At the edge of the world… or is it “worlds”?...
A pro shop raid...
Four becomes six...
March 2026
The four of us weary, beer-filled travellers finally made it to the hollowed grounds of Bandon Dunes around 8:30 a.m. on Sunday, with nothing but our knapsacks and a few stale bagels swiped from the Bandon Inn.
Skip was once again on the phone with the airline concierge and almost turned violent when he found out our golf bags – which were still stuck in Toronto – didn’t make it onto the first plane bound for Oregon.
Fearful that his brain would completely snap, and that the three of us would become his whipping boys when he realized there was no airline employee for him to strangle, we started to fill his head with well-intentioned lies.
“Think of it,” I said on the 20-minute ride from Old Bandon to The Dunes, “we need clothes! Now we can get all the Bandon merch we want … and bill United!”
“Maybe you’ll play better with rental clubs!”
“The clubs will get here soon, man. I’m sure of it!”
Given my well-known tendency to tinker with my swing and tools, I was secretly angrier than skip. But I was also trying my best to hold the team together. Like a father whose family was falling apart before his eyes, I put on a brave face for the kids and tried to distract them with a trip to the toy store – in this case the Bandon pro shop.
When we had the collective epiphany that we actually could spend United’s money on Bandon merch, the mood did start to change. Technically if an airline loses your bags, they are supposed to reimburse you for the necessities – like, in this case, new Bandon headcovers.
I’m still unsure if what unfolded in that shop was entirely legal, and if the police show up at my door with the claims manager from United, I guess I’ll have my answer.
“I had my rain gear in my golf bag, and boy is it expensive!”
My weather app did say we could expect 2 mm of rain at 9:00 p.m., and that was good enough for us.
“I had all my hats in there too!”
There was hardly any sun in the afternoon forecast, “but the glare from the ocean, man. You need a couple hats!”
By the time we brought our hauls to the front desk, we might as well have been wearing balaclavas and demanded the two unassuming pros “open the damn registers, or else.” Charging everything to the room helped ease the pain of the $1000 VISA bills we knew – but soon let ourselves forget – would eventually coming. We had no idea if United would pay the tab, and we surely weren’t going to, so the whole thing did kind of give off “robbery”
When it came time to choose our rental clubs, we caused another panic amongst the resort guests and staff when we started ranting and raving about the wrong driver shafts, putter inserts, and iron offsets.
But customer service is in the DNA of Bandon. You sense it the moment you step off your shuttle and are greeted by the bag boys, who somehow already knew your names and were expecting you to arrive at that very moment.
We were told by our driver that we had to meet some 80-year-old legend named “Shoe,” who had been coming to Bandon since it opened and was now a ceremonial employee. As soon as we got there, there Shoe was. Like an animated statue dedicated to all that is right and good in the game of golf, he immediately yelled, “The King group! I hear we are celebrating a birthday …”
We therefore shouldn’t have been surprised when, after we “casually” dropped our single-digit handicaps to the two pros, they also let us raid the demo club-section for drivers and wedges that better fit our games. At the time I took this as an act of kindness, but in hindsight I can see it for the dirty sales trick that it was. After striping a demo TaylorMade Qi35 3-wood for 36 holes, they knew there was no way I wasn’t going to buy the damn thing.
Sporting about $4000 worth of Bandon-branded gear, the four of us walked – no, strutted out of the pro shop and into the main lodge. We felt more like the Dillinger Gang than the idiotic group of golfers that we were, and we possessed the same “Robin Hood” mentality of that band of outlaws who thought, in vain, that they were really doing the Lord’s work –
“This is for anyone who’s ever been screwed over by the airline greedheads!”
We grabbed a couple beers before hopping in our getaway van, in this case a Bandon shuttle which is always on hand at the main lodge and which you can call just about anywhere on the property from an app. We were now on the run to Sheep Ranch and our first taste of golf At the Edge of the World.
We were never going into that first tee-shot blind, especially not after being forced to face the beast with our makeshift arsenals of Titleists and TaylorMades. Sheep Ranch is the northern-most course on the property, a good 10-minute shuttle ride from the main lodge and thus the only course with its own driving range. Before every other round you need to sort your life out at the main practice facility, which I can say with certainty would rival those at any top Tour venue. You could honestly warm up with driver on the putting green if you wanted; the thing is so big that it would easily swallow all 18 greens at my home course, Sleepy Hollow in Stouffville, Ontario, with enough room left over for a bar.
