Tom Coyne: Writer

TOM COYNE: It's a game that gives you great storytelling elements—I mean, the things you need for story: characters, conflict, challenge, resolution, is it a comedy or tragedy?—like, all those things are built into a round of golf. So it's something, as a writer, that you can really lean on.

MASON REED: I'm Mason Reed, and this is Invested in the Game, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each episode, we tell the story of remarkable people who have committed their time, resources, and emotional energy into making golf the wonderful—and sometimes maddening—game that it is.

Hello, Invested in the Game listeners. Season 3 is upon us. Thanks for supporting and listening to us this far.

On today's episode, we're speaking with Tom Coyne. Tom's the editor of The Golfer's Journal, hosts The Golfer's Journal podcast. He has a golf course design firm and is best known for his books over the last 20 years, including Paper Tiger and his trilogy of golfing adventures: A Course Called Ireland, A Course Called Scotland, and A Course Called America. Side note, did you know that when you add a fourth to a trilogy, it's called a tetralogy? I had to Google that one.

Tom's most recent book, just released in May of '26, is A Course Called Home. This adventure is a bit different. It chronicles Tom's involvement in Sullivan County Golf Club, a golden-era Catskills nine-hole golf course that was on the edge of extinction. What started as a curiosity for a potential magazine article quickly evolved into Tom as a caretaker of the course and eventually an owner.

Tom and I spend most of our time talking about his new book and his experience with Sullivan County. You're going to love listening to Tom. He's whip-smart and yet has this down-to-earth vibe, sardonic wit, and self-deprecating humor that makes conversations with him so enjoyable. I hope you enjoy listening to our chat as much as I did participating in it.

Tom Coyne, welcome to Invested in the Game. Glad to have you here.

TOM: Mason, thank you so much for having me. I am thrilled. Charles Schwab's been such a friend of Sullivan County, the golf course I'm involved in. I really appreciate you supporting now that the book is finally out about it, you know, giving us a chance to chat about it.

MASON: I'm looking forward to that, and I'm purposely going to spend the bulk of our conversation on that. There's a few things I want to ask you about in advance of that, that I think will help some of our listeners familiarize themselves with you.

But you are one of the most interesting people in golf. You're an editor of a magazine. You write books. You're a caretaker and owner of Sullivan County Golf Club, which you just mentioned. You're involved in golf course design. I could go on. So thrilled to talk to you about the last part of that, because I think we would need several hours if we actually went through all of your endeavors at this point.

TOM: Haha.

MASON: So we're going to talk mostly about the last part of that.

But I think it would be helpful, Tom … I'd love to understand how you got introduced to golf and writing, but we'll do golf first. When were you introduced to golf in your life, and when did it … if it switched from a hobby to, I don't know, you have the bug or an obsession, or did it tip into something more than just a casual hobby? Can you help us understand your relationship with the game from the early days?

TOM: It's been unhealthy from the very start. No, I'd say the bug got in pretty much right away. I started when I was maybe 9, 8, 9 years old. And initially, I remember being resistant to playing golf because, you know, my dad played and my older brother played, and he was a pretty good player. And so there was this kind of like, "I don't want to do what my brother does. I want to like … I'm going to go be good at this." But that didn't last very long because once, you know, Dad took me up to the club for my first junior clinic lessons, whatever. And then it became about, "Well, I wanted to be better than my brother."

And also, just the … you know, we started playing … I remember playing like junior, junior nine-hole matches and struggling and not liking the feeling of not being good at it and getting very obsessed with trying to get better. So I don't know if that's … it's kind of a funny way to fall in love with something, right, that I'm bad at it? But I think, you know, you see people who just make it look easy and looks like magic, right, especially when you're starting, and you can't hardly make contact. So I do remember like wanting to be good at golf so badly at a very young age.

And you know what's funny? Like, that hasn't changed. I won't say how many years I am away from age 9. It's a few. But I'm still chasing better golf, and I still believe my best round is coming tomorrow. And I'm still buying swing aids and watching YouTube videos to find my greatest …

MASON: Sounds a little quixotic at this point, but hopefully you'll catch the windmill, so to speak.

TOM: It's coming.

MASON: Yeah, it's right around the corner.

TOM: It's coming. You watch it. It is, so … but that's what golf does, right? It's this great bait-and-switch because you'll hit one shot that's as good as you'd ever need to hit a golf shot, and then, you know, you'll hit 80 others that aren't quite so good. So it does give you that feeling of like, "You can do this," because we actually technically do what like professionals do … that we watch them do on television. Granted, we do it much less frequently. Like, I can make a 30-foot putt. I can hit the middle of the green. I can hit a fairway. I can … well, I don't hit as far as I used to perhaps, but you know, I can get it out there to where I need to, you know? And it's just like, well, but I only do it twice a round and they do it 67 times a round, so …

MASON: Right, if you're watching LeBron play, you're like, "I can never do that."

