It’s back!
Twenty years later Tatra Press has kindly allowed me to bring back Grounds For Golf now that golf architecture is of more interest to the masses. A new Introduction looks at what’s driven the interest growth and two new chapters I had a blast adding (plus a few edits to keep things up-to-date).
The Amazon purchase page for the book arriving June 15, 2026.
This accompanies GolfDigest.com's plug for their Saturday rules show done in conjunction with CBS's Bill Macatee and Bobby Clampett. But the photo does not tell us what Macatee is saying...
I have decided not to play in The Barclays Classic next week at Westchester Country Club. As I have said all along, my intention was to compete in all four PGA Tour Playoff events, including the inaugural Barclays Classic. But the truth is, I'm just not ready.
Playing the last two weeks in the heat and humidity were mentally and physically draining. Although I managed to pull out victories in the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational and PGA Championship, my body is spent and I need a short break. Major championships are grueling experiences and usually necessitate recovery time.
Ever since turning professional in 1996, my goal has always been the same: To win every event I enter. I've done pretty well, winning 59 times on the PGA Tour. If I don't feel that way prior to a tournament, I won't commit.
This is in no way a knock on Barclays, their new event next week or the new FedEx Cup series, which I fully support. I just hope that this extra week of rest will rejuvenate me for the final three Playoff events and Presidents Cup. It is still my goal to win the FedExCup and I am hopeful this will give me the best opportunity to finish the year strong.
Tiger
In looking over Brett Avery's Golf World PGA Championship stat package, I loved the "Cool Stat":
Of the field Tiger Woods defeated to win his 13th major championship, 80 players went into the PGA Championship having competed in fewer than 13 majors. Only 50 players at Southern Hills had made the cut in at least 13 majors. And of those, only eight had placed in the top 10 at least 13 times.
If nothing else, check out the stats to see the side-by-side shots of Tiger circa 1998 and Tiger today.
Having toyed with the Stack and Tilt concept a bit more on the range, and having had the privilege of working with Mac O'Grady back when he was still mad at Deane Beman, I now regret my initial remark that this is Mac Made Easy. Several elements are quite different from Mac's teachings, particularly the takeway (was that P2 or P3!?) and some of their thoughts on the role of the right leg.
Anyway I haven't been able to follow the little community within a community that has developed on the original post here, which is up to 327 comments.
The latest Golf Digest installment's best component is the input from other jealous instructors trying to debunk the potential of Stack and Tilt.
The news that Tiger is skipping the Barclay's may not be all bad, as Jeff Rude notes somewhat intentionally.
Should Woods skip the first playoff event at Westchester (N.Y.) Country Club, it wouldn’t give the initial B-12 shot the Tour’s pet project was looking for and needed. After all, the Tour has used more than $40 million worth of advertising inventory this year to trumpet the new Cup series.
Good news for Woods and the Tour is this: He can still win the FedEx Cup if he misses Week 1. He’ll be the points leader at 100,000 after the reset on Sunday night. Based on Tour computer models, he’ll need to get to about 112,000 to win the Cup. That means he’d probably win the Cup with a victory, a fifth and a 10th in the playoffs. If he skips the opener, he’d just have three weeks to get those points instead of four.
That shouldn’t be too much of a hurdle for him considering the way he’s playing and the fact he has played well at the final three playoff courses. He won last year at the TPC Boston, site of the Week 2 Deutsche Bank Championship; he has won three times at Cog Hill, the BMW Championship venue in Week 3; and he has three seconds at East Lake in Atlanta, site of the Tour Championship grand finale.
Should Woods win the Deutsche Bank and BMW, he would be all but a mathematical lock to win the Cup. And the Tour Championship would become, to the Tour’s dismay, anticlimax.
So see, not playing Westchester is just one less Cup clinching win that would mess up this otherwise wonderfully concocted idea!
Ron Kroichick reports on the uh, dilemma that the current U.S. Amateur Public Links champion faces...
Knost, unlike so many ambitious young golfers, already has qualified for next year's Masters. He can drive down Magnolia Lane, stay in the Crow's Nest, stroll alongside the azaleas, walk across Hogan Bridge and try to keep his ball out of Rae's Creek.
And he's not sure he will.
Knost, 22, recently completed a standout college career at SMU. He's coming to San Francisco next week for the U.S. Amateur, which begins Monday at the Olympic Club, and soon thereafter, he will travel to Ireland to represent his country in the Walker Cup.
All the while, lingering in the back of Knost's mind - and sometimes in the front - will be Augusta National. He won the U.S. Amateur Public Links last month outside Chicago, landing him a berth in next year's Masters. His name is right there on the tournament's Web site listing 2008 invitees, wedged between Jerry Kelly and two-time Masters champion Bernhard Langer.
