Standing on the first tee at Bandon Dunes, you are quite oblivious to all the marvelous trouble that awaits. The ocean is hidden from view, somewhere off to your left behind the sand dunes and shrubs and hotels that bowl the opening fairway. You are also just a few steps from the main lodge, where you can see the other guests smiling around the gas fire pit that burns 24-7. They seem so safe and calm.

Yet your mind starts to wander back to the demonic imagery of the greens that, moments earlier, looked so small and impenetrable against the background of the raging sea. You already caught a glimpse of this treachery as you walked through the narrow path between the pro shop and the main lodge to the starter hut.

But now your brain is in pretzel: you’re afraid, yet you also can’t wait to get there, to the edge, to see that.

Such is the absurd beauty of the whole Bandon experience: the simultaneous excitement of what lies ahead, contrasted with the utter dread of knowing it’s about to blow up your round and mind.

No sign of the beast on the second hole either, though the 220-yard par 3 over a valley of fescue is a nightmare of its own.

The body starts to tingle on the par 5 third hole. You are hitting straight at it now, but it seems to be extending its hand rather than cocking it back to punch you in the jaw. The hole is slightly elevated and, since the ocean and the horizon meet directly behind the green, there is only a thin sliver of sea that you can fool yourself into thinking is merely a lake. And “you’ve dealt with lakes before, Tyler. Get a hold of yourself!”

By the fourth hole, however, the gig is up. Now you are really in it. It’s everywhere and the clouds overhead seem to not only be bringing the rain and the wind but also impending doom. The ocean is all you can see to your right as you walk down the fairway. When you get to the green, it’s all you can see, period.

I hope everyone at least once gets to experience holing an 8-footer while your mind revolts against the thought of being stranded in the middle of the Pacific, the group in front already too far ahead to hear your screams. You’d be better off holding a flare gun than a putter, but thanks to my caddy, Shane, and my partner, Jerry, I made it off the green with a par and kissed the slightly-more-sheltered fifth tee box.

Even though these views are seared into my brain, I once again can hardly recall a single shot I hit with any detail. Maybe it was the beers, or maybe it was the strange flow-state I had somehow entered - a Zen-like focus that I presume resembled whatever what’s-his-name felt while climbing Free Solo. A sense of danger is not something we generally associate with golf, but the sheer force of nature that was inevitable here was doing something to my mind and nerves, which was then doing something surprising to my golf game. 

With Jerry freeing me up with pars and Shane still handing me whatever club to hit (no further information required), I didn’t need to think about my actual game, which meant I was free to focus on something else, or nothing at all. The round became another lesson in mindfulness, and I felt every raindrop that appeared suddenly and from nowhere, saw every new leaf on the still-budding trees, and watched each wave crash to shore then roll back out, crash to shore then roll back out, crash to shore…

Whenever I’ve had one of these once-in-a-lifetime rounds, however, that very same mind has always, at some point, turned against me with a genetically encoded need to remind itself how well it’s playing. This kiss of death finally came on the 13^th hole when that little voice started telling me how strange it all was …  I saw the flag whipping in the wind but heard nothing. Nobody was even chirping me anymore. In fact, Skip and Mac almost seemed polite! It was too quiet, and like the pitcher who notices nobody is sitting next to him in the dugout and therefore realizes he’s throwing a perfect game in the 7^th, that’s when I saw I was 3 under and bogey free.

If anyone can recommend a mental coach, I’m all ears. From that point on there was no more stopping to admire the views, no more sense of the present. I think I even asked Shane for a yardage or two, just to be sure, and like a catcher calling an 0-2 curveball and getting shook by that same pitcher, he was right to be disgusted with me. I knew I was spiralling but I couldn’t help it. My stupid brain had taken the reins from the instincts of my body and I was rapidly sinking out there with the buoys that tried in vain to tell me “DANGER! DO NOT COME HERE!”

I spent the next four holes fighting an unrelenting current of bogeys, and when I washed up on the 18^th tee, I was back to even par.

The knowledge that I might have just squandered my first under par round in three years made me feel like Tom Hanks in the first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan … where am I and how the hell can this be happening? (I can say this because I spent a year-and-a-half as an infantry soldier in the Canadian Armed Forces, and while I never even sniffed a battlefield, I at least heard stories).

Perhaps some of my military training kicked in, and I’ll never really know how I did it. But something clicked, and I knew right then that I wasn’t going down, not like this, not here.

I’m pretty sure I smashed driver then 5-wood greenside, and can vaguely remember chipping it to about four feet. Jerry and I had already won the match, and knowing I would throw a full-on tantrum and probably ruin dinner if I didn’t make the putt, the boys tried to give me the birdie. Obviously, I couldn’t take it.

