Why Fore Fifty?

Getting older has always been something people dread. We fear it because it means the loss of youth and the loss of our ability to participate in things we love. However, as we get older sometimes we gain clarity about where we are in life and what we want to do with the rest of it. Recently, I reached a clarity like that.

I was lucky as kid, even though I didn’t realize it at the time. My parents realized the benefits of taking their kids to new places. My dad was a P.E. teacher and my basketball coach, and my mom worked as a treasurer at the school. That meant summers were for traveling. Based in Northwest Indiana we took multi-state road trips to Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon. We went east in an RV with my best friend’s family to Niagara Falls and the Finger Lakes. Michigan weekend trips to the Sister Lakes and Ludington happened frequently.

We would drive 20 hours to Florida for spring break every year like seemingly every other Midwestern family growing up. And it was there, in Ft. Myers, FL on my grandpa’s executive course that a spark lit a fuse that would burn for a long time. I later started a golf team at my high school in order to play some free golf. In those days, however, basketball had my heart.

Four years of playing college basketball at NCAA Division II Saint Joseph’s College didn’t afford me much time to play golf but the road trips and less than great accommodations that a D2 basketball program affords once again stoked the flames of wanderlust that had been burning since I was a kid. I came back to my alma mater to coach after graduating and it was during the summers I fell hard for golf. My first year coaching college basketball I made just over $2,000 and lived in a dorm. However, because our athletic department had worked out a deal with Sandy Pines GC to give all coaches at St. Joe free unlimited golf I suddenly had the time and access to play a tremendous amount of rounds. Those summers if I wasn’t on the road recruiting for St. Joe I was playing at Sandy Pines. I was unbeatable at Sandy at that time but my game did not travel and any time I went to play somewhere else my game fell off a cliff.

A few years later in 2016 a call from my best friend Aaron set stone my desire to travel to a new places and play golf there. Aaron and our other friend Steve had each won a trip (with a guest each) to play golf at Pebble Beach and The Links at Spanish Bay. I still remember Aaron’s words to me when he called to tell me he was bringing me, “Let’s try to become decent so we don’t embarrass ourselves at Pebble.” That trip will eventually get its own post but, that day, it was perfection. We got Pebble on a 75o sunny day. I don’t remember my score, but I remember the smile on my face for 18 holes. You know the feeling you get when you hit a wedge to 3 feet on the 18th after hacking it around all day, swearing that you were done with golf forever? That feeling that keeps us all coming back. I have been chasing that day at Pebble ever since.

In the time between then and now I developed so many other reasons to love golf. Golf is by far the best sport we have at allowing you to compete without having anyone else with you. It is obviously more fun to play with friends or even when you get a random pairing that turns out not to be a nightmare. But you don’t need it. When you play a round of golf alone you still have competition- from your past self, from the elements, the course, and your own expectations. Golf gives us hope. Hope that we can solve it, that we can finally put all the pieces of our game together for just this one round. It is so hard to watch the NBA or NFL and every believe we could do the things those players do. But golf allows us this delusion. Even some of the worst players can chip one in, make a 40-foot putt, make a birdie and pump our fist like Tiger.

So why did I create this site? Partly, I would love to show that golf travel doesn’t have to be outrageously expensive. There are affordable great golf courses all over our country. I would love to share some of those places I have found. It’s because of everything above. It’s because I love golf and I love to travel. It’s because I wanted to write about something I love. It’s because I want to keep chasing hope.

And now I want to do it in all 50 states.