[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...
Fan favorite and all-around good guy Steve Stricker was named Ryder Cup Captain for 2020. The event will be played in his home state of Wisconsin, at Whistling Straits, host of three PGA Championships since 2000. Stricker will be formally introduced at a press conference at 8 a.m. in Milwaukee. Veteran sports writer Gary D’Amato broke the story earlier today...
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???”...
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...
“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...
If you needed any more proof that Tiger Woods is still getting free passes from the media, the deafening silence by the golf media on the day he pleaded guilty in his DUI case was concrete proof. “Looking haggard in a black suit and white T-shirt, the golf legend entered the plea to reckless driving through his lawyer at court in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.”...
We here at AWITP have Justin Thomas as our favorite to win Player of the Year based upon his four titles and one major championship this season. Still, the bookies have Jordan Spieth as the favorite right now to take the FedEx Cup with Thomas just behind. Here’s the full list. We’re taking Thomas to bring it home and close out a breakout year. Jordan...
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...
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...
A new day may be dawning in golf: a kinder, gentler rule book, beginning 1-1-19. The reason? The game takes too long and the rules are too confusing…and at times too penal. That’s fine motivation but as I digest the new rules, some of them work, others don’t. Some of the rules will make the game more fair and equitable, some rules will speed up the...
Yes, I know, most people voted for Dustin Johnson. But I think that’s a sympathy vote. I also think we in the golf media are doing that herd groupthink thing again. Dustin won the U.S. Open at Oakmont with a cloud hanging over his head, but he didn’t shoot 63 on Sunday and 20-under overall setting a major championship record. It was one of the greatest...
Tiger Woods’s long-awaited return to the PGA Tour will begin at home against the smallest field in competitive golf. Woods will play the Hero World Challenge at Albany December 1-4, starting alongside a mere 17 other players. “A lot of players make their homes right there, so it’s a buddy trip to Ti’s house,” quipped one irreverent wag...
Amidst a tumult and shouting that would have impressed even the great Grantland Rice himself, the United States defeated Europe 17-11, winning their first Ryder Cup since 2008. Patrick Reed preened like an NFL linebacker, Phil Mickelson made putts from Duluth, St. Cloud, and Monkato, and Ryan Moore – the last man to make the team – sank the Ryder Cup...
Here are the matchups for tomorrow’s singles at Hazeltine Natonal as the 2016 Ryder Cup turns towards the Sunday Singles. 1. PATRICK REED (USA) V. RORY MCILROY (EUR) Ohhhh, grab your popcorn. We finally get the marquis matchup we wanted to see at a Sunday singles. You KNEW Reed had to lead off, and you KNEW Europe had to front load, and for once, the stars...
It’s downright poetic: the “Greatest Event in Golf” (as countless golfers and pundits have described it) is being played in the most golf loving state in the union. This week the 41st Ryder Cup comes to Hazeltine National, the golf club specifically designed to bring the golf world’s pre-eminent events to Minnesota. Built in 1962 by Robert...