Golf Trips
Every group has one guy who does all the work. He books the tee times, collects the money, and spends the first morning on the phone instead of the first tee.
This year, let it be somebody else.
Sequencing is the whole thing
A golf trip isn’t a list of courses. It’s an order, and the order is what separates a great week from an exhausting one.
Which course on the day you land, when everyone’s stiff and short on sleep. Which one you save for the last morning. How far the drives are between them, and whether that drive happens before or after eighteen holes in wind. Whether the tee times leave room for lunch, or whether you’re eating a sandwich in the car for six days.
Get it right and nobody notices, which is the point. Get it wrong and the trip is a logistics exercise with some golf in it.
The things that get missed
The weather day
One day of your trip will be worse than the forecast promised. The plan for it should exist before you leave, not be invented at breakfast — a later tee time, an indoor alternative, a round somewhere more sheltered.
Caddies and carts
Some courses are walking-only. Some expect caddies and some require them. Caddie fees and gratuities are usually cash, usually per round, and almost never in the number somebody quoted the group at the start.
Getting the clubs there
Fly with them, ship them, or rent at the course. Each one is right in different circumstances, and the wrong choice is discovered at an airport carousel.
The pairings
Sixteen golfers means four groups, and who plays with whom on which day is not a neutral question. We’ll happily build the pairing sheet and the format so nobody has to do it over drinks the night before.
The range of abilities
Every group has a scratch player and someone who plays four times a year. Course selection, tee boxes and format decide whether that’s fine or whether one of them has a miserable week.
The people who aren’t playing
Plenty of golf trips include spouses and partners who have no intention of playing thirty-six holes. They should have a better week than sitting in the room, and that takes planning too.
Where these go
Ireland and Scotland
The trip most groups build toward. Southwest Ireland, the Ayrshire coast, the East Lothian stretch outside Edinburgh — each is a different week, and the choice depends more on your group than on the rankings. Book early. The good tee times on the famous courses are gone a year out.
The American sandbelts
The Oregon coast, the Nebraska sandhills, central Florida, the Carolina sandhills. Walking golf on remarkable ground, several courses within a shuttle ride, and no passports. Often the better first big trip for a group that hasn’t traveled together before.
Northern Michigan
Underrated, and the best value in American golf for a summer week. Dramatic courses within short drives of each other, long daylight in July, and lodging that suits a group of twelve without anyone remortgaging.
Warm weather in February
Arizona, coastal Mexico, the Caribbean. Less about the golf being unmissable and more about it being seventy-five degrees while home is not.
Not only buddies trips
Member-guest weekends. A milestone birthday where the gift is the trip. Fathers and sons, or mothers and daughters, playing somewhere neither will forget. Company golf where half the value is the four hours in a cart with a client.
And the trip a group has taken every year for a decade, where the only thing that needs to change is who has to organize it.
Tell us who’s playing.
How many, roughly when, and whether you’ve got somewhere in mind. We’ll take it from there.
ʻOhana Getaways 