Special to GNN and AWITP by Yale Bluer CHARLOTTE, NC – She had a voice like Foghorn Leghorn and the manners of Yosemite Sam. She’d fake-baked her skin to a brassy orange and streaked her spaghetti-straight hair a metallic gold. She wore ass-high, crack-tight, denim short shorts, wedges, and a scoop top two sizes too tight. She said she was 34, but my...
CHARLOTTE, NC – As we close the books on the 99th PGA Championship and the 2017 golf major championship season in general, there are several broader truths to celebrate than just Justin Thomas taking home the Wanamaker Trophy. Sure, Thomas’s win is an apotheosis of sorts, his elevation to the ranks of golf’s current elite. He’s fulfilled all...
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...
CHARLOTTE, NC – You have to love Jim Furyk. He shoots from the lip. When asked about the changes to Quail Hollow Club for the 99th PGA Championship, he had the perfect laconic reply. “One could be the toughest opening hole in golf. It actually looks like a really nice par-5 to me, but for some reason they put par-4 on the card,” he deadpanned. See...
CHARLOTTE, NC – Like an archaeologist wide-eyed with wonder as he finally deciphers ancient hieroglyphics on a graven monument, so too was I mesmerized by the photos on the walls of venerable Canterbury Golf Club in Cleveland, Ohio. They depicted a more civilized age, the heady halcyon time during which the PGA Championship was born, an Interwar America...
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...
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...
SPRINGFIELD, NJ – As night falls at Baltusrol and the forest-draped mountain is shrouded by low clouds, the waning crescent moon shines feebly in the overcast sky. Finally, the promised rain came, just a thin shower, but I was too late. Against all predictions, the 2016 PGA Championship finished on time Sunday night. Inside the clubhouse amber lights burn...
SPRINGFIELD, NJ – —“I didn’t win despite my handicap, but because of it – just as Hogan came back from that automobile accident, and Babe Zaharias came back from a cancer operation. — Ed Furgol after winning The 1954 U.S. Open at Baltusrol At precisely 9 o’clock the sun went down with a last vermillion flash behind old Baltus...
SPRINGFIELD, NJ – Right on cue, Baltusrol did what it always does at major golf championships – surrender a record low score. Sometimes it’s an immortal that does it – such as Jack Nicklaus or Phil Mickelson. Sometimes, however, it’s a journeyman who comes out of nowhere – Lee Janzen or Thomas Bjorn leap to mind. Each of those four...
SPRINGFIELD, NJ – When the tempest breaks at a major championship, it tends to do so with Olympian fury. A bar sinister moves across the sky with a rapidity that seems incredible. Then the wind’s voice rises with growing fury. The clouds turn black, then green, convulsing all a once into a washing machine in the sky. That’s what we’re waiting...
SPRINGFIELD, NJ – The approach of sunset was as grand as a Norman Rockwell painting. Rugged Baltusrol Mountain, also called First Mountain, stood sentinel over the stately golf course with its rambling Tudor architecture clubhouse as it has for over a century, while the sun dipped down low between the clouds and hillside, spreading a reddish flame across the...
SPRINGFIELD, NJ – When you look at a map of Baltusrol Country Club, the payout of the golf course resembles a barbell with the left side over-inflated on the bottom. But to the professional golfers assembled here for the last major golf championship of the year, the 98th PGA, it looks more like the plumpest, fattest, juiciest chicken wing this side of Buffalo...
I caught up with Graeme McDowell, Kevin Streelman, Sergio Garcia, and golf course architect Rees Jones while roaming the grounds, while Phil, Henrik, and Danny Willett and more dropped by the media center for interviews. You can read all about it Golf News Net. We’ll have more all week from Baltusrol, as well as an extended dance version of the Jay’s...
“Ye friends that weep about my grave Compose your minds to rest Prepare with me for sudden death And be forever blest” That is the chilling epitaph on the forlorn, grey tombstone standing sentinel over wealthy oxen farmer Baltus Roll’s lonely grave in a northern New Jersey Presbyterian burial ground. His was a pioneering family in the region, so...