Northern Ireland's best golf, Wedge Guy Terry Koehler, and the USGA's Classic Shots photo book

Hear this latest episode of TravelGolf.com This Week.

Northern Ireland not on your short list of hot golf vacation destinations? It should be. In this week’s podcast, host Dave Berner talks to Brandon Tucker, who recently returned from a trip to Northern Ireland, about the great golf options there, including the magnificent Royal County Down.

“That’s quite a golf course. It’s visually just incredible,” Tucker says. “It’s a very demanding test. You’re going to get beat up on a few holes, as I did, but there are some spectacular holes there.”

Known as The Wedge Guy, Terry Koehler talks about developing the versatile V-SOLE technology for wedges.

“I think wedges have really gotten the short shrift in the industry to a large degree because they have kind of been relegated to commodity status,” Koehler says. “To me, it didn’t offer me a lot of help that the big companies offer 40, 50, 60 wedge models when I can only have two or three in my bag at one time. I felt like I needed to figure out how to make a wedge that was good from just about anywhere, for just about everybody.”

The United States Golf Associations’ book Classic Shots presents the greatest images from the association’s photo archives. Author Marty Parkes, who’s been with the USGA for 16 years, talks about the project.

“It came together very slowly,” Parkes says. “It wasn’t long after I started here, that I started spending a significant amount of time up in our photo archive, and I was astounded by the depth and breadth of the collection that was up there. In the back of my mind I always thought, there would be a great book here.”

This podcast is supported by Florida Golf Travel and Pioneer Golf.