The golf courses are full dangersbut the game itself is not dangerous. It’s not high speed like car racing or high impact like the NFL. While you can twist your back or twist a wrist, the risk of permanent damage is disadvantageous.
So why, when you play, are you so afraid?
Christopher Smith has long struggled with the question. A GOLF Top 100 Master who has been an instructor for over 35 years, Smith knows that sound mechanics can calm the heebie-jeebies (not a bad idea to take a lesson!), and that mental strength can be a salve (no harm in seeing a sports psychologist!). But I believe that getting to the source of fear and discomfort sometimes requires going deeper.
This is where ayahuasca comes in.
What-now? Ayahuasca is a psychedelic tea brewed from plants native to the Amazon rainforest, used in spiritual and healing ceremonies by indigenous cultures for centuries, long before golf was a twinkle in a Scottish shepherd’s eye.
Smith first tried the ancient medicine (“It’s not meant to be a recreational drug,” he says) in the early 2010s as part of a journey of self-exploration. He saw its potential for mind expansion, spiritual purification, and over time he recognized how it could be combined with the skills of his profession. Since 2023, he has been running retreats that combine traditional ayahuasca ceremonies with traditional golf instruction. Now he offers two or three a year.
The logic, as Smith sees, is that the biggest obstacles in golf are internal: thoughts, feelings, emotions, expectations, many of them stashed in the subconscious, beyond the reach of conventional treatments. Ayahuasca, he says, can help players tap into this realm, work with negative experiences and past traumas, and replace prejudicial thought patterns with more functional ones.
If all that sounds woo-woo, consider that numerous clinical trials have shown the healing potential of ayahuasca.
Because beer can interact dangerously with certain medications and health conditions, Smith pre-screens applicants to make sure they qualify. And while ayahuasca is illegal in the United States, this is not an obstacle on their retreats: they take place in Mexico.
These are not roughing it – escape into the jungle. Guests stay five nights in a luxury beach house in Los Cabos with an ayahuasca expert on site throughout the day. Access to the Puerto Los Cabos Golf Club is included. The schedule includes three ceremonies led by a shaman, an 18-hole evaluation round under Smith’s watch, and continued coaching on and off the course during the stay.
The effects of ayahuasca can persist for six hours or more, and ceremonies are scheduled accordingly. Participants are given their own personal indoor space to take in the experience safely, with expert practitioners supervising. The point is not to play golf on ayahuasca but to transfer the benefits of ayahuasca on the course.
Like golf shots, Smith says, retreats are best approached with a clear intention. Guests arrive with different goals. Some are literally stuck with their golf swings. Others are stuck elsewhere in their lives, trapped in bad relationships or unhealthy habits, prone to self-sabotage or self-reproach. Smith encourages participants to think carefully about what they are looking for in advance, with the proviso that, as with golf, no specific result is guaranteed. “Everybody takes something different from it,” Smith says. “But in general what we’ve seen is that the people who come are more fearless, kinder to themselves, more compassionate and more free.”
What begins with a medicinal tea is meant to carry over to the first tee and beyond. The next retreat runs November 17-22. The price $8,999 per person. You can learn more here.
3 things I think
Establishment of tee-booking law: Like bots, third-party brokers have been the scourge of municipal tee time booking systems in recent years: taking reservations and reselling them at an up-charge. What to do for them? California passed a law. Signed this week by Gov. Gavin Newsom, the legislation prohibits intermediaries from listing, selling or transmitting tee times at publicly owned courses without the permission of the course operators. Tee time brokers in Los Angeles were the main target here; this is where they caused the highest problems. But the law applies throughout the state and in all of its 200 municipalities.
Dye is split at PGA National: : PGA National Resortthe South Florida stay-and-play staple that has hosted a Ryder Cup, a PGA Championship and continues to host the PGA Tour is adding Triple Stick Golf Club, a new course for Love Golf Design members only. With plenty of water to work on the route and artistic license to choose a style suited to the site, lead architect Scot Sherman, a longtime collaborator of Pete Dye, took inspiration from Dye, with railroad bulkheads, flat-bottomed bunkers and par-5s that closed both nines of the par 70. Crook nodyes Stick’s name is famous for Davisa Dye’s (Davisa III) childhood nickname, “Tripp.”
A failing grade for Yale: : A function in The Athletic has put the Yale Golf Course back in the spotlight (unflatteringly), exposing maintenance issues that have derailed the famed CB Macdonald/Seth Raynor design from its $30 million reopening this year. Gil Hanse– guided renewal. Criticism of university management of the layout is nothing new; Golf junkies have long grumbled about what they have represented as a combination of bad management and negligence. That grousing, however, has largely been limited to golf nerd circles. You can’t help but wonder if this wider attention in a prominent national publication could lead to a more lasting change in how the school cares about its famous course.