I’m sure they were as relieved as I was when the ball lipped in, and I barely felt the big bear hug from Shane that almost ripped my limbs off. Even our other caddy, Brian, who liked to stick the needle in from time to time by reminding me how much better he would have hit some shot, said, “I think you would’a had me today, Ty. Great round.”

That was enough for me. But in truth, the greatest joy was realizing I wouldn’t have to drop $3000 on those rental clubs.

I made that final putt in near darkness, so I don’t remember what time we got to McKee’s Pub for dinner. Usually I’d be ready for bed after the 36 holes of walking and the 10 hours of all-out-war against my mental demons, but one must celebrate even the smallest milestone in this forsaken game, and by god I was going to drink to that 71.

For some unknown reason, Jerry bet Skip one American dollar that he couldn't finish five pints of Guinness in an hour. For some lesser known reason, Skip accepted and immediately started splitting the G and then splitting the bottom of glasses. We were all full from the delicious black tar before the Pacific chowders and shepherd’s pies arrived, but hearing that these dishes were humble staples – and since we had another full day of walking tomorrow - we ate anything and everything.

The pints kept mysteriously arriving as we dealt cards and drunkenly dropped our filthy dollar bills in our food - a game of “Chase the Ace” had broken out, although I can’t describe the rules because I don’t remember them. I do remember us causing a scene in that bar – we were far too excited at the prospect of winning four dollars - and having to pull up extra tables as random strangers, enticed by all our hootin’ and hollerin’, wanted to join the action.

At some point the manager noticed we were flagrantly breaking the law. Gambling in bars is illegal in Oregon, and, hilariously, he nervously shuffled over and apologized for inconveniencing us. But as I’ve said many times, customer service is everything here, and rather than tell us to stop as he had every right to, he brought us a case of poker chips instead.

“Uh... Um … pardon me guys, but can you use these instead of bills, just so there is no money visible on the table?”

I thought, “There truly are no rules here”, and the clanking of chips in the ever-growing pot only brought more curious, unexpecting rubes to our table.

When the staff started stacking chairs around 12:00 a.m. we realized, on account of being unable to see straight, that we had overstayed our welcome (although, again, nobody asked us to leave). But by that time it felt like 5:00 a.m. and I think we were all looking for an excuse to get the hell out of there.

While the boys took their time finishing their beers and cashing out their chips, I ran outside to “get some air.” Outside the bar there is another communal, wood-burning fireplace, and I saw two strangers sitting in front of it and talking closely. Thinking nothing of it, I sat down right beside them, as if we were old pals, and listened as one dude vented about his impending divorce. They didn’t change their tone when I sat down, and I nodded along as if I had something to contribute. When I briefly interjected with my own drunken advice, they nodded, too.

That’s when I realized I wasn’t on a trip with a brother and two friends, but that we were really at some sort of twisted family reunion. Even among complete strangers, you somehow knew you were bonded by the very fact of being here - that you were, truly, among friends.

We had a similar experience our final day when taking the shuttle from Old Mac back to Bandon Dunes. We stopped to pick up a group of guys about our age, and if they didn’t tell us they were from Minnesota we would have known it the second they spoke.

They ribbed us about Canada’s hockey defeats to the US at the Olympics, and we ribbed them back for being dumb American idiots. It was love and first sight, and when we told them we were leaving in a few hours to head back to Toronto, they were sad we wouldn’t be able join them at the bar that night. But then one of them saw this as an opportunity: “You guys have any drugs you can’t take with you to the airport?”

Only among friends can you ask such a question without an instant of forethought, and even though we were alcohol guys and not drug guys, we liked these loveable dummies so much that we all wished we had something to offer them.

When Skip, Jerry, and Mac finally stumbled out of McKee’s and pulled me away from the fire and my new teary-eyed, soon-to-be-divorced friend, a shuttle was already waiting to take us to our rooms. Clearly someone had radioed central dispatch to let them know there was a feral pack of deadbeats who, if a ride wasn’t ready, would have to be fished out of a ditch in the morning.

Our driver didn’t bat an eye either, not even when Skip sprawled out across the seats to take a little nap. He couldn’t wait 3 minutes, but evidently this was nothing new since, when we got to our cabin, our driver also offered to help roll him to the door.

Whether it was with a smile or a grin, I think that’s gotta be the definition of customer service.

