Illustrations By Dan Page June 2007

Course ratings are derived from the exclusive 5-star Golf Digest Places to Play scale. A single star represents "basic golf." Five stars indicates "golf at its absolute best." Golf Digest's Best Places to Play guide, based upon the ratings of tens of thousands of readers, is available for $24.95.
Basic golf.
Good, but not great.
Very good. Tell a friend it's worth getting off the highway to play.
Outstanding. Plan your next vacation around it.
Superb. Golf at its absolute best. Pay any price to play at least once in your life.
The equivalent of one-half star.

If a course has no star rating, it means that the course did not receive a minimum of 10 ballots, either because it is very new or simply was not visited by a sufficient number of Golf Digest readers.

CATSKILL MOUNTAIN HIGH

by Mark Whitaker

SULLIVAN COUNTY, N.Y.—When most people think of the Borscht Belt, they envision fast-talking comics entertaining the middle-class Jews who used to flock to the summer resorts in the mountains north of New York City. But my mind goes to the string of venerable public golf courses that still dot the Catskills. I took up golf while vacationing at a little house my family owns in Woodstock, and every summer I try to make a pilgrimage to a few of these classic old tracks.

June is my favorite time to play them, when the long northeastern winter is finally a distant memory but before the hot July and August sun bake their unirrigated fairways brown and hard. So when I can make it up there from my home in Manhattan, I call my friend Joe, the real-estate broker, and he calls his buddy Kevin, the retired teacher, and we take off on the winding roads of Sullivan County to Grossinger's, or Kutshers, or Tarry Brae, or the back way to the Nevele.

With the exception of the brutally long Monster at the old Concord resort (now closed for renovation, though there is limited play on the golf course), none of the designs is quite on a par with the best of the private courses I've played since those early days. But each has some individual holes that are as difficult as the best of them, and as stunning. Last summer at Tarry Brae, for instance, I was once again dazzled by the 495-yard sixth, where after hitting a blind tee shot over a hill, you climb it to look down a steep fairway to a tiny green nestled into a beautiful lake. As much as the golf, I relish the funky incongruity of the surroundings. Where else do you look up from your ball and see Hasidic Jews in tall fur hats and knee-length black-wool coats walking along the roads to the nearby towns, or barefoot Buddhists in flowing robes padding back and forth to the local ashram? And as you swing by the old resorts--some of them shuttered, others well past their prime but still taking guests--you can almost hear the ghost of Henny Youngman: "Did you hear the one about the priest, the rabbi and the scratch golfer . . . ?"

Grossinger C.C.
Big G course, $65-$95
nine-hole Vista course, $19-$27
grossingergolf.net, 845-292-9000.

Kutshers C.C.
$45-$60; kutshers.com, 800-431-1273.

Nevele Grande Resort & C.C.
$60-$75; nevele.com, 800-647-7000.

Tarry Brae G.C.
$36-$45 (including cart); tarrybrae.com, 845-434-1257.

Mark Whitaker, the former editor of Newsweek magazine, is vice president and editor-in-chief of new ventures at The Washington Post Co.'s Internet Division.

***

IRISH GOLF, AMERICAN STYLE

by Philip Beard

KOHLER, Wis.—If you've always wanted to play in Ireland but lack either the time for the commute or the fortitude for a ski-cap and rainsuit getaway, then you need to experience Irish golf as only the Yanks can provide it. At Whistling Straits, your $375 round of golf (including the required caddie and the recommended tip) can be followed by a massage from a woman your wife would shoot on sight (at the posh Kohler Waters Spa), followed by a meal that could feed Haiti (at the American Club). And the scariest part? It's worth every penny.

When the Kohler family moved its fledgling plumbing and enameling works to the Wisconsin countryside in 1900, they did it to improve the lives of their employees. What is now the American Club was once a dormitory, complete with bowling alleys, game rooms and gathering places, where Kohler tried to indoctrinate its mostly immigrant workforce into the American lifestyle. Even Kohler's corporate mission statement—"to improve the level of gracious living in the lives of all ... "—seemed to look forward to a day when this sleepy farm town might welcome travelers from around the world.

What Kohler never could have anticipated was the 13,000 truckloads of sand. That's what Pete Dye carted in to convert the lakeside farmland into a stunning replica (with rough-mowing sheep) of the dune-laden, cliffside links of Ireland. The vistas on his walking-only Straits Course are spectacular from the first swing to the last, and half of the holes are played directly along the cliffs. But Ireland never saw weather like this. You want the challenge of the Irish wind without the rain and cold? The weekend I spent there with my brother and two old friends, I hit an 8-iron with the wind at my back on the brutal par-3 seventh on Friday, 4-iron into the wind on Saturday, and made double both times. But the skies were eggshell blue, the temperatures hovered in the upper 70s, and the aptly named Heather awaited me at the Spa. Aye. ‘Twas a foin night fer a good roobin'.

