Original thoughts and
stories about golf
in the Deep South.
There’s nothing new that I can write about the Masters and Augusta National. But I know how it made me feel.
The Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail’s short par-3 course is an important step forward from its monolithic collection of regulation-length designs, but it falls short of divorcing itself entirely from some of the Trail’s more mundane qualities.
A dramatic reading of PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan's letter to Tour players concerning the merger of the PGA Tour and LIV Golf.
Long neglected by the PGA Tour, Pebble Beach and LIV could form a match made in Hell — but a match just the same.
Deciding No. 10’s designer was a moment that cried out for boldness. Instead, Pinehurst blinked.
Patrick Reed’s defamation lawsuit against Brandel Chamblee and Golf Channel digs a deep hole for itself.
Judge Beth Labson Freeman hands the PGA Tour an early win in its courtroom war against LIV.
Until now, Phil Mickelson versus the PGA Tour was a storyline. As of August 3, 2022, it’s a historic lawsuit.
LIV is golf’s New World Order. But as wrestling’s NWO showed, that ascent brings no guarantee of permanence.
A dramatic reading of “The Wheels Up Experience,” by Patrick Koenig of The Fire Pit Collective (April 24, 2022).
A dramatic reading of “Inside Golf Man’s 24-Karat Breakout at the Players Championship,” by Brentley Romine of GolfChannel.com (March 14, 2022).
Sportswashing is not a new strategy. But through the Super Golf League, Saudi Arabia has found pro golfers to be a particularly eager lot.
A California bill to support repurposing municipal golf courses has been miscast as a threat. In truth, it is an opportunity, if the golfing world will take it.
A dramatic reading of “Pinehust is on the Move, and So is the Pinecone” by Matt Ginella of the Fire Pit Collective (June 24, 2021).
The end of another disappointing year, but perhaps with a glimmer of hope on the horizon.
Tobacco Road Golf Club, near Pinehurst, N.C., is a paradox: a wild adventure among manmade features, through rugged conditions laced with sand and brush.
Leif Skodnick, on the unexpectedly fine line between range sessions and Yiddish swear words.
After a long overdue restoration, Southern Pines has transformed from a neglected local favorite into one of the heavyweights of the Sandhills.
When it opened in 2000, architect Mike Strantz described Tot Hill Farm as “worlds apart” from his design at Tobacco Road. He was right. That’s its problem.
Even among the North Carolina Sandhills’ embarrassment of riches, Asheville Municipal’s Donald Ross design is a fun time at a preposterous value.
Vaccines remain the world’s best weapon against COVID-19, and mandating vaccination has proven to be wildly effective. The PGA Tour should accept the pandemic’s changing nature and change along with them by requiring vaccination.
The PGA Tour’s threat to ban players who participate in an upstart Saudi golf tour’s events raises as many questions as it answers.
Mike Eovino, on a horror story from his early looping days — and a moment of revenge in his more seasoned looping days.
On an afternoon at the site of the 2022 PGA Championship, thoughts about the sorts of souvenirs you can toss in your golf bag — and the sorts you can’t.
The golf course construction business is in the middle of a surprising resurgence, but larger economic headwinds are complicating the comeback.
At first glance, LaFortune Golf Course in Tulsa appears fairly nondescript. But it quickly reveals that it learned a few tricks from its neighbor, Southern Hills.
The geological period from which Cambrian Ridge takes its name was a time of dramatic change and evolution. Cambrian Ridge almost shows some of the same. Almost.
Rumored changes to the PGA Tour’s fall schedule, along with the title sponsor’s pending sale, cloud the future of the Sanderson Farms Championship.
Chris Parsons previews the Sanderson Farms Championship, at which the PGA Tour’s young stars seem poised to roost.
In the shadow of larger golf courses with unlimited budgets, Bent Brook is an average course facing an above-average challenge.
Imagine building 26 golf courses at the height of the golf development bubble, with nine figures in public pension money — in an effort that now loses money year after year. Welcome to the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail.
In theory, 12-hole designs should be cheaper to play, build, and maintain. But in the staid industry of golf course development, there’s been no rush to test the theory. The minds behind Sweetens Cove are ready to change that.
Rob Collins had one shot. At Sweetens Cove, he took it — and he bet on himself over and over again. Somehow, impossibly, it worked.
Waking up at 1:30 a.m. to watch golf isn’t conducive to work, or anything else really. But it’s become my favorite TV viewing experience of the year.
Through its silence in the face of Donald Trump’s racism, the PGA of America is not merely acquiescent in his behavior — it is complicit.
The fawning over Brooks Koepka’s “mental toughness” oversimplifies a complex skillset and underappreciates the difficulty of assembling it.
Climate change isn’t merely coming for southern golf courses, it’s already here. But as with the rest of America, preparation lags far behind the problem.
For 110 years, a struggling beachfront golf course on the Mississippi Gulf Coast has enjoyed its claim as the state’s only Donald Ross design. Except that it’s not.
Two municipal golf courses in Jackson, Miss., were born into racial segregation. Now they’re open to everyone, but with revenue plunging, it might be too late to save them both.
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