Back in the late-1960s, an elderly British historian toured the vagrant districts of San Francisco at the height of the “hippie era,” hoping to define this strange counterculture which, at the time, looked like it was going to drastically reshape American life. He left his trip somewhat sympathetic to the cause, even if he couldn’t bring himself to fully endorse it. The hippies had found something, he thought, that was essential to the survival of humanity: a return to an emphasis on mankind rather than the tribalism inherent in the New Capitalism; a love for people for its own sake.

I got whiffs of this same spirit all over the Bandon grounds. Not that the golfers there had revolted or withdrawn from society – quite the opposite, as I’m almost sure our Minnesota buddies were in a frat and now worked in finance, and as our pro shop bills piled up and told us capitalism was, in fact, the name of the game. Still, there was an unmistakeable spirit of the collective, where nobody was really a stranger and people generally cared about one another. In real life, do you sit closer or move further away from the stranger trying to talk to you on the bus?

Not here, though. Here we were all too happy to engage with everyone who inevitably asked “where’d you play today, and how’d it go?”

That’s not only golf as it was meant to be played, but I think that this is how we were always meant to live. While not everyone can afford to join this kind of movement, I realize this is precisely why we work so hard to join country clubs and take trips like these. It’s also why golf still feels like an escape even after we triple the 18^th and shoot 102. The only sad fact, to me, is that we all know this is an escape, and I wondered many times at Bandon why, and indeed if, this had to be so.

Despite everything I just said, you could forgive me for thinking the next day would be more of a horror show than an escape. When we got to the range, the wind that was already blowing 50 km/h at 8:00 a.m., which was not helping the hangovers. To be fair, we never once thought “what the hell are we doing here?” even though the looniest golf nut back home would have long since cancelled his tee-time. 

So we hit ball after ball on the range, stopping after every shot to collect our hats which had blown five stalls over, a smile on our face the whole time. Once when my hat flew all the way down to the putting green, I came face to face with a brick shithouse dressed as a man, only to look up and see it was star NFL tight end and, through his engagement to Taylor Swift, pop culture phenom Travis Kelce. A few stalls down I saw NFL stars George Kittle and Nick Bosa lose their hats, too.

These guys could have easily said “fuck this” and hopped on their private jet for a day-jaunt to calmer climates, but here they were battling the elements alongside us less well-quipped (and less well-endowed) mortals. I don’t know why, but that made us feel emboldened, and we didn’t dare complain about the weather again.

We were scheduled to play Bandon Trails in an hour, and a few people on the range told us just how lucky we were. We didn’t understand this at the time … How could anybody be “lucky” after waking up to this weather? The rain had started to fall, blowing sideways and shattering our pupils whenever we tried to watch the ball flight. Since they said this was links golf the way it was meant to be played, we tried to console ourselves with the thought that this was our one true "Scottish" round.

But Trails is the only course on property that isn’t really links, even if the weather tried to trick us into thinking it was. The dense, old-growth forest that the course is built in made it seem like the shuttle driver got lost and accidentally dropped us off in the interior of British Columbia. It was a stunning change in scenery that threw us off our game, but we soon understood why the poor saps stuck playing Sheep Range or Pacific Dunes called us lucky. The forest at Trails blocked most of the wind, and while they were having their balls blown off the green and into the ocean, there were holes in the tree-lined valleys where the only breeze came from our own panting breath as we navigated the steep, elevated tee boxes.

Coming to the narrow shoot of the 10^th tee, I felt like I was in Middle Earth and that the course had been forged by the Dark Lord Sauron himself, just to mess with us. The wide-open fairways of the three previous courses were a distant memory, and even without the wind it was still cold and wet and very much a fight for survival rather than a score. 

Since Skip and I had tied Jerry and Mac in our first round of the week, and seeing as this was our last round before the final, winner-take-all match of our tournament – where we would each start at different scores depending on how many wins we had accumulated during these match plays – we decided to run it back. We were once again tied standing on the 18^th tee, and I thought Skip and I had a certain victory when Jerry pushed his driver into a fairway bunker that looked like it could hide an Iranian dictator. Walking to my ball in the fairway I assumed it was now 2 v 1.

But just as Shane brought the best out of me at Bandon, by now Brian was firmly on Team Jerry, and he wasn’t going to let his guy go down like a punk. Usually quieter and more reserved than Shane, I got goosebumps when I heard him talking to Jerry at the bottom of that sand pit. Questioning whether to lay up or go for it – which looked to be physically impossible given the X-Games-sized ramp he’d have to hit over – Brian didn’t flinch:

“Time to be a hero.”

