another level. Both Four Seasons properties operate from a “know your farmer, know your food” philosophy, and roughly 65 percent of the menu items are sourced from farmers and fishers on the Hawaiian Islands. The resort’s ONE FORTY restaurant is its steakhouse and dinner spot,

There is peace here, a rich cultural heritage and a rare opportunity to escape

serving up prime and Wagyu beef alongside fresh Hawaiian fish grilled to perfection. The wine list there is top shelf and, again, the views are fantastic. The two other main dining options will be familiar to fans of Malibu, California: Malibu Farm and Nobu. The two eateries are neighbors in the surf town-turned-celeb city where Ellison also has a home or two. Nobu Lana‘i is, of course, the Lana‘i enclave of world-famous Chef Nobu Matsuhisa, serving up glorious sushi and memorable evenings on a cliff-side terrace. Malibu Farm joins it as another fantastic eatery, this one featuring the fresh, organic dishes for which Chef Helene Henderson became known in her location on the Malibu Pier. These are joined by a number of other dining and drinking options and ensure a memorable experience for the fare alone.

MANELE GOLF COURSE

Located at Four Seasons Resort Lanai, the Manele Golf Course sits atop lava outcroppings and features three clifftop holes that utilize the Pacific Ocean as the ultimate water hazard. In addition to the signature 12th hole, a clifftop stunner that holds its green over a 150-foot drop to the Pacific, the fifth hole is impressive as well, with a 60-foot drop to the green on approach. A Jack Nicklaus design that measures 7,039 from the “Nicklaus tees” and 6,310 from the blues, this course is hardly a cakewalk, but five sets of tees ensure everyone has a memorable experience with carries over natural gorges and ravines, rolling fairways and expansive greens. Look into a “Sunset Nine,” which includes cocktails and a round on the back nine after 3pm, and “Member for a Week,” with which resort guests can enjoy unlimited sunup-to-sundown access over seven days, top-drawer rental clubs and a GPS cart included—and no tee times required. fourseasons.com / lanai / golf

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SENSEI LANA‘I, A FOUR SEASONS RESORT

fourseasons.com/sensei Resort Lana‘i’s complement is Sensei Lana‘i, an ultra-luxe wellness retreat that rests near the cooler, elevated center of the island, just outside of Lana‘i City. Nestled among lush gardens, the resort was designed by a top architecture team inspired by traditional Japanese ryokan (hot spring spas) and other Far East retreats. Return visitors to Lana‘i will note that the property replaces the former Four Seasons Lodge at Koele, which somewhat curiously was modeled on a Victorian English hunting lodge. The lodge had been closed for the past few years as it underwent a multimillion-dollar renovation, and the transformation is simply amazing. Luxuriously minimalist rooms are filled with light and clean lines—an aesthetic carried throughout, with the whole of the resort incorporating the natural surroundings, gardens and water features into the striking interior spaces. As visually impactful as the aesthetics are, the experience here is visceral and physical as well. From top to bottom the wellness programming was designed by health care professionals and nutritionists in partnership with Dr. David Agus, the cancer specialist who’s treated such notables as Lance Armstrong and who teaches at the University of Southern California. With his guidance, Sensei Lana‘i was designed to help individuals on their overall wellbeing journeys, not just to focus on one aspect of health. To ensure guests maximize their potential here, minimum stays of three days are recommended and wellbeing specialists are available to help guests navigate options. Private, guided sessions are offered along with group classes, a fitness gym, movement studios, a pool with lap lanes, and more. There’s an exquisite spa with a range of treatments, and dining at Sensei has been designed by Chef Nobu to consider not just the sensory experience, but also the nutritional aspects and the wellness impact on our bodies. And should golf, beach or ocean activities be desired, a shuttle sorts transport to the beach resort.

Sensei images Robb Aaron Gordon

Sensei Lana’i [above & left] and a view of the island’s Puu Pehe (Sweetheart Rock) [bottom left]

Hawaii Tourism Authority Heather Goodman

TRUE LUXURY

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The bustling nightlife of Honolulu and the frenetic tourism of Waikiki—and all that comes with those—are experiences one should have before properly being able to say they’ve visited Hawaii; but those aren’t reasons to visit, exactly, and they’re not what made Hawaii attractive in the first place. Rich in its natural landscape and in its culture, Lana‘i contains aspects of an older Hawaii, even as it pushes forward to help define what the next version of Hawaii could be. Sitting on the late afternoon sands at Hulopo’e with a drink in hand watching the dolphins, there’s a clarity that comes. It helps to answer questions of a sort, to make sense of modern life’s noise. Healing, restorative and enlivening, this is the true luxury of Lana‘i, and whether you find it on a beach, among the cliffs on the stunning golf course, in the top accommodations and amenities or somewhere else on the island, it underlies the true aloha spirit and it’s well worth traveling to experience.

KODAK Sun Lenses bring clear, sharp contrast to the course, allowing you to better visualize your game strategy.

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ADVERTORIAL

TURKISH AIRLINES New services from Turkish Airlines in accordance with its guidelines for safe travel: Hygiene Expert and Hygiene Kit

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Starting its local flights after a two-month hiatus and just days away from resuming international flights, Turkish Airlines implements two new inflight service changes to protect the health of its guests. Prepared with scientific data in mind, the flag carrier is distributing “Hygiene Kits” containing a mask, disinfectant and antiseptic tissue to its guests in accordance with its ‘guidelines for safe travel.’ In addition, “Hygiene Expert” cabin crews will be appointed to flights to be responsible for the distribution of Hygiene Kits and provide oversight to make sure all necessary precautions are implemented correctly.

All precautions under the control of Hygiene Expert In the new era, precautions in the sky will be under the purview of Hygiene Expert cabin crews. Working as a health inspector, Hygiene Experts will solely focus on the enforcement of all on-board hygiene and social distancing measures for the healthy travel of passengers. Responsible for lessening the on-board circulation of individuals and making sure cabin crew and passengers adhere to the social distancing rules, Hygiene Experts will monitor the mask usage of passengers, while making sure that passengers do not remove their masks all at once during the service of food and beverages. Instructing passengers to prevent lines forming during lavatory usage, Hygiene Experts will also disinfect the lavatories. Hygiene and safety checks of the lavatories will also continue to be performed by all cabin crew as well.

Turkish Airlines Chairman of the Board and the Executive Committee, M. Ilker Ayci stated, “We are working hard on all contact points to ensure a healthy and safe travel experience for our passengers. At Turkish Airlines, we are providing significant services to our passengers with our enhanced guidelines for safe travel that are prepared in accordance with instructions of scientists. Some of the significant new implementations in accordance with these guidelines are our Hygiene Expert cabin crews and Hygiene Kits distributed by them. Responsible solely for all on-board hygiene and enforcement of social distancing measures between our passengers, we believe that our Hygiene Experts will help our passengers to feel more comfortable and relaxed about their travels.”

Ultra-hygiene for aircrafts before every flight Turkish Airlines aircrafts are disinfected prior to every flight via thorough cleaning methods. Hygiene in the cabin is ensured as all contact points in our aircraft are thoroughly cleaned using chemicals safe for human health, and with methods that are proven scientifically to be effective. Special equipment and chemicals are used for different surfaces such as seats, windows, screens and lavatories.

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TRAVEL Wisconsin

The Ryder Cup might have to wait to make its Wisconsin debut but for the rest of us the first tee awaits. Gary Dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Amato, who spent almost three decades reporting for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, reports on an under-rated American golf destination

Erin Hills, stage for the 2017 U.S. Open

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isconsin? America’s Dairyland as a golf destination? Isn’t the state best known for cows, beer and cheese, and a National Football League team based in the frozen northern outpost of Green Bay? Well, yes. But that’s so past tense. Over the last two decades, Wisconsin has quietly built serious momentum as a bucket-list golf mecca, with Whistling Straits and Erin Hills getting priceless exposure as major championship venues, Mike Keiser’s wondrous Sand Valley Resort taking shape in the state’s central sand barrens and older gems such as SentryWorld and the Links Course at Lawsonia just waiting to be re-discovered. It’s a short season, to be sure, but Wisconsin’s summer climate, with its warm days, cool nights and plenty of rain, is perfect for growing bentgrass. Even the small-town nine-holers and budget-conscious munis are

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known for spoiling golfers with smooth, fast greens. The topography is surprisingly varied and includes rolling hills, thick forests, vast sand deposits, dramatic glacial features and the Horicon Marsh, the largest freshwater cattail marsh in the United States. Though there was some good public golf in Wisconsin before plumbing magnate Herbert V. Kohler Jr. started building his golf empire, the beginning of the state’s ascent as a global destination can be traced directly to the opening of the original 18 holes at Blackwolf Run in 1988. Designed by Pete Dye for the Kohler Co. and laid out on pristine land in the Sheboygan River Valley an hour north of Milwaukee, Blackwolf Run quickly earned must-play designation because of its unrelenting challenge, beauty and superb conditioning. It was the first true public golf experience in Wisconsin, and though Kohler didn’t intend for it to be a trend-setter, it became a template for great golf to follow. Much of it was built by Kohler himself. First, he and Dye controversially split Blackwolf Run into nine-hole segments and added nine holes to each, creating the distinct River and Meadow Valleys courses. Then, inspired by what he saw on golf trips to the British Isles, Kohler purchased

a large piece of scruffy lakefront land near the village of Haven—flat as a pancake, littered with toxic waste and unremarkable except for its two miles of uninterrupted Lake Michigan shoreline. He brought Dye out to the land and told the late visionary, “The next time I see this, I want it to look like Ballybunion.” And so was born Whistling Straits, among the more visually stunning courses in America with its towering dunes, knobby mounds and fescue-covered ridges—all manufactured by bulldozers—and more than 1,000 jaggededged bunkers strewn hither and yon across the dizzying landscape. Like a true seaside links, weather conditions can (and often do) change by the hour. So complete is the links illusion that many a wind-whipped golfer has absently referred to a white-capped Lake Michigan as the “ocean.” The Straits Course opened in 1998 and has played host to three PGA Championships, perhaps not coincidentally won by players who would soon after ascend to No. 1 in the Official World Golf Ranking (Vijay Singh in 2004, Martin Kaymer in 2010 and Jason Day in 2015). The Straits also was awarded the 2020 Ryder Cup, which has been pushed back to 2021 by the coronavirus pandemic. “Golf in Wisconsin has always been strong. It just wasn’t known,” said U.S. Ryder Cup team captain Steve Stricker, a small-town Wisconsin kid who never left the state and resides in Madison. He has hosted the American Family Insurance Championship on the PGA Tour Champions at University Ridge GC in his home town, one of the finest public facilities in the state. “Herb and the Kohler family put together that masterpiece up there at Whistling Straits (and) the Blackwolf Run courses, and that kind of put us on the map. Golf is a destination all of a sudden here in Wisconsin. It’s cool to see.”