The facilities at Sheep Ranch were only slightly more modest than the main practice area, which was probably for the best. We had lost all sense of time and place since we stepped off the bus and felt the gravitational pull of the looming Pacific. We needed some semblance of normalcy, a reminder that we were, in fact, still on planet earth.
After Jerry spent more of United’s money on merch at the Sheep Ranch shop (all 5 courses have their own pro shop and branded gear), the rest of us grabbed more beers. We thought the beers would help us get a grip on our fading sense of reality, but they simply told us to throw down two Zyn cans on the putting green – our tee markers – and start putting for dollar bills (and more drinks).
At some point I caught a glimpse of a random bag at the loading shack, which, after a few seconds, I realized was now my own. I hurried to the range, thinking I should probably see if I could even hit these ungodly-looking Qi35 irons. They had a rental set of Callaway Apex blades that looked and felt closer to what I normally use – a TaylorMade MB-CB combo set – but my hatred for Phil Mickelson, a hatred borne out of a pathological love for Tiger Woods, meant I hadn’t touched anything with a Callaway logo in 23 years.
I felt only a tinge of regret when I set up to my first range ball, looked down at the monstrosity of a 7 iron, and thought, “this is what high-cappers have to go through every day?”
The iron head was so big and ugly that it seemed I’d have a better chance of flying it to the moon than finding the centre of the face. But to my surprise and almost dismay, I striped every ball.
The only problem, I quickly found out, was the driver. The shaft was so light that when my body sent the signal to my brain that I had finished the swing, my brain just couldn’t do the math – the clubhead still wasn’t on the way down. I wasn’t only hitting everything off the heel; the ringing in my hands, amplified by the cool ocean wind, left no doubt that I was hitting the fucking shaft.
The embarrassment of being at Bandon and shanking a driver – a feat I once believed to be physically impossible – was a new level of shame. But I had to pull myself together, and since me and this driver might be stuck together for the week, I started whispering sweet nothings in its ear:
“You respect me, and I’ll respect you. Just get me through this and I’ll find you a good home. I promise.”
No time to figure it out now. The bugler was sounding the call to reveille, and we were now only 20 minutes from capturing those seaside flags in the distance.
“Fuck it,” I thought. “Six more beers will solve this crisis.”
I had bigger issues on my mind anyway. We were about to meet the two caddies who would be our eyes and ears for the duration of the trip. Looking back now, it wasn’t a 4-footer for birdie to win a match or a 5 iron over a salt-water-lined par 3 that made me the most nervous.
As anybody who has been on a trip like this knows, apart from an airline’s incompetence, this meeting of total strangers was the only other thing that could sink the entire experience. Get a caddy who doesn’t jive with your group, and the whole vibe goes to hell. Or get a caddy who is too into the vibe, and you shoot 100 while babysitting a drunkard.
Hiring a caddy is a must on trips like these, but it’s a bit like playing Russian roulette – 5 times out of 6 it’s great, but there’s always that one bullet that means instant death, leaving your ghost to wonder why you ever played in the first place. If you choose to go no caddy, however, then you might as well just load all six chambers.
We met Shane and Brian, or Parts and Cap’ as they would come to be known, at the loading area. We introduced ourselves, quietly interrogating them in the hopes of gaining some knowledge into the minds and mannerisms of these two outsiders. They gave us nothing; they were both so stoic, but in their own unique ways.
Shane was one of those strange types who looked like he could have been 42 or 78. Whatever answer he gave to “how old are you,” you’d have to take him at his word. He was in a full Bandon rainsuit and toque even though the sun had already burst through the marine layer and the day was now relatively warm and glorious. He didn’t say much, eventually grabbing two bags and walking to the first tee.
“Uh oh,” I thought.
Brian was younger, and I pegged him around the same age as us - mid-to-late 30s. He appeared more groomed and put together than Shane, but the dark sunglasses he wore every second he was with us made him hard to read. He had a clean black beard and wore the classic caddy attire – those white jumpsuits made famous at Augusta. I instantly thought that I’d definitely jive better with Brian. But like Jesus Himself, the golf gods also work in mysterious ways.
Since I come from a family of private investigators, I started trying to piece this confusing scene together: clearly Shane was the veteran. I assumed his somewhat disgruntled appearance meant that he either didn’t give a shit about us, or he was so good at his job that appearances didn’t matter.
