Tom Coyne on becoming an "accidental" golf course owner

By May 3, 2026 / 10:23 AM EDT / CBS News Add CBS News on Google Tom Coyne has one of those jobs most would envy. As a bestselling author and editor of The Golfer's Journal, he gets to travel to and play some of the most exclusive courses in the world. "It's not a bad perk of the job, Lee, I'm not gonna lie to you!" he said.He's played over a thousand courses, including Augusta National Golf Club (home of the Masters), St. Andrews (the oldest course in the world), and the Pacific-hugging Pebble Beach in California."There's all sorts of different places in golf," Coyne said. "There needs to be all sorts of different places in golf."Most wouldn't argue that point, but just how different are we talking about?For a guy whose been invited to the top clubhouses in the world, how in the world did he end up at one in Upstate New York with leaky roofs, abandoned mowers, and mold as thick as the rough itself? And yet, locals weren't scared off, blinded perhaps by their love of the game. The Sullivan County Golf Club is a rural 9-hole course that opened back in 1925 in Liberty,