After being cancelled in 2020 due to the Coronavirus pandemic, the Open Championship, the de facto world championship of golf, returns for its 149th iteration in the grandest of English traditions. The setting is the sparkling white cliffs of Dover, the ancient, storied town of Sandwich, and the hurly-burly gnarled mounds and frightful bunkers of Royal St...
Jon Rahm, who has endured genuine heartache through the Coronavirus pandemic both on and off the golf course found solace, synchronicity, and redemption in the unlikeliest of places – the crucible of U.S. Open golf championship. Rahm became the first Spaniard to win the U.S. Open after firing a scintillating 4-under 67 to edge South Africa’s starcrossed...
At a U.S. Open where PGA Tour uber-stars and wily veterans were expected to have an advantage a puzzling stranger and a promising young gun hold the lead after 36 holes at 5-under. England’s Richard Bland, obscure even in his own country, fired a dazzling 67, balancing seven birdies against three bogeys, while American Russell Henley, the first round co-leader...
We were having a fine run-up to this, the 103rd PGA Championship, even before Rory McIlroy’s TaylorMade TP5x golf ball tumbled into the cup at the 72nd hole of the Quail Hollow Championship two weeks ago. Nearly all of golf’s young gun stars and marquis names had won since the turn of the year:Â Bryson Dechambeau, Patrick Reed, Justin Thomas, Jordan...
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...
PEBBLE BEACH, CA – Louis Oosthuizen found the poem, the song, the fragrance that is Pebble Beach Golf Links so irresistible, he had to stop and take some pictures. “I was out there, probably looked like a tourist taking all the pictures on my phone and forgot I was playing a practice round. But, yeah, that’s what this place does to you,” he...
A sports dynasty rekindled today as Tiger Woods breezed past third-round leader Francesco Molinari, then held off a Who’s Who of modern golf en route to his fifth Masters Championship at Augusta National Golf Club and 15th major golf championship overall. Woods didn’t just defeat Dustin Johnson and Francesco Molinari; he defeated shame and humiliation...
Somewhere in Heaven Dan Jenkins is smiling, because this is what a major championship leader board is supposed to look like. Our great lion of a sports writer may be watching his first Masters from Heaven, but the heart of a true golf writer always aches for the greatest names to be in contention, not puzzling strangers. So right now, with five former major champions...
[Editor’s Note: We’ll be filing two game stories this week, one during the first three days of play and our usual tournament recap for Sunday night. You can follow all the action at Golf News Net and here.] The Masters is the greatest sporting event of the year: period, full stop, end of sentence, end of paragraph. Not the Super Bowl, not the World...
We’re a little late starting the Jazzy Awards – that’s short for Jay’s Golf Awards – but we’re early on the ski slopes…so we’ve got that going for us. As always, in the name of journalistic purity, we publish our Player of the Year Award in this column. This year we voted for Francesco Molinari. “What???”...
There is SOOOOOOOO much meat on this bone, we could discuss it for years! European Tour pro Brandon Stone had 500 tries to make a hole in one on a par-3 on his favorite course in the world, Sun City in South Africa. This video unearthed by Ryan Ballengee of Golf News Net follows Stone’s quest to cardv a seventh ace in his career. What follows, of course, is...
The last time heads rolled like this, Marie Antoinette let them eat cake. The Storming of the Bastille might seem like a massage compared to the potential bloodletting this weekend, as the U.S. Ryder Cup team looks to win on foreign soil for the first time in 25 years. With a murderer’s row line-up, chemistry everywhere you look, and a golf course that looks...
CHARLOTTE, NC – His name means “Thunderbear” and his golf game rises with the sudden ferocity of a storm. Perhaps the most mercurial young rising star of the European Tour, the lanky Danish player born Jakob Olesen, but who pays professionally under his middle name, “Thorbjorn,” shares the lead in the 99th PGA Championship with the...
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...
ERIN, WI – Dana Fry, who along with Mike Hurdzan and lawyer-turned-writer-turned-golf architect Ron Whitten, designed 11-year old Erin Hills, site of the 117th U.S. Open, recently said in an interview that, “it’s unprecedented for the USGA to host the tournament at a venue this new.” He’s close to being correct. It’s actually only...