In all fairness to the USGA and R&A, a major revision to the Rules of Golf was already in the works when the U.S. Open came to Oakmont Country Club in 2016. Still, it’s somewhat amusing to think that a golf ball moving just a fraction of an inch on a breezy summer day was Read more…
“I always look at these things, and to me there’s three facets. There’s the lightning in the bottle story, right? Improbable as hell, but that has a direct lineage to me right back to 1913 and Francis Ouimet at Brookline. Then you have the young upstarts, these kids that are coming in just brimming with Read more…
Johnny Miller has gotten a lot of mileage for the 63 he shot at Oakmont Country Club on Sunday at the 1973 U.S. Open. Critics of Miller when he was the lead analyst for NBC’s golf coverage tired of the rhetorical shoehorn he often used to mention the feat. Maybe. But I think Miller deserves Read more…
DUBLIN, Ohio — The sight of Jack Nicklaus crying on live television last June during the final round of the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday underscored the momentousness of the news he was trying to share with the help of CBS golf anchor Jim Nantz. It is common practice for Nicklaus, the Memorial founder and Read more…
Island life was everything for Emily Odwin. She was at the beach daily while growing up in Barbados and activities were centered around the ocean, where she learned to swim when she was only 4. It was her happy place to relax as well. Growing up in the parish of St. James, Odwin became a Read more…
One can legitimately argue that Rory McIlroy began to fulfill his immense promise with his victory in the 2009 Dubai Desert Classic, where he held off Justin Rose by a shot after nearly surrendering a six-stroke lead over the final six holes. His maiden triumph on the then European Tour at age 19—after two playoff Read more…
The fickle playing partners of Golf and Politics are finding concerning coalescence in one of the nation’s great golf pockets. The Coachella Valley, known to most with the blanketed title of “Palm Springs”—home to 120 courses across a 40-mile spread of SoCal sand and sun and host to annual PGA Tour, PGA Tour Champions and Read more…
Urban legends are a barstool currency, traded among sports fans to inform and debate but mostly to entertain. Many of them are surreptitious in nature and border on the apocryphal, such as Michael Jordan’s really retiring from basketball because of a gambling suspension, Cassius Clay’s phantom punch of Sonny Liston and the 1985 NBA Draft’s Read more…
At this precise moment 25 years ago—early May 2000—the greatest golf of all time was being primed for liftoff. A then-24-year-old Tiger Woods, who had always played a wound golf ball with a balata cover, was preparing to put a new multilayer, solid-core ball in play. He believed it gave him an edge—less spin and Read more…
You could be forgiven for missing it, since it happened the same weekend Rory McIlroy won the Masters and wrapped up his career Grand Slam chase. In early April, the U.S. National Junior Team defeated Team Canada, 16-8, in a three-day, Ryder Cup-style competition featuring three different match-play formats at Champions Golf Club in Houston. Read more…
Brad Faxon always seemed to be two different players, each on parallel but dramatically divergent paths that never seemed to intersect. One was easy, capable of wondrous eye-hand artistry. The other had a dogged, fitful struggle whose triumphs put him in the conversation for best bad ball-striker in golf history. With short shots, and especially Read more…