But beware the famous shamrock-shape 18th green. With the sun almost down and the dew already lying heavy on Sunday evening, I hit my two best shots of the weekend over a massive crevasse to the front-right leaf of the green, all in the face of a triple press. We were poised to take money from our friends (who are also clients) for the first time since they'd paid their last bill, until one of them (red of face, with a passion for the darker liquors) skulled a third-shot 8-iron that began bounding along a footpath that was meant to be out of play. It rolled up the hill behind the green, and then fell with just enough momentum to trickle onto the back-right cloverleaf.

Where the pin happened to be.

Six feet.

When I'm done three-putting for bogey from 120 feet, my client rolls his in for par.

Heather?

Whistling Straits G.C. (Straits)
$300 plus $57 for caddie (plus tip); destinationkohler.com/golf, 800-344-2838.

Philip Beard a self-described "recovering lawyer" is the author, most recently, of Lost in the Garden, a novel about a middle-aged man obsessed with sex and qualifying for the Champions Tour.

***

CALIFORNIA DREAMING

by Mark Frost

SANTA BARBARA, Calif.—So you've slogged through another brutal winter and soggy spring, and your reasons to resent Southern California are already too numerous to mention, and then comes June. The marine layer lingers until noon, holding off the fiery hints of desert heat, you're dialing in your wedges, your weekend-warrior adhesions are starting to break up, the starlets have busted out their summer wardrobes . . . and if you don't find Los Angeles a reasonable facsimile of heaven, there's always Santa Barbara.

Ninety minutes north—60 by Porsche—you'll find even more moderate weather, seaside breezes, authentic faux Spanish architecture, the best taco stand north of Jalisco and, shockingly for our region, something resembling a sense of history. Even the offshore oil platforms look like Christmas trees when they're lit up at night. If this isn't where God wanted to retire, it was good enough for Ronald Reagan.

You can dream about playing The Valley Club—an Alister Mackenzie masterpiece, which goes without saying, in nearby Montecito; which is to Santa Barbara what Santa Barbara is to L.A.—and while you're at it, drop in at Augusta National and Pine Valley unannounced, and best of luck to you. Or you can head up to the Sandpiper Golf Club, a little north of town, and buy yourself the best daily-fee round between Torrey Pines and Pebble. Why this brawny seaside links isn't better known or hasn't gone private is a mystery that's best to ignore because it only works in your favor. In fact, I should be slapped sideways for mentioning it here.

Here's what you get, for a fraction of the cost of its better-known neighbors in either direction: challenges on every hole, spectacular views of the Santa Ynez Mountains to the east, a string of fairways along the coast to rival any you've seen. If you can play, you'll relish the test; if you can't, you'll remember the scenery for a long time after you've driven the Porsche back to Budget Rent A Car in Beverly Hills, where irony is in such limited supply that "budget" isn't even in quotation marks, and the starlets are always in mid-season form.

Sandpiper G.C.
$124-$144, plus $16 for cart; sandpipergolf.com, 805-968-1541.

Mark Frost's latest novel, The Second Objective, is in bookstores now. His next golf book, The Match, will be published this fall.

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THE PLACE FOR AN ACE

By Susan K. Reed

PALM COAST, Fla.—The 17th hole at the Ocean Course is among my favorites anywhere, no matter the season. I love the whole course, in fact, and have felt that way since I first played it three years ago, when it was known as Ocean Hammock.

Approaching the Ginn Hammock Beach Resort, about an hour and 15 minutes south of Jacksonville, you feel as if you're reaching Land's End. The Atlantic Ocean lies directly ahead; the front and back nines of the Jack Nicklaus-designed course extend to the north and south, along the beach. There is a lovely 20-room boutique hotel, the Lodge, and an excellent restaurant, the Atlantic Grille. Despite condo towers in the distance, you only have to look toward the ocean to feel completely alone.

The Ocean Course is a wonderful series of risk-reward par 5s, challenging but makable par 4s and dramatic par 3s. The course is a test; it has water, a pleasant combination of pine and palm trees, uphill and downhill holes, and Nicklaus' wonderfully creative greens.

I've returned to the course every year since my first visit in 2004, discovering new things about it each time. The first seven holes play inland, so you stand with your back to the ocean on No. 1, take one last look at the Atlantic and don't return to the beach until No. 8, a dramatic par 3 that has five sets of tees ranging from 118 to 185 yards. The tee shot is played off a dune over a sandy waste area to a beautiful elevated green with the ocean as a backdrop. Depending on which way the wind is blowing, 118 yards can feel like 185 and vice versa. There are few prettier holes in golf.