SPOILT FOR CHOICE

Blackwolf Run [top]; the 16th hole of the Straits Course, Whistling Straits [left]; the 16th hole at SentryWorld

The state’s ascent as a global golf destination can be traced directly to the opening of the original 18 at Blackwolf Run

No multi-day golf trip to Wisconsin would be complete without a round or three at Erin Hills, which played host to the 2011 U.S. Amateur and the 2017 U.S. Open, the latter won by Brooks Koepka. The course was largely designed by retreating glaciers some 15,000 years ago; architects Michael Hurdzan, Dana Fry and Ron Whitten knew to leave well enough alone, moving very little dirt during construction. The rugged and nearly treeless terrain features kettles and ridges perfectly spaced for golf, with fairways running through natural corridors to remarkable green complexes. The ninth, a short par-3 played from an elevated tee, through ever-present wind to a green surrounded by snaggle-toothed bunkers, can induce any number from 1 to 10.

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Erin Hills is located some 35 minutes from downtown Milwaukee and three miles from Holy Hill, an awe-inspiring hilltop basilica that seems to tower directly over the course. From the tee on the long par-5 closing hole, the golfer is tempted to try to kick a field goal between the basilica’s twin spires. A putting course opened in 2019 and Erin Hills has since converted its fescue fairways to bentgrass with a novel over-seeding process that required only a minimal interruption in play. Like the Straits, it must be walked. The full Erin Hills experience requires golfers to stay the night and enjoy exceptional hospitality, boosted by an award-winning wine list, excellent menus, great service and a relaxed ambience. The club offers five Irish-style cottages—four guestrooms in each—filled with antique furniture yet also all the mod cons a golf party needs. Sand Valley Resort, which consists of 18-hole courses designed by David McLay Kidd (Mammoth Dunes) and Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw (Sand Valley) and a 17-hole par-3 delight called The Sandbox, is fast gaining a national reputation. Keiser reportedly wasn’t ready to build more golf— and especially not in Wisconsin—until he saw the land,

buried under tens of thousands of pine trees planted in rows and harvested by the region’s paper mills. Beneath the pine plantation, however, was an enormous sand deposit, the remnants of a prehistoric lake—200 feet deep in some places, and perfect for fescue fairways. Located near the tiny town of Rome in Adams County, Sand Valley is modeled after Bandon Dunes, with spartan on-site lodging, an understated clubhouse, a caddie program and memorable golf. Tom Doak is designing a third “big” course, and there may be more to come. About 45 minutes north of Sand Valley, in Stevens Point, SentryWorld is on the short list of the prettiest and best-conditioned parkland courses in the Midwest. A Robert Trent Jones Jr. design, SentryWorld opened in 1982 as Wisconsin’s first upscale public course and was re-imagined during a 2014-15 renovation overseen by Jones. Owned by Sentry Insurance, which title-sponsors the PGA Tour’s season-opening Sentry Tournament of Champions, SentryWorld features 15-minute tee times, a state-of-the-art practice facility and stringent maintenance practices. Each year, more than 20,000 flowers, mostly patagonias and impatiens, are planted around the green on the unique par-3 16th “Flower Hole.”

Located near the tiny town of Rome, Sand Valley is modeled after Bandon Dunes

Sand Valley [above] and the 17th hole at Erin Hills [left]

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GOLF AT THE BOG

One of Arnold Palmer’s proudest achievements in course design is the par-72 championship course at The Bog, in Saukville, 25 miles north of Milwaukee, almost midway between the city and Kohler. The par-72 layout runs through a stunning 300-acre property, bringing in ancient woodlands, the natural wetlands of the Cedarburg Bog, rolling hills and thriving wildlife.

Scheduled to open in Spring 2021 is The Inn at SentryWorld, whch promises to further embellish the resort’s enviable reputation with 60 guestrooms and a boutique feel. A course that for years was out of sight and out of mind is the original Links Course at the Golf Courses of Lawsonia in Green Lake, a sleepy town in south-central Wisconsin. More recently, course architecture buffs have “discovered” the 1930 gem, an inland links designed by William Langford and Theodore Moreau and considered by many to represent the duo’s finest work. The course is nearly treeless on its interior, with emerald fairways bordered by wispy fescue rough and elevated tees offering stunning panoramic views. The Links is known for its incredible set of push-up greens, many with steep walls and 15-foot drop-offs into bunkers. The green on the par-3 seventh hole reportedly was built atop a railroad boxcar; best not to come up short and face a sheer vertical shot to an unseen flagstick some 25 feet above your head. Golfers who fly into Milwaukee should check out the Brown Deer Park Golf Course, just 20 minutes north of the airport and the crown jewel of the Milwaukee County Parks system, which boasts 15 popular courses. Brown Deer, designed by landscape architect George Hansen and opened in 1929, played host to the PGA Tour’s U.S. Bank Championship in Milwaukee from 1994 to the tournament’s demise in 2009. It’s where a 20-year-old Tiger Woods uttered “Hello, world,” marking his professional debut

Milwaukee is famous for its beer and curds

in 1996. A plaque on the first tee commemorates the event. Take a brewery tour in Milwaukee and play Brown Deer—though not necessarily in that order—before heading northwest to Erin Hills, Lawsonia, Sand Valley and SentryWorld, or north to Kohler. Complete your trip with a tour of historic Lambeau Field in Green Bay, known around these parts as Titletown USA. It’s home to the Packers and the site of the famous “Ice Bowl” 1967 NFL Championship Game played in sub-zero temperatures and won, of course, by the Pack. Oh, and one more thing: save room for some cheese curds. Like the golf here, they’re memorable.

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CARS Top 10

Four Wheels

hat happens when you combine Manifest Destiny with more than 4 million miles of roads? You get American cars. No matter if you want to cruise or rocket, preen or scream, America has the car for you. Sometimes lavish, sometimes spartan, we’ve built some of automotive history’s greatest vehicles.

Here, chosen after careful consideration by a panel of distracted drivers who were thinking about their next road trips, are 10 of our favorites, cars we at Kingdom feel made enough of a difference to warrant attention. Doubtless you’ll have others on your own Top 10 list, and that’s fine. It’s a big country and there’s enough road for all of us. We’ll be seeing you—in our rearview mirror (unless we’re in a 1963 Sting Ray…). Happy motoring.

nberg Mod e s e u D el J 932

Timing, as they say, is everything, and in the case of the Duesenberg Model J it was far from ideal. Its debut came in 1928, just before the Great Depression kicked off and took the idea of a near-$200,000 (in today’s money) luxury automobile from “lavish” to “surreal.” But what a car. Less than 500 of the beauties were built, with the 1932 SJ model making 320hp with a supercharged straight-8. Duesenberg was so assured of the car’s singularity they advertised that they hadn’t bothered to put a nameplate anywhere on it. Enthusiasts, they said, would see “master strokes of engineering and design and construction obtainable nowhere else than in a Duesenberg.” Stunning in every way.

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1935 Auburn 851 Speedster

The distinctive boat tail and striking design came from designer Gordon Buehrig, who also designed Duesenberg’s Model J, but the engineering is all Auburn. In its day this was the one to beat, with a supercharged engine and highly advanced touches (such as a two-speed rear axle) helping driver Ab Jenkins to shatter 70 speed records at Bonneville in July of 1935 driving a stock 851. Fewer than 50 of these are thought to exist now, perhaps not surprising in that, like Duesenberg, (which was under the same ownership in the 1930s), Auburn’s incredibly expensive vehicles appeared during the Great Depression.

1949 OLDSMOBILE 88

When they write a song about a car, it’s either a really good car or a really bad car. In the case of the 1949 Oldsmobile “Rocket 88” (also the name of the Ike Turner original) it was good, great even. The “Rocket” moniker came from the car’s pioneering overhead-valve V8 engine, a monstrous innovation that drove a relatively light body (by standards of the day). The Olds took 10 of the 19 races in the 1950 NASCAR season and that year’s Carrera Panamericana as well, making the 2,000-plus mile trek across Mexico in fine style. No word on whether or not the driver had the radio turned up.

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DILLAC DEVILLE A C 9 4 9 1

Available in three trims, the top-of-line Bel Air version of Chevrolet’s 1957 offering remains one of the most iconic cars ever produced. The last of a series that started in 1955, the ’57 was the boldest of the three model years, with air ducts engineered into the headlight pods, sharp fins, a sealed cowl, and enough chrome and steel to build a brightly shining battleship. The ’57 also boasted a 283 cubic inch V8 that saw it dominate races against other marques so handily that NASCAR held the Chevys to a cubic inch restriction. It wasn’t the best-selling car of the year (Ford actually outsold it) but the 1957 Chevrolet’s cultural impact and longevity in pop culture have eclipsed almost anything else from the decade. If you’re cruising around in a ’57 Chevy with the top down, you will get noticed, fuzzy dice or no.

