If you’re a golfer, he needs no introduction. Butch Harmon is the greatest golf teacher of all time, the most outrageously under-appreciated figure yet to be inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame and Tiger Woods’ coach in his formative and peak years from 1993 to 2004—ages 17 to 28. “The way I put Read more…
Jordan Spieth has mastered the pro part of pro-ams. He looks the part, he acts the part, he certainly plays the part of being a fearless professional. So, it’s appropriate he’s the inaugural winner of The Legacy, the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am Award presented by Golf Digest and the Monterey Peninsula Foundation. On the 40th Read more…
Long before Tiger came along, the pals of my youth were Hoganophiles or infantrymen in Arnie’s Army. I was a Nicklaus guy; I studied all things Jack. My first act of civil disobedience as a teenager was getting a Philadelphia public-library card under false pretenses in the name of “Jack Nicklaus.” I used it to Read more…
I must know a couple of thousand people on a first-name basis who play golf, but I know only two who climb mountains. I went to Arizona to see one of them on the way to see the other in Kansas. I asked the first what I should ask the second. They’re both in the Read more…
I have the unlikeliest golf friend that you need to meet because a round of golf with him will change your life—or at least inspire you to look at the world differently. Jim Yong Kim was born in 1959 in Korea, one of the poorest countries in the world at the time. His father was a Read more…
A great wind is blowing off the sea, a source of courage or pain for golfers. I’m reporting from the battlefield of links golf in a howling, moaning gale on the southwest coast of Ireland at the 16th World Invitational Father-Daughter Tournament. My daughter Sam and I are not accustomed to playing every day, and Read more…
The first time the term might have been used was at Royal St. George’s in 1999 when golf’s boulevardier Jimmy Dunne was playing a casual match with his friend Frank Brennan while attending Wimbledon. On the long par-3 11th hole, Brennan hit a slight hook into the right side of the green and appeared satisfied Read more…
Caitlin Clark reminds me of Nancy Lopez. They were instant winners. Their popularity transcended and lifted their sports. They’ve inspired both admiration and envy among their peers. And maybe most important: They share an indomitable spirit. You know Caitlin’s story, but you may have forgotten Nancy’s. She won the USGA Girls’ Junior at 15 and Read more…
Last fall an 11-year-old named Holden Bautista made two holes-in-one in a single round, and, even better, Tiger Woods was an eyewitness. The kid asked Tiger if he had ever made double aces—“I mean you’re the GOAT, so it would be expected?” “You had to go there,” replied Tiger, laughing. “I’ll give you that one.” Read more…
You might say it started when W.P. Kinsella wrote a baseball novel in 1982 called “Shoeless Joe” that used the haunting refrain, “If you build it, he will come.” The extraterrestrials of Stonehenge may have had the notion originally, but Kinsella’s mantra expressed perfectly that if you create something worthwhile, people will beat a path Read more…
One of America’s iconic companies, U.S. Steel, agreed this week after months of speculation to be sold to Nippon Steel for in excess of $14 billion. The origins of U.S. Steel have a golf connection that’s worth recalling as the ultimate example of the game as a business tool. The story is coincidentally told in Read more…
Every golfer has a bucket list of courses they want to play, but I prefer to ask friends for their Ice Bucket List: What’s the best drink you’ve had at the best courses? You haven’t completed the Grand Slam until you’ve tasted these four cocktails in situ: 1. Southside Traced back to Al Capone’s Chicago, Read more…
The last time I was in Louisville, birthplace of The Greatest, I went to the Muhammad Ali Center for a meeting of The First Tee Trustees, and he was there. Sports’ most eloquent speaker couldn’t speak. Ali smiled and had his picture taken with each of us, as one by one we said a few Read more…
In my garage at home is a red canvas, cylindrical shag bag with a protruding aluminum tube that retrieves golf balls without back strain. It’s my longest serving piece of golf equipment in continuous use. The Original Shag Bag was invented by Clifford Hurd and Ian McDonald in 1948, and the same company, Madewell Products, Read more…
Australian Golf Digest
