Why the best course I played in 2025 was the one I played backwards
One of the funniest parts about letting go of your childhood is learning the little lessons you were able to retain.
I don’t know how old I was when my father first dropped his favorite pearl of wisdom. I don’t remember what he said. But I can still hear the speech in my mind, spoken in my father’s playful tongue, as if emphasizing its inherent truth. I suspect I will.
“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”
It took me a while to understand the meaning of those words, and it took me a long time to realize what they were referring to me. But the answer came when I least expected it: On the golf course I headed in the wrong direction.
I realized that my perspective was changing as my rental car rolled down the highway somewhere in northern Michigan the night after my 28th birthday. The feeling was not dryness or wistfulness – but something deep: I was facing the strangeness of aging for the first time.
At twenty-eight, I was not old. More importantly, I didn’t to hear the old one. In fact, I felt exactly the same age as when I graduated college in 2019 – still doe-eyed and green and hungry. But then I looked at the calendar and saw that Syracuse University’s class of 2025 had just graduated ten years after I arrived on campus. I was as close to the class of 2025 as the class of 2013 was to me … which means: in the past.
I spent a few minutes walking around, dealing with the sinking feeling that I was falling behind. I was 28 and young. But my chance to find real relevance at a young age, to be the whiz kid I always thought I would be, was quickly slipping away. If I blink, I’ll be 30 and shower. Again then what? Committed to life as a low-impact writer? Become a jilted golf media curmudgeon? Continue to suck golf? Move to the suburbs? Blech.
It didn’t help that I was in Michigan on a golf trip that was supposed to bring back the glory days. For months, my college buddies dreamed of this long weekend in Northern Michigan as a long-overdue reunion — a golf trip with holes across god’s land as the perfect excuse to renew our friendship. Now, instead of remembering who I was, I was driving in the woods, afraid that he would disappear.
We woke up the next morning. The sun was rising quickly over Forest Dunes Resort, the latest in a string of unusually cool June days that promised 15 hours of daylight. Within minutes of our arrival, we were on our way to what I hoped would be the highlight of our trip: The Loop, a reversible Tom Doak design that plays in a different direction each day.
I had been to The Loop when I was young – a wide-eyed 22-year-old alive with the power of anxiety and courage – and I remembered the experience as an addictive drug to golf: mind-bending, vision-expanding and repetitive.
We played our first round and the reviews were lukewarm. It’s very good. Good. What’s different. The highest handicap on our tour was thanks to the fact that the fairways at The Loop occasionally cut 200 yards wide (it was a tough weekend on the scorecard); low handicappers were happy that things were playing tight and fast.
But then we came back the next day to play our second round, and I watched as the golf course came to life. The same mounds that protected the green now serve as backstops, sending shots off the line and spinning toward the flagstick. The same bunkers that magnetized misses to the left now punished misses to the right. Usually, the best shot wasn’t a pull drive or a zippy chip but a bunt with a 4-iron. Everything was echoed in everything else, but nothing was duplicated.
The sun came out as our round reached its midpoint, and as we waited for the light to shine on the treacherous par-3, we paused for a beer. We sat on the sponge, drinking and laughing as we recounted the stories of the long weekend. My worries melted away.
It wasn’t hard to understand why. The Loop was everything I loved about golf: playful, creative and thought-provoking. It was better the second time than the first – and the beauty was magnified by the fact that I had already seen it.
Obviously, my friends agreed.
“That was absolutely crazy.”
“I didn’t get it yesterday, but I get it now.”
“Okay, that was unbelievable.”
“The roads were wide yesterday.”
As the exciting review began, I thought of my father.
When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.
The route, the variety of shots, hell – even the mode of transport had changed from our first to our second round – and everything about the experience was better. There was less stress, more laughter, and even more birdsong. The Loop had changed from a nice course to a great one … and all we had to do was walk in the other direction.
I wish I could say that the Loop taught me to ease my worries about aging – that I learned the best things in life come from the intersection of knowledge and wisdom. It didn’t happen.
What I learned from The Loop is that it’s okay not to know, it’s okay if things aren’t what you thought they would be.
If you look hard enough for a new perspective, you will find it – and maybe that won’t be the only thing that changes.
You can reach the author at james.colgan@golf.com.
