I had to hold back a teardrop or two as I wrote the ledes for my PGA Championship previews this year. This week’s tournament at Kiawah Island’s Ocean Course marks the first time a Pete Dye designed course has hosted a major golf championship since the great man passed away in January of 2020. And although the golf world rejoices at our collective slow...
We were having a fine run-up to this, the 103rd PGA Championship, even before Rory McIlroy’s TaylorMade TP5x golf ball tumbled into the cup at the 72nd hole of the Quail Hollow Championship two weeks ago. Nearly all of golf’s young gun stars and marquis names had won since the turn of the year: Bryson Dechambeau, Patrick Reed, Justin Thomas, Jordan...
KIAWAH ISLAND, S.C. – Dappled sunshine off the lapping ocean waves or a howling gale bending flagsticks to their near-breaking point? Which Kiawah Island Ocean Course will we see for the 2021 PGA Championship? The windless one that surrendered a winning score of 22-under to Colin Montgomerie at the 1997 World Cup (and Alex Cejka and Per-Ulrik Johansson shot 63...
We’ll be reporting all week with 2x daily reports starting Tuesday from the PGA Championship for Golf News Net. In the meantime, he are the odds to win the 2021 PGA at Kiawah Island’s Ocean Course: Rory McIlroy +1000 10/1 Jon Rahm +1200 12/1 Justin Thomas +1200 12/1 Dustin Johnson +1200 12/1 Jordan Spieth +1400 14/1 Bryson DeChambeau +1400 14/1 Brooks...
Augusta National will look to allow patrons for the 2021 Masters, scheduled for next April 8-11. The 2020 Masters, won by Dustin Johnson, was delayed until November last year due to Covid-19, and was contested without patrons for the first time in its illustrious history. “Following the successful conduct of the Masters Tournament last November with only...
There were former major champions, seasoned veterans, and long bombers dominating the leaderboard all week, but it was a kid from Cal who swooped in with a final round 64 to win the 102nd PGA Championship at San Francisco’s Harding Park Golf Coursed. 23 year-old Collin Morikawa finished 13-under for the week, good enough for a two stroke win over 2016 U.S. Open...
At 8-under China’s Haotong Li is your surprise leader at the halfway point of the 2020 PGA Championship at San Francisco’s Harding Park, but two-time defending champion Brooks Koepka is part of a six man log-jam tied for second just two shots back. Playing in early warm and windless conditions, Li fired a 65, then took a break of less than an hour before...
My golf buddy Ector and his wife Marta are in NoCal this week and brought their golf clubs with them from L.A. I played Casa de Campo with Ector, and had a blast. He’s one of those guys that you don’t care what he shoots, because he’s so much fun to play with, (even though he shoots 120). It also helped watching his eyes widen with wonder as I...
Back in 1974 while covering Super Bowl VIII, writer Hunter S. Thompson discovered that all he had to do to make deadline was to take the Super Bowl article he wrote the previous year, change the name of the losing team from “Washington Redskins” to “Minnesota Vikings,” and fax it in to Rolling Stone. The Miami Dolphins slowly strangled both...
California golf conjures up fond reveries of golden sunshine, rhythmic waves lapping peacefully at rocky shorelines, and flagsticks snapping briskly in the breeze, silhouetted nobly against the blazing sunset… …just not at TPC Harding Park. Let’s see: Olympic Club, Meadow Club, California Golf Club of San Francisco, San Francisco Golf Club, Pebble...
DATELINE: A SECRET UNDERGROUND BUNKER, SOMEWHERE IN U.S.A. So a PGA Championship in August means this is Glory’s Last Shot, right? Not exactly. This season the PGA Championship is actually Glory’s First Shot. The Coronovirus kayoed world professional sports since March, leaving stadiums empty, athletes playing to pre-recorded crowd noise, and many events...
To the horror of golf architecture aficionados, and in a nod to goodie bags and swag, the PGA of America awarded the 2025 Championship to North Carolina’s Quail Hollow Club, home to a yearly PGA Tour event and host of the 2017 PGA, won by Justin Thomas. Quail Hollow isn’t even the 10th best course in North Carolina. We wrote about that back in 2017 in...
Call it Black Friday or Friday the 13th, whichever you like, but that was the day the sports world went dark, along with Broadway and colleges across the country. Wuhan Flu or Coronavirus, whatever it’s called, it’s here. Time to get those 90-day emergency supplies out. Not ready…out. The time to prepare for this has passed. If you weren’t...
It’s been a great few weeks for Golden Age golf architecture on the PGA Tour. With all the world enjoying Pebble Beach, Riviera and the other crown jewels that the West Coast has to offer, it’s a good time to take a closer look at some of the best tournament venues we’ll see this year from not only the PGA Tour, but from the USGA and PGA of America...
PEBBLE BEACH, CA – With all the pomp and circumstance of the U.S. Open’s long and storied history at Pebble Beach, as well as the course’s glorious 100th anniversary, it’s easy to forget that the PGA Championship also was contested by the shores of Carmel Bay, and that it gave us as zany, wild, and dramatic a major as it has at many of its U.S...