Is Cobra’s new 3D-printed putter the real deal, or just hype?

I just read an article on an online golf outlet about Cobra Golf’s new King Supersport-35 Putter, touted as the first 3D-printed putter. Unfortunately, like so many equipment “reviews” in both print and online golf media, this article reads more like a press release from the club manufacturer than a meaningful evaluation of the product. I have met the author of the article, and played golf with him, and he’s a very nice guy – but he’s not an engineer. I, on the other hand, am—a mechanical engineer as it happens, and I have just shy of 40 years’ experience in the design and manufacture of mechanical equipment, so I have the background to call out the club manufacturer, Cobra, on some of the claims that are repeated in that article.

The first thing that struck me as wrong is that this is not the first 3D-printed golf club to hit the market. Admittedly, the others of which I am aware are from much smaller boutique brands with very little market penetration; for example, Round4 Putters, which was making some noise online a couple of year ago but which seems to have disappeared from the landscape since then.

Callaway and Ping—both major manufacturers—have experimented with 3D putters. Back in 2015 Ping marketed a soup-to-nuts custom design and fitting process for a 3D-printed putter that would result in a personalized one-off putter at a cost of something like $7,000 to $9,000, but have yet to bring one to the retail marketplace. So Cobra are the first to bring out a mass-market (but still pricey, at $399 MSRP) putter, but not the first 3D-printed putter on the market.

On the technical side, Cobra states that 3D printing allows the formation of a latticework of metal that allows mass to be relocated from the middle of the head to the perimeter resulting in, they say, “the highest MOI without the need for additional fixed weights.” Now, it is true that that fancy-looking lattice structure would be extremely difficult to produce by conventional manufacturing methods, but is it really necessary? Or effective? Why not just hog that space out by CNC milling machine, removing the same amount of material, or even more, to get the desired effect?

You see, that fancy lattice isn’t structural; it doesn’t provide support for the upper portion of the club head, or stiffen the face of the putter—it’s just there to look fancy and justify the use of 3D printing. And while fixed weights may not be as sexy as a 3D-printed lattice, they are easily installed by conventional means. For that matter, removable weights allow adjustment of the mass distribution of the putter by the use of heavier or lighter interchangeable weights, yielding a wider range of performance and fitting options in the same basic putter head with very simple manufacturing methods.

To their credit, Cobra is utilizing a new, advanced 3D-printing method developed by Hewlett-Packard that delivers the precision and complexity of high-resolution 3D metal printing at higher production rates, and thus at lower cost, than the powder-bed fusion methods that have been used previously.

Rather than use a laser to sinter metallic powder layer by layer, HP’s 3D Metal Jet process “prints” a binding agent into a matrix of metallic powder, building up the desired shape a layer at a time. The binder is cured by a heat source, producing a high-strength “green” part which is then sintered (essentially, baked at high temperature to fuse the metallic powder matrix) to create the final part. After some cosmetic finishing and CNC milling of the most precise finished dimensions, as necessary, the part is complete. This process is faster than powder-bed fusion, and has been shown to produce more uniform material properties in the final part.

That’s all well and good, and there are any number of applications for which this process would be a manufacturing godsend—but does it really bring any performance advantages to the world of golf?

As I mentioned previously, the one real justification for the 3D printing process which is touted by Cobra’s ad copy, the internal lattice, is advertised as a means to increase MOI (it’s y- or vertical-axis MOI they’re talking about, which they don’t specify, but when considering the dynamic properties of a shape, it is important to know, and specify, which axis—X, Y, or Z— is being considered). Looked at realistically, however, the same mass distribution could quite easily be achieved by more conventional methods, so why bother with the whiz-bang 3D-printing method?

It all comes down to one word: hype (also “marketing”, which is far too often the same thing.)

Let’s face it—golf clubs, especially putters, being sturdy metal objects which don’t wear out quickly, and whose one wear-prone component, the grip, can be easily renewed, don’t support model turnover. Not, at least, unless the consumer can be convinced that the latest model will take strokes off your game by allowing you to hit the ball farther, straighter, with more precision (or some combination of the three).

