A Year in Golf: Cypress Point, Bandon, Pebble Beach & More | RADMOR

A Year in Golf

There are years when you play a lot of golf, and then there are years when golf seems to take you places.

2024 was one of those years.

Bob and I have been playing this game together for more than 30 years, going back to our days as teammates at the University of Washington. Back then, golf was mostly about competition. We practiced to get better, played to win, and measured progress one shot at a time.

We’ve played competitively. Bob went on to play professionally. We’ve played rounds where every shot mattered and plenty more where absolutely nothing was on the line.

Somewhere along the way, our relationship with the game changed.

The score still matters more than either of us would probably like to admit, but these days some of our favorite memories have less to do with what we shot and more to do with everything surrounding the round. The anticipation the night before. The drive to the course. Seeing a fairway for the first time that you’ve spent years hoping to play. The people you meet. The friends who join you. The beer afterward. And the stories that somehow get a little better every time you tell them.

In 2024, golf took us from the forests of the Pacific Northwest to the Monterey Peninsula, across the dunes of the Oregon coast, into the California desert, through the lava fields of Hawaii, up into the mountains of Idaho and eventually back home again.

Somewhere along the way, we realized we were having one of the great golf years of our lives.

THE 2024 SCORECARD

Low Round: 67, Monterey Peninsula Country Club, Bob Conrad
Low Nine: 31, Wing Point and MPCC
Fastest Round: 2 hours, 50 minutes, Wing Point
Slowest Round: 6 hours, 10 minutes, Chambers Bay
Favorites: Cypress Point, MPCC, Kukio and BIGHORN
Would We Play Them Again Tomorrow? Take your pick. They’re all amazing.

HOME (Washington)

A lot of our golf still begins in Washington, which feels appropriate.

This is where Bob and I met. It’s where we played college golf. It’s where, decades later, RADMOR began. The courses here are connected to different chapters of our lives, and returning to them has a way of collapsing time.

Wing Point is my home course on Bainbridge Island. It isn’t long by modern standards, which is precisely what makes it interesting. There are a couple nearly drivable par 4s, small greens, tight lies and just enough temptation to convince you that you should be making birdies everywhere.

Then you don’t.

The greens are among the best in Washington, and the course rewards imagination more than brute force. I managed a 31 there for one of my low nines of the year, a fact I intend to mention whenever the opportunity presents itself. 

Broadmoor holds a different kind of significance.

Bob and I probably played a thousand rounds there during our years at Washington. Maybe more. Sitting less than a mile from campus, it became an extension of college life for us, a place where countless hours were spent practicing, competing, talking and probably avoiding whatever else we were supposed to be doing.

Returning all these years later is strange in the best possible way.

Golf courses hold memories differently than almost anything else. You stand on a tee and suddenly remember a match from 30 years ago, a shot you haven’t thought about in decades, a teammate, a conversation, or simply a younger version of yourself standing in exactly the same place.

That’s Broadmoor for us.

Aldarra came later, but it has become equally special. Built on the former Boeing family farm and designed by Tom Fazio, it feels like a golf club created almost entirely around the idea of golf itself. There is no unnecessary theater, just an exceptional course, a great walk and one of the strongest tests in the Northwest. As the home course of the University of Washington men’s golf program, it also connects our past with the generations of Huskies who came after us.

Then there’s Sahalee.

Sahalee asks a fairly simple question: Can you hit it straight?

If you can, it asks you to do it again.

And again.

The corridors through the Douglas firs are among the most recognizable in Northwest golf, and there is something wonderfully severe about the place. We were fortunate to shoot RADMOR’s Fall 2024 campaign there, which gave us the chance to experience the course differently, not simply as golfers but through a camera.

Few places look or feel more like the Pacific Northwest.

And then, of course, there is Chambers Bay.

Our round there lasted six hours and ten minutes, easily our longest of the year, and somehow we still love the place.

Chambers is enormous, exposed and unapologetically different from almost everything else in Washington. The train runs alongside it, the wind can completely change it, and the ground often has more influence over your ball than you do.

Your mood may also change several times before reaching 18.

It hosted the 2015 U.S. Open, but its championship pedigree isn’t what makes Chambers interesting to us. It’s the fact that you rarely seem to play the same golf course twice. The conditions change, the decisions change, and bad shots inevitably happen.

What you do next is usually the more interesting part.

