Plays his 500th course in Wales
He didn’t start playing golf with the aim of playing a certain number of golf courses, but once he started making a list there was a certain number Lawrence Auer designated that he would like to reach.
If not for a conversation with a friend of a friend at the PGA Show a few years ago, Auer didn’t even consider starting such a list or chasing a certain number. Yet there he was, standing on the first tee earlier this month at Royal Porthcawl Golf Club in Wales, set to play the 500th different golf course in his career.
The friend of a friend, with whom Auer still stays in contact, told him about a group of golfers of which he was associated with that kept track of all the different golf courses they have played in their lives, each person keeping their own list. The idea intrigued Larence Auer, an Australian native who came to the United States after a successful amateur career in his native country, played college golf here, and then made the game his profession as a club pro and assistant.
He was several years into playing the game and so the list became lengthy pretty quickly. He had played in three national tournaments in Australia and five times in the PGA of America’s championship for club pros, now called the Professional mpionship. That doesn’t count the courses as a college player and just as an avid golfer he added to his list.
Eventually, he settled on a goal of playing 500 courses.
A lifetime of golf
“I started playing golf when I was nine years old and you don’t really think about it much when you’re a kid because you usually are playing the same few golf courses all the time,” said Auer, who retired 18 months ago after serving as head golf professional at Mobile’s Azalea City Golf Course for several years.
“Then you start going on trips and with social media and the Internet, I got the list of every golf course in Alabama and it’s alphabetical. The same in Florida. Then you sit back, and I literally, as part of the project, wrote down [golf] trips I’d been on. I’ve been to Pinehurst on this trip and this course on this trip. You start writing them down.”
In March, he returned from a month-long trip home to Australia where he added a couple more courses to his list and realized he was at 498. He wanted No. 500 to be a special course but he didn’t have that course in mind.
“The one thing I didn’t plan was leaving a course close to home that was special for 500,” Auer said. “All of a sudden I realize I’m going to have to get on a plane or drive somewhere. I’m going through my options and I kept getting closer and closer to this [previously planned] trip, so I decided I’ll just wait. There’s no big connection to it other than it’s a top 100 in the world and it’s a Royal club and there’s only so many Royals in the world and there’s only five in the UK.”
That led him to No. 500 in a morning tee time, paired with two visitors to Wales from London, and Auer had his 500th course.
“It wasn’t like one of those exciting trips,” he said. “There’s a golf course there, but there’s walking trails and pony trails and all this stuff and it goes down over a bay. And then directly overlooking the bay from the highest spot on the golf course is the ruins of a church. It was built in 1200-something but sometime in the 1500s it was abandoned, with the weather beating on it. … The golf course just happens to be there. … It’s a Top 100 in the world, and is ranked No. 1 in Wales. The women’s British Open championship will be there next year. Because of the location there’s never been an Open Championship there, because of the logistics. It’s a little out of the way. They want the Open there.”
As he made his way around the course, Auer said he didn’t experience any special feelings about the day, that it was just another good day on the golf course, making new friends.
Lawrence Auer: No 500 was ‘windy and drizzly’
“Not really,” he said if it felt special. “I wish I could say yes. I didn’t know what I expected it to be, but I was just walking around. It’s a true links golf course where you’re playing along and you know the ocean is over there and you see it for a couple of holes and then it’s just a couple of dunes — you can hear it, it’s right there and you’re just playing golf. It’s not a beautiful golf course because half the time you’re surrounded by scrubby dunes. The course is fabulous, but it was windy and drizzly and that kind of thing. It’s not like playing Pebble Beach, where you get all these photo opportunities. I enjoyed the day — the morning, the golf and the evening and all that, though.”
Auer said he didn’t keep score but he did card a couple of birdies and he didn’t make any double bogeys, so he estimated he probably shot around 74. He would add three more courses to his list after Royal Porthcawl, including one in Bath, England, which was No. 499 on the list.
Breaking it all down, Auer said he has played courses in seven different countries, in 22 states in the U.S. and in all six states in Australia. Aside from the U.S., Australia and Wales, he has also played in Canada, New Zealand, Ireland and England. His list is now at 503, and while he said he’ll keep the list going — he has it on an Excel spreadsheet — he no longer has a goal he is trying to achieve, He’s just going to enjoy playing golf, wherever that may be.
He used the Internet and social media to help him track the places he had played. Alabama and Florida have websites that list alphabetically all the courses in the state, which was a big help jogging his memory.
“To get there, seven different countries, and then you realize, it really was a golf journey,” Auer said. “It was a 52-year or 53-year golf journey that has taken me to seven countries and at some point I just happened to hit 500 in Wales. If you had said 15 years ago, you’re going to play 500 golf courses and you’re going to end up in Wales, I’d have said, OK, that’s random. Which it was.
Remembering the Woodlands, which is on his list
“What’s funny is maybe six months after I started my list and I’m at 340 or something like that, I’m driving down to Gulf Shores. I’m going down Highway 59 and I’m at an intersection. You remember a course on the right there? The Woodlands? I’m sitting there at the red light — it’s not on the alphabetical list for Alabama because it’s not there anymore — and I write a scratch note to look it up and see if it was on my list and it wasn’t, so I added it to the list.”
It hasn’t been a journey of big-name courses, either.
“For me, you have some courses where you can namedrop — Pinehurst No. 2, TPC Sawgrass, those things, and that’s cool,” he said. “But that’s not the cool part. It’s just the places it’s taken me and an appreciation for the different types of golf courses. Just talking to guys and making new friends.
“Something I appreciate is little small towns — I’ll use Hurley [Miss.] as an example — where you’ve got a Whispering Pines [Golf Course] there, Eighteen holes in a city of 3,000 people. Pretty important to the town, isn’t it? And that golf course, there’s not one bad hole on the course. It’s a good golf course. I like playing there. I like playing the Country Club of Mobile or Steelwood or wherever, but I like going to Hurley too. It’s just a nice golf course.”
What has been the most fun along the way?
“I would say that number at the end, I had committed to getting to 500, but really it’s the planning and it was like, what’s the next one? I played 24 golf courses in Michigan just because my daughter lived there for four years. Met guys. The other daughter lives in Oklahoma. Driving to Oklahoma and stopping and playing. … random stuff like that was fun. It was always what’s next. … I really don’t think it will change things. I didn’t have a date, like must be at 500 by 2024. I’ll still keep up with them. I’m at 503 right now. …
And then I played at Azalea [City] recently, which is fine. You appreciate it.”
Tommy Hicks is a contributor to Alabama Golf News and is a sports writer in Mobile.
Editor’s note: This story originally appeared on www.lagniappemobile.com. It is reprinted with permission.
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Featured image courtesy of Lawrence Auer