TOM: I can't dunk.

MASON: "There's no world where I can dunk or do anything," right.

TOM: Exactly, exactly. But I can do what he just did, because I did it last year on a Tuesday night. And so …

MASON: One of my 10,000 shots, I can do that.

TOM: Haha, exactly.

MASON: They do it at a 90% clip.

TOM: Exactly.

MAON: And so was golf a recreation and hobby of yours as you entered college and started being interested in writing? And I guess I've never thought about this, but did you catch a writing bug at an earlier age, or was that a teenage college interest? When did that surface for you?

TOM: It was actually pretty early. I mean, I wasn't sitting around writing poetry as a child or like composing manuscripts as a youth. But writing was always something that I loved to do.

And I actually remember, in like first grade, I wrote a Christmas story. And we had this dictionary of Christmas terms. So I basically plagiarized the whole thing and just used all the words in the dictionary. But I showed it to my teacher, and she's like, "Oh my gosh, like, look at all these words you're using." In any event … oh my gosh, my career started with ripping off a dictionary, but … wow, I'm just putting this together.

MASON: Haha.

TOM: So I remember her walking me down to the third grade to read the story, to like show off. And I liked the approval that came from something that I wrote, the way that I expressed myself. In school, it was the thing that I was probably best at and through high school, college, writing for newspapers, magazines, all that stuff.

So there was a progression to where I ended up in a graduate writing program, but like golf was never part of it. Golf remained a hobby. I was serious about it in high school. I tried out for the college team, didn't work out. And after that, golf just became like a hobby. Like, I was a really good Monday bar scramble player. I could go out in like the McFadden's Monday outing at whatever golf course and go win the scramble for you. So yeah, my 20s, I was basically winning a lot of like beer t-shirts. That was the extent of my golf accomplishment. But connecting golf and writing was a pretty happy accident.

MASON: And your first major thing you did was fiction, wasn't it? The first book you wrote?

TOM: It was, yeah.

MASON: Yeah. Because I think that most people that are familiar with your writing associate you, I'm going to guess, more with all of the "Course Called" travel …

TOM: Oh yeah.

MASON: … where you're kind of the central character in these nonfiction books. But that's not where you started. You started with fiction. That kind of put you on the map, didn't it?

TOM: For sure. The "Course Called" books have ran circles around my first book, which was a novel called A Gentleman's Game. And that was actually my master's thesis when I was in graduate school. You had to write a … I was in a fiction program. You had to write a manuscript as your thesis. And I started writing these stories about a caddy, because I'd grown up caddying as well as playing golf. And you know, those stories turned into chapters, and I was like, "Well, maybe this will be a novel." I mean, I'm 23. Like, I don't know how to write a novel. I hardly know how to write anything. So I strung those together, and it got published. It got made into a movie, and you know, that was nuts.

MASON: That's not normal, right—just for everybody out there listening—that your thesis, that would ultimately become a novel, became a movie as well?

TOM: Yeah, I would say probably not the typical path. But it really skewed my perspective on how this whole writing career was going to go because it's like, "Ah man, I can't wait till next year when I write another book, and we have another movie, and that'll be so fun, too. And I'll get a better suit for the next premiere," you know, like all that. Yeah, it's like … you realize, for a book to be made into a film, it's a once-in-a-lifetime, one-in-a-million shot—and I was spoiled right off the start. Yeah, it kind of works backwards. Like, you know, that should happen later in your career, but it was great.

And like you said, it kind of put me on the map in the golf space, right? So even though that novel is … there's golf in it, and it takes place at a golf club, it's a coming-of-age story really. But because we could put a golfer on the cover and on the golf shelf, suddenly I'm in the golf space, which is, for an author, is a good place to be. Golfers buy books. Golfers read books. Golfers, they're a thoughtful bunch. And I've been happy to stay in that space and have a readership there.

MASON: I was going to ask you this later, but I think it probably dovetails better to what you just said, which is why do you think, for you at least, or for others, golf provides a good environment for storytelling? What is it about golf courses or golfers or the game that seems to lend itself towards good stories?

TOM: Yeah, so George Plimpton famously said, "The smaller the ball, the better the writing." So you get not a lot of great basketball writing out there. Well, there's some, but a lot of good baseball writing. But golf, I would say, has the sort of richest, you know, from Updike to just so many people have done good golf stuff over the years. So I mean … but the question of why, it's a good one. And I think that, you know, golf as a game, you know, you're out there for four, maybe five hours, and the actual action of what's happening is a few minutes, right? So there's a lot of time to talk, to think, to tell stories. There's a lot of space. You spend a lot of time in a round of golf in your head versus other sports that are instinctual, that are reacting, right? You initiate the action in golf.