Real, meaningful advances in golf club design are rare—the last one which really struck me as innovative and with real performance advantages was Callaway’s “Jailbreak” technology, which is kind of a hokey name for their use of a pair of vertical reinforcing rods which connect the crown and base of the head of a driver, fairway wood, or hybrid,  isolating the face so that it can do its job more efficiently by allowing the face of the club to flex and rebound without distorting the body of the club head.

So, to my rather cynical (but knowledgeable, if I say so myself) eye, Cobra’s new 3D-printed putter, while sexy and cool, and produced using a very interesting new manufacturing method, is just another hyped-up golf product that is being sold to the golfing public on the strength of some whiz-bang new technology, when it is really just a lot of smoke-and-mirrors marketing designed to generate another product cycle. It is another example of a golf club manufacturer selling golfers more new clubs they don’t need, when said golfers would benefit more from practice and instruction than they will from dropping a load of cash on the latest fancy new club design.

Read greens like a pro with the help of a GolfLogix Green Book

If you have watched much, or any, golf on television in the last couple of years, you have probably seen the pros reach for their back pocket when they get to the green. What they are reaching for is a green book, the logical follow-on to the ubiquitous yardage books that pros and their caddies have consulted during their rounds for many years. Made possible by the development of laser mapping technology that has been used to read the putting surfaces of golf courses all over the world, these books depict the contours of the green with contour lines like a topographical map, and the slopes as colors, or with arrows indicating direction and relative speed, or sometimes both.

Until recently these handy references weren’t widely available, but now, thanks to companies like GolfLogix, the makers of a smartphone golf scoring app, every recreational golfer with a few bucks to spare can have green books for many of their favorite courses.

The GolfLogix folks have mapped the greens of 528 golf courses in California at last count, and as near as I can tell from a rough count of the list on their website (https://store.golflogix.com), they have produced books for about 85% of the courses in the Bay Area/Monterey Peninsula region, so the chances are good that they will have a book for whatever course you want to play.

I have always contended that the putting stroke is the least difficult skill to master in the game of golf; the problem is, determining the proper line to hit the ball on, and how hard to hit it, are the two most difficult skills to master in golf—which is why putting befuddles so many golfers.

Here is where, if I were a pitchman for this product, I would start the spiel about how the GolfLogix green book will transform your game, drop strokes off your score, and turn you into the golfing god you always knew that you could be—but I’m not, and I won’t. What I will say is that these books are a handy on-course guide, as well as a great teaching tool.

The GolfLogix green books include standard yardage book features—diagrams of each hole with yardages and features depicted—with two diagrams of each green: a heat map which depicts the area and severity of the slope of the green with colors ranging from white (dead flat) to red (steepest), and a slope map with arrows which show the direction, and by their length the severity, of the slope of the different areas of the green. A handy YouTube video on their website will get you up to speed on how to use all the features of the book.

Of course, reading the extent and severity of the slope is just the start. Grain, surface dampness, and the type of turf you’re rolling on are also significant factors—but knowing the slopes is a good start.

It may take you a few rounds to get the hang of correlating the slope markings on the heat maps and slope maps to the contours of the green that you see with the naked eye; but honestly, after you do you may find that you are reading the greens better than you were before you started using the book—and may just leave it in your pocket when you pull the putter from the bag. Whichever way you go—using the green book as a teaching tool to boost your green-reading skills, or as a regular on-course guide, your game is sure to benefit from the addition of this arrow to your golf-skills quiver.

“Young Guns” lead the way at Champions Tour ’s Pebble Beach stop

The PGA Tour Champions Northern California stop, the PURE Insurance Championship, usually finds the fairways and greens of Pebble Beach Golf Links and Poppy Hills Golf Course inhabited by pairings of youth players from First Tee chapters around the country playing with Champions Tour pros, but like everything else in this pandemic year, things have changed. This year the event is playing as a pro-am, with First Tee teens replaced by well-heeled amateurs, and all three rounds are at Pebble Beach. There is still a “youth movement” of sorts underway at the 2020 event, though, as Champions Tour rookies are dominating the leaderboard.

Of course, “rookie” is a relative term in this case, as every player in the field has a wealth of experience behind them, and some are very familiar names, but the first-round leader and two of the three players who were tied for second after 18 holes are 50-year-old rookies on the tour, and the three players who rounded out the rest of the top-five spots are aged 51.

