Question: What do you do when you want to build a huge buzz for your golf course, but its design is only pretty good, not truly great? Answer: GOODIE BAGS! If there’s one superlative you can say about Quail Hollow Club, the swag is terrific. If there’s two, well… CRICKET! CRICKET! CRICKET! The pros, the PGA of America, and the club’s guests love...
Once again, the good folks over at Golf Course Trades have done a spectacular job making my monthly column look terrific. Of course, having such a remarkable subject as Bayonne helps. It’s one of the great stories in the history of golf course construction, a Herculean endeavor in every way. From the article: “Bayonne, just across the river from TriBeCa...
MONROE TOWNSHIP, NJ – Last Thursday saw the 10th annual Writer Cup between Philadelphia/NJ and Greater New York City golf writers end in yet another Philly romp. Yet as Philly Captain Mike Kern of the Inquirer was again drenched in metaphoric victory champagne and as his players were wreathed in the smoky fog of proverbial victory cigars for the eighth time in...
It’s a busy coverage schedule this summer. We’ll be covering the 10th annual Writer Cup from Forsgate Country Club, the 99th PGA Championship from Quail Hollow, and the reboot of thee Potomac Cup from Potomac Shores Golf Club. The Writer Cup is always a hoot as Forsgate lays out the red carpet for its annual battle between the golf writers from New York...
This was the old major championship preview I did for PGA.com back in 2008. From the article: Indeed, all Merseyside rocks every 10 years or so, as though the Beatles have returned to prominence, every time professional golfers return to Birkdale. The patrons are duly rewarded for their fervor with outstanding views of the golf: Birkdale was a stadium golf course...
ny time you get to play Bayonne Golf Club, it’s a banner day, but in high summer, it’s perfection. One of the Great Golf Courses on Earth – yes, capital G, C, E – it’s both an engineering marvel and a cunning design, slowly building to a rousing crescendo. It was a privilege and an honor to be able to write about it for Golf Course...
We turn from the U.S. Open to the Open Championship, but first we’ll kill two birds with one stone with our next guest on the Jay’s Plays show. Joe Wilczynski is a legendary running coach, and with the 40th running of thr Boilermaker 15 in Utica today, he’ll be graduating another class of rookie runners to the finish line and leading his Mohawk...
Ryan Ballengee has this story about the surreptitious…and disconcerting…adjustment of Euro Tour players’ drivers while the clubs are stored for the night. Ballengee reported that a number of players, including rising European Tour star Bernd Weisberger, had their driver settings adjusted while the clubs were stored for the night at Le Club National...
One last U.S. Open redux as Tony Dear, our European Correspondent, came on the sow to talk U.S. Open, Brooks Koepka, and miss the trivia question yet again:):) We’ll be checking in with him again in a couple weeks to talk Royal Birkdale and the Open Championship.
I love Golf Course Trades – they make my photos and words look gorgeous! My second of three consecutive cover stories, this time about the wondrous Bulls Bay by Mike Strantz. Click here to read the piece, then peruse the rest of the ‘zine as well!
Soon they’ll run my Erin Hills piece, and then after that, my U.S. Open Road trip piece.
TOWN OF ERIN, WI – No less a personage than nine-time major champion Gary Player himself said that, “the long bunker shot is the most difficult shot in golf.” How fitting it is then, that the 2017 U.S. Open was essentially sealed by Brooks Koepka with one of the most exquisite played in the recent annals of the tournament. Clinging to a one shot...
TOWN OF ERIN, WI – Dear Dad: Happy Father’s Day! Another year, another U.S. Open, (13 now, in a row, and 25 majors overall), another year I get to write a letter to you in the form of an article, and you get to tell me what I should have done all week while I was here. Oh well, it beats Mom feeding you that slop at the nursing home they call food...
ERIN, WI – Hey! Ron Whitten, Dana Fry, and Mike Hurdzan built this great golf course in Wisconsin. Let’s go and hack at it! That’s not my loudmouth, lunkhead golf buddies and I talking, it’s the brightest stars of the professional tours. A remarkably benign Erin Hills surrendered record numbers of birdies to every Tom, Dick, and Harry (or in...
ERIN, WI – With a precision that Bernhard Langer would have envied, Rickie Fowler seized the first round lead of the 117th U.S. Open with a dazzling 7-under 65. It was the lowest score-to-par in the first round of the National Open since Jack Nicklaus and Tom Weiskopf fired 8-under 63s at Baltusrol in 1980. Fowler’s card was sparkling clean – seven...
ERIN, WI – The collection of one shot holes at Erin Hills is as strong as we’ve ever seen at any U.S. Open. Both nine and 16 are downright iconic: instant classics. Both holes also prove that length is overrated. The ninth green is completely encircled by bunkers, including several narrow trenches just wide enough to stand, but, in places, to narrow to...