Six-Holer in Paradise

Did you ever get to a Jimmy Buffett concert? I made it to one. It was in San Diego, back in about 2002. Could have been 2001. Hey, if the memories aren’t hazy, you didn’t do Buffett right. But I vividly recall the parking lot looked like Halloween had sex with a tiki bar. It was a pulsating carnival of gleeful revelers who had spent substantial time and money on their costumes and portable bars. Seemingly thousands had been there since the gates opened, each turning their spot into an elaborate tropical oasis themed in the language of Buffett: shark fins, birds of every color, palm trees and frozen-drink machines. Marijuana smoke mingled with charcoal burning on Weber grills. A woman in her 70s dressed as a pink flamingo made me take a shot of something neon green.

I don’t remember much about the show itself, other than what felt like hundreds of smuggled-in beach balls bouncing all over the outdoor arena. Jimmy played the hits, and everyone shouted every word. More than the set list, I remember the vibe: It was one of the friendliest mobs I’ve ever experienced. A sea of adults who would wake up to their real lives in just a few hours with splitting headaches had been gifted permission to be their best, goofiest selves. The pink flamingo lady gathered me up into a rum-soaked hug on our way back to the car afterward. It was beautiful.

Music criticism can be more vicious than the discourse around golf course architecture. Despite a following so fanatically loyal to him that Margaritaville eventually turned into a corporate behemoth, Buffett’s music is often dismissed as unimportant or worse, cliched. And I get that. Neil Young wrote anti-war protest songs and co-founded Farm Aid. Buffett crooned about cheeseburgers in paradise.

But the thing about cliches is that at their core, they are rooted in truth. And when you find a six-hole golf course made of seashells and buckets at a restaurant in the Bahamas steps from some of the most achingly blue water you have ever seen, “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes” suddenly becomes one of the most important songs ever written.

We fled to Exuma to get away from golf. Four couples, all with various jobs in the industry, needing a few precious days of peace. It was a three-part plan: Find childcare for our kids. Get to the rental house. Float. That was it. “What are you going to do when you get there? Fish? Jet skis? Golf?” People asked us. “Nothing,” we would firmly reply. “There is a pool at the rental house and there is the ocean. We are going to float in them both.” We even printed the word on hats and t-shirts to commemorate the trip and our mission.

And guess what? We did it. We floated. We set up little stations around the rental house with drinks and snacks and towels and sunscreen. We fired up the outdoor speakers and played Buffett and Zac Brown and Sublime and “November Rain” by Guns N’ Roses once because we had visited the drink station enough to air guitar Slash’s epic solo.

Then, one afternoon, someone had a controversial idea: Let’s not float. Let’s walk a half mile or so down the beach and visit the little restaurant. There was a rumor it had the elusive and delicious Bahamas conch salad. It was too radical for all the floaters to leave at once, so it was decided that Chris and I would bravely leave the compound to explore the wild frontier.

The Blue Conch Restaurant was open, but didn’t have many customers, or any conch salad. Deon the bartender explained that the “Conch Salad Lady” was supposed to deliver that morning, but she never showed. Maybe tomorrow. He shrugged—it’s always island time in the Bahamas. But he did have tequila, and club soda, and limes. 

And pin flags. 

Through the windows of the bar, we spied a series of what looked like old Home Depot buckets, dug into the ground and sporting tattered triangles of fabric. Our eyes bulged when we looked around the inside of the restaurant and spied two 5×7 picture frames: one with Jack Nicklaus and the other with Tiger Woods. Shit. We floated all the way into international waters, and golf still found us.

After taking a sip, Chris let out a huge laugh and shook his head. “Real” golf would have been an affront. But bucket golf? Where you play six 25-yardish par 3s in flip flops with a beverage? Well, that sounded about right.

Deon, a young man who had already gathered a repertoire of beach-themed dad jokes that would make a Carl Hiaasen character proud, confessed he didn’t know much about it. Said people play now and again, but it wasn’t like they had a tee sheet. “It’s not the Masters, my friends!” He pointed toward a dark hallway and said to check in the back by the janitor closet for any gear. Sure enough, next to some toilet cleanser and stacks of unopened napkins sat a menagerie of rusted old wedges and badly painted oversized wiffle balls. We chose our weapons, filled our cups and wandered out to the first tee.

Under the steamy Exuma sun, we had the course to ourselves. We laid out the rules: A six-hole match for a drink. Overall stroke play for another drink. Club in one hand and cocktail in the other on every swing. Play every shot as it lies. Every putt must be holed in the bucket. I turned on some Iration on my phone, and we were off.

I’d get laughed out of a Golf Club Atlas chatroom for comparing the course to Cypress. But hey: They both have sand-strewn inland holes before finally opening up to a pair of par-3 stunners on the water. And it’s entirely possible Jimmy Buffett played both layouts.

The empty parking lot ran along the left of the opening hole, and we declared it OB. I flirted hard with it, but the aggressive line paid off with a winning par. Chris battled a potentially tequila-induced slice off the tee. I hit it great and considered playing exclusively one-handed when I got home. We both learned how to open up our wedges to pop our wiffle balls over the sun-bleached rock and conch shells surrounding each bucket. We rehashed stories of stupid shit we did 20 years ago. We talked about our kids and tried—in vain, we both knew—to prepare ourselves for the next phases of their lives. Two guys on the golf course. Son of a son of a sailor.

I closed him out on No. 5 with the kind of steady par that Rory would have paid handsomely for at Pinehurst. Up two strokes going into the sixth, I pulled a tee shot left and he ripped his best one of the day. There was the faintest whiff of the competitive spirit we have when playing back home when that sumbitch clutched up and made his birdie, but another grindy par earned me an unnecessary but essential drink. It was definitely not the Masters. It was perfect. 

“Another loop?” I asked.

“Nah,” Chris wisely replied. “Let’s go float.”