First-round leader Jim Furyk, one of those 50-year-old “rookies”, is a former FedEx Cup champion (2010) and the 2003 U.S. Open champion, and has an additional 16 PGA tour wins on his CV. Another familiar name near the top of the leaderboard is Ernie Els. Probably the second name, after Gary Player, that comes to mind when South African golf is mentioned, Els has two U.S. Open victories to his credit (1994, 1997), two Open Championship titles (2002, 2012), and 15 additional PGA Tour wins—not to mention his 47 international victories.

Less well-known, except perhaps to the deep-knowledge pro golf cognoscenti, is the remaining 50-year-old who was sitting T2 after 18 holes—Cameron Beckman. A three-time winner on the PGA Tour, Beckman turned pro in 1993, played on the Nike Tour (now the Korn Ferry Tour) developmental circuit, Beckman went to the PGA Tour Qualifying Tournament 10 times before locking up his card for the 2008 season with a T20 finish at the Children’s Miracle Network Classic.

After 18 holes Furyk, Els, and Beckman were sitting just ahead of another 50-year-old, Stephen Leaney of New Zealand, and a couple of 51-year-olds, Dicky Pride and Gene Sauers. By the end of the second round they had been joined by another 50-year-old, Canadian lefty and 2003 Masters champion Mike Weir; and 60-year-old Fred Couples had snuck into the mix.

In the second round Weir, who has battled elbow problems for many years after an ill-advised change to the “stack-and-tilt” swing method, found a gear that he might not have known he had, and after a 1-over 73 in the first round, ascended the leaderboard at nose-bleed speed, picking up 38 spots on the strength of a clean-card 7-under 65 that included a string of three birdies in a row on holes 14 – 16.

Fred Couples, the only player over 51 years of age to crack the top seven after 36 holes, woke up from something of a trance, it seems, after Friday’s desultory four-birdies, two-bogeys, two-under 70, and knocked together a bogey-free five-under 67 to vault 15 spots up the leaderboard into a five-way tie for third.

The field, including the twelve amateurs who made the pro-am cut, will assemble Sunday starting at 7:35 to decide the issue.

PURE Insurance / First Tee event deserves some love—even up against the U.S. Open

It has been a tough couple of years for the PURE Insurance Championship at Pebble Beach, the PGA Tour Champions event that benefits the First Tee. In 2019 the tournament was scheduled against the Safeway Open, the PGA Tour’s opener that is held 2-1/2 hours north of Pebble Beach, at Napa Valley’s Silverado Resort and Spa. The two events effectively bracketed the Bay Area, and despite the obvious attraction of Pebble Beach, the big names/big hitters of the main tour are perhaps a little bit sexier for the mainstream golf fan. Then came 2020—the year when everything changed.

The panorama that greets you as you walk from the Lodge at Pebble Beach down to the 18th green is one of the finest views in golf. (photo by author)

As shelter-in-place kicked in and sports, along with everything else, shut down, the whole schedule was up in the air. The possibility of events being cancelled, even events that were months in the future, loomed large. Eventually golf came back—the first pro sport to do so, with extensive, comprehensive safety measures in place—though with big changes in the schedule, and the biggest change was the rescheduling or cancellation of the majors.

The grandaddy of them all, the Open Championship, was cancelled outright for 2020, as the British Isles struggled to get a handle on the pandemic and lagged behind the United States in reopening golf courses for recreational play. The PGA Championship was pushed back from March to August—a gloomy time of year for its venue, TPC Harding Park in San Francisco, but the change produced a thrilling, much-watched tournament. The Masters—that odd championship of nothing which is pretty much a major just on the strength of the memory of Bobby Jones, and because the green jackets of Augusta National want it to be—was delayed to November, and the United States Open, which is a championship, was pushed back to September.

Therein lay the rub, at least as far as the PURE Insurance Championship was concerned, because the USGA settled on a week in mid-September, the same week in which the PURE Insurance/First Tee event was scheduled, to put on their national championship. In a week that could have belonged to the PGA Tour Champions on the basis of the tournament venue alone, the spotlight was stolen by the national championship.

