Visiting the UK and playing at the home of golf

After over 20 years of never venturing across the Atlantic Ocean, I was fortunate to spend a week and a half with my family in the United Kingdom. This was an eventful 10-day trip, and I got the chance to do some things I never could dream of anywhere else.

We started off in London, which is tough to describe without comparing it to things I’ve seen. London is New York, Los Angeles, Washington and Boston rolled into one city. It’s the political, cultural and economic center of everything, with a few centuries-old buildings and places sprinkled around. We saw the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace, and celebrated a regular Sunday Mass in Westminster Cathedral (there’s certainly something jarring about walking through a city, making a turn and stumbling across a centuries-old monstrosity like we did). We took a day and ventured out to Windsor Castle, Bath and Stonehenge.

Huh. Rocks.

Then we went to Edinburgh and stayed in a condo downtown. Walking from home to a restaurant, we could cross the street and see a damn castle on a big hill. It’s majestic. We later visited the castle, which was awesome, and walked the Royal Mile because of course. It’s a beautiful city, and I enjoyed being in the center of it for a little while. At the end of the trip, we drove up to Inverness, where we stayed for just a couple days before driving back. The views while driving through Scotland are unlike anything I’ve ever witnessed.

But the reason I was looking forward to this trip for so long, and the reason I’ll remember it as long as any family vacation, is the golf. I joined my dad and family friend Keith for three rounds in Scotland, all at incredible venues. Our tee times were all booked months in advance, and we were lucky that the weather cooperated with us for the most part. Here’s the rundown of everywhere we went.  

THURSDAY, JUNE 29—ST. ANDREW’S (JUBILEE COURSE)

Rain, wind and sand won this day. It wasn’t close.

We drove the hour and a half from Edinburgh to St. Andrew’s in the rain. At the end of the journey, we made a left turn and suddenly saw the promised land. Behind a few buildings were the start and finish to the Old Course, with the hotel in the background. We drove a little further to the parking lot, checked in and warmed up on the green a bit. There was time to practice more than we did, but we had lunch and stayed dry while we could.

Looks like we're ready for some fun, right?

The course is widely referred to as the hardest on the property, and after a couple easy holes, it became clear why. I started bogey-par and thought I was headed for a fine round, but took a 9 on the par 5 third and kept struggling from there. The two holes that stand out a couple weeks later are the par 4s at #8 and #15. The former is a long dogleg left that played incredibly long and difficult into the wind; lost my second shot in gorse. The latter is a shorter hole, but it’s tricky because of a false front on the green, and the mounds on both sides are almost like walls.

It was raining sideways all afternoon long. Winds were somewhere between 30 and 45 mph throughout the round. Everyone was miserable, or at least seemed so. My shoes were soaked by the fourth hole or so. I didn’t look at my phone and hardly ever brought out the scorecard because it was raining so hard. The whole thing was survival, and my game didn’t hold up at all, but I embraced all of it. I’ll think of this weather every time I see it mess with players in the British Open or Scottish Open or anything comparable. It’s an experience I can’t find anywhere else in the world.

There are seven courses at St. Andrew's. I was fortunate to play two of them.

FRIDAY, JUNE 30—ST. ANDREW’S (OLD COURSE)

Over a decade ago, when I played Tiger Woods Golf for the first time, this was the first course I selected. As I’ve grown to love and appreciate the game over the years, the Old Course seemed more and more like a sacred place. I’d wanted to play it ever since the days of nine-hole rounds at local executive courses. To actually get out here, we had to enter a lottery in the fall and agree to play another course on the property (Jubilee was chosen for us), but we got the nod in November. I had been eager for this day ever since then. I did worry from time to time that the weather would be miserable, and Thursday’s conditions amplified that. But this round was pretty much everything I wanted it to be.

We woke up at 4 a.m. and left at 4:30. We got to the course at 6 and teed off at 7. When we crossed the Swilcan Bridge and finished the round, it was just after 11. There was a constant breeze, but it was never unpleasant; we didn’t catch a single drop of rain. We spent the early afternoon wandering around the area, eating lunch in the closest pub and browsing through all the shops surrounding the first and last holes. I spent plenty of time above the stairs between #1 and #18, watching players start and finish their rounds, and I could just stand there for hours more. It’s my new favorite place, really.

