PITTSBURGH, PA – There’s an old, true saying about the fervor and loyalty of Pittsburgh fans – when you play Pittsburgh, you play the whole city. Now you can add a corollary to that rule: when you run Pittsburgh, the whole city runs with you. Over 300,000 spectators cheered on 30,000 runners for the seventh annual Pittsburgh Marathon and Half...
BALDWINSVILLE, NY – Mother Nature obviously saved her best and brightest sunshine of this entire April for the Earth Day Half Marathon in Baldwinsville. A bold sunrise of blazing red and gold – sunbeams stretching their arms joyously – melted into a cloudless azure sky, and the rolling Adirondack foothills and meadows were bathed in a light that...
That’s more like it – Ernesto the Prediction Iguana went 5-1 last week, and 2-1 in teasers. That brings the season totals to 15-9 overall, 5-7 in exact teasers. He’s headed off for his annual November vacation next week, so the cats all get a chance to show their prognosticating prowess, but before Ernesto and his girl take off to some iguana...
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Good things happen when a Golden Age club not only hires the right golf course architect to perform a restoration, redesign, or renovation, but actually listens to his suggestions. It’s tough for Golden Age courses to embrace change sometimes, but by listening to the sage advice of internationally-acclaimed golf architect Kyle...
Rickie Fowler, JB Holmes, and Matt Kuchar became three of Davis Love’s four Captain’s Picks for the USA Ryder Cup team which will battle Europe at Hazeltine National Sept. 29 – Oct. Europe has won the last three Cups in a row. The final spot looks to be a battle between Bubba Watson and Bill Haas. Fowler will play well in a pod with Reed, Mickelson...
On the face of it, this looks unfair. A 10 year old girl, clearly a child prodigy at golf, is mysteriously being banned from golf for one year while her parents fight over custody. From the Deadspin article: “The ban comes as the kid is thriving on the links. By the count of Vechery [the father], a career real estate salesman and part-time golf coach, his...
We talked Ryder Cup, PGA Championship, and the Olympics with Ryan Ballengee then golf course architecture and his latest golf designs with Steve Smyers. Steve has two new designs coming on line soon: La Jama in Ecuador, and Meridoe in Dallas, plus he’s unveiling his touch-up work at Old Memorial later this fall.
If you want the truth about what’s happening in the darker corners of the sports world, Phil Mushnick of the New York Post should be a daily stop. Today he skewers Nike’s entire Tiger Woods-fueled lunacy that led to their demise. From the article: “Nike was barking up the wrong money tree. Golfers aren’t as impressionable or as vulnerable as...
SPRINGFIELD, NJ – —“I didn’t win despite my handicap, but because of it – just as Hogan came back from that automobile accident, and Babe Zaharias came back from a cancer operation. — Ed Furgol after winning The 1954 U.S. Open at Baltusrol At precisely 9 o’clock the sun went down with a last vermillion flash behind old Baltus...
SPRINGFIELD, NJ – Right on cue, Baltusrol did what it always does at major golf championships – surrender a record low score. Sometimes it’s an immortal that does it – such as Jack Nicklaus or Phil Mickelson. Sometimes, however, it’s a journeyman who comes out of nowhere – Lee Janzen or Thomas Bjorn leap to mind. Each of those four...
SPRINGFIELD, NJ – When the tempest breaks at a major championship, it tends to do so with Olympian fury. A bar sinister moves across the sky with a rapidity that seems incredible. Then the wind’s voice rises with growing fury. The clouds turn black, then green, convulsing all a once into a washing machine in the sky. That’s what we’re waiting...
SPRINGFIELD, NJ – The approach of sunset was as grand as a Norman Rockwell painting. Rugged Baltusrol Mountain, also called First Mountain, stood sentinel over the stately golf course with its rambling Tudor architecture clubhouse as it has for over a century, while the sun dipped down low between the clouds and hillside, spreading a reddish flame across the...
SPRINGFIELD, NJ – When you look at a map of Baltusrol Country Club, the payout of the golf course resembles a barbell with the left side over-inflated on the bottom. But to the professional golfers assembled here for the last major golf championship of the year, the 98th PGA, it looks more like the plumpest, fattest, juiciest chicken wing this side of Buffalo...
I caught up with Graeme McDowell, Kevin Streelman, Sergio Garcia, and golf course architect Rees Jones while roaming the grounds, while Phil, Henrik, and Danny Willett and more dropped by the media center for interviews. You can read all about it Golf News Net. We’ll have more all week from Baltusrol, as well as an extended dance version of the Jay’s...
“Ye friends that weep about my grave Compose your minds to rest Prepare with me for sudden death And be forever blest” That is the chilling epitaph on the forlorn, grey tombstone standing sentinel over wealthy oxen farmer Baltus Roll’s lonely grave in a northern New Jersey Presbyterian burial ground. His was a pioneering family in the region, so...