Because I think golf being such a mental game, that it perhaps attracts people who are inclined to either write about it or want to read about it. I also think it's a game that sort of takes over your life, and that goes to maybe the difficulty of it, the challenge of it, all the different places you can play it. And so I mean look, this office that I'm talking to you from is just covered in golf nonsense everywhere. I mean, it's like a shrine to this game. And I don't know, if I was a tennis player, I don't know if my office would look like this, right?

MASON: Yeah, the courts are generally the same.

TOM: Haha, yeah.

MASON: The ball is … yeah, and you can also play … you named pretty much everything. You can also play most of your life competitively against anybody. Like, Rory McIlroy can play a 20-handicap, 95-year-old man or woman and have a competitive match. And there's nothing like that, and that I think … maybe that helps also that you have these characters going through it for decades and decades. And that 95-year-old still trying to get better and maybe watching these YouTube videos you're talking about.

TOM: Exactly, I mean, you're going to have a long life in this game, a long career. You're going to have all sorts of experiences, and we share them with each other, right? We share them after a round. The story of your round of golf sometimes is almost as important as the round itself, it seems. You know, your memories of it, the things you learn about yourself. Gosh, golf gives you so much to write about. So it's a game that's built on story. It's a game that gives you great storytelling elements—I mean, the things you need for story: characters, conflict, challenge, resolution, is it a comedy or tragedy?—like, all those things are built into a round of golf. So it's something, as a writer, that you can really lean on. I mean, the setting is right there in front of you, and it's a beautiful one, and it's interesting. Yeah, so all the pieces that I would teach in my creative writing classes about, "OK, these are the things you need for story," golf gives them to you in abundance.

MASON: Before we jump to your latest book, you found yourself as, I suppose, the main character—you were just talking about characters—in these somewhat wild adventures after your fiction book. So from Paper Tiger through the "Course Called" trilogy. What was that transition like where you said, "I'm going to do this adventure?" I don't know if you thought you were going to write a book, or you decided that later. But either way, you found yourself becoming a character in your own stories, which is obviously quite different from writing a fiction book, even if it was rooted a little bit in your experiences as a caddy. What was that like to all of sudden be writing books about yourself and what you were doing and the experiences that you were having?

TOM: It was tricky, right? And I had to adjust to that because it's one thing if someone doesn't like your book, and it's another thing if they don't like you, because you're in the book. You know, they're like, "Well, I didn't like that character." Wait, that was me.

MASON: That's hurtful. Yes, yeah.

TOM: Right? So there's another element of pressure. And there's also like, in all these stories, like I've either … in Paper Tiger, I tried to play pro golf, so I had to actually accomplish something. So there's not just the sort of pressure of writing the book. There's like creating and living a life that's interesting enough to become a book.

MASON: Right.

TOM: Right? So that's a little bit different. But I think at the end of the day, the difference between writing fiction and what I would call creative nonfiction, which is an oxymoron, but it's basically nonfiction where you're applying the tools of the fiction writer. So can you write scene? Can you write dialogue? How do you develop characters? All this stuff. Like, the tool, it's the same toolbox. It's just that in doing nonfiction, obviously you're held to truth and honesty about what actually happened. And you're given the events rather [than] having to invent them. So I just kept trying to put myself, you know, with the last, I don't know, five books, put myself in positions where the circumstances would give me something really rich. And then I could apply the tools that I worked on in graduate school or my whole life that are just really the fundamentals of storytelling. So I don't look at them as being all that different. Though I think my wife is … I do want to go back to writing fiction, and I think my wife is looking forward to that because I think she's tired of being a character in all my stories.

MASON: And to the family disruption that comes with long travel …

TOM: Well, there's that for sure.

MASON: … or 50 states of golf travel …

TOM: Yeah.

MASON: … and all these other things.

TOM: But I think it's weird for her when a stranger comes up to her and is like, "Oh my gosh, like, how's your house?" or "How was that trip?" or this and that, and she's like, "What?" I'm like, "Remember you were in the book too? Did you read it? Did you even read my book?"

MASON: The challenge of nonfiction, I suppose.

So speaking of putting yourself in interesting situations, we connected, we Schwab, connected with you in, probably in 2023 would be my guess. And we shared your story about Sullivan County in one of our Challengers films. So that was almost three years ago. And at that moment, you had just started to take on this project. You're on a mower. You were figuring out that you had forgotten to order golf balls. You were in the thick of it in 2023. The podcast will come out right about the time your latest book is out, called A Course Called Home, which is about Sullivan County.

