The Waggle #19-Winter Golf on 'The Cape'
Honor Boxes, Golden Hour, and Finding Silver Linings
“Cape Cod is the bared and bended arm of Massachusetts: the shoulder is at Buzzard's Bay; the elbow, or crazy-bone, at Cape Mallebarre; the wrist at Truro; and the sandy fist at Provincetown, — behind which the State stands on her guard, with her back to the Green Mountains, and her feet planted on the floor of the ocean, like an athlete protecting her Bay, — boxing with northeast storms, and, ever and anon, heaving up her Atlantic adversary from the lap of earth…A man may stand there and put all America behind him.' - Henry David Thoreau
Cape Cod is rightfully famous as a summer destination, but, over time, the winter golf scene has captured my heart. This time of year is without the lobster bakes, the long days at the beach, and the long lines at the bridges and ice cream stands. The entire peninsula takes a well-deserved deep breath for the winter after the tourists have left for the season. And it stays quiet: the gift shops remain dark and locked up, the parking is more manageable, and, depending on the town you are in, sometimes the local bars are the only place to eat. I do not offer this idea as a criticism. In the ‘off-season,’ in the algorithm of wind and ocean spray, dormant grass, and the occasional temporary green, I have uncovered what feels like a private hibernal retreat. Sometimes, the game offers us these spaces—a respite, an opportunity for a deep breath, for solitude. Take it when you can get it.
For golf ‘sickos,’ the temperate climate in the winter, proximity to the sea, and sand-based soils provide the ability, in most years, to play golf outdoors in all twelve months of the year. For New England, this is somewhat remarkable, and I have completed this ‘challenge’ more than once since moving here. If there is no snow on the ground (and that which sticks doesn’t stay around long), more golf courses than you think will remain open year-round. The sandy soil typically allows the courses to largely dry out, and the conditions usually hover on the edge of what you might call ‘sporty’. You learn something about the depths of your interest in the game when you are looking for partners to join you on February days when it’s windy, and the temperature is in the forties. Some people are interested, and many others are not. Absent the crowds, the lines, and the need for tee times, there are interesting places to check out and the freedom in which to do it. I learned that in a good winter, you can sneak down from northern New England two or three times a season to play some quiet golf along the ocean.
I started going on these Cape trips when my daughter was very young. I remember the timing on this clearly. It’s hard to forget. Having to split up time with your child is tough. I can’t recommend it. But this is all she’s ever known, and we make the most of our time together, and I think there is some safety in the routine for her now. It’s been an exercise of patience for me and, for her, an early realization that some things just…are. There is nothing to lament; I am luckier than most and am aware of that. But a dialectic is at play here: being her Dad is wonderful, and it sometimes takes a certain kind of determined mindfulness practice to make sense of it all, especially the moments in between. They hit you out of the blue sometimes. When I finish picking up the toys and putting them away, what is it that I am to do in this empty house? More often than not, my answer was to get away. Especially in winter, I would often leave the mountains behind, turn the car south, work my way past Boston, and head over the bridges until I eventually came to the ocean again. You can find a different kind of quiet down there if you are looking for that sort of thing. And I often was. It’s not much of a silver lining. But it’s something.
And so, some years later and a few weeks ago, I once again traveled down to Cape Cod in happier spirits but with some of these recollections on my mind. Things are different in my life now. It is less frantic and hopefully more considered, and Thoreau’s quote about “quiet desperation” carries less resonance than perhaps it once did. The Cape is brown and beige and orange and grey this time of year, and it’s attractive to me in its unique way; the colors and the sparseness feel temporary and fleeting. There is a mist in the air, and the only hint of summer's eventual beauty is that the sea is bluer than you might think it would be at this time of year.
My old friend R. lives ‘on Cape’ now. R. is an excellent player who teaches and runs a small golf company in the Upper Cape. I have known him for a long time (he can tell you how we met sometime), and since he moved south a few years ago, we have been meeting up most winters to play. This year, I added a wrinkle. I told R. that we were going to the eastern end of the Cape and playing two courses that he had never seen: Chatham Seaside Links and the Highland Links at Truro. These old nine-hole courses- built over a hundred and twenty-five years ago- are short, quirky, and almost always empty this time of year and perfect for playing persimmon clubs. It feels like a different age: this end of the Cape is not quite the edge of the world, but it sometimes feels like it. I know that both pro shops are locked up tight for another month or two, and an honor box will have to do: drop your money in the slot and enjoy the day, boys. In my experience, honor box golf almost always means something interesting and worth seeing at least once. I hoped R. would feel the same.
The day before, on the way down to the Cape, I had expected to find my third honor box of the trip at the Marion Golf Club, a nine-hole course just down the road from the Kitannsett Club that I return to often. But when I arrived on the edges of Buzzards Bay, there were a few cars in the parking lot, and I was surprised to see the pro shop open. Will, the GM, explained that he was open for the day so that members could come by and pay their dues, and we chatted for a good while about “Little Marion” and the upcoming restoration work they have planned for George Thomas’ first golf course credit. You might know Thomas from his other more famous works at Riviera Country Club, Belair Country Club, and Los Angeles Country Club (North and South). Those are hard tee times to get but you can play his original design for about forty dollars. Rumors abound that Gil Hanse will spearhead the restoration work planned a couple of years from now; you can’t help but be excited for the future of a seaside course that oozes laid-back quirk and fun. All three par threes feature a greenside rock wall to hit over (and sometimes through!), and there are other blind and intriguing shots on your short walk around the property. It’s well worth seeing, and places like this consistently refill my enthusiasm for New England golf and our golf community at large. We will pay close attention to Marion over the next few years as things develop, and I imagine this will not be the last time you hear of it from The Waggle.
