The Maritime Offerings

14.06. Berlin – Saint John

6:24 PM.

Lakes as far as the eye can see, some tidal, some not. Pine trees and birches frame the one that I’m walking around. Its water is red, that means iron heavy if I remember correctly. The sweet scent of heather mixes with salty air coming in from the sea. It all reminds me of Keralia in North-Eastern Europe. But it’s different – everything is larger, and there is space, lots of it. I try to ignore all I know about this country and start fresh. A wooden elk holding a hockey stick greets me at the next house I pass. Above it a flag, white sandwiched by red, the national symbol in the middle. Not an eagle, not a snake, but a maple leaf. Everything screams, no, whispers to me that these are friendly shores.

11:02 PM

It’s been a long day. 3 flights from Berlin, Germany, to Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada. A tear of relief shed after making the connection onto the Montreal flight at Frankfurt – my golf clubs were left behind, but that was to be expected. The excitement felt on an intercontinental journey, my first in 10 years. A warm welcome by Anne, my wonderful B&B host. Her dog Ferdinand wasn’t quite as friendly at first, but soon made himself comfortable on my lap. And there’s the anticipation of what’s to come: 8 days full of playing golf and filming with a couple of Canadians I met on the internet. Thoroughly planned, fully scheduled and I have no idea what to expect. Good night.

15.06. Saint John – St. Andrews-by-the-Sea

0:46 AM (16^th)

Who would have thought there’d  be multiple cameras on me when I finally meet Pat? Surprise! Got dragged along to the supermarket to choose which oats I prefer for breakfast and which beer for the evenings, while I was still busy processing reality. I should have known this would be overwhelming. If I had thought just one second longer though, I might have stayed at home. Thankfully I didn’t. Lack of self-reflection comes in handy sometimes. Ignorance is bliss.

After picking up a lobster poutine from a snack shack, we arrive at The Algonquin just a little late for our tee time. Tees, fairways, greens: known terrain, finally. The air has been cleansed by heavy rainfalls, the sun has taken control. Playing okay on the front nine, but only until the first beer is opened. I’m not used to drinking on the golf course. Rolling terrain and open grasslands roamed by woods and dotted by trees define the first nine. The holes after the turn bring the tidal bay into view and play. That seaside stretch is as good as it gets. Serious stuff.

Pat. The hug for our first hello felt strangely familiar, like meeting an old friend. We had met online, followed and liked each other’s work, and one day came an invitation to join the Preferred Lie guys for a trip to the Maritimes.  He seems to be handling a lot of things at once and is being super warm and welcoming. The kind of person that makes you want to be around them.

In the hotel now, sharing the room with Cardis after beers over dinner (I’m better at those) and watching the Oilers finally beat the Panthers to keep Canada’s Stanley Cup dreams alive. At least we’ve already played a round of golf together – folklore has it that you can get to know a person on a golf course better than anywhere else, but I wonder how much truth that holds. It’s probably stranger for him to share the room with the weird German than the other way around: at least I’ve followed his instagram for years. We talk about his work, how he wanted to build a photography portfolio but then started out filming his van lifestyle. How people thought he was plain crazy to try and make a living off that, how he got to where he is, and how he’s proud of that. “When people tell me that I can’t do something, it just fuels me more to prove them wrong”.

I’m lying in bed, earplugs in, Cardis still editing photos. Lights out. Early start tomorrow. Clutch day (they seem to use that word for everything good here). I’ll prove the haters wrong another time.

The Algonquin Golf Resort:
https://www.algonquinresort.com/golf

16.06. St. Andrews-by-the-Sea – Prince Edward Island

10:56 PM

Drones whizzing up in the air by 5 AM this morning, scenes set up and interviews conducted by 8. A couple of one litre cups of Tim Horton’s (think Canadian Starbucks with a McDonald’s-y vibe) coffee fuel us until the late morning leaves what already feels like a rare window of free time to enjoy a proper breakfast. We soon head towards Prince Edward Island past Saint John airport, where my clubs have finally arrived. Luckily, traffic jams in the scarcely populated Maritimes are unheard of, making the planning of travel times quite reliable. Mike’s cruising speed of 134 km/h sharp (“equals exactly the speed that you will get away with without speeding over the 110 km/h limit according to my calculations”) reduces the ETA minute by minute as we near our next destination.