TOM: Yep.

MASON: So we haven't chatted. There's this three-year gap now between when we last connected with you, and now there's a …

TOM: Yeah, how much has changed?

MASON: Yeah, a lot's changed. So for people not as familiar with the Sullivan County story, can you just give a little bit of a summary of how that came to be—and then we'll talk about the book in a minute—but just how the project came to be? Because it was one of these, you know, maybe serendipitous or coincidental life things that morphed into something much bigger.

TOM: Yeah, it's turned my life into something I never expected. My life compared to four years ago, it's hardly recognizable now having this golf course in my life.

This whole thing started with a DM on social media from someone with a handle @gorsenod, who was a superintendent at a nine-hole golf course in the Catskills. And I had a vague notion of where the Catskills were. But he said, "This course, it's almost 100 years old. It's going to close, and I'm trying to keep it open. Would you like to write about it? Do you know anyone who would be willing to invest in it, you know, to try and bring it back?" And it sounded like a magazine story. And so I went up in like March, wanted to meet @gorsenod, who ended up being Shaun Smith. And we hit it off. We just kind of saw a lot of things the same way, and his sort of passion for wanting to save a nine-hole golf course because it meant so much to him and to the community, it was just something that I wanted to be a part of. And it felt bigger than the magazine story that I thought might come out of the trip. And at the time I had a book deal, and without a subject, and I thought, "Well, what if this became like We Bought a Zoo?"

The current owners of the place were wonderful. They'd had it for a few years and just couldn't make the golf go. They were trying to save it themselves. And so they said, "Hey, if you want to have it for a year, you know, we'll cover everything—the bills, taxes, utilities, everything—like you're the … it's yours. You know, you can just have a year to see what happens and see if you can do something with it. And then you could have the option to buy it." Because I certainly was not in position to be buying golf courses, and I'm still not.

So that's what I did. I said, "Let's go for it," and I moved up to the lower Catskills and to Liberty, New York, to Dirty Dancing country. And it became my summer home, and I learned how to mow fairways and cut cups and maintain a golf course and, you know, try to run a business. You know, it's a funny thing to go from a writer staring at a screen all day or where you spend most of your time in a room by yourself, and then having a going concern. It's quite an adjustment. But you know, you need challenges to tell stories, and you need problems. Problems become material, and so the place gave me plenty of material.

MASON: Was your diving head first into mowing grass and doing all of the operations of the place a fiscal function, or was it both that, "I want to do this to understand what it's like to be doing all of the work that goes into a golf course," while also you didn't have the revenue probably coming in anyway? So did that kill two birds basically by doing that?

TOM: 100%. That was exactly, yeah, absolutely. Because one, you know, our greens crew was two people. So if on days that I was there, which the first year was most days, if I could get on a mower and cut fairways, which was the only thing I was trusted with. So yes, right, that's another person we don't have to pay. So that's great. Because yeah, we have two nickels to rub together. But then it was like, "If I'm doing this, I want to do it all," right? Like, "If I'm going to run a golf course, I want to do it from every angle. I'm going to stock the shop. I'm going to get a logo. We're going to redo this. We're going to redo that. I'm going to learn how to take care of all this stuff. I want to see what goes on in the maintenance barn." And so, yeah … and not only like selfishly because I was curious, but also for the book. Like I wanted to … if I'm writing about like, what's it like to run a golf course, I'm not going to just show up and write paychecks, you know? I'm going to get my hands dirty. And they got quite dirty, actually.

MASON: Yeah, and the book starts there. I just got my copy yesterday, and I've only read a few pages, and it just … I'm not giving anything away on the first page. I mean it is … starts right with cleaning blades and how to repair mowing equipment. I mean it is …

TOM: I'm stuck in the mud, yeah.

MASON: Yeah, stuck in the mud.

Did Shaun allow you to expand your responsibilities? Did you get to touch the greens, ever? I know you raked bunkers, you cut holes, but did you get to the point where you're at least proficient at anything that needed to be done?

TOM: No, I did not. I got to the point where I got pretty good at mowing fairways. And you'd want to be playing the course after I mowed the fairway because the fairway would have probably gotten a little wider. Because it's just always easier to take a little extra than to try to hit that line perfectly and leave some, because that looks terrible. So over the course of the season, fairways got bigger and bigger.

MASON: It's a friendlier golf course.

TOM: Yeah, why not?

MASON: It's very modern of you to have wide fairways.

TOM: So modern.

