One man's "poignant and revealing" quest to uncover the roots of his family's obsession with golf-in Ireland, Scotland, and the American heartland. In Ancestral Links , senior Sports Illustrated writer John Garrity takes readers on a fascinating golfing odyssey. First he returns to the majestic seaside Carne Golf Links in a remote corner of Ireland, from which his great-grandfather left for America. Next he visits Musselburgh, Scotland, where his maternal ancestors played golf before the first thirteen rules of the game were written there in 1774. And in Wisconsin's St. Croix River Valley, Garrity revisits the New Richmond Golf Club, where his father learned the ancient game. At every stop on his journey, Garrity reflects on the life and career of his beloved late older brother, Tom, a former tour player. Part memoir, part travelogue, and all golf, Garrity's story of how the sport altered three small-town landscapes and forever changed one family is a captivating and unforgettable tour of the links. John Garrity, a Golf Writers Association of America award-winner, is a senior writer at Sports Illustrated and a regular contributor to Golf Magazine and Travel & Leisure Golf , among other publications. He’s authored over a dozen books. He lives in Kansas City. You don't expect to meet your familiar on the 11th hole at Carne. It's a stunning hole: a par 4 that plays from a pinnacle tee to a canyon fairway and back up again to a green above a cow pasture that runs down to the beach. Huge terraced dunes line the fairway on either side. If you spray your tee shot you can wind up making an alpine-style ascent to a vertiginous perch to hit your second. There is also an unusual hazard down the left side, about 220 yards out — a grassy crater in a pulpitlike protrusion above the canyon floor. "Hold on!" I yelled, watching my drive hook around the biggest dune and disappear from sight. "Don't know about that," Gary said. "Could be all right." I looked for a signal from the golfers waiting below, where the rough tumbled into a gorge. They had interrupted their search for a lost ball to wave us through, but now they were as still as the grazing ruminants in the meadow beyond. "If my ball had cleared the crater, they'd be ducking." I slipped the head cover onto my hybrid 2 and returned the club to my bag. Once we had all hit our tee shots, the players ahead resumed their search in the heights. They were assembled in the grassy crater when we arrived on the scene. One of them, a dark-haired flatbelly, was stoically appraising his options. His ball was buried in thick green grass on the face of the crater — a lie that Tiger Woods might have been able to negotiate, but no one else. The fellow seemed to understand this, because he worked himself into the only stance available to him — left foot on the rim of the crater, left leg bent, right leg straight as a fence post, right shoulder dipped, left ear aimed at the sky. Wasting no time, he took a healthy hack and staggered backward. The ball sailed out in a spray of grass clippings and looped listlessly toward the little gulch, where another uncharitable lie probably awaited him. "Good out," I said. "At least I didn't hurt myself." He shouldered his bag with a smile and descended from the crater with careful steps. It took another minute or two for Gary to find my ball, and I wasn't too thrilled when he did. It, too, was in the face of the crater, just a few feet to the right of the spot where the previous victim had left his mark. Following his example, I planted my left foot at the level of my belt and swung with gritted teeth. There was a muffled click at impact. My ball popped out of the crater and followed gravity down to the fairway. It wasn't until we stepped onto the 12th tee that Terry Swinson said anything. "Did you visit with John Geraghty?" he asked. "How's that?" I wasn't sure what he was referring to. "The fellow you were talking to back there. Haven't you met?" I laughed and shook my head. I had spoken to John Geraghty on the phone recently, having spotted his name near mine on the Belmullet Golf Club roster. He had invited me to his house for a visit as soon as would be mutually convenient. But all I knew about John was that he lived out on the Mullet and he was "a builder" — a description that covered half the adult males in Western Mayo. "What are the odds," I asked, "that two guys with the same name, who don't know each other and live on opposite sides of the Atlantic, would each hit a golf ball to the same spot, at the same time, on the same day?" Gary grinned as he teed up his ball. "If you're talking about that particular spot, I'd say the odds are pretty good." A couple of nights later, I drove back down the Blacksod Road to Aughleam, which, like most of the hamlets on the peninsula, was little more than a cluster of roadside buildings and a few farmhouses served by a rib road. Following John Geraghty's directions, I turned right at the desi