Here's the caveat: The Public Links champion must remain an amateur to keep his spot in the Masters. All along, Knost planned to turn pro after the Walker Cup in September and pursue his PGA Tour card at qualifying school.
"Everyone who plays golf dreams of playing in the Masters, and now I have a chance," Knost said in a telephone interview. "And playing in the Masters as an amateur would be such a different experience - they treat amateurs extremely well.
"It definitely would be difficult to pass that up. You never know what could happen. I could never make it there again."
History tells Knost few players turn down a Masters invitation - Tom Scherrer, the 1992 U.S. Amateur runner-up, was the last to decline. Scherrer didn't make it to Augusta National until 2001 and he hasn't been back since then (Scherrer now plays on the Nationwide Tour).
Knost recently talked to Phil Mickelson, who praised his talents, encouraged him to turn pro and predicted Knost will qualify for the Masters several times in the future. But therein lies the risk: What if he doesn't make it back? What if his career sputters and skipping the '08 Masters becomes a lifelong regret?
Well, he'd really, really hate Phil Mickelson for starters.
Walker Cup captain Buddy Marucci bluntly told Knost he would be crazy to pass on a whirl around Amen Corner.
I think so too. You all?
Steve Elling takes his annual look at the players who made all four major cuts and breaks down the numbers.
For the second time in four years, Woods is the major-championship major domo, unseating Phil Mickelson, who won the honor in 2004 and 2006. Woods was the low man at the Slam events in 2005, but missed the cut at the U.S. Open in '06, his lone weekend off at a major in his 11-year pro career.
There were several statistical oddities this year.
Of the 10 players who made all four majors cuts in 2006, none did likewise this year. In fact, in an eye-popping turnaround of the wrong sort, Australia's Robert Allenby finished seventh among the players who completed all 16 rounds at the '06 majors at a collective 3 over. This year? He shot the highest score of any player who appeared in all four, missing the cut across the board and finishing a collective 45 over in eight rounds.
Because of difficult conditions at 2007's first two majors -- this year marked the third time in history that winning scores were above par at both the Masters and U.S. Open -- the cumulative numbers skewed inordinately high. Since we began tracking the cumulative Grand Slam winners four years ago, 2007 stands as the first time fewer than 10 players made the cut in all four events.
Check out the story for the list of the elite 10.
What do you think? Nice rebranding eh?
First Davis Love, now Boo, Bubba, K.J. and Chris DiMarco WD to rest up for four weeks (if they should be so lucky) of studying points permutations and figuring out how to pay their caddy 10% of deferred compensation. Joedy McCreary reports.
Add Grant Boone to the list of those not quite grasping Woody Austin's various rants from last week's PGA press center:
And Austin is accurate when he suggests that he and lots of his peers have a similar desire to succeed, even if they can't back it up on the course as often as Woods.
Austin backed it up all week. He was the only player to shoot par or better each day. And despite beginning the final round four back of Woods, he actually had a birdie putt at 15 that would've pulled him even. It was only after a hard-fought 67 left him two shots short that Austin finally began to crack. First, he interrupted a reporter's observation that he'd been hard on himself earlier in the week because of missed opportunities:
"I was right, wasn't I?"
Whoa, big fella. After the reporter finished his question, Austin responded specifically to shooting a 70 in the second round to Woods' 63:
"Well, like I said on Friday, you cannot give somebody seven shots, especially someone who happens to be the best player in the world. And I, like I said, I went over his round and over my round, and I outplayed him from tee-to-green."
It was right here that you were telepathically giving Austin the same advice Brian Fantana gave Champ. "Why don't you stop talking for awhile? Maybe sit the next couple of plays out." But Austin kept going:
"I don't think anybody plays any better than I do when I'm on; I know that's crazy, but I think I can hit any shot anybody in the world can hit."
I was with him right up to the point that he talked about being crazy. Woody wasn't done:
"You give anybody who is really good a four-shot lead over you -- I beat him today, but it doesn't matter because he had four shots on me. So, you know, I don't care -- he happens to be the best player in the world, but if you put any great player, any good player with a four-shot cushion, their odds are going to be pretty good. Especially when they happen to be the best."
Suddenly, he was Steve Martin giving a call to arms in "Three Amigos:" "The people of Santo Poco can conquer their own personal El Guapo, who also happens to be the actual El Guapo." And then came a little Yogi Berra from the AFLAC commercial:
"He always says -- what does he always say? He always says, 'I want to be in the last group on Sunday.' If he wants to be there, and I want to be, why do I not want to be there? Why would I want to be somewhere else?"
Beats me. And finally, like a punch-drunk fighter swinging wildly before the inevitable face plant into the canvas, Austin offered this:
"Well, you said in the media, especially on Friday, that he played just an unbelievable round of golf and that he was in total control and that he was just toying with the field. We can go through our rounds. I outplayed him on Friday, but he beat me by seven shots. So, does that mean he's that much better? I don't get it. It just happens that he scored better, and like I said on Friday, can you not throw away that many opportunities when you are trying to win a big golf tournament. He took advantage; I didn't. Does that mean he played better than me or he's better than me? I don't agree with that."
