Welcome to “Will o'the Glen On Golf”!

Welcome to Will o’the Glen On Golf! I may be a lone voice crying in the wilderness for a while here, until I work out how to guide some reader traffic to this blog, but I am hoping that, with time and experience, I will bring readers to my little corner of the online world.

A will o’the wisp is an elusive goal or hope, so I have chosen to combine “will o’the wisp” with Willow Glen, the name of the neighborhood in which I live, in San José, CA, in the name of my web-log to symbolize my aspirations for my labors here. My goal is to educate, enlighten, and amuse my readers (not in any particular order) – with the full realization that some of the amusement might be unintentional on my part.

While my ultimate goal here on these pages might be elusive, my identity will not be – I do not intend to be circumspect in that regard. My name is Gary K. McCormick. I am a mechanical engineer, an aspiring writer (despite the clichés about engineers not being able to write, these are not mutually exclusive activities) and – heaven help me – a golfer.

I have only been playing golf with any level of intent for about a year and a half, so I am relatively new to the game, but I have been reading about and following golf for nearly 25 years, having gotten that bug when the father of a friend of mine recommended that I read Dan Jenkins’ book Dead Solid Perfect. I quickly set about getting hold of as many of Mr. Jenkins’ books as I could track down (golf-related and otherwise), and have read everything new that he has come out with since then. Mr Jenkins’ writing, and viewpoint, set the tone for my own viewpoint on the game of golf, so expect to hear a lot about Dan and his golf writing, and Ben Hogan — the mid-20th Century golf legend who Mr Jenkins was privileged to know, and whose career he covered from 1951 until Ben’s retirement from competitive golf in 1967.

I expect that I will also be writing about golf in Central California — the Monterey Peninsula and the San Francisco Bay Area – the area in which I have been privileged to live my entire life, and home to some of the most beautiful, and revered, golf courses in the world. Pebble Beach Golf Links and Cypress Point down on the Monterey Peninsula, Pasatiempo in the hills above Santa Cruz (take that, Augusta National, we have two Alister Mackenzie creations right here in our backyard – three counting public track Sharp Park, in Pacifica), Harding Park and the Olympic Club in San Francisco, to name a few – all these and (thanks to the weather) year-round golf, too. Say what you will about Florida, Myrtle Beach, and Hawaii—outside of Scotland, this has to be the golf center of the world!

Musings on happenings in the world of professional golf are likely to form a significant part of the content to be found here in the future, and thoughts on the people – players, commentators, journalists, and officials – in the game. Professional golf may not be as rich in characters as it has been in the past, but there are still personalities out there worth writing about. The LPGA will get some of my attention, too – the distaff side of the game has as much to offer, in every way, as the male side, and I look forward to using this forum as my motivation for learning more about the women’s game.

So stay tuned as I figure out this blogging deal – and if I reach some appreciative ears, the effort will have been worth it.