Travel
I sailed to Antarctica in search of golf. This is what I found

In 1914, explorer Ernest Shackleton and his 27-man crew set sail on a journey to Antarctica. Their mission? To become the first people to ever cross the entire continent, which is roughly 1.3 times the size of Europe. I, too, recently journeyed to the White Continent … aboard a 264-person luxury cruise ship as part of the Future of Space’s inaugural Space2Sea Voyage of Legends alongside William Shatner, Neil deGrasse Tyson, moonwalker Charlie Duke and many other featured guests. My mission? To play golf on Antarctica.
Yes, any attempt at finding similarities between my “mission” and Shackleton’s is made tongue-in-cheek, except for one. Shackleton’s crew technically failed in their goal of traversing the continent, yet their two-year ordeal being stranded on ice and remote islands through multiple winters in which they ate penguins and seals is one of the most remarkable tales of human survival. No one died.
As I embarked the Seabourn Venture in Ushuaia, Argentina, the southernmost city in the world, I knew my mission to play golf on Antarctica would technically fail as well. Simply put, with rare exceptions, it’s not allowed (more on this in a minute). But what consolation could make my journey, like Shackleton’s, a success? More candidly, what could I do to most convincingly argue that I have played golf on Antarctica, without technically playing golf on Antarctica?

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OK, now to address your inevitable question: What the heck is a golf writer doing on a cruise to Antarctica? I had the same thought after accepting the invitation from Future of Space co-founder Daniel Fox, a wildlife photographer and author turned entrepreneur who along with his wife, Tristan, founded the company to help shape the discussion of space exploration and commercialization. As part of that goal, the company launched Space2Sea, an initiative in which they charter a cruise ship to a remote destination, invite esteemed guests and create a program filled with engaging lectures and discussions. In addition to space and scientific experts, guests like myself from various unrelated fields are invited to add a different perspective to the conversation and spread word of the voyage to new audiences. The next Space2Sea voyage is scheduled for the Galápagos Islands, Nov. 1-9, 2025.
“Will I be able to hit golf shots?” was my obvious first question on the pre-trip call with Fox, who very politely explained that international regulations limit many tourist activities on Antarctica, including golf. Hopeful that onboard libations might change these rules, I ordered a three-piece detachable bullseye putter, folded it up and smuggled it in my suitcase. One no isn’t good enough for a golfer.
A quite literal rite of passage for any cruise to Antarctica starts with crossing the Drake Passage, 600 miles of open ocean between Cape Horn and Antarctica. Infamous for having the roughest seas in the world because no land barriers stop the current, waves commonly reach 15-20 feet and much higher during storms. Think you’re wobbly after a few beers at the turn? I don’t want to hear it.
The opening day at sea began with a Q&A with each of the featured guests, who reflected on what inspired them to journey south. “We’re here because of this curiosity which permeates most human beings and is the reason for space programs and advances in medicine,” said the 93-year-old Shatner, who is best known for playing Captain Kirk in Star Trek.

From left to right: Tyson, Kelly and Shatner discuss their journey to Antarctica and how it parallels space exploration.
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“I look at this similar to going to space,” said Scott Kelly, the American astronaut who over his career has spent more than a year in space and is the twin brother of U.S. Senator Mark Kelly. “For me, going to space was about serving my country, but it was also about the adventure. For me, this is also about boldly going where I have never been before. That’s what I want to do.”
Tyson, one of the world’s leading science communicators and astrophysicists, offered a more somber perspective. “If we lose the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, the water levels will rise to equal that of the Statue of Liberty's left elbow, flooding basically every major city in the world,” he said, referencing the effects of global warming. “I just want to make sure I touch the continent with the glaciers before all the glaciers are gone.”
It was the sense of adventure that Kelly referenced that was palpable among all 200-plus passengers, an eclectic mix of space and science enthusiasts much more inclined to debate string theory and chastise Flat Earthers than the golf-ball rollback and slow play. There were entrepreneurs, a quantum physics professor, an oncology nurse, a former MTV News executive, an ABC News producer, a sculptor, a sociologist, a food distributor executive and employees from astronautics companies SpaceX and Blue Origin. And a golf writer. Talk about imposter syndrome.
After a day-and-a-half at sea and with my lunch still where it’s supposed to be, we caught our first glimpse of land at Elephant Island. To attempt to describe the scale of Antarctica is nearly useless. Pictures and video even struggle to capture it fully. The water is a clearer blue than off the shores of Kapalua. The glaciers, millions of years old, ascend from the ocean straight up, like a riveted-faced pot bunker, except hundreds of feet, not six or seven. The silence, complete.

