From Toque to Tee

“Go, go, go, get legs!” Ming Tsai screams, pleading at the ball in midflight. In the cruel game of golf, hitting the ball straight is only half the battle. On a hole like the par-3 11th on the South Course at Connecticut’s Lake of Isles, where the water-guarded green is practically an island, the tee shot must also be the perfect distance or it’s lost.

Ming’s ball, hit well and dead straight, hovers for what feels like an eternity before coming to earth, obeying his commands and landing on the front of the green, then rolling within six feet of the flag. Ming has been automatic from this distance all round and stays true to form, making his second birdie of the day, with seven holes still to play.

Accustomed to success and to having his commands obeyed in the kitchen, Ming transfers these skills to the golf course effortlessly. We play one of the two courses at Foxwoods, the largest casino in the U.S., in southeastern Connecticut. We’re here during the resort’s annual Food & Wine Festival weekend, where Ming is one of the celebrity chefs. His restaurant, Blue Ginger, in Wellesley, Massachusetts, is one of the nation’s most acclaimed Asian fusion restaurants and has won almost as many awards as its owner (Esquire’s Chef of the Year, 1998, and the James Beard Foundation’s Best Chef in the Northeast, 2002). Not only is Ming the designer of a retail food line for Target, author of four cookbooks, and host of East Meets West with Ming Tsai and Simply Ming, he is also a former professional squash player and mechanical engineer by training. Educated at Phillips Academy in Andover and Yale University — along with a graduate degree from Cornell — he’s about as far from the typical chef as you can get, except in one regard: Ming, along with many of the nation’s top culinary wizards, is obsessed with golf.

“Every time I tee it up, I’m thinking record round,” he says. “As a chef, you have to have a lot of confidence in what you do.” Ming, relatively new to the game, plays on the road regularly and practices several times a week. He belongs to two private clubs and has his handicap down to an impressive 11.9. Ming sees connections between golf and cooking on many levels. “To be a great chef you don’t just need to be able to cook. You need marketing, finances — ‘every shot in the bag,’ so to speak,” he says. “Golf is like cooking in a lot of ways. It’s like you can ruin a dish if you put in too much salt, or worse, too little. In golf, a shot that is off by half an inch can be like ruining a dish. I’m pretty intense about everything I do, and golf is perfect for that.”

Ming is also intense about his rivalry with our playing partner, Michael Schlow, a fellow celebrity chef and food festival marquee name. Not coincidentally, Schlow also won the James Beard award for Best Chef in the Northeast, and his Boston restaurants Via Matta and Radius are recognized among the best in the Northeast. His newer Alta Strada restaurant is right inside the MGM Grand tower at Foxwoods, and he recently opened a Latin-themed eatery, Tico, in Boston. An avid golfer for about seven years, Schlow has a handicap of 10. While Ming and Schlow are close in skill, they usually play for a friendly cash wager, which Schlow always seems to win.

“We’re competitive in a friendly way on the course, just like we have friendly competition in the restaurant business,” Schlow explains. “In Boston we have a great community of chefs, but if we don’t play golf, we don’t get to see each other.” The duo has a frequent third golfing partner in the form of Todd English, yet another past winner of the Best Chef in the Northeast award, and a food star with about 20 eateries across the nation, as well as eponymous fine-dining restaurants onboard the luxury liners Queen Mary 2 and Queen Victoria. English is another chef who draws a connection between his passion for golf and his passion for cooking. In fact, he has gone so far as to consider locations for his new restaurants based on local golf quality. When he first opened his signature Olives restaurant in the Bellagio in Las Vegas, he was excited because he could now play the casino’s exclusive Shadow Creek course.

Schlow also sees parallels between the kitchen and the greens. “In golf, there is the repetition of form and consistency, just like in cooking,” he says. “There are a couple of chefs I know who are too crazy about it, too into it, but I understand why. Ming and I put away our cell phones for hours and relax.” Ming adds, “We are under so much pressure at work, and while playing golf is pressure, you can’t think about anything else while you play. It’s an escape.”

The same sentiment is offered by Emeril Lagasse, owner of multiple top eateries nationwide, host of several food shows, and fanatical cookbook author. “I love the game,” he says. “The appeal to me is that I’m free. I can blank out responsibility. A couple of weeks ago I played in the pro-am at the Viking Classic — I made two birdies, by the way. I have my own golf tournament every year in Newport, Rhode Island, for scholarships for my alma mater, Johnson & Wales.”

In a serendipitous way, cooking and golfing go hand in hand. Most chefs don’t work until late afternoon, a perfect schedule to snag an early tee time. And, interestingly, they enjoy standard 19th-hole refreshments, like cold beer, burgers, and steaks. “Chefs usually like simple food. I look forward to a club sandwich,” says Bobby Flay, star chef, author, and TV personality. There are also other motivations. “As chefs we get to go places that are beautiful for golf — Hawaii, Scottsdale, Hilton Head, places like that,” Ming says. With more culinary festivals than ever, many are held at resort hotels with golf courses, almost a required amenity to lure the top names on what Schlow calls “the guest-chef golf circuit.” The “circuit” includes some of the hottest names in cooking, from Nobu Matsuhisa (who has done ads for Callaway golf clubs) and Emeril Lagasse to Bobby Flay and Tom Colicchio (who developed the clubhouse dining at the ultra-private club Liberty National, partly in exchange for playing privileges).

Who knows? It may not be long before these celeb chefs become celeb golfers — if they can tear themselves away from the kitchen.

Larry Olmsted is a prolific writer and golfer based in New England, where he is sometimes a prolific eater.