The Joys of Golf, No Matter the Weather or the President

http://asideofbooks.com/author/ijkahn/

far A few years ago, a Google app on my phone offered to navigate me to “work.” I didn’t know what to make of that, because my office is in my house, so I clicked the tab and discovered that Google had deduced, based on how I spend my time during a typical week, that I must work at 10 Golf Course Road—the address of my golf club. Google must also think I get laid off every winter, because between early December and early April I hardly ever go to the club. I live up in the hills in western Connecticut, a hundred miles north of New York, and our course almost always shuts down within a week or two of Thanksgiving.

You can read the rest on the website  of The New Yorker, right here.

Let’s Check In With President Trump

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I missed the first episode of Donald Trump’s awesome new reality-TV show, on Thursday night, because I was playing bridge with my old-lady friends. I thought I was recording it but when I played it back the next morning I discovered that what I’d actually recorded was a cheap knock-off show starring Rick Perry and Carly Fiorina. Oh, well. I’ve got a pretty good idea what it was like, because Trump and I talked on the phone in June. He was just No. 2 in the polls then, and when I asked him if there was any presidential-type announcement he wanted to make he said, “Yeah, I’ll give it to you.”

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Then we went back to talking about golf. I had called him because three friends and I had just played Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point, in the Bronx—a brand-new golf course, which is owned by New York City but managed by Trump on a 20-year-lease. I was pissed because golf carts are allowed but pushcarts aren’t. That’s the only bad thing I have to say about the course, though. (You can read more about all that in my column in the September issue of Golf Digest.)

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I assume that one of the first acts of the Donald Trump/Rosie O’Donnell administration will be to nationalize the U.S.G.A. and the P.G.A. of America, and schedule all future American major championships on courses that Trump owns or operates. Maybe the U.S. Open will be held at Trump’s club in West Palm Beach, which is just across the Intracoastal Waterway from Palm Beach, which Trump described to me once as “the richest place anywhere on the planet, in terms of, you know, wealth.” Whether or not that happens, Ferry Point is worth a field trip. And if you have a late flight out of LaGuardia, perhaps while fleeing the country following Trump’s election, you can stop on your way to the airport.

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I played with Tony, Hacker (real name), and Gary, our terrific superintendent, and the four of us walked and carried, after dumping a lot of extra stuff in our cars. The photo above is of the guys who were playing just ahead of us. Four guys playing with two caddies are even slower than four guys riding in two golf carts, so I had plenty of time to take pictures. The course is a worthy tribute to Scottish and Irish links golf, and although it’s expensive it’s not overpriced for what it is. Here’s Tony in the native Bronx fescue:

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And here are Gary and Hacker:

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The views alone are worth the green fees. Here’s the Brooklyn-Manhattan skyline:

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And the cemetery where Charles Lindbergh dropped off ransom money for his kidnapped kid, to no avail:

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And the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge, which looks like it connects Queens to the eighteenth fairway:

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We’re going back, just as soon as we’ve slipped enough hundred-dollar bills out of our wives’ purses.P1150951