But no, fairways were my specialty. And Shaun would have all these patterns, like, "I want you to do this and do that, because last time we cut it this way and cut it that way." I mean, all these things you learn about, like if you're cutting fairways, and you're not out there before the dew dries, man, you're in so much trouble because you just lose where you've gone. Now, like more expensive fairway mowers have like little foam things that drop dots along your fairway to give you your mow lines. Like, now, I love that I can talk about mow lines now. This adventure has given me a lot of interesting knowledge. And if you don't have that kind of stuff, you're just out there blind.

So it's been … yeah, so I'd get out there early before the dew dried and try Shaun's new pattern, but I'd usually end up just doing a Zamboni because that was the easiest. Just loop around until it's all done.

MASON: Yeah, just do loops.

TOM: Yeah, loops.

MASON: Yeah, try not to create corners on the fairway that they can't mow the next day.

TOM: Yeah, this is how things have changed for me. When I look at golf courses that have that hexagonal, that striping or whatever, that just blows my mind, like, the work and the time and the cost of the machinery and all that that goes into making a fairway just look like that. Things we absolutely take for granted, I certainly don't take them for granted anymore.

MASON: I think about that a lot when I'm out on the course, that, you know, these crews, and you start to talk about this in the book at the beginning, but they operate a lot in the cover of night, or at least at the very early. And it's just, like, a lot of golfers just show up and have no concept of what has gone in from everything from fertilizer to mowing and everything in between and native grass. And yeah, I think I've taken it for granted is probably an understatement.

So that was starting in '23, and you went from magazine story to, "I actually might be interested in caretaking this and being a part of this." And then did you have to quickly figure out, "How am I going to monetize this?" Because if you've got an option to buy it, you had to start thinking about how it could actually make money, which the owners who had given you this deal, I'm guessing, hadn't quite cracked the code on that just yet, or else they wouldn't have done what you were able to do. But did you have to start quickly figuring out how the heck this turns into a viable, money-making operation after you've learned how to do the mowers for a little bit?

TOM: I did, because I got it to a point where we weren't losing money—and we were even making a little money, and mostly out of like … and now we had logo and merch, and it was a cool story that golf social media was excited about, and people were joining from all over the place because you could join for $450 or whatever. So we were getting memberships from all over the place, and we had money. But just enough money to the status quo, right? Like, we weren't buying any new things or hiring any new people, but we were keeping it going, and that was cool. But what's the future, right? That's just keeping your head above water, barely. So yeah, I had to put on a business hat, which is a hat I did not know that I owned.

So I thought about what the property had going for it, aside from like a really charming golf course on the side of a mountain. We had a lot of extra acres that we didn't use for golf and probably couldn't because it would either be wetland or on the side of a mountain. So you know, what about homes here, and what about lodging? What about hospitality? And that's how the original owners got involved was that was their plan for it. And then they got busy with a lot of other projects.

So I went to them and said, "All right, what if we … you guys stay on. You get the clubhouse going because you do hospitality very well. We find 30 home sites. We find some space for a lodge out there, maybe do some glamping and stuff like that and turn it into a destination. And then the money that I can bring, we'll put that into the golf course. Now granted, I'm giving up 50% equity in … you know, I'm going in on a partnership. I'm not buying the whole thing outright. But that way, we can get all this stuff done. And we did it ridiculously cheaply in golf terms, like how much golf projects can cost. We did it very, very, very low budget. But we rerouted, fixed up the course, built a driving range, a putting course, and we did all that for $750,000, $800,000.

MASON: Wow.

TOM: Yeah. We don't have irrigation. Our irrigation is pretty much hand done, off the back of a truck. And Shaun now has a new system where he pumps water down the hill just using gravity. It's a wild rigged system to get water to the greens, but most of the course …

MASON: But to put that in perspective for people out there, golf courses, it would be hard to build an 18-hole golf course these days for under $30 or $40 million.

TOM: Yeah.

MASON: I'm guessing something like that. And many of them can cost hundreds of millions of dollars. So the fact that you did all this rehabilitation and got it … I just wanted to give some point of reference for that being under a million bucks.

TOM: Yes, it is a very different kind of project in those terms, because yeah, I mean, if we wanted to irrigate the course, I mean, that's going to cost you a couple million off the top. And we're just talking about nine holes. So yeah.

So we put the money in, you know, where we thought it would be best spent. But still, to get that back, you're never going to get that back off $25 green fees. So it's like, "All right, but if we have these home sites, and we do some other stuff, we can." And so again, my partners up there, that's their business. They're very good at it. So eventually, we'll have some homes on the property, and that'll be wonderful.

This was a part of the world where, for decades, people came every summer, spent the whole summer with these huge resorts, again, like these Dirty Dancing places. And it's such a beautiful part of the world. And it just went out of fashion, and people started going elsewhere. And now people are starting to rediscover it. So if we can be there as they do, that's what we'd like to do.

MASON: That's awesome.