The course, open to guests of its resort, is home to an unforgettable final four holes: The Bear Claw. No. 15 plays up a huge hill to a green that sits 30 feet above the fairway. The second shot is blind, but on my last visit I hit one of the best 6-irons of my life and landed my approach on the green. There's no sweeter feeling than hiking up to the green, seeing your ball and then taking in the sweeping expanse of the Atlantic.

Well, on second thought, there is: No. 17, another stunning par 3 that plays toward the ocean. Everything felt right that day, and I took my pitching wedge for the 104-yard shot over a deep valley with two deep bunkers guarding the front. I barely felt the ball as it left my club and soared in a high arc toward the green. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. The ball took one hop, and then I couldn't see it anymore. I was confused. I hadn't seen it roll off the green into the bunker, my usual fate. The rest of my foursome started jumping up and down. "You made a hole-in-one!" they shouted.

I didn't believe them until I got to the hole and peered in. There was my ball, my first ace.

Ginn Hammock Beach Resort (Ocean)
$190; oceanhammock.com. 888-246-5500.

Susan K. Reed is Editor-in-Chief of Golf For Women.

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A CAPITAL IDEA

by Christopher Hitchens

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Mention "Washington" and "golf" in the same breath and the mind conjures the image of a lavish trip organized by lobbyists for congressmen, or the immaculate greens of the Chevy Chase Country Club, or one of the many high-toned courses on the fringe of the Beltway.

For me, though, one of the pleasures of summertime city life is the ability to go a couple of miles north, up Sixteenth Street, and make a left into the wilderness of Rock Creek Park. This dense bit of greenery, around a deepish ravine that runs through the northern part of the Federal diamond, is a huge lung of fresh air for the nation's capital and a classic example of what the Romans called rus in urbe, or the countryside in the city. One of its lesser-known charms is the Rock Creek Park Golf Course, a public facility where you can drive up, pay a modest green fee, hire a buggy and never hear the traffic that is so close. It's National Park Service property, so there's no danger of it ever being "developed."

The par-65 course is small and has two sharply distinct choices. The front nine is a series of short holes, all 3 or 4 par, starting at the top of a fairly steep slope and skirting the edge of the park. The tougher back nine takes you through a more densely wooded area, with long and narrow fairways and small greens. You are very likely, in both cases, to run up against the wild deer that make Rock Creek their home. There's the nice sense of possibly getting lost, which makes up for the number of balls that are likely to disappear.

The club seems to have traditionally been the preserve of African-American enthusiasts, though Washington is not as segregated as it once was. Clubhouse facilities are not lavish but include some basic food and drink. Cheap lessons are available for beginners. There is not, usually, any great wait for a tee-off. I always come away feeling strangely refreshed, as if I have left town for a day.

Rock Creek Park G. CSE.
$20-$25 plus $12.50 for cart; 202-882-7332.

Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair. His most recent book is Thomas Jefferson: Author of America.

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A GREEN MOUNTAIN GETAWAY

by Tad Friend

ST. JOHNSBURY, Vt.—One weekend every summer a dozen of us, middle-aged New Yorkers with middling handicaps, converge on the St. Johnsbury Country Club in northernmost Vermont, a semiprivate layout as green and lovable and peculiar as Kermit the Frog. The course's fairways, schussing between files of pine and oak, work into the memory; drifting off to sleep on midwinter nights, I play the course in my head, plotting to take all the trouble out of play (leave driver home; chip in 18 times).

The town's other attractions are scant: Accommodations top out at the Comfort Inn, and the house special tends to be the onion rings. So we play 36 holes a day, trying to tame the longest short course in the world (5,853 yards from the whites). The first, fourth, sixth and 10th holes play straight up into the clouds, and your aiming point is usually a passing airplane. Whereas on the ninth, which drops off the lip of the world, even I can hit it nearly 300 yards.

My usual St. J round involves gathering pars and bogeys on the gentle front nine, laid out in 1923 by two-time British Open champion Willie Park Jr., and then leaking epithets on the back nine, built in 1992 by Geoffrey Cornish, may he take stroke and distance in hell. Cornish's greens are ski runs, and ravines lurk on almost every tee shot. The 546-yard 16th requires you to thread a 3-wood between a hill on the left and a gully on the right, smash a wood over another gully, play a soaring long iron to 50 yards short of the green, foozle a pitch into one of four bunkers ringing the narrow green, duff your explosion, and conclude with three judicious putts. At least that's how I play it.