Goddamnit. I didn’t need to watch since I know what was coming. When I looked at the green I saw Jerry’s ball had ended up 6 feet from the pin. I remained so stunned by this defiance of physical law that I made double from somewhere and shot 84. His birdie won him and Mac the match, which also meant I lost my lead. The three of us were now tied going into the finals.

Over 750 ml (each) of saki and beer chasers and, much like Bandon Trails, an equally out of place yet delicious bowl of ramen at the course’s Asian-inspired restaurant, we decided there was only one way to settle this: like a couple of streetballer’s calling “next,” we’d head to the Preserve that afternoon – Bandon’s 13-hole par 3 course (not to be confused with Shorty’s, which we were told we could skip) – and shoot for it.

Given we were far removed from the paradoxical safety of the trees, we could feel the wind and rain again, and seeing as I had never had a sip of saki in my life let alone 750 ml of it, things started to get very hairy for me. We were the only ones dumb enough to play the Preserve in this weather, and it was a cool but eerie experience not seeing another soul for miles. I also remember slowly slipping into madness after every beer and flared wedge that landed in the gorse bushes. I could barely grip the club and the ramen sitting in my stomach was desperately clawing at my insides, wanting to be set free. In short, I was in hell.

Down two to Jerry on the final 13^th hole, I couldn’t hold it any longer. The ramen had breached the gates of my bowels and the boys watched me sprint for dear life down the slope and across the putting green, all the while screaming “WHERE IS THE BATHROOM! SOMEONE TELL ME WHERE THE DAMN BATHROOM IS PLEASE!” 

I didn’t even bring those poor long johns home with me, and for all I know the next guests in our room got a horrible surprise when they saw them in the corner, still “drying out”.

If I thought shooting eight-over my cap was bad, shitting myself at 36 years old, at Bandon Dunes, at least put it into perspective. This was a new low… although if I had to do it over again I’d still order the ramen. It was that good.

There was nothing else to do but congratulate Jerry on claiming the pole position (although he wouldn’t touch my hand – smart), and then head back to McKee’s to drown my sorrows in some more shepherd’s pie and pints. 

I think Jerry saw the despair in my eyes, though, and he suggested him and I go check out the Bunker Bar while Skip and Mac finally called their better halves for the first time. The Bunker Bar is something that does not belong in the present day, as is instantly evident from the sign on the door that says “Cigar Smoking Allowed” - and boy did it show. It was like entering a time machine to the 70s – shaggy, cigar burnt carpet, wood panelling on the walls, a pool table and sets of poker chips everywhere, for your pleasure, and a bartender who looked like he used to work saloons in the old wild west. 

We obviously stayed and had a drink and then used the chips to play blackjack, making a pact that we would have to return here again for the proper experience and the full baptism back into manhood.

By the time I got to McKees and tried to eat, it was all too much. The day was weighing heavy on my mind and, not surprisingly, I didn’t last long. Too much shame. Too much trauma. And after losing most of my dollar bills in blackjack and Chase the Ace, I had to call it - time of death: 10:30 p.m. While the boys would usually guilt me into staying, they too saw the look in my eyes and immediately understood the situation. They watched me disappear into the great beyond without a word, where tomorrow would be a new day.

When I woke the next morning, not even the sight of my crusty long johns in the corner could dampen my renewed spirit. This really was a new day - the sun that had collapsed into a black hole at Trails was now bursting through the forest and into our cabin window.

“Wake up Skippy … We got Pacific Dunes today, buddy!”

He had borrowed my morning routine of dry-heaving over the toilet, and once he was done, he saw the sun, too. It didn’t take much to get us going, knowing that we were about to play the 2^nd ranked public course in America. I assume all the boys had also turned in early, as even Jerry and Mac looked half-decent when the shuttle rolled up to take us to the range.

I had my breakfast burrito in the range bar and washed it down with a Sand Bagger (after yesterday’s incident, I wasn’t taking any chances with beer this morning). It was also the first time I was able to warm up in short sleeves. I was feeling better by the second. 

Pacific Dunes is the closest course to the range, and since I was feeling good and wanted to lock in for the finals, I decided to walk over. This was a terrible mistake, as I soon found out my legs were starting to give after four days of walking 36 holes, and that the big “Pacific Dunes” sign was only for the driveway that goes straight up a half-mile cliff to the clubhouse. When I saw the boys’ shuttle coming behind me, I jumped into the middle of the road and flagged it down. I figured if it hit me it didn’t matter since I would have run out of breath and died on that road anyway.

