The Guest Book
Words from those whomade the journey.
We do not advertise, and we do not chase reviews. Our guests write when they get home — and, more often than not, when they are ready to come back. A few of those letters, shared with permission.
I have played every course on my bucket list in America and none of it prepared me for the first tee at the Old Course with John standing beside me. He had us on in April, on a Tuesday, when the ballot said no. I still don't fully understand how, and he just smiled and ordered the coffee.
Robert Whitmore
Greenwich, Connecticut
The Kingdom of Golf · April
Muirfield has been the white whale of my golfing life. Two failed attempts over fifteen years. John had a letter written, a lunch at Greywalls arranged, and a foursomes afternoon in the old manner. My father played 36 holes there the week he turned seventy. There is no price on that.
James Callahan
Boston, Massachusetts
A bespoke Muirfield journey · September
The West Coast Clipper was the finest week of travel my wife and I have ever taken, golf or otherwise. Sailing into a Sound before breakfast, Ardfin entirely to ourselves, a dram at the clubhouse that John insisted we try. We have already booked to return with our sons.
Charles & Eleanor Hastings
Palm Beach, Florida
The West Coast Clipper · June
As someone whose family left Ayrshire in 1848, the genealogy week was never really about the golf — and then they had me play Prestwick the morning after standing in the kirkyard where my great-great-grandparents are buried. I wept on the third green. Superbly, quietly done.
Margaret Ellison
Toronto, Ontario
The Genealogy Tour · May
Three generations, seven courses, one week, and not a single wasted hour. My son-in-law is a scratch golfer, my father is eighty-one. John built the week so each of them got their day, and neither of them knew the other had been accommodated. That is the difference.
David Rosen
Chicago, Illinois
A bespoke family week · August
I asked for two things: Royal Dornoch in decent weather, and a round nobody at my club in Dallas has played. I got both. The second one I am not permitted to name, which is precisely the point.
Thomas Beaumont
Dallas, Texas
The Northern Highlands · May
The Outlander week was my wife's idea. I went for the golf, she went for the castles, and we both came home having got the better of the bargain. Doune, Blackness, Culross — and Carnoustie in a forty-mile wind the day after. Our marriage survives on stronger ground now.
Kevin O'Donnell
Denver, Colorado
The Outlander Tour · September
Every detail arrived before I thought to ask for it. Caddies who knew my game by the fourth hole, a rain suit in my size in the car, a dinner table moved because the wind turned. I run a company of four thousand people and I have never seen service assembled like it.
Alexandra Pierce
San Francisco, California
The Kingdom of Golf · July
Turnberry in the evening light, the lighthouse holes with nobody ahead of us, and dinner after at the long table. My grandfather played Ailsa in 1962. John found the scorecard photograph in the clubhouse archive and had it framed before we flew home. He is not a concierge. He is a curator.
William Ashford III
Nashville, Tennessee
A bespoke Turnberry journey · June
Add Your Own Chapter
The next letter could be yours.
Tell John the courses you dream about. He has likely played them last month — and he knows the man who can get you on.