Fore Play - A Decade Ends: From New Zealand to King Island

Episode Date: December 31, 2019

Riggs conducts the decade's final Fore Play alone recounting every detail of going solo on the far side of the world: dinner with the locals, embarrassing first tee shots, and what it's like golfing in New Zealand (Tara Iti, Kauri Cliffs, Titirangi) and on King Island (Cape Wickham and Ocean Dunes). Riggs also delivers a serious thank you to all our fans! You can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/foreplaypod

Hey, 4Play listeners, you can find us every Tuesday and Thursday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. This is Riggs, and I'm here to tell you a story. I'm going to tell you a story on this show about traversing the world, about being pretty much an entire world away and playing some of the most exotic, some of the most desirable, some of the most unimaginable golf that you could possibly play with people, that you never, ever thought you would meet, how it happened, how I put it all together, what it was like, what those experiences will mean to me forever.

But first, I have to acknowledge the fact that today is Tuesday, December 31st, 2019. That means very simply that this is the last day of the decade. Now, that causes you perhaps to sit back and reflect. And it's really done the same for me and for my podcast, I know as well. And really what I want to reflect on real quick, because this will be the last podcast that we do in this entire decade. This will be the final podcast we do. Yes, we will be back on Thursday.

We will have the entire crew. It'll be myself, Frankie, Trent. I think Lurch, I don't know if he has to do his real life stuff, real job stuff. I'm not sure. You'll get at least three or out of the four, perhaps all four. But this is the very last show that we'll do the entire decade. And that has done me to sit back, think a little bit. about this entire thing and about this, this job, this thing that we get to do.

And a lot of you, when we post Instagram stories, tweets, whatever it is, a lot of you respond to them. And you kind of say, hey, fuck you, Riggs. Fuck you, man. I'm in my cube. I'm sitting here doing my thing. And you guys are out there playing the best golf courses in the world. You all stink at golf yet you're filming yourself playing golf.

You're talking about golf. You're fist pumping Tiger Woods. inside the ropes. You're challenging Justin Thomas and Zander Schofley lefty, playing golf with Bubba Watson and his caddy Ted Scott and sitting down with him for an hour afterwards. How did this possibly come to be? What is going on here? And so it's pretty crazy to think that almost three years ago now, Trent and myself started this show, Foreplay. myself, I was just working tech sales. I was making 50, 80 cold calls a day.

Trent Daddy was a security guard holding down the fort in Iowa, in bumfuck Iowa. Frankie Borelli was refusing to give people free water at Borelli's restaurant out on Long Island. Poor Lurch was and still is slinging software. So Lurch, you know, not a ton of change day to day. but to think now, I mean, it's almost three years later that we started this show that we get to do what we do. And a lot of you say, you know, your job is preposterous. Your job is ridiculous. Your job is so great.

Really, the number one word I would say is it's unimaginable. Our fucking job is unimaginable. And the reason that I would say it's unimaginable is because this job doesn't exist. This job shouldn't exist. Again, we just get to go play these awesome golf courses. We get to sit down for three hours a week. four hours a week, and we get to just talk about golf, talk about whatever the hell we want to talk about,

sort of related to golf. Sometimes we talk about hockey, sometimes we talk about movies. Who knows what we talk about? But mostly we talk about golf. And the fact that we get to be paid to do that, it is unimaginable. It's an unimaginable job. And none of that,

none of everything that I've described thus far, would be even close to possible if it weren't for every single one of you listening out there right now. Every time you go out of your way to download a podcast, to fire that podcast up to listen for I think it's at least 30 seconds or a minute or five minutes or whatever the hell it is for it to count as a download and listen for us. Every time you scroll through Twitter, you go out of your way on YouTube to fire up our page and watch one of our new videos. Every time you click on one of our blogs and read about what we've had to say on whatever the hell is going on in the world of golf or anything else, every single one of you that's done that.

And every time you've done it, it has allowed us to do this unimaginable job that we get to do. So I would like to start this show with a massive thank you to every single one of you. And it goes beyond that. It's not just subscribing to the show and having it automatically downloaded to your phone. You guys buy merch. You guys go out of your way at events to come up and say hi to us. Not a single minute goes by for any of the four of us where we are not incredibly great. where we lose perspective because what we get to do is ridiculous.

It is unimaginable and none of that would be even close to a reality. We wouldn't have been able to create this fake, ridiculous, preposterous, unimaginable gig if you guys didn't actually enjoy it. If you guys didn't participate, you guys get involved on Twitter, on Instagram, the comments, even when you roast us. That all helps, man. All of that is a part of it. it keeps the conversation going.

It makes what we do relevant. It allows us to grow and continue to do what we do. So now that the decade has come to an end before we jump right into 2020, I just want to give a very serious, very heartfelt thank you to every single one of you. You guys rock. You're the best. And we're just going to keep doing it bigger and better. Also, we got a new video put out that our team worked on kind of highlighting the entire year, wrapping it up. into a few minutes.

That might pull at you a little bit, realize how crazy this year has been. So big thank you from all of us to all of you. And please continue to listen so that we can continue to live this fake life. It's awesome. Okay. I next want to jump into a story. I'm going to tell a story. And that story really begins about a month and a half or two months ago.

And it begins with the Australia trip in general. Now, a little peek behind the curtain at Barstlesport. We, the four-play crew, in order to have these types of trips, and we've done a bunch of them this year, and it kind of started, I guess, I would say, our trips started with Bethpage Black. Now, it's not really necessarily a huge trip. It's an hour drive or whatever from Manhattan. We work in Manhattan.

But the four of us, three of us, I guess, that week, plus you factor in Jake, our production squad and all of that. That week, it was the four of us were out of the office from, you know, Sunday night until eight days later, the Monday after the PGA championship. and for us, you know, we do a lot of different shit. Frankie and I, we do the 4 to 6 p.m. radio show. I'm the host. Frankie's the producer. Frankie does everything pretty much behind the scenes of Dave's life, and he's trying to transition out of that. But he's been doing that for three or four years now.

Trent Daddy is all kinds of involved with the chicks. He goes on there all the time and talks about Bachelor. He's on the Snapchat show. He blogs nonstop. So there's a lot of different things that we do. So in order for us to, you know, get permission, get kind of the approval of Barstool to be completely out of the office and only focused on what's going on at one single golf tournament that week, you know, we got to have a pretty good pitch and we need to go out there. We need to produce so that Barstool can look at the numbers, the X's know, whatever you want to call it, the data, break it down and go, okay, it's worth it for these guys to be out for the entire week in the field, doing their thing. And so the PJ Championship of Beth Page Black was massive for us this year.

We got all kinds of footage. We got millions and millions of views from us just bumping in to Bryson D. Shambow, to us raiding the player's entrances as they came in. Duff Daddy, like lugging along really slowly. Kids rolling in with his hat. He looked like he'd never been outside of like a temperature that's ever been above 65 degrees in his entire life. We had videos of Tiger coming in. We had the Bryson D.C.C.M. Bo and Frankie Borelli chipping lesson on the driving range at Bethpage Black during a major championship.

We had Seth Waugh, who's the president of the PGA of America. So we were able to go out there. We're able to get all of these cool moments. And when we came back, it was very clear, okay, sending these guys out there, it actually works. They get shit. We went to Pebble Beach, three weeks, a month later, whatever it was. And the Monday that we're at Pebble Beach, we get the video with Tiger Woods. It comes over.

He chats us up. People have been breaking down that video like it's the fucking JFK assassination for the last six months or however long it's been since that happened from where you guys stationed to us just waving at them to Trent and Frankie stealing each other's basketball line at the end to me tapping him on the on the on the shoulder on the arm like a crazy person and just saying hey, congrats of the masters and him tap a me back and going how about that shit, eh? By the way, happy birthday Tiger wins. He's 44 years old. but the Pebble Beach trip we we got video ran into Justin Thomas we had Matthew Fitzpatrick his catty pulled Frankie over so again we kind of proved hey we're in the field we're out of the office for you know an entire week even longer we're going to fly all the way to Pebble Beach we're going to get a house at Pebble Beach all this so again I don't want to bore everybody too much with behind the scenes stuff but doing these trips there's a little bit of opportunity cost in us not doing other things and only solely for focused on this, plus the fact that some of these trips can be as expensive as shit. Pabble was very expensive. We went and did the North Carolina trip.

Now, and those videos are going to come out. I know a lot of you guys ask about that all the time. I want folks to understand that our producers, Jake, who's been with us for over a year now, every single podcast that goes out, every clip that goes out promoting those podcasts, every video that we shoot, the Riggsverse videos that go out, the videos from on course from at the President's Cup to the more highly produced videos. Again, the Riggs versus videos, the longer form videos, the 18 whole round videos. Those all are shot and produced by right now our one guy. So we want these to be very highly produced.

