Forget Brooks Koepka, Michael Block won the 2023 PGA Championship at Oak Hill —by Jay Flemma, Golf News Net— PITTSFORD, NY – Brooks Koepka may take the Wanamaker Trophy back to Mohammed bin Salman and Saudi Arabia, but club professional Michael Block won the 2023 PGA Championship. He won all our hearts as well. Block turned the year’s second golf major...
A Workingman’s History of Oak Hill Country Club’s East Course —by Jay Flemma, Golf News Net— PITTSFORD, NY – It was cold, grey, windy, and rainy Saturday in Rochester for the third round of the 105th PGA Championship. Indeed, the entire week at Oak Hill Country Club has been blustery with wind whistling through the leaves of the oaks and sycamores and...
Soak Hill 2 – Another PGA Championship, Another Rain Storm to Soften the Golf Course —by Jay Flemma, Golf News Net— PITTSFORD, NY – It’s a sequel ten years in the making. In the second round of the 2013 PGA Championship, everybody’s favorite Dockers-wearing zombie, Jason Dufner, starred in “Soak Hill,” biting off Oak Hill’s head and sucking out its lungs...
Future PGA Championship Venues are Mixed Bag of Masterpieces, Old Favorites, and That Laughable, Ludicrous Valhalla Mess —by Jay Flemma, Golf News Net— PITTSFORD, NY – How wonderful to see Oak Hill polished to its highest shine in perhaps a century or longer. It may never have played better for any major championship. Better still are the broad smiles and...
You are tuned into the right place for all things Rochester, Oak Hill’s East Course, and the 105th PGA Championship coming up May 18-21. We’ll be writing two articles a day Tuesday through Sunday for Golf News Net, we’ll have two hour-long radio shows: one pre-tournament and one post, and we’ll have twice a day radio reports from Thursday...
With a bogey free 5-under 65 San Francisco-born, Texas native Will Zalatoris surged into the lead at the 104th PGA Championship. The second year pro who was runner up in his first Masters in 2021 took advantage of an unexpected, but favorable change in the weather to fire a 31 on the back nine, including three consecutive birdies at 11-13 in sunny, windless...
Golf architect Perry Maxwell’s life and legacy were, and still are, filled with ironies. You have the southern gentleman banker who moved to the dust bowl of Oklahoma during the Great Depression to raise a family. You have a man who turned to golf design almost has an accident (and at the suggestion of his wife no less) become so proficient he became partners...
The Southern Hills Country Club that the touring professional golfers will face in the 2022 PGA Championship will bear only a passing resemblance to the 2007 Southern Hills systematically dismantled by Tiger Woods as he won his 13th major and his fourth Wanamaker Trophy. Happily, Southern Hills will appear far more similar to its origins in 1935-36 when Golden Age...
It’s the dawn of a new era, albeit with strong overtones of our beloved history. The Jay’s Plays Radio Show on Golf News Net and Sirius XM has moved. We are now Jay Flemma Sports Report – JFSR for short. Indeed, all your favorite shows in the GNN radio lineup have been picked up, and you can hear us all on iHeartRadio. (See GNN for the portal.)...
I’ll be hosting Golf Course Trades’ short webinar series on one of my all time favorites and an instant and forever classic: Bayonne Golf Club. Arguably the greatest build of the 21st century, architect owner Eric Bergstol designed an Irish-style links on an old waste disposal site overlooking New York harbor. Few people could manage the ludicrous...
“We have lost our iconic clubhouse:” with those words the entire golf world wept. Oakland Hills Country Club president Rick Palmer confirmed what everyone feared Friday morning – a devastating fire that broke out Thursday morning completely destroyed the century-old clubhouse, which had stood sentinel over six U.S. Opens, nine major championships...
This is some of the biggest news in golf. Not the pro tours, not the latest equipment, the rebuilding of C.B. Macdonald’s lost masterpiece, Lido Golf Club, in the middle of the sand wastes of Wisconsin by Tom Doak and the Kaiser family is the quantum leap the Second Golden Age of Golf Course architecture has resulted in. Run, don’t walk to...
Once again, Golf Course Trades does a splendid job of running my story about New Hampshire’s Rees Jones-designed marvel, Baker Hill. Truly one of the best Rees courses I’ve played, the club also will have one final year to celebrate the career of the only head superintendent they’ve ever had: Bob Turcotte, a.k.a. Baker Hill Bob. All across the east...
MOULTONBOROUGH, N.H. -You don’t see a lot of New Hampshire golf courses on many mainstream top-100 lists. Why not? When pundits discuss the best states for golf, they often overlook New Hampshire, and that’s a shame because Donald Ross, a colossus of golf course architecture, left behind a legacy of exceptional golf in the Granite State, easily the equal...
Call it an encore: the USGA has announced their second U.S. Open Anchor site, and it is being met with the same widespread acclaim as when they announced the inaugural site at Pinehurst. Fabled, venerable Oakmont Country Club in Pittsburgh has been given the honor, and will host the 2025, 2034, 2042, and 2049 U.S. Opens, with an eye toward eventually hosting the...