We got up the cliff and to the staging area and met Shane and Brian – “one last dance,” we told them, even though it really wasn’t the last dance since we had two “fun” rounds booked the next day before heading to the airport. But this was the final match: the winner taking home some American money and a lifetime of bragging rights, as who knows when we’ll make it back here. Jerry got to start at 2 under after his great play and my terrible bowels at the Preserve, while Mac and I would start at 1 under and Skip even par. 

Despite being much more secluded, the first tee at Pacific reminded me a lot of the first tee at Bandon. There is once again no sign of the ocean that gives the course it’s famed name and, dare I say, the wide open fairway almost made it feel… easy?

Unlike Bandon, the tee is a bit of a walk from the clubhouse, and that walk was also our first glimpse of the Punch Bowl – the massive putting green that serves as an ever-changing 18-hole mini golf course, and which, when the weather is decent, remains open under the lights.

I can easily see why Pacific Dunes is ranked so highly, although I don’t think any of us ranked it as our favourite on property. This is likely because it was the last course we played, and the novelty of the seaside views might have been wearing off. It is also possible we all wanted to win this thing so desperately that we didn’t let ourselves take it in the way it deserved.

Looking back at the photos Jerry took, this now feels like a crime. He’s obviously a great photographer, but you could have photographed this course with a Motorola Razor and still understood the magnitude of the place. I regret not processing this earlier, especially since Jerry (our photographer for the week) was so focused on winning that this course has the fewest photos. 

Maybe the course was too perfect? We again lucked out playing Pacific on this day - not only was this the warmest, sunniest weather we got all week, it was also the calmest winds we faced. That doesn’t mean the golf gods were letting us of easy, though. This was Oregon in March after all, and one of the most vivid memories I have is looking out from the fairway to the ocean and seeing a perfectly straight line separating an approaching wall of dark grey cloud. The sky was split completely in two: one half, out over the ocean, was grey and dark and ominous, and the other, the part that was still over our heads, was blue and cloudless. The grey wall would soon hit us with a vengeance, and we’d have to throw on three layers for 15 minutes until we saw those lines reverse, with the blue sky replacing the grey out at sea. 

We did this dressing up and dressing down at least three times during the round, and going through that, at this course, I think we finally understood what links golf truly meant: be prepared for everything, and never get too comfortable. Even though I shot another 84 and lost miserably, it didn’t matter.  

It doesn’t – it couldn’t – get any better than this. 

Mac, that quiet, handsome little ninja (and not just because he’s Asian), somehow came out of nowhere and won. I suppose that was the next best thing to me winning, since if Jerry was victorious I’d be hearing about it every morning when I woke up to the ding of my phone and a text message that said: “Hey idiot. Remember when I beat your ass?”

Mac is so even-keel and, despite him understanding fashion and stealing all the girls I liked, so modest that I actually had to double-check he had in fact won when I started writing this. That wouldn’t have been the case with me or Jerry; if I won my LinkedIn profile would list me as “Golf Champion – Bandon Dunes” whereas Jerry would have told his wife he was turning pro and meant it, pursuing his delusion by bankrupting his entire family and squandering my nieces’ nascent college funds on his new swing coach.

In the end, I think it all played out for the best. 

But when we shook hands and hugged our caddies, the adrenaline immediately started to wear off, which meant we started to really feel the weight of five days of beers and wind and rain and 20 kilometers of walking.

The thought that we still had two more rounds, just for the hell of it, caused our bodies to tremble, and we each began tossing out half-hearted feelers to see if everyone else was serious about going through with them:

“Man, I’ve spent a lot of money … although I probably have enough for one more round.”

“Ah, my back, my back! I didn’t say anything on the 6^th hole, but it seized! I’ll just have to see how I feel in the morning.”

For whatever reason, we didn’t turn to sleep or Advil for the cure. The only thing that could save us, we foolishly thought at the time, was more beers and tequila shots at the Punch Bowl. Which also happens to be the story of how we lost our good buddy Skip.

After Pacific, we at least had enough sense to shuttle up to Sheep Ranch to finally try their famous pastrami sandwich before one more night of debauchery. But by the time we got there they had sold out, and we settled for the consolation prize of some chowder and lamb stew, which we ate by yet another outdoor fire.

Sitting down and then trying to get up again quickly turned out to be problem, and when we returned to the Punch Bowl standing upright seemed damn near impossible.

I had to sit down, so I made friends with an older gentleman on a bench beside the outdoor bar and the first ridiculous hole of this mini-putt course from hell. I could only watch as Jerry, Mac and Skip disappeared into the Pacific Grill from the patio above, and then could only cry when I saw them returning with shots between their arms and bags of drinks in their hands. 

“No, God please … no more.”