ORVETTE STING RAY C 3 6 9 1 SPLIT WINDOW COUPE

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The prototype dropped jaws at the 1949 Autorama, showing power windows, power seats, a perfume atomizer and even a two-way radio telephone. And if the production version didn’t have the rear-seat secretarial setup (because of course you need your secretary along on the road trips dutifully jotting down your epic road trip novel as you dictate it) it still wowed buyers with its standard power windows and tony interior chrome trim. Note the absence of a B pillar as well, giving the roof the appearance of almost floating—a feeling passengers no doubt enjoyed barreling along in this early Cadillac.

y B el v e h C 7 i bl e t 5 r e 9 v 1 Co n Air

It only lasted one year, but the split window at the rear of Corvette’s first-ever coupe is still talked about today. Designer Larry Shinoda was thought to be following the direction of Chief of Design Bill Mitchell, who wanted the Sting Ray centerline prominent from tip to tail. The split caused a blind spot wide enough to block a motorcyclist, but that didn’t necessarily bother Sting Ray owners, who more often were concerned with what was in front of them. A fuel-injected L84 model made 360 horsepower, which, married with Zora Arkus-Duntov’s incredible engineering and a lightweight body, meant that the view out the rear window was likely just dust anyway.

1 9 6 3 L i n c ol n ental Conve Co n ti n

r ti b

U M S D TANG R O F 7 6 9 1 SHELBY GT500

We could have picked any fourth generation Lincoln Continental, but 1963’s version of the Ford-designed luxury liner offered a bit more luggage room and rear seat room than its predecessors while maintaining aspects of the model’s distinctive styling that we like, which began to change in 1964. Hardly performance vehicles, the first American post-WWII four-door convertibles were all about style: suicide doors in the rear, standard power top, a low, imposing stance and cruise-ability for miles. There was a fourth generation Continental in Goldfinger, The Matrix, Animal House and Spider-Man 2, among other films, and Perry Mason drove one. All good, just remember that sunglasses and a dark suit are required.

Coming off a couple of model years that saw Caroll Shelby-tuned Mustangs almost useless for driving around town (they were essentially race cars), things balanced out nicely in 1967. Standard Mustangs saw a possible 390ci, 320hp four-barrel V8 on offer, but Shelby’s GT 500 version got a 428ci V8 that added another 35hp, plus fiberglass body pieces and effects to decrease weight and improve aerodynamics, all while playing nice on city streets. The result was a muscular, customizable car that became an instant classic and which is still in demand today.

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1968 Chevy C a m a ro Z / 2 8

1977 PONTIAC T RA N S A M F I R E B I R D

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The pony car war between Ford and Chevrolet in the 1960s produced some absolutely fantastic vehicles, and one of the gems was the 1968 Camaro Z/28, which kept the battle firmly in GM’s favor for a couple of years. Credit Roger Penske and his engineers with taking the underperforming Camaro to the podium in 1968 and 1969 via improvements to nearly every tunable component. The car dominated the SCCA Trans-Am racing series and gave young boys plenty of images to hang on their walls for years to come.

It’s the Smokey And the Bandit car. Do you need to know more? In fact the car that inspired the inclusion of a Firebird in the film was a 1976 Trans Am LE with a grafted-on 1977 front end. Pontiac was shooting the 1977 brochure, they didn’t have a 1977 model available yet, and so they improvised. In any case, as the story goes, Burt Reynolds and director Hal Needham saw the brochure with the T-topped Firebird and decided that was the car. Pontiac provided five 1977 models for the film and the rest, as they say, is history. Beyond the film, the car was important as it was a true muscle car made at a time when other marques were beginning to dial-down their muscle. The high-trim version W72 Performance Package included an L78 Pontiac 400 with stated 200hp and 325lb-ft of torque, which the NHRA claimed to have actually tested at 260hp. While its 0-60 time of 9.3 seconds is slow by today’s standards, it was quick in 1977—not that it mattered. As long as you had the Starlight Black paint and the gold firebird on the hood, you were going at the speed of light (or you felt like you were, anyway).

CLUB Landings

The Landings

Clubs considering their futures might look at this Southern gem for inspiration on how to do things right

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estled among the Southern pines on Skidaway Island, minutes from Savannah, Georgia, The Landings is one of America’s premiere communities, with six championship golf courses, great dining options and an engaged membership. Everyone in the community enjoys 30 miles of walking, biking and jogging trails; two full-service deep-water marinas; a two-acre community garden; and a host of other incredible amenities. Those that join The Landings Club also enjoy world-class golf, 30+ courts for racquet sports, four unique clubhouses with farm-to-table dining, numerous swimming pools and an astounding Fitness & Wellness Center. With a stunning new Marshwood Clubhouse that honors Arnold Palmer in two Palmer-branded dining venues, and with seemingly constant upgrades across the community, The Landings is a great place to live. But more than that, The Landings is a great example of how clubs can position themselves for long-term success. Their secret in a nutshell? Keep looking ahead. The Landings appears out of the Georgia woods as if it’s been there forever, the homes in this beautiful island community tucked along winding roads fringed by Southern pines that skirt any of six championship golf courses (including two designed by the Arnold Palmer Design Company) and ultimately lead to a remarkable array of recreational and dining options. There are near 4,600 home sites here—The Landings is its own village, of sorts—and yet because of the island’s woodland topography one feels a world away. The community has evolved since development began in 1969, changing from the originally conceived escape for retirees into a vibrant community inhabited by young professional families, business leaders and, yes, some very happy retirees. Regional development and a parkway that offers a quick commute to nearby Savannah helped to facilitate the shift, but it’s the engagement of the membership and the responsiveness of The Landings’ leadership, combined with the community’s amenities and lifestyle, that ultimately are responsible for creating what today could be considered a model for private clubs looking to thrive in the coming decades. In the end, club leaders say, their community’s success is about always looking forward, not back.

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Photo: Richard Leo Johnson

“Back 10 years ago The Landings was predominantly focused on the Northeastern or Midwestern retiree, 60-plus, empty-nesters,” says The Landings Club Executive Director Steven Freund. But with the connection to downtown and other changes, he explains, “we quickly became a multigenerational club. Consequently we had to think about not just the monolithic golf-centric person, but couples with families, kids, who are they, what do they want and how do they want it? The more we thought about it the more we saw that we needed to have different dining venues, different concepts, and different options.” Most recently that has included a completely renovated Marshwood Clubhouse, an architecturally stunning 23,500 square feet with a resort-style pool complex featuring a Cabana Bar, and two interior dining options that honor Arnold Palmer: Palmer’s Steakhouse and Arnie’s Tavern. There’s also an upscale golf shop and plenty more for members to enjoy—and this is just one of four clubhouses at The Landings, each of which has its own personality, one offering Southern fare, another a coastal grill, and there’s more to come. There’s also The Deck, a “fast-casual” dining facility that’s happy to take members coming off the tennis courts or golf course, from the pool or anyplace else where people are dressed to play and relax. Serving a variety of approachable fare such as sandwiches, pastries, hand-tossed pizzas and more, Freund says it quickly became one of the property’s hottest locations. “It became our biggest-grossing dining venue on the island, with close to $2.5 million a year in food and beverage in one fast-casual dining outlet,” he says. “Some clubs don’t

do that in their whole club. But more than a place to grab a bite, it’s a place for members to gather, to relax, popular with families and with everyone. We looked at who our users are, and one of them, she’s 94. That validates the notion that we’re a multigenerational club.” The distinctiveness and smart moves with the branded dining ultimately are just one example of enhancing diversity and encouraging options throughout The Landings, says Steve Justman, The Landings Director of Golf. “There’s a story Steven [Freund] told me about when he first got here years ago: one day he was eating lunch in one of the clubhouses, he blanked out for a minute and forgot where he was. We have six food and

Marshwood & Palmer

The new Marshwood Clubhouse at The Landings (one of four clubhouses here) is a sight to behold. Part of a multi-year $25 million improvement plan that’s seeing upgrades across the community, and designed by Howard Kuo of Kuo Diedrich Chi Architects, working with a dedicated team at The Landings, the 23,500 sq ft beauty features clean lines, soaring ceilings complete with sounddampening built-in, and a luxe pool complex that would put many top resorts to shame, among other amenities. Two standout features are the dining options: Palmer’s Steakhouse and Arnie’s Tavern, both named in honor of Arnold Palmer and decorated with Palmer touches. Along with stylized pictures along the walls, glass features at Palmer’s Steakhouse are etched with architectural drawings from two Palmer-designed courses here (The Marshwood and Magnolia courses) and the road that leads to the clubhouse is named Palmer’s Draw. Palmer’s grandson Sam Saunders was on hand at the Club’s ribbon cutting this June, as were other Palmer representatives, and all were impressed. “Mr. Palmer built the first two golf courses here,” explains The Landings Club Executive Director Steven Freund. “And so when we had an opportunity to start the conversation with our members about branding the new dining facilities, they overwhelmingly said how much they appreciated Mr. Palmer and how much they liked the tie-in. He is the persona of what a private club should be— classy and timeless.”

