10 things I learned about golf in America on a cross-country road trip

Thirty-five years ago, the legendary football writer Peter King joined the mythical football coach John Madden on a bus ride across America.

The story pitch was simple — a glimpse into the country through the eyes of its foremost narrator — but the effect was stirring. For all of Madden’s skill in diagnosing the blitz and admiring a well-executed seal block, the subject he spoke about most eloquently may have been his country.

It made sense. In his second career as a broadcaster, Madden spent more hours traversing the country in his bus (lovingly named the Madden Cruiser) than he did anywhere else. He drove because he was too claustrophobic to fly, but soon found he enjoyed the experience. Madden read Steinbeck voraciously, and the author’s lust for America’s open roads seeped into the football coach.

I don’t remember the first time I read King’s story from the Madden Cruiser, which you can (and should) read here. I do remember the line that ended the story. It struck me at first glance and has lingered ever since.

“You go to a big city, and you hear the world is going to hell, but it’s not true. Small parts of it are; the whole isn’t,” Madden said. “You get out there, and it makes you feel better about America. The thing works.”

I thought about this line again just a few weeks ago, when I made the relatively sudden decision to relocate from New York City to Park City for the winter. For the first time in my life, I had a good reason to drive (most of the way) across the country. I would see states I had only flown over or zipped through, a ship passing in the night en route to somewhere else. Now, though, there would be no exit. I would have to sit through every small town and rolling prairie from behind the wheel of a 2011 Toyota Highlander, an endless strip of asphalt ahead of me.

When people asked me about the drive, I tried my best to steal Madden’s fervor and optimism. “I’m excited to find exactly what’s out there,” I said.

But deep down, I was worried. Not by the prospect of Nebraska or Iowa or Western Illinois, but by my lingering skepticism that there still was anything worth finding. I feared that what once endeared Madden to this country had vanished — that America’s goodness had disappeared down a well of nihilism and self-interest, behind lines drawn in internet comment sections and across debate stages.

On the night before I departed, I decided I needed to fight these worst instincts. As I stuffed the final items of clothing into my suitcase, I formed a plan. I would track the one ray of light I knew I was certain to find in every state — golf — and I would see if I learned anything along the way.

The 10-state journey started the following morning, November 3, shortly after 5 a.m. local time.

10. New York

It was the shortest portion of our drive, but also the hairiest. Only about 20 miles separated us from New Jersey, but those 20 miles sliced through the most fraught stretch of New York City rush hour traffic — the corridor connecting Long Island, the Bronx, and New Jersey.

In the haze of the pre-dawn darkness, I nearly forgot to spot the first golf landmark on our journey: Douglaston Golf Course, a bustling New York City track smushed between three major highways just over the Queens border.

I had only played Douglaston once — a forgettable round at a glacial pace in which I’d inadvertently managed to snap the head off an old driver — but I couldn’t suppress a smile as we drove past. A long time ago, Douglaston had been one of my grandfather’s golfing homes. Poppy, a New York lifer and golf diehard, helped to instill the spirit of adventure within me that fueled my decision to move out west.

I imagined he might have gotten a kick out of this.

9. New Jersey

As we cleared the George Washington Bridge, I gazed out, as I always do, at Overpeck Golf Course — a public track staring down I-95 on the Jersey side of the bridge.

North Jersey is loaded with golf courses, and the Metropolitan Golf Association regularly visits clubs in the area like Knickerbocker, Ridgewood and Arcola. Overpeck is different from those places. Settled in the lowlands near the swamps of MetLife Stadium, it’s the kind of public course that represents so much of the sport in the Northeast: an oasis from the hustle and bustle of the city … conveniently located well within view of rush hour traffic.

It only took about 20 minutes of driving before we’d broken one of Madden’s golden rules of the road.

“Don’t wait for anyone, finish any bottle of water you start, drink right out of the bottle,” Madden had told King. “And never take I-80 in or out of New York—there’s always construction.”

Indeed, Madden was correct. There was construction once again on I-80, and an interminable stretch of congestion was forming before 6 a.m. We were jettisoning out of the New York Metro area at just the right time.

8. Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania shifts quickly from metropolis to the heartland. I-80 would take us through the entirety of the state, nearly 300 miles from east to west, and most of it would be spent traveling through the morning bustle of rural America. The winding highway scythed through gorgeous, yellow-and-orange terrain overlooking the Allegheny National Forest, and breathtaking, trapped-in-amber steeltowns like Clarion and Stoneboro.

From the highway, a set of golden shadows cascaded down upon Clarion Oaks Country Club in the morning light.

7. Ohio

You do not need to leave I-90 to see why Ohio’s golf courses are some of America’s most revered. Boulder Creek is an oasis on the side of a dull stretch of highway, and the golfers filling the fairways and greens indicated a little November rain shower was unlikely to spoil the fun.