Putting together an itinerary like this – planned down to 15 minute shower breaks – is impressive enough. They credit Brandon for it, claiming he is slightly more conscious of making sure the details will work out. Or just “higher OCD”, as he puts it. Clearly, the team is a well-oiled machine. Almost like family… Well, they actually are family. Who was whose brother or cousin again? They all kind of look like they could be related. It is time to find out on the way to ‘PEI’.

Mike and Alex, who I’m in the car with, are brothers, Pat is their cousin. Growing up a couple of hours from each other near Toronto, they all used to be sent to grandmother to spend their summers and play golf together. Brandon, a childhood friend of Mikes’s, completed the gang soon after. They stayed in touch, loved their competitive golf and each other’s company, and eventually came up with the idea of creating a website for individualised golf course rankings. That was followed by filming and sharing their journeys to the country’s best and most unique courses, and here we are filming Canadian Classics Season 5, which they invited Cardis and me for.

“We essentially didn’t know what we were doing in the beginning and taught ourselves everything”, Alex reminisces. He now fills TPL’s first full-time, paid position and seems to be the group’s creative soul. “I recently realised, we’re essentially journalists now.” That’s true, and it’s showing in the quality of their content: not just creating golf travel vlogs, but looking behind the scenes and beyond traditional perspectives on the game.

After passing Confederation Bridge, formerly the longest of its kind in the world, we get to Prince Edward Island and arrive at Belfast Highlands Greens just in time for our late afternoon 9 hole round. The course is sandwiched between a campsite and the sea. Public golf at its best, very much like I’ve come to love it on the British Isles. From the open land it starts out on to the middle holes through thick forest and the release along the bay to finish off, it forms a rhythm as special as a 9 hole course possibly could. What a cool place.

Now I lie in bed, in my own room, happy and exhausted, belly full of seafood pasta. That Bryson celebration already burning itself deep into my head from rewatching today’s US Open coverage. I hope I dream of other things.

Belfast Highland Greens Golf Course: 
https://belfasthighlandgreens.ca/

17.06. Prince Edward Island – Pugwash

11:48 PM

4^th night, 4^th different bed, and it feels like it’s been 2 weeks. 

Where did we start the day again? Ah yes. The big, bold and beautiful bunkers of Dundarave filled with PEI’s signature red sand. Enjoyed the views but couldn’t hit a ball straight all day, and on top of that realised that I lost my 2 iron at Belfast Highland Greens yesterday. The boys are doing their best to get it back, but damn, my good old partner. The places it’s been with me! All the oceans and roughs and bushes I’ve sent golf balls towards with it! All those attempts to hit the perfect stinger and those rare few times pulling it off that I’ll remember forever. Am I getting nostalgic over a 20-year-old Ping G5 iron?

At some point on the back 9, Mike wants to redo a couple of interview scenes with me. It all came so easily to me when I was imagining what I would say about my journey and the amazing golf courses I would play over here. With a camera in my face and a group of golfers close behind us, it’s not so easy. It’s getting in my head, like the lack of game I’m bringing this side of the Atlantic. It feels awkward. “It’s usually a good sign when you’re uncomfortable. It means you’re growing.” Mike says, snapping me back out of my head and into reality. It may be the one most important thing anyone has said to me on this trip. Nothing I’ve never heard before, but some things need to be said at the right time. And Mike’s the kind of guy who’s good at that.

0:36AM. 4:24 hours until wake-up for the 6AM drone shoot. The new normal.

Dundarave Golf Course:
https://peisfinestgolf.com/dundarave/

18.06. Pugwash – Ingonish

3:21 PM

John, Brad and Christine – what a trio of entirely different characters, all doing their part to make the Northumberland Links experience feel that extra bit special this morning. John’s the General Manager and superintendant, this golf course being somewhat of a lifetime project and a canvas for his equally scientific and creative brain. He hired Christine, Canada’s next great golf architect, to suggest changes to the course. Brad is John’s assistant pro and so much fun to play with. I’m told he speaks in the most rural Canadian dialect ever, but I simply can’t be convinced he wasn’t teleported to Pugwash straight out of Texas. Just imagine him speaking Texas slang.

Whatever they’re up to, things seem to be transforming here. You can just feel when that seed of change has been planted. They shouldn’t have asked us how we’d like the green speeds today though. “Give us all you’ve got!” we said in youthful arrogance, and they gave us as fast as they can. Perhaps the fastest greens I’ve putted on, and that made for some really fun short game challenges. Brandon’s game impresses me once more today, his reliable baby cut is just never going to miss a fairway. The same cannot be said of me today.

