The Pro Shop is my new Barbershop

Beyond those surface level conversation starters, though, there’s enough trust in our mutual discretion to speak freely about what’s going right and what has gone terribly wrong, in golf and life. Golf professionals listen to a lot of what people want to complain about, so I think they enjoy the idea of someone actually listening to them for a change.

The Flag Game – a different kind of golf wager

The Flag Game works like this: each player receives a flag with their number written on it. The number is the sum of par for the course and that player’s course handicap. Each player’s number is how many strokes they get to use to get as far down the course as they can, and their flag is planted wherever their final allotted stroke comes to rest.

Blind Shots Podcast Season 4 Episode 11 – Lie + Loft Founder Luke Davis

I speak with Lie + Loft founder Luke Davis about his journey to and within golf. Golf art and golf imagery has come a long way in the past decade or two. Once the exclusive province of the coffee table books, luxury travel publications, and the architecture issues of the mainstream golf publications, artistic depictions of golf’s playing fields have been devolved to the people in the digital age.

Love of the links at The Golf House Club, Elie

To experience Elie is to play golf simply for the joy of it, through one’s eyes, heart, and imagination, rather through a range finder lens and the tally on a scorecard.  Golf legend and five-time Open Championship winner Peter Thomson remarked of the Elie links, “It’s quirky and it’s the most enjoyable course I know. If I had my way, I’d build Elies all over the world.”

Blind Shots Podcast 8th Night of Christmas Quick Loop

I contemplate how my local golf club professionals fulfill a role that I formerly found in my barber, my bartender, or my colleagues. Talker. Friend. Listener. Confidant. Fellow traveler. They are the fabric that binds me to my golf community, and the tie that binds that larger community together. And I’m better for knowing them.

Blind Shots Podcast Season 4 Episode 10 – Americans in the MidSouth at Sewanee

This episode is another installment of the Americans in the MidSouth episode. This time, Fred and I share memories and platitudes of the Course at Sewanee, located on the campus of Sewanee: The University of the South, just up the road roughly 50 miles west of Chattanooga.

To me, the Course at Sewanee, a nine-hole, 2014 Gil Hanse renovation, does community golf hub unlike most anyplace else I’ve visited on this side of the Atlantic. It is an arresting and engaging golf course, folded seamlessly into the fabric of the University Domain up on the Bishops’ Mountain. The greens and the visuals at Sewanee are superb, perfectly nestled into the larger landscape of the course, all of which left a lasting impression upon me, and a desire to return sooner rather than later.

Blind Shots Podcast Season 4 Episode 9 – Kieran Clark, the Open Championship comes home to St. Andrews

Kieran Clark, the Digital & Social editor at Golf Shake, lives in St. Andrews, Scotland, which gave him a unique experience when the 150th Open Championship was played there on the Old Course this summer.  He gets to the essence of what make the Home of Golf so special on any given day, and how those magical qualities are amplified by the buzz and excitement of an Open Championship.

Blind Shots Podcast Season 4 Episode 7 – Do Something Extraordinary Golf Club with Shad Lacefield

The Do Something Golf Club in Lexington is bringing golf into the schools and communities that otherwise might not otherwise have any exposure to the game we love. Its founder and driving force, Shed Lacefield, shares the journey of his brainchild program that began as a few kids learning to swing a golf club after…

Blind Shots Podcast Season 4 Episode 5: Above the Clouds – Duane Horton, Charlie Rymer & The McLemore story

I was charmed by what I found at The McLemore, high atop Lookout Mountain above Rising Fawn, Georgia. In this conversation with Duane Horton, president of The McLemore, as well as the Scenic Land Company, and Charlie Rymer, McLemore Executive VP, we discuss how the community and development is transitioning from a traditional golf residential…

Blind Shots Podcast Season 4 Episode 4 – Lawrence Donegan on Adventures in Junior Golf

Lawrence Donegan’s essay titled Adventures in Junior Golf from McKellar #5 was the most important article I’ve read in 20 years. In it, Donegan examines the Youth Sports Industrial Complex through the lens of his experiences as the dad of a junior golfer, weaving tales of woe and lessons learned with the bad and the…

Blind Shots Podcast Season 4, Episode 2 – Matt Considine of NewClub Golf Society

Matt Considine is a co-founder of NewClub Golf Society, an official golf club modeled after the golf societies of Great Britain and Ireland. NewClub offers a home to golfers that desire the best elements of a golfing community: camaraderie, competition, and a commitment to stewardship of the game we all love. Matt’s passion has become…

Nine thoughts on this year’s buddies’ golf trip

Each August, on the heels of our annual golf getaway, I reflect on what revealed itself in the build-up, execution, and aftermath of the three (or sometimes four) day spectacle. Organizing those thoughts into something coherent and valuable takes as long to plan as the actual golf trip. Here is my attempt for the 9th…