It’s the one day of the year when the golf writers become golf stars…and it’s a good thing for them that the cameras aren’t rolling, because play would look like U.S. Open Saturday at Shinnecock Hills pretty quick. The 12th annual Writer Cup, the yearly showdown between the Philly golf writers and the New York scribes, tees of this Thursday at...
SOUTHAMPTON, NY – Brooks Koepka may have won the trophy again, and Tommy Fleetwood might have won the hearts of golfers everywhere with his tournament record-tying 63 and rock-star hair, but Shinnecock Hills won the 118th U.S. Open. As it should be; at a truly great U.S. Open, the course is always the star. Koepka became the first repeat U.S. Open Champion...
SOUTHAMPTON, NY – Pre-eminent sports writer Rick Reilly’s hat said it all. “Pray For Birdies,” it blared in red, white and blue. It feels like an old-school U.S. Open even though the golf course is as wide as a weekend bogey golfer could wish for. Despite the widest fairways in modern tournament history, at the halfway point of the 118th U.S...
Here are the tee times for the 118h U.S. Open. We’ll be live at Shinnecock Hills all week starting Tuesday morning. Thursday (June 14), hole #1 / Friday (June 15), hole #10 6:45 a.m. / 12:30 p.m. – Harold Varner, Gastonia, N.C.; TBD; Matthieu Pavon, France 6:56 a.m. / 12:41 p.m. – Michael Putnam, University Place, Wash.; Scott Gregory, England; Will...
As always, Golf Course Trades did a phenomenal job with my preview for the U.S. Open. Super Jon Jennings leads an all-star cast of supers, meteorologists, and USGA brass in getting Shinnecock Hills ready for the pros and the National Championship. Jennings is a fascinating guy. as the articles states, “Golf is lucky to have gotten Jennings at all, actually. He...
The awful weather of this never-ending winter continued all across New England, the Mid-Atlantic, and into the Rust Belt and Heartland, crippling travel and causing multiple delays to the start of golf season. Even Shinnecock Hills, site of this year’s U.S. Open, has been affected. Erring on the side of caution (of course) the Club will Open one week later than...
“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...
I wrote about Meadow Club for this month’s Golf Course Trades, one of those courses that you have to play before you die. Here’s my favorite part of the article: As I took a deep breath and savored the crisp, wine-sweet, forest-fragrant air, the October sun’s rays began their last golden stretch across Alister Mackenzie and Robert Hunter’s...
Ryan Ballengee and GNN did a fantastic job making my Meadow Club article look so good. Big thanks also to Sean Tully. I can’t wait to get back out there again – it was Heaven. From the article: Call it the Machu Picchu of golf. From far below, in the hippie town of Fairfax, one can look a thousand feet sheer up the cliff-side to the shallow, mountaintop...
FAIRFAX, CA – Call it the Machu Picchu of golf. From far below, in the hippie town of Fairfax, one can look a thousand feet sheer up the cliff-side to the shallow, mountaintop bowl where the verdant fairways of Alister Mackenzie and Robert Hunter’s Meadow Club lie, serenely etched between fescue-clad rocky slopes. Indeed, the first time I saw Meadow Club...
It’s one of the greatest courses in the world, and a personal favorite of both myself and Tom Doak, (who did terrific work there, by the way). A HUGE thank you to Golf Course Trades for making my article on Garden City Golf Club look so good! From the article: “Garden City is one of those courses that materializes out of the mists of time like a reverie...
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...
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...