[Ira Fishman]

Because of the photos: Somerset Hills and Whippoorwill.


Despite the photos: Trinity Forest, The Golf Club, and Wolf Point.


Photos reinforce lack of interest: Torrey Pines, Chambers Bay, Whistling Straits.


Ira

[MKrohn]

As older people are want to do, some of my mates were musing about how we travelled pre internet, that is, you turned up and figured it out.


Nowdays travel is so simple and golf travel the same, I would think its getting difficult to find anywhere that I have not seen photos, particularly in the UK and Ireland (my preferred destination given course accessibility)


After the main courses have been done, perhaps I would like to go to Scotland and play some of the courses I have heard about (on GCA and TGF) but not really seen, Machrihanish, Tain, Golspie, Gullane, Boat of Garten, Elie, Musselburgh

[John Kavanaugh]

A couple of days ago I had to pick up my son at the airport at midnight. Considering it was a two hour drive I attended a concert of someone who I had never heard of beforehand. Only way to go.

[Sean_A]

All is not despair.  I am planning to play a course on Monday which I didn't know existed until a week or so ago. 

MK...you are right, pre-website days it was a pain to organize trips to the UK when living in N America.  That said, I learned a ton back then doing the research...information which has served me well these few decades.

Ciao

[jeffwarne]

All is not despair.  I am planning to play a course on Monday which I didn't know existed until a week or so ago. 

MK...you are right, pre-website days it was a pain to organize trips to the UK when living in N America.  That said, I learned a ton back then doing the research...information which has served me well these few decades.

Ciao

Actual road maps and Fodors...
and a dose of Darwin, later Finnegan, Doak and the Michelin Travel Guide.
and just turning up at a BnB


The internet is amazing though-and surprisingly the remote places are just as remote-once you get there

[David Davis]

I've never based travel on photos of courses and also tried not to read threads specific to the courses I'm seeing until afterwards. Ideally I'd prefer not to have an opinion before I actually see a course and that's hard to do if you read 10 pages of comments with photos on a given course.


Naturally, this isn't always realistic, especially if you are talking about really well known courses.

[John Foley]

All is not despair.  I am planning to play a course on Monday which I didn't know existed until a week or so ago. 

MK...you are right, pre-website days it was a pain to organize trips to the UK when living in N America.  That said, I learned a ton back then doing the research...information which has served me well these few decades.

Ciao

Actual road maps and Fodors...
and a dose of Darwin, later Finnegan, Doak and the Michelin Travel Guide.
and just turning up at a BnB


The internet is amazing though-and surprisingly the remote places are just as remote-once you get there

Who remembers the old Golf Digest Courses to play book? That was the go to guide to determine where to play when on the road. Would love to get my hands on an old copy of that.

[Thomas Dai]

There’s a course in Santiago, Chile which I’ve never seen any photos of but has always intrigued me - “Prince of Wales CC.”
Oggi, oggi, oggi!
Atb

[Sean_A]

All is not despair.  I am planning to play a course on Monday which I didn't know existed until a week or so ago. 

MK...you are right, pre-website days it was a pain to organize trips to the UK when living in N America.  That said, I learned a ton back then doing the research...information which has served me well these few decades.

Ciao

Actual road maps and Fodors...
and a dose of Darwin, later Finnegan, Doak and the Michelin Travel Guide.
and just turning up at a BnB

The internet is amazing though-and surprisingly the remote places are just as remote-once you get there

Never touched a Fodors nor Doak (til much later when websites were already going) nor Michelin.  I did however use Dickinson, Steel, Allen and WAoG in conjunction with Finnegan and some Darwin.  I think I mainly used club recommendations for accommodation (still do sometimes)....don't know how many Mrs So and So recos I had 

Ciao

[Tom_Doak]

Never touched a Fodors nor Doak (til much later when websites were already going) nor Michelin.  I did however use Dickinson, Steel, Allen and WAoG in conjunction with Finnegan and some Darwin.  I think I mainly used club recommendations for accommodation (still do sometimes)....don't know how many Mrs So and So recos I had 

I had a book with me in 1982-83 called "The AA Guide to Golf Courses" - that's the Automobile Association, not the acronym most Americans associate with "AA" 


It was a terrific book.  Write-ups of 50 courses in the front, and then details on every other course in the U.K. in the back, complete with a maps section showing the location of every course!  Paperback, though, so it was pretty much destroyed after a year of very heavy daily use.


As for finding places to stay, on my year overseas I stayed almost exclusively at small B&B's.  My daily schedule was organized around the fact that if you got to town before 5 pm you could go to the local tourist office [which nearly all towns of any size had] and they would book you in somewhere for a fee of 50 pence!  So, my routine was:


Get up in the morning and take pictures
Eat breakfast and check out
Drive to the next town in my sights [maybe stopping to see another course or landmark on the way]
Go to the tourist office, and find my accommodations for the night
Play golf
Dinner
Photos
(Rinse and repeat, as the shampoo companies say)


What a great year that was!

[Tom_Doak]

There’s a course in Santiago, Chile which I’ve never seen any photos of but has always intrigued me - “Prince of Wales CC.”
Oggi, oggi, oggi!