But I tell you, man … the bodily convulsion from the first tequila shot was like a needle of norepinephrine for a heart attack victim. I had been resurrected by agave and alcohol, and we promptly took over the entire putting green with a bravado that we didn’t notice at the time but which surely must have caused a few complaints. 

The Punch Bowl is utterly hilarious. It’s a monstrous, mind-bending green with bumps and elevations that I can only assume were designed by a schizophrenic toddler. It’s impossible, and even though some holes are a mere 20 feet away, we never made a single “hole in one” – but we did have several 7 putts. All of us had a moment where we missed on the low side and watched for what felt like 30 minutes as our ball took a 30-foot half-pipe to another continent, ending up 10 times further from the hole than where it started. It was foolish and dumb and hilariously fun, and the fact that we could watch the sunset behind the trees, and that there was a bar right on the green, made it downright glorious.

We played the course three times, alternating the format as we got more drunk and creative, only stopping because it had become pitch black and they weren’t turning on the lights that night. They would have had to bury us under the green if they did, but we were glad they didn’t when we realized our dinner reservation was 2 hours ago. Luckily the Pacific Grill wasn’t busy, but unluckily Jerry thought we needed another bottle of Oregon Pinot. And that is when my mind became as dark as the sky outside the window.

I legitimately don’t even remember what I ate for dinner (but I do remember trying a bite of Jerry’s porkchop, which I made a mental note of being the best bite I’ve had in 20-odd years).

By the time we finished the meal, the lovely staff who had graciously put up with our antics and clearly wanted to go home were genuinely concerned for our well-being, especially when they saw me sit on my ass and slide down the stairs like a four-year old just so I wouldn’t fall. Our waitress asked if we were driving and I said “Do we look that dumb?” She was incredibly relieved to hear we were staying on property, and I understand why.

At some point my memory starts to return, in pieces...

We are back at the Bunker Bar – whose brilliant idea was this? There are plastic cups in front of us of but there is no alcohol in them (the alcohol is in the glasses). The plastic cups are filled with dice, and we are shaking them and pouring them out. Skip does some math, somebody wins but not me, I give them dollar bills. 

This went on for hours, although I again can’t tell you what game we were playing or what the rules were.

However, I’m pretty sure I lost, as I started the trip with $100 in ones and would return home with three.

The next morning was sad for many reasons. Saddest of all, we had to leave this adult Disneyland at night and return to our golf-less homes in Toronto. Almost as sad, we were all on the brink of death, save for Skip who was already basically dead.

I tried to rouse him out of bed, but he just couldn’t do it. And like me after the Preserve fiasco, he had that look in his crusted-shut eyes that told me to “just drop it.” 

I went to the other cabin and was relieved to find Mac had a pulse and that he was still down to play our morning round at Old Mac, where we were scheduled to tee off in 22 minutes. No sign of Jerry until I heard a murmur beneath the bedsheet – “I’ll meet you guys for the second round.” 

The sun was shining and the wind was showing us mercy and this was our last day so to hell with them! We were fine with a two-ball, our only concern was if we’d have to pay Shane and Brian for the two no shows, since we scheduled them for the entire week and they expected this haul to be worth it.

God granted another miracle when, just as I was about to hit my tee shot, Jerry appeared from the shadows. While he looked like he was sleepwalking the entire time, he had made it, and we had a calm, relaxing round– even the Ghost Tree looked less intimidating under the piercing blue sky. 

When we finished we texted Skip, and when he didn’t immediately reply we called caretaking to conduct a wellness check. Turns out he was on the range, trying to find the driver that had deserted him the moment we set foot in Oregon. He had apparently “found it”, however, and that thought gave him new life since he agreed to meet us at Bandon Dunes for our final round. 

We were, understandably, pretty beat down, and I think we wanted to get this round over with as much as we wanted to stay here forever. The wind had also picked up, and by the back nine it was probably blowing the hardest it had all week. 

Because I was so focused (or not focused) on shooting under par, I didn’t appreciate some of the holes at Bandon Dunes the first time I played it. Now that the wind had completely broken my spirit and I was a cool 1 million over par, I figured I should try to really take it all in, one last time...

I tried to feel the sand under the grass beneath my feet, listened for every squawk of the gulls, and took mental images of each signature hole. But even though it was our last day, that didn’t mean we couldn’t drink, so my little meditation was once again pointless.

The one exception, though, was the 16^th hole. The hole was so jarring and beautiful – how had I not noticed this before? - that we all stood on the tee box a long time, not saying much, but just staring. The enormity of finally being here, and now having to leave, was hitting us, and for the first time all trip we asked our caddies to take a group photo. 