I got the sense Brian had been ready for anything. We could have been a group of 20 cappers from Taiwan and he would have no problem fading into the background for 5 days. He was eerily quiet, and neither he nor Shane took the bait we immediately dangled in front of them – peace offerings of cold beer and light-hearted chirps, just to give them they lay of our land and see if they’d assimilate.
There were no pleasantries on the first tee. Shane was carrying mine and Skip’s bag this round, and we let him know this was the first in our series of matches, and that I needed to beat the breaks off my brother no matter the cost. Barely a wry smile. He just handed me the driver and told me “centre-left.”
Thankfully he didn’t notice the ball marks on the shaft, and I was already too intimidated to ask him, “centre-left of what?” All I saw were some shrubs to the right and left of a short fairway which quickly disappeared before a hill, leaving nothing for the eyes to focus on but a particular white-capped wave moving angrily across the sea.
Since it was Jerry’s birthday, we convinced him that he deserved to hit the honorary first shot – another dirty trick, I know, since we all wanted to see where he hit it and listen for the caddies’ response. He pushed a low draw that ended up in the right rough, which I immediately filed away as important information since it told me those prickly shrubs of death were not as reachable as I thought.
I can’t remember what Skip and Mac did, but the beer I chugged on the walk from the staging area to the tee did its job, as I somehow managed to find the face of this wretched driver. A bullet-cut that I hit well, but, if I was being honest, seemed destined not to carry the small clump of bushes and trees down the left side.
“Ah that’s perfect!” I yelled, fully believing it was dead. Everyone was watching intently, but I picked up the tee and kept the schtick going … “It’s fineeeee, boys, don’t worry.”
Shane picked up my bag and b-lined it for the trees.
Well, my ball was fine, and “fuck you!”
The first hole at Sheep is a par 5, and I now had a chance to get on in two. It would have been a relatively easy shot save for three problems:
1 - I had never hit this 5 wood before, nor even looked at what flex the shaft was;
2 - if I miss-hit the thing I was hooped, since I didn’t have any real wedges (they only gave me an “A” and “PW”);
3 - the green I was squinting at looked to be the size of a thimble against that backdrop of pure blue sky and ocean.
I was already however many beers deep, but I was able to convince my brain that this drunkenness was actually the ninja-like focus that only comes from a golf match against one’s own flesh and blood.
Anyways, my memory becomes a bit hazy.
I’m not the kind of golfer (or writer, even when stone-sober) who remembers individual shots, and I’m always amazed by my friends who can still tell me what I made in April on hole 6 in 2019. I, on the other hand, remember feelings.
So I have zero recollection where I hit that second shot, nor can I really recall any other shots from that round. But my Golf Canada app tells me I started birdie-birdie, and I do vaguely remember making a “what’s the course record” joke walking to the third tee, which got precisely zero laughs.
Most importantly, though, I distinctly remember thinking, “At least I’ve shown Shane I can play.” He seemed to have noticed, too. He clearly respected good golf and loved seeing quality shots. The better I played, the more into my game he would get.
By god, I was winning him over!
But somewhere around the 6th hole, I committed what I thought was an unforgivable sin. I asked for a yardage, which he immediately gave me even though I hadn’t seen him check a yardage book or use a range finder. Since we were still in the “getting-to-know-you” stage of our relationship, and seeing as my range finder had likely been run over by a plane back in Toronto, I asked to borrow his. That request just about cost me my 6 holes of good will.
“I don’t carry a range finder.”
Huh? I didn’t dare let him know it, but I was mad. What kind of caddy doesn’t carry a range finder, and where the hell was he pulling all these numbers from?
I remember Shane firmly telling me, “just hit the 7,” and me thinking, “how do you know how far it goes?”
I didn’t want to start a fight, not this early. I was 2-under and we were with him all week, for better or worse. I wanted to keep the peace … plus, he had the look of a guy who once fought Grizzly bears for fun during his glory days, and I didn’t want to meet that guy. Not out here, where a body could all too easily “fall” off the cliffs and into the ocean, never to be seen again.
I hit the 7 as told and immediately knew it was a thousand miles over the green. So when it actually dropped 6 feet from the pin, I could do nothing but profusely apologize for my thought crimes.
That moment turned the whole trip on its head, but not in the way I had expected. Few will understand that it is only in the pandora’s box of two kindred, gold obsessed minds, that one good shot - and a little bit of trust - has the power to forge lifelong bonds.