The course itself is surreal. You can tell it’s old when you’re walking it. Your heart beats a little faster on the first hole (more so on the second shot over the burn than on the tee shot) and picks back up coming down the stretch. It seems old and basic, but seeing the undulations all over the place first-hand, you really appreciate what a special place it is. It’s not a long course—they stretch it to some 7300 yards for the Open, but we played it at a modest 6300—but its tricks still make it a test.

It me, trying to play sideways out of a bunker on #7.

I played pretty poorly, battling a two-way miss on the tee and going the whole round without making a significant putt. I was in two pot bunkers: the crescent thing in front of the seventh green and Hell Bunker on #14 (I had a hybrid to the green on my second shot but topped it). It took me three shots to get out of both. In good news, though, I drove the green on #9 and #12, converting the birdie just before the turn. A strong five-hole stretch from #8-12 kept me in double digits. On the last three holes, which all have famous out-of-bounds to the right, I hit a duck hook to the left (on the Road Hole, I took a “provisional” and knocked one straighter). You never want to go to a destination course like this and fight your game, but I’ll remember being awestruck more than anything.

It's the Swilcan Damn Bridge, folks.

SUNDAY, JULY 2—ROYAL DORNOCH

We usually play three rounds of golf during a one-week vacation, so playing two St. Andrew’s courses left us one more place. Dornoch, however, is definitely not an afterthought. It’s right up there with the Old Course on most “Best in the World” lists, even though there isn’t an extensive championship history there. On a surprisingly calm Sunday afternoon, we got to see what it was all about.

The course is hidden astonishingly well, and it’s a tiny place. You can’t see it driving through the town, and don’t even realize what you’re looking at until you get down to the miniscule parking lot. The clubhouse is sizeable but understated. There’s a practice green and, apparently somewhere, a range. It doesn’t seem special until you play a couple holes.

After a short par 4 and an uphill, undulating par 3, I realized the beauty of the place on the third tee. It bends to the left, but both shots are somewhat obscured. There’s mounds and bunkers scattered in just the right places. The rest of the course from there is low-key perfect: every hole is a little different, you can always see the ocean, and there’s never a boring shot. #8 and #17 have massive drops in the fairway. #14 and #18 are super long par 4s; the course closes with five straight two-shotters. We played it at about 6600 yards, and it wasn’t clear how far they could stretch it back. Because of how tight everything is, though, they should be just fine.

As is apparently the case with small operations like this, they didn’t have stiff-shafted clubs for us. I used regular shafts for about a year too long in high school, so I knew not to expect much, especially with the longer clubs. Surprisingly, I drove it rather well on the front nine, only to consistently slice my way into trouble on the back. This was pretty much how my round went. I was solid on the front, even birdieing the par 5 ninth to go out in 42. Things came apart as soon as the next hole, and I stumbled and bumbled my way in. I left the course disappointed in my game, but I hope I’ll remember the course’s subtle and glaring beauties longer than any of that.

I hope to return to the UK for more golf in the future; it feels like we didn’t even scratch the surface of spectacular venues we could play. But in my first taste of golf over here, all three rounds were unforgettable. I’ll be telling stories about this week for a long time.

Jose Fernandez, Arnold Palmer, a sad Sunday and some thoughts

It was one of those moments for which I'll always remember where I was. I was half-awake in bed Sunday morning when my friend texted me that Marlins pitcher Jose Fernandez had died. I don't know why he threw in the "Marlins pitcher" part, because I've never known Fernandez to be anything else. Either way, I was reflexively skeptical. I didn't have a "breaking news" notification on my phone for it. He wasn't trending on Twitter when I searched his name. But when I did, the first tweet I saw was Ken Rosenthal confirming multiple reports of Fernandez's death. My heart fell to the depths of my stomach.

