Ernesto the Prediction Iguana continued his impressive opening to the NFL prognostication season with a 4-2 week, 1-2 in teasers. His only miscues were those pesky Bears…this time they upended the ravens in Baltimore…and the Giants. The Bears may play in the NFC North, but they may want to petition for a change since they could end up metaphoric champions...
The folks over at Golf Course Trades did a terrific job publishing my U.S. Open Road trip article in their September issue. It was a great run: The Roc and Pheasant with Phil Furfari, Canterbury in Cleveland, where – among others – Jack Nicklaus made indelible major championship history, Keith Foster’s dazzling renovation of Moraine Country Club in...
Are you ready or some football picks? We are. Jay’s Plays NFL Picks is back for it’s 12th season. First we want to welcome back all our readers from Golf News Net. Glad to have you aboard again. Also welcome to all the listeners on the Jay’s Plays Radio Show. We’ve been kicking ass and taking names for much of the last decade, batting a...
Special to GNN and AWITP by Yale Bluer CHARLOTTE, NC – She had a voice like Foghorn Leghorn and the manners of Yosemite Sam. She’d fake-baked her skin to a brassy orange and streaked her spaghetti-straight hair a metallic gold. She wore ass-high, crack-tight, denim short shorts, wedges, and a scoop top two sizes too tight. She said she was 34, but my...
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 love...
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...