There should be PhDs in human psychology studying nothing but these unplanned and inexplicable moments on the golf course, where two friends – or in our case, strangers - converge onto a single brainwave. At that moment, Shane and I tapped into the alien hive mind, and we never left it for 5 days.
He immediately started to let loose, too, ribbing me in his dry but good-humored-tone by occasionally asking if I “still wanted to borrow his range finder.” And I’d give it back, asking him before every round if he remembered to bring that non-existent tool.
The 8th hole was when I really knew we had him. He called Long Ball Skip off the tee, fearing he could reach the group that was 290 yards down the fairway. But he then immediately turned to my brother and jokingly asked what the hell he was waiting for. “Yes!”
Then, up on the green, when I heard him ask Brian what our match was at, it was as if we struck gold. These guys were beauties. I watched their own bag-vs-bag rivalry develop, which put them squarely in the action rather than outside of it. They now had a stake in our little tournament, and we had hit the caddy lottery.
We probably wouldn’t have picked Shane and Bri out of a lineup had we been given a choice. But we were glad we weren’t. Somehow the staff at Bandon just knew to put us together. Maybe it was pure dumb luck, but even my ultra-rational, soulless mind tends to think there were mysterious forces at play. After all, the golf gods owed us after the airport debacle.
Remembering how the staff knew our names as soon as we got off the bus, I also wouldn’t put it past the Caddy Master to have his own team of spies checking people’s social media, and then running our profiles through the caddy equivalent of match.com.
Whether we had simply lucked into this partnership or it was some cosmic destiny, I may never know. Either way, they would end up becoming an integral part of our trip, and this story.
We all played surprising well that first round despite, or perhaps because of, the beers and rental clubs. After posting a 76 (with a few generous gimmes from my opponents), I felt the round belonged to Shane as much as it did me. After the 8th hole I didn’t hear another yardage the entire trip – I have no idea how he did it, but he just handed me a club and, when I hit it like I was supposed to, it was the perfect distance every time.
I was obviously happy with my score, but I couldn’t shake the quiet, nagging voice inside my head that was causing me to question some important life decisions:
“Have I been lying to myself by playing blades all these years?”
“Maybe I have to switch to game improvement irons …?”
“Am I just a high-capper in disguise!?”
Sheep has another claim to fame aside from the fact that you can see the ocean from everywhere: it’s pastrami sandwich. They literally have t-shirts with the sandwich on it for purchase in the pro shop, and as all the locals told us, it was one of those rare things that everyone talks about for good reason. It was well worth the hype.
So imagine our disappointment when, after grinding out some decent scores, we went in to collect our reward only to find that they had sold out. I nearly cried, but then was quickly consoled by the inexplicably comforting lamb chili they offered us instead.
My play also hadn’t been enough to win us the match, which didn’t help the mental spiral. After 18 holes, we had somehow tied. I pretended to be pissed, but the result seems like poetic justice when I look back on it now – it was Jerry’s birthday, some of us had never seen the Pacific Ocean, and I was hitting shovels for chrissake!
Our solid scores were also influenced by the good fortune of having played Sheep Ranch first, on a day with relatively little wind (40 km/h gusts is “little” for March in Bandon, even if the Beaufort Scale tells you that, at those speeds, “large trees sway” and “umbrella use is difficult”). There was hardly a tree on the course, and the architecture seemed to defy both logic and physics when it seemed like every hole ran along the cliffs.
It was totally exposed, and we knew that on a day when the sea was particularly angry, it would be the stuff of nightmares. This suspicion was confirmed when we made friends at the pub after a particularly windy day - this poor sap, who had been forced to brave the elements at Sheep, told us how he hit one to two feet only to watch the wind blow his ball off the green, over the cliff, and down onto the dune-swept beaches below. If he had the gall to go down and get it and somehow survived, he’d probably get a parade for having achieved a feat akin to Neil Armstrong’s “one small step” – over the entire week we saw one crab fishing boat bobbing out over the cliffs. That was the only sign of life beyond the horned larks and gulls and whatever demonic fish-creatures lurked beneath the high-tide.
Each course at Bandon averages 35,000 rounds per year. But in testament to their mission of providing “links golf as it was meant to be,” whenever you catch yourself staring, out there, you can’t help but feel comfortably alone.
We once again have to thank the incredibly sage booking agent we mentioned in our prologue article. Over a year ago, she had picked all our courses and scheduled them in the order in which she felt they needed to be played. And like all the Bandon staff, she must have had the extra-sensory gift of foresight. She almost had me believing in the supernatural when, on the day our new bar friend lost his golf ball to a hurricane, we barely felt a breeze as we plodded around the Trails course, completely protected by the massive forest and sandy cliffs which now lined the fairways rather than the sea.
