The monthly reader poll.
The nice thing about a warm, wet winter is that we, here in Central Kentucky. jumped into the spring golf season early. The downside to this joyous turn of events for the public at-large is that my pasty, furry, Scot-Irish mutt legs made an appearance in shorts on the golf course much sooner than anyone…
Golf attire has come a long way in the last century or so. Hickory-club leagues notwithstanding, long gone are the days of plus-fours and button-down shirts with ties appearing on players on the golf course. Since at least the 1940’s, a nice pair of slacks or shorts and a knitted short-sleeve golf shirt are pretty…
I wish golfers and golf fans, on the whole, weren’t so steeped in manners and ingrained with the tenets of polite society. I wish that once in a while they would allow themselves to be given over to notions of herd hierarchy or lynch mob justice, where the members of the herd mercilessly keep the…
I have attended exactly two professional golf tournaments: The PGA Championship at Valhalla in 2014 and the Senior PGA Championship in 2015. Both were incredible experiences, though decidedly nothing like what I imagine the Ryder Cup environment was this fall at Hazeltine. Seeing what professional golfers can do with a club and a golf ball…
Golfers, it seems, are creatures with conviction. For the September Blog Poll Question, I asked if you, Dear Readers, had ever walked off of a golf course because the pace of play was too painfully slow to continue. While I expected there to be a few curmudgeonly responses akin to the golf version of “Whippersnappers”…
Pace of Play issues are not a new phenomenon for the golfing masses. It’s hard to find a recent edition of almost any major golf publication that doesn’t include an acknowledgment of and possible solutions for slow play. The USGA and R&A websites are replete with “helpful” guidelines, course management resources, and results of scientific…
I often wonder when was the last time some of the courses I play actually checked their yardage stakes, cart path markers, or sprinkler head yardages for accuracy to the center of the green. Though, honestly, the 100 & 150 yard markers are really the only ones I really concern myself with, as those are…
A few of you, Dear Readers, have spoken. Those that chimed in on January’s Poll Question about your level of commitment to walking the golf course appear at least as dedicated to walking as I am. That is, if given the opportunity by the course or management, you would prefer to walk. As the Poll…
I’m an ardent golf course walker. I’m not a radical absolutist; I will ride a cart when necessary. However, when given the choice and opportunity, I prefer to walk, for a lot of the obvious reasons. I firmly believe that exercise is a critical component of my golfing experience, and nothing accentuates this like walking…
Call us sheep. Call us sycophants. Call us parishioners at the altar of the Top 100 lists. Just don’t forget to call us when you need a fourth member of your group at one of the world’s most celebrated golf courses. You have spoken, Dear Readers, and by an overwhelming two-thirds majority, you have thoroughly…
One of my guilty pleasures and great joys each winter is reviewing the lists of the major golf publications’ lists of “Top 100” courses and the like. I also enjoy some of the more static lists like the Golf Course Architects Top 100 and the The Links Association’s list of the 246 True Links Courses,…
The results of the November poll question are in and the One Bearded Research Team has analyzed the data, and it’s clear that the you, Dear Readers, definitively prefer unpainted, natural wood golf tees. I’m hardly surprised by this result; sometimes the simplest things are just the best. I’m just curious if this groups’ affinity…
I had an amusing interaction with a friend on Twitter regarding his superstition about using only unpainted, natural wood tees. Which got me to thinking and caused me to realize I’ve never spent any time thinking about what kind of tee I use. Sure, in the pro shops and golf department of Dick’s Sporting Goods,…
It’s generally acknowledged that baseball players are probably the most superstitious athletes as a group. Sure, there are outliers in every sport, like Michael Jordan and his famous UNC Tar Heel gym shorts and Les Miles’ appetite for football field grass. But as a group, baseball players have no equal when it comes to trying…
In Central Kentucky, August usually marks the peak of the summer heat. Lawns go dormant. Creeks and ponds dry up. Corn sometimes pops on the stalk. And most of the golf courses get firm and fast, with enough brown overtaking the green in the turf to make the folks at Chambers Bay proud. (I say…
We are the best equipped, most stylishly clad group of wooden soldiers ever to threaten to storm a golf course, at least with respect to our rain gear. However, according to our July poll results, we are loath to actually use the gear for their intended purposes. Collectively, Dear Readers, it appears our spouses, parents,…
Last month I polled my readers on if they have a favorite golf course souvenir that the like to purchase as a keepsake at the golf course. It turns out, Dear Readers, we really don’t. Our preference appears to be “a little of this” and “a little of that.” The results below confirm that amongst…
We’ve had an exceptionally wet start to our summer in the southern Ohio River Valley. The rash of daily summer thunderstorms has left me wondering if I really live in central Kentucky or southern Florida. The upside of all the water is the lush green grass pretty much everywhere and some of the healthiest vegetable…
I forgot to post the results of the March Blog Poll Question in a timely manner. You know, sometimes life (fatherhood, career, husbandry, actually playing golf, etc.) just gets in the way of the brain functioning at a high level…if at all. Back in March, I asked you, Dear Readers, what is the longest iron…
When I recently transitioned to my shiny new Sun Mountain Four 5 golf bag, it was a perfect opportunity to inventory and assess all of the accumulated tools, toys, and junk that had become permanent free riders during each round of golf. In addition to at least two dozen found golf balls that I would…
The May Poll Question brought out a record number of responses, and hopefully a little shameful self-reflection for most of you that responded, Dear Readers. In last month’s question, I posited, “What rule do you and your friends disregard regularly?” I was interested in what my Readers’ regular golfing buddies let slide from the scorecard…
In a perfect world, we would all play golf completely by the Rules. All of them. All the time. Every time. However, in my experience, outside of tournament play, very rarely do I find that golfers follow every rule, every time, myself included. I don’t throw this generalization out for consumption to impugn the integrity…
With the recent release of Golf Digest’s annual equipment Hot List, my perennial evaluation of what’s in my golf bag and daydreaming about new clubs commenced in earnest. I’m generally happy with my clubs. In the course of my year of golf lessons, I discovered that any deficiencies resulting from putting a club on the…
It’s not a perfect bell curve, but the results of this month’s One Bearded Golfer poll question makes me think our crack research team is getting better at creating our monthly questions. And in the spirit of putting your money where your mouth is, I think I learned more about my audience from the results…
For golfers in North America, especially those living anywhere not named “Florida” or “Arizona,” winter is the silly golf season. Occasionally, a few of us are able to get out for some off-season frigid golf just to satisfy our need to be outside on the links. However, for most everyone else, winter is the time…