No offense to the rest of the PGA Tour Champions schedule, but the PURE Insurance event is pretty much the class tournament of the tour. I mean, come on—the venue, the charity… the venue (pardon my bias, but I am a Central California local, born and raised in Steinbeck Country.)

In a normal year play in this event is split between Pebble Beach Golf Links and Poppy Hills, the home course of the Northern California Golf Association, and the pros play with junior playing partners from First Tee chapters all across the country; but even scaled back in this pandemic era, playing as a pro-am, no juniors, and only at Pebble Beach, the event is worthy of the golf world’s attention.

Except for a two-year period (2011 and 2012) when the event was held in early June under the generally overcast “June gloom” skies that locals know so well, this event has reveled in the glorious late summer/early autumn weather that the Monterey Peninsula and the Central Coast basks in after enduring the chilly gloom of summer. There’s pretty much no finer place to be than the Monterey Peninsula at this time of year, and that might have something to do with the star-studded field that the tournament has drawn this year.

Els, Furyk, Couples, Love, Montgomerie, Langer, Singh, Jiménez, Cabrera—these are just some of the names that appear on the leaderboard this year. Major champions during their PGA and European Tour careers, most of them, along with other players who hit their stride later in life and have enjoyed great success in the post-50 era of their careers.

Don’t get me wrong, I love our national championship—but even setting aside my local bias, this is a tournament that deserves some love. Like every professional golf tournament on every tour, this event provides a great boost to local charities—even without the income from ticket sales besides benefitting the First Tee, the Monterey Peninsula Foundation distributes profits from this event and the AT&T Pro-Am to a wide variety of worthy causes in the Monterey Peninsula area.

It’s a tremendous shame that this event isn’t able to have spectators on site this year, but with any luck this tournament, and all the others on the schedule will be back to something like normal next year. It’s a great venue, with a great charitable footprint, and a slew of recognizable championship-level names on the scoreboard—with all that going for it, if the PURE Insurance Championship doesn’t deserve some of your viewing time, this week, even when the U.S. Open is on your TV and/or computer screens, I don’t know what does.

Mixed results for NorCal golfers on opening day of 2020 U.S. Open

There are half a dozen NorCal-associated golfers in the field at the 2020 U.S. Open at Winged Foot Golf Club, and at the end of the first round the results they posted range from a respectable 1-under to a worrisome 8-over.

Collin Morikawa plays a shot from the greenside rough on the third hole during the first round at the 2020 U.S. Open at Winged Foot Golf Club (West Course) in Mamaroneck, N.Y. on Thursday, Sept. 17, 2020. (Darren Carroll/USGA)

Happily for we natives of NCGA territory, the two top scorers among the group are Northern California-born—Clovis’ Bryson DeChambeau, and Sacramento native Cameron Champ.  This pair of long-ball hitters from the Central Valley carded rounds of 1-over (DeChambeau) and 3-over (Champ) on the venerable Winged Foot GC layout.

The group of four remaining players of special interest to NorCal golfers comprises two SoCal golfers and two out-of-staters, all with college golf connections to the Bay Area.

Cal Men’s Golf is represented by Southern California natives Collin Morikawa and Max Homa; former Stanford golfer Brando Wu, of Scarsdale, NY, and Colorado-born 2011 San Jose State grad Mark Hubbard are also in the field.

Wu, a 2019 Stanford grad, is playing in his second U.S. Open—his first as a professional—after topping the points list of the developmental-level Korn Ferry Tour series in 2019. He claimed the “best of the rest” title among NorCal affiliated players with a 4-over 74. Opening with a 2-under 33 on the front nine, Wu fell prey to the Winged Foot rough on the homeward nine after hitting only four of eight fairways.

Wu may be remembered for receiving his Stanford diploma on the 18th green of Pebble Beach Golf Links at last year’s U.S. Open—nice compensation for having to miss his graduation ceremony at the Palo Alto campus.

Cal Men’s golf standout and 2020 PGA Championship winner Collin Morikawa found the venerable Westchester County golf course heavier sledding than TPC Harding Park, where he hoisted the PGA’s Wanamaker Trophy six weeks ago after taking the 2020 PGA Chmpionship. The SoCal native seemed never to entirely get his feet underneath him on Winged Foot’s turf, going 36-40–76 largely due to a fall-off in his usual masterful iron work (-1.08 SG:Approach), around the greens (-2.37 SG) and weak putting (-0.83 SG:Putting). 