beverage outlets and long ago they were mostly traditional mahogany and dark green, similar menus, every clubhouse had a pub burger, a chicken sandwich and so on. And while that’s great we realized we had an opportunity to create variety—we don’t have to be everything, for everyone, in every location. Members can take the 15-minute golf cart ride from one side of the island to the other and go to the location that specializes in what they want: fresh seafood, or Palmer’s steakhouse or whatever they want. And in the golf operation, I’m looking at the same thing.” In fact, vibrancy seems to be the driving force here and, as Justman suggested, it’s reflected in every aspect of the club. The four golf shops on property each have their own character, carry differing lines, different products at different price points. Golf programming similarly is diverse, with a wide range of instructional and member club options, considerations for new facilities, new ways to approach the game. In testament to the membership’s diversity there are 150 member-organized golf groups supported at The Landings offering among them options for serious competitors and game newbies alike. At one point The Landings ladies group was the second-largest women’s golf association in the country, second only to the LPGA. “Half of our rounds are played equally among men and women,” Justman says, “and usually at other properties it’s about 80 percent men. We’re split 50-50.” Beyond golf there’s bocce, pickleball, tennis courts and so much more: “This is the first place I’ve ever been where it’s like ‘Woah, slow down, there are too many social activities,’ Justman says laughing. My biggest focus is how do we create a fun and enjoyable golf experience for our members and their guests, and so we definitely have to be diverse, have the score-based options and then the cocktail and purely social golf options as well. Everyone here has fun.” “That’s true,” says Freund, identifying golf as the epicenter of The Landings community (with six courses, after all). “But there’s been a movement toward members wanting a club to be the total package, a source of wellness and the social centerpiece of your life and we’ve responded to that. We probably play more rounds of golf here than any private club in the country, 180,000 rounds per year or close to it. But we have a 50,000 sq ft Wellness Center, and consider that it generates 275,000 to 300,000 visits per year. Put that in perspective: golf is really important, but what’s most used is our wellness center. That can’t be overlooked. Our members have embraced it all: pickleball, golf, wellness, tennis, we have a croquet lawn, the pools… It’s this multi-experiential club and a fantastic community of friends. Anyone who wants to live an abundant life, a life overflowing, we’d love to meet them.” Learn more about The Landings at thelandings.com

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CLUB

L I B E R AT I N G S PA C E S In constricted times we look to Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wide-open spaces for inspiration, and some of the best are these golf courses and their promise of big skies and broad views. Free the ball, free your mind

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T H E PAT R I O T GOLF CLUB Oklahoma

uilt as a testament to the sacrifices America’s military makes every day, The Patriot Golf Club holds the headquarters of Folds of Honor Foundation, which supports families of military veterans who’ve given all for their country. It also happens to hold an incredible golf course, a Robert Trent Jones, Jr., design that challenges all comers with 7,158 yards of rolling terrain, lowland marshes, limestone canyons and upland prairie. More than a club, though, The Patriot Golf Club is a reminder not to take freedom for granted—something we can all appreciate.

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Evan Schiller | golfshots.com

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PEBBLE BEACH California

ne of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s best known courses, we never get tired of looking at this stunner on Californiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Monterey Peninsula. It opened in 1919 with a design by Jack Neville and Douglas Grant, though many leading architects have made improvements over the years, including H. Chandler Egan, William Herbert Fowler, Alistair MacKenzie, Jack Nicklaus, and Arnold Palmer. Captured here by renowned golf photographer, Evan Schiller, is the magnificent 10th hole, sitting proudly atop Carmel Beach, where the sands get a Pacific redesign on a daily basis.

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M AYA C A M A GOLF CLUB California

ack Nicklaus was feeling merciful when he designed this Sonoma County track, which is somewhat kinder to average golfers than many of his other designs. At 6,800 yards itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a lovely walk, which is good as there are no carts here, allowing golfers to enjoy the stunning natural surroundings. Wildlife abounds, as do elevation changes, and each of the four par-5s offers a chance at a good story for the 19th. And whether the day goes right or wrong, many of Sonomaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wineries are within minutes of the property, ensuring a great day no matter how the putts roll.

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LEGACY Latrobe

100 YEARS O F L AT R O B E Latrobe Country Club is celebrating its centenary in 2020. When Arnold Palmer bought the club in 1971 he turned to his personal assistant Doc Giffin and said, “You’re secretary and treasurer”—and so Giffin remained until a management restructure 43 years later. A lifetime member, here Giffin pays tribute to a club where he has spent so much of his life

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he touches of the caring hands of three generations of the Palmer family permeate the history of Latrobe Country Club as it celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2020. It began a century ago when a teenager named Milfred Jerome Palmer—better known by his nicknames Deacon or Deke—joined the crew that was starting to build a nine-hole golf course on the edge of Latrobe, a small industrial and mining town some 50 miles southeast of Pittsburgh in Western Pennsylvania. It continued through the next 50 years as Deke Palmer served the club’s membership as grounds superintendent from 1926 and, six years later, as the golf professional. Over those years he raised a family that included his first-born,

Arnold, who was destined to become one of the most famous and popular athletes in history. The family ties burgeoned in the years after Arnold Palmer, on the upper fringe of his greatest years on tour, acquired sole ownership of a property in somewhat rundown conditions in September 1971, and, with the infusion of an extensive amount of his own capital, brought it up-to-date with major refurbishing and the addition of a number of much-needed facilities. Latrobe CC was assured of remaining a first-class country club operation following the loss of Arnold in 2016, as his daughter, Amy Saunders, has provided further investment in the club and facilities, under the leadership of Latrobe CC President and General Manager Don Emery.

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IN ARNOLD PALMER’S WORDS

Arnold Palmer on Latrobe Country Club, as written in A Golfer’s Life: “I feel confident in saying that buying the club from the members is one of the smartest moves I ever made. It enabled me to preserve a facility I care deeply about and to give something back to the people of Latrobe. It pleases me in ways you can’t imagine when members stop me to say how fine the golf course looks or how terrific the food in the dining room has been… While much has changed around here, the spirit of the place, the most important part, remains the same.”

“One of my greatest memories is how we were fortunately able to use the country club during the summer,” recalls Amy Saunders. “It was more a community club than a private club, never a pretentious place; it was where the kids congregated during the summer, at the pool. It was our summer camp, if you will.” For more than 40 years, Latrobe CC existed as a quiet nine-hole club, while small tracts of land were gradually added to what had been a 63-acre farm adjacent to the Lincoln Highway (US Route 30). The biggest news of that era was when the great Babe Zaharias played in an exhibition match at Latrobe with Deacon and a barely teenage Arnold. In his book, A Golfer’s Life, Arnold later wrote: “The Babe was one of the great women of American golf, with sparkling wit and a swing as strong as garlic. I remember how she stepped to the first tee, pegged up her ball and

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turned to the gallery and joked, ‘Okay ladies and gentlemen. Hold on for a second while I loosen my girdle’. She proceeded to nail the ball a mile down the fairway with one of the sweetest and most compact swings you’ve ever seen.”

GRAND PLANS

Additional land purchased in the mid-1960s extended the property to 110 acres. Nine holes were added, creating the course that pretty much constitutes the 18-hole layout as it is today; a tight, rolling and testing 6,500 yards from the back tees with small, mostly-elevated greens and fairways lined by trees, primarily pines planted by Deke Palmer and his crew. Over the years, the course has been nurtured under the supervision of just three men: Deke, his younger son Jerry after Deke’s death in 1976—whom Arnold later elevated to general manager—and Jerry’s right-hand man Martin Repko, who has been on the job since then. Before Arnold acquired the club, he broke the course record during a casual round with local friends in 1969, shooting a 12-under-par 60 that remarkably included two bogeys. The record he supplanted was his own, a 62 he shot two years earlier while entertaining two state governors, Raymond Shafer of Pennsylvania and Jim Rhodes of Ohio. The 60 stands to this day, the closest challenge coming one summer when Bob Ford, the highly-respected Oakmont and Seminole professional, had a shot at breaking 60 but deliberately short-circuited his round in a show of respect for the man he so admired.

The 10th hole [left]; working on constructing the back nine in 1963 [above] are [l to r] Deacon, Arnold and club president Harry Saxman; Deacon on his tractor at Latrobe [right]

When the club became Arnold’s possession in 1971— an acquisition that his father, knowing its shaky financial and physical condition, didn’t think was wise—Arnold absorbed all the scattered shares in the owning Unity Land Company, the majority of which were held by the principals of the Latrobe Steel Company, the town’s biggest industry. He immediately began the much-needed improvements and within a few years moved the ninth green to add tennis courts, built a proper halfway house, installed a modern irrigation system and practice range, added a main dining room and covered patio to the modest clubhouse, along with other remodeling. Arnold also erected a new maintenance building with a wing utilized to house much of his memorabilia, including the red Toro tractor that became famous as a prop in a host of Arnold’s Pennzoil commercials. Many of those and other commercials and television interviews were shot from scenic spots on the course, taking pictorial advantage of its verdant, pine-lined fairways and the colorful backdrop of nearby Chestnut Ridge, in the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains that run through central Pennsylvania. The club has hosted many PGA Tour professionals, celebrities and politicians, among them former President George H. W. Bush. Latrobe has been the venue for many charitable fund-raisers, its proudest years coming in the 1990s when Arnold devised a two-day “Golf Gala” extravaganza. The highlight of the event, played in alternate years at Latrobe and nearby Laurel Valley Golf Club—where Arnold captained the 1975 U.S. Ryder Cup team—was a skins

From a wooden statue by the 18th fairway, Deke Palmer still keeps an eye on things game in which he played with virtually every top player at that time; three different stars each year who appeared at his invitation, without reimbursement. Over its six-year span, the event raised some $6.5 million for the local hospital, one of many charitable efforts that has been and is still being put forth by the Palmer family. “The centenary makes me think about how my grandfather was raised, how he worked at the steel mill and was taken over to the country club to work, and how that impacted my father,” reflects Amy. “He saw how hard my grandfather worked and it’s indicative of why my father felt so sentimental about the club, and he understood the positive impact the club has had on so many people.” In a way, Deke Palmer is still keeping an eye on things. Years ago, when some of the towering pines that were planted in the early years were dying out, Arnold had an eight-foot stump saved from one such pine along the 18th fairway. Through the skills of a chainsaw artist, he had it converted into a wooden statue of his father, keeping a wary eye on each golfer as he or she climbs the inclined fairway to the final green of “his” golf course. (Conditions of the coronavirus pandemic permitting, Latrobe Country Club will cap its celebration with a 100th Anniversary Celebration Dinner on October 3.)

