By Tom Chiarella
Photo By James Rexroad July 2007

First, you gotta find a wingman. Someone who won't steer you wrong on the tee box, at the blackjack table, when ordering whiskey. Someone who will stand by you. Let's get out of here for a few days, you say. Let's throw some dice. Let's hit some balls. Chaos is at the doorstep in moments like these. You need your boy: someone you won't get tired of, someone who will drive once in a while, someone who's always game for a bet. Not all that demanding a job description, really, but sometimes it can be tough to find the right partner for your basic three-day casino-golf getaway. The selection must be made. The alchemy is essential. The wingman must be found.

Put the call out broadly. People have obligations, duties. Some guys just change; they no longer have time for long ambles, trays of whiskey sours on the pool deck, no interest in the argument in favor of parlaying a $5 hard-eight every time it hits. You're going to hear it all. Work is a common excuse. And some guys really do have to work. Poor bastards. One of my brothers was too booked to come with me on my latest trip. The other said he was a little short on cash. My local partner had family stuff. My boy in New York just returned from a two-week trip. The low point came when I called my friend Mike and asked him to tag along with me to Albuquerque: three nights, three premium courses.

He took a big sigh. "I can't," he said. "My cat is getting a radiological implant." "Your cat has cancer," I said. "Not cancer," he said. He sighed again. "Whatever," I said. "You can't go drink, gamble and play golf because of your cat. It has a tumor or something. That's what you're telling me." Mike moaned a little. "Pretty much," he said. "Sucks, though. I really want to go."

Ladies and gentlemen, this is not a wingman. And like I said, when you're going into the action, right into the heavy flak of the intense golf-gambling weekend, you gotta have one. There's always a reason to get out of a weekend of golf and gambling; rare is the one guy who will take to the road and all that it entails. When I called my college roommate, a large wedge of a guy, as loyal and kind as they come, a guy by the eminently sensible name of Jim Smith, he jumped at it. He was between jobs we both were and we needed to talk. The timing, he said, couldn't be better. Only then, with the partner in place, could I start to see the places I was going and the things I was about to do. I was flying to Albuquerque, N.M. I was going to jam as much golf and gambling as I could into 72 hours. We went over the itinerary on our cell phones from the airport, just before departure, my wingman and I. It felt for all the world like a mission.

Albuquerque is A sleepy little city. Downtown, they light the buildings at night, which is pretty enough. At least we thought so as we drove straight past it all from the airport, on the way to the Sandia Resort & Casino, perched at the edge of the Pueblo of Sandia reservation, toward the three excellent golf courses I booked for the two of us: Santa Ana Golf Club, Sandia Golf Club and Twin Warriors Golf Club. (These courses are Nos. 33, 28 and 10, respectively, on Golf Digest's new list of the Top-40 Casino Golf Courses. See page 157.)

By the time we arrived it was the middle of a Tuesday night in the desert, both of us having arced the nation on long commercial flights to settle here. Eight floors above the desert floor, facing a mountainside as yet unapparent in the blanket of darkness, we started to feel the twin siren calls of the casino-golf getaway. The casino beckoned just below us, the golf course called from the distance. The former wanted to draw from the latter. At that point on the trip, time stretched out in front of us. We could go play cards, or we could rest up for the 36 holes facing us later that day. In this way we discovered the first key to the golf-casino connection: Each in its own time. We had a tee time in six hours. So we slept.

Golf and gambling share a measure of the same urgency in the life of a vacation. When you're staying at a casino and playing golf there, or nearby, your truest measure of the experience is time. What is 72 hours, really? Three twirls of the planet, in a cycle of millions. Nothing. Similarly, what is three rounds of golf? Fifty-four holes? In the grand scheme, it amounts to very little. But when you wake up in an enormous suite, with a grand, golden window view of the gnarled and snow-tinged Sandia Mountains, when you trudge northward in the cold desert morning, alongside the commuters, when you stand at that first hole, overlooking the tough Tamaya nine at Santa Ana Golf Club, 54 holes feels like a very large asset, like a giant roll of cash, and two days, like an eternity. The sun risen, the air warms with every minute. Hitting into the belly of the first hole feels like a small act, a tiny carving from the trip in full. It hardly seems to cost a thing, time wise.

I had a friend who once told me things are different in the desert. Of course, that was when we were driving his crappy, under-air-conditioned '92 LeSabre back from Vegas to L.A., looking at a distant ranch house surrounded by miles of nothing but scrub. But on this day, Smitty and I discover that same thing once again: Things really are different in the desert. The ball carries, and I am suddenly, blessedly, a long hitter. We play from the tips on the first nine, then slide up to the front tees so we can start trying to drive some greens. And so it is, that on the second nine at Santa Ana (where we were directed to the Cheena side, slightly longer from the front tees), the real gambling begins.