ABOUT
Weekend Golf Getaways is not your average golf blog
Background
I grew up in Buffalo wanting to be a writer and a professor. After attending Cornell and earning a PhD at the University of Virginia, I chased the academic job market through a series of short-term university teaching posts, including a two-year stretch teaching U.S. History in Durban, South Africa, just after Nelson Mandela was elected.
When I returned home to Charlottesville, my history book The New Niagara: Tourism, Technology & the Landscape of Niagara Falls was published — but academic prospects were limited. Around that time, a friend brought me into a small insider golf-travel publication that would eventually become GOLF ODYSSEY.
I began by helping with a guidebook and, as a thank-you, was given the chance to write a story on Williamsburg, Virginia. That assignment opened the door. Before long I became the publication’s primary writer and later its managing editor. I remained full-time through several ownership changes and ultimately worked for Golf Channel when it acquired GOLF ODYSSEY.
The GOLF ODYSSEY Years
GOLF ODYSSEY was a niche print and digital publication, The Insider's Guide to the Best in Golf Travel, that in its later years became Golf Channel's most exclusive golf travel outlet. I served as its managing editor and wrote the majority of its destination features, shaping the publication's voice across nearly two decades of ownership changes and editorial evolution.
Two figures shaped those years more than any others, and both are sadly no longer with us. James Finegan, one of golf's most gifted storytellers, contributed regularly to GOLF ODYSSEY, and I had the privilege of editing his pieces on the UK and Ireland. David Baum, GOLF ODYSSEY's longest-serving owner and Editor-in-Chief, brought a perspective and energy that propelled the publication forward through many chapters of its evolution. Engaging closely with both gave me something that years of travel alone couldn't: a deeper understanding of how to tell the story of a place.
Experience and Perspective
By the time my GOLF ODYSSEY years were done, I had visited roughly 150 destinations and played more than 750 golf courses — across the full spectrum of golf travel, from understated public facilities to the finest destination resorts in North America and beyond. Experiencing that range firsthand taught me what details truly matter to traveling golfers and what separates memorable trips from merely pleasant ones.
For most of those years, I traveled anonymously — experiencing resorts exactly as a reader would, without special treatment or curated itineraries. Even when travel was hosted, the goal remained the same: to understand what truly defines a trip beyond the planned experience. That discipline shaped not only what I wrote but how I learned to see a place.
My role at Golf Channel ended shortly before the pandemic, after which I stepped away from regular golf travel writing for a time. In recent years I contributed articles to GolfPass and GolfNow, including equipment pieces, golf history and culture features, and destination-related coverage that kept me closely engaged with the evolving golf landscape and how travelers plan trips today.
Weekend Golf Getaways
Weekend Golf Getaways represents a return to long-form golf travel writing, created independently and at a more deliberate pace.
All destinations featured here draw on firsthand experience from my GOLF ODYSSEY years, supplemented with ongoing research and updated context to reflect how these trips are experienced today, even as destinations evolve over time. My goal isn't simply to describe golf courses. It's to help readers understand the full character of a destination — the setting, the atmosphere, the dining, the history and backstory that give a place its identity, the texture of the surrounding area — and whether it's right for them.
What has driven me throughout all of this is simple: curiosity. I enjoy digging beneath the surface of a place, wandering surrounding towns, exploring museums and natural areas, trying local restaurants, and noticing the small details that give a destination its character both on and off the golf course. That same curiosity continues to guide my writing today.