The messy truths new PGA Tour chief executive Brian Rolapp will learn about pro golf. The 30-foot birdie putt that Rory McIlroy made on the last hole at the Genesis Invitational this February sums up the state of professional golf. In a playful exchange with reporters, Rory was asked if he knew how much it Read more…
Given the option of playing golf or going to a golf museum, golfers will always choose playing golf. This is why the museums of baseball, football, basketball, hockey and NASCAR attract 200,000-350,000 visitors a year while the USGA golf museum in Far Hills, N.J., gets 5,000. Even the World Golf Hall of Fame Museum in Read more…
From Rory McIlroy’s $600K birdie to Brian Rolapp’s big plans, pro golf is flush with cash, but facing an identity shift. This piece explores what’s next for the PGA Tour, and what could be lost along the way.
You would have liked Fuzzy Zoeller. He was a Hillerich and Bradsby kind of pro, a Louisville slugger, one of the very long drivers on tour who fought a bad back his whole career after getting submarined in a high school basketball game. It wasn’t the last time he got undercut. I remember Dan Jenkins Read more…
After 37 1/2 years, there’s a new superintendent at the No. 1 course in the country, which is kind of a big deal. The old guy, Rick Christian, has retired at age 60, and therein lies a couple of stories. I was a new member at Pine Valley Golf Club when he was named head Read more…
He’s got nothing left to prove on the competitive field, his play in TGL has been a joke, and legacy-wise there’s little upside for him in joining the Champions Tour. Commissioner Woods, your destiny awaits you.
A popular Irish golfer—who has flip-flopped so many times I’m not sure where he stands now—spoke the unvarnished truth when he said he used to be opposed to the PGA Tour partnering with LIV, but looked at how much money he made last year, and, well, you know, it’s all good. The game’s ongoing success Read more…
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…
Australian Golf Digest
