Books
  • Lines of Charm: Brilliant And Irreverent Quotes, Notes, And Anecdotes from Golf's Golden Age Architects
    Lines of Charm: Brilliant And Irreverent Quotes, Notes, And Anecdotes from Golf's Golden Age Architects
  • The Future of Golf: How Golf Lost Its Way and How to Get It Back
    The Future of Golf: How Golf Lost Its Way and How to Get It Back
    by Geoff Shackelford
  • Grounds for Golf: The History and Fundamentals of Golf Course Design
    Grounds for Golf: The History and Fundamentals of Golf Course Design
    by Geoff Shackelford
  • The Art of Golf Design
    The Art of Golf Design
    by Michael Miller, Geoff Shackelford
  • Alister MacKenzie's Cypress Point Club
    Alister MacKenzie's Cypress Point Club
    by Geoff Shackelford
  • The Golden Age of Golf Design
    The Golden Age of Golf Design
    by Geoff Shackelford
  • The Good Doctor Returns: A Novel
    The Good Doctor Returns: A Novel
    by Geoff Shackelford
  • Masters of the Links: Essays on the Art of Golf and Course Design
    Masters of the Links: Essays on the Art of Golf and Course Design
  • The Captain: George C. Thomas Jr. and His Golf Architecture
    The Captain: George C. Thomas Jr. and His Golf Architecture
    by Geoff Shackelford
  • The Riviera Country Club: A Definitive History
    The Riviera Country Club: A Definitive History
    by Geoff Shackelford
Current Reading
  • The American Private Golf Club Guide
    The American Private Golf Club Guide
    by Daniel Wexler
  • Unplayable: An Inside Account of Tiger's Most Tumultuous Season
    Unplayable: An Inside Account of Tiger's Most Tumultuous Season
    by Robert Lusetich
  • Cracking the Code: The Winning Ryder Cup Strategy: Make It Work for You
    Cracking the Code: The Winning Ryder Cup Strategy: Make It Work for You
    by Paul Azinger, Dr. Ron Braund
  • The Story of Golf, Official 2010 Edition
    The Story of Golf, Official 2010 Edition
  • Swinging from My Heels: Confessions of an LPGA Star
    Swinging from My Heels: Confessions of an LPGA Star
    by Christina Kim, Alan Shipnuck
  • Fifty More Places to Play Golf Before You Die: Golf Experts Share the World's Greatest Destinations (Fifty Places Series)
    Fifty More Places to Play Golf Before You Die: Golf Experts Share the World's Greatest Destinations (Fifty Places Series)
    by Chris Santella

    Follow up includes yours truly nominating Rustic Canyon. Shocking, I know.

  • Sports Illustrated The Golf Book
    Sports Illustrated The Golf Book
    by Editors of Sports Illustrated
  • Planet Golf USA: The Definitive Reference to Great Golf Courses in America
    Planet Golf USA: The Definitive Reference to Great Golf Courses in America
    by Darius Oliver

    The highly anticipated second volume comes to America for more design analysis and stunning photography.

  • Jenkins at the Majors: Sixty Years of the World's Best Golf Writing, from Hogan to Tiger
    Jenkins at the Majors: Sixty Years of the World's Best Golf Writing, from Hogan to Tiger
    by Dan Jenkins
  • The 19th Hole: Architecture of the Golf Clubhouse
    The 19th Hole: Architecture of the Golf Clubhouse
    by Richard Diedrich

    SI Golf Plus calls this the #1 golf book of 2008.

  • World Atlas of Golf: The Greatest Courses and How They are Played
    World Atlas of Golf: The Greatest Courses and How They are Played
    by Mark Rowlinson

    New and updated, including contributions from Ran Morrissett and Daniel Wexler.

Classics
  • The Book Of Golfers: A Biographical History Of The Royal & Ancient Game
    The Book Of Golfers: A Biographical History Of The Royal & Ancient Game
    by Daniel Wexler


  • A Season In Dornoch: Golf and Life in the Scottish Highlands
    A Season In Dornoch: Golf and Life in the Scottish Highlands
    by Lorne Ruberstein

    A summer in Dornoch.

  • Emerald Gems:The Links of Ireland
    Emerald Gems:The Links of Ireland
    by Laurence Casey Lambrecht

    Beautiful images of the classic Irish links.

  • Golf Architecture in America: Its Strategy and Construction
    Golf Architecture in America: Its Strategy and Construction
    by Geo. C. Thomas
  • The Spirit of St. Andrews
    The Spirit of St. Andrews
    by Alister MacKenzie
  • Club Life: The Games Golfers Play
    Club Life: The Games Golfers Play
    by John Steinbreder
  • Discovering Donald Ross: The Architect and his Golf Courses
    Discovering Donald Ross: The Architect and his Golf Courses
    by Bradley S. Klein
  • Evangelist of Golf: The Story of Charles Blair MacDonald
    Evangelist of Golf: The Story of Charles Blair MacDonald
    by George Bahto
  • The Course Beautiful : A Collection of Original Articles and Photographs on Golf Course Design
    The Course Beautiful : A Collection of Original Articles and Photographs on Golf Course Design
    Treewolf Prod
  • Reminiscences Of The Links
    Reminiscences Of The Links
    by Albert Warren Tillinghast, Richard C. Wolffe, Robert S. Trebus, Stuart F. Wolffe
  • Gleanings from the Wayside
    Gleanings from the Wayside
    by Albert Warren Tillinghast
  • The Missing Links: America's Greatest Lost Golf Courses & Holes
    The Missing Links: America's Greatest Lost Golf Courses & Holes
    by Daniel Wexler
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« Round .5 Clippings, 2009 U.S. Open | Main | 2009 U.S. Open Round 1 »
Thursday
Jun182009

Johnny: “This thing is Johnny Miller, it’s totally Johnny Miller"

I received a few strange looks on the train this morning when I laughed out loud at this Johnny Miller remark in Richard Sandomir's NY Times story about Johnny's special notebook:

He used to carry a surveyor’s tool to assess how putts would break, but last year he downloaded the Break Meter application to his iPhone. He demonstrated his toy in an NBC trailer, showing the angle and slope of a table and the linoleum floor.