00:34 AM (19^th)

Fast forward 10 hours, ca. 300 kilometres, and I’m now lying in bed approximately 50 metres from a National Park beach and not much further away from Highlands Links, a course that has intrigued me for as long as I have read about golf. I just never thought I’d ever get here. Talking about getting here: things seemed to change; time seemed to go slower, eyes wider, forests greener, houses fewer and the light warmer once we crossed the bridge to Cape Breton Island. There is magic in the air.

The guys are on the beach lighting a fire conjuring up some of that magic, while I’ve taken a minute to chill alone. It’s all amazing. It’s all a lot. Need a bit to process the lobster eating introduction earlier by Cardis. Not to forget the midnight putting competition on the 15^th green on one of the most unique courses in the world. Or filling the road trip hours with good old car games with Alex & Mike.

Exhale.

Nite!

–

Northumberland Links Golf Club:
https://www.northumberlandlinks.com/

19.06. Ingonish

11:40 PM

If I’ve ever had anything like a spiritual revelation on a golf course, it came this evening at around 7pm on the 14^th hole at Highlands Links. The low sun dunked the course in a golden hue, highlighting the utterly unique ground movements in the course’s fairways. I cannot tell you exactly what it is, but I’ve just never seen anything like this and I don’t think I ever will again. The place is so here. So Canada. So Cape Breton Island.

It’s an overwhelmingly scenic site between sea and national park, and the routing takes a perfectly  paced journey through it. There’s natural undulations in all shapes and sizes, producing one-of-a-kind golf holes and shots. The greens are always interesting and never over the top. Something special is at work. It is simply beautiful – the spirit of the game breathes strongly through these fairways.

The untamed forest lining the fairways swallows up nearly every ball that encounters it, and hit many of those today. But somehow, here it adds to the experience rather than taking away from it. And it built my frustration up to the point where I realised that something’s got to give. So there I go after a 9 iron approach finds the forest at 14 – like so many other shots in the almost 2 rounds we’ve played here. Some voice that comes half from inside, half from somewhere above whispers that I need to let ‘it’ go. Let go of the fear of losing the ball in the next best piece of forest or rough. Let go of the fear that paralyzes my body mid-swing. Let go of the stresses of meeting expectations and doing things right. You cannot swing this way. You cannot live this way. You need to swing freely. Free yourself of the fear of an imperfect result. Judge your shot by the commitment and effort you put into it.

Played the last 4 in 2 under par. Maybe it was also just the long awaited dip in the Atlantic before the round that sorted me out? “Feel that connection to your feet, man”, Cardis had said as we stumbled back across the pebbles from the beach for our midday swim.

Cape Breton Highlands Links Golf Course:
https://golfcapebretonhighlands.ca/

20.06. Ingonish – Cabot

2:57 PM

There may have been times on this trip when I wasn’t entirely sure what my place in it was. But just being there to see and document this image wiped out all remaining doubts. 5 guys standing on the edge of cliff filming the same thing, or perhaps filming someone else filming that thing, or filming someone who is filming someone filming that thing. I was so amused by this scene and the supersized lobster holding man in the parking lot that I didn’t even get to look at the thing they were filming. A spectacular cliff scene, probably – not the first and not the last on this journey.

11:59 PM

Every day of this trip so far, I’ve had the feeling that it’s simply impossible that this morning was this morning and not some morning a week ago. So much has happened every day on this trip, but today tops them all. 18 holes at Highlands Links, followed by a 3 hour ride along the legendary Cabot Trail, followed by an absolutely surreal sunset round on Cabot Cliffs with Pat and Alex. Relieved of filming duties for this round, I could sense that this was something truly special for the two of them aswell. Not that a day of playing two of the world’s best courses, driving through a National Park and then – in the case of Pat’s round – holing out for eagle on the notorious 17^th in clutch fashion could ever not be anything special. The reveal on top of the fairway on 15 was overwhelming, even though I had seen it in photos before. And that came after too many holes to count which would already stand out as absolute bangers on every other course in the world. Laying in bed in our Cabot cottage with a full golfing heart and nothing more to say.

Cabot Cape Breton:
https://cabotcapebreton.com/

21.06. Cabot

0:13 AM (22^nd)

I don’t remember ever playing with a caddie before. At least one booked at a golf course that I’ve played as a visitor. But I didn’t need that experience to realise that I lucked out with Mark big time today – he did all the things right on our first round at Cabot Links that a caddie possibly could. “All depends on the speed” he liked to say as he gave me a range to choose my line from. Politely reigning in my occasional overestimating of club lengths – “I’d prefer the 7 to the 8”. Like a well seasoned dish, he gave just the right amount of advice to narrow the focus and not confuse with too much information.