The following morning, I link up with R., and we head to Chatham Seaside Links on the eastern elbow of Cape Cod. Surrounded on three sides by water, the town of Chatham is better known in the golf world as the home of one of the great golf courses in the world, Eastward Ho!. Seaside Links, the town’s municipal course, is a different experience but is less than one hundred yards from the ocean and nestled into the surrounding town. It immediately captured our interest with two fun opening holes that played down a small hill and then back up. The course is undulating and short, but R. and I mainly talked about deceptively contoured greens, the views of the ocean, and recent turns in life. It’s a theme for the day and we have time to talk it out. The day is warm enough for golf in February, and the combination of a strong breeze and tiny putting surfaces had us laughing as seemingly good approach shots were unceremoniously rejected more than once. After hitting several practice putts on the hysterically distinctive ninth green, we returned to the car, agreeing to come and play here again.
Our quick first loop was followed by another hour's drive nearly to the top of Cape Cod's claw to the Highland Links at Truro, which sits inside Cape Cod National Seashore. Highland Links is a unique place, and it might be the best ten bucks you can spend anywhere to play golf in the winter. The course sits high on the bluffs overlooking the Atlantic, and, given the almost total absence of trees, you can see the ocean from seven of the nine holes. The course plays up and down the dunes, along the sea, and in and around the shadow of the oldest lighthouse on the Cape. It’s quite a spot to play. If you tilt your head slightly and allow a touch of nostalgia to creep in, the walk might remind one of playing golf in remote parts of the UK. Links Magazine says the following about it “It’s a simple, lay-of-the-land golf experience on an excellent natural site—a sandy bluff featuring some outrageous views of the Atlantic—and before the Bandon Dunes courses began to arrive at the turn of the new century, it was the only course in America that could properly be classified as a links.”
The sixth tee takes you to the very edge of the bluffs overlooking the ocean. It’s a spectacular setting and one of those places that reminds you how lucky golf can make you feel sometimes. If you thread your way through scotch broom behind the tee box and take a few steps down a small path, you will be treated to a view of the ocean that you won’t soon forget. The vantage makes you involuntarily stop and take inventory of your surroundings, your good fortune, and perhaps of some of your thoughts living deeper inside of you. On one of his famous visits to Cape Cod in the 1840s, Thoreau stood in nearly the same spot and wrote the following, “This sand-bank — the backbone of the Cape — rose directly from the beach to the height of a hundred feet or more above the ocean. It was with singular emotions that we first stood upon it and discovered what a place we had chosen to walk on. On our right, beneath us, was the beach of smooth and gently-sloping sand, a dozen rods in width; next, the endless series of white breakers; further still, the light green water over the bar, which runs the whole length of the forearm of the Cape, and beyond this stretched the unwearied and illimitable ocean.”
We went around the course twice. We took our time at the sixth tee on the second loop and lingered for an extra moment. The steel grey sky of the afternoon had finally cleared, and sunset’s golden light bathed the course and lighthouse. The ocean sparkled back at us as we watched it from above. From a flattish patch of yellowed dune grass and packed sand at the cliff's edge, R. and I each silently hit golf balls into the ocean, hopefully sending our worries and concerns along with it. A small, cleansing act of hope that golfers do. Being a parent isn’t easy sometimes and there are situations to deal with that are beyond our control at times; how we respond in those moments when it feels like we are drowning, is often the only thing that really matters. Perhaps we recognize that acceptance in each other. Not much is said, and we both also understand that days like this are rarer than we care to admit and that silver linings sometimes feel hard to come by. For the moment, we will take a pretty great sunset and a day of golf by the ocean. It’s almost dark by the time we finish and there is only time left for a couple of smash burgers on the way back to Hyannis. We say our goodbyes in the parking lot and then I am once again alone. It’s been a good day.
People have been coming to Cape Cod for a long time. The Wampanoag came to live, the Portuguese came to fish cod, the English came to stay, and Thoreau came to find a better sense of himself and his understanding of the natural world. Walking around Hyannis looking for coffee the following morning, I think about a persistent though largely discredited story coming from the ancient Northern sagas that suggest Norse explorers came here as early as the tenth century and that Cape Cod is one of the places later identified as ‘Vinland’ in their histories. It’s a wild story but we are all here on the backs of wild stories, myself included, and we all have come a greater distance in life than we might realize. So I sit and drink my coffee in the sun and watch the boats moving in and out of the harbor at this early hour, content for once and happy to just be sitting here alone with my thoughts, looking at the expanse of the ocean and thinking about what comes next.
** R. would hate it if I forgot to remind you that he did win 1up on the 27th hole. He would also ask me to remind you that we played straight up. Check out his company, Seaweed Golf by clicking this link here.