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LEGACY Putters

Palmer & his Putters 102

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Through a lifetime of searching, of trial and error, of hot form and cold, of hopes dashed and renewed, there were many times Arnold Palmer thought he had found the ideal putterâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;it just needed a little grinding, maybeÂ a new grip. Golfers have always tinkered with putters and looking back, Palmer was never slow to tighten his workshop vice around the neck of a new flat-faced stick

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rnold Palmer always showed an unshakeable loyalty to family, friends and fans but never was there a putter that earned Palmer’s unflinching devotion. Rarely did a putter enter Palmer’s goodly grip that the great champ didn’t think he could improve, one way or another. Mark McCormack, the man who pioneered the industry of athlete management with his work for Palmer, once declared: “If a wizard gave Arnold Palmer a divining rod that would point to gold in the ground, Arnold would take it home and start whittling it to point to diamonds too!” In the latter years of Palmer’s life the obsession may have eased, but don’t let that fool you into thinking Palmer was anything short of whole-heartedly consumed with trying to improve his putting performance and work out how to extend a hot streak on the greens from one round to the next. Palmer devoted countless hours on the practice green with his hands wrapped around the leathered grip of a simple putter. Countless. “It’s impossible to overestimate the importance of being a good putter in order to be a successful golfer,” Palmer told Kingdom magazine in a 2007 interview. “I used to think there was an actual formula for great putting and that if I could discover the key to that formula, I would become the greatest putter in the history of golf. It’s a formula I’m still seeking.” At the time Palmer was seeking it with a first generation Callaway 2-Ball White Hot Mallet, 34-inch shaft, with an out-of-production Lamkin Leather paddle grip. “It’s got great feel and gives a true roll every time,” he said. “Best putter I’ve ever had.” Maybe, but Palmer’s best putting years were when he wielded the classic blades he used to win most of his 92 professional victories, which had not altered much from the ones golfers had been using for the past century. Palmer’s Latrobe workshop was full of bags of cast-off clubs, tubs overflowing with shredded leather grips, pairs of spikes, and walls casually decorated with the kind of sports memorabilia that would spark the envy of every sports bar.

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Palmer’s workshop at Latrobe is testimony to a life of determined equipment tinkering [above]. Some of Palmer’s more eccentric putters [below & top right]

“It’s impossible to overestimate the importance of being a good putter to be a successful golfer”

Royal Opportunity

At the Media Day for the 2020 Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard, journalists were invited to putt with a few of Arnold Palmer’s putters, including one from high school and one he used to win 40-plus events, including a Masters. Of the latter, “I three-putted with it,” wrote Sean Fairholm of Global Golf Post, adding that, “You get to do a lot of cool things as a media member but this... is next level.”

But it’s the wall of putters, more than 2,000 of them, that illustrates in one glance just how much time Palmer has spent over his career trying to uncover putting nirvana. They are stored in a fashion that other connoisseurs might use to store fine wines. Some he might only have used once or twice, others are vintage and rusty and look like they could have been lifted straight from the bag of Old Tom Morris, while there are also the Wilson-manufactured “Arnold Palmers” that ruled the greens of Augusta National for a heady spell. Those Wilson originals, cast right in amidst the makeshift contraptions sent by earnest admirers, are among the most valuable to club collectors. Rare and significant Arnold Palmers produced from 1955 through 1963 have fetched thousands from eager aficionados. Then there’s the odd assortment of fat ones, skinny ones and weapons that look like they could hammer rocks. There’s one with a frieze of a multi-propeller airplane facing away from the ball. One inventor sent Palmer a peanut putter. There is a lime green contraption that looks more like a crude metal detector. One has a disconcerting head that’s no bigger than the ball itself. One of them looks like a mini-manhole cover sawed in half and welded to a shaft. One of the most unusual putters is an adjustable, banjo

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PIC 1964 Masters Putter

When New Plymouth GC in New Zealand needed a trophy for a youth event, the club’s Mike Brooke reached out to Arnold Palmer. “I honestly thought he would offer a glove or a cap,” Brooke told Stuff in 2017. What arrived, though, was Palmer’s 1964 Masters-winning putter [pictured above], along with a letter from the icon confirming it as the genuine article. For years youth event winners were allowed to take the putter out of its trophy case and have a few putts on a practice green. Unfortunately, following Palmer’s passing the club, facing hardships, was compelled to auction it off, raising nearly $140,000. Palmer and Mulligan in the Latrobe workshop in 2007

“Some putters are just novelties unless you get hot with one of them—then it becomes a true friend” number (with a tiny wrench included) with a 12-string face that melodically boings the golf ball. Ray Floyd took some heat when he started playing with an unconventional Zebra camber-sole Ram Putter at the 1976 Masters. The purists howled, until he won. Then a flood of imitators swamped the market. That’s why none of the putters sent to Palmer over the years were dismissed out of hand. “I’ve given them all a try,” he said. “Great putting is half technique and half mental. The best putting I ever did in my career was when I had a

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guy standing right beside me telling me what a great putter I was. All that positive reinforcement worked wonders. He told me I was a great putter and I became one.” That man, the ever-affable George Low, enjoyed some tour success in the 1930s and ’40s before becoming a renowned putting expert who often took credit for Palmer’s fine putting skills as an early tour pro. Some have griddled vice-marks near the heads; a sure sign that the master found a flaw and tried to coax it toward perfection with some grinding or carefully located weights. “There are always gimmick putters, and more than a few of them have been sent to me,” said Palmer. “They’re just silly. Some guys will put a metal fish head on a putter if they like to fish. I have one that’s a little bottle of Pennzoil, and one that’s a bottle of Scotch. They’re novelties. Just little conversation pieces, really… Unless you get hot with one of them. That’s when it stops being a novelty and becomes a true friend.”

LEGACY Harry Frye

A Local View

Photographer Harry Frye was a staffer for the Latrobe Bulletin in Arnold Palmer’s hometown— no wonder he was there to see so much of the legend’s career, including the following...

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It took a hard-fought 18hole playoff for a young Jack Nicklaus to take the 1962 U.S. Open from 1960 champ Palmer, delivering an exciting finish and the beginning of a great rivalry

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More from 1962, including a shot of Arnold with his wife, Winnie, and father, Deacon, in the picture just below

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Photographer Harry Frye captured Palmer across much of his professional career, from his school days right through to 1973 (below, with Palmer in glasses) and beyond

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AGED

32 YRS WI N N ER

KY OF THE YEA S I H R

GIFT GUIDE Summer

Silver Lining

In good times and challenging times both, this fine selection of gifts exists to enhance summerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s best potential

Old Fashioned Fluted Richard Brendon

Castano Aficionado Case The Peter James Leather Cigar Case holds everything you need. Hand made in North America using imported Italian leather and contained by a durable dual American-made metal zipper, this product is not only convenient, but acts as a statement piece. Suitable for 5-6 cigars with ring gauges up to 60, and heights of up to 7.5 inches.

Richard Brendon partnered with Gleneagles Hotel, Scotland to develop this Cut Crystal Collection, mouth-blown and hand-cut by expert craftspeople in Slovenia. Drawing inspiration from the cocktail culture of the Art Deco 1920s, the Fluted stemware is light and perfectly proportioned, while the tumblers are reassuringly weighty. A progressive yet timeless collection.

P E T E R J A M E S .C A

R I C H A R D B R E N D O N .CO M

Peter James Leather

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Revo Watson

Inspired by vintage Revo style, Watson's signature rectangle shape features a classic keyhole bridge and metallic detailing. The lenses are constructed of high contrast crystal with Revo's signature NASA-based polarized lens technology for superb visual clarity and protection. In short, this exquisite eyewear offers timeless style with cutting-edge vision. R E VO.CO M

Pendleton

Glacier National Park Blanket Since its establishment, Pendleton has honored America’s treasured National Parks with a collection of distinctive Park Blankets. Perfect for the great American outdoor picnic, all the blankets are woven in Pendleton’s proprietary Northwest woolen mill. This offering is made from 100% pure virgin wool and is inspired by the Glacier National Park in Montana's Rocky Mountains, with its mountain goat symbol. P E N D L E TO N - U S A .CO M

London Socks

Bond St Herringbone collection Founded in 2013 on the tenet that good socks inspire a confident start to the day, London Sock Company has been successfully helping gentlemen put their best-dressed foot forward ever since. The latest Herringbone design, the Bond St, is knitted from the company’s proprietary stretch-fit Scottish Lisle Cotton blend. Perfect in the boardroom, clubhouse or on course, the Bond St is simply a luxurious step in effortless style. LO N D O N S O C KC O M PA N Y.CO M

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GIFT GUIDE Summer

Rimowa

Rolex

An iconic design from the day it launched, this lightweight bag from Germany now comes with a twist: color-matched leather handles and trim, offering a supremely classic touch to this carry-on. Designed to fit in overhead bins, it ensures a smooth journey.

On the high seas of watch design and function, the Oyster Perpetual Yacht-Master II commands the bridge. Engineered in Oystersteel, with an Oyster bracelet and bidirectional rotatable bezel with a blue Cerachrom insert, the Yacht-Master II is the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s only chronograph with a mechanical memory, an essential tool enabling skippers to gauge their best course.