Fernandez was my favorite pitcher. The energy he brought to the mound every fifth day was palpable, and it seemed to transfer into his pitches. His fastball was a thing of beauty, and his slider was called "the defector." And as great a pitcher as he was, he was only getting better. 2016 was his first full season in the big leagues, ever. He was on an innings limit as a rookie in 2013, then needed Tommy John surgery halfway through 2014, which kept him out for half of the following year. At 24, Fernandez was blowing away the league in strikeouts per nine innings (12.49). But I loved his energetic personality even more than all of that. He made baseball look fun, no matter what. As someone who all too often got myself down when I wasn't in good form, I looked at Fernandez wanted to carry myself like him.

So even though I never met the Marlins' ace, I was reeling from the bad news. I tried to contemplate it at church, but mass moved too quick for me to really reflect and pray. I scoured Twitter and read nearly any stories I could, just to make sense of it all. I've dealt with death before: Family members, priests, even other ballplayers. But the combination of Fernandez's athletic prowess, sociocultural significance and closeness in age to myself was beyond jarring. I've never felt anything like what I felt Sunday morning. I spent the rest of the day mindlessly bouncing between televised football and golf and my awful fantasy team and the homework I put off until this suddenly gloomy day.

The golf tournament was wild. Rory McIlroy won the TOUR Championship and, as a result, the FedEx Cup, making him season champion after picking up his first win of the year just two events prior. It was a pivotal moment for McIlroy's career: He'd never won the FedEx Cup, and in doing so he reasserted himself as the most dominant force in the game, Dustin Johnson and Jason Day be damned.

But even golf made me sad on Sunday, because Arnold Palmer died at age 87. On the list of all-time greats, Palmer is somewhere outside the top five but firmly in the top 15. On the list of the game's iconic figures, though, he's behind only Tiger and (maybe) Jack Nicklaus. For the second time in 12 hours, I scarfed up tweets and stories, and this time there were video montages as well.

Somehow, however—and I don't even know if this is a good thing—Palmer's death helped me understand Fernandez's. Palmer's death was heartbreaking because he positively impacted the lives of so many others; Fernandez's death was heartbreaking because he was on his way to doing the same.

We've all heard stories for years about how great a person Palmer was. He signed every autograph (legibly), he always made eye contact, and he always made time. He was a friend to millions. Fernandez's exuberant, bubbly personality may have been well known, but after his death came the stories of how positive his own influence was. He often hung out with sick or underprivileged kids before games, and smiled at them the same way he smiled at his teammates. His love for his family and his wife and his unborn child was clear as day. But because he died at 24, his reach couldn't extend nearly as far as Palmer's, and the lives he can't impact anymore sting so much more than the strikeouts he can't rack up or even the dollars he can't earn.

I've spent too much time thinking about Fernandez and Palmer since Sunday morning. I think the next stage past mourning over their deaths is to try and live my life the way they would have. Both loved what they did, and loved inspiring people. I'll never be an All-Star pitcher or a Masters champ, but maybe on some small scale, I can emulate these two legends.

I'll start with a smile and a thumbs-up.

The Mamba Slithers Away

Kobe Bryant is a legend. This much has been clear for at least a decade.

But “legends” come in levels. And in his final game on Wednesday, he reminded the world that he was right on that top level.

Kobe Bryant is such a legend that he can shoot the ball 50 times without making anybody mad.

Kobe Bryant is such a legend that he can name himself after a predatory snake and everyone will just go along with it.

Kobe Bryant is such a legend that he can successfully create space with nothing but jab steps and shot fakes, even when his defender and everyone in the building knows he’s trying to create space with nothing but jab steps and shot fakes.

And then he makes the shot. And another, seconds later. And another, seconds later.

He’s done this for 20 years, in a career that included five NBA titles, two Finals MVPs, and a list of accolades that reads longer than War and Peace. He’s one of the 10 best players ever to step on a court—where he slots is up to you—and has inspired countless fans with his countless moments of glory.

Wednesday night’s game was peak Kobe. He took shot after shot after shot after shot, and kept his team in the game almost by himself. It was a performance that almost justified those ridiculous ticket prices.

The Lakers were losing, because the Lakers are bad. They entered this game 16-65, limping to the finish line after a train wreck of a season. They trailed the Jazz by 9 points with under four minutes to play. The cute little Kobe send-off was coming to a close.