They're going to take time. They're going to take a couple months. They're going to be really, really cool. You're going to love them. You're going to see us hitting horrible shots and a couple amazing shots mixed in with phenomenal drone work. really cool camera work, B-roll, et cetera. It's going to be great. You're going to like it.

But on the horizon was the President's Cup. President's Cup is down in Australia. We have these relationships with the players. And so we pretty much just put it on, you know, kind of our head of productions plate, put it on their radar that, hey, we're thinking that it might not be a bad idea if we can go to the President's Cup this year. Well, it turned out that they kind of took this pretty seriously, came back to. us, you know, a couple weeks later and said, you know, there's actually some money that we can find behind it, which any time you have money behind something at Barstool, that helps your case

dramatically. So we had some money, a couple sponsors, Fandul, Peter Millar, two of our favorites, that are interested in sponsoring the trips. So my little ears perked up. I like to plan trips. Everybody knows that. The Bundago Boys, the originals, myself and Trent Daddy. So I started to put things together a little bit and say, well, well, well, well, you're telling me we can fly across the world to Australia where Tiger Woods, Justin Thomas, Bryson D. Chambot, all these great players at the time, for all we knew, Brooks Keppka, Dustin Johnson, all these phenomenal best players in the world, many of which we've achieved some sort of relationship with, are going to be playing on the world stage against the internationals, on international soil.

in Australia, one of the great courses in the world, Alastair McKenzie's Royal Melbourne, and we could be there. There's kangaroos, there's dangerous fucking snakes, there's amazing golf courses. We can be there to capture whatever content we can capture. I think we might have something here. So that's sort of how all of this came to be.

Now, you saw what we were able to get while we were out there. We had obviously the Tiger Fis Pump, the JT video where he and Zander Shoffley are playing lefty, against Frankie, seeing if they can out drive him. The kangaroo video, Trent, making 130, 50 foot put, whatever it was. I'm sure that put will be 250 feet by the time we're done talking about the story.

But you all saw what we got. It was an amazing time in Melbourne, mixing it up at the President's Cup, Tiger, millions of views on that. Good, great, grand. Then we jumped over to Barnbougal. We've recorded, I think, four or five more that are going to be episodes

from sort of us being out in the wild playing these different courses around the world. world and and you know highly producing video of us trying to play these golf courses and experiencing these things that we know are on pretty much every golfer's bucket list in the world now just shortly after that we have Christmas New Year's at Barstow we get that entire time off you know we're pretty much we're talk a lot about how we're always on uh that's kind of our gig is you're always got to be on you always got to be knowing what's going on in the new You got to be ready to blog something.

You got to be able to talk about something. When the tournaments are going on, you know, we're covering it on Saturday, Sunday. That's just what we do. It's the gig. It's great. We love it. It's unimaginable like I talked about earlier. And so one of the huge perks is that we pretty much close the office down.

Christmas, New Year's depends when those win in the week days, those holidays fall. But this year is like, okay, so you're telling me, we're going to go to Australia. It's going to take at least eight. nine, 10-day trip because we need to cover the event the whole time. It takes a couple days to get there. It takes a couple days to get back. So you're telling me I could be all the way in Australia. President's Cup wraps up.

Bar-Bougal shoot wraps up. It's now Wednesday. I'm in Australia. I could go back to work for Thursday, Friday, and then we're just off for basically two weeks. Or I could just stay on the other side of the world where there is Tasmania, King Island, New Zealand? Well, fuck me.

I think I'll do that. So the other guys, they wanted to go back to company party. They wanted to get a couple days FaceTime in at the office. Very understandable. Kudos to them. I said, well, fuck that. I'm going to take this opportunity while I'm here. I'm not going to go back to the office for a couple days.

I'm going to lock up. I'm going to try to get out, film any rigs versus videos I can, and really just see this part of the world while I'm here, because how many other times do you get the chance? to have already taken a 22-hour flight across the world, and you're just right in this part of the world. You got nowhere to be for the next, basically two weeks work-wise. So really, I had this window, about a week-long window,

where my only, my next commitment, after we kind of parted ways, the four-plate crew in Australia, in Tasmania, my next commitment was I had to be home for Christmas Eve, or my mom would kill me. I just, I had to get home. So I had about a week to really finagle something. and luckily an angel from the planning heavens, Frank Krieger, who's with Best of New Zealand Golf, highly recommended to me from my good friend Matt Janella, put me in touch.

And I said, look, there's some courses I want to see on King Island. King Island is a very small, 1,500 person island, just north and west of Tasmania, which all that's south of Melbourne, south of the main island of Australia. And I really would like to see New Zealand. Who the fuck wouldn't want to see New Zealand? So I basically threw all of this at Frank, who was a hero. And we went back and forth, 10, 20 times. We never were able to get on the phone, which while I'm trying to plan this,

we were in Bermuda, and then we were in Australia. And so it was just, it was Thanksgiving. Then we were in Bermuda, blah, blah, blah. It was very difficult to get on the phone with them. So a lot of emails back and forth. But long story short, the story really begins Wednesday, nearly two weeks ago, where I found myself, and I knew I was going to find myself alone in Tasmania, and I've got a week before I have to be home for Christmas Eve.

So what the hell would you do? And what I did from there was the guys left. We parted ways. I slept at Bar and Bougal on Tuesday night on Wednesday morning, which I believe, That was December. Hold on. I got a million pop-ups. And currently my calendar is on May 2020,

so I have to scroll all the way back to December. That was December 18th. I wake up. 4 a.m. You have to drive an hour, hour and a half, to the airport at Launceston. I believe that's how you say.

Launceston, we talked about in the last show. Launceston. Then I take a flight from Launceston to King Island. It's only about a 40-minute flight total, maximum. But my plane, if I get on this plane, it's a prop plane, I'm the only person on the plane. I'm the only passenger. There's probably 12 seats or so, but I'm the only passenger.

I'm in seat 1A. So think about a plane, pop, you know, hop on this whole thing, step on it. Tiny airport, by the way, zero security, none, zero, not anything. You check your bags, which is literally a joke. Guy comes out and, like, takes a marker and, like, writes your initials on, like, a little piece of paper that he basically tapes onto your bag and then he's just like, okay, and then he just grabs your bags,

hands him to a guy standing around next to you, and that guy just literally throws them on the plane. You watch him do that. And this is on the island of Tasmania. So I get on this plane, and they're like, all right, mate, you're just, you're the only passenger until we're going to pick some more up on the way. I'm like, okay,

what do you mean we're going to pick some up on the way? What are they fucking parachuting from another plane on the airplane? What do you mean we're going to pick, we don't pick people up on the way? That's not a thing. Well, yeah, we're going to make a real quick. stop in Bernie. I think it was Bernie. It'll probably be a five-minute stop. We'll pick them up. We'll be right in our way.

Should be at King Island in about an hour, maybe a little bit under an hour. So I'm alone on the plane. I'm sitting in seat one A. Like four and a half feet in front of me are the two pilots. The guy literally gave him the safety, the whole little spiel. He gave it on one knee just sitting right in front of me, maybe a foot in front of me. So I go right, and he's just going through the pamphlet, which is really a pretty interesting moment because I think we all shout to Uncle Chaps, we all tune out

the safety thing. But when a fucking pilot, who's this Australian guy, who you're really hoping knows what he's doing because you're flying this little prop plane over Tasmania and it just does, it feels like a commercial plane, feels like even if the pilot doesn't know what he's doing, those things just fly themselves. This motherfucker did not fly

itself. That guy in front of me on one knee giving me the safety thing, he flies it. And he needs to know how to fly it. And so you don't want to tune out. So it's the first time I actually really, he's putting the light jacket on, doing all that right in front of me. So actually he was really paying attention.

I was kind of thinking, like, if you don't know, if you actually don't pay attention and then shit hits the fan, you might be kind of screwed. He tells you all, there's like this whistle that you can blow for help. There's a certain way that you need to know how to put the thing on. I learned a lot. And you had to, because again, the guy sitting right in front of your face, And if you don't, then you're just a real jerk off.

While this guy's telling you the safety thing, a foot and a half from your face, and if you're just like on your phone or something, that can't happen. So we fly, pop up into the air, fly about 20 minutes, land real quick, like a family of six or something. Get on. He gives them the safety spiel. We take off, I don't know, four minutes later, something like that. Then you fly to the very small island of King Island. Now, you land.

