SOUTHAMPTON, NY – My colleague and friend Mike Vaccaro, a sparkling gem of the New York Post sports writing diadem, likes to collect datelines. I remember he was especially proud of “Beijing,” but lamented publicly that it couldn’t be “Peking” instead. Mike and I met writing the dateline “Mamaroneck” in 2006 at Winged...
SOUTHAMPTON – “It’s a process, it’s a process, it’s a process.” If the old Tiger Woods – describing his swing changes – said it once, he said it a thousand times. It became a joke in the media center. I thought it was merely a combination of platitude and mantra; something to he chanted to himself as he worked the range...
Double good news over at Golf News Net today. First, they have published my Fenway Golf Club article. Short but dangerous, and always interesting around the greens, Fenway belongs in the Pantheon of great Tillinghast courses. Next, Steve Eubanks of Global Golf Post joined me on the Jay’s Plays Radio show. We talked PGA, LPGA, Tiger, golf travel and –...
[Editor’s Note: As part of the 2018 Ominous Seapods Reunion festivities, Jay went into the vault, and with the help of South Catherine Street Jug Band archivist Nate Pelton, released three more live archival recordings from the Golden Age of the Ominous Seapods under the “North Country Freakouts” series. Today, Volume 2: 06-17-94 Waterhole 3...
FAIRFAX, CA – Call it the Machu Picchu of golf. From far below, in the hippie town of Fairfax, one can look a thousand feet sheer up the cliff-side to the shallow, mountaintop bowl where the verdant fairways of Alister Mackenzie and Robert Hunter’s Meadow Club lie, serenely etched between fescue-clad rocky slopes. Indeed, the first time I saw Meadow Club...
Ernesto the Prediction Iguana tread water through a 3-2-1 week, 1-2 in teasers after the Panthers barely got past the Bucs, the Bills get robbed by the refs (again in favor of the Cheatriots), and the Giants got blanked by a milquetoast Arizona team. That puts the season totals at 58-19-1, 22-17 in teasers. happily, Week 17 Ernesto saves up his energy for the...
Erneesto’s return to the helm of our NFL Picks here at AWITP and GNN saw him tally a solid 5-1 week, 2-1 in tesaers. That swells the season totals to a sterling 55-17 overall, 21=15 in teasers. Of course one critical win was due to dumb luck – The Steelers beat the Patriots yesterday, but the Cheatriots beat the Steelers. The lone loss was the Chargers...
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...
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.
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...
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...
ERIN, WI – Dana Fry, who along with Mike Hurdzan and lawyer-turned-writer-turned-golf architect Ron Whitten, designed 11-year old Erin Hills, site of the 117th U.S. Open, recently said in an interview that, “it’s unprecedented for the USGA to host the tournament at a venue this new.” He’s close to being correct. It’s actually only...
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...
You may find yourself In a beautiful house With a beautiful wife. You may ask yourself “Well, how did I get here?!” —Talking Heads, “Once in a Lifetime” The immortal words of David Byrne, that’s what we all might have asked ourselves in April of 1987, even Larry Mize, as he strode out of Butler Cabin clad a Green Jacket, the newly...