The WARRIORS

First to confirm was my wingman from high school — we shared a bond forged in topped three-woods and the specific shame of losing to a close comrade you've known for 25 years. 

Then there were those two close friends about to become first-time fathers, but who were still determined to tip it all weekend with the focused energy of men who understand their golf calendar is about to be significantly restructured - if not blown to straight to hell. Like Jeremy Renner heading back to Iraq at the end of The Hurt Locker, chasing an adrenaline rush that only the chosen understand, the fairway was their sanctuary. Not even the desperate cries of their women and unborn children could keep them home.

I came prepared, presenting each of them with a copy of The Tale of Tiger vs. Bear by Golf Pops — a children's golf book I make a point of bestowing on every new golf-obsessed father. 

My wife's cousin was the sleeper pick, a guy nobody was sure about until the third hole of round one, already six drinks deep, when it became clear he was in fact the beauty of the whole thing. 

Then the two two-handicaps: the Greek David who would morph into the Achilles heel of all who faced him. A man built like he was designed to generate clubhead speed, and whose physical presence on the tee box makes the fairway look narrower before he's even gripped the club. 

Also, the Asian sensation: compact and precise; a different kind of dangerous — like a modern ninja, he would go undefeated all weekend through pure shot-making and a mental focus that was borderline offensive.

Finally, Mr. Hollywood himself— the eighth man, and the one who saved the whole trip at Zero Hour. He flew direct from a work conference in San Francisco despite being based in New York. That kind of logistical commitment separates the true golf sicko from the casual enthusiast.

And there we had it. Eight soldiers. Half Canadians, half Americans. 

All beauties.

The BATTLEFIELD

The Cabot Group is known for finding overlooked, seemingly unusable or neglected land, and then building something that could make the ancients weep. Cabot Cape Breton in Nova Scotia — those clifftop links above the Cabot Trail — those are the famous ones. Then they came for Florida.

Florida. The flat one. Cartographically described, somewhat unkindly, as a long mistake pointing at Cuba. Golf here has historically been country club architecture by committee: flat, manicured, inoffensive, palm trees. In short, good weather, bad bones.

Then somebody looked at a decommissioned citrus grove in Highlands County, a place so far off a tourist’s map that your GPS starts to get philosophical. 

In fact, as the editor of Pitch Mark told me, the first time he drove there he got about 10 minutes from the gates and watched, in horror, as an old-fashioned prison chain gang, still wearing the black and white stripes from Fargo, picked trash in the bushes. 

In this way, it did truly feel more “warzone” than “golf mecca”. But for some ungodly yet fortunate reason, Cabot said, “this is exactly what we need.” 

The land definitely has texture, with gradient changes nobody expected, sandy scrub corridors, native wiregrass meadows, and old grove rows with genuine elevation breaks. Just like us, it was raw and weird, but still somehow worked.

Cabot brought in a suite of architects, each given only enough latitude to interpret the land on its own terms. The result functions less like a golf resort and more like an architectural gallery you walk through with a seven iron.

The area is known as “Karoo” (also the name of one of its two courses). And while it sounds like something from a Cormac McCarthy novel — a community for exiles and speed freaks taking shelter during the End Times – the land has history. It was once World Woods, Tom Fazio's celebrated Florida design and one of the state's most respected golf destinations for decades — a property that already understood what good ground looked like before Cabot arrived. When Cabot acquired it, they handed the reimagining to Kyle Franz, and what Franz did with the raw material Fazio identified is nothing short of a resurrection. 

Karoo is the crown jewel of that transformation. It’s a course that feels rooted in the land's past yet still entirely of its own moment. It was the course our group kept returning to in conversation, and in our own minds during the reverent post-round silence. 

Wide, punishing, naturalistic, quietly intelligent. The routing moves through the scrub and sandy wastelands with the confidence of an artist who trusts his muse to carry her own weight. Unlike the landscape, the greens are complex but subtle; with everything that’s in their way, they have no need for theatrics. The fairways are generous until they're not, and the moment they stop is always the one that matters. 

Karoo is a rarity in modern golf’s analytical turn - $500 range finders, GPS carts, strokes gained percentages, and trackman ranges with numbers that we only pretend to understand. Now here was a course that still rewards instinct over calculation, and commitment over analysis. Thankfully, this played right into our group’s philosophy for golf trips, fatherhood, and decisions made on a Tuesday when someone texts you the words “Citrus Farms.” It was also, we realized, a good philosophy for life.

Mostly warm and invigorating, the Gulf Coast air occasionally got mean. It tried to keep us honest, pressing against our shot shapes and demanding we account for it. Then, a cold front would move in unexpectedly: genuine breeze, the temperature dropping to a place that jolted us awake and into the present. With it came the rain — not the nachos-and-wait kind, but the kind that floods the course, wafts the pungent smell of grass and scrub, but then pulls back like a curtain, leaving everything clean and clarified.

The thunder came, too, rolling along the horizon. Again, it was not the kind that suspends play, but the kind that served as a potential portent and let us know: Mother Earth was watching. 

Lightning as well, off in the distance. Slow, silent flashes that made the whole group look up and go quiet for a moment. It was like the land wanted to remind us “you are guests here.” This land was wild before we arrived, and it was showing us it still had its teeth despite the pristine fairways now carved into its soul. 