It's a beautiful little thing, but you notice as you're landing, I mean, you can just see from one end of the island all the way to the other, and it's only like half of your vision. You can see it's just ocean everywhere, this small little island, and you're thinking, man, this is where we're actually going to this tiny little place. What could possibly be here? Well, some amazing things are here. I'm going to talk all about that. First, I have to talk about Pink Whitney, and this is a little bit ironic. Because Whitney and myself, we get into it. Funny, Regs, that you would be on a podcast by yourself

and that you have to sit here and plug Ryan Whitney's drink. That's probably making him a bazillion dollars, which is ridiculous because he already has a bazillion dollars because he robbed the NHL and made like over $30 million. But it does happen. It does turn out that I very much like to drink. And Pink Whitney, made by New Amsterdam vodka, they're the official sponsor of Barstle Sports.

Pink Whitney has taken off everywhere. I remember when I went to Cabot in September, that was like September 15th weekend. When I went to Cabot, Pink Whitney wasn't available in Canada at the time. And I brought a bottle of Pink Whitney. And these two Canadian lads, mates, great guys, didn't know each other. They both brought myself and Lurch and my whole crew

some local Canadian beer to drink. And I knew this was happening. They had reached out. I said, yeah, is when we get an interview. want to bring me some, some alcohol, some goods from Canada. Great. Why the hell wouldn't we? We'll meet. We'll take a nice picture. Say hi. And then we'll be on our merry way. Well, I knew this is happening. So I brought a bottle of Pink Whitney up to give to them. Should have brought two. That was a mistake. Because they legit, I brought the bottle out.

And I said, okay, guys, I know there's two of you and only one bottle. So I don't know exactly what you want to do here. And I figured one of them would be like, oh, yeah, the other guy can just have it. Oh, no, no, no. These guys legitimately squared off in the rain outside and did a best of three rock paper scissors for the Pink Whitney bottle. And the reason is because Pink Whitney is phenomenal. The way that I like to drink it, I fill that glass all the way up to the top with ice, and then I just pour that Pink Whitney in. I let it sit for a minute or two because I do like it to water down just a hair. And I'm like that with almost all my drinks.

I like ice and my whiskey. If you want to call me soft, fine. You know, it's not soft. Pink Whitney, it's delicious. New Amsterdam vodka. they're the official vodka of Barstle sports and Whitney, the Chickles guys. I can't do anything but give them credit.

They made a phenomenal drink. Go get yourself some. Drink it in 2020. Drink it forever because it's great. Okay. King Island. A couple golf courses on King Island. Again, it's only 1,500 people.

Think about how few people that is. 1,500 people. That is nothing. Think about when you've been to like a, you know, a common. show, some of these decent, even some of these decent-sized comedy shows that'll have in some of the theaters, I'm thinking of up in Boston that are like, you know, 1,500, 1,500 seat. It seems like a really small crowd because we're used to the stadium.

You go watch a hockey game or you go watch a football game. You got 20,000, 50,000, 100,000 people in these stadiums. You go to some of these theaters where they do those comedy type shows. And that's a great experience, cool theater. but I mean 1,200, 500, people, you can look around, you can envision that, that's nothing. That's the entire population of this fucking island.

There's like a cheese factory on there, and then there's farming, and then there's like a shuttle service or a rental car company, and that's it. That's the only thing on this island, except since I believe 2016, two new golf courses.

And it's a little bit of a coincidence that the two were kind of built and came to be at the same time because forever on this island there was just a nine-hole course, a little shorter, little nine hole course. That is there to this day. That is up kept by volunteers.

There's no official staff that upkeeps this place. It's actually really cool. It's very browned out because they don't have a big staff upkeeping it, making it green, this, that. So it plays incredibly old school. We drove around with John, who is the superintendent or was the superintendent now. He's a little bit more charged. He's like the manager, general manager of Cape Wickham. But he and his wife actually drove me around in their pickup truck, the little nine hole course there.

But until, again, a couple years ago, three, four years ago, there was essentially no golf on the island. Coincidentally, Ocean Dunes and Cape Wickham were built by two kind of totally different crews and came to be about the same time. So I land in King Island and airports a joke. I mean, you walk right off the plane. No one says a word to you. You're just on the tarmac. You're just on the tarmac on the runway. You can really go wherever you want at this point.

You look around. There's essentially nothing. I mean, you're just on an island. That is just off an island. That is just south of a bigger island. And that island is called Australia. The only thing between Australia and Antarctica on the line that King Island is on is, out and that's just it and so you're kind of out there and you're looking around and it's such a

fresh like an injection of fresh air and sort of holy shit i will never be in another place like this in my life i never have been another place like this in my life it's very exciting you walk right into the airport tiny little airport they have a very small little coffee shop which i was surprised by and i do think it's probably the only coffee shop on the entire island and they're right next to that there's a very small desk and it just says run rental car. I had rented a car. Shout out to Frank. It set the whole thing up. I walk right up there. They've got like three pieces of paper out, each one with a key on top of it, a car key. And they just go, oh, what's your name, sir? I'm like, you know, Sam Bezoian, which is my real name.

Okay, this is you. They hand me a key and a piece of paper. I think I signed something. They're like, yours is a little white Hyundai right out front. They just pulled my car right up front. That was it. I grab my bags real quick. You walk right. You throw your stuff in the car, which the steering wheel is on the right side. You have to drive on the left side, but it doesn't matter. You don't see anybody on this island. Ocean Dunes is about a three-minute drive away from the airport. So I would say within what?

Within three and a half minutes of wheels down at the King Island Airport, I was in the car and driving less than five minutes to the golf course. You pull into Ocean Dunes. So Ocean Dunes, maybe the most understated arrival. I've ever had at a golf course in my entire life. They haven't built a full clubhouse yet. They haven't even really started construction on it, it appears. There's just a small little very temporary clubhouse, basically a hut. It's got like a couple picnic tables in this little outdoor patio area.

And then the pro shop is maybe, feels like a Manhattan apartment closet. They have a couple boxes of golf balls. Thank God, desperately needed that. Guy David. in there. Great guy. Love barstool. Love what we did. Gets you all set up. And then they pretty much just let you do whatever the hell you want. There was no one there at the time. So I grab a cart. I roll out. I hit balls for a little bit, actually, which was nice. Needed to hit balls. In the temporary clubhouse at Ocean Dunes, it looks out over. I mean, when you pull in,

the parking lot is, it's all gravel road. You drive through this little gravel. road for probably five, like a couple minutes actually. So the real time for the airport to what looks like the entrance is like two or three minutes. And then you drive for a couple more minutes on just this gravel road. Can't see anything and all of a sudden the coast appears parking this tiny little, tiny little gravel road parking lot that has maybe spaces for, I don't know, eight cars, something like that. You walk down. And again, at this point, you're thinking that you drove to the maintenance shed.

you're thinking you drove to the service entrance of the golf course. Nope, you drove to the main entrance. You walk down, you go into the little hut that I just described, and then again, you're kind of on your merry little way. I was alone at this point. I got a cart, and I just buzzed around this golf course, playing music. I was playing some classic rock and playing my game.

Now, one thing that's scary is that they tell you, before you tee off, says, all right, you know, there's the first tee, and you're going to be out there by yourself. So if anything happens, there's a snake kit underneath your seat. If you think the snakes are supposed to be bad

in Australia, mainland, Australia, or even on Tasmania, out here, I mean, there are signs everywhere that say beware, and then there's a little snake emoji, and it says, snakes seen in area, and they're everywhere.

And these snakes, again, are snakes that if they buy you, they will fucking kill you. It's not like, oh, snakes are gross. I don't like them. They're evil, which they are. But I don't like them. They slither around and they're just kind of gross.

And if they bite you, it might hurt. No, it's if they bite you, you will die. Your life will end. You will go from a living, breathing thing with feelings and thoughts and family and a job to just dead. You'll just be fucking dead if one of these things bites you. And so I'm out here in a cart by myself on King Island where there's no. I went around and I have a snake kit under my seat.

To this day, I don't know what that means, a snake kit. Maybe it's just a revolver. And if you get bit by this snake while you're out there playing golf by yourself, you just get the revolver out and shoot yourself in the head because why else would you rather just lay there with horrific evil serpents slithering all around you, biting you, and killing it. You wouldn't want to do that. So the snake kit might have just been a revolver. I'm not sure because I never opened it because luckily it never happened. because any single golf ball I hit that went anywhere close to an area where one could conceal

oneself, i.e. deadly snake, I just took a drop and took a penalty stroke. Can't tell you how many fucking balls I lost. I lost so many golf balls. But really, I mean, think about it. You can't, there are so many times where I knew, I knew, man, my golf ball is within like a 10 or 20 square foot area right here, just off the rough, in this little heathery, fescuey stuff, it's playable. If I just walked in there five, six feet, I could find it. But what's the alternative?

