Timeless Tracks
Courses & Travel

Timeless Tracks Episode 3: Performance

Only very difficult, multi-faceted golf-courses can host major championships, and the two designs featured here require great skill. Our experts discuss the magnetic draw of these layouts and golfers' quests to come back again and again to conquer them.
Presented by Porsche

Released on 8/3/2015

Credits

Starring: Matt Ginella, Chris Millard, Larry Lambrecht, and Stina Sternberg
Director: Cathryne Czubek
Producer: Gigi Dement
Director of Photography: Tony Burns

Transcript

00:00
(peaceful music)
00:03
[Male] A timeless track, it's about a legacy.
00:06
It's something that is built to be everlasting.
00:09
It's this special experience.
00:11
[Female] Bethpage Black and Kiawah Islands Ocean Course
00:14
really demand that you bring your best performance.
00:20
The Ocean Course at Kiawah, host of major championships
00:24
and Ryder Cups, is the hardest golf course in America,
00:27
and that's when the wind isn't blowing.
00:28
It starts hard, and then it gets harder.
00:31
A lot of people like to go out there and say,
00:34
I shot this on Kiawah's Ocean Course.
00:36
What'd you shoot?
00:38
And you start comparing notes.
00:39
That little layer of masochism lives in all of us.
00:42
Some of the best, timeless tracks in golf really,
00:45
truly challenge every part of your game, but you love it,
00:49
and it's part of what makes these courses so great.
00:52
I don't know if you'll find a prettier place
00:54
where you virtually see the Atlantic Ocean from every hole.
00:58
Pete Dye is one of the most innovative,
01:00
diabolical designers that ever lived.
01:02
He really changed the game.
01:04
If a middle handicap player were to come to me
01:06
and ask me about the Ocean Course,
01:07
I would say really what you're gonna get
01:09
is a piece of golf history.
01:11
Regardless, whether you're a scratch player or a 22,
01:14
you're gonna end up playing where Bernhard Langer
01:16
ended up losing the Ryder Cup.
01:17
You're gonna play on a golf course
01:18
that brought Mark Calcavecchia to tears.
01:21
There's not many places you can go
01:23
as an average, everyday golfer and get that experience,
01:25
and Kiawah's one of them.
01:29
[Matt] Bethpage black, it's the lead sled dog
01:32
for municipal golf in America.
01:34
I grew up in the New York area,
01:36
and Bethpage was always sort of the worse-kept secret
01:39
among passionate golfers.
01:41
You've heard the stories where people sleep in their cars,
01:43
camp out overnight, and it's all true.
01:45
It had that kind of a hold on the New York golfing scene,
01:49
until David Fay had the master stroke
01:51
of bringing the US Open there,
01:52
and introduced it to the whole world.
01:54
When the first US Open was held at Bethpage,
01:57
I stayed in a tent 'cause I was photographing it.
01:59
I was fortunate enough to play the next morning
02:02
after the tournament.
02:04
When I first stepped onto the tee, my knees were buckled.
02:07
I had watched it all week, I had watched it evolve
02:09
into its championship form.
02:11
It's one of those things I'll just never forget in golf.
02:14
There's a warning sign on the first tee.
02:16
Warning, the black course is an extremely difficult course,
02:20
and yet not highly skilled golfers march to the 18th green
02:25
battered and bruised.
02:26
Their egos in the bottom of their bag.
02:28
Are we golfers just gluttons for punishment?
02:32
No.
02:32
We do enjoy a challenge.
02:34
And Bethpage Black has that lore
02:37
that makes you want to come back to conquer it.
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