Cabin Twist Luggage

R I M OWA .C O M

Yacht-Master II

R O L E X .CO M

Heritage Driving Gloves Stringback Fingerless Olive

The road trip is quintessentially American and for those covering long distance in a classy convertible, grip on the wheel should match the style. Perfectly reflecting the ethos of the best in classic motoring are these Nappa lambskin and crochet cotton combination hand-made driving gloves. Absolutely the right steer. T H E O U T L I E R M A N .CO M

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Buly 1803

Tortoiseshell Acetate Dressing Comb From the country that gives us watches to die for and capable, bottomless bank accounts comes this luxurious handcrafted comb. Made in Switzerland from tough tortoiseshell acetate, it has variegated teeth designed to prevent damage to the scalp and hairâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;fit for bankers and watch-builders alike, and for those who appreciate their work. B U LY 1 8 0 3 .CO M

Recovery

Hand Cream

There comes a time when we all feel a little stiff and weary after a round. Vegan, 100% THC-free and biologically engineered specifically to ameliorate post-round wear and tear, On The Green has developed Recovery, a CBD oil that alleviates fatigue and leaves golfers feeling fresh for the next 18 holes.

Often associated with fire, Saffron is considered the most auspicious color in India, one worn by monks and sages. It has always been a part of Byredoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s founder Indian upbringing in smell, taste and color, and a twist on its idea helped to yield this fragrance, inspired by the idea of unity and inclusion.

O N T H E G R E E N C B D.CO M

BY R E D O.CO M

On The Green

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Hand Cream

GIFT GUIDE Summer

Linn Speaker Series 3

Series 3 is an all-in-one, wireless speaker that brings music to life in full technicolor detail. The precision acoustic engineering comes in an elegant design, but the looks have purpose; its flowing curves and natural materials have been carefully selected for their audio properties, ensuring that the Series 3 is a feast for the ears as well as the eyes. And with simple plug and play setup, just take it home, users can plug it in and start listening to favorite tracks as they’ve never been heard. L I N N .C O.U K

VOCIER Briefcase

Cleverly designed to compliment and attach to the Avant Carry-On while remaining airline compliant, Vocier’s innovative vertical briefcase and its interior file system is the perfect companion for those wanting to remain styled but well-organized when traveling. It keep the tools of trade organized and within reach, with dedicated compartments for passport, file folders, 15” laptop, smartphone, charger, cables, and other business travel necessities. VO C I E R .CO M

Dewar’s Double Double 32 YEAR OLD

Drawing new inspiration from legendary Master Blender A.J. Cameron, Dewar’s has created a super-premium blend of unparalleled smoothness and character. Resurrecting Cameron’s four-stage ageing process from 1901, malt whiskies are double-aged as are the single grains, the malt and grain whiskies are then aged together for a third time before a fourth, and “finishing” age, in sherry casks. Available as 21, 27 and 32 years old, these are Dewar’s expressions of true excellence, with the 32 confirmed as the world’s best blended Scotch in June by the World Whisky Awards. D E WA R S .CO M

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Scotty Cameron Phantom X 5.5

With a choice of five head styles, the Phantom X line presents players with a variety of mallet setups, including multiple shaft bend and alignment options. All feature multi-material construction, precision milled solid aluminum faces integrated with 303 stainless steel heads with enhanced vibration dampening. The 5.5 has a low shaft bend providing enhanced toe flow for stability while still encouraging an arc in the stroke. This bend was inspired by Justin Thomas’ Tour prototype setup and combines some of the feel of a blade with the forgiveness benefits of a mallet. This is the putter of choice of Kingdom’s publisher—who needs all the help he can get. S COT T YC A M E R O N .CO M / P H A N TO M -X

XXIO

11 Hybrid XXIO is Kingdom’s go-to brand for premium lightweight golf equipment across the range. New this year are the XXIO Eleven hybrids, featuring Weight Plus technology and lightweight shafts that combine to produce fast, forgiving, and easy-to-swing golf clubs. Not only are they easy to hit, but with a slower swing produce distance and enhanced ball flight. X X I O U S A .CO M

ASICS

Gel-Course Duo Boa Distributed in America by Cleveland Srixon, the legendary running shoe brand, ASICS, has launched two revolutionary new golf footwear models. Shown here is the Gel-Course Duo Boa that features the BOA Lacing system for fast, precise fitting. Waterproof, the shoes offer excellent stability and traction. Rearfoot cushioning reduces impact and increases shock absorption, while Toe and Lateral rubber wraps help maintain balance throughout the golf swing. Available in the best pro stores and online. S R I XO N .CO M /A S I C S

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GIFT GUIDE Summer

Snell Golf

Shot Scope

Snell Golf’s new MTB-X, recently named the “longest and best value golf ball” by MyGolfSpy.com, features an updated three-piece construction to further improve performance. The X model of the MTB line features a firmer feel with high ball speeds and increased spin for approach shots. The soft cast urethane cover provides excellent durability and soft feel on short irons and around the green. All orders include free shipping and volume pricing.

Designed for style off course and supreme functionality on course, the Shot Scope V3 comes preloaded with the company’s in-house course database of 35,000 worldwide courses. The V3 automatically tracks each shot hit on the course, and post-round more than 100 different stats can be reviewed via the V3 mobile app or Shot Scope’s online dashboard on different clubs, tee shots, approaches, short game and putting to help improve on course strategy and ultimately lower scores.

S N E L LG O L F.C O M

S H OT S CO P E .CO M

MTB-X

V3 Golf Watch

Premium Hardwood Golf Tees Western Birch

A tee is just a tee, right? Western Birch proudly proves different. These stylish tees are 100% white birch hardwood and are designed with a slightly thicker shank that provides extra durability and both a premium look and feel. Add on high quality printed colors and customization options and Western Birch undoubtably brings a fresh and colorful way to accessorize any golfer or event with this classic golf staple. W E S T E R N B I R C H .CO M

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kingdom.golf Subscribe online Exclusive Subscriber offer Subscribe to Kingdom for 2 years and weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll send you a dozen Snell Golf MTB-X golf balls to get your golf season off to a flying start. With high ball speeds and increased spin for approach shots, your handicap will be grateful. Subscribe online using coupon code snell2020 or call our subscription line 888 335 3288. This offer is good thru 09/10

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Foldsofhonor.org

Conduct a Golf Marathon! The cost of our freedom is paid for daily by our brave service members and their families. Make your next round count and raise money to provide scholarships for our military families in their pursuit of education. Patriot Golf Day is changing lives through the game of golf. We are honoring their sacrifice by educating their legacy. Hosting a golf marathon is an exciting and effective way to get involved. Collect donations and pledges from your family, friends and peers for each hole you commit to play in a day. Whether it’s 18 or 126 holes, you’re making a meaningful difference in the lives of our military families. We also provide online fundraising platforms to make collecting pledges even easier! Billy Sampson, PGA is our most successful golf marathoner. He completed 215 holes in 2018 raising $147,000. He has raised a total of $560,000 in the last seven years supporting Patriot Golf Day! Join Billy and our other successful golf marathoners who have answered the call to duty by saying “YES” I Stand with Folds of Honor. This will be the most heroic round of golf you will ever play !

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WGJ Game Changer

Women on Course In 2005 Donna Hoffman launched Women on Course and quickly grew the organization into a game-changer for getting women into golf. Today, with a sharpened mission and revitalized structure, the group is changing the game again

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“W

e’ve been busy,” says Donna Hoffman, the former television producer and entrepreneur who founded Women on Course in 2005 to ensure more women gained access to golf ’s numerous benefits, including its professional networks. WOC was founded on the idea that, for many women, the golf lifestyle might be more appealing than the game itself—a successful approach, as it turned out. WOC attracted more than 30,000 members nationwide and, after a brief stall under Billy Casper Golf, the organization is back in Hoffman’s hands and surging forward again with new members and an enhanced executive audience. “We’re the only national group out there doing this,” Hoffman says, pointing to WOC’s program for getting women into the game, which includes partnering with businesses to get their women employees on course. “With my business partner, Tina Fox, our mission is to empower women in corporations to be able to seamlessly go anywhere men go. If men are going off to play golf, the women we work with don’t have a brick wall; they can go as well.” Going by the numbers, there are quite a few women going—and even more who will be. National Golf

Foundation studies in 2018 and 2019 found that women comprise roughly 23 percent of all adult U.S. golfers—but 31% of all new golfers, and in the junior ranks it’s 36 percent. For their part, Hoffman and Fox are committed to ensuring those golfers make the most of the game. “Women are interested,” Hoffman says. “A lot of younger women approach us, some of whom want to be market leaders and who see that there is value in golf. I think millennials are affecting it. They don’t put up with stuff, they’re genderless: ‘We just want to do this!’ That might be a factor.”

Networking

If it’s resonating with its growing audience, WOC is also being noticed by the corporate world, including marketleading businesses that want to get their women employees on course where networks are established and where deals can be made. “I’ve noticed corporations are coming to us much more frequently than they used to,” Hoffman says. “They see it as a benefit for their companies and they like that we focus on the networking aspect of it first. They want their women to make contacts; that brings in business and affects the bottom line.” In this, golf is ideal, Hoffman explains, not only for networking outside of the business but also within.