A snake pie to you and you just die? No, that's not worth it. Why the hell would you do that? You wouldn't. So I took a ton of drops. Ocean dunes. First four holes. I mean, I thought we were in for maybe one of the greatest rounds in history.

of the world with this with this golf course. First hole is this dog league right par five. And you're just looking out sort of over towards the ocean a little bit off the tea, but there's this big dune. And if you get aggressive, you can rip one over the, over the dune. And then you get over there,

which I did, no big deal. And then you get over there. And it takes like a pretty much a 90 degree right turn right down towards the ocean. So the green, you're very elevated hitting down into this green that's well below you. And the only thing that's behind it is the ocean. And it's a par five, so you're kind of ripping at it in two.

A lot of space wide open before the green. So you can kind of miss. It feels good. I duck hooked a six iron into the fescue, took a drop made bogey. But then the second hole, again, you kind of drive over and you're hitting out. It's a little bit of a blind shot, but it's only at 260, 70, 80 yard par four. And all you can see kind of to the right and behind where you presume the green is is ocean. Then you get up to number three.

Number three, the T-box is right along the coast, and then there's a little inlet that's between the T-box and the fairway, and then the fairway kind of runs pretty much straight out, but maybe even a little bit kind of angled off to the right. So you're hitting this T-shot over the ocean to this fairway that's angled away from you, and you're thinking like, holy shit, we're only on the third hole, the fourth hole. The T-box is even more back in this corner right along the coast. You actually have to tiptoe your way out there on this little piece of land that exists. And then you hit your T-shot again over the ocean to this green. It's about 150-yard hole. So that's how you start at Ocean Dune. Now, I will say the rest of the holes in the front line, you go a little bit more inland.

They're not quite as sweet, but some of them are still really cool. I think the sixth hole goes back out towards the water. And there's a great downhill par four. I want to say it's the eighth hole maybe. I think it's the eighth hole. That's a great par three, sort of a little bit more inland hole. Then you get to the back nine. And the 10th hole is a par three again where you basically,

you're hitting over the ocean with like a little cliff on your right. Up top that cliff sits the little pro shop hut that I mentioned. The 11th hole. Again, you go back out towards the ocean. You get a couple inland holes. Those inland holes have double green actually. I love double green. Big Scotland guy, big Lynx golf guy.

Cabot Lynx actually has a double green. So I love a double green. You got a course two holes that go to one green. It's a massive green. And then a couple more holes along the back nine go out against the water. Really cool short part three with a skinny little green that's crazy exposed to the wind and it's always windy out there. So the course is phenomenal.

Now, I do think, and I, and I, I'm hearing up to this point that the second course on the island, Cape Wickham, is way better. I'm like, holy shit, how is this going to happen? One of my biggest complaints with Ocean Dunes, and anybody out there who's played it, which probably almost nobody listening, but the 17th and 18th holes are kind of inland holes. And if there's a way, which I believe there has to be, for them to sort of wrap that round up, where you play along the ocean, you play with these ocean views, I think that would even elevate the Ocean Dunes course to another level.

But this is my first experience at this entire place. So I'm thinking, where the hell are we? This is amazing. This is the first course that I'm playing alone. I listen to music. I wrote around a cart. I didn't get bit and eaten alive by a really dangerous, deadly, evil fucking serpent snake. This is great.

Met a couple locals. I mentioned David from the pro shop. They said, hey, we're in Adam. I think it was David and Adam, who's part of the ownership of the whole ocean dunes and management, something like that. And they said, hey, we're actually, we're having down at the boathouse, we're having a little cookout, a little dinner, a bunch of drinks, you should come by. So I get divided by the locals to come by the boathouse. My first night, I can't tell you, the people of King Island were so kind. The boat house is a communal kitchen. So the entire island

has access to the communal kitchen. This lady owns it, who's owned it, I believe, forever. and the whole deal is that you go, you use it. As long as you clean up after yourself, it's a kitchen. They got obviously all the, they've got tables for you to kind of have your own little, your own little meal, your own little hangout. They get a couple tables outside, and the boathouse sits along the harbor. We had the most beautiful, shout at Rigsie Weather, most beautiful, calm evening along the harbor.

They said it's never like that, never, ever, never, under any circumstances, except when I was there. Perfectly calm evening. A few of the guys actually from the PGA tour who worked. for the PGA tour, happened to be at King Island the same time I was. I knew a couple of them. So it was them and then like 10 or 15 locals. We had maybe 20 people total, 15 people total, something like that. And the locals, they cooked out for everybody.

You know, they were so excited that folks came to their island to see these golf courses. They cook out. And then there's an honesty box in the kitchen. And so if you feel like it, just if you feel like it, you can throw money into the honesty box. I did, obviously, very honest person. But they cooked for us, they fed us drink. We had an amazing time, amazing time. You got to meet the locals.

I was chatting with this one guy, older man, who had backpacked across, or no, he had out, I'm sorry, hitchhiked, hitchhiked across the United States of America when he was like 18 or 20, something along those lines in like the 70s or the 60s. He started in Miami. he uh you know back in those days he booked a flight from uh i believe from melbourne to miami and then he had a flight out six months later he had a flight out of lax back to melbourne and he had like no money he just had the clothes in his back and he just hitchhiked across the united states of america he went uh really north america he went up to like canada down through he stayed with a family in wisconsin for a while

then he went back up through like ban from the calgary area incredible story got to meet the locals had a bunch of drinks, had a lovely time. And then John, who again is kind of one of the managers, I guess general manager over at Cape Wickham. And his wife gave me a nice ride home, which is good because I had too intoxicated to drive myself home. Slept at Cape Wickham. They have, I think, 16 little two-bedroom kind of villas

that overlooked the water right on property. So I slept in one of those, wake up. My good friend B, who's actually from the Boston area, hadn't seen him in four years. He works for a little company called Golf Tech. Moved out to Hong Kong to open up golf tech there. He's been out there ever since. Hadn't seen him in four years. He was very coincidentally going to be on vacation in Australia.

I said, why don't you come to King Island for a day? Picked him up at the airport. It's about a 35, 40-minute drive to the airport. Didn't see one car the whole time. Imagine that 40-minute drive on the main road, going right across the island, 40 minutes. You can only go like 50 minutes across the island. So I went quite literally across the island to pick them up. 40 minute drive, didn't see a single car, not one other car.

Anyways, pick up B. We go back to Cape Wickham, which is on the northwestern point kind of of King Island. Now Cape Wickham is, and I'd heard this going in, I try to go in as a surprise as I can. I try to go in with no knowledge of the course. It might sound crazy to some people, but what I had gotten sunken into that I didn't like was sort of this pattern of showing up at a course, a bucket list course, course I was really excited to play, and knowing all the holes already, and knowing all the visuals already, and not really stepping onto a two-you and being like, oh, holy cow, what do we got here? This is cool. Because I'd been on the website. I'd taken the drone tours or all of the whole by whole tours,

and I'd sat in my cube or sat at the office, and all I'd done in all my free time was just look at the website because I was so excited to go play these courses. And I had to train myself not to do that. Big time tip, if you can out there, anytime you're going to play an awesome course that you're really excited about, go in as blind as you can. Try to do no real research,

try to not know what the holes are going to be, what the views are going to be, so that when you arrive, you're kind of stunned. and you get to soak it in that way, and then do all the fucking research you want to afterwards. So Cape Wickham, I knew, I knew going in that it was going to be a course

that was going to end up very high on my rankings of all-time courses I've ever played. Matt Janelle had told me that. I'd read Alan Shipnuck's piece on his whole trip, and I follow him. He's a friend of mine as well. We had chatted a little bit about it. So Cape Wickham was and is one of the greatest,

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You probably saw some of the photos that I posted. If you haven't, go check them out. There's a lighthouse at Cape Wickham that really kind of serves as the main focal point. It's always in the background. There's a couple holes where you aim at it. It's going to be really the thing that kind of stands out. It's their logo in terms of identifying like, oh yeah, that's a hole from Cape Wickham. And Cape Wickham, it's got so many holes on the water.

Which, of course, elevated. We are creatures that love being on the water. I always laugh when folks try to kind of demean a course almost by being like, well, it's, it only gets the rankings or it only gets all the praise. And people only love it and are so infatuated with it because it's on the water. If you took those same holes, you put them inland, they wouldn't be great holes. Yeah, hey dude, if you took those fucking houses that are on the ocean and you put them inland, they probably wouldn't be worth $20 million either. They'd be worth like $20 because nobody gives a fuck about certain areas inland. Everybody loves being on the water.

Everybody loves the ocean. You love looking at the violent waves crashing into the rocks. You love it. Cape Wickham has so many ocean holes. The ocean's always there because you're on this tiny, you know, 1,500 person island, King Island. So we get there. And I had seen it the evening before, but I had really kind of like almost tried to cover my eyes because I didn't want to see, I didn't want to be spoiled.

