Chris Baldwin lives for the polemic, so it is not unexpected to find him bashing Michelle Wie for the quintillionth time this season. Jennifer Mario takes a more sanguine, logical approach to young Miss Wie, and is a truer if less dramatic read. Both of these fine blogosphere residents recognize that the yardstick by which Michelle Wie is currently measured is none other than the Pink Panther, Miss Paula Creamer. Baldwin claims that Creamer will always be better than Wie, by virtue of the former’s two wins during her maiden LPGA season. He also subscribes to ... full post »

Howard Sounes, born during my year of 1965, has written a book of scandalous proportions. The bedrock of the professional game is threatened by The Wicked Game: Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, and the Business of Modern Golf. With the dilligence and flair of a tabloid journalist, Sounes reports on the growing-up years of Palmer, Nicklaus and Woods the way Mark Felt informed on the goings-on in room 723 of the Howard Johnson Motor Lodge. Having provided the necessary foundation of these three lives critical to the growth of American golf, Sounes paints a picture ... full post »

My blogging buddy, Kiel Christianson, hit a nerve when he mentioned an aging Greg Norman and the ultimate year of crossing over. With that as a pithy introduction, here is my list of what I remember (and sometimes miss) most about golf during my first 39 years, 9 months, and 5 days: –the clickety-clack of metal spikes along the cart path; –the thwack of a persimmon or laminated clubhead against the golf ball; –the shattering feeling of a rock-flight hit thin on a late fall afternoon; –staring through the hedges of Oak Hill on an August afternoon in 1980 at the Golden Bear ... full post »

Dennis Walters’ book IN MY DREAMS I WALK WITH YOU reveals what it is like to be a paraplegic who has made a career out of inspirational golf clinics. Jack Newton lost an eye and an arm to a propeller, yet continued to play and announce the game. Pat Browne won 20 consecutive US Blind Golf Association championships, 22 overall. For the past four years, Kevin Hall has competed for Ohio State’s varsity squad. In 2004, he won the Big Ten individual championship by eleven strokes. This week he competes on the PGA Tour for the first ... full post »

Some of my colleagues on the Travel Golf blog circuit have put down the grey lady of golf as out of step, touch, and even time! The ball goes too far, the tribulations of the fairways and greens are closer to clouds and ocean waves than they are to a proper surface for major championship golf. Ain’t no way, say I. What other course names its bunkers in a such a retro-cool way? Ever travel on the metro in Europe? They name all their stations and stops for famous and not-so-famous people, places and incidents. In ... full post »

One of my favorite things to do in odd-numbered years is to envision which Buffalo-area courses could host the Walker Cup. How difficult can it be? After all, you don’t have the crowds that an Open or Amateur can bring in, nor the media onslaught that accompanies the crowds that . . . yeah, that’s it. The next thing I do is ask why the USA will not win this year. Call it Ryder Cup lite if you want, but our record in the Walker Cup over the last eight years is . . . ZIP ... full post »

All the uproar over the girl from Hawaii has caused me concern, and not just as the father of three lovely daughters. Not since, well, Annika, has the golf world (which ranks right up there with world peace and space exploration in importance) been quite so divided on a tangled web of an issue. Here are five points of light on the Michelle Wie/Annika/Women and Men/Why can’t we all just get along issue, in no particular order: 2) Wie gets sponsors’ invitations: As a pro, it would piss me off. I can’t imagine someone coming in ... full post »

Michael Hurdzan is one of my favorite course architects. I have traveled to Columbus to play Cooks Creek and Golf Club of Dublin, and marvelled at his ability to make the challenge equitable for the duffer and the player. Subscribing to a theory espoused by Jones, MacKenzie and others, in which the initial target areas should be wide enough to accomodate all, while the precise ones should be, well, precise enough to challenge the best, is easy to say, difficult to pull off. I have dreamed of journeying north to play Devil’s Pulpit and Devil’s Paintbrush, near ... full post »

I have seen the future, and it is not Pogo. In a recent press release, caddie Ronan Flood was revealed to have worn a certain brand of shades that help to read putts better, to help his man Paddy Harrington win the Barclay’s (loved the commercials where they sang opera!) I love the concept of the shades, but I love even more the thought that professional caddies are now the targets of marketing and P.R. machines. I think that Flood got the idea from Jam Boy, as he has written in blogs about the same pair of ... full post »

The boxer from Mexicali, Mexico should not be here. The youngest of eleven children who grew up in a carboard-metal hut, should not be here. Yet here he is, champion of the Lake Erie Charity Classic on the Nationwide Tour. It is fitting that this victory comes not under the hot lights of the PGA Tour, but in a small town in southwestern New York. Amid the gentle slopes of the allegheny mountains, near a bucolic lakeside town, Esteban Toledo has captured paradise. Toledo did some exciting things at Findley Lake, like eagling the #14 hole known ... full post »

Do these symptoms describe you? Prone to fits of anger when any forward-moving shot doesn’t come off as it would for Annika or Tiger; Shake in fury when you come up on a foursome that doesn’t QUITE play as promptly as you’d like; Get livid when your playing partners take the honor, putt out of turn, or breathe during your backswing. If so, RELAX. It gets crazier, wackier, nuttier, and you just have to handle it. Exhibit A (the only one you’ll need) is the junior golf camp. Kids from 9 to 13 working their way from ... full post »