Par for the Kingdom

Here we go again. I’m starting yet another blog. About golf and lots of other stuff too.

I am going to start slow, with a few pictures from one of my favorites places, Eastmoreland Golf Course, a 105-year-old municipal golf course in Southeast Portland.

The opening flyleaf to Michael Murphy’s classic novel of sports and mysticism, “Golf in the Kingdom,” depicts the panel representing Hell from Hieronymus Bosch’s triptych “The Garden of Earthly Delights.” The book’s main character Shivas Irons claims that Bosch played an early form of golf, and that Hell dramatizes the agonies experienced on those early golf courses.

As part of my quest over the past year and a half to re-engage with golf, a game that has been a central part of my life since my childhood as the son and grandson of golf pros, I am committed to embracing the range of experiences (good, bad and ugly) golf offers its congregants.

A multi-image snapshot of Eastmoreland GC – a cathedral of natural beauty – on a glorious, rainy morning seems an appropriate place to start this record of my journey “back” to golf.