A few years ago I got my chance, and on one glorious weekend I played Pebble, Spyglass, and the Links at Spanish Bay. All three courses are managed by the Pebble Beach Company, but at the time I’d forgotten about the fourth course in the fold, Del Monte Golf Course, the granddaddy of them all just a few miles inland.

It turns out that Del Monte is the oldest continuously operating golf course west of the Mississippi River. San Francisco’s Presidio Golf Course is older, by a little more than a year, but it was closed during the Spanish-American War of 1898 to serve as a drill field. Del Monte was built as an attraction for the Hotel Del Monte, which later joined the navy (literally) and is now the headquarters of the Naval Postgraduate School. Now the golf course is connected to the Hyatt Regency Monterey Hotel & Spa.

When I say connected, I mean that just about literally. The 17th green is so close to the lobby windows I was hesitant to stand by them when looking around the place on arrival. Just about every golfer who’s swung a club can overshoot a green by ten yards, and that’s about all it would take to plunk one off the plate glass windows.

But that’s part of the appeal, of course. The hotel nestles up to 17 and a portion of the 18th fairway, so you know you’re staying on the golf course, and because it’s a hotel “& Spa” there’s enough there to interest non-golfers.

The course is stately and beautiful, as you’d expect from a course with its pedigree. Towering Monterey pines and broad oaks line the fairways, often poking into fairways and challenging you to clear them to cut distance on doglegs. Many of the holes seem easy, but few of them are.

The greens are small, there’s plenty of sand protecting greens and in fairway bunkers, and for me, reaching the green was never a guarantee of par. They’re hard to read with lots of slope, and fast enough to bedevil the occasional golfer like me.

And I like this about Del Monte: it’s a favorite course for locals. If you come without your golf buddies you can join up with locals who’ll share their course knowledge, tell you how best to make your way around. That only goes so far, naturally; you’ve still got to hit the ball and put it in the hole. But the camaraderie is always welcome. And by Monterey standards, the place is affordable. Greens fees are about one-fifth the cost of a round at Pebble.

So nobody dreams about playing Del Monte, they dream of Pebble. But now I do. Locals say the course is subtle, and it takes time and repeated play to understand its character. I know I only got a whiff of those subtleties, and the course got the best of me. But I’ve been thinking about the shots I didn’t make, and I want another chance. I’ll be back. It’s the perfect weekend away.

On a recent trip back to NYC, my mom dug out a pair of chiffon yellow Bermuda golf shorts with my grandma’s initials embroidered on them and gave them to me. Thanks Mom, maybe I can wear them in some hipster renaissance outfit somewhere in SF.

My mom pulls crazy things out of boxes and storage places in her small Greenwich Village apartment; like hordes of clowns coming out of a circus car, the treasures just keep coming. These were pristine and had probably been cloistered away for more than 30 years. Suffice to say I am NOT a golfer, save the mini golf experiences with my kids. I get the appeal though, and can perhaps imagine, that some day it might be of interest to me.

Golf, however, is a huge part of the travel market and I have written about golf courses and destinations for years. Two recent stories got me thinking about the symbolism of golf in today’s world. The New York Times story: Revolutionary Cuba Now Lays Sand Traps for the Bourgeoisie and the NPR story charting the golf course casualties of the recession, seem to encapsulate so many of the changes rocking our country, the global economy and the geopolitical shifts in the world.

Ironically, Cuba is now building greens, hoping to woo more tourists, while Florida and Georgia, two of the go-to golf states, are converting some courses to park lands, primarily because of a decline in traffic and revenue. Smaller, less glitzy courses are the first to suffer following the real estate boom and bust. Course construction was fast and furious in the Go-Go ’90s and now there is too much supply and not enough demand. Across the U.S., 600 golf courses have closed in the past five years. The National Golf Foundation, or NGF, expects another 500 more to close in the next three years.

In Cuba, fifty years after Castro closed all of his country’s courses calling golf the “epitome of bourgeois excess,” Cuba is rushing to green light at least four luxury course projects in an effort to attract the global golfing elite to the Caribbean nation. Even Castro’s old comrade, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, is still trying to do away with his country’s courses, to make room for housing for the poor. Cuba as a golfing mecca…the times they are a changin’.

The game of golf, travel, and Barack Obama’s victory in the U.S. presidential election are getting all mixed up this week. In a stunning upstaging of Joe the Plumber, William K. Wolfrum reveals on Worldgolf.com that Obama’s success was preordained by “Curt the Golfer,” an Illinois 22-year-old who says (and he has witnesses) that he hit five holes-in-one in the past week.

Most golfers, including many professionals, go their entire lifetimes without hitting one. Wolfrum sees Obama’s success in these five aces by a fellow Illinoisan (in golf, a hole-in-one is also called an “ace”) as clearly as reading tea leaves.

Brandon Tucker, meanwhile, discovered what travel overseas will be like in a post-Bush world when he flew to Morocco to cover the King Hassan II Trophy golf tournament. Instead of dagger stares and dismayed, befuddled, and angry queries about George W. Bush, he’s received friendly comments about electing Obama.

For golf-loving travelers (or travel-loving golfers) Morocco may come as a big surprise. The courses there are superb, as Mark Marais attests.