Lahinch- A special place to me

When I was 10 years old, I got to go to Lahich for the first time. It was the first great golf course I had ever played. It was a glorious sun filled Irish afternoon and spending that day with my dad was one of the most special days of my life.

Me on the back bank of the par 3 5th, the Dell hole. I got up and down for a par from there :)

I was lucky enough to return this summer. It was the same special palce to me.

Lahinch is an undervalued and underrated golf course and is a must see on any first time Irish golfing vacation.

I urge you to explore the links of Lahinch and let Bradley Golf Travel plan the trip for you!

Matt

We can now help with Australia!

After returning home from a whirlwind tour of Tasmania, Melbourne and Adelaide, I now feel quite comfortable in offering help planning a golf or family trip down under.  So many great courses, people, cities and sites.

When traveling to Tasmania, I can happily suggest a charter service from Melbourne that saves time, energy and gets you on the courses at Barnbougle much more efficiently.  Check out the view from the plane as we arrived over Barnbougle Dunes and Lost Farm:

Once on the ground, so many great holes to see including this Doak gem:  #13 at Barnbougle Dunes:



And here is a picture from my new all-time favorite course, by my all-time favorite golf course architect.  Royal Melbourne, designed by Dr. Alister Mackenzie:



I can highly recommend every course that I visited...give us ring or send us an email, and we will start planning your down-under adventure.

Bart

Merry Christmas!!

Christmas time is here and with it snow! Just like the 8th at Royal Dornoch.

From our family to yours, we hope you have a blessed holiday and a happy new year!

Merry Christmas!

Matt






Picture used from golfclubatlas.com taken by Brian Ewen.

The beauty of a rain suit

No matter what the venue might be, especially if you are playing on one of your memorable vacations, don't forget the wet gear!

 

The 18th at Royal Dornoch as another storm approaches.

And you might enjoy playing in the elements! I know I certainly do.



Connemara Golf Club, Connemara Ireland

The weather can even be inspirational! I have been the witness to a certain round in my dad's lifetime in which he cooly fired a 77 at Ballybunion during a monsoon ;-)

Let Bradley Golf Travel plan youre next trip and never under estimate the value of a good rain suit!

 

Matt

What is your favorite golf memory?

Getting to play and enjoy the game of golf growing up, and being able to share this with my dad is one of the things I cherish greatly in my life.



From being a small kid, to the teenager I am now, I love playing golf no matter the venue.



These are memories that will last as long as I live.



So contact Bradley Golf Travel now and let us plan the trip that will create your memory that will last a life time!


Thanks Dad,
I love you.
--Matt

Where do you want to go?

It's a simple yet complex question.. Whether its...

Traveling the world with your dad...

Or playing a major champioship site...

Or just having to play in some goofy looking socks!

Whatever it is,

Bradley Golf Travel will get you there and enjoying the trip of a lifetime!!

http://www.bradleygofltravel.com/

The Sacred Nine...

Bernard Darwin christened Royal Worlington and Newmarket "The Sacred Nine":

(upon entering the clubhouse, you can see the Darwin article on display on your right)

With a wild set of greens, and charming sense of stepping back in time, Royal Worlington is largely considered the best nine hole course in the world. Despite its lack of space, Royal Worlington requires a plethora of interesting shots, including teeing off over previous greens.

With a 220 yard par 3, a 450 par 4 and a 475 par 5, Royal Worlington provides the ultimate 9 hole variety.

Let Bradley Golf Travel book Royal Worlington for you on your next trip to England!

Some pictures were used with permission from http://www.golfclubatlas.com/

Matt

A true legend..

Well, believe it or not, I met Arnold Palmer this weekend at Bay Hill.  We were warming up on the range before our round when our magnificent host waved his hand asking us to come closer.  Our host was standing and chatting with the King!  We were introduced with a hankshake and Mr. Palmer was as kind and cordial as a man could be.  He was incredibly nice to us.. After meeting him, it got me thinking about Arnold Palmer designed golf courses.....

My favorite of all Palmer designs is Tralee, a fantastic links in southwestern Ireland.

The back nine, in particular, weaves in and out of huge dunes.

Tralee is the sort of place that makes you want to come back to enjoy the spectacular setting and fun golf. On your next trip to Ireland, don't miss Tralee.

The Person Who Kicks It into the Cow Field….

                A year ago we were getting ready to take the children to Paris.  It was going to be their first trip to France, and I prepared them in my usual way by forcing them to listen to French languages CDs anytime we were driving anywhere in the car.  After a month of repeating Bonjour and Merci as I shuttled them back and forth, they could at least manage the minimum standards of Parisian etiquette.  This is important; the French are sticklers for etiquette.  When you go into a French shop, the first thing you do is look the shopkeeper in the eye and say good morning.  In French.  When you leave, you say goodbye, again rather formally, even if you've only been in the shop for thirty seconds and are not interested in buying a single thing.  It's not hard, and it matters.