George Bahto had a theory that Prince of Wales CC was a Charles Banks design, if I remember correctly.  His evidence was pretty flimsy.  I didn't see that piece of his manuscript until after he passed away, which was just after I'd been to Chile with Randy Thompson, or I would have insisted we go to see the course, even if it is a crowded mess now.

[Sean_A]

Never touched a Fodors nor Doak (til much later when websites were already going) nor Michelin.  I did however use Dickinson, Steel, Allen and WAoG in conjunction with Finnegan and some Darwin.  I think I mainly used club recommendations for accommodation (still do sometimes)....don't know how many Mrs So and So recos I had 

I had a book with me in 1982-83 called "The AA Guide to Golf Courses" - that's the Automobile Association, not the acronym most Americans associate with "AA" 

It was a terrific book.  Write-ups of 50 courses in the front, and then details on every other course in the U.K. in the back, complete with a maps section showing the location of every course!  Paperback, though, so it was pretty much destroyed after a year of very heavy daily use.

As for finding places to stay, on my year overseas I stayed almost exclusively at small B&B's.  My daily schedule was organized around the fact that if you got to town before 5 pm you could go to the local tourist office [which nearly all towns of any size had] and they would book you in somewhere for a fee of 50 pence!  So, my routine was:

Get up in the morning and take pictures
Eat breakfast and check out
Drive to the next town in my sights [maybe stopping to see another course or landmark on the way]
Go to the tourist office, and find my accommodations for the night
Play golf
Dinner
Photos
(Rinse and repeat, as the shampoo companies say)

What a great year that was!

I wish I knew about Pennink's Golfer's Campanion.  Still, to be honest, the best source of info was keeping one's ear to the ground. I learned a lot about other courses by talking club members.  Just wondering, is there much difference to reading about courses without pix than with pix in terms of a guide to playing? 


Oddly, I met a guy at Pennard many years later who was coming from Germany on a big BMW bike.  He didn't book any courses...all the future plays were word of mouth from speaking with folks at clubs etc.  He set a £50 limit because he wanted to see the smaller courses.  When finished with GB&I, he was going to sell the bike, sail to New Foundland, get another bike and play his way to somewhere in Kansas, Missouri or some such state.  He had some great advice to end up at Pennard by word of mouth! He wasn't sure if it was worth while to continue through Wales to the Holyhead crossing or cut bait and cross at Fishguard.  I told him Aberdovey might be worth his time should he choose the northern route.  I mentioned Southerndown, but he was adamant, there was no going backwards!

Ciao

[Richard Fisher]

Delighted to see Tom's invocation of the old AA Guide, especially in its original (1977) format with fifty course write-ups at the front beginning, appropriately enough, with Henry Longhurst on The Old Course. One important feature, which may strange seem now given that the emergence to public prominence of the great seaside courses in the south of Ireland was one of the major features of the decade that followed, is the adherence to the AA's own turf of the United Kingdom (so nothing at all about courses in the Republic of Ireland).

GCAers might be interested in the 'Top 50' courses selected for special treatment, an interesting pre-ranking exercise with an interesting mixture of the obvious and the markedly less so (La Moye and Parkstone, for example). Anyway, the Top 50 listing ran (in contents-order, with no internal hierarchy apart from first entry)

St Andrews
Hoylake
The Berkshire
Gleneagles
Little Aston
Royal Aberdeen
Royal County Down
Royal Dornoch
Saunton
Sunningdale Old
Wentworth
(All of the above had a colour illustration - hence bound up together)
Ashridge
Blairgowrie
Broadstone
Burnham and Berrow
Carnoustie
Formby
Ganton
Hillside
Hunstanton
La Moye
Lindrick
Liphook
Macrihanish
Moor Park
Moortown
Muirfield
Nairn
Northants County
Notts
Parkstone
Prestwick
Royal Ashdown Forest
Royal Birkdale
RCP Deal
Royal Lytham
RND Westward Ho!
R Porthcawl
R Portrush
RStD Harlech
R St Georges
The Sacred Nine
Rye
St Enedoc
Southerness
Troon
Turnberry
Walton Heath
West Sussex
Woodhall Spa
(black and white image only for this cohort)

The guide went through various iterations and impressions, some of which made little sense: the colour disappeared, and at one point the decision was taken to publish it without the 'Top Fifty' articles at all, an editorial move which rendered the careful hierarchy of courses arranged by different typefaces in the main guide almost nonsensical. But it was, as Tom says, very helpful, 98% comprehensive, and certainly the book which, along with Dickinson and Pennink, set me off on actual trips in the 1980s - or rather, detours from work missions which seemed to have a congenial place for an afterwork game nearby. The twilight fee the first time I played Tom and Sean's beloved Pennard was, I recall, a tenner.

At the time the AA Guide had one major rival in Donald Steel's DailyTelegraph Guide, and there was also for some years a rather good Collins equivalent, both of which had rather nice essays on individual courses amidst the factual information. This is palpably a world we have lost, or rather a world which has gone on-line, as the various 'top 100' sites and, indeed GCA itself, make manifest. I'm very glad I still have the books though, and the original 1977 AA hardback guide is well worth having, if you ever come across it second-hand.

[Thomas Dai]

I don’t recall the AA book but have somewhere a copy of the Daily Telegraph version. Very useful it was. And of course back in the days when folks had maps and road atlas’s and the like golf courses were highlighted on maps by a coloured flag.
Atb

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