I want to, again, go in as blind as I can, like I explained earlier. Very understated arrival, much like Ocean Dunes. A little bit more of a serious sort of clubhouse thing, but it's, again, it's temporary. There's plans at Cape Wickham to build a second course and maybe put the clubhouse in between the two courses. So it's still a temporary clubhouse. And again, it's a 1,500 person island, man. Like, how massive of a clubhouse and an operation could you have? half. Small thing, similar to the hut at Ocean Dunes, maybe a little bit more packed with a little bit more heat.

And what I mean by that is there's a chef there. And the chef is phenomenal. Me and my friend B ate like three meals there. I think all three meals here this day. And the chef is so stunningly good. I ate like a breakfast sandwich. Phenomenal. I ate like a turkey sandwich for lunch. Phenomenal. I got a steak for dinner. You guessed it. Phenomenal. So great chef. Anyways, you go in, we grab a cart, it's the same kind of situation.

Hey, boys, knock yourselves out. Beware of snakes. Don't get bitten, because if you get bitten, you'll probably die. We roll over to the teeth. Now, B had come in, like I said, from Hong Kong originally, and then his flight over, actually, from Melbourne, 35-minute flight from Melbourne to King Island.

From Melbourne was packed with a crew from Shanghai. Turns out, this crew came straight to, King Island, or two Cape Wickham, and they're going to play golf around the same time. They actually jumped onto the T, and there's 12 of them, I guess, maybe 16 of them. On the first T, B and myself, we're in a cart, just the two of us. We both play lightning fast golf, and our plan was to play 36 holes. It's only like 10 a.m. sunsets around this time, 8.39. We're playing this gorgeous course.

There's nobody out there, because again, tiny little island, except this crew of 12, maybe 16 people from Shanghai, are in front of us. And I got to give it to one of the guys who works at the course, recognized the situation, ran up there, did a little talking, and a couple of the guys from Shanghai, from the Shanghai crew, they kind of recognized the situation as well.

And they said, are you guys too? He said, yeah, they said, go, go. They didn't speak a ton of English. So they let us play through on the first tee. The very first tee of Cape Wickham were playing through these people. Now, there again,

they're so excited to be here. They just ripped their clubs out of their travel bags. the first tee is legitimately mowed into the practice screen. The first tee is like it could be one of the practice green holes that you put into, but instead they just put two T markers there and you literally tee off from the practice screen. So it's a whole little scene right here, a couple people putting and then all the whole Shanghai crew and then us. So they're all on the T either putting or literally standing on the T kind of because they're excited. They started their little buddy's trip, whatever.

And so B and I step up. We both rip one down the fairway, massive fairway. Most wide fairway you've ever seen in your life, wind howling left to right. The hole is stunts like a 300 maybe 60 yard par four. Ocean all down the right. Ocean all behind the hole that you can see from the T, a wide open fairway. So it's very inviting. One of the coolest opening T shots in golf, it's very friendly.

And again, wind's hard off the left. You can really just fire something out the left side. The wind will drag it 20, 30 yards. You can't miss the fairway. It's almost impossible. We both hit the fairway. They go crazy. I'm talking.

This Shanghai crew is going nuts. It's like they just watched Tiger, you know, can the winning put at the 2008 U.S. Open or to can that put that he had to make to force a playoff against Rocco mediate that little 15-foot slider down hill. It was like that. I mean, I hit the fairway first. I'm like, oh, yeah, we're all laughing. Then B hits the fairway. They go nuts.

And we're all laughing. We can't fucking speak with them. We don't speak the same language, not even close. So they're kind of saying each one of them fist bumps us. And then they're like, picture, we've got to get a picture. They demand a picture with the American. So we had already cracked open a couple beers. Here's this crew from Shanghai.

We ripped drives down the middle of the fairway, the biggest fair we've ever seen in the entire fucking planet. We take a picture with this crew, and then we played through them on the first team. Second haul, all along the ocean. Again, wide open fairway, pretty short par four. And you learn very quickly as you're playing Cape Wickham. Third hole is like maybe 175-yard. par three.

You have to hit, again, over the ocean. I actually posted, I think, a picture of this one on Twitter. And you learn very quickly at Cape Wickham that you are on a course that you'll just never really forget. And you're also realizing in kind of the moment. And I actually talked to a lot of the guys, all, you know, the other guys, Frankie, Trent, Lurch, Jake, everybody. And my friend B about how unique it is when you're down there in that playing golf.

And that's like, you step on a lot of these T's and you step onto these courses. you arrive at the first time. And as you're playing it, it's very different to sort of know in your head that you will never ever be back here again. You will most likely never, under any circumstances, be able to play this hole again or to have this experience again. Because even if you live in the states, which you do, you're listening to show or anywhere you live, really, you know, and you might get that chance to play the coolest course around your town. And you know, like, yeah, I can't believe I got out there, but like, you'll probably be able to get out there again. And even me, like, if you go to Bandan Dunes, you do a really cool trip to Bandan Dunes, and you have a great

buddy's trip, you know, and you're thinking like, God, I need to soak this up because it's so hard to get here. It's so cool. But like, in the back of your mind, you're also probably thinking, like, man, maybe we'll be back, like five, ten years or maybe even next year. At some point, maybe we'll bring your kids here. Like, we'll be back. We can make the flight from, you know, from the Midwest or from New York out to band and to Oregon, we can do that. Even if you play pebble, it's like this is a once in a lifetime thing, but maybe when you have kids

someday, you'll get back out there again or maybe even at the U.S. Open, you'll get tickets and you'll go watch. You'll be there again. When you're in fucking King Island, Australia, you know, it kind of hits you that you're thinking, man, I'm going around this course and like, all I'll ever, the only experience I'll ever get

ever again of this place will be kind of this surreal memory that like, was I really? 10,000 445 miles away from home on this tiny island south of Australia playing this magnificent course that's almost like someone fabricated into my mind because it doesn't seem real and none of this seems real. So you're kind of gathering and having that experience in real time is very, very bizarre and unlike anything I'd ever had in golf ever.

Not to mention, you know, a lot of the courses, like some of the courses that I just mentioned and even if you get to play in Oakmont or Shinnock, you know, you're out there and you're kind of like walking on eggshells and you're actually literally walking the golf courts. You might have a caddy. You might be carrying, but like you're walking. Me and my boy, B, we have, we picked up 12 beers in the little pro shop and we have a cart. We got music blaring and there's no one in front of us and there's not going to be anybody in

front of us all day. The sun is shining. There's minimal wind for them. air. They say the wind always whips that sometimes people can't even go out and play. It was like maybe a 15 mile in our wind. Just perfect the whole day. So it's like 10, 15 in the morning. We're on the third or fourth hole. Make our way around. Now, you're going to see a lot of the press that this place is going to get, Cape Wickham, is going to be about some of the holes with the lighthouse in the background and more of the,

like, hardcore ocean holes. The 18th hole is this gorgeous par four that, kind of wraps around the beach where you can literally hit your ball off the beach. My favorite hole out there, the ninth hole, and I filmed the rigs verse video on it, you're going to see it. But it is this downhill par five that goes out towards the ocean. There's huge dunes kind of on the right side. And then down by the green, there's this massive dune just left of the green that the green is like cut into.

And it's unlike any hole I've ever seen in the world. And it's followed by this really. cool par four that you didn't even know existed because when you're playing the ninth hole like i said it kind of goes down and towards the water and they build it in a way where you can't you know it almost looks like the green where you're hitting your approach shots and whatnot it's kind of an infinity green it looks like the greens in the ocean and then you get past the hole and you see that there's another hole this little par four that is like a half pipe the fairway is like a half pipe and it goes straight downhill and all the way towards this green the green is sunken you know

inches away from the rocks and where the ocean's crashing into the rocks. And this is the 10th hole out there. And so you get these kind of back-to-back holes. The 11th hole is this short part three that, again, you literally hit over the ocean. The 12th hole is kind of a drivable part four, where if you want to take off more of the left, you have to, again, risk leaving it in the ocean if you pull it a little left, or you can try to rip it right of the green. If you do, you know, you can drive the green.

And then you kind of come back around the clubhouse. 15 goes right out towards the lighthouse. It's kind of on the high part of this little peninsula that the lighthouse is on or that the lighthouse leads to that is sort of separates the first nine, the first part of the course with the second part. And then you go the last three holes, you go straight back in towards the clubhouse the entire way and towards that little beach that I told you about. But 16 is a gorgeous par four oceans.

down the right, slight dog leg right in the second half of the hole so that your second shot, your approach shot is again into this green that looks like it is just perched up along the ocean, the little cove that comes into the ocean. 17 is again another beautiful part three with the ocean all on the side of the hole. And then 18 is the hole that I described earlier where, you know, you can bite off as much as you want to chew. Did I say that right? Yeah, I said that right.

along the beach. And if you hit a little bit more of aggressive shot, you have a tiny little wedge in. If not, you got more of a midiron into this green. And there's all along the left side is a massive kind of dune or hill cliff type thing. And on the top of it is where the clubhouse hit. So it's this incredible setting. You're kind of blown away whole by hole at the fact that this could all be on one golf course.