Mark Hubbard, a former San Jose State golfer, found himself in a similar position to Morikawa at the conclusion of his first round, with a 6-over 76 on one birdie and seven bogeys. Hubbard had his own 18th-green moment at Pebble Beach Golf Links in 2015, when he proposed to his girlfriend, Meghan, after completing the first round of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

Of course someone has to be last, and in this accounting of NorCal-affiliated golfers, that dubious honor falls to former Cal Men’s Golf stalwart Max Homa. A decently strong performance off the tee (+1.12 SG – 9 of 14 fairways) wasn’t enough to carry his round in the face of numbers like -2.17 SG:Approach, -2.38 SG:Around the Green, and -2.03 SG:Putting. 

Homa can take heart (I suppose) from the fact that he closed out his first round one stroke better than fellow SoCal native Phil Mickelson, and saw a lot more of Winged Foot’s fairways than the veteran southpaw, who only found two of 14 in the first round.

PGA Tour season opens in the Napa Valley under orange-tinted skies

 Advocates of a PGA Tour off-season got no satisfaction this week as the 2020–2021 season opener got underway at Napa’s Silverado Resort and Spa on Thursday – hard on the heels of the Labor Day Monday finish of the 2019–2020 Fedex Cup final.

Ominous orange-tinted skies brought back memories of the 2018 event, which closed out its final day in blustery conditions that, later in the evening, played a part in igniting wildfires in the nearby hills that swept across the tournament venue destroying at least one grandstand complex. Though not directly threatened by any of the wildfires currently raging across the state of California, the Napa area, like much of Northern California, is suffering the worst air-quality conditions the region has ever experienced.

This year’s field for the event is a disparate collection of young guns and established stars, with a healthy dose of major winners—Sergio Garcia, Jordan Spieth, Jim Furyk, Shane Lowry, Charl Schwartzel, Keegan Bradley, Jason Dufner, and the ubiquitous Phil Mickelson (whose representing agency, Lagardère Sports, is the event organizer), and one former World Number One, Luke Donald.

You had to look a ways down the leaderboard after the first round to see any of those names, however, as Schwartzel, the 2014 Master champion, Shane Lowry, 2019 Open champion, and Keegan Bradley, the 2013 PGA champion, had the best first rounds of their major-winning peers, all opening at T11 with 4-under 68s.

Dufner and Mickelson were next among the major winners in the field at 2-under and 1-under, respectively, while none of the rest managed to break par: Garcia and Furyk at even par; and Jordan Spieth, whose struggles continue into the new season, at 1-over. Luke Donald, whose tenure as World #1 lasted for a mere four weeks in 2012, struggled to 6-over 78.

The leader after Round One was Scotsman Russell Knox, who opened with a clean-card 9-under 63 on the 7,203-yard North Course at Silverado, followed by Sam Burns, Bo Hoag, and Cameron Percy, all one shot back at 8-under. Two-time Safeway Open champ Brendan Steele opened with what for him was a typical opening round on the wine-country course, a 7-under 65. The 2017 and 2018 champion in the event carded opening rounds of 67 and 65 in his recent back-to-back victories here.

“The Golf Round I’ll Never Forget”, by Matt Adams ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️☆

Matt Adams, the author of The Golf Round I’ll Never Forget, has a great reputation as an interviewer, and before I got my hands on a review copy of this volume I assumed that I would be reading interviews, or at least some interview content, from fifty champion golfers. (If a little alarm bell went off in your head when you read the word “assumed” in the previous sentence, you get a gold ⭐️.)

The subtitle of this book—Fifty of Golf’s Biggest Stars Recall Their Finest Moments—gives the impression that the players whose “finest moments” are recounted here were interviewed for this volume, but alas, this turn out not to be the case. The chapters draw on previously published material which includes quotes from the players involved, but that’s the extent of it. That caveat aside, this is a nicely curated compendium of memorable golf rounds which any avid golfer would find interesting.

