Quick Pars is us sharing our golf travel stories.

I don’t remember when the game bit me because I’ve enjoyed playing golf for as long as I can remember.

But Menekse, well, let’s just say she wasn’t immediately smitten.  So, I took her to the Old Course at St Andrews and some of the other classics.  She even hit her first golf ball at Carnoustie!  But it wasn’t until we watched Follow the Sun that Menekse realized that maybe this game had something.  You know the movie- it’s the story of Ben and Valerie Hogan and their initial struggles of touring the US while playing on the PGA Tour. I think there was something about the title and the fact that golf courses are found in beautiful places all over the world that appealed to her.

So, in 2018, we decided to quit our jobs and travel the world while playing golf. But how does a traveling golfer actually do Slow Travel?  After all, golf is not like frisbee where we can just throw our clubs into our backpacks and go.  There is no getting around the fact that bringing our clubs will make our travels a little more difficult.  We also decided to travel with carry-on luggage only and use our clubs as our check-in luggage. Only carry-on luggage, for the next few years? Crazy, we know. But hey, we’ll have our clubs!  It’s all about sacrifices, right!

We have a really long list of golf courses that we want to play.  Currently, this list is almost 450 courses long.  And it’s located on 6 continents, in 43 countries!  Can we make it?  Who knows, but we are going to give it a try.

Slowly traveling the world playing golf, all while chasing the summer- that’s Quick Pars.

Just prior to us starting our golf travels, we travelled to Paris to attend The Ryder Cup.  It took almost a year of planning and waiting, but it was a dream come true!

The very first step of our journey was to play Golf in Turkey. Menekse’s roots are Turkish, which is why it was a perfect start.  We flew to the extraordinary city of Istanbul and then continued to the southwest coast and enjoyed our time with her parents.

Having lived abroad for years, we next wanted to spend some time with my family in Oregon.  Of course, while there, we played some Golf in Oregon, and even managed to play a little Golf in California.

After saying our goodbyes to family and friends, we set off on our journey with a one-way ticket to Hong Kong.  With just our golf bags and backpacks on our backs, we travelled and played Golf in Asia from the end of February until the last day of August 2019.  In addition to playing Golf in Hong Kong, we travelled and played Golf in Taiwan, Golf in Indonesia, and Golf in Malaysia.

We have so much more golf in Asia to play, but it was time to pack our backpacks and golf bags and move on.

Afterward, we were excited to cross the equator and to begin our Golf in Oceania adventure in the Southern Hemisphere!

First up, we flew to the land of the Kiwi excited to play Golf in New Zealand.  We made it our goal to play all the True Links Golf Courses of New Zealand and are happy to report, mission accomplished!

For as long as I can remember, I have always wanted to play Golf in Australia! And so perhaps our arrival to Melbourne just in time for the Presidents Cup was just a coincidence.  Perhaps not.  But Australia is where we spent our 500^th day on the road, and where the COVID-19 pandemic has completely altered our plans.