Unleashing my inner curmudgeon.
This is the fourth in a series, a back nine of thoughts cultivated from a recent fall golf trip to the Pinehurst and Southern Pines areas of North Carolina. What started as bullet points grew into substantial realizations. I hope you enjoy reading them. Headcovers are a myth. A grift. A pure canard. The byproduct…
This is the second in a series, a back nine of thoughts cultivated from a recent fall golf trip to the Pinehurst and Southern Pines areas of North Carolina. What started as bullet points grew into substantial realizations. I hope you enjoy reading them. When we first visited The Cradle at the Pinehurst resort in…
Today was my least favorite day on a golf course. The ugliness of the outside world invaded the sacred spaces between the first tee and the eighteenth green in a way that left me blindsided, hurt, and angry, not because of my play or my score or course conditions, but because of my friend, Thomas.…
I’m training for my first marathon. That means I’m going for jogs on as many evenings as evenings as Kentucky weather and this 42 year-old body will allow. On Sundays, I do my “long run” for the week, a predetermined distance that changes each week that I use to build up my endurance towards the…
How much are a good pair of golf shoes worth? Not how much do they cost, that’s easy to calculate, depending on one’s fashion and functionality preferences and an Amazon Prime account. Rather, how valuable are golf shoes in the grand scheme of a round of golf? A recent unfortunate experience leads me to conclude…
Best that I can tell, the online community lovingly referred to as #GolfTwitter has devolved into something indistinguishable from the rest of social media. What was once a thriving, welcoming collection of people that enjoyed discussing and sharing their golf thoughts and experiences has broken down. It’s been replaced by the same tribal, snarky cesspool…
Let me tell me a story about how something so inconsequential, so incidental to the playing of golf can matter greatly to the golf course experience. Can a scorecard matter? Not what is written on the scorecard, not the information printed in ink or the scores scribbled in pencil, but the actual physical scorecard? Yes?…
In a recent column in Golf Australia magazine, my friend Rod Morri made the case that the game of golf is in dire need of a long-term strategic plan. He is absolutely right. You should take a few minutes to read that column here. His essay acutely recognizes that the game of golf doesn’t need…
With the PGA Tour visiting Harbour Town and Augusta National this month, there has been plenty of discussion of good and bad golf architecture, favorite holes, restoring versus remodeling, and the like in recent days. This got me to thinking about some of the worst holes I regularly encounter locally, so that I could give…
On a randomly warm, sunny Sunday afternoon in January, I snuck out with two friends for nine holes of winter golf. And something happened that utterly ruined a perfectly nice round that, frankly, I’m still mad about two months later. So I’m hoping that committing the episode to writing will provide some cathartic relief. My…
The Golf Channel did all golf aficionados a solid on Christmas Day by broadcasting old episodes of Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf all day long. Watching that beautifully grainy footage from the 1960’s of some of the game’s legends was a fantastic nightcap for the holiday and reminded me of how much I enjoyed those…
Recently, one of our regular co-conspirators here at OneBeardedGolfer.com was preparing for a trip across the pond to the Home of Golf. Slim needed to provide evidence of his actual golf handicap to the golf clubs he was hoping to play, a common requirement for access to private Scottish courses. So, he set about investigating…
I’m a vociferous advocate for fast pace of play on the golf course, and absolutely and unapologetically abhor slow play. Loathe isn’t a strong enough word to adequately convey the vile hatred and low regard in which I hold golfers that are unnecessarily slow. Just as Dante experienced seven distinct levels of hell, I discern…
I try to remember all the good shots: the bombed drive, the approach knocked stiff, the incredibly unlikely putt that goes in. At some of the more memorable courses I’ve played, I’ve tried to hold on to a memory of at least one good shot with some success, even as the years stack up in…
There’s supposed to be a glowing review of Devou Park Golf Course in Covington, Kentucky, in this space, replete with beautiful pictures of the course and surroundings, a riveting course description, and colorful anecdotes of a fun, memorable afternoon. Instead, you get the story of why I walked off of a golf course at the…
I was the absolutely just the worst type of golfer. A lunatic. Insufferable. Reprehensible. A laughing-stock. I was, indeed, a vanity handicapper. Despite my best efforts to free myself from the shackles of pride, false bravado, and trying to control perceptions of me in all phases of my life, the hardest vanity to let go…
I love my home course. It’s a nearly 100 year-old parkland layout, replete with narrow, tree-lined fairways, deceivingly subtle elevation changes, and sloping, postage stamp greens. It’s our only local municipal course that lies inside our city’s “inner loop,” mere minutes from downtown and less than a mile (as the crow flies) from the University…
It’s October, which in Central Kentucky means that I have from two to six weeks of golf season left in 2014. Sure, there will be the random warm afternoon or sunny Sunday that will tempt my golf Jones now and then. But the days of being assured of turning in at least one 18 hole…
Every thing I’ve read recently says I should take my 3-iron, and maybe even my 4-iron, out of my golf bag. Pundits and professional teachers alike say long irons are too hard for amateurs to hit well, much less control. Hybrids and fairway woods are the way to go, they say. The list of reasons…
Yesterday, a fellow Golf Kentucky Links devotee posed a couple of interesting questions to me concerning a few of my recent course review write-ups. He noticed that I had commented that both Old Silo and Heritage Hill were very fair golf courses. To his credit, Jason called me on my borderline overuse of the term…
Martin Kaymer probably still hasn’t awoken from the dream that was his 2014 U.S. Open performance. Who could blame him? That was the most effortless major performance probably since Rory at Congressional or Tiger at Pebble Beach. As impressive as Kaymer’s performance was, the undoubted star of the week was the renovated Pinehurst No. 2…
I have been fortunate to play some amazing golf courses this year, including 3 so far ranked among the top public courses in the United States, in both South Carolina’s Lowcountry and the volcanic mountains of Maui. I’m also proud to say I have thoroughly enjoyed playing some of the best courses in Kentucky, several…
I had my 7th golf lesson last night, which, per usual, was humbling for the first 30 minutes or so. But I was able to walk off the instructional tees with a plan and a sense of optimism for the future. That would have been all well and fine, except that the my range work…
A recent New York Times article espoused the possibility that gimmicky 15-inch holes will provide the much-needed spark that will pull the golf industry out of its precipitous five-year decline. Instantly, every talking hairpiece on radio, television, and the Internet took the story and ran with it. Generally, the pundits used the article as the…
Saturday was a fun day to watch the RBC Heritage at Harbour Town Golf Links. The course was extremely wet. It was a cool, windy, nasty day. The famed 18th played dead into the wind, making it a three shot par 4. Basically, the pros were playing the course under nearly the same conditions as…