And it plays pretty damn lynxy. It plays very lynxy, which I love, which means, you know, it's, you're almost never hitting like a 60 degree wedge. My boy B had to learn that quickly, like six or seven holes in. He's like, okay, they don't want you to use a wedge out here. They just don't want you to use a 60 degree wedge. You got to bump it. You got to use kind of the terrain. And we had a ton of fun with that.

So we just, at that point, ran it again. And there's really nothing good with it having played that course, having kind of had the experience I've talked about, you're like, well, I'll never get to play this again. and then being like, oh, wait a minute, we get to just play it again. No one in front of us, 36 holes, had a bunch more beers, loaded back up, stayed, did a stake in the evening, and then drove to a little King Island hotel, woke up, flew out. King Island, I can't recommend it enough. The people, too, they were phenomenal. They were so friendly.

They were very open with the fact that, like, it's kind of a risk to build these courses because nobody ever comes to this island. The hope is that in building them, more people will visit. They'll kind of be able to grow this tourism business that the island could desperately use. The airport needs to get a little bigger because the flights now, I think, can only come in really from Melbourne because the airport's so small. They want to get flights that can come in from Sydney as well. A lot of people do come in from Sydney, but they have to go through Melbourne.

So it was really interesting hearing kind of the whole ecosystem of this place and how it will or won't. survive and I really desperately hope that it does because even though I did that whole spiel about how you'll never be back you know part of me thinks one day I would love to return there see it kind of thriving and maybe see another course or two there and more infrastructure and the clubhouse is ready to go and more people kind of experience the whole thing because again to be playing that magnificent of a golf course in lynxie type shape that's on a tiny island south of australia the only thing between australia and antarctica on that line is crazy town, and it was really cool.

So Cape Wickham, about as high on my list as you could possibly be on. Next part of the trip. B and I wake up the next morning. We fly to Melbourne. I say goodbye, B, enjoy your little trip. I drive 10 minutes from the small airport that you fly into on the tiny plane to the real main Melbourne airport. I fly Melbourne to Auckland, New Zealand. This actually surprises people.

It's about a four-hour flight, about three and a half, four-hour flight to New Zealand. A lot of people think it's a little hop, skip, and a jump, boom, you're there. Nope, not the case. About a pretty serious flight. There's a time difference, a couple different time zone difference and whatnot. So it's kind of a full day of travel. I arrive in New Zealand on Friday, December. I've got to do the calendar thing again.

I got to do the calendar thing again. Give me a second, folks. This is December 20th. I land in Auckland, New Zealand, about 4.30 p.m. I'm at my hotel about 5.30 p. I didn't realize this. I went to the bar, grabbed a couple beers, had a little dinner by myself, and the bartenders from Israel. She was telling me, you know, I struck a little conversation, a little chit-chatter. I'm all excited. I'm on a fucking vacation. And she was telling me,

first of all, anywhere on this earth you go, the minute that you walk into a place, everyone there knows you're American, everybody, which I had heard before. I heard that when I was in Scotland. You can dress Euro, you can dress, you know, South Pacific, you can dress Australian. You can dress however you want the minute you arrive walk into a place everybody knows yep that's an american that was the first thing she told me second thing she told me it was like the whole fucking country of new zealand apparently for christmas and new years gets off much like barstlesports dot com they get off so like the bars were hopping everybody's go they're hopping and i said it's like you know it's like 536 p.m. uh on friday and you know how's business been all that she's like oh

it's crazy because everybody's on holiday. I was like, we mean everybody. I didn't know the whole country's off for like two weeks. So everybody was out. I was exhausted. I've been traveling 36 holes a day before, drank a bazillion beers, took a million shots, lost a million balls. I was kind of ready to go to bed.

So I stuck it out for a couple hours. I bought some things. I had to go to some shopping. You can't go to New Zealand, not get Christmas gifts from New Zealand. You have to. So I did a little Christmas shopping and went to bed. Wake up Saturday morning. It's now Saturday in New Zealand.

It's the first real. full day of their like two week long vacation. So I go to, and this was all so incredibly easy because of my guy Frank and the best of of New Zealand golf folks. When I arrived in my hotel Friday night, there was an envelope. A envelope on my bed. Open the envelope. It's got vouchers for everything.

Rental car that I'm going to pick up the next morning. Voucher. Bed and breakfast I'm staying at that night. Voucher. Tea time at Kari Cliffs, which is the last leg of the trip, voucher. All this stuff's made so freaking easy. all those flights I just told you about, these little puddle jumpers, these little prop planes that you jump on,

all booked, all made super. I just gave my credit card number. I said, Frank, I trust you. He seemed like a great guy. Your whole crew, all the other employees that he's got working for him, who I was in touch with. Super trustworthy, gave me my credit card. Boom, booked everything.

All I had to do was show up. Here's rigs. Just put me on a plane, fly me to wherever Frank says I'm going. He arranged at Tittarengi, Terrangi. These guys, goddamn. So you're supposed to roll the R. Terengi. Terengi, I can't say.

You're supposed to roll the yard. Terrangi is the only golf course in New Zealand designed by Alistair McKinsey. It's the only one. And there's the two courses I play after, Terriidi and Cari Cliffs, are spectacular. And they've got the crazy views. Tittorangi is 20 minutes from city center in Auckland.

Big-ass city, Auckland is. And so I was like, Frank kind of recommended it. It would be cool to see an original Alastair McKinsey course. It's obviously about 100 years later, so the course has changed, but there's an initiative at the club

to kind of restore it and to kind of fix a lot of the bunkering and get it back to as close. But now you can tell it's chrome. There's housing all over the place, and it's kind of like jammed into this middle of this kind of neighborhoody part of Auckland. And it almost had a little bit of like a Marion-type vibe

to it. Or Marion, anybody's ever been to Marion? It's like there's not even, there's barely a room for the golf course, let alone like spectators and whatnot to watch. I don't know how they do U.S. Open at Marion because it's so packed in there, and that's how it felt at Titterrand. But I show up. And again, it's Saturday morning.

It's probably 10 a.m., 11 a.m., something like that. And I don't really know what the hell is going on. I don't know who exactly I'm playing with, but I'd heard, you know, maybe one of the assistant pros is a barstool fan or a four-play fan and wanted you to play and he's got a group and you're going to have a great time. Just show up, you'll have a great time. Say, okay, that's not a problem.

I can do that. So I roll in and first guy I meet in the parking lot, Kevin. And I get out of the car and he kind of says something to me. He said, oh, he rigs. Yeah, what's up, man? He goes, I'm Kevin. So what the fuck is Kevin?

What do you mean? Big thing in New Zealand, New Zealand exit, the ease is like double ease. So Kevin is Kevin. I'm Kevin. What's up? Kevin. Kevin's not even playing with us.

He just wanted to hang out. So he ended up caddying for me. And I think he said he got into golf a couple years ago. He's like a 14 handicapped. Loves golf, loves the show, loves barstool, and just kind of wanted to hang out. He knew the guys obviously that were playing with. And he kind of wanted to just hang out. He plays the course.

A member of the course, plays it all the time. So he caddied for me. Tried to pay him afterwards. Wouldn't accept it. Had some beers of him afterwards. He did accept those. We had a great time. Keevan, caddies for me.

and then we played with Brett, who's one of the pros, I believe, up there, Johnny and Alex. Johnny was my partner. So we get there. There's no range at the course. Now, I haven't played in about a day and a half, and I've been fighting my driver like you wouldn't believe. And you all saw that in Bermuda for the last, like, months. Since like maybe mid-November, late November, like ever since we got back for the Carolina trip, been fighting my driver. And I got the thoughts of my head when I pull out of driver.

you wouldn't believe, folks. You wouldn't believe. You just wouldn't believe them. So I'm fighting the driver. I'm thinking like, I'm going to get there a little early. Well, I didn't. I had to get the rental cars.

A few pain in the ass. Just because I couldn't figure it out. I went to the wrong place because I'm dumb. So there's no time to arrange. There wasn't a range anyway, so you can't need drivers. So we walk out of this first team, and everybody I can tell a whole crew, everybody's actually being pretty quiet thus far.

And it feels a little serious. I would find out later they were all just super hungover. So nobody was really chit-chatting that early. morning on Saturday, their whole vacation just started very understandable. We get to this first tee. And it's, again, it's pretty damn wide open. Pretty wide open first tee. You don't really know exactly you're hitting it, but you just hit it pretty much straight.