  (Ahhh...April in Paris, Cathedral de Notre Dame de Paris)

(photo by Katie Bradley)

                Knowing a bit of another language is always a good thing, and my language CDs have done me proud.  In Florence I was able to ask the guard at the Pitti Palace why all the statues of male gods had their penises hacked off (apparently, the widow of one of the Medicis ordered it done--some day I have got to hear  the rest of that story); I was also able to buy gnocchi to bring home on the plane (it's true that the man wouldn't sell it to me until he approved of my pronunciation, which took awhile, and also true that I had to resort to whole-body sign language to convey vacuum-packed for the airplane , but we managed).  In Costa Rica I was able to ask, in Spanish, "How do you say 'iguana' in Spanish?" only to be solemnly told, "iguana".  I was also able to use the phrase "It is the blue truck," much to my delight, as it won me a bet with my son, who thought that was the most useless of all the phrases on the Spanish CD.  And I successfully ordered us pizza, soda, and red wine, in a restaurant in the middle of nowhere.  The pizza came with mashed potatoes on it--but that could have happened to anyone. 

                But sometimes you don't need to know the language, or even the local culture or rules of etiquette.  Some things are universal to our humanity.  When we were in the Osa penisula, the most remote part of Costa Rica, we were able to visit a very small local school.  We visited during recess; while the adults toured the single classroom, a dozen children, including all the students of the school and my son and daughter, who were ten and seven years old, played soccer in the school yard.  I looked out the window to see my son make a wild shot.  The ball flew over both the goal and a barbed wire fence and landed in tall grass among grazing cows.

(the Bradley kids, students at the Carbonera School, and the actual soccer ball)

                The children stopped running, and looked at my son.  My son sighed.   He trotted to the edge of the field, ducked between the wires, shooed away a cow and retrieved the ball.  Later, back at the resort, he said, "That's always the rules, Mom.  The person who kicks it into the cow field has to go into the cow field to get it. You know," he added, "those kids were exactly like us.  We were really just the same."

                I travel to see interesting places--Paris, the Pitti Palace, the Osa.  I travel to taste new food and hear new languages and see things I can't see in my home country.  But more importantly, I travel to make my  own world larger and the actual world smaller.  I bring my children so that  they can come to understand that, where it really counts, we are all the same.

guest blogger:  Kim Bradley
enlarge your world, contact us at inquiry@bradleygolftravel.com

One Special Day..

Lahinch, Ireland... 2 words that carry so much meaning for me. I spent a lovely day on the western coast of Ireland with my father.  It was here that I played my first great golf course.

Opened in 1893, and later changed in 1927 by Alister Mackenzie, the architect of Augusta National, this specatuclar course winds in and out of wind-swept sand dunes. This course has a mystical feeling and the magic of never knowing what lies just around the corner.

The most famous hole at Lahinch is the Dell, par 3 5th. The green is situated in a natural depression in the dunes. My shot ended up long and on the dune, as you can see here.  I did make a specatucalar 3 from this spot.

Neither my dad nor I will forget this afternoon, for Lahinch is truly special.  No golfing life is complete without a visit to Lahinch.  Don't miss it.

We have liftoff!

Our official company website has been launched.  Be sure to check it out.

http://www.bradleygolftravel.com/

(Cruden Bay!)

My First Eagle...

It was a gorgeous Scottish afternoon with my dad at North Berwick West Links. Here is where I had my first ever eagle, by knocking it in the hole at the 1st from about 165 out. That afternoon was a fantastic time, and North Berwick is a cool, quirky course where you actually play over a 400 year old stone wall!

The original redan is also here at North Berwick and some of the most famous holes in all of golf try to copy the stategies found here.

My day at North Berwick is truly something that I will never forget and to have shared that afternoon with my dad is something that I will cherish for the rest of my life. You should want to give your son a day to remember like this so contact Bradley Golf Travel at inquiry@bradleygolftravel.com to get your trip planned today.

Seeing the world and playing golf with family and friends.....

(Here we are at Cashel House, 2009)

The Bradley family loves to travel. We love to see new places, try new things, be together and have fun. Through this blog we'll share some of our adventures with you. If they inspire you to travel and make your own fabulous family memories, that's great. If they just give you a glimpse into the amazingly diverse world, that's great, too.

As you will see, vacations are a big part of our family life. Matthew and I are passionate golfers and golf architecture junkies; Kim and Katie, well, not so much--they love to ride horses, visit museums, and explore quirky marketplaces and interesting towns. Through care and planning, our trips, while they include playing some of the great golf courses of the world, are great fun for the whole family. That's what we specialize in at Bradley Golf Travel: custom designed vacations that will be exciting for golfers and non-golfers alike. So if we can help you plan your next great family getaway, please contact us at inquiry@bradleygolftravel.com or check out http://www.bradleygolftravel.com/