The 16^th is a short par 4 with a tee box and green that are slightly elevated, while the fairway splits in two between a massive dune. You are forced to either hit it safe out to the right – bringing on the entirety of the ocean - or else aim for the higher and further sliver of fairway to the left of the green and pray you don’t flare it into the gorse bushes. Or worse, it you hit the dreaded straight ball you could find yourself on a 15-foot vertical slope, plugged in the side of the dune. 

This might be the only shot I truly remember hitting all week. It was down wind and I flushed a 5-wood green side … or actually … was that the other Bandon round? The shots are a blur, and now I’m not sure but who cares - it was, by a Pacific landslide, the best and most picturesque hole I’ve ever played, and despite my brain cell count falling to single-digits, I will remember it always. 

The 18^th hole also felt surreal, as we fought the physical ache of our bodies and the mental anguish of our minds that said, “This is the end.” How true, and in so many different ways. It was all so strange, and again, nobody was saying much. Except Shane, who obviously had experience dragging guests to the finish line after a week of masochistic ecstasy. 

Earlier that round, I had 200 yards dead into a wind that was now at hurricane levels. They should have had sirens calling us off the course and demanding we seek shelter, but all the courses were obviously still full. Shane said – and I don’t think he was joking – that it was playing all of 400. He handed me the 5-wood, but with a wry smile he asked, “Why not driver off the deck?” No chance. That wasn’t a shot I had, and after 130 or however many holes of being beaten to death by wind and rain and shin splints, I was ready to get this thing into the clubhouse for one final bowl of chowder.

Well I busted another perfect 5-wood just to watch it fly about 160 yards, with the added shame of hearing Shane laughing. 

“I was hoping you’d show me some talent.” 

Now, on the par 5 18^th and needing to make 5 for the greatest 79 of my life, I was faced with a similar dilemma. After finding the fairway I was still 310 out, and because it was straight into the eye of the wind the prospect of getting to the green was impossible. With Brian in earshot, Shane handed me the 5-wood. This time he was already walking away as he again shouted, “Driver off the deck?” 

Here was man who I now considered a friend, and who had helped me shoot my best score in 3 years, basically telling me, to my face: “You don’t have the stones.” 

Well, fuck it, I thought. 

I looked at Brian then back at Shane now 50 yards to my right. I sprinted over as I heard Brian screaming, “Yes … YES!” He knew it was on. I grabbed the driver from the bag myself and told Shane, “I’ll show you some goddamn talent.” His face lit up. 

“Hold on, I gotta watch this,” he said.

I waited in the fairway for Mac to hit. Once Shane had a clear line of sight, I set up to the ball. I stared at the head of the driver which somehow looked twice the size without a tee, simultaneously thinking “what the hell am I doing” and “I will nut this thing.”

When the ball came off the face I felt the happiness of a 1000 lifetimes, right there in my loins. Here was that one perfect shot we all wait for, the one where you expect doves to fly from your shirt sleeves and the final movie score to start playing; the guy finally got the girl. 

I nearly blacked out as ball penetrated the wind and took the contour of the fairway, losing sight of it as it trundled towards the green below. Shane smiled but never said a word. When I got over the hill and saw my ball, there it was sitting on the front edge of the green, 310 yards from where it started.

I would quickly proceed to 3-putt, but who the hell cares. I had proven myself worthy of the talent shown to us by Shane, Brian, and all the staff and courses at Bandon Dunes.

Jerry - we hadn't seen him the whole hole as he decided to take the scenic route down the right side - had the final putt. A 15 foot birdie putt thanks to one last "hero" pep talk from Brian.

Buckets.

A perfect end to the perfect 40^th birthday trip.

On the bus ride back to Eugene, there was no talk of our scores anyway. We rode in a content silence, one that simply said: “We were there.”

The great American essayist Joan Didion once wrote, “It is easy to see the beginning of things, and harder to see the ends.” While she was commenting about ephemeral things – like the end of an era or a shifting sense of self – I’ve always found this to be rather literal. 

Has Bandon really ended just because we’ve returned to the bitter cold and rain of a Toronto spring?

Also like Didion, I find little joy in “dealing with the abstract.” Journaling, as I’ve tried to do here, is an exercise in the specific, and act of rendering the intangible into something that can be touched and felt. It’s why I can’t write fiction – I’ve always found real life to be more interesting and beautiful.

This has therefore been a story about what is.

That said, I haven’t cracked a beer at 8 a.m. since returning home, so in that way the last round at Bandon was truly the end of something. But it was also the beginning of something else, something much more important: a renewed appreciation for golf “the way it was meant to be played” … of being able to see a game I have ranted and raved over for 30 years as if I were hitting my first ball.

