The Round That Stays With Us

Royal and Ancient Golf Club, St. Andrews, Scotland
“The Swilcan Bridge on the Old Course — proof that golf isn’t just played here, it’s lived here. Every stone holds the footsteps of champions, and every round is a walk through history.”

Every golfer has one.


That first real round, the one that stuck. Maybe it was with your dad at the local muni. Maybe it was sneaking out with buddies after school, carrying a half-set of borrowed clubs. Maybe it was on vacation, when you first stepped onto a course that looked like the ones you’d only seen on TV.
Whatever the setting, that “first round” never leaves you. It’s the place where the game stopped being just a pastime and became part of who you are.

The Pull of Nostalgia
Golfers are, by nature, nostalgic. We don’t just keep score — we keep stories. We remember the shot we hit flush, the friend who laughed at our worst slice, the smell of the grass as the dew lifted that morning.
For me, those first rounds were with my Dad, patiently teaching me grip, swing, etiquette, and the camaraderie only golf can provide. We walked up and down the hills of a small nine-hole course at Phillips University in Enid, Oklahoma — my forever hometown.
After more than 40 years photographing golf courses around the world, I’ve learned this: golfers don’t travel just to tick courses off a list. They travel because they’re chasing the feeling of that first round, hoping to find it again in a new place.

The Round as Compass
That memory becomes a compass. A golfer who first felt the magic of the game at Pinehurst will always want to wander back through the Carolina sandhills. Someone who first teed it up on a windswept links will one day feel the pull of Scotland or Ireland.
I experienced this myself in 1990, when I was assigned to photograph courses for the coffee-table book Grand Slam Golf. Just before the trip I had broken three ribs while working at Augusta National and couldn’t carry my heavy camera bag. So I asked my dad to come along as my caddie. Together we walked every course on the Open rota. Despite the pain, it turned into one of the greatest adventures of my life — a treasure of time spent side-by-side with him.
That first round isn’t just a memory — it’s a promise. And golf travel is, in many ways, our attempt to keep it.

How Art Brings It Back
That’s where golf artwork comes in. A photograph on the wall can transport us instantly to the fairway where it all began. But it can also pull us forward — reminding us that the game’s magic isn’t only behind us, it’s still ahead.
I’ve seen this in homes where I’ve installed my work. A single image becomes more than decoration. It sparks memories, ignites conversation, and inspires future journeys. For a simulator room, office, or home putting space, why not hang the course that takes you back to your first round — or the one that might help you relive it?

The Memory That Connects Us All
The details differ, but the story is the same. Every golfer carries that first round inside them. And every golf trip, every bucket-list round, every photograph on the wall is, in some way, an attempt to return to that moment when the game first took hold of us.
Even now, after photographing some of the world’s greatest courses, I still drive past that little nine-hole layout in Enid. It’s abandoned now, the bunkers gone, but the fairways are still mowed and the greens still visible. I can picture every step my dad and I took there, learning the game together and bonding over life itself. I miss him dearly.

That’s what makes golf more than a game. It’s why we travel. It’s why we dream. And it’s why we hang the game on our walls — to remember, and to remind ourselves where the journey began.

See more moments where golf and life come together — visit GolfAsLife.com to explore the full collection: www.golfaslife.com

Mike Klemme is a golf course photographer whose 40-year career has taken him to nearly 50 countries and over 1,800 courses. He photographed two books for Golf Magazine (Grand Slam Golf and Golf Resorts of the World) and served on the Golf Magazine Top 100 Courses in the World panel from 1990–2020. His current project, Golf As Life, blends imagery and stories at www.golfaslife.com.