“This thing is Johnny Miller, it’s totally Johnny Miller,” he said cheerfully as the iPhone registered its findings. “I don’t really need it, but it verifies things for me.”

And I let out a groan after this one:

Miller confessed to one weakness: “I don’t sit on the range all day and talk to players. My thing is to be more of an expert on the holes, to know what to watch out for, what not to hit, how the putts break and to know every bunker.”

He also knows that Nick Faldo, the lead golf analyst at CBS and the Golf Channel, has something he will never have: a knighthood, which was announced last week.

“Is CBS going to call him Sir Nick now?” Miller asked. “Jim Nantz might.”

Would he like to be Sir Johnny? “As long as it doesn’t take three divorces to get it,” Miller said, referring to his friend Faldo’s marital history. He smiled and said, “I guess that wasn’t a cool thing to say.”

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Reader Comments (16)

Nevermind the knighthood. Diet and exercise for Johnny Miller.
06.18.2009 | Unregistered CommenterTammy
Geoff, perhaps you didn't realize it, but Johnny once shot a final-round 63 at Oakmont to win a U.S. Open. I just thought you should know. (Johnny Miller; 2 majors.)

As for the Break Meter Application on his iPhone, a cocktail glass half-filled with a nice peaty scotch will serve the same purpose. "That kind of thing is totally Walter Hagen, it's totally Walter Hagen." (Walter Hagen; 11 majors.)
06.18.2009 | Unregistered CommenterChuck
i laughed at the faldo dig. people don't seem to like old nick that much, do they.
06.18.2009 | Unregistered Commenterjimbob
dbh's hope for humankind is that everyone starts referring to themselves in the 3rd person. That's what dbh hopes for.
06.18.2009 | Unregistered Commenterdbh
Thank god for the rain no golf but no Johnny Miller either
06.18.2009 | Unregistered Commenterkeith86
I like Nick Faldo a whole lot, and I absolutely hate Johnny Miller. It stands to reason that Johnny would take a shot at Nick Faldo - after all we all kinda hold a grudge against people who are better than ourselves. There is no catagory I can think of where Johnny is as good as Nick and on top of that Nick can still play golf - and if any of you saw Johnny embarrass himself at the last Father /Son he played at (two years ago I think) you know Johnny can't play golf anymore. That stupid Callaway commercial he did was terrible as well, he swings the club like a fat hack at your local country club. Oh and lets not forget that the ladies like Nick Faldo, needless to say not many ladies like a fat old man like Johnny Miller.
i can understand why people don't care for johnny -- he's a know-it-all -- but as an avid amateur golfer, i find his insights about the players, strategies & courses invaluable. i don't get that with nick. i don't mind nick -- i almost died of laughter on easter sunday at the masters when he said that rory sabbatini looked like an easter egg: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_hGuTx-bvyk0/SeNi0-tjLoI/AAAAAAAAB6M/qggxjs7pylg/s400/85919464.jpg

what does nick say, anyway? he's obviously a huge figure, but as an announcer, i think his days are numbered.
06.18.2009 | Unregistered CommenterGC
I like Sir Nick's Maybach.
06.18.2009 | Unregistered CommenterSteven T.
I missed this one on my first reading:

"He [Miller] claims to have a stimpmeter, to measure green speed, in his head."

Considering that a Stimpmeter is a 36-inch extruded aluminum bar with a notch in it, that might explain a lot.
06.18.2009 | Unregistered CommenterChuck
Is Faldo's nickname something like "Nick the [rhymes with Nick]". My sense is that might be why Faldo and Miller hit it off. They can sit around and be [rhymes with Nick] to each other all day.
06.18.2009 | Unregistered CommenterThe O
Nominated in the "I'm My Worst Enemy" category, Poulter is an up-and-coming/ in-the-making [rhymes with Nick]; but sadly for him, he won't earn the Sir and Major titles to support his egotistic puffery.
06.18.2009 | Unregistered CommenterMorg
Chuck - that has to be the best line of the Open!! You are spot on. (And I love listening to both Johnny and Nick. Without them, it ain't worth listening to.)
06.18.2009 | Unregistered Commenterwrapitupty
Nick the Dick says it all
DA -- let's sometime compare a transcript of 2 minutes of Faldo's babbling/stumbling and 2 minutes of Miller. As much as I dislike Miller, there is absolutely no way that anyone could put Faldo above Miller as a communicator. Faldo is challenged to finish a sentence or phrase. He is absolutely dreadful, to quote another Brit commentator.
06.19.2009 | Unregistered CommenterKevin
very classy of johhny to take a jab at faldo's divorces.
what a douchebag that johnny miller!
06.19.2009 | Unregistered Commenterredneck
Alll the hating on Johnny baffles me. Some of the stuff he comes up is funny- Like TRAP DRAW. Is this the opposite of a NET FADE???? Goofy stuff. I find that much funnier than Dwiddle dum and Dwiddle dee over there on CBS.
06.19.2009 | Unregistered Commentervwgolfer

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