Another tip: If your ball lands in the yawning bunker beneath the 18th green—the trap really is beneath the hole, not beside it—pick up. No one likes to see five or six buckets of sand flying around without an accompanying ball, and besides, picking up lets you speed back to the first tee and sneak in a few more holes before dark.

St. Johnsbury C.C.
$42-$49, plus $38 to share a cart; stjohnsburycountryclub.com, (802) 748-9894.

Tad Friend, a staff writer at The New Yorker, is working on a family memoir.

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JOURNEY TO A SECRET PLANET

by Tom Chiarella

FRENCH LICK, Ind.—Tell people—as I often do—you're going to French Lick, and you're met with an ugly expression of confusion: a salad-blend of grimace, grin and predictable smart-ass remark that roughly translates to "Huh?"

Yes, French Lick is an ugly, somewhat awkward name—bringing to mind a weird service you might stumble across in the more nefarious regions of Craigslist. And, yes, it's a fairly plain-Jane town in the middle of south-central Indiana with none-other-than-Larry Bird as its most cosmopolitan native. Still, let me tell you this: Take a deep breath and go to the Lick.

When you set out for the French Lick Resort Casino, you're just one of the tens of thousands of people who, in the past 150 years, have traveled to this great remove to be healed in some fashion at one of the largest resort hotels built in the 20th century. I choose golf for my healing.

Some people enjoy the stories associated with the massive, 443-room hotel, like the fact that the place was frequented by FDR, Al Capone and Diamond Jim Brady (on different weekends, one presumes). But a guy like me doesn't go on vacation for a history lesson. I've been coming here for almost 20 years, mostly because it is home to a largely unknown Donald Ross course that is a rough-and-tumble, 7,000-yard, par-70 tester. I feel like I'm on a secret planet, playing my favorite game—golf in a heavily bunkered, subtly textured milieu, with a grand hotel in the distance. There are steaks over there, I always tell myself. And massages. And now, even poker. So, I'm all good. That's pretty much what I want from a getaway.

I used to play here when the resort was a hulking ghost of its former glory, with a mile of deserted hallways that brought to mind only "The Shining." In those days, you were alone in the restaurant, you wandered to the bar down corridors so eerie and empty you half-expected to hear Jack Nicholson's typewriter clacking away in the lobby.

But the place hung on, and now with the advent of casino gambling, it has undergone a massive face-lift. The hotel? Top-notch. And another $4.6 million has been drilled into a renovation of the Ross course. In 2008, a new Pete Dye effort will open, making French Lick the kind of place it once was, and the kind of place you want it to be: one that makes people jealous the moment you drop that silly name.

French Lick Resort Casino
$75-$110, including cart; frenchlick.com, 800-457-4042.

Tom Chiarella is a contributing editor at Esquire and an associate professor of English at DePauw University.

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A SCOTLAND SOJOURN

by Charles McGrath

CAMPBELTOWN, Scotland—My favorite place to play in June is Machrihanish Golf Club, the underappreciated links at the bottom of the Mull of Kintyre in Scotland. In June the weather is the most reliable it ever gets in Scotland, the gorse is in full yellow bloom, and the days are so long that after an early supper you can squeeze in an extra round.

Mostly, I have to confess, I play Machrihanish in my imagination, because it's so hard to get to. You fly to Edinburgh or Glasgow, wait a day or so for the airline to remember what it did with your clubs and then drive all the way to the bottom of the country, past countless sheep, so far south you can see Ireland on a good day.

In my mind I get to skip all that and step right onto the first tee and contemplate what is surely the prettiest but also the scariest opening hole in golf. Depending on how much you want to bite off, your tee shot has to carry diagonally across 200 yards or more of the Atlantic Ocean. When the tide is out, the shot is slightly less daunting, because you can play from the beach if necessary, but it still makes your glutes clench. After that, the routing takes you up into the duneland, with towering mounds and waving tan marram grass, and also requiring lots of courageous blind shots.

The back nine is not, in truth, quite as spectacular, which might be why Machrihanish is undervalued; after the 230-yard 16th—a monster of a par 3—the course ends with a sort of whimper, in fact. But even this imperfection is in a way part of the appeal, a way of bringing you back down to earth, which is where all the members firmly reside. Machrihanish is simple and unpretentious, with a small stucco clubhouse that used to be somebody's home and still feels like one. The locals are so friendly that they will even adjust your handicap for you. I played once with two white-haired regulars who, besides giving me lots of tips, practiced private scorecard juju. Whenever I asked how we stood, they'd just say, "All square."

Machrihanish G.C.
£40- £50 ($78-$98); machgolf.com, 011-44-1586-810213.

Charles McGrath is a New York Times writer at large and frequent contributor to Golf Digest.