The PGA Show is anchored by the big golf brands, which always make impressive showings. Nike and Callaway and Taylor Made preen, their stands like fancy retail stores during pre-Christmas sales, full of eager shoppers looking at the latest fashions in clubs, shoes, shirts, putters, bags, sweaters and so on. But lurking about on the […]
Golf
Demo Day at the PGA Show: The Hope Springs Eternal Exhibition
Wednesday, January 23, 2013. Orlando, FL The Wednesday during PGA Show week in Orlando every year is Demo Day, the gigantic al fresco exhibition of the latest equipment from the big brands, along with novel teaching devices, innovative tees, ingeniously shaped putters and an array of clever inventions that you will soon realize you can’t do […]
Making Golf Part of the Walkable City
A version of this essay appeared in The Oregonian, November 18, 2012. What the “Walkable City” Means for Golf. Jeff Speck, Walkable City. How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Nov 13, 2012. $27.00. Urban planner Jeff Speck’s Walkable City is both a forceful analysis of what’s wrong […]
Rory Confirms His Greatness, Winning the PGA Championship by a Record Eight Shots.
In April, 2011, right after Rory McIlroy’s meltdown in the final round of that year’s Masters, I predicted that Rory’s travails in Augusta would be viewed in retrospect as a minor glitch on his road to greatness— an aberration rather than a tendency. (Tiger’s weekend crumbles during this year’s majors, however, represent a trend.) Now […]
The PGA Championship’s Elimination of Bunkers –What’s Next?
The PGA’s decision to treat all those deep sandy pits that look exactly like bunkers at Kiawah’s Ocean Course during the PGA Championship this week as “sandy areas through the green” raises some interesting questions. The whole notion of “waste areas” has a provocative provenance. According to Forrest Richardson, a golf course architect based in […]
The PGA Championship, the Ocean Course, and the Menacing Geography of Pete Dye
Jim Furyk’s meltdown on the 72nd hole at Firestone last week foreshadowed what we’re likely to see a lot of at this week’s PGA Championship on the Ocean Course on Kiawah Island. Pete Dye knows how to plant fear deep into the heads of players even before they get to the first tee, and nowhere […]