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...
A journalist asked PGA Championship leader Brooks Koepka a laconic question last night and got a laconic answer. “Is there any doubt whatsoever in your mind that you’re going to win tomorrow?” “No.” It wasn’t a smart question, but boy did Brooks screw up the answer. We already know the outcome of tomorrow’s golf: Koepka is...
[Golf writer to Your Author: “Why are you writing about a mountain? Your Author: “Because it’s there.”] BETHPAGE, NY – The putt that won Tiger Woods his fifth Green Jacket hadn’t even tumbled into the cup before golf media were almost uniformly waxing poetic about “the greatest comeback in sports history!” Let’s...
BETHPAGE, NY – Like a dragon incinerating Daenarys Targaryen’s enemies, a fire-breathing Brooks Koepka scorched Bethpage Black in round one of the PGA Championship with a 7-under 63 and a one shot lead over New Zealand’s Danny Lee. England’s Tommy Fleetwood is in third place, four shots back at 3-under. The rest of the field needs binoculars...
BETHPAGE, NY – Much has been made of Bethpage’s brute length, elevated greens, and deep, dangerous, whimsically shaped Rees Jones inkblot bunkering. Most players are convinced this PGA Championship will feel much like a U.S. Open in terms of difficulty, partly because the Black Course hosted the 2002 and 2009 U.S. Opens before becoming a PGA of America...
BETHPAGE, NY – The stars are shining brightly on Broadway this week as the reigning Masters champion Tiger Woods, the defending champion Brooks Koepka, and the world’s number player Dustin Johnson all are favorites to win the 101st PGA Championship this week at Bethpage Black. While not as relentless as Winged Foot, as penal as Oakmont, or as windy as...
BETHPAGE, NY – Babe Ruth and Derek Jeter. Joe Namath and Bill Parcells. Mark Messier and Mike Bossy. Willis Reed and Patrick Ewing. The Harlem Globetrotters. Bobby Fischer. John McEnroe. If there were ever a Pantheon of New York Sports Immortals, those are names that would forever be enshrined. But who should represent golf as New York’s hero? Sure, they...
The PGA of America, in a move many expected, added Congressional Blue as a PGA Championship venue for 2031. You’ll recall Rory McIlroy set the 36, 54, and 72-hole scoring records, along with the 72 2019 – Bethpage State Park, (Black Course) Bethpage, N.Y. 2020 – TPC Harding Park, San Francisco, Ca. 2021 – Kiawah Island (Ocean Course), Kiawah...
Just under eight miles as the crow flies from Bellerive Country Club, site of this week’s 100th PGA Championship, while the golf world celebrates the PGA of America’s centennial anniversary, a far more grave, but just as riveting drama is unfolding. St. Louis was where much of the uranium used in the first atomic bombs was enriched. Although those bombs...
We’ll be paying the PGA Championship in August for the last time this year; it moves to mid-May starting in 2019. Here is a list of the future PGA Championship venues going forward – at least the ones that have been determined… 2018 – Bellerive Country Club, St. Louis, Mo. 2019 – Bethpage State Park, (Black Course) Bethpage, N.Y. 2020...
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...