Where does the balance happen between "I'm writing a book" and "I'm doing this without thinking of writing a book?" You know, I'm sure thoughts come into your head that you can't get out of your head about how this was potentially becoming a book. But how did you manage that when you were trying to do all of this work, get it set up as a business, and try to prop it up for future success for the community, financially viable, all these things, while also thinking there's probably a book in here somewhere? Did you take notes, or how did you think about it, and how did you handle that balance?

TOM: Yeah, well, it's good … you know, all the books, you know, from Paper Tiger, A Course Called Ireland … Scotland … America, like I've approached them all the same way that if the premise is strong enough, and the situation for me, difficult or uncomfortable enough, that something's going to come out of it that's going to give me something to write about, right? Like, the Irish have an expression—"good news is no good for telling," right? Nobody wants to hear about how great your day was and how smoothly everything went. So I've always tried to give myself, whether it be doing Ireland on foot or trying to play all 50 states, like make the challenge a level of absurdity to it so that you know you're going to find yourself in some situations that are going to be really rich with story. And me trying to run a business, the absurdity factor was off the charts. So I knew that there was going to be story.

And when I go into all of these projects, I'm only thinking about what I'm trying to do as a golfer or a traveler or a golf course owner or operator. Now I'm taking notes every evening, I'm downloading. I mean, it used to be like … and when I did [A Course Called] Ireland, it was more romantic. I'm journaling in the corner of the pub at night, everything that happened. Now I'm dictating it into a phone, which is slightly, yeah, slightly less romantic.

MASON: Same concept though …

TOM: Same concept.

MASON: You're sharing your day's thoughts and getting those …

TOM: Getting the words down, what happened. And there's some days when nothing happened, and there were no notes, but a lot of days it was, "OK, I wanted to collect art, who told what joke, what happened when Shaun got attacked by bees again or whatever?" And they're not terribly extensive notes, because I think when, at least for me, when I sit down to write, the stories that have stuck with you and that are like on the tip of your tongue and ready to be told, they're the ones that should be in the story. I can always go back to my notes to fact check them or see what actually did … when did that happen or whatever. But I think with this book, over so many years … it was supposed to be one year, and then my editor's like, "Wait, you're buying the course? So now I want to hear about that." And then the next … and then he's like, "You're redoing the course? I want to hear about that." So it became a three-year book. But when I sat down to wrote it, I had 500 pages of notes, but I almost never had to go back and look at them.

MASON: Wow. I was going to ask you about that, and I know it sounds like a bit of a remedial or obtuse thing of like, "How do you write a book?" I'm sure there's different ways to write a book. You might have the archetype of the writer who goes away and sits in a cabin and shuts everything off and out comes a book a few months later. In your case, was it more organic, or did you actually get to a point where you had all your notes, and then you started to write a narrative, or you started to write a manuscript? How do you actually write a book in this case?

TOM: Yeah, so this has been consistent through, you know, all the nonfiction books is where I'll go and do this thing. This one's a little bit different because the story's not over. Like, you can go play Sullivan County, and I'll be there this summer—and the story goes on.

But you know, I'll finish a trip or arrive at some point where I'm like, "OK, this is the end of what I'm going to write about," and not do anything for a little while, let it sit for a couple months, and let it just kind of roll around in my head until I know what the story is about, until I've really put my finger on, "OK, this is a story about this person trying to do this thing. And these are the things that were opposing them," right? Just, which is just like the classic three pieces of a story.

And sometimes it takes a little while to figure that out. Going into it, you think it's like, "OK, this story, it's going to be We Bought a Zoo, and it's just all these crazy things that happen when you try to buy a golf course." And trust me, there's plenty of that. But it's like, "Oh no, you know what? This is really about a dreamer. This is really about this guy Shaun who hit me up on social and wouldn't let go of a golf course. And like, what if we didn't let go of the things in our lives that were difficult," you know? And he didn't, and look at what happened.

And I'm like, "OK, now if I'm going to write about that, now I know how to approach the book." And it takes time. But in the moment, when you're running carts and trying to make sure the fairway is getting mowed or make sure the greens are rolling, none of that occurs to you. It's in there, but it's not at the front of your mind. You're trying to get through the day. So yeah, it takes some time to like, at least for me, to like understand what the book is going to be about.

And then once I'm there, yeah, I do actually do that creepy, like, The Shining retreat usually and go off …

MASON: Locked away in your …

TOM: I go locked away and …

MASON: … in your writer's shed for a little while.

TOM: "All work and no play." And now actually that we have a home in the Catskills near the golf course, that's where I went and, you know, spent a month and … or as long as I can get away with. And I need to do that to get myself started, to be completely away from the email and the distractions and the whatnot.