Tyler Brower/www.ampersandstudios.co

Tyler Brower/www.ampersandstudios.co

Tyler Brower/www.ampersandstudios.co

Tyler Brower/www.ampersandstudios.co

Tyler Brower/www.ampersandstudios.co
Kelly summarized the sentiment well. “It’s very similar to before you fly in space for the first time. You have a sense of what you’re going to see based on what people have said or wrote or things you saw on TV, but then when you get there, you’re like Well, there is really no comparison to what I had envisioned in my imagination.”
After dropping anchor a few hundred yards off land, I broke out the putter from my suitcase, pieced it together and scouted my options. The terrain on Elephant Island is too treacherous to make landfall, so a few putts on my balcony, against the stunning backdrop would need to suffice. If you’re going to convince people you played on Antarctica, you need video evidence.
The next day, we would make our first landing, on an active volcano called Deception Island, which last erupted in 1970. Traditional golf was not an option, however. “For most of the places that we do visit, I would say that's really not a possibility in the current situation because of the wildlife concentration in areas that we go to,” our expedition leader, Fridrik Fridriksson, said on whether I could hit golf shots on the continent.
The International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators, an organization of more than 100 companies including Seabourn (the cruise operator we were on), regulates tourism activities in Antarctica. Given that tens of thousands of tourists travel to Antarctica each year, the organization sets strict rules for acceptable behavior to limit the environmental impact.
While Fridriksson agreed that golf is “an innocent enough sport to not necessarily have great impact,” there is potential for serious damage, especially if you take a divot, for example. “Any kind of soil, any kind of biological material, any grass, any mosses, any lichens, it will take decades if not hundreds of years to recover to its current state,” he said. “In many places of the world, especially in the polar Arctic and Antarctic regions, all life is very precious.”

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There are a few research bases—including McMurdo Station and Scott Base—where golf is occasionally played, but those are located in areas with far less wildlife concentration than our landing sites, so the risk is minimal. Even then, the term “golf” is used loosely. Researchers almost exclusively use putters, arrange makeshift mini-golf holes on the ice and hold tournaments such as the “Winter’s End Classic.”
With ball-club contact off the table for me, a wooden walking stick would be my new club of choice. After ascending a few hundred feet to a cliff overlooking the caldera of the volcano at Deception Island, with winds gusting 40 miles an hour, hail pounding down and five layers on, I made a few air swings. I can only imagine the ball flight.
Had I hit a real ball on the island, it would have been a fluffy greenside bunker shot, given the volcanic ash seemed like some kind of otherworldly sand. Some people said the terrain looked like the moon. In any other setting, the conversation stops there. Not so on the Space2Sea voyage. I approached the true authority on the matter, the retired astronaut Duke, who is one of just four people alive who has walked on the moon.

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“No, not really,” the 89-year-old Duke told me when I asked him whether the terrain was similar to the lunar surface. The soil was much softer on the island, whereas it’s quite firm on the moon, he said. “As you walk [on the moon], you compress the soil a little bit, but you never sink in more than a couple of inches at the most,” he said.
Yet it was just a few minutes into this discussion that the conversation turned to golf, as Duke, once a 2 handicap, reminisced about rounds with Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, Jimmy Demaret and Jackie Burke, among others. It is a custom set of Hogan irons, stamped with the Apollo 16 logo, that Duke is most proud of. Hogan himself gave Duke the clubs at Shady Oaks Country Club in Fort Worth. “He said, ‘I’ll only give them to you if you play with them,’ so I did,” Duke said.

As a crew member of Apollo 16 in 1972, then 36-year-old Duke became the youngest person to ever walk on the moon.
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It was this moment that made me truly appreciate what makes a Space2Sea voyage so special. For anyone interested in science, space or who just likes adventure, the opportunity to mingle with the likes of Duke, Tyson, Kelly, Shatner and others is a perk rarely offered. Whether you’re debating the nature of dark matter with the world’s leading astrophysicist or simply talking draws and fades with an astronaut, these unguarded, unfiltered interactions with fascinating experts makes the trip—which ranged from $35,500 to $91,500 for the general public—far more valuable than a typical cruise.
But I had some more “golf” to play. The following day, on Christmas Eve, we made our first continental landing at Neko Harbor, amidst a colony of Gentoo penguins, calving glaciers and the occasional avalanche on an adjacent mountain. Feeling like I left a little in the tank during my first air swings the day before, I hiked up a few hundred feet to the edge of a cliff, gripped the walking stick and put a little more swoosh in the downswing. My excuse if I didn’t get to my left side? Well, you can see.
The two-day Drake Passage on the way home, however, was my riskiest attempt to incorporate golf into what had already been the trip of a lifetime. While the seas on the way down were fairly calm with 10-foot waves, the journey home featured the infamous “Drake Shake,” when waves reached a consistent 15-18 feet, throwing the boat from side to side, up and down. Anti-nausea patch on, putter and ball in hand, it was time to play golf on the Drake. Along with photographer and avid golfer Tyler Brower, I set up holes around the boat, including a daring trip onto the bow in 40 mile-an-hour winds.

Tyler Brower/www.ampersandstudios.co

Tyler Brower/www.ampersandstudios.co

Tyler Brower/www.ampersandstudios.co
I’m not an AimPoint guy, but I’d say we were dealing with a little more than four- or five-percent slope. An uphill putt as you’re cresting an 18-foot wave quickly becomes a downhill slider as you crash down the other side. Certainly not speaking from experience, but I would imagine the closest on-land analog would be trying to navigate Augusta National’s greens in 40 mile-an-hour gusts after downing seven beers.
So, you be the judge of whether this all makes me an Antarctic golfer or not. I know that I didn’t actually play golf on Antarctica, but should there come a day when I’ve checked each of the other six continents off my golfing list, I’ll be bragging that I’ve done them all.