CHARLOTTE, NC – You have to love Jim Furyk. He shoots from the lip. When asked about the changes to Quail Hollow Club for the 99th PGA Championship, he had the perfect laconic reply. “One could be the toughest opening hole in golf. It actually looks like a really nice par-5 to me, but for some reason they put par-4 on the card,” he deadpanned. See...
CHARLOTTE, NC – Like an archaeologist wide-eyed with wonder as he finally deciphers ancient hieroglyphics on a graven monument, so too was I mesmerized by the photos on the walls of venerable Canterbury Golf Club in Cleveland, Ohio. They depicted a more civilized age, the heady halcyon time during which the PGA Championship was born, an Interwar America...
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...
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...
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.
TOWN OF ERIN, WI – Dear Dad: Happy Father’s Day! Another year, another U.S. Open, (13 now, in a row, and 25 majors overall), another year I get to write a letter to you in the form of an article, and you get to tell me what I should have done all week while I was here. Oh well, it beats Mom feeding you that slop at the nursing home they call food...
ERIN, WI – Hey! Ron Whitten, Dana Fry, and Mike Hurdzan built this great golf course in Wisconsin. Let’s go and hack at it! That’s not my loudmouth, lunkhead golf buddies and I talking, it’s the brightest stars of the professional tours. A remarkably benign Erin Hills surrendered record numbers of birdies to every Tom, Dick, and Harry (or in...
ERIN, WI – With a precision that Bernhard Langer would have envied, Rickie Fowler seized the first round lead of the 117th U.S. Open with a dazzling 7-under 65. It was the lowest score-to-par in the first round of the National Open since Jack Nicklaus and Tom Weiskopf fired 8-under 63s at Baltusrol in 1980. Fowler’s card was sparkling clean – seven...
ERIN, WI – The collection of one shot holes at Erin Hills is as strong as we’ve ever seen at any U.S. Open. Both nine and 16 are downright iconic: instant classics. Both holes also prove that length is overrated. The ninth green is completely encircled by bunkers, including several narrow trenches just wide enough to stand, but, in places, to narrow to...
ERIN, WI – A blood red sunset bathed Erin Hills Golf Course in an eerie witch-light as the sun descended behind an ominous curtain of black clouds. One last feeble flicker of the dying rays extinguished dismally, and then the landscape plunged into darkness, illuminated only by angry streaks of lightning, each strike silhouetting the clubhouse against the...
GNN has just posted my Erin Hills preview for the 2017 U.S. Open.
We are at our desk working an hour earlier than our ETA. The rain has stopped and the players are headed out for practice rounds.
We’ll also post the Gary D’Amato interview we did as the second half of our Jay’s Plays Radio Show preview.
Happy U.S. Open week everybody.
2018: Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, Southampton, N.Y. 2019: Pebble Beach Golf Links, Carmel, CA 2020: Winged Foot Golf Club (West Course), Mamaroneck, N.Y. 2021: Torrey Pines Golf Course (South Course), San Diego, Calif. 2022: The Country Club, Brookline, Mass. 2023: Los Angeles (Calif.) Country Club (North Course) 2024: Pinehurst Resort & Country Club, Village of...
It’s U.S. Open preview time. We’ll have our article posted at Golf News Net soon, but in the meantime, here’s part 1 of my Jay’s Plays Radio Show preview. This is one heck of a show people. Our first guest was the one and only Peter Kessler, veteran of thousands of radio and TV shows, including Golf Channel. We talked Tiger and Erin Hills...