Where were my golf hole pictures taken?

I decided to use a different golf course photo for my subscription service than the one I use on Twitter. I took the above photo in 1981 at the par-3 third hole of the Ocean Nine on the Princeville Makai golf course. It’s on the north shore of the ultra-green island of Kauai on Hanalei Bay.

Dan Jenkins wrote a rave about Robert Trent Jones’ new course in Sports Illustrated in 1972. So I finally got to play my Substack hole nine years later.

My boyish dreams did not come true: I lost all ten golf balls I hit … into the lake, the overgrown hillside, and the jungle barranca beyond the green. My father had given up golf so he was just driving the cart for me. I talked him into hitting one ball on #3. He stuck it ten feet from the hole and then wisely refused all my entreaties to hit another shot.

My Twitter/X avatar is of the steep uphill 18th hole at Alister MacKenzie’s Cypress Point on California’s Monterey Peninsula, next door to Pebble Beach. The 18th is widely considered the worst hole at Cypress Point. The three previous holes play across the Pacific Ocean, and might be the peak of world golf.

But I like the look of 18’s grass.

I’ve never played Cypress Point — you pretty much have to be a GOP Secretary of State, like George Schultz or Condi Rice, or a GOP Secretary of Defense, like Caspar Weinberger, to be invited to join the club. Bob Hope said a successful membership drive at Cypress Point is when they drive out 40 members.

But I did sneak onto Cypress at age 15.