The book is divided into six chapters, collecting anecdotes into such classifications as “History In The Making”,which includes Gene Sarazen’s eagle on the 15th hole of Augusta National in the final round of the 1935 Masters; Johnny Miller’s record-setting 63 in the fourth round of the 1973 U.S. Open at Oakmont; and Al Geiberger’s groundbreaking 59 in the second round of the old Memphis Classic in 1977. (Little-known fact: Geiberger used the same ball for the entire round, almost unheard of in the days of the wound balata ball.)

Among the other sections are “Big Shots and Defining Moments”, with the story behind Hal Sutton’s famous “Be the right club!”call at the 2000 Players Championship; “Great Comebacks”, which includes the story of Arnold Palmer’s legendary come-from-behind victory in the 1960 U.S. Open at Cherry Hills, and more. Most of the stories included in the book will be familiar, at least in outline, to golfers with a sense of history, though a few are less well-known, and all the more welcome additions to the book for that. For example, how many of us are familiar with Kathy Whitworth’s record-setting victory in the 1965 Titleholder’s Championship?

A few shortcuts are taken in some of the stories—for example, Arnold Palmer’s bogey on the 16th hole in the fourth round of the 1966 U.S. Open at the Olympic Club, a key factor in Palmer’s eventual loss to Billy Casper in a Monday playoff, is skimmed over as just another bogey—but each section includes anecdotes and background that will make for fresh reading, even for knowledgeable golf fans.

Presented in a handsome full-color 9" × 11" paperback format, with plenty of photos, The Golf Round I’ll Never Forget makes a nice gift for the golfer in your life—or for yourself.

Cal Golf alum Collin Morikawa outlasts crowded leaderboard to take 2020 PGA Championship

A 95-year-old muni golf course on a chilly, windswept, often fogbound peninsula in Northern California just provided the golf world with one of the most thrilling final rounds in major-tournament golf in decades—and a Cal Men’s Golf alumnus was the star of the show.

2020 PGA Championship winner Collin Morikawa poses with the Wanamaker Trophy during the trophy presentation ceremony. (Image copyright: 2020 Darren Carroll/PGA of America)

San Francisco’s Harding Park Golf Course (now TPC Harding Park) was shown to great effect this past week, in wind, fog—and even sunshine—and while some of the biggest hitters in the game were factors in the outcome right to the end, it was a mid-range hitter whose game excels in accuracy who outlasted the bomb-and-gouge brigade to step into the winner’s circle at the end of the day. Collin Morikawa, a 2019 Cal graduate, reigning PAC-12 Men’s Golf champion, and second-year PGA Tour pro who already has two professional wins to his credit, plotted his way around Harding Park with GPS-worthy precision, all the way to the grand prize—the Wanamaker Trophy.

The weather on San Francisco’s west side was overcast but generally calm, with mild temperatures for most of the day, trending chilly as the final pairings closed out their rounds. The firm greens were troublesome for long approach shots, requiring a steep landing angle to hold the putting surface, and the Harding Park greens, derided by some as flattish and uninteresting over the course of the week, befuddled many of the contenders down the stretch with their subtleties.

As many as seven players were tied for the lead over the second half of the round, but their numbers dwindled as bad breaks and bad luck took their toll. Northern California’s Cameron Champ, a Sacramento native and the winner of the season-opening Safeway Open last October at Napa’s Silverado Golf & Country Club, dropped back when an errant drive at the long par-four ninth hole resulted in a double-bogey six, and bogeys on 13 and 15 put paid to his chances for the win. Champ’s 8-under finish netted him his first Top Ten finish in a major tournament, and it is unlikely to be his last.

Bryson DeChambeau, another NorCal native and a big hitter who has achieved notoriety for his recent emphasis on physical bulk as a means to increase his length off the tee, started the day at 6-under and was among a half-dozen or so players who dipped into double-digits under par. Back-to-back bogeys at holes 8 and 9, the one-two punch of hardest-playing holes that closed out the front side, dropped him off the pace. Birdies at 14 and 15 pulled the 2015 U.S. Amateur and NCAA champion back to 10-under, but it would prove sufficient only for a spot in a five-way tie for fourth place.

