The awful weather of this never-ending winter continued all across New England, the Mid-Atlantic, and into the Rust Belt and Heartland, crippling travel and causing multiple delays to the start of golf season. Even Shinnecock Hills, site of this year’s U.S. Open, has been affected. Erring on the side of caution (of course) the Club will Open one week later than...
I suppose it’s fitting that on the 30th anniversary of Sandy Lyle donning the Green Jacket that our generation’s heel of a golfer – a person as sour, dour, and sometimes unlovable as Lyle – won the 82nd Masters. Patrick Reed slouched and slogged his way into Butler Cabin and the Green Jacket with a workmanlike but uninspiring, up-and-down...
I first heard it as a middle-schooler taking my initial steps in studying the craft of story writing. I hated its disingenuousness then, and my distaste for it grows with each passing year – that old journalistic saw: “Where heroes don’t exist, it is necessary to invent them. It’s good for public morale.” Author Dan Jenkins always said...
“Tiger and Phil! Tiger and Phil! Tiger and Phil!” For the last eight weeks, that’s all we’ve heard in golf. Turn on your television set, pick up a magazine, or scan a newspaper headline, and it’s almost as if prophets were delivering a message from God that they saw written in letters of fire 30 feet high. And as we’ve inched...
In just a week, Tiger Woods’s odds of winning the Masters went from 17-1 (good for third, behind Rory McIlroy and Dustin Johnson) to a 9-1 favorite. Justin Thomas and Rory are second at 11-1. DJ has faded to 23-2. Remember – odds are a reflection of who Vegas thinks people will bet on – not who they think will win. Clearly too many people were...
I wrote about Meadow Club for this month’s Golf Course Trades, one of those courses that you have to play before you die. Here’s my favorite part of the article: As I took a deep breath and savored the crisp, wine-sweet, forest-fragrant air, the October sun’s rays began their last golden stretch across Alister Mackenzie and Robert Hunter’s...
Wow, what a terrific job Ryan Ballengee and the GNN team did publishing my fun look at the various U.S. Open Qualifying sites. Click here for the story. My fave part of the article: Orange County National’s Crooked Cat course is another boring, watery, center-line slog, so much so that during the week of the PGA Show, you’ll often hear golfers that played...
What was it Heath Ledger said in “The Dark Knight?” “Tiger plays well in one…little…tournament…AND EVERYONE LOSES THEIR MINDS!” That’s exactly what happened. Tiger finished second at a tournament nobody normally watched, and everyone is back on the bandwagon, and DUI be damned! Betting odds are not a reflection of whom...
—by Jay Flemma, special to Slave to the Traffic Light Magazine— SLEEPY HOLLOW, NY – Dear Runner’s World: Grab a pin, and take out your running map. It’s time to permanently add a new destination race to the annual calendar. Sleepy Hollow, cozily nestled between the frowning, dark hardwoods of the Rockefeller State Forest on the one side...
Big thank you to Steve Eubanks who was the first guest on the show. For segments three and four we brought in Gary van Sickle, formerly of SI and Golf Magazine, who takes a different tack when it comes to the Tiger Woods media frenzy than Steve and I do. He also breaks down the PGA season so far and talks about the changes to various USGA rules giving the game and...
Imagine my surprise when I saw something called “Hombre Golf Club, the Bad and Ugly Courses” listed among the nearly 100 local qualifying sites for the 118th U.S. Open. What passes for names these days! First we had the Mighty Ducks in hockey, now we have the Good the Bad and the Ugly in golf? What’s next? Is the Outlaw Josie Wales gonna pop out...
Double good news over at Golf News Net today. First, they have published my Fenway Golf Club article. Short but dangerous, and always interesting around the greens, Fenway belongs in the Pantheon of great Tillinghast courses. Next, Steve Eubanks of Global Golf Post joined me on the Jay’s Plays Radio show. We talked PGA, LPGA, Tiger, golf travel and –...
Tell anyone other than an ardent golfer that you’re going to Fenway and they’ll ask you to say hi to Big Papi and Jason Varitek for them. Tell the ardent golfer, on the other hand, and they’ll not only know that Yankee Stadium is much closer, they’ll be totally jealous too, because they know Fenway is a terrific A.W. Tillinghast golf club...
[Editor’s Note: As part of the 2018 Ominous Seapods Reunion festivities, Jay went into the vault, and with the help of South Catherine Street Jug Band archivist Nate Pelton, released three more live archival recordings from the Golden Age of the Ominous Seapods under the “North Country Freakouts” series. Today, Volume 1: 10-15-94 (Early Show) Zeta...
Ryan Ballengee and GNN did a fantastic job making my Meadow Club article look so good. Big thanks also to Sean Tully. I can’t wait to get back out there again – it was Heaven. From the article: Call it the Machu Picchu of golf. From far below, in the hippie town of Fairfax, one can look a thousand feet sheer up the cliff-side to the shallow, mountaintop...