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“What lifestyle setting could you possibly use for business that’s as accepted as golf?” she asks, pointing out that many social settings, such as bars, are inappropriate for professional networking. “Getting to know people on course as opposed to having a chamber meeting or something, the relationship that comes out of that day of golf is much deeper than the chamber meeting. And look, you can spend money for all the dinners and lunches you want, women are going to walk away after that and it’s over. If you spend on golf, it offers longterm returns.” Various surveys, including those conducted by Kingdom’s publisher on behalf of Women’s Golf Journal, found that the two main reasons women stayed away from the game were (1) they felt uninvited and (2) they were intimidated. Hoffman and Fox address both of those by inviting women into the game via its lifestyle and camaraderie, as opposed to its performance aspects. “We say that step one is fun: ‘Get an outfit. Step two: Learn how to drink wine.’ And so on. We have a nine-step program on how to be course ready and the first five take place in the comfort of your own home; you don’t have to go anywhere. And now ‘You only have four more steps to go!’ We introduce them gradually, and before you know it they’re immersed in golf.” If there’s any question about WOC’s success, Hoffman points out that they’re currently enjoying 33 percent growth per year staging events and meet-ups that are making a difference. “We took a group of something like 80 ladies to Pinehurst,” she says, “and [Pinehurst] said they’d never had a recreational group that large of just women. I said, ‘You have all these historical event pictures on your wall, could we get a picture on the wall?’ I was joking, but not joking.” The key to success, she says, is that WOC is not a golf group, per se. It’s a networking group, and so many of its members are motivated to the game for different reasons. “There are a lot of networking groups out there—lots. And if you look at us, we’re competing with the networking groups as opposed to with the golf groups. Most women don’t know that golf is a great place to meet people, they have no clue. They’re trying to network, trying to meet decision-makers, but the groups they’re in don’t always work. If we open the door and give them the skills to do it here on the golf course, they’re going to meet a whole different group of people—but you have to learn golf to get in there. Even if they only golf once per year, we try to give them the tools, and that’s important. If they’re not prepared, if they don’t know their tee from their putter, then it’s going to backfire on them. And with the golf, some are going to take it up because they love it; some, it’s just a means to an end.”

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Finally

For Hoffman herself, she told Women’s Golf Journal some years ago that she wasn’t originally a fan of the game. “I was a television producer,” she said, “I sold my company, I was dating and I met this guy who loved golf— and I hated golf.” She liked the lifestyle, however, and so she decided to focus on that, to create a golf-lifestyle TV show: “fly around, go to resorts, show the lifestyle and the fashion.” As she moved forward with the TV project she started getting enquiries from women on how to get into the game. That turned into a happy hour at a top eatery, to which women were invited to drink wine and chat golf. Eventually that became Women on Course, and today it’s thriving, a vibrant part of helping to grow the game—and to help women and businesses realize golf’s benefits. “If you’re an individual and want to learn the game, we have an online program, a fast track to the first tee,” Hoffman says. “If you’re a corporation and looking to create a program for your women employees, have them perform better and be able to go anywhere, we can help prepare them to do that. Tina and I are really into training women on how to make deeper connections—and connections for life. We’re giving women far more than just an opportunity to connect with a ball.”

Women on Course is a networking group as much as it is a golf group

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CLUB Health

Going Solo

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In 2020, the year of the Coronavirus, golf courses have had to re-assess their normal practices—like all businesses— and use of the conventional golf cart has been problematic. One result has seen golfers take a health kick

hen Arnold Palmer grew up amid the rolling, wooded hills of Latrobe Country Club in western Pennsylvania in the 1930s and ‘40s, in the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains, golf was a game played on foot. Three decades later, the golf cart had taken hold of American golf. Mass production of the cart allowed golf clubs to bring in their own fleets and with them a significant new revenue stream. “Walking is the better way to enjoy golf,” Palmer once said in an interview for Kingdom, and it turned out his father Deacon—course superintendent and professional at Latrobe—never liked the idea of golf carts transporting golfers around the golf course he helped build. “Unfortunately, we’ve gotten away from that as carts became more important to the game,” added Palmer. “Walking is the way the game is supposed to be played, and it’s so beneficial to your health, especially as you get older. “My mother encouraged me to walk everywhere and walk every day. A good long walk is good for the body and really clears up the mind, too. You can do a lot of good thinking on a long walk.” When we asked Tom Watson, he echoed Palmer’s sentiment. “I don’t agree with Mark Twain’s comment, that ‘Golf is a good walk spoiled’,” says Watson. “You can enjoy a walk in nature when you play golf. You can get away from the world on the golf course if you turn your cell phone off.” We put this to Tiger Woods too, and he didn’t hold back in considering the health benefits of walking golf.

Skooza was launched into the golf market in January

“Look at the obesity rate in the United States,” Woods told Kingdom. “It has gone through the roof. Type-two diabetes is easily curable; it is simply down to diet and an exercise regime. With advances in digital and computer technology, a lot of kids don’t go outside anymore. Lifestyles have changed.” The Coronavirus pandemic has forced all businesses to look carefully at social interaction this year and on the golf course, two golfers sharing a cart carries a health risk. Some clubs installed screens in the middle of their carts, others insisted that each cart only carry one golfer. Four carts for a fourball? That’s a lot of cart tracks on the fairway, while halving golf cart revenue for a golf course. In changing times, fast emerging from the fringes of the golf market are single riders, the most impressive and visually appealing of which might be the Skooza. The Skooza golf scooter is built from very light aerospace-grade aluminum to give it an overall weight of only 95 lbs and an electric motor that reaches speeds of 28mph.

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MADE FOR WALKING THE BIOM COOL PRO is the latest addition to Ecco’s hybrid offering and brings waterproof and breathable Gore-Tex Surround technology to Ecco footwear for the first time. Another advance comes in the Tri-Fit Grip spikeless outsole made from ultra-durable TPU, to withstand wear on and off the golf course. Ecco promises zonal performance from the outsole in three segments: one for stability, one for durability and one for rotational support.

“Skooza is to golf scooters what Tesla is to electric cars. We are positioned at the top of a new category” THE PING HOOFER CRAZ E LITE weighs just 1.4kg and that is very light indeed for a golf bag that still features an array of pockets, rain hood and hip pad. The secret to the featherweight is in the carbon fiber legs.

“Before the pandemic I was like the soft spikes salesman walking into the pro shop in the nineties,” starts Skooza’s Phillip James. “When the pro would look at you and was like, ‘That’s a really cool idea but it’s not going to work’. Well the golf market has flipped now, over the last couple of months and Skooza sales have increased by more than 300 percent during spring, month on month.” Skooza was launched into the golf market in January and after a quiet start, 2020 has become the year of the single rider. At $3,495, Skooza is particularly well-placed with its sleek design. Its battery power allows up to 35 miles on a single charge while the Skooza’s low center of gravity and extra-wide stance means its won’t flip or tip like a bike or moped, ensuring a high level of handling and user safety. “Skooza is to golf scooters what Tesla is to electric cars,” adds James. “We are positioned at the top of a new category that is more active than playing golf in a cart.” In a category populated by companies like Phat Scooter, Finn Scooters and GolfBoard, the other advantage of single riders is that they increase pace of play, compared to walking golf but also compared to two golfers sharing a cart, with two golf balls flying in various directions. We’ve all been in those cart rides.

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Also seeing tremendous growth is Stewart Golf, with its leading-edge X9 Follow electric trolley. The X9 Follow literally follows its golfer up the fairway thanks to a Bluetooth connection to a belt clip. Online sales in the United States during April and May increased by 886 percent, year on year. Figures for early June were even higher. “Our stocks are sold out and we are working hard to keep up with demand,” says Mark Stewart, CEO of Stewart Golf. “The level of sales has been unprecedented. Our X9 Follow is particularly popular as more golfers upgrade from carrying or pushing, or switch from riding in a cart.” “A lot of golfers used to think their course was too long or hilly for walking. But this year, being forced to walk for the first time, they realise they can walk comfortably. The X9 Follow gives walking golfers freedom on the course.

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Walking gives a round of golf a rhythm that carts disregard

Walking golf with the X9 Follow from Stewart Golf

Golfers are telling us they won’t go back to using a cart.” Arnold Palmer had a point about walking. It gives a round of golf a rhythm that carts disregard, not a recipe for slow play. A round of golf grinds to a halt with extended searches for lost balls, lingering studies of course guides, multiple practice swings and by weighing up putts from all angles. And let’s face it, when a golfer has struck the tee shot of his or her dreams, who wants to rush that momentary glory? Walk it. Like a first kiss, it is to be cherished.

DRINK Scotch

Highland Tiki

hile rum is the spirit most associated with tropical “tiki” drinks, Scotch has a lot to offer the genre. Scotch’s scarcity among the early canon of sunset-hued libations, first popularized in the 1930s, is due more to its post-Prohibition regard as a spirit of status than to any failing as a fine complement to fruit or Polynesian flavors. In fact, Scotch whiskey is so ideal

as a foundation for palm-inspired coolers that Trader Vic himself used Dewar’s 12-year as the premiere ingredient in the signature cocktail of his restaurant’s London location when it opened in 1963. As one of the founders of modern tiki culture, Trader Vic knew that Scotch wasn’t just a fine partner for tropical cocktails, it was an elevation. Here, then, are several elevated takes on classics enjoyed wherever warm tradewinds are felt, even if only in the heart.

Night Sands Appearing in 1930, the original Blood & Sand cocktail was named for Rudolph Valentino’s bullfighting film of the same name and utilized blood orange juice, Cherry Heering, Vermouth and Scotch. Our take swaps out the Heering for Creme de Cassis (we like Lejay’s, produced in France since 1841) and allows for standard OJ because the blood orange variety isn’t always in great supply.

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• • • •

¾ oz Dewar’s 15 ¾ oz sweet vermouth ¾ oz Creme de Cassis ¾ oz fresh-squeezed orange juice

Shake all ingredients in an ice-filled shaker and strain into chilled coupe glass.

London Sour There are two men who claim to have invented the Mai Tai: Donn Beach of “Don the Beachcomber” fame and Victor “Trader Vic” Jules Bergernon, Jr. Both brought tiki culture and tiki drinks to the mainstream, and the latter launched a global chain of Polynesianthemed restaurants that endures today, operating in locations as far afield as Bavaria, Germany; Bahrain; the Seychelles; and at the London Hilton on Park Lane, for which the following cocktail was created.

