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...
PEBBLE BEACH, CA – In 2000, when Tiger Woods Years lapped the field, broke or tied nearly every important U.S. Open record, and turned our beloved Pebble Beach into flotsam and jetsam in the wake of a yacht insultingly called Privacy, some pundits mistakenly thought Pebble Beach had become obsolete. Those same pundits ignored the rest of scoreboard. 3-over tied...
My first piece from the Open is up at Cybergolf. It’s a hole-by-hole breakdown of Pebble Beach. From the article: “Even though it’s the shortest U.S. Open we play, it’s still getting awfully quick out there,” cautioned Woods, who was civil and obliging with golf questions on Tuesday but surly, rude and more obnoxious than a vuvuzela horn...
Thanks to John Bywra for doing such a great job getting my preview piece up and looking great over at PGA.com. In a few minutes, also jump over to Cybergolf for my hole-by-hole breakdown of Pebble Beach.
In the meantime, how about Spain playing like Spam against Switzerland?
Years ago, when the U.S.G.A. announced that each ten years they would celebrate the U.S. Open with a party of special magnificence, a decennial return to Pebble Beach, elated cheers rang throughout the golf world. Beautiful, rugged Pebble has been a national treasure and a crown jewel in the American golf diadem for nine decades. Indeed, when the sun shines over...
We’ll also have some portions of the piece up at PGA.com, but for today, here is my U.S. Open preview: Emerald, Sapphire, and Gold. The Tom Watson/Herbert Warren Wind articles from 1983 that I found in the basement were worth their weight in treasure. From the piece, Watson recalls his miracle chip-in at 17: “Watson had played the difficult par-3 well all...
My preview of the Players Championship and the review of TPC Sawgrass are up at Cybergolf.com. Here’s the link. Here’s also a snippet for you: “It was the age of Nicklaus, but unlike the flash-in-the-pan rivals of Tiger Woods, Nicklaus had a pantheon of Hall of Famers to battle each week: Watson, Seve, Johnny Miller, Weiskopf, Crenshaw, Trevino, and...
Tony Korologos of Hooked on Golf just got back from St. George’s, Utah and has a great review of Sand Hollow, one of last year’s candidates for best new public course.
The link is here. From the article: Mike Bodney, senior VP of the President’s Cup, rerouted the golf course so that nearly every match would at least arrive at the lakeside, if not play almost the entire stretch. I won’t reprint the exact re-routing of the holes; you’d get more lost than the kids in “The Blair Witch Project.” But...
Watch for another announcement regarding the Road Hole soon. Meanwhile, Tom Doak, Bandon Dunes head pro Jeff Simonds, and writer John Dunn discuss Doak’s version of the Road hole at Old Macdonald, the newest course at the Bandon Dunes facility.