We welcome golf course architect Brian Ross in Episode 20, the first of a small series of episodes focused on one of my favorite and most special places in golf, StoneCrest Golf Course in Floyd County, Kentucky. A couple of hours southeast of Lexington, high on the mountain ridge above the city of Prestonsburg lay…
Welcome to Episode 19, an audio essay about golf friends and The Brotherhood of the Bogey. Thoughts on a page that I spoke into the microphone, essentially. A private message from a listener regarding an Americans in Scotland episode sends me down a path of introspection of who I play golf with, why, and what…
It’s Round Two of The Americans in Pinehurst Roundtable, and in this episode we visit one of my very favorite golf courses in the world, Mid Pines Golf Club, and it’s worthy brother across the street, the Pine Needles Golf Course. I’m a sucker for a period piece, and Mid Pines has the vibe of…
What starts as a grill room debate with one of my best friends about Tobacco Road Golf Club evolved into a deep dive into blind shots on the golf course. At issue are the merits and differences between blind tee shots versus blind approach shots. To help settle the point, I tap friends and experts…
This is Short Game Session 11 – A monologue of thoughts on a wild Club Championship week that included playing for keeps with a 5-wood, a great old course, and bad nerves before a driver fitting. Come for the golf talk, stay for the amateur physics lessons. Links for the show: The results of the…
Welcome to our new Americans in Pinehurst series. Familiar voices from a new setting, as Fred, Matt, and I provide tales, laughs, and analysis on our experiences in the Sandhills region of North Carolina. This week we discuss how we began our 2020 Golf Trip at the Pinehurst Resort, playing Pinehurst #1, The Cradle, and…
Welcome to episode 15. I chat with one of the best people I’ve met in the golf industry, John Kim, of U.S. Kids Golf. He’s a true golf tragic if there ever was one, but has been blessed to see some of the best things in golf up close and personal. We discuss U.S. Kids…
Welcome to Short Game Session #10. This week I riff on our recent Buddies’ Trip to the Sandhills of North Carolina, winner’s guilt, and letting go of the reins. The Pinehurst-Southern Pines-Sanford area of North Carolina has such incredible golf courses and experiences. It’s my Scotland that I can reach without getting on an airplane,…
Welcome to Episode 14. It’s our Fifth and Final Round of The Americans in Scotland Roundtable, Just as melancholy set in as our Scottish Golf Adventure came to a close, so sets in a bit of sadness that this is the last edition of the audio journal of my travels around Scotland with Fred and…
Welcome to episode 13 of the Blind Shots Podcast. This is a conversation with J. Drew Rogers, ASGCA, a golf course architect that has helped produce and refine some of the best courses in Kentucky. Ours isn’t a discussion of architectural merit or strategies, but rather a talk about the business of being a golf…
This is episode 12. It’s Round Four of The Americans in Scotland Roundtable. And emotionally, this is the big one. It’s a conversation about the Old Course with my Scottish Golf Trip companions, Fred and Matt Chaney. We spend an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out how to describe the Old Course experience.…
This episode is a conversation with my Scottish Golf Trip companions discussing our round at St. Andrew’s Castle Course on a beautiful Scottish morning. We also recount our favorite moments of food and cheer around the town of St. Andrews. I loved the Castle Course. It was challenging, yet rewarding, and very different from every…
A post-script on my one-man spirit of golf marathon to and thru the Sand Hills of North Carolina. I briefly recap what I was looking for, what I found, and what it means to me to have completed my personal golf crusade to my favorite American golf course, Mid Pines and Tobacco Road. I walked…
The Blind Shot Podcast’s first remote episode! A brief update from the North Carolina Sand Hills after day one of the Sanity Break. The golf course at Mid Pines Golf Club is everything that I remembered, everything that I had hoped it would be. After walking 36 holes in one afternoon, I am sneaking up…
Self care. Refresher. Getaway. Mini-Vacation.Sanity Break. Whatever you want to call it, I’m escaping into a combination of things I’ve always wanted to do: play virtually unlimited golf on the summer solstice in a place that I love very much. I don’t know who needs to hear this episode, except that everyone should know that…
This is episode 10, a conversation with Ru Macdonald: a Scot, a golfer, an employee of the European Tour, a golf social media influencer, and the owner and proprietor of the Scottish Golf Podcast, which is one of the original podcasts within in the golf podcasting space. It’s a conversation about his origins, his passion,…
My friend Rod Morri always laments that the best of conversations occur and the best stories are told “off-air,” once the recordings are finished. He’s right. So today, with Short Game Session #6, I’m bringing you one of my favorite golf trip stories, ripped from the outtakes of one of our regular podcast recording sessions.…
Welcome to Episode 9 – This is a conversation with Ethan Fisher of Golf House Kentucky on his experience in the PGA Management Program at Eastern Kentucky University. We discuss this academic program, one specifically designed to prepare students for a career in golf, but why it doesn’t restrict a candidate to jobs only in…
Welcome to Episode 8 – The Americans in Scotland Round table, Round Two. In this episode, we recount our day at Carnoustie and a day at Elie. It’s a virtual roundtable conversation with my Scottish Golf Trip companions remembering our journey getting to and from Carnoustie, golf on the world’s hardest links course, and the…
Welcome to Episode 7 of the Blind Shots Podcast. This episode is a fun discussion with Tyler Van Hoose, who is the general manager of the Keene Trace Golf Club in Nicholasville, Kentucky, just south of Lexington in central Kentucky. Keene Trace Golf Club, among other accolades, is the host club of the PGA Tour’s…
Welcome to Episode 6 – The Americans in Scotland Round table, Round One. It’s a virtual round table conversation with my Scottish Golf Trip companions, Fred and Matt, discussing our preparations for our Scottish, the whirlwind hi-jinx that was the day(s) of travel that culminated in a great round on North Berwick’s West Links as…
In this week’s mini-episode, I explore the utter joy of walking a golf course for the sake of a good walk. I’ve been out to Kearney Hill Golf Links in Lexington taking very amateur pictures of the course for a blog project. What I’ve found while out there on the course, either alone or with…
Welcome to Episode 5 of the Blind Shots Podcast! In this episode I interview my friend Peter Schmitt of the Eternal Summer Golf Society. Peter and I discuss how he found his love for the game after taking some time away from it, and how that turned into a passion for classic golf equipment, items…
We are all dealing with the isolation and social distancing in our own ways. Some of us are still playing golf under strict guidelines, while others sit idly by while their golf courses are shut down. Neither situation is ideal. For me, golf has become an interwoven set of memories and day dreams, plans being…
Welcome to another episode in our Scottish Golf Experiences series! This episode is a companion piece to my essay Afternoons were for Match Play, which you can find over on the blog at OneBeardedGolfer.com. This interview with my friend and competitor, Matt Chaney, delves further in depth into what made our random afternoon matches at…