He’s from Halifax, some of the other mostly young men and women are from somewhere nearby or other parts of Canada. They get accomodation for the summer, work one or two rounds for 6 days a week and get to play either course for 10$ in the evenings when there’s free tee times. In some way Cabot is the Highlands Links of the 21^st century: a world class golf development that is (among other things) supposed to bring jobs to its rural Canadian communities. The development didn’t go ahead without complications, but at least the former land owners are not still waiting for compensation 80 years later, like at Highlands Links. But that is an excursion for another time.

Well, all that shall not distract from the absolutely stunning golf course we played today. The Links is the ‘mhhhhhhh’ to Cliffs’ ‘ooohhhhh’, if you know what I mean. There’s no shortage of standout holes, they’re just all tied together more by consistently pure, natural dunesland. It feels more linksy altogether: landforms falling where they may, creating holes nobody could draw up on the board, like the 8^th, a par 5 featuring a blind 2^nd shot over a large ridge – Pat’s favourite. The fescue on the whole property is as crisp as it gets, firm enough to really make you think, but not make shots unplayable. If heaven was a golf course, it would play like this. With Mark on the bag and my spiritual encounter in the back my game is finally back on track, too: a clean 74 with no doubles or worse. Stop it Canada, you’re just spoiling me at this point.

22.06. Cabot

10:56 PM

Just looking back at today’s texts:

Pat into CCS5 chat group, 10:32 AM:

Thru 11. Emil 8, Pat 8, Brandon 10.

Alex into CCS5 chat group, 10:37 AM:

Thru 12. Mike 7, Alex 6, Cardis 9.

Things were certainly heating up in our match today. Team International (that’s Pat, Cardis & me) have had a spectacular comeback in the stableford match against Team Canada the last couple of days. My game’s in shape, 5 birdies and number of shots I’ll never forget helped the team move ahead of our opponents this morning. Another point was played for in scramble format on the Nest, Cabot’s short course, in the afternoon. The 10 holes were halved in summary thanks to clutch putts by Pat & Cardis down the stretch. A playoff nearest-to-the-pin contest from our veranda to the Cliffs’ 1^st green had to decide the outcome. That’s when they surprised me with my good old 2 iron. I’d almost forgotten about it, but I probably never will anymore after this. They got it found and sent over to Cabot. Just things guys do golf trips? No, surely those are extra miles.

My memories of what has happened where over the last couple of days are starting to blur. It’s like my brain is starting to melt from awe and satisfaction. Now that the end is near, I’m suddenly, finally just here.

23.06. Cabot – Halifax

11:09 PM

“Know what I’m sayin?” Cardis mumbles to me in his thick American accent. The words barely audible, but oozing pure coolness when joining forces with that signature Cardis smirk. “It’s all about creating these memories with people. I’m a people guy. I create and nurture relationships.” We sit in an Irish pub in the center of Halifax, Nova Scotia, safe from the relentless rain outside. It has resumed its natural course after granting us an 8-day window from stepping on the first tee at Algonquin to stepping off the 18^th green at Cabot Links this morning. You just couldn’t make this up.

For once, after all those car rides, I actually fell asleep on one. The excitement in my body just rapidly dropped once we made our way from Cabot towards Halifax. Mike’s consistent 134 km/h cruising speed did its part to put me to sleep, along with a last few listens to the song of trip – “I′ll take you down the only road I′ve ever been down. You know the one that takes you to the places where all the veins meet, yeah…”

Cardis & I said goodbye to the crew at Halifax airport with a last big hug – we’re both spending another night in town before flying out tomorrow morning. After the lobster poutine introduction on the first day, I finally get to try just a normal poutine: chips, gravy, and cheese. Simple, but effective. Goes down well with a Guinness. “Anything is possible man”, Cardis continues: Meeting up in Europe next year, filming a campervan & camping trip in Wales? Teaming up on sponsorships? “You can reach out anytime you need something.”

It’s 11:32 pm as I’m writing these lines back in my airbnb. Those last 9 days now feel like I’ve been through a miraculously, perfectly scripted spin in a washing machine. I don’t know whether any of those things we talked about will actually happen in the future. What matters is that through meeting Pat, Alex, Mike, Brandon, and Cardis, new possibilities are on the horizon, new things seem possible. All because we’ve experienced things together. I’m flying back to Germany tomorrow, crossing the Atlantic eastwards. That’s with the prevailing jetstream in my back, in more than one way.