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LI twosome plays golf in all 50 states

Erik Boland

September 13, 2007

What comes through in the end is these guys have the greatest wives out there.

Tom Nodell and Joe DiMaggio - yes, he gets the obligatory "weren't you married to Marilyn Monroe?" from people - had been longtime friends who decided late in 2002 to undertake a different kind of golf odyssey.

Instead of the standard attempt to play, say, Golf Digest's Top 100 courses, the pair would try to play a golf course in all 50 states.

Permission from home, of course, would be needed.

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"Have fun," Nodell said of how his wife, Cookie, and DiMaggio's wife, Patty, responded.

And so it began June 8, 2003 at Barefoot Landing, a Greg Norman course in Myrtle Beach, S.C. Taking a week or two at a time to steadily knock out courses in bordering states - e.g. playing in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and Kentucky in one trip - Nodell and DiMaggio putted out at Eagleglen Golf Course at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Alaska, on Aug. 11 of this year to complete their task.

Nodell, who lives in Lindenhurst, chose the courses, logging on-line to scout out tracks in various states the two could play at a reasonable price. They hit The Woodlands TPC in The Woodlands, Texas, Boulder Creek in Streetsboro, Ohio, The Links Golf Club in Post Falls, Idaho and, naturally, Bethpage Black in New York. There was RTJ Grand National in Opelika, Ala., Loma Linda CC in Joplin, Mo., Wildhorse Golf Course in Pendleton, Ore. and Heart River Golf Course in Dickinson, N.D.

Nodell and DiMaggio became Jack Kerouacs of sorts, taking to the road in traveling to states East of the Mississippi River and flying to the rest. They rented cars West of the Mississippi and drove from state to state. The native New Yorkers, long used to the nightmares of traffic and paucity of unoccupied land, were struck, DiMaggio said, by "just the immensity of the United States."

"You get to places like Nebraska, Kansas, Montana, North and South Dakota, Idaho," he said. "Places like that, just miles and miles of open space. It's mind-boggling."

Red or Blue state, they found themselves mini-celebrities as golf typically transcends politics. The first round of drinks at town taverns might be on the house, discounts at courses were offered and, after a day at Lakewood Golf Club in New Orleans, a bar owner in nearby Slidell, La., gave a tour of his establishment's kitchen and pulled some exclusive vintage from the wine rack.

"We saw people riding mechanical bulls in places," Nodell said. "You don't get a lot of that up here on Long Island."

DiMaggio, 70, retired in December of 2000 after a career with Grumman Aerospace and Nodell, 58, retired in October of 2002 from his job with the New York City Comptroller. They had been playing golf together for years and, with both retired, DiMaggio, a Farmingdale resident, thought they should expand their golf horizons.

"I said at first 'that's crazy,'" Nodell said of the 50-state trek. "Two seconds later, I said 'that's a great idea.'"

An idea DiMaggio said no one they ran during their travels had heard of previously.

"I don't think we encountered a pro in the shop at any course that said they had heard of someone doing this before," said the Brooklyn-born DiMaggio.

The two have discussed playing in England, Scotland or Ireland, though their wives have chatted about their own travel plans: they want to visit beaches in every state that borders an ocean or gulf.

The husbands both laughed. They're all for it.

"They can do anything they want," Nodell said.

Said DiMaggio: "I don't think we're in any position to tell them no."

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