Rather than see this weather as a curse from the golf gods, we all thought, “What a blessing.” A trip with weather like this is memorable in a way perfect conditions never are. But only if you have the stones to embrace it.

The barracks

Citrus Farm’s par three course stays lit up and is available to play after dark (and it is also very amenable to being played with a drink in hand). But because the skies opened up properly our first evening, and seeing as the wine was already flowing, our group collectively decided the par three would have to wait for another trip. We watched it beckon us from a distance with the longing of men who knew exactly what they were missing. The wine was our consolation, and we had zero regrets until the morning.

Thankfully, the range also stays open at night, under the lights. Someone even had the good sense to toss up some massive speakers and play music. As people who truly love the game know, the images that are most seared into my brain are of eight men standing in a row, hitting balls into the warm Florida sunrise (or, at Cabot, sunset). Good music in the air, a drink or seven nearby, no scorecard, no consequence — just struck irons, laughter, and the specific obscenity of a man who tries to pure a five-iron after six whiskeys and two glasses of red and inevitably rips it off the hozzle. 

This is where the golf trip morphed into the “buddies trip”. Like recruits shooting the shit after a hard day of training – it’s where a group of soldiers becomes a band of brothers.

The Aftershock

Like shell-shocked soldiers returning home from the front, I won’t share the gory details of the actual Ryder Cup-style war that unfolded (although I will note that my team won). But the animosity of going two down with two holes to play against your friend-turned-foe was almost forgotten as we all sat on the terrace — more cold things in hand and the day's matches hanging loosely in the air, only to be mobilized if the opponent you beat got a bit too out of line. 

On Saturday evening, the wine was flowing yet again. And (yet again) sometime after midnight the skies properly opened — a downpour that drummed on the roof, flooded the cart paths, and washed every trace of the day off the course. It felt like déjà vu as much as a reset. Embracing the conditions, I told the group, “the golf gods are just hosing down the stage for our finale.” 

In the end, my team won our little tournament 9-7. But most importantly, the Karoo and Roost courses delivered what great matchplay architecture is supposed to — a short game bonanza where strategy and precision mattered more than distance, and where sophisticated design and complex greens separated the decisive from the hesitant. 

On Sunday, for the second consecutive day, I was walking up the final hole with the victory cigar already lit, the result mathematically sealed. 

The Cavalry

Cabot Citrus Farms is walking only. No carts, no shortcuts, and nowhere to hide. By Sunday afternoon our legs had filed a formal complaint with our brains, and our backs were starting to chime in as well. The ache is the receipt, the proof you were actually out there and present for all of it, earning every glorious view and misread putt one stride at a time. The step count is part of the price of admission, the stiff back on the flight home its own little trophy. In short, the suffering makes everything that much better.

But none of this — not the 9-7 win nor the three 20-footers I made on Sunday — happens without my calvary: my caddie, Spencer.

Spencer from Minnesota, who summers in Nebraska. He’s that peculiar kind of someone who when you ask “where are you from,” it somehow only raises more questions. He would offer the answers gradually over five hours of walking each day, the way good caddie conversation always unfolds — never forced. 

The caddie-player relationship is one of sport's stranger arrangements. Another soul is in your head, reading greens you can't fully see (even while you pretend to), handing you the right club before you've committed to the number and though he knows nothing about your game. He spends the day talking you off ledges and onto lines. 

Spencer carried both my rounds, and he read Karoo's greens with a fluency I will never be versed in — how the ball releases, where it falls away, which putts are faster than they look. On multiple occasions he gave me a line I didn't believe, but I trusted it anyway and watched the ball track exactly where he said. 

Most importantly, Spencer was simply good company for the miles upon miles of walking. The vibe was right. I would have poured a glass for him on the terrace any night, without hesitation. The Grape Gasolina would have been extended to him. After all, he earned it as much as I did.

While the stiff back is mine alone, the victories belong to both of us. 

All Quiet on the Florida Front

I am writing all this on my return flight home. Back stiff. Legs cooked. I logged somewhere north of 35,000 steps across the weekend and I feel every one of them — a slow-burning that starts in the feet and arrives at the lumbar with blunt, non-negotiable authority. Yet I would not trade a single step.

Flight delayed. This feels appropriate. The weekend doesn't want to end.

We came down here, eight beauties from scattered chapters of a life, Canadians and Americans united in casual decadence and debauchery. And we experienced some serious matchplay played over two days on ground that deserved to be, and now, thanks to Cabot, once again is taken seriously. 

I heard the snow is thawing up north. Masters weekend is approaching. Two soon-to-be fathers are heading home to the biggest weeks of their lives. The sleeper pick delivered. The sticks were sticks. Hollywood Ben has the receipts.



Cabot Citrus Farms – that obscure and derelict citrus grove turned artistic masterwork, where Karoo will humble and seduce you within the same back nine, and where the range stays lit at night and the music plays — will be waiting for us when we return. 

Patient. Sandy. Merciless. 

So like Jeremy Renner walking onto the transport jet for yet another tour, we’ll be back. 

And you better believe we’ll be bringing the calvary.

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