Tom Coyne has one of those jobs most would envy. As a bestselling author and editor of The Golfer’s Journal, he gets to travel to and play some of the most exclusive courses in the world. “It’s not a bad perk of the job, Lee, I’m not gonna lie to you!” he said.
He’s played over a thousand courses, including Augusta National Golf Club (home of the Masters), St. Andrews (the oldest course in the world), and the Pacific-hugging Pebble Beach in California.
“There’s all sorts of different places in golf,” Coyne said. “There needs to be all sorts of different places in golf.”
Most wouldn’t argue that point, but just how different are we talking about?
For a guy whose been invited to the top clubhouses in the world, how in the world did he end up at one in Upstate New York with leaky roofs, abandoned mowers, and mold as thick as the rough itself? And yet, locals weren’t scared off, blinded perhaps by their love of the game.
The Sullivan County Golf Club is a rural 9-hole course that opened back in 1925 in Liberty, New York, a small town about two hours from Manhattan, up in the Catskill Mountains where tourists used to flock during the Borscht Belt resort boom.
The course even made headlines in 1931 when a local pilot took off from what was then the 8th fairway for a daring transatlantic flight to Denmark – hence the club’s logo (left), a nod to both its golf and aviation history.
Dan Yaun started caddying at Sullivan County when he was a teenager. His family has been here so long, there’s a street named after them. The club championship board boasts its fair share of the family name, too. But over the decades, as the tourists took their clubs and money to fancier courses, things at Sullivan County were left to the locals to keep up.
“It was going downhill a little bit,” Yaun said. “Basically I think we were maintaining it ourselves.”
Eventually there were more deer than players. In 2023 the unprofitable but still golf-able 170 acres went up for sale.
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The only greenskeeper left, self-described “turf nerd” Shaun Smith, feared that would be the end of an era. “It’s always been the local course on the edge of town; it’s kind of always been for everybody,” he said.
And that brings us back to Tom Coyne and his golf writing. Smith was a fan, and reached out to him. The two got to talking about the course. As a writer always in search of a good story, Coyne took the bait and came up for a visit.
It looked, he said, like a place that was ready to close. Still, there was something about it. It had none of the trappings today’s golf often has – there were no tee times, no valets, no swimming pools or tennis courts, and there was certainly no attitude.
“We couldn’t be less stuffy,” Coyne said. “We are not fussy. You don’t have to get dressed up. You just show up, bring your dog, and go play golf.”
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Purists might argue that’s the way golf ought to be – wild fairways kept like a bad haircut, nothing manicured, but playable and accessible to anyone. And that’s the story Tom wanted to write … and he has, in his latest book, “A Course Called Home.”
“I’ve been consuming golf my whole life,” Coyne said. “But what if I got on the side of actually providing golf? That would be different.”
Just how many course owners do you know who mow their own fairways? Long story short, Coyne asked its former owners to let him run the course for a year, along with Shaun Smith, and if together they could turn it around, Coyne might just buy the place.
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Obstacles weren’t strangers to either one of them. Coyne said, “I recognized a kindred sort of golf sicko like myself. So, we bonded on that level. There was also connection there in that Shaun’s sober and I’m sober. I think people who’ve gone down that path and know what that experience is like, there’s a connection there and an understanding with someone that is pretty meaningful.”
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“It really became something that we forged kind of a trust around quicker than maybe two strangers would have otherwise,” said Smith. “I guess he probably feels I trust him a lot, too.”
Together, along with his golf course architect Colton Craig, they set about re-routing some of the holes to take advantage of the topography and the views. They also put in a putting course and a driving range. The goal was to make the course attractive for folks to travel in from outside the Catskills, but keep every bit of the Catskills in the course. “This has to remain a rural Catskills Sullivan County golf course,” Coyne said. “And it has to feel like that. That’s gotta be the identity. It has to feel like you’ve gone somewhere else.”
All of that, and you could still play for less money than you might spend on lunch. “You’re not sure who came in on a first-class flight and who’s the local schoolteacher,” Coyne said. “Everyone’s just there for the love of golf and the love of camaraderie.”
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As word got out of the rescue effort, remarkable things started to happen. “Caddyshack” star Bill Murray and NFL star Jason Kelce both came on as Tom’s partners. Before long, applications for memberships were coming in from far and wide – players, Coyne says, who would likely never set foot on his greens. “For folks that have joined just for the sake of joining, they’re enabling people to play golf who wouldn’t have a golf course otherwise,” he said. “I think that that’s a beautiful thing about the golf community. You know, it’s not just about my golf, it’s about our golf.”
These days, when he sees the ground crews at premiere courses like Pebble Beach, he’s both appreciative and also a little jealous. “I even, like, covet a pile of dirt,” Coyne said, “’cause that’s a good pile of dirt!”
It’s all part of the game he never saw before. And now that he has, it’s not golf that’s taken on more significance; it’s all those who make the game possible.
“Golf doesn’t let you hide,” Coyne said. “You know, I’ve seen some very powerful or famous people look very normal after about two holes.”
Asked if he would do it all over again if he had to, Coyne replied, “Yes. Absolutely. 100 percent. And for one simple reason: It’s ’cause of the people that it’s put in my life. This was something where I absolutely got to be part of a team who wanted to make something good in the world. What a gift!”
READ AN EXCERPT: “A Course Called Home” by Tom Coyne
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Story produced by John Goodwin. Editor: Ben McCormick.
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