If I’ve done this right, being specific doesn’t just mean describing what we saw and ate, nor what scores we shot (although even I could not resist the temptations of a few humble brags). When I sat down to write all this, I was of course drawn to details – I will forever be able to conjure up a bird’s eye image, looking down on myself as “I” stare out from the Pacific Dunes’ cliffs and see the approaching grey wall of cloud and rain above, the whole scene making no sense since, where I am standing, there is nothing above but sun. But these details hardly seem to matter. What matters are the manifest feelings those details seem to now conjure up. Feelings that have no definitions.   

Thus, I think the “is” in “what is” can only be Bandon itself. Not the courses or the bars or the weather, but all of it, somehow, all at once. 

In a weird way, this gives me hope, both for my job and for humanity. I get a weird pleasure in knowing that feelings like these cannot be implanted in us by some algorithm, no matter how intelligent. With the right prompts, it may spit out these exact words, but they wouldn’t come from the feeling from which I write them now. Without that, I think, there is no meaning. It’s merely a postcard; no matter how good or poetic its prose, there is nobody behind the words, and because of that you know its simply saying, “this is a dogleg left” and “there was a Ghost Tree.” 

I’m sure ChatGPT would give you a much more accurate description of the courses than I ever could. But you won’t know – you can’t know - what it actually felt like to play there.

That’s all I can do, folks, and I now think it’s why we created this journal in the first place: it forces us to take nothing for granted, to see the beauty in what is in front of us and, most importantly, underneath – a window into the golfer’s soul. But at its algorithmic lowest, this can become comically mundane. 

For those who are so fortunate, hitting a golf ball and going on a yearly trip can start to feel that way – mundane – no matter the destination. As soon as you’re done it’s “where are we going next year, and how can we top it?” This is death.

Since I’ve been home, I’ve had a few people ask me questions like: “was it better than your trip to Cabot Cape Breton?” In earnest, how am I supposed to answer that? 

What reflecting on this trip has taught me is that such questions demand more than a yes or a no, even if one provides an explanation. The trips were at a different time in my life, even if only a by a couple quick years. They were with different people, at a different place. And while the courses and landscapes shared similarities, the trips can only be compared this way if one believed they were truly about golf courses, oceans, and scorecards. As soon as you stop to think about it, however, you know that they are not.

Therein lies the beauty of Bandon, and if there is a point to all this, that’s probably it: wherever you are golfing, immerse yourself not only in the sport, but in time and place and people. You may return to that same spot with that same group. But you are only there at that time once. It all only ever happens once.

When it’s late at night and I’m scrolling through Jerry’s Bandon photos, I sometimes find myself wondering if Shane and Brian – and the 600 other caddies on call there – still stop to admire a sunbeam over the 6^th green that finally pierces the ocean layer. Do they even notice? I hope they do, but I’m not sure. For some reason I get very sad thinking about it.

I imagine returning back to this place day after day would be like the member of Augusta National who decides he (or finally, she) doesn’t feel like playing on a random Tuesday afternoon. The fact that they have that choice shows precisely what is lost on them, but not us. We would all bludgeon a stranger to death if meant being able to walk Augusta at midnight, with nothing but a flashlight, just as we happily place thousand-dollar deposits for nothing but a year-long wait and a promise.

This is probably why Bandon Dunes can only be what it is: a destination course where one must win a lottery just to book their spot. It is not a place for members. It simply can’t be. It is a place where, in our case, four middle-aged idiots got to be children again, and where we played what is for us an intensely serious game but with an awe and curiosity that, again, can only be described as child-like.

That first morning at Bandon, when Skip and I awoke in our cabin at 6 a.m. - the same morning when we knocked on Jerry and Mac’s door and, after seeing Death in their eyes, closed it immediately and went to breakfast by ourselves – we didn’t even consider calling a shuttle. This struck me as curious at the time, but for whatever reason nothing was said between us. It was still pitch-black outside and the main lodge was, we guessed, at least a 20-minute walk from wherever the hell we were, on winding roads that we only knew led to somewhere. 

But without a word, we picked up our golf bags and started walking.

Everything felt new and mysterious – was the car that just passed coming in for a tee time? What kind of trees are these anyhow? Hmm … I’ve never seen that bird before. Is that the morning dew shimmering in the streetlight, or did it rain last night? I wonder what I’ll shoot today…

We thought about these things in silence, then. I am still thinking about them now. In that way, I don’t think we ever really left. 

We are still here: a place of definitions, but no answers.

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