[Author’s Note: This interview was over 17 pages long. Here are some fun and interesting excerpts. You’ll have to buy the book for the rest:)] Dan Hixson – Zen and the Art of the Do It Yourself Golf Design Career MC Lars is actually wrong (for once!) Post-punk laptop rap isn’t the new DIY: golf course design is, at least if you’re Dan...
While I get a few more interviews and course reviews finshed, here’s some great insighta o Chambers Bay from Robert Trent Jones, Jr., who by this time next week = may pull a come from nehind victory in the Rio primary:) (I.E. The Olympics election…err…selection…) JF: Now those hummocks look like berms that Seth Raynor did at flat courses like...
Day 3 – Gold Mountain, (Olympic Course) 5:15 a.m., Seattle No matter how many times I do it, waking up in darkness isn’t for me. My body clock is used to the California hours that all entertainment lawyers keep, even in New York. (If a Cali lawyer calls you at 4:59 his time and you’re not there, as Ian Faith said, “they start screaming like a...
Day 1 – The Road to Chambers Bay Warm clothes? Check. Laptop? Check. Clubs? That’s a big check! And we were off to Seattle for the Walla to Walla Tour – golf in Washington state during the first week of January. The weather report called for highs between 45 and 25 degrees, with lows in the teens, but no snow, thankfully. So I added four layers of...
So I’m 2/3 done with my NW trip to open the year. Great fun so far. I’ll more post pics when I get time, but for now I’ll get the ball rolling. Chambers Bay was really wonderful. I really like Whistling Straits, I love Arcadia Bluffs, I really love Pac Dunes, but Chambers may be my fave of that crop. Fave holes included 1, 4, 7, 10, 11, 12, 17, and...
Bag? Check. Laptop? Check. Clubs? Check. We’re ready to launch our first of many tours this year for the Magazine, for Cybergolf, and for my first book. This is a big one: tomorrow it’s Chambers Bay, site of the 2015 U.S. Open where we will play the course and interview Mike Davis – the head of the U.S.G.A. himself and get his thoughts on many...
Since forming his own design firm in 1997, Colorado’s Jim Engh has won four “best new course” awards from Golf Digest, been named “Golf Architect of the Year” in 2003 (ahead of such luminaries as Fazio, Dye, Jones, and Doak), built a reputation for getting world class work done on time and under budget, landed one gorgeous site after...
JOHNS CREEK, GA – Ron Whitten’s recent Golf Digest article on the new turfgrasses being tested this week at Atlanta Athletic Club’s PGA Championship is another excellent observation by one of the most intelligent voices in the game. His knowledge of architecture and travel is unparalleled. In his article he mentions a number of southern and western...
At 8:30 a.m. Monday, beachcombers spotted what looked like two pipe bombs laying at the base of the sea wall beneath the 9th green. Shane Bacon and Jay Busbee of Yahoo! Sports have a great diagram and the Bay City/Mercury News have updates. From the article: “A Monterey County bomb squad was dispatched Sunday morning to Pebble Beach Golf Links, where an...
Tom Doak and George Bahto are collecting a lot of hardware this year for their terrific course at the Bandon Dunes Resort, Old Macdonald, a course that hearkens back to all the design concepts that C.B. Macdonald, Seth raynor, and Charles Banks all championed. Ran Morrissett has a terrific breakdown of the course at Golf Club Atlas. Doak has already collected the...
This one was so much fun. Blue and Gold, Blue and Gold, everywhere you look, Blue and Gold. From the article: How can you not love Santa Cruz? It’s like a wax museum with a pulse, to paraphrase modern-day philosopher Vincent Vega. Banana Slugs and terrible Shakespeare (who the hell else would do King Lear wearing nothing except for barbed wire and the metal cap...
Let’s quickly reset the schedule of events, coverage, and articles for the next few weeks: 1. The British Open! 2. My preview and live coverage of the PGA Championship 3. Article on Pasatiempo 4. Atlantic City Country Club 5. Golf along I-84 in the NE corridor 6. Book reviews of Titanic Thompson (Kevin Cook) and Ancestral Links (John Garrity). 7. Stephen Kay...
PEBBLE BEACH, CA – It’s Graeme McDowell who won the 2010 U.S. Open, not Lou Graham, but since McDowell’s win closely resembles Graham’s victory at Medinah in 1975, the confusion is easily forgiven. Like 1975, Championship Sunday dawned over Paradise with the game’s greatest players lurking near the top of the leaderboard. But also like...
Here’s my latest Cybergolf piece. Enjoy. From the article: “From personal experience, let me tell you that any windy, forested road called “17 Mile Drive” is no place to get lost, but that’s exactly what happened to the biggest names in golf, as the U.S. Open leaderboard is left to forgotten major winners from 2003, a couple foreign...
Cybergolf ran my U.S. Open piece where I got to talk with Tom Watson, Jack Fleck, and a real-life Signboy. From the article: “Speaking of fairways and greens, NoCal and underdogs, my next interview was a stunner, a bolt from the blue. As I strode towards the media center exit, notebook in hand intent on finding a Garcia, Curtis or Paddy, an elderly gentleman in...