After playing so surprisingly well at Sheep Ranch, we quickly stopped at the main pro shop to inquire about the cost of purchasing our demo clubs outright, and then headed back to our rooms, the Chrome Lake cottages, which were literal cottages – beautiful yet rustic, semi-detached cabins tucked away in a pocket of forest – to shower and change. When we arrived at the Tufted Puffin, the restaurant in the main lodge, I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to keep my eyes open let alone stomach another beer.
I’m not usually a wine drinker, but when Jerry and Skip started raving about the Oregon wine scene and ordered a bottle, I was more relieved than scared. It was a trade-off I was all-too-happy to make: get more drunk, but ingest less liquid.
My fatigue also subsided when we realized we were in the throes of March Madness. And since we never went anywhere without our stacks of dollar bills, we ate and drank while watching the games on the large TVs and making ridiculous bets. Only Skip knew anything about college basketball, as was evident when Mac pretended to be a savant by betting on some future first-rounder to make the next basket, only to realize he had been sitting on the bench for the last 6 minutes.
The serendipitous timing of March Madness was something we could always fall back on when our minds went dark. Whenever someone’s eyes started to droop, we could easily snap them back to attention with a “next basket Alabama. Any takers?”
I don’t remember going to bed that night, but I also don’t know whether to blame the beers or the jet lag. Either way, getting up at 6:30 a.m. for a tee time at Old MacDonald was easy – two aspirin and a couple dry heaves over the sink (just in case) and we were ready to roll. Or at least my roommate Skip and I were … when we knocked on Jerry and Mac’s door and were greeted by two goblins in boxer shorts, we hit the breakfast buffet without them.
After breakfast, we shuttled to the practice area and were shocked to see that Jerry and Mac had transformed back into something close to a human being. They must have transferred their curse to me, however, as things started to turn hairy when the dry heaves came back in the most violent way. I made the near-fatal mistake of bending over to put a tee into the mat, and then had to sprint away from the heavenly light that was now calling me home.
Nothing another beer and an egg sandwich couldn’t fix, I thought. And when the people hitting beside me fled in horror at the ghastly sounds of my esophagus, I was able to privately take in one of the most beautiful sights in existence, another secret only known to golfers – the bliss of a driving range sunrise.
I was beginning to feel like I was trapped between worlds, like some sort of manic, human-sized Russian Nesting Doll. Bandon was clearly its own thing, a pocket of land that feels more of the cosmos than the earth. My physical body was clearly mangled, having lost all control of its vital functions. But my mind seemed to exist in another world entirely, one where the only law of physics was pure inner peace.
We rode the shuttle to Old Mac, still at peace, but when I saw Jerry emerge from the Old Mac pro shop with 6 Bud Lites and 4 High Noons, I waited for my brain to snap out of its eerie calm. Usually in my state, I would have instantly shut down at the sight of all that aluminum and tin. Yet it looked as if the old rules no longer applied at Bandon – here was a place that I could seemingly do whatever I wanted … and get away with it.
I finally came to after a slightly too-firm slap on the back from Shane, who had apparently teleported out of the morning mist.
I told Big Shane he had mine and Mac’s bag – Ty and Mac at Old Mac against Jerry and Skip.
“Ha. Easy day for me,” he said, then snatched the bags and headed to the first tee.
While Brian was more ecumenical about the whole thing, wanting to see us all succeed, Shane, my guy, well - we were now a team.
And god help whoever stood in our way.
Apart from the stupidly beautiful landscapes and immaculate quality, the best part about Bandon is that all five courses are so different. Sure, the ground and sand and gorse bushes are the same, but the course architectures, and those “beautiful landscapes,” are not.
After spending the previous day at Sheep trying to make birdie while trying not to fall into the ocean to my death, I was legitimately stunned when I stepped on the first tee of Old Mac. There was no sign of the ocean that so haunted me in the night. I can’t really find the words to describe what I was looking at, so I’ll once again take the easy road and say: some things you’ll just have to experience for yourself.
The best I can do, I guess, is to tell you that the seaside trance I was in at Sheep now shifted into a complete awe and respect for the architecture at Old Mac. There were no precipitous cliffs, barking seagulls, or sun beams breaking through a sea layer for the actual course to hide behind. Of course, Sheep was also ingeniously laid out, but your attention was always drawn to the beyond.
