This book would never have come about without the platform provided by Golfweek magazine. The Orlando-based periodical has been my full-time professional home since 1999 and before that, beginning in 1988, my main part-time outlet. What began as a monthly column on golf course architecture eventually became a second career, one that enabled me voluntarily to leave the academic culture for which I had trained. I am grateful to the publishers and editors for their tolerance of my prose and for the opportunity to fill so many print and web pages over the years.
I am particularly grateful to Golfweek in this instance for allowing me to develop material that first appeared in the magazine. Most of the chapters here—except chapter 3 on New Mexico, chapter 7 on Connecticut, and the postscript—began life as or incorporate material from articles that were initially published in the magazine. I have taken the time to build upon these original articles and tailor them specifically for this book. The chance to expand those early forays into essays five or ten times their original length has been a refreshing experience. I have been lucky, indeed, to have found with Golfweek a professional home that still values the written word.
Writing is a strange experience. As with any writer, I’ve had some considerable help along the way. A whole range of people helped me arrive at a point where I could bring together my interests in golf, sports, landscape, literature, and political culture and put a highly personal touch to it.
Early on, as much as thirty years ago, I began conversations with Julie Dobrow, Stephen J. Rosow, and Lorne Rubenstein that have found expression in this book. Also formative were more golf-specific engagements with architects Bill Coore, Geoffrey Cornish, Ben Crenshaw, Pete Dye, Gil Hanse, Michael Hurdzan, Tim Liddy, Rees Jones, Robert Trent Jones Jr., Brian Silva, and Andy Staples. Course owners/developers Mike Keiser, Michael Pascucci, Donald Trump, Lowell Schulman, and Dick Youngscap provided invaluable insights, as have turfgrass experts Scott Ramsey, Frank Rossi, and the late Stan Zontek. Tommy Naccarato provided impressive technical help on images. Joan Taper proved to be an assiduous reader and manuscript editor. And I got more inspiration and encouragement from Dorothy Blackwell, Curtis Gillespie, Emmy Moore Minister, Scott G. Nelson, Tony Pioppi, and Orin Starn than I have ever let on. What started as a group of golf course evaluators I run for Golfweek has gradually evolved into a network of close friends, including (but not limited to) William Cosgrove, Steve Katz, and Glen Rapoport.
On the night twenty-six years ago when I met Jane Nadel—anthropologist, mother, and gardener—she asked me, “What is there to write about golf?” Now, after all of these years together, we’ve not reached the end of the answer.
Maybe other writers are different; it took me a considerable way into this project to realize where these essays were going. To the extent that there is coherence in the vision of golf I express here, it is largely because—as I discovered while writing—this book emanates from a core understanding that’s much simpler and more unified than I ever realized. For that I am grateful to my parents, Milton and Alberta Klein. They had no idea what they were getting into and little idea of how much I got out of it.
Portions of the introduction and chapters 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6 were previously published, in different form, in the following issues of Golfweek magazine: June 12, 2011 (“Final Round with a Dad Who Didn’t Play”); March 12, 2010 (“Stone Canyon Comes to Life”); August 13, 2010 (“Rollin’ Along in the Heartland”); August 25, 2007 (“Simple Pleasure: On a Prairie Dog Tour of North Dakota”); September 12, 2008 (“North Dakota’s Simple Golf Lesson”); July 14, 2007 (“Bandon Charette”); and February 3, 2012 (“Inside the Ferry Point Park Project”). Used with permission.
Portions of chapter 1 were previously published, in different form, in “Mountain Lake: Never Heard of It,” in The History of Mountain Lake, by Cynthia Zaref (Lake Wales FL: Mountain Lake Corp., 2008). Used with permission.