• • • • •

2oz Dewar’s 12 2 ½oz fresh-squeezed orange juice ½ oz fresh-squeezed lemon juice 1/6 oz orgeat syrup 1/6 oz sugar cane syrup

Shake all ingredients in an ice-filled shaker and strain into an ice-filled Collins glass

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One of the hotspots of 1930s Los Angeles, the Cocoanut Grove nightclub at the Ambassador Hotel was famous for a number of reasons, including its libations. In 1962, the Grove started serving its Cocoanut Grove Cooler, a Scotchbased concoction from award-winning bartender Tom Strenger, and the drink quickly caught on. Our version is a simplified take on the original, more conducive to home bartending (and to home bar ingredients). Nonetheless, it is a lovely way to beat the heat, and yet another example of how Scotch is comfortable among the palms.

• 1 ½ oz Dewar’s Caribbean Smooth • ¾ oz fresh-squeezed lemon juice • ¾ oz fresh-squeezed orange juice • ¾ oz pineapple juice • ¾ oz guava juice • ¾ oz Cointreau • 1 tsp Trader Vic’s Macademia Nut Liqueur

Add all ingredients to an ice-filled shaker and shake, strain into rocks glass (or tiki mug of choice)

Cocoanut Grove Cooler

Coconut Highball Tommy Dewar invented the Highball in 1892. More recently, his family’s distillery in Scotland gave it an inspired twist by introducing Dewar’s Caribbean Smooth, a blend of up to 40 single malts and grain whiskies that lay in casks for at least 8 years. Double-aged and finished in a Caribbean rum cask, this is the perfect—and one of the easiest—ways to take a tropical vacation in your backyard.

• 1pt Dewar’s Caribbean Smooth + • 1⁄2pt Lemon juice • 1⁄2pt Monin coconut syrup • Soda water • Mint sprig & lemon wheel garnish

Combine ingredients in a shaker and then pour over ice in a Collins glass

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“Reverse Dry Shake” Egg white cocktails, such as the Ramos Gin Fizz, depend on a proper egg white foam; here’s how to get it. Rather than shaking all ingredients over ice for an extended period, which breaks down the egg proteins and creates foam but which can dilute the cocktail and yield a watery result once strained into the glass, try this: Shake all ingredients in an ice-filled shaker for only 20 seconds or so, then strain into a chilled shaker that contains no ice and shake vigorously for an additional 15-20 seconds. From there, pour (no straining necessary) the cocktail into a glass and serve. The foam will be bigger, stronger, and much more pleasant.

Starboard Light Trader Vic himself created the Starboard Light and Port Light cocktails, the former featuring Scotch and the latter bourbon. Referencing the nautical terms for right and left, originally the mostly-red drinks were served in “starboard” green and “port” red glasses, but we were content with a chilled vintage bamboo coupe glass, which showcases the foam from the egg white.

• 2oz Dewar’s 15 • 1oz fresh-squeezed lemon juice • ½ oz passion fruit nectar • 2 tbsp honey • 1 egg white

Shake all ingredients (see sidebar: “Reverse Dry Shake”) over ice and strain into a chilled coupe.

SPRING 2020

FOOD BBQ

LOW & SLOW Perfect pulled pork for lazy long days

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ecently we’ve found ourselves with quite a lot of time on our hands, and it’s possible that you have too. With the extended time around the house have come plenty of opportunities to smell the roses—or as we’ve discovered, the barbecue. Traditionally our grill has been for steaks, chicken and other relatively quick cooks, an enjoyable means to an end during backyard parties and family get-togethers in which the actual grilling lasted no more than a couple of hours. But longer days and a lighter schedule have had us thinking beyond “3 minutes a side,” and so we decided to smoke a bone-in Boston butt. The result? Let’s just say it was a great way to spend the day. A whole day, in fact.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED: • • •

A Boston butt BBQ rub Meat thermometer

• • •

Aluminum foil Patience An appetite

THE MEAT

In the UK, the bone-in cut of meat from a pig’s shoulder is reasonably known as “shoulder on the bone,” but in the United States we call it a pork butt or, commonly, a Boston butt. One theory on why is related to America’s earliest days as a country and to New England butchers packing pork shoulders (a less-desirable cut at the time) into barrels, known as “butts” (from the Latin word for cask, “buttis”). Another theory has it named a butt because the cut is so thick, like the butt of a rifle or similar. Whatever the reason for the name, the cut contains a lot of connective tissue that needs to be broken-down, meaning slow cooking is almost essential. A Boston butt includes parts of the shoulder blade, neck and upper arm, while a “pork shoulder” comes from lower on the leg and extends to the hock. A Boston butt also contains more fat, which over a slow cook bastes the meat and yields fantastic flavor. Size: When deciding what size Boston butt to buy, a common rule of thumb is 1/3 to 1/2 lb of meat per person. Ours was around 6 lbs and was more than enough for a family of four, with plenty of leftovers. Prep: Everyone has a style, but we’ve always had good luck with cross-cutting the meat in a diamond pattern. This has yielded excellent “bark,” as the crusted skin is called, with pull-able chunks. Do as you like, then give it a good rub. You’ll want to cover the meat with a rub at least 24 hours before you smoke it; this heavily influences the flavor and bark and it’s where you can get creative. There are a million opinions on rubs and twice that many recipes, and we wouldn’t pretend to be the last word. Dive into that rabbit hole online or at your local BBQ store. The easiest way to sort it is to buy a commercial rub, and here again there are plenty available. We like the products from Meat Church BBQ and are particularly fond of their Honey Bacon Rub, which gives the meat a sweet and slightly spicy bark that suits our palate. Still, there are plenty available; have fun experimenting. Rub the meat all over, as much as you like without caking it (we rubbed it in further and shook off the excess after taking the picture at left), then tightly wrap the butt in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge.

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THE CO OK

We use a Big Green Egg as we love the natural cooking, the control, and the results offered by this kamado-style ceramic cooker, but the idea will be the same with any smoker: low heat over a long period of time. How long? Tough to say, but at 225˚-250˚F you can figure on 1 1/2 to 2 hours per pound, so this isn’t a last-minute meal after work. The trick is to get your smoker to somewhere between 225˚ and 275˚ and keep it there. For us, that meant filling the BGE with natural lump charcoal and getting the temp to an even 250˚. It takes about 45 minutes to get it calmed down and steady, but once it’s set it’s basically good to go. It’s advisable to cook the meat indirectly, which in the case of the BGE means inserting a convEGGtor ceramic plate over the fire but under the grill itself. It’s advisable to cover this in aluminum foil and to slip a small foil pan on top of it to catch the drippings. Otherwise, once the temp is steady, take your meat from the fridge and put it right on the grill; no resting, no fancy arrangements needed. At this point we also insert our temperature probe (we use a DOT from Thermoworks, a ridiculously simple thermometer that never lets us down) and set its alarm for somewhere near 195˚F.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

At first, not much. Jump in the pool, go for a bike ride, watch a movie, whatever you like. The meat will happily cook away until, at some point around 160˚, maybe 7 hours into the cook, it’s probably going to stall. Basically, as the meat’s been cooking it’s been “sweating,” its juices rising to the surface. Just like perspiration when you exercise this has a cooling effect, which causes the meat to “stall,” with its temperature sitting still for what can feel like ages. Traditionally we ride this out, but if you want to get things moving (or if you’re concerned about moisture loss) you can remove the butt from the cook and wrap it in aluminum foil. Clearly you’ll want some proper gloves for this, and you’ll want to take your time because for this to work the foil has to be very tight, right up against the meat all over. Some people double wrap to ensure it’s as covered as possible, which will inhibit the sweating effect. Wrapped or no, return the meat to the cooker and let it continue to cook until it’s done. Ideally you’ll want the internal temperature to be between 195˚ and just over 200˚. This ensures safety and a thorough cook.

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THE FINISH

Once your Boston butt is done, remove it from the grill and place it into an empty cooler or some other kind of insulated space (we’ve used an oven before). Keep the meat wrapped, put it on a platter of some kind, wrap it in towels if you can, and then leave it in the cooler for at least 30 minutes. If you’re taking this to a friend’s, no worries: it can rest in the cooler for a couple of hours if you like. Once you’re ready to eat, take it out and start shredding—or “pulling”—the meat. If you have proper gloves for this you can use your hands (the meat will be hot), and there are pulling forks sold for the purpose, but we’ve never had any trouble just using a couple of forks. The bone slides right out and the meat breaks apart easily. From there it’s up to you. Served on a bun with coleslaw, piled on a plate smothered in your favorite sauce, put in a stew of some kind or something else, it’s hard to go wrong once you’ve gotten this far. If you’ve done it right you’ll have tender, mouth-watering pork and the satisfaction of having prepared something wonderful. And even if you’ve done it wrong it’ll still likely taste great. It’s hard to get it wrong, maybe because things that take time tend to be more forgiving. In this case it’s worth it, and a great way to spend a day. A whole day, in fact.

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Primed for Flight

esigned less than a decade earlier by A. W. Tillinghast, Winged Foot Golf Club first gained national recognition when it played host to the U.S. Open over its West Course in 1929. The Club has hosted the U.S Open a further four times since and a single PGA Championship, all over the West Course. Winged Foot’s East Course has held the U.S. Women’s Open twice and a U.S. Senior Open. That first U.S. Open saw Bobby Jones win the third of his four national titles (pictured) after defeating Al Espinosa in a 36-hole playoff. This year’s rearranged championship will again be played at the Mamaroneck club, over its West Course, September 17-20. Even if viewing will be largely limited to TV, we at Kingdom can’t wait.

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