MONTEREY

There are golf destinations, and then there is the Monterey Peninsula.

Few places in the world concentrate this much extraordinary golf, history and natural beauty into such a small piece of land. I’ve been fortunate to play golf there since I was a teenager, and somehow returning never feels routine.

This trip began with a course both Bob and I had spent most of our lives hoping we might someday have the opportunity to play.

Cypress Point.

Our great friend Ben Garner made that call possible.

Thank you, BGarnes.

What can you really say about Cypress that hasn’t already been said?

Not much.

It is every bit as beautiful as you imagine, and perhaps even more so because of how naturally the course reveals itself. Alister MacKenzie’s routing moves through forest, dunes and coastline before eventually arriving at one of the most famous stretches in golf.

Then you reach the 16th.

At some point, you stop thinking about architecture, rankings and bucket lists. You stop trying to contextualize where you are.

You just stand there and look.

Some places live up to expectations.

Cypress somehow exceeds them.

The funny thing about golf, though, is what can happen a few hours later.

Bob, our resident in-house plus-two, didn’t exactly have his best stuff at Cypress that morning and managed to shoot 81.

Then we went to Monterey Peninsula Country Club.

He shot 67 from the tips on the Shore Course.

Of course he did.

That’s Bob.

Did I mention the 31 on the front?

The Shore Course is one of those rare places where the golf and the setting feel completely inseparable. The Pacific is constantly present, but it never feels like beautiful scenery with a golf course attached. The course itself is too good for that.

It is simply a wonderful place to play golf.

And apparently an even better place to shoot 67.

Way to go, BobRad.

Spyglass Hill has a different kind of history for me. I’ve had the great fortune of playing there almost every year since I was 14, and after all that time, it remains one of my favorite courses anywhere.

The opening holes get most of the photographs, understandably, as they tumble through dunes toward the Pacific. But then Spyglass disappears into the Del Monte Forest and becomes something entirely different.

It is difficult, beautiful and occasionally brutal.

Exactly the kind of golf course we tend to love.

Pacific Grove sits at almost the opposite end of the spectrum, which is part of what makes it so special.

One of the things we love most about golf is that an unforgettable day doesn’t require an impossible tee time or a famous name on the gate.

We shot our Spring/Summer 2024 campaign at Pacific Grove. The front nine works its way through the trees, then you cross into the back and suddenly the Monterey coastline opens in front of you.

It is municipal golf in one of the most extraordinary golf destinations in the world.

Accessible. Unpretentious. Beautiful.

Golf needs more places like it.

Thank you to Pacific Grove and everyone who keeps that place so special.

And then there was The Hay.

We played it as a sixsome, which probably tells you everything you need to know.

Nine par 3s, good friends, a few drinks, very little concern about score and an unreasonable amount of fun.

Sometimes golf really doesn’t need to be any more complicated than that.

BANDON

If Monterey feels like golf history refined over generations, Bandon feels like the game stripped back to its essentials.

Wind, ground, weather, walking, decisions and the Pacific Ocean constantly reminding you that it doesn’t particularly care what you shoot.

Bandon Dunes still feels astonishingly natural. David McLay Kidd created something that looks less designed than discovered, with wide fairways that appear generous until the wind starts removing the options you thought you had.

Then you come back the next day and the wind changes.

Suddenly it’s a different golf course.

That is part of Bandon’s magic.

Pacific Dunes feels different again. More dramatic, more eccentric and more likely to leave you standing somewhere wondering exactly what Tom Doak expects you to do next.

That uncertainty is part of the fun.

The course moves through dunes and along cliffs with an effortless quality that disguises how sophisticated the architecture really is. It is one of those places you continue playing in your head long after you’ve left.

Bandon Trails takes you away from the ocean, which initially sounds like a compromise at a place famous for ocean golf.

It isn’t.

Coore and Crenshaw lead you through dunes, meadows and forest, creating an experience completely different from the courses along the coast. There is a quietness to Trails that makes it one of the great surprises of the resort.

Then there’s Old Macdonald, where golf architecture becomes a conversation across generations.

Everything feels bigger.

The fairways. The greens. The wind. The decisions.

The course borrows ideas that have influenced golf architecture for more than a century and gives you room to figure them out for yourself.

You make a plan.

Then the wind changes.

You make another one.

That’s golf.

THE DESERT

Desert golf has never been particularly subtle.

