SCOTCH PLAINS, NJ – Raise a glass to 100 years of rousing cheers. Shackamaxon Country club in northwest New Jersey celebrates their centennial this year. It’s another runaway success for the tandem of owner/developer/magnate Chris Schiavone and golf architect Stephen Kay. Finger pressed firmly on the zeitgeist of modern golf architecture, they’ve...
Great job by Ryan Ballengee and the folks at Golf News Net running my review of my new Callaway Apex Forged Irons.
UPDATE! I’m still hitting the irons great, thank you for asking!
We had Ryan Ballengee and Gary Van Sickle on the Jay’s Plays show on the Golf News Net Radio Network. We talked about the Masters, Jordan Spieth, the Players, Fowler, McIlroy, the USGA Fourball and the Anderson Memorial, both at Winged Foot, and the best moments of Tropic Thunder! sadly, no one has gotten the JB’s Best Hot Sauce Trivia Question right in a...
I’m swinging new irons for the first time in 37 years, and it feels like I just got out of prison. As for my last set: Fred Flintstone, here’s your freaking golf clubs back. “Are those original Ping Eyes?” people would ask me, staring slack-jawed at my golf bag as if they were meeting a Dodo bird. “Yes, they are. Do you still point at...
MAMARONECK, NY – Set your TiVo for Fox Sports 1 this weekend, because you’ll get a rare and wonderful opportunity: Winged Foot’s East Course, in all its majesty and splendor, will finally get the close-up it so richly deserves as the USGA and the television cameras descend on the venerable club – the Yankee Stadium of golf – for the...
Great job by the wonderful folks at GolfCourseTrades.com for running my article on Old Town Club, the last great course of Perry Maxwell. It’s a wonderful course in Winstom-Salem, NC, the home course of mighty Wake Forest! From the article: “It is impossible to understate how important Old Town is to both Maxwell’s legacy and the study of golf...
MONROE TOWNSHIP, NJ – The wind was cold as Spanish steel. A golf ball-gray sky stretched end to end across the horizon, clouds moving forlornly before the breeze. To the west a dark thunderhead roiled, black as a witch’s cauldron. Yet to the buoyant hearts of northeast golfers it might have well been a sunny 4th of July. “What a perfect day for golf...
Just like newly-minted Masters Champion Danny Willett, the due date for Ryan and Katie Ballengee’s second child was…Masters Sunday! Yup…planned that well! :):) Still, the ever clever Ballengee, publisher, producer, and editor of the Golf News Net came up with a brilliant birth announcement for little Rose Carmela: Genius! So now little Carrick has a...
It was the 66 that was the illusion — that and the four consecutive birdies to close the front nine on Sunday. But those 22 holes are what made us believe that Jordan Spieth was headed into Butler Cabin for another Green Jacket Ceremony to close out the 80th Masters as back-to-back champion. Surely the steely-nerved, iron-willed, icy-veined two-time major...
“Take your bottom lip, and pull it up over your head.” That was how comedienne Carol Burnett described labor pains, but it also depicts how it feels to flush a 4-up lead in golf to the drummer of a punk rock/top-40 band, but I’m getting ahead of myself. The stars were still bright when Gary Wiseman’s Escalade pulled into the Quik-E-Mart so we...
The Masters is less than a month away, and this year being the 30th anniversary of Jack Nicklaus’s miracle win in 1986, we have a special preview piece commemorating the event. Also, we’ll be reporting on thee Masters with Friday and Sunday recaps and columns here and at Golf News Net. In other news, coming up on the Jay’s Plays Show we’ll...
It’s an all new Jay’s Plays Show on the Golf News Net Radio Network. First golf architect Bill Love and Director of Golf Will Hutter talk about Olympic Club and how it might play for the 2021 U.S. Women’s Open. Then golf architect Stephen Kay and golf course magnate Chris Schiavone jump on the show to talk about Shackamaxon’s 100th anniversary...
My first Golf Course Trades article is up! It’s my review of the architectural and agronomic changes to Poppy Hills, the great RTJ, Jr. course on the Monterey Peninsula that shares hosting duties with Pebble Beach, Monterey Peninsula Country Club, and Spyglass Hill. You can click on the entire article here. Here’s a teaser: “Pine Valley’s...
You know how it was all the rage a few years ago to start building brass statues of people and putting them around golf courses? If you legitimately want to bronze people that actually are good for the game of golf, then New Jersey should erect a statue of country club magnate Chris Schiavone. First, Chris spearheaded the resurrection of mighty Forsgate Country Club...
You know how Bob Kraft is all, “I like the product so much, I bought the company”? We’ll I’m the same way. I don’t advertise just anything. I only pick things I really, really, love – that I’m 100% behind! Craftsmanship and quality – that’s what it takes to be a Jay’s plays sponsor. That’s why...