At Old Mac, it’s the course, not the ocean, that is right in front of you. Like sheep, it was also wide open, but it was as if the architect plotted the course on a desert oasis and then lost the blueprints in Oregon. Whoever found them made it work.
We spent a lot of time debating our favourite courses at the end of the trip, and our rankings are always fluctuating whenever we are reminded of a certain hole – or immaculate shot - we had long forgotten. This won’t be a conventional take, but I’m saying it right now and putting in print: Old Mac was my favourite course.
I don’t even really know why. It was just … fun? You could hit the ball anywhere and easily find it, but no matter what you were probably still making bogey. In fact, Shane told me how, when Old Mac first opened in 2010, caddies used to make a pretty penny by betting their lower handicap guests that they couldn’t get around the place in under 40 putts. He claimed that about 80% of those bets paid out.
Thank god he told me this after the round. I’m a decent putter, so I definitely would have pushed to see if the old Shane was still in there, wagering whatever amount he thought he could afford. And I would have lost. Not only did I have over 40 putts this round, I did it again when I played the course a second time two days later.
If the turtle-backed greens are how the ol’ bastard scares people away, then the “Ghost Tree” is how it sucks them back in. I won’t even try to describe this signature, demonic looking stump. It’s quite an eerie thing to look at, but like most gruesome scenes, you also can’t look away. You see it throughout the course, sometimes up close, sometimes from afar – and then you see it again all throughout the pro shops, since it’s been enshrined as Old Mac’s logo (in my opinion, the coolest logo of all the courses).
Walking past it on hole 3, even in broad daylight, I got a haunting feeling that it’s not really a tree but rather a tombstone. For what or whom, I don’t know, but I couldn’t decide if I should kneel at its base and pray or run in the opposite direction for dear life.
After all, it’s a tree for godsake, so I don’t know why it’s so cool, just that it is. Smack dab in the middle of a course that is so wide open and inviting, this specter seemed so wildly out of place. Yet it also feels completely intentional - from a “trying to make birdie” perspective, it never lets you get too comfortable.
And after I heeled my 10th drive of the round on hole 13, I was convinced the thing was in fact haunted, and that it had cursed me.
“This ghastly tree is why I bogeyed the 9th! Hell, it’s also probably why my clubs are in shambles on the Pearson tarmac!”
It’s times like these where a good caddy makes all the differences, and Shane had already proven himself to be one of the best. He therefore didn’t exactly talk me off of the ledge so much as throw my driver off it.
“That thing is done for the day,” he said, turning the club upside down. He was right again. I couldn’t miss with the 3 wood (and was still probably out driving Jerry by 20).
Even down a man, I shot another 76. But this time it was enough for Mac and I to win. I would have spent the rest of the night laughing at Jerry for missing his four-footer on 18 to tie the match, but just as we were finishing we got a surprising phone call that made the 76 feel like a 66.
“This is the front desk speaking. Your clubs have arrived.”
Somehow, someway, Skip had done it. I was sure he must have sent the airline a criminally insane letter – a death threat made with cutout letters from the Bandon welcome magazine in our rooms. But whatever he did, it worked. The airline had not only flown our clubs to Eugene, but they put them in a black car and taxi’d them straight to the main lodge. And not a moment too soon.
We couldn’t believe it. We were playing the Bandon Dunes in the afternoon, and now we’d get to hug and kiss our babies before bringing them along for the ride.
While I was ecstatic, I also couldn’t help but wonder if this was another evil ploy cast upon us by the ghost tree. I had just shot back-to-back 76s, which were more than decent rounds for me. I tinkered with the idea of simply swapping the driver and leaving everything else, but when I saw my own TaylorMades – naked and afraid from 2 days of isolation – I just couldn’t do it to them.
As we were leaving Old Mac, Shane and Brian reminded us of another important fact:
“Now you have no more excuses!”
I contemplated this for a long time. But, as it turns out, no excuses would be necessary. The days of separation anxiety must have done something to my usually disobedient set of clubs. As if they knew they were on the chopping block, they clearly wanted to remind me of the special times we once had.
Well, I can tell you now that I never want to leave them (or Shane) again. Unbeknownst to me, I was about to shoot my best round in 6 years at one of the most infamous courses in America...
***
Stay Tuned for Part 3 of A Pacific Pilgrimage, Coming Soon.
Bandon Accommodations: Chrome Lake Cottages
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