WAYNE, NJ – His name is Hank Gola, and for decades he was the voice of the Great New York Sports Fan as the New York Daily News beat writer for pro football and golf. Hank is beloved in NYC, a home town boy who became a lifer of a local sports writer with a dozen national accolades to his name. If you grew up reading the New York sports pages, you saw the...
Continuing its meteoric rise atop both rankings lists and in the hearts and minds of the golfing public, Forsgate Country Club received two more honors recently. First, as Pat Norton reported earlier, Paul Kaster, Director of Instruction for the Forsgate Golf Academy and a member of the club’s Teaching Professional staff was recognized by Golf Digest as one of...
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...
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...
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.
PITTSBURGH, PA – There’s an old, true saying about the fervor and loyalty of Pittsburgh fans – when you play Pittsburgh, you play the whole city. Now you can add a corollary to that rule: when you run Pittsburgh, the whole city runs with you. Over 300,000 spectators cheered on 30,000 runners for the seventh annual Pittsburgh Marathon and Half...
HINGHAM, MA – “Boston Golf Club?” my friend asked, confused. “That’s not helpful. Which club in Boston do you mean?” “No, that’s the name of it,” I replied. “Boston Golf Club…THE Boston Golf Club. The definitive article, so to speak.” My buddy gave a knowing, “Ahhhh!” and then turned to...
Golf News Net ran my Jay’s Plays radio show interview with Eric Bergstol. We talked Bayonne, designing in greater New York City, his Empire Golf empire, and more! Tune in here for the fun.
BAYONNE, NJ – A funny thing happened when I went to interview a golf course architect about his design strategies. I got a grad school-level lecture in landscape architecture, construction, and golf course permitting instead. It was every bit as fascinating. Eric Bergstol lives the dream of everyone who enters one of those Armchair Architecture contests they...
We’ll have a longer article soon, but the best modern curse we visited this year was Boston Golf Club, called “the best course designed since 1960” by one of the smartest architecture critics I know. Designed by Gil Hanse, the course is a 21st century Pine Valley, a rustic, minimalist Shangri-la deep in the forest west of Boston. We’ll have...
MONROE TOWNSHIP, NJ – The eyes of the golf architecture cognoscenti are again upon our beloved Forsgate, and once more we are being spoken of in knowing nods and holy whispers. Golf Design expert Ran Morrissett, owner and operator of the golf design think tank GolfClubAtlas.com, has posted his analysis of the Banks course on line at for all the golf world to...
SCARSDALE, NY – [Author’s Note: Ardent golfers on both sides of the pond have heard of Sunningdale Golf Club in Merry Old England, a heathland masterpiece by Harry Colt and one of the world’s great courses, so rightly famous that author Ian Fleming made his quintessential super-spy James Bond a member of the august club. But here in America another...