But once I've done that, once I'm on a roll, once I'm, "OK, now I'm in the book," once the book becomes the first thing you think about in the morning and the last thing you think about at night, you know, you're good. But it takes a little while for it to become that.

MASON: One more question just on the book-writing process that I thought of as you were saying this. Do you write a book, in this case, let's use your most recent, chronologically, or is this like Pulp Fiction? You're writing like something over here that's out of order, and then you have to sequence it together. Or when you started that month process, do you basically say, "All right, I'm starting from the beginning?"

TOM: No, it's pretty chronological. But I do, I think with all the books, try to like identify, "All right, what was like the biggest problem? Give me a crisis. Thinking back, what was the trouble that I kept having or that I had?" So in the [A Course Called] Ireland book, it opens with me almost getting eaten by a dog. Paper Tiger opens with me trying to hit a golf shot at Canadian Tour Q-School and being scared to death. So starting with a problem and then working where you're on this battlefield of like, " I'm unprepared for this. I don't know what's going to happen here. I'm stuck. I'm in trouble." And then it's like, "Oh, how did I get here? Well, let me tell you." I just like front loading it that way so that your reader knows that, "All right, there's going to be some stuff in here," and we'll get to it rather than starting with, "One day I wandered up to the Catskills."

MASON: Yes.

TOM: "I found myself a little golf course."

MASON: This is where your writing, your talented writing and your professor self of teaching writing come into play. You're helping us understand how you stitch stories together in addition to you doing it yourself.

TOM: Sure. Well, you have to lead strong, you know?

MASON: Yeah, exactly.

A couple of future-looking things here, and then we'll let you go.

When we did the film with you, which I watched again this morning in advance of hopping on the podcast with you, you said, because this is 2023, you said, "I have no idea how this story ends. It could be comedy, could be tragedy," but you didn't know, which would make sense when you were early days at Sullivan. And then you just said, "Hey, it's going strong if people want to go up there this summer." So you finished a book. Is the story still going? In your mind, can we close the thought from the video three years ago of not knowing how the story ends because this is a living, breathing thing. This is not like you've played 50 states of golf, and you've checked it off and completed it. I can't wait to read the book regardless if the story is still unfolding. So I'm just curious how you would talk about that now three years later.

TOM: I mean, the story definitely has an ending because there's a … yeah, we arrive at a place at the end of the book where it feels like complete. Like, we are in a very different place on the final page than we were at the first. So yeah, I mean, the truth of the matter is that this place still exists, and I'm still there doing the things that I'm doing in the book. Some of the cast of characters has changed. Yeah, our circumstances have certainly changed. But we're still … I still think like long-term, the health of Sullivan County—hopefully the book is a nice boost for it—but we still need golfers and support and members and people to come find us and people who believe in community golf and rural golf and affordable golf. I mean, this is not a place that was hit by the … the COVID boom in golf did not affect Liberty, New York, where you basically have a golfing population of X people, you know, that, whatever the number is, right? So if you're a community that relies on people to come to it, we still need that. And we would love for anyone to be part of the next chapter of Sullivan County by joining today for the low price of $500.

Can you believe you can be a member of a Met section golf club for the year for $500?

MASON: No.

TOM: I can't believe that, Mason.

MASON: And also, I think that, you know, good logos go a long way, and you have one of the best logos out there. So if someone …

TOM: Yeah, George Peper just did a book, The Best Logos in Golf, and we're in it.

MASON: Yeah.

TOM: I can't believe it.

MASON: It's deserved.

TOM: And the logo's about three years old. It's so cool.

MASON: It really is good. And that goes to show how important that is to, you know, golf nerds like you and me.

TOM: Hugely.

MASON: So you already talked a little bit about what's next for Sullivan County. Is it too soon to ask you what's next for you? And I guess that's also awkward. It's not like you're like leaving Sullivan County, and then there's this new thing, and that's in your past—because that'll still be a part of you for many, many, many years to come.

TOM: Right.

MASON: But do you have, and you don't have to share them, but are there some other things brewing in your head that you're going to put yourself into yet another crazy situation here in the future?

TOM: No, 100% there's a lot brewing. But I think "A Course Called," I don't know what else I have left in that arena, you know?

MASON: Yeah.

TOM: I've done the travel I want to do, and I bought a golf course at this point. I don't know. You have to really want to do something and be so passionate about it and for it to be so obvious about the next step in your life for it to become a book project or something like that, because it takes over your life for years. So I don't have anything on the "Course Called" front, doing that right now.

MASON: If your wife is listening, she's recording this and …

TOM: I know.

MASON: … putting it somewhere in the kitchen …

TOM: She knows.

MASON: Like, "He said it. He said it on the record."

