Scramble-team strategy: Recruit your superheroes
It’s that wonderful time of year when northern golfers are scrambling around like crazy. By this I refer to scramble-format competition, the shared-shot approach to team play. The four-person scramble...
View ArticleNeed for speed: May I introduce you to Mr. Provisional?
You know this guy. He’s not Mr. Right, but he’s Mr. Right Now. That tall, hunky drive you intended to accompany to the dance floor seems to have dumped you. Mr. Handsome opted to salsa with the...
View ArticleEndless Golf
Ho hum, another Thursday, another meaningless first round of PGA golf on TV. For the next three days, a field of young white guys will shuffle themselves until the King of Clubs emerges on Sunday. In...
View ArticleShe’s just not that into you
I played last week with a bunch of women who don’t love golf. They like it just fine. But they don’t have time to get really good at it. These casual players don’t have handicaps, some don’t even keep...
View ArticleTrumpeting his idiocy: The Donald on golf
From a golf industry perspective, what Donald Trump had to say recently about Mexican immigrants is bad enough . But what he said about the golf industry itself is even worse. No official has paid...
View ArticleMy Fox Sports problem
I really wanted to hate Fox Sports golf coverage, I really did. After all, what’s not to not like about Fox? The billion-dollar, 12-year deal Fox cut with the United States Golf Association for rights...
View ArticleOn the ball: Your mark. Your eyes.
I just played the wrong ball twice in one week. The first time I lost an EWGA league match, after the two-stroke penalty. The second time I merely embarrassed myself and my host—though I confess I did...
View ArticleGetting to know you, golf style
“Make new friends and kee-ee-eep the oh-old,” was a song we trilled in Girl Scouts long, long ago. “One is silver and the o-ther gold.” That sweet chummy tune has lodged in my brain as a permanent...
View ArticleGive and take: Some rules and lore about conceding putts
Two really good things happened at the Solheim Cup last Sunday. First, the U.S. won with a surprise drive from behind, thus heartening American golf fans beat up by years of Ryder Cup losses. Second,...
View ArticleGolfus interruptus: Fox Sports kinda sorta covers the U.S. Women’s Open
At 8 pm Eastern time Thursday the three top players in the U.S. Women’s Open field were making the turn. Their first nine holes had been full of drama—amazing shots, dumb choices, so-so scores for...
View ArticleDropping for dummies: How, when and where to use golf’s favorite fix
It’s that championship season—club championships, league championships, pride-among-pals championships. But some of us suffer from sleep-depriving anxiety, or even forgo the chance to win gilded...
View ArticleWhat do golf and income tax have in common?
As April 15 looms, it strikes me that only income tax has a more complex set of rules than golf—which, unlike the former, is supposed to be fun. The USGA and its British cohort, the R&A, are trying...
View ArticleGolf and sex and Trump. (Have I got your attention?)
The U.S. Women’s Open, arguably the most prestigious event in women’s golf (and one of the few that refer to players as “women,” not “ladies”), takes place this week at a course owned by Donald Trump,...
View ArticleWhat does a (golfing) woman want?
In the past couple weeks I’ve both joined the LPGA and earned the right to play Augusta National next year—all without picking up a club in this endless Northeast winter, nor improving a handicap...
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