6. Indiana

I must have sounded like I was losing my mind when, 12 hours into our first day of driving, I turned to my road trip partner (and girlfriend), Jamie, and blurted out the following line.

“Wait! Is that the Warren Course at Notre Dame?”

Indeed, it was. I’d seen my first true golf landmark: A beloved Coore-Crenshaw university course with gnarled bunkers and quirky greens. Better than golf, though, we were nearing our first stopping point, and dinner was on the horizon.

5. Illinois

It was shortly after nightfall when we finally pulled into the parking garage at the Chicago apartment belonging to my GOLF colleague, Sean Zak. After nearly 13 hours of sitting, it was time to stretch our legs.

We walked only for a few minutes along Lake Michigan before a golf landmark stopped us. It was a driving range, less than 200 yards from Mr. Zak’s apartment. No wonder he was so hard to reach during afternoons in the summer.

4. Iowa

After a year living in the buzzy Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg, the name “Williamsburg, Iowa” was too enticing to pass up.

The town, complete with its own “Central Park,” could be on the postcard for small-town America, complete with a cozy downtown area filled with bustling cafes and restaurants. Mi Casa Mexican, in the main town square, treated two distracted travelers on work calls to warm service and a delicious meal of fajitas and enchiladas.

Just up the road, at Stone Creek Golf Club, one of the most pristine nine-holers anywhere in America offers a similar welcome. For $26, you can go once around the nine-hole loop designed by five-time PGA Tour winner D.A. Weibring.

In other words, in Williamsburg, Iowa, you can find a hot meal and a terrific round of golf for less than $50. In Williamsburg, Brooklyn, $50 might not get you a pair of coffees.

3. Nebraska

Long before the road trip began, Jamie and I elected to stop our second day of driving at a hotel in Kearney, Nebraska, a tiny city right in the center of the state. I didn’t tell Jamie at the time that part of my interest in Kearney was more than logistical: Madden and King had stopped in the same town on their journey across the country, enjoying a meal at a family-run steakhouse named Grandpa’s, which Madden said typified his feelings about America.

We arrived in Kearney to find that life had gone on after the Madden Cruiser’s visit to Grandpa’s. The steakhouse is no longer in business, but the heart of the place that had endeared itself to Madden remained solidly intact. Kearney might not have Grandpa’s anymore, but it does have Barista’s Daily Grind, an astonishingly good coffee shop with a line deservedly wrapped around the parking lot.

As it turns out, not all of the change in Nebraska over the last 35 years has been bad. Not much further up I-80, Jamie and I stopped in Gothenburg, once a crucial stop along the Pony Express (the famed horse-and-ride mail exchange that connected much of the American West in the 1860s). Gothenburg has since become something of a hotspot for golf, welcoming the development of one of the most underrated new public courses in America, Wild Horse.

True to its name, Wild Horse cannot be entered without a 1.5-mile trek along a dirt road. And, true to its name, the golf course feels as if it exists in a world entirely untouched by human beings. I didn’t have time to play, but from what I saw I’m already convinced. For $65 on weekdays and $80 on weekends, I’m not sure there is a better golf value anywhere in America. I already have a visit circled for my return trip.

2. Colorado

If you were hoping to prove John Madden’s words about America right in an instant, you would go to Buccee’s. The eponymous (and enormous) chain of truck stops is like a fever dream of the American ideal: At once a gas station, shopping center, grocery store, barbecue joint, confectionery, and award-winning pit stop restroom.

Maybe you’d stop there on your way to or from Rodeo Dunes, the brand-new resort course opening about an hour outside of Denver. But if that felt inconvenient, you wouldn’t have to drive far to find some of the Mountain West’s best golf elsewhere in the state.

The most surprising thing about the drive through Colorado was how much of the state was covered in golf. For nearly three straight hours, the I-70 corridor ripping through the Rockies was dotted with exotic-looking mountain tracks. As the mountains shifted from soil to sandstone, and the colors shifted from dark brown to red, the familiar sight of golfers traversing the fairways and greens of their local tracks served as a kind of north star.

We were nearing the end.

1. Utah

We finally arrived in Park City to find that ski season hadn’t quite started. An unseasonably warm early-November had put opening day for the nearby mountains in question, but the string of sunny, 60-degree days was welcomed by at least one portion of the local community: the golfers.

As I drove through my new hometown for the first time, I looked around to see four golf courses well within view. Everywhere I looked, golfers seemed happy. They walked and rode, carried and push-carted, drank in the scenery and the sunshine.

I thought about the words Madden first spoke 35 years earlier.

“What I’ve learned traveling around is this: People are nice,” he said. “Hey, all we have to do is spread out a little bit, because we have a lot of space.”

I thought of every restaurant and fast food joint. Every gas station and truck stop. Every interstate and hiking trail. Every old friend and honest stranger. After a week on the road across the United States, had anyone disabused me of that notion?

The answer was simple: No.

America, it turned out, was still good. You just had to try and see it.