Can check: St. Arnold Art Car IPA
In-brain soundtrack: “Rocks Off,” Rolling Stones
Free legal advice: Delete your Amazon app before handing the phone to your child
Golf hole living rent-free in my head: Sweetens Cove’s ninth
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If there’s a better public golf course in America than Sweetens Cove, then I haven’t found it yet.
Dylan Dethier’s seminal profile of Sweetens Cove Golf Course ran in the New York Times eight years ago today. By co-designer Rob Collins’ admission, the beloved nine-holer, the place that launched a thousand YouTube videos, wouldn’t have survived without that article.
Of all things, the part most seared into my brain is this quote about nine-hole courses:
“It’s not the ’60s anymore,” Collins said. “Dad can’t take off by himself at 8 a.m. and come home late night, eight martinis deep. That isn’t going to work.”
Which is a natural transition to TopGolf.
TopGolf, if you’re somehow unfamiliar, is a chain of driving ranges located somewhere between late-stage capitalism and “Blade Runner.” Music in the tastes of middle-aged dads blares on loudspeakers; you pay for a couple of hours in a bay; you choose a game on a touch screen; you play the game by hitting targets with computer chip-laden balls; the computer keeps track of your ball speed, trajectory, and distance to come up with your scores; and you accidentally order $130 in tater tots and neon-blue cocktails.
If you’re a golf purist, you probably shit on the very idea. If you’re newly golf-curious or six years old, it’s a low-stakes way to try out the game in a fun setting with lots of other people who can’t play worth a damn. And if you’re a father with enough spare time for 18 holes maybe three times per year, it’s a way to hit some balls without abandoning your family and strengthening your wife’s case for divorce. Plus: tater tots and neon-blue cocktails.
I’ve played 18 holes maybe once this year. But I’m at TopGolf probably once a month. Maybe that’ll cost me my playing privileges at Redass Country Club’s palatial 7,900-yard Tom Fazio design. But as I’ve gotten older, my ethos has evolved to this: if you’re hitting a ball toward a target, that’s golf.
Banging scuffed Top Elites into a pond? That’s golf. Putting around the living room with your kid’s plastic 24-inch-long putter? That’s golf. And if all you can manage is two hours hitting irons cast from melted 7-Up cans at a dressed-up Dave and Buster’s — well, that’s golf too. Hell, they’ll probably even let you slug eight martinis. You could do worse.
. . .
Speaking of doing worse, let’s talk about the Atlanta Braves.
Despite this week’s godsend of a series win in Queens, rarely in the past 30 years have the Braves lit a season on fire like they’ve done in 2025. And if you’re looking ahead to 2026, when the roster will look nearly identical to how it looks today, which is more likely: that the Braves suddenly turn into a playoff team, or that they spend another six months rolling around in their poop-laden bed? My money is on the latter.
Regrettably, the long-term future doesn’t look much better. The front office has neglected the farm system for years, leaving Atlanta with exactly one top-100 prospect and a pool of prospects widely regarded as one of baseball’s least impressive.
Cool.
A lawyer’s job is to tell their client what they need to hear, not what they want to hear. So here goes: the Braves should rebuild. Not an earth-shattering rebuild, but a “soft” rebuild along the lines of what the Washington Capitals did before during the NHL’s 2024 offseason. Atlanta could trade a couple of pitchers (Spencer Strider and Chris Sale come to mind) and Austin Riley in exchange for high-ceiling prospects who are a couple of years from being MLB-ready. Assuming A.J. Smith-Shawver and Reynaldo Lopez come back from injury, the hit to the pitching staff would be minimal. As for Riley, one of the farm system’s only strengths is a pool of promising shortstops. Teach one of them to play third. (“It’s not that hard. Tell ’em, Wash.”)
None of that will bear fruit in the next couple of years, of course. That’s the way rebuilds go. But in case you forgot, the 2027 season isn’t gonna happen anyway. If you’re gonna have a crappy baseball team, then you might as well have a crappy baseball team when there’s no baseball happening. With any luck, that wave of prospects is MLB-ready by the time 2028 starts.
. . .
A smattering of final thoughts:
Longtime Golf Twitter fixture Adam Fonseca just released a novella called “The Game,” apparently without telling anyone that he was even writing it. I admire the nonchalance. I also admire the word “novella,” though I confess to not knowing the difference from a novel. And I’m sure Adam would admire you for your patronage.
Six months into a diagnosable obsession with “The Godfather,” I’m reading the novel (novella?) for the first time. I’m not sure it’s better than the film, but it certainly paints some of the central characters as more complex creatures — especially Kay and Fredo. Michael comes off as less of a robot. I’ve got about 60 pages left, but I’ve got an educated guess about how it ends.
Downside of climate change: permanent global economic calamity. Upside of climate change: late-autumn tomatoes. Three seedlings, which I’ve grown from seed, will be going in the ground next week. With a little luck, backyard BLTs will be back on the menu by the end of September.
There’s a subreddit called r/MyBoyfriendIsAI. Stop whatever you’re doing and read the whole thing.
Global warming, don’t fail me now.
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