You can even hit it over this right bunker and you're totally fine, not a big deal. It's, you know, whatever, you're fine. Well, my boy, um, Brett steps up first, rip some driver. They're like great show. Alex steps up. I think he's got like an iron in his hand. It's a long iron longer and I've ever seen anybody in real. hit an iron.

My partner, Johnny. We threw balls up in the air. My partner, Johnny. You're like, oh, you got me. You're not going to like that. So I'm thinking, like, anybody who makes that comment, it's like a 20 handicap, or maybe like an 8-handicap who plays

like a 20 handicap like I did in Bermuda. Johnny just roast a driver. I mean, it hits a driver. Eight million miles. It might have gone roughly. So I got to step up. And the thoughts going through my head. The first tee is right next to the clubhouse.

So anyone who's standing out there, anyone who's walking around the locker room, the pro shop, eating a bite to eat, they're all right there. Basically on top of you, like it's a fucking stadium and there's this little T-box right there, first team. I hit the furthest right drive you've ever seen your entire life. And it wasn't like a shank one, like, it wasn't like a low kind of skanker, right, that like kind of hits something and stays in play or like whatever. It was like, it was hit hard and so far right that Keevan actually, like instinctively, just said, whoa. And then somebody else's group was like, whoa.

And everybody's head just turned. They're like, I think Keevan looked at me and goes, I'm a 14 handicap. I've never seen one that far right, ever. And it was the furthest right. I was like, what's over there? It's just neighborhoods, mate, like neighborhoods. So, re-tee, I think we lost the first hole with a birdie. So to kind of put everything into perspective here, here's me, I'm slapping it around.

I just shot 103, 100 in Bermuda, and I'm struggling my game. I can't get a driver and play. Play with these guys. We lost the first hole with that bird. Because my boy Johnny, I believe, the hole's so easy, even though I hit the furthest right two shot in the world, holes so easy that we're like giving back a shot. So Johnny's like a plus two, so he's giving back two shots.

So fucking right of the gate, they make a birdie. Our guy makes a birdie. We lose the hole. Next hole, I hit one like out of play right. They freaking bullstripe them. We lose the hole to another birdie. Third hole, they make like another fucking birdie. and we our birdie was squashed again because our fucking guy is getting too many strokes he has to give away to the course where we're three down through fucking three and these guys are playing golf and nobody's even really talking that much because they're all hung up here's me i'm thinking what the fuck am i doing out here i'm at this alice

mackenzie course in new zealand i'm in fucking new zealand i'm by myself i don't know anybody these guys are all like what is did i get is this a joke is this a trick did somebody trick me is there a fucking camera that's like we have to capture how out of place rigs is going to feel with these sticks out here making birdies left and right not saying a fucking word to each other well turns out that they eventually cracked open a bunch of beers after like the eighth hole or so he cracked over a bunch of beers got things going brett my man brett who was great apparently does not play great golf after he starts drinking so he went from just a stripe show to like worse than me which is bad i started to and i'm a really good downwind to play not a good end of the wind player.

We played like the last six or seven holes straight downwind. And I was playing off a seven, so I was getting like nine shots. I was getting seven or eight shots and really like nine because my man, Johnny, was giving away so many shots. Long story short, we went from like three or four down. We ended up winning. I had a couple holes in the back nine where I factored in. We ended up winning. We had a bunch of beers.

We sat up at the clubhouse afterwards at the little members bar. It's a member's bar up at Teterangy. I'm never going to say that right. is awesome. Overlooks the course, overlooks that first tee I just told you about where guys like me hit it 8 million yards out of bounds, right? And it had just a delightful day. They're telling me all about Auckland. They're telling me about the course, some of the inner fightings of the course with the bunkering and the new bunkers. And now, anybody who, you know, you know the name Alastair McKenzie, built Augusta National with Bobby Jones. He built Cypress Point, which is one

of the most famous courses in this entire world. Royal Melbourne, which we just watched the President's Cup out, he's famous for his bunkering. If you don't know what that means, think about any picture that you've seen from Cyprus point of these kind of sprawling, like, fingery-type bunkers that look so natural, but also kind of, they're just so unique, and they're like Allison McKinsey. And there were holes out there where that was so clearly the case, where it was like, okay, this feels like an original Alistair McKinsey hole. And then there were green complexes that you wouldn't believe.

One green out there was a five. tier green five tiers not one not two not three not four tiers five tiers think like the fourteenth green at augusta the hole with no bunkers the whole where tiger made birdie twice this past year year when he won the master's tournament he is a defending champion we go into it in 2020 where tiger woods made birdie from like the left trees where that security guard almost killed him think about that green it's like a huge false front and then you see t or you see approach shots in that green you watch the master like the pin will be on the left and and someone will land one sort of like what looks like it's going to be on that tier and then it just starts to catch a ridge and it rolls away and

the camera pans and you have to be thinking in your head like okay this camera has to pan to like the end of the green pretty soon but it just doesn't because the green is so massive and it collects and then funnels into another area that's what a lot of these greens were like which was super fun to play the greens were awesome again they had kind of the bones of an alister mackenzie course which was great to see but also it had the the very clear evidence of like, oh, it's been 100 years. Things have changed a little bit. Regardless.

Awesome experience. Those guys were super cool to play with. I can't imagine it was going through their head after my first T shot because the only thing was going in my head was like, wait, I have to hit again now. Like that went out of bounds. So I'm still, like my situation hasn't improved. Like usually there's a little bit of a relief, right? You hit that first T shot after you're nervous or after you're clearly in a position

you don't want to be in and you're thinking like, how the hell am I going to get this in play? Well, I didn't get it in play. I actually was just still in the same situation, except I had just hit a worse T-shot than even I thought I was going to hit. And so I can't imagine it was going through their brains at the time. But Keevan, Brett, Johnny, Alex. We had an awesome time, phenomenal time. And we won.

We won. I believe it was one-up at the end of the day. So that feels great. Then I drive about two hours north. Up to Mangawai. I think it was Mangawai Beach area of New Zealand. You get a little bed and breakfast. I go out on the beach, fly the drone, get some cool shots.

The North Island of New Zealand is where I'm at at this point. And the North Island of New Zealand, it's gorgeous. It's spectacular. It's unlike anything you ever seen before. It kind of gives you a little New Zealand vibe. But the South Island is apparently the place to be. The South Island apparently blows the North Island out of the water. The South Island is where they filmed, you know, Frodo fucking running around with the ring,

trying not to get caught by the bad guys, the order, all that stuff. that all when you really think of New Zealand you're really thinking of that kind of stuff I think that's all South Island Queensland's supposed to be gorgeous so I'll probably go back and see some of that stuff we are on the North Island we're on like the North Eastern Coast we're making our way up the north eastern coast of New Zealand and we stopped this lovely bed and breakfast going to town I go into Mangua you know it's kind of weird when you're by yourself

you know you don't look like too much of an alcoholic but you want to drink you want to have a beer or two I don't usually drink alone but in this situation it feels like you should So I kind of go in. Everybody knows you're American, apparently, so it feels like you're walking around the fucking sign on your back. But I walk in, have a nice beer, a little dinner, go to bed, wake up. Next day is maybe the full day that I was the most excited about on this entire little kind of Riggs does his own trip.

And that's because Tireidi. Tereidi is Terriety. Terry Edy. I keep trying to say these things correctly. Actually, I'd never heard really anybody say Terry Ead out loud until I pulled up to the gate at Terriety and the guy's just like, welcome to Terriety. And I'd been saying like, Tara Iti the whole time

because it's spelled two different words, like a big block out of American, Tara Ety. But the guy's just like, welcome to Terriety. And so I'm going to try to say it like that the whole time. But Terry E. Everybody who does not know is, again, a relatively new place, a couple years old,

and it's really kind of skyrocketed in terms of the praise, the press, the rankings that it gets as a worldwide golf course. or as one of the courses, you know, in the world as its place as one of the great new courses ever built. And outside of that, it's got a very, it's incredibly exclusive. And most places out of New Zealand aren't. They're not like that crazy, expensive to join. And Terry, he is.

It's like the who's who of New Zealand and America and China and Europe. up are members at this place, at Terry. Another good way I heard it described, I think somebody said this to Matt Walsh, who I'll get into, but I believe he told me this, maybe that, maybe I just made that up. But somebody described it as, and Terry E has one course now, they're building two more, and the two new courses are going to be public, and they're building them, you know, right next door. I believe Tom Doak's doing one, and Core Crenshaw doing one, Tom Doak did Territi, the one

that already exists. And somebody described it as, I think it was a member who described it as, Terry, the current course, is our Cyprus. And the other courses that they built here are going to be our pebble beaches and our spyglass hills. And the point being that, you know, this is, this little stretch of land up on this northeastern coast of New Zealand is, in their mind, going to become one of the great stretches one of the great pieces of land of golf in the world.