That’s part of its appeal.

Mountains and rock frame impossibly green corridors in landscapes that seem completely unsuited to growing grass, yet somehow the contrast works.

BIGHORN was one of our favorite stops of the year.

Both the Canyon and Mountains courses are extraordinary, with dramatic elevation changes, immaculate conditions and views that occasionally make concentrating on golf difficult.

But one of our favorite memories there didn’t happen on the course at all.

The Vault.

If your host offers to take you, go.

The collection of cars is extraordinary, and it’s one of those unexpected experiences that reminds you that some golf trips become memorable because of everything that happens around the golf.

TPC Scottsdale’s Champions Course offered something different. Living somewhat in the shadow of the Stadium Course may actually be part of its charm. It’s relaxed and playable, but still asks enough questions to keep you interested, with the McDowell Mountains and Sonoran Desert providing a backdrop that makes it impossible to forget where you are.

HAWAII

And then there’s Kukio.

Some places make you wonder whether you’re actually there to play golf or whether golf is simply the excuse that got you there.

Kukio is one of them.

The Tom Fazio course moves through black lava with the Pacific almost constantly in view. Everything about the place feels considered, from the course and landscape to the clubhouse and, yes, the lunch.

Definitely the lunch.

If you are fortunate enough to be invited, say yes.

Then take your time.

Some rounds should not be rushed.

INTO THE MOUNTAINS

Sun Valley gave us another version of the game entirely.

Trail Creek and Elkhorn trade ocean air and desert heat for elevation, mountain views, fast greens and that particular clarity of air you only seem to find at altitude.

Golf has an incredible ability to belong almost anywhere.

At elevation, the ball behaves differently. You start recalculating distances and convincing yourself you’ve suddenly gained 20 yards.

And every once in a while, you stop pretending you’re reading the green and simply look at the mountains.

That’s allowed.

THE COURSES IN BETWEEN

One of the best reminders of 2024 was that not every memorable round happened somewhere famous.

We also played Washington National, Tacoma Country & Golf Club, Seattle Golf Club, Interbay and Soboba Springs. Some were courses we knew well. Some brought us back to our college days. Others were simply rounds squeezed into an afternoon because we had a few hours and golf sounded better than whatever else we were supposed to be doing.

Interbay might be the perfect example.

Nine holes in the middle of Seattle with our friend Dylan Diether. City views in one direction, mountains in another, a cold beer afterward and Pioneer Square ten minutes away.

Nobody is putting Interbay on a ranking next to Cypress Point.

That isn’t the point.

In our book, a great day in golf has never required a world ranking.

WHAT A YEAR

Looking back, the thing I remember most isn’t Bob’s 67.

Although Bob will probably disagree.

It isn’t Cypress Point, Bandon, Hawaii or any single course.

It’s the accumulation of all of it.

The flights and drives. The early alarms and late dinners. The anticipation of arriving somewhere you’ve never played before. The people who invited us. The friends who joined us. The unexpected conversations and the places golf gave us a reason to visit.

And, perhaps more than anything, the hours spent walking together between shots.

Bob and I first met because of this game more than 30 years ago.

Back then, golf was about competition. Qualifying. Getting better. Trying to prove something.

Some of that never leaves you.

We still keep score.

We still want to beat each other.

We still care more than we probably should about a three-foot putt.

But somewhere along the way, golf became something else too.

It became a reason to travel and a reason to come home. A way to reconnect with old friends and make new ones. A reason to call someone you haven’t seen in a while and say, “We should play.”

It gives us an excuse to spend four or five hours walking somewhere beautiful with nowhere else we need to be.

We know how fortunate we are to have played the courses we played in 2024.

Very fortunate.

Cypress Point is a place we may remember for the rest of our lives. So are Bandon, MPCC, Kukio, BIGHORN and so many others.

But if this year reminded us of anything, it’s that the magic of golf has surprisingly little to do with how exclusive, famous or highly ranked a course might be.

Cypress Point can give you a day you’ll never forget.

So can nine holes at your local muni with the right people.

Maybe that’s why, after all these years, we still love this game as much as we do.

There is always another course to discover, another trip to plan, another friend to call and another first tee waiting somewhere ahead.

And if you’re lucky, there are people in your life who have been walking those fairways beside you for decades.

That might be the best part of all.

Here’s to wherever the game takes us next.

Scott & Bob
RADMOR