Living on the east coast, I get to play a lot of golf courses with varying geography. For example, we have mountain courses in the west of our state, ocean courses to the east and then there is the Pinehurst courses which are set right in the middle. Still, I have only limited experience with golf in the west (outside of Las Vegas and Phoenix) so I was wholly looking forward to experiencing the visual fireworks of Seven Canyons Golf course in Sedona Arizona.

Living In Durham NC, I have the benefit of only being 80 minutes from the heart of the sandhills and Pinehurst Resort. While I do not play the Pinehurst Resort course very often I do get to play a decent amount of golf in the area. What I love about the area is that even though it is only 90 miles away from my home, it always feels like a different world. 

Imagine if you gathered all of the world’s hardcore golfers for a weeklong conference with the sole purpose of designing a resort made just for them. When all of the ideas had been spitballed and voted on and fretted over, the result would be a plan for a world class golf course with amazing views and a resort that offered everything we want and none of the stuff we don’t. Guess what. Bandon Dunes held that conference (or they just had some really smart people in charge).

Playing golf on Saturday is a hard enough sell to the wife, let alone getting away for a long weekend golf trip. Luckily, my wife is pretty cool and I probably get more rounds in per year than most guys. Still, some of my favorite rounds come each year when I take 15 other guys to Pinehurst for our annual Ryder Cup trip. The fact is, golf trips are AWESOME!

For the past six years I have organized a guys golf trip to Pinehurst NC. I have written a couple of posts about how to organize a guys golf trip and also suggested a format that works for 8 or 12 guys, but this year I threw that all out the window and moved to a Guys Golf Trip Ryder Cup.

TPC, we’ve all seen the logo, we’ve all seen the tournaments on TV and we all get a chuckle from MasterCard commercials: “Yeah, that’s the guy Brandt Sneeedakar.”

One of the many great things about golf is the fact no two courses are identical. However, many are fairly nondescript. Even at the premier level, there are certain “looks” that we have come to expect, and I think this is particularly true in the United States. Fortunately, this is starting to change, in part because of the work being done by master architect, Tom Doak. Unlike your average country club course, Doak is creating natural minimalistic masterpieces. One such example is the newly opened Streamsong Resort in Florida.

Cheap by nature, I am not one to think shelling out $350 for a round of golf is very prudent. In my opinion there are only a few courses that truly fit that bill. Pebble Beach is certainly on the list given its history and stunning views (or so I have been told), Pinehurst #2 would probably be another one. For my 40th, I played Pinehurst #2 and my caddie telling me “don’t worry, Tiger missed that same putt” alone justified the $340 I paid. With the rare opportunity to play TPC Sawgrass, I was going to get a first-hand look at another one of the famed courses that is a potential “bucket list” track.

I am not exactly sure when, but certainly in the past two years, FedEx started to heavily promote their club shipping service. While the commercials were catchy, I was always wary of using the service because I figured the cost would be too much of a premium. I know this because I ship things on a regular basis (primarily via UPS) so I am aware of what it costs to ship a 45 pound bag. Throw in a box and service and I am thinking we are in the $75 per trip range. Side hint: UPS Stores and the like absolutely charge insane markups . . . go directly to a UPS location when possible.

Pinehurst Golf Trip: If you somehow “lucked into” being in charge of organizing your buddy golf trip you know just how much work it can be. Fortunately, there are few things more fun than heading out of town for a few days of golf with all your buddies. So if you are in that unenviable position of outing organizer, let me give you a few ideas for a Pinehurst trip that I have picked up over the years.

Golf Trip Format Suggestions: So you are organizing a golf trip? There are lots of thing to consider including which courses to play, where to stay and what to do at night. One important detail to work out is the game format (ie, captain’s choice, best ball, mixed format). Getting the golf games nailed down early can help keep your golf trip running smoothly and make your life easier. Below is the golf trip format I have used for both an 8 man and 12 man trip . . . in both cases we play 5 rounds in 3 days. The goal is to have a format where a mix of skills can all compete together but also make it such that there is healthy individual competition.

Pinehurst Golf Trip Part 2: Since I wrote the lead up post regarding the annual Pinehurst golf trip, I thought I would add a final recap.  Rather than recount a bunch of stories that would not be very interesting to most folks, I thought I would instead give a laundry list of my golf trip thoughts and some golf specific thoughts that I came away with.

If you don’t have an annual golf trip then it is high time you get one started. Seriously, if you play golf more than 20 times a year, why in the world are you not taking a golf trip?  Knowing that you are going to play 3-7 rounds of golf in a span of 3-5 days is 100% different than your typical Saturday round.  I mean it is 24/7 of golf, golf talk, golf smack, golf betting, golf drinking..you get the point.  Plus, even if you have a bad round, it great because the next round is just hours away!