And, you know, you have the Hamptons, Long Island, with Shinnock National Golf Links, Friars Head. You don't have to go far and you've got Bethpage Black. And like that golf out there is considered one of the great stretches of golf in the world. Monterey Peninsula with Pebble, with Cyprus, with Spyglass, with the Monterey Peninsula Country Club courses. There's, I'm sure some I'm not even thinking of missing right now. Scotland, you think of the St. Andrews area. There's Karnustis within 45 minutes of that. The old course, Kings, Barnes.

You don't have to drive far and you can get amazing golf. Edinburgh, you go down in North Barric and all that's only an hour and a half or so away. These are some of the great stretches, the Sandbell. We were just at, the Melbourne, you know, Australian sandbell. And they're thinking of kind of this stretch where Teredi is. It's like one of the new great stretches. the world for golf. It's very easy to see why. Of course, it's phenomenal. It has that type of, you know, there's certain places you go where the hospitality, the service, the amenities

are all so next level that you're just, it's like you're, you, once you arrive and they open that door, the car door for you and you hop out. It's like you don't step on ground, you step on a cloud. And you just, you just walk around floating around on clouds. the whole fucking day. And that's kind of what it feels like. Everybody, everybody that's in there, they're so friendly.

They take care of you. They got like a, a very young, sort of excited staff that takes care of you. The amenities are off the charts. Everything you could possibly need. Great showers, great stalls.

We got to go to a bathroom, which I did. And then you get out, and the golf course has ocean views the entire time, these islands in the background that are clearly you're in fucking New Zealand. You can just tell.

We don't have island. like that in America that are like these mountainous type islands that are in the background. The golf course is a Tom Doak design, and it plays like that. I mean, it plays pretty lynxy. He's got the wild greens with the huge bowls where the ball funnels into different places, really fun, a couple short par fours, and then it's got really dramatic par three's coming in, again, with the ocean in the background, and the ocean's pretty much there the entire time. So Terry E.D. was everything that I thought it would be.

the reason I was able to get on there, in this case, this instance, was Matt Walsh. Anybody doesn't know Matt Walsh played in the NBA, played for the Miami Heat for a hot second, played professional basketball over in Europe for a long time, and then recently, last couple of years, bought the New Zealand Breakers, which is Auckland's professional basketball team. They play against all the Australian teams, and he bought the team, moved to New Zealand and runs the team. That's what he does.

Great guy. He's done some stuff with Barcelona Sports before. I'm sure you've seen it. And I'd chat with him a few times. He got really into golf in the last handful, 10 years, whatever it is. And so he was like, yeah, if you ever come to New Zealand, I could set up Terry Edy. I'm coming to New Zealand, Matt. Let's play.

We did. Really, really good dude. He set us up with this guy, Paul, who Paul's the member. And Paul brought in a fourth, his friend Gary, who's also a member, who actually lives up in San Francisco. So we had the two members, Paul and Gary against myself and Matt Walsh. nicest guys incredibly successful smart guys talked about all kinds of different things

from the breakers to the world we're going to solve all the world's problems we're going to solve all the issues to the golf course to the future of Terriety to the house that Paul's building on the golf course if you do build a house on the golf course it has to meet these certain guidelines where it basically has to blend it can't like stick out as a house

a lot of people like to build a big ass house that sticks out is like yep, that's my house, motherfuckers. Nope, not a Terry E. Cannot do that. And all of these really cool, specific and unique aspects to the property and to ultimately this entire kind of region of Terry E.D. Golf that they're going to build.

And so we were able to get a bunch of that straight from Paul and Gary themselves, who like I said, are members and know all about it. Their families were there. We got lunch with their wives and their families afterwards, and they were incredibly excited and nice to be. The people in New Zealand are just so friendly. It's kind of crazy.

And it's not a culture shock. That's another thing. I've been telling a lot of people, when you go to New Zealand or you go to Australia, the biggest surprise to me was how little of a culture shock it was. Everybody speaks English. Everybody listens to the same music. Everybody gets pretty much the same cultural references. They see the same movies. They love the same type of sarcasm, the same kind of humor.

You crack a little joke. They get it. It's not like over their heads. What they say typically isn't too much over your head. and they speak English. That's huge. The only thing that's not easy or the same is you drive on the other side of the fucking route.

That's the only thing that's different. And your steering wheel instead of being on the left is on the right. Outside of that, not that big of a culture shock. It's like you're kind of in the Midwest of the United States. That's really what it feels like. People speak a little bit differently and they're very nice. And that's pretty much it, except New Zealand is surrounded by ocean and cliffs and mountains and the Midwest is not.

So, anywho. great lunch afterwards met a couple other members as well they come up all their families were in for for christmas everybody's just very happy go lucky to be there and we got to learn a lot about the place we move on matt decided actually to hop in with me we drive up to pretty much the very northern point of the north island of new zealand and we go up that way we stay in this little town called like pia piai something like that uh new zealand not a whole lot going on there we get our a nice little meal. They have a couple of drinks.

We watch the New Zewin Breakers. We have two glasses, actually, of Chardonnay while we're watching the breakers at the bar. Kind of a weird move. But Matt led with that. I wasn't going to change. I was like, yeah, I love white wine drinking Chardonnay. Breakers win on like the last second shot. So he's like, we got to do shots.

So we do shots, have a couple more drinks, go to bed. The reason I tell you that part is because ever since then, he just texted me last night. He goes, hey, I've been doing the same drinking routine for every game since we had that moment last week. And the breakers haven't lost. They just keep winning. So he does like two glasses of Chardonnay, and then when they win, he does a shot, and it's all to, he's superstitious clearly.

And we started a little trend, so congratulations to us. Anywho, wake up, we drive about 40 minutes more north up to Carrey cliffs. Carly cliffs built by an American, same guy who built, I believe, Cape Kidnappers. Carly cliffs, again, way up on the north-eastern tip of the coast of the North Island of New Zealand. probably the most, you know, draw-jopping, jaw-dropping, jaw-dropping views of any golf course I've ever seen. It looks so New Zealand you can't believe it. There's like a pod of islands out there on one side. The other side, there's a driving range where you hit out, and all you can see is like, you know,

what feels like hundreds of miles of, like, coastline and mountainous New Zealand terrain. So you're hitting what feels like you're at like a pedal beach on steroids. That's like the driving range. Very cool course. I'd say a course that most people would be like, yeah, if I could just play that course once, I will have said that I accomplished everything I want to accomplish in golf. Magnificent place, spectacular. Like I said, the views you would not believe.

You get your camera out the whole time. You take all the photos. You put them up on the Instagram. You got to get them in because the place is so gorgeous. It is. The golf course, like it says, built by an American. So it was one of the few instances on the entire trip where we were playing a very American course. Very green, very luscious.

If you miss the green, you got to get your 60-degree wedge out and kind of, you know, pitch one out of the rough. So the course was architecturally, felt like a very American course, just kind of placed on this northern tip of New Zealand. Phenomenal amenities, again, there's like this big old lodge up there, I guess, that's a bigger destination draw, even than the golf course. They said if we'll have 40 or 50 people at dinner tonight, only like eight of them will have played the golf course because people go up there to stay. So it's beyond just the golf course. It's a huge destination with folks to go up there and just see the views. So you can imagine if you're there just for the views and just for like a helicopter ride or just to go hiking because the views are so magnificent. Imagine what it's like playing golf on that.

So really cool experience of play with Corey, who works at the bar up there. Corey, I met at Cabot Links this past September. He is from, I believe, a couple hours away from Cabot and met him at the bar up there. He winters by working in New Zealand. That's just where he decided to go. I think that he said this is his first time there. So he was able to play with us. The three of us went out.

We had a bunch of drinks, played a bunch of golf, and really enjoyed everything that is Kari Cliffs, K-A-U-R-I. So you can go look that up if you would like. Check it out. The views are magnificent. And that was the end of my New Zealand trip. After that, we drove over to this little airport. I can't remember exactly what it's called.

Took about a 30-minute flight down to Auckland. I hopped a 14-and-a-half-hour flight from Auckland to Chicago with no internet, which is not ideal. I watched four movies. Four movies, Toy Story 4, yesterday. Goodfellas and Bohemian Rhapsody. Loved all of them. No joke.

Every movie I saw was great. I was a big fan. Now, I will say I'm typically a little bit more. more emotional on planes, like I've said before, cried five times during crazy rich Asians. And I got a little emotional during yesterday at the end of the movie. Got a little emotional at the end of yesterday, which is kind of any, I don't want to give the whole thing away. But regardless, that's my trip.

I thought I would talk for maybe 45 minutes. It's been like an hour and a half. So I hope you enjoyed it. I hope it wasn't weird that you're just sitting there listening to me, just talk to you. Happy New Year. We will be back on Thursday. Hit it hard.