Tony Finau plays fast because of mosquitoes. On the modest public course where the tall Utahn learned the game, he found that long pauses gave the skeeters a better chance to land, so he and his brother kept up a brisk pace. Brooks Koepka plays fast because there’s the ball and there’s the target and 10 more data points hurt …
On the final tee in the final round of The Open Championship quite a few years ago, someone told Golf’s Biggest Showoff that he trailed by two. He’d have to make an eagle two on the par-4 18th at Royal Lytham & St. Annes to tie. The Showoff received the news without apparent emotion, then banged out a long drive …
By: Curt Sampson Weighing in on Rick Reilly’s new book – Commander in Cheat (Hachette Books 2019) is to skate on thin ice, for in these troubled times, expressing the wrong opinion of the Leader of the Free World can get you disinvited from Thanksgiving dinner and left out of the will, while agreement can cause people to re-discover just …
Cue the calliope, the circus is coming to town–in golf tournament form! Sorry. Comparing the AT&T Byron Nelson Classic to a mere circus may be the worst kind of smart assery, but on the other hand: there will be exhibitions by a strong man; there will be a midway, sort of; many, many (parking lot shuttle) rides; and chances to …
Someone once said of Arnold Palmer that he didn’t play our game, we played his. That’s the way a lot of writers feel about Dan Jenkins, who died last month at age ninety. Of the 500 or so mourners at his memorial service at a limestone cathedral in Fort Worth, I counted at least a dozen professional scribblers. Would have …
Perhaps you were the kid in the backyard passing a football to himself. Probably you complemented your thrilling catches and zig-zag runs with crowd noise, narration from Brad Sham, and an end zone dance. Cowboys win! Maybe golf inspired your athletic fantasy life. It’s a little embarrassing to recall teenage me hanging on the yellow ropes at Firestone Country Club …
Crotch, butt, shoulder, shoulder, nose, ear, nose, ear … Rafael Nadal’s obsessive pre-shot self-touching amounts to a Disorder and I’d feel sorry for him if not for the fact that he’s won over $100 million from pro tennis and 17 of its majors. All who watch sports are unwitting and sometimes unwilling witnesses to such ritual tics. Can Eli Manning …
They’re going to change the golf ball. I don’t know why, but they are. And they’re going to do it wrong. By “they,” I mean the USGA, the R&A, and the PGA Tour, in concert, perhaps, with the manufacturers. By “change” we mean not allow it to go so far. And by “wrong” – read on, please. The tipping point …
Worst. Masters. Ever. There is not even any debate about it. Fifty years later, the 1968 version stands out as a singularly awful golf tournament. The event changed lives – not for the better – and damaged reputations. The result seemed so outrageous that it distracted us from many other outrages. That took some doing. Merely listing the negative milestones …
Golf is the most boring sport on television. A recent poll judged our game to be more boring, even, than darts. Darts! We should give a damn, I think, at least a small one, because television is the gateway drug to more participants, and more players improves the health and wealth of every aspect of the game, from architects to …
