Sunday, February 7th-Wednesday, February 10th
First day of golf was glorious. Stepping out onto Old Macdonald on Sunday morning, I felt light and buoyant and free. After just a few holes, my caddy and I were overtaken by a seasoned golfer named Alan – a tall, sturdy, slightly florid Glaswegian with a somewhat grim demeanor but a deep love for the game. I was nervous to be playing alongside someone so experienced – he confided that he’d been playing since he was two – but Alan was too much of a gentleman to show any impatience or contempt. He was helpful and encouraging, in his gruff, earnest way. After a few holes together, he had to forge on ahead; his run was being timed, and he didn’t want to be tagged as a slow player. He wished me luck and vanished on ahead, and I felt like I had been visited by the Spirit of Golf itself.
I had some good holes and some lousy holes, but it was good to be out there no matter what. I felt I understood the appeal of the game, of Bandon, of the universe. I felt like I knew what Robb Stey had been talking about. This place really was special.
At sunset I took a walk down to the beach, which had an unearthly beauty as the light faded over the waves. On my way back, a deer contemplated me from the top of a dune, and it felt like the perfect magical capper to a pretty damn magical day.
Day Two on Bandon Trails was lovely also. Astonishingly, I shot a birdie on the second hole (I was playing from the forward tees, but still). Scotch on the patio afterward felt good and well-earned. Takeout dinner was a bit cold and a bit lonely, but also deeply peaceful. Plus, how lonely can you be when you’re texting Robb Stey and he’s eagerly lapping up your updates?
Day Three – Pacific Dunes – got a little more challenging. The day was gorgeous, and the views over the ocean were spectacular, but the play was very, very challenging, and we were sandwiched between a slow party in front and a fast party behind, and I exchanged a few words with my caddy when he tried to hurry me along. My partner for the day, Michael, couldn’t have been nicer or more patient, but there was still too much tension on the course for me to enjoy myself the way I’d have liked to – particularly on my last day.
After the round, Michael treated me to a shot of Casamigos – and then I had to rush off for my bunker lesson with Grant Rogers. I realize I haven’t mentioned Grant Rogers! Grant Rogers was an undisputed highlight of my visit. He has a tendency to tell long, rambling stories – some captivating, some a little pointless – but he knows golf backwards and forwards, and he’s a good, patient teacher, and he seemed to take a shine to me, which was immensely flattering, especially considering how highly Mom and Robb think of him. I was scheduled for only one lesson with him initially, but we ended up having four; at the end of each lesson, he would suggest another, and then another, and then another after that. He has a way of framing a lesson as a joint effort, so that the two of us were putting (or whatever it was) as a “team”; this is an extremely effective technique for keeping student morale high. Over the course of the four lessons, we worked on driving, putting, and bunker play. Grant considers himself a bunker master, and he encouraged me to see ending up in one not as a failure or a frustration, but as an opportunity to make a really good bunker shot. On my last morning, just before I headed off, Grant called me over to his office in the Practice Center so he could give me a TaylorMade hat – the exact kind, he assured me, that the PGA players wear. He felt I’d earned it. It was an incredibly sweet gesture, and I tried to show how grateful I was.
Also on my final morning – just as the sun was coming up – I finally got to explore the property’s nature trails. I started out on the Jamie McEwan Trail, with staggering views of the frost-covered green at Pacific Dunes. The trail wandered along a ridge, then down around a pond, then out through the putting greens at the Practice Center. When I intersected with the Woodland Trail, I followed it to the famed Labyrinth (a recreation of the ancient one at Chartres), where I walked the maze, just as Robb Stey had commanded. I don’t know if I had the epiphany I was supposed to have, but it was a lovely, contemplative spot.
The stretch of the 101 around Bandon is elevated, and it offers glimpses, to the east, of a large wooded valley and mountains rising beyond. Striking out east, you wind down into that valley, and immediately you’re in a wilder world than the relatively tame coast. Coquille is a small logging town, and the water that borders the road is thick with floating logs. The Coquille River parallels the road, but it seems to spill out in all directions, so that half the time you can’t be sure if you’re looking at a river or a lake or a flooded plain. This stretch was sublimely beautiful, and wonderfully lost in time.
Then up into the mountains, heading south on the 5 toward Medford. The highway twists among wooded slopes, some of them freshly logged. Oregon is beautiful. Oregon is just what you’d want it to be.
Fairly disappointing Tinder date in Medford, after which I backtracked on the 5 to spend the night at the Wolf Creek Inn. Dating from 1883, it’s the oldest continuously-operating hotel in the Pacific Northwest, now owned and run by the Parks Department. (Apparently Clark Gable and Jack London stayed there, but I didn’t find that out until much later.) The place felt strangely deserted – you check yourself in by getting a key from a drop box outside the door, and the restaurant is closed due to Covid – but it was ridiculously charming, and very reasonably priced. Wolf Creek is a strange town – sort of quaint and remote-feeling, but also just off the interstate. The room was small but comfortable. In the morning, I wandered on…