In this week's SI Golf Plus, a stand alone FedEx Cup playoff preview (not posted online), Michael Bamberger profiles architect Tom Doak's rise to prominence. For synergy purposes, included with the piece is a Doak assessments of each FedEx Cup playoff venue, including the TPC Boston, recently renovated by Gil Hanse and Brad Faxon.
Here's what Doak says:
I've never been there, and I'm not in a good place to judge it. It's an Arnold Palmer course, and his stuff is all over the map. Gil Hanse, who used to work for me, did the renovation work there. It's a weird relationship--I admire what he's doing, but I'm not going to be his biggest booster. I have to compete with him.
Of course Tom is welcome to feel whatever he likes and you have to admire his honesty, however, he seems to be implying that he doesn't want to say anything positive about a potential competitor.
And in light of the recent release of the Golf Magazine Top 100, I'm uncomfortable with the notion of Tom, one of 100 Golf panelists, evaluating Gil's work when he's openly stating that he does not want to promote his competition. Wouldn't this make him less likely to fairly evaluate the work of Hanse or anyone else he considers competition?
This seems to me to be example A for why architects in today's cuthroat business should not be allowed to vote on course ranking panels.
Tom Cunneff picks his nine favorite holes in golf. The piece also includes a link to Tom Doak's dicussion of Riviera's 10th, which I don't believe appeared online earlier this year. It's worth reading, and I say that not because I was included. Just a good read.
Golf.com also includes their 18 favorites with many killer photos. It was done in conjunction with the new Golf Magazine ranking. Lo and behold, Riviera's 10th made their list as the penultimate hole. Unfortunately they ran a photo of Riviera's 9th green in its place.
**With working links now...
Thanks to reader NRH for this C.W. Nevius column in the San Francisco Chronicle analyzing the fight for Lincoln Park and other San Francisco city courses.
Bo Links, one of the founders of the San Francisco Public Golf Alliance, says golfers are planning a march on the Board of Supervisors today. The issue is whether the city should study turning its money-losing golf courses into another kind of recreation facility, like soccer fields, or preserve the fairways and greens.Oh dear. This is beautiful:
Guess which side the golfers are on.
"We're going to hitch up our britches and go to City Hall," Links says. "We're hoping to have over 100. And some of the guys are talking about bringing golf clubs."
This, of course, raises two questions:
First, what would you use to get up and down from the steps of City Hall? A lob wedge?
And second, in the midst of so many high-profile and contentious issues, how did the city's golf courses get to be such a hot topic?
That part is simple - the golf course debate has something for everyone.
For neighborhood activists, it is about empowerment. For golfers, it is populism. For Supervisor Jake McGoldrick, it's a labor issue. And fellow Supervisor Sean Elsbernd is talking about governmental red tape. McGoldrick is leery of letting a private firm manage the courses; Elsbernd thinks it could not only work, but make money.
Last Wednesday, the supervisors' Budget and Finance Committee met to consider McGoldrick's proposal to create a golf task force to conduct a three-year study of the "adaptive re-use" of the golf courses.
To the surprise of nearly everyone, the golfers showed up in force, some 50 strong. Richard Harris, another of the founders of the Golf Alliance, says the group made its point forcefully.
"You need professional management for the golf courses," he says. "What you don't need is another three-year study. That's asking to literally study it to death until the golf courses deteriorate so badly it isn't an issue."
"Even I was surprised," said Elsbernd. "What I really appreciated was watching the faces of those who thought this was going to be a walk in the park, so to speak."
In the face of that kind of response, it was decided not to send the proposal out of committee with a recommendation for a yes vote. And Monday, McGoldrick announced that he plans to make a motion to put the matter over until at least next month, meaning that it won't be voted on in today's meeting.
"Which has to be a victory on our part," says Elsbernd.
The golfers may have been slow to act, but they have been fired up by talk that some of the city's courses, like the neglected, but scenic, Lincoln Park, might be turned into a soccer field.
"Or BMX bike runs," says Isabel Wade, executive director of the Neighborhood Parks Council. "Or skate parks. We could have one incredible event center on the 17th hole. Nobody has been looking at that."
We'll pause here for a moment while the residents of those huge, expensive homes in Sea Cliff consider the implications of an event center around the corner from them. And that's not to mention the fact that any soccer pitch built on the hills and mounds of Lincoln Park would require players to use safety ropes to keep from sliding off the field.
Geoff Shackelford is a Senior Writer for Golfweek magazine, a weekly contributor to Golf Channel's Morning
Copyright © 2022, Geoff Shackelford. All rights reserved.
