FAYETTEVILLE, NY – We all know the rags-to-riches story of Bethpage Black: a municipal golf course built in the tumult of the Great Depression survives long decades of languishing and mismanagement before being restored to its former glory and ascends into the rarified air of a major championship venue. It’s an inspiration to every public golf course. But...
The deaths of 11 climbers on Mount Everest this year has spurred the Nepalese government into action…sort of. Yes, Nepal’s Ministry of Tourism has released a 59-page report proposing changes to rules covering guiding and mountaineering on Mount Everest. But according to seminal climber and mountaineering expert Alan Arnette, much will remain the same, and...
Golf Course Trades did a magnificent job with my latest piece: St. George’s Golf and Country Club, a true Devereux Emmet faithfully restored by Gil Hanse. St. George’s shows that you don’t need 7,500 yards and forced carries over water to defend par, you need curvaceous greens with terrifying false fronts. You need tilted fairways and uneven lies to...
In a move only an actuary could hate, the PGA Tour changed the format of the FedEx Cup this year, translating a convoluted “points”system of scoring to the “score-to-par” system used every week. This also solves the pesky problem of having dual winners as we did in the past: someone wins the Tour Championship, but someone else wins the...
MONROE TOWNSHIP, NJ – For the ninth time in 12 years, the team of Philadelphia and New Jersey golf media all-stars defeated the New York/National golf writers and broadcasters to win the Writer Cup at Forsgate Country Club’s fabled Banks Course. Playing a stroke play format where the top ten net and top three gross scores counted, Philly shellacked New...
Danish golfer Thorbjorn Olesen, a former European Ryder Cup player and current world number 62 has been suspended by the European Tour pending the outcome of his trial on charges of sexual assault and drunkenness on a flight from Memphis to London. According to various reports, Olesen was allegedly drunk and unruly with other passengers and had to be calmed by fellow...
So while I finish the skiing part of the article, GolfTripX, the new travel wing of Golf News Net, has just published my review of Mount Snow Golf Club. From the article: “Everything at Mount Snow starts at the tee box; you have to drive the ball long and straight. More then half the tee shots are blind and almost all of them require long carries over crests in...
This month’s column for Golf Course Trades focuses on an important milestone in the careers of both Perry Maxwell and Alister Mackenzie. Oklahoma City Golf and Country Club was the genesis of their long and fruitful collaboration that would ultimately produce Augusta National and Crystal Downs. From the article: “‘What I love about the greens are...
Within five days of each other, venerable Forsgate Country Club’s Banks course will host the 12th annual Writer Cup and welcome LPGA immortal Jan Stephenson for an exhibition. The Banks course, the last course designed by the triumverate of C.B. Macdonald, Seth Raynor, and Charles “Steamshovel” Banks has hosted a galaxy of PGA and LPGA stars since...
Ryan Ballengee at Golf News Net reports that John Daly has reversed himself. After stating last week that he would play the Open Championship at Royal Portrush despite not being allowed a golf cart by the R&A, Daly has, instead, withdrawn. Instead, he will play the PGA Tour’s opposite field event, the Barbasol Championship in Kentucky. Ballengee wrote:...
…or Happy Treason Day as some of my UK friends say. But either way, treasure our freedom and cherish our rich heritage. It is our bane if we forget.
Once again, the good folks at Golf Course Trades have done a spectacular job spiffing up one of my pieces. This time it’s Chris Schiavone and Stephen Kay’s restoration of one of A.W. Tillinghast’s earliest courses: Shackamaxon Country Club in northern New Jersey.
From the article:
Golf News Net and GolfTripX are hosting a reader and fan fun trip to…drum roll please…Tennessee! (Ain’t no place I’d rather be/Baby, won’t you carry me…). Ryan Ballengee and the GolfTripX guys found this 9-holer designed by the King-Collins firm called Sweetens Cove that has fantastic movement in the earth, terrific green contours...
Once again, big thank you to the National Ski Council Federation. They have syndicated my Attitash article. You can click here to see it on their website. Mount Snow and cannon are next.
PEBBLE BEACH, CA – For the first time in five years, USGA avoided a rules controversy, a set-up imbroglio, a weather issue, or a turfgrass meltdown. Thank goodness, because the squabbling about the last four years by plarers and press has been more then just strident. It almost appears they are on a mission, with the players demanding a kindler gentler U.S...