But then Kobe went off one last time. He scored 17 consecutive Laker points, which brought his total from 43 to 60. In the middle of this spurt was a 26-footer that cut the lead to one, followed immediately by a 20-foot fadeaway for the lead.

With 30 seconds to play and the Jazz clinging to that one-point advantage, Kobe Bryant had the ball. Then, for the 50th time in the game, he shot it. And for the 22nd time, he nailed it.

97-96. The Lakers went on to win. Kobe made it happen. Because of course.

Sports are entertainment. And Kobe entertained us for 20 years. There were people who loved how he went about his business, and there were people who hated it. But behind that hate was a layer of respect, to which everything gave way at some point during this performance.

60 points on 50 shots. It was a sendoff performance befitting only of Kobe Bryant. Peyton Manning left as a champ, but his last flash of greatness was long before his final game. Same for Tom Watson, who at 65 missed the cut in his final British Open and Masters appearances. Derek Jeter came close with his walk-off single in his final home game, but he played three more relatively underwhelming games as an encore. Only Kobe could walk away like this.

He’ll probably focus on his business next, but I wouldn’t mind if he took up poetry. His Players’ Tribune piece was thoughtful and a very interesting read. But we both know he’ll always be that kid with the rolled-up socks and the garbage can in the corner.

3.

2.

Shoot.

1.

“Kobe!”

Buzzer.

Swish.

Reacting to UNC-Villanova

Okay. About the happenings of Monday night.

This story could have been about North Carolina’s three-point shooting. The Tar Heels were 7-of-9 from downtown in the first half. Joel Berry was playing the game of his life. Justin Jackson and Marcus Paige were playing like champions.

Then it was supposed to be Phil Booth’s night. The sophomore guard racked up a career-high 20 points and was making circus shots that pushed the limits of human physical prowess. As Villanova pulled away late, he was in line to be anointed a hero.

But then UNC came back, and Marcus Paige nailed a double-clutch three to tie the game with 4.7 seconds to play. It was the kind of shot that makes sedentary people jump up and emit primal noises.

Kris Jenkins rendered all of those things irrelevant.

The final shot (and play, for that matter) will follow the parties involved forever. It’s one of only two buzzer-beaters the championship game has ever seen, and is the farther shot by nearly 25 feet. It brought tears of joy to millions, and tears of agony to millions more (not to mention the virtual tears on the face of Crying Michael Jordan).

And the dude beat his brother. The parents of UNC point guard Nate Britt, who was on the bench for the final play, legally took custody of Jenkins while the players were in high school. They said they had talked about this game as a possibility, but now they’ll be talking about it as a reality for years and years and years to come.

This was a great game. If you want to sell it short, you call it “one of the best” college basketball games ever. If you like to overreact, there’s a reasonable argument to be made that it’s right at the top, and that nobody has ever made a greater shot than Jenkins.

But the whole thing was special. The entire tournament, 66 games of excitement and brilliance, built up to this. The national anthem was sensational. The player intros were over-the-top. Bill Raftery brought out the best of his memorable catchphrases.

Ryan Arcidiacono brought it to the biggest game of his career. So did Joel Berry. So did Phil Booth. So did Marcus Paige. And so did Kris Jenkins.

I was rooting for Villanova, primarily because UNC was my dream school until it was “unable to offer me admission.” I’m no longer bitter, because I ended up happy at Maryland, but I still spent the whole season dreading the possibility of a Tar Heel title. The last thing I wanted was to watch UNC’s celebration and think “I could be there, too, if I worked a little harder in high school.”

So as the confetti poured down from the rafters, the Wildcat team piled on Jenkins, I did feel some sort of relief. I also felt a little guilty seeing Paige and Brice Johnson and even Roy Williams truly heartbroken. How could I have wished that upon them?

But any personal vendettas took a backseat to what I had watched as a sports fan. This title game was exhilarating throughout, and in the end it was won rather than lost. I’ll never forget Monday’s contest. And neither will anyone else who saw it.

Sports are great.