TOM: She knows I would love to get back to writing fiction. So you know, hopefully that's where things start to go. But it's tricky because there's an audience now that has enjoyed, touch wood and thank God that they have, and hopefully they enjoy the next one, you know, that they've enjoyed the "Course Called" series, and maybe they're more inclined to read nonfiction than fiction. Men are generally more inclined to read nonfiction than fiction. My audience definitely skews male. So you know, we'll see what happens. I'll have to work in some, I don't know, some battle scenes and some wizards or something, and we'll be fine. Golfing wizards and with vampires and …

MASON: I love it, yes.

TOM: … and we'll take over the world.

MASON: Just put a bow on "A Course Called," then move on to like superhero stuff …

TOM: Whatever it takes.

MASON: … then you'll definitely get a movie.

All right, last question. We ask everybody this, and I cannot wait to ask you this question. When you think about any part of golf, any part of it—either amateur, golf courses, professional, anything—what gives you optimism about the future when you think about some portion of golf? Or what comes to mind that gives you a positive trajectory about golf in the future?

TOM: So I'll just give you something recently. I went down to the Caddyshack Invitational. It's very much like the Masters in every way. No, it's about as far as one can get from …

MASON: I was like, "Not the one I'm familiar with, but OK."

TOM: It was wild. The Murray Bros. Caddyshack® Invitational in St. Augustine, Florida—25th of their celebration. And they raise a lot of money for charity. It's super fun. A lot of celebrities, and it's such a huge party, incredible music. They really blow it out. And I was down there, and I was in the airport. And so I was flying into Jacksonville, and I was looking around, and you know, you're waiting, praying for your golf clubs to come off the conveyor belt—and here they come. And you know, there's like 25 bags coming off, and there was no one else on that flight going to the Caddyshack event. But they were all going to play Sawgrass, some were going to Sea Island, whatever. And they were all younger than me. And I was like, "Whoa. That's cool." Like, they were all 30-something-year-olds. Golf has changed in that I wouldn't have pegged any of them as like country club members. And when I was growing up, you didn't play golf in Philadelphia unless you belong … or the country club member, right? So you know, they're that younger golfer who consumes a lot of their golf via YouTube or Instagram, whatever, and then they spend their golf money on these golf trips and golf experiences, right? So the golfer has changed a little bit, but they're younger, and they're passionate. And they're knowledgeable too, because they're listening to golf podcasts, and they're reading The Golfer's Journal or whatever. And that's really cool. And we certainly see that at The Golfer's Journal, how many young, informed people want great golf stories, and they want golf to be part of their lives. So certainly a time not too long ago when all those golf bags would have belonged to dudes older than I am. And so it was pretty cool to see all these young guys who were like, "Dude, I saw you on Instagram," you know? I'm like, "Is golf cool? What happened?"

MASON: Yeah. Yeah.

TOM: Golf's cool.

MASON: Well, we spent all this time talking and didn't get into your work at The Golfer's Journal, but I think that The Golfer's Journal has played a major, major role in that. And there's others. There's an ecosystem of content and media companies that have helped with that. But I mean, that's wonderful to see. I agree with you. And I think that someday when we're talking a little more about your other endeavors, we can talk about that because that really has tapped into that—The Golfer's Journal, Broken Tee Society, and all the different ways people are just taking golf in a way that you and I didn't really grow up with. It's different way to do it.

TOM: Exactly. It is. It's exciting.

MASON: Thank you so much for your time, Tom. It's good to see you after a few years and talk to you.

For anybody listening out there, May 5th is the date that A Course Called Home is coming out. You can read all about the journey of Sullivan County Golf Club. And also, you could become a member.

TOM: You certainly can.

MASON: Go join and go play, go play in the summer and enjoy the Catskills and see what everybody was loving for almost a hundred years up there and will continue to love.

So thanks for all you're doing, Tom. Thanks for your time, and good luck in everything. Good luck with Sullivan County, and good luck with a fiction book in our future.

TOM: There you go. Thanks, Mason. Thanks for having me and huge thanks to Charles Schwab for being such a support.

MASON: Happy to do it. Good to see you.

TOM: Good to see you.

MASON: So that's it for us today. Tom's new book, A Course Called Home, is available wherever you buy your books or audiobooks. You can also go to tomcoyne.com, that's T-O-M-C-O-Y-N-E dot com, or search for @CoyneWriter on X, Facebook, and Instagram.

For all of Schwab's golf content, including our films, tournament news, and promotions, check out SchwabGolf.com. If you've enjoyed the show, which we hope you did, we'd be really grateful if you'd leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, a rating on Spotify, or feedback wherever you listen.

For important disclosures, see the show notes or schwab.com/TheGame.