Dustin Johnson, an early favorite to contend for the title today, has been fighting a seeming majors jinx for much of his career, alleviated only by his 2016 victory in the U.S. Open at Oakmont, and was plagued by near-miss putts in his pursuit of a second major title. Four birdies and two bogeys, at the par-3 third hole and par-4 fifteenth, netted the Carolina native a 2-under round and 11-under for the tournament, good enough for his fifth T2 or solo-second finish in a major.

At the end of the day, and over the closing holes of the final round, it was all about Collin Morikawa. The recent Cal grad posted the lowest round, a 64, and only bogey-free round, among the top 20 finishers. Beyond the raw numbers of the score, his stats tell the tale: 1st in driving accuracy, 1st in approach accuracy, 1st in Strokes Gained-Putting; but those numbers, while impressive, aren’t the thing that people will remember from the final round in his impressive victory— it’s the gunslinger eagle-two that he put up at the par-four 16th hole that will be talked about for years.

Morikawa came to #16 after having chipped in for birdie at #14 to take the lead at 11-under. The course had been set up with a couple of teasingly drivable par-fours, most notably the 16th hole, a scenic two-shotter along the Lake Merced shore that was playing an enticing 300 yards to a center-right pin today, and he had resolved, before the round, not to succumb to the temptation they presented. But on the tee-box at #16, sitting on 11-under, with Paul Casey already in with the same score, and Tony Finau and Bryson DeChambeau in the pairing behind him sitting on -10 and -9, respectively, and both representing threats to pick up another shot or two in the final holes, he made a decision.

“Wednesday night, I had no plans on going for 16 at all. […] Colt Knost, he saw me Wednesday afternoon practicing on there, and he asked me if I was ever going to go for it. I told him a quick no, it’s too much into the wind, why go for it. ”

When his caddie, J.J. Jankovac, asked him what he wanted to do on the tee at #16, Morikawa thought back to the 14th hole at Muirfield Village, in the final round of last month’s Workday Challenge tournament, when he hit a similar shot into the drivable par-four 14th hole, and then went on to win the event in a playoff.

“…It was like 278 to the front, and just a good drive for me. It was going to land just short of that in this weather; it’s going to bounce on up,” Morikawa said in a post-round interview, “(caddie J.J. Jankovac) looked at me, he counted off and asked me what I wanted to do and I told him, ‘Let’s hit a good drive.’”

And “hit a good drive” he did, one that golf fans will be talking about for years. Landing just short of the green, the drive bounded up onto the putting surface, released, and rolled to within seven feet of the hole. After bringing his caddie in to help read the putt, something he rarely does, Morikawa stepped up and rolled it dead-center into the hole for an eagle-two and immediate separation from the field.

Barring some unfortunate mishap on his part, and/or miracle strokes on the part of Finau, DeChambeau, Casey, or Johnson, it was all over at that point; two strokes with two holes to play, let alone three, is too much to ask of any golfer outside of a Hollywood production. Morikawa closed with a pair of pars, though on both holes he came within inches of birdies that would have turned his victory into a late-running blowout.

Morikawa’s 65-64–129 finish is the lowest weekend total for a man in a major championship, and the young man from La Cañada, California, has now joined Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, and Rory McIlroy in the ranks of players who won their first PGA Championship at the age of 23. Besides the $1.98 million paycheck, the win brings with it a five-year exemption on the PGA tour, and entries to the U.S. Open and the Masters.

Day One of the PGA Championship was a tale of two waves

The first round of the 2020 PGA Championship was a tale of two waves—and despite the proximity to the ocean of Harding Park, the San Francisco muni that is hosting this strange golf season’s first major, it wasn’t Pacific Ocean waves lapping at the shore that shaped today’s results, but the weather affecting the morning and afternoon starting waves, and who got to play when.

Australia’s Jason Day, though not much mentioned in the runup to this week’s PGA Championship, is co-leader after the first round, at 5-under 65. (Image © 2020 Darren Carroll/PGA of America)

Golf, being an outdoor game, is at the mercy of the elements, and never more so that when it is played near the ocean. In Northern California that can mean fog, overcast, blowing mist, or just plain wind, and while that famous line likening summer in San Francisco to a harsh winter was not actually written by Mark Twain, it has certainly persisted because there is so much truth in it.

The players in the field this week saw the accustomed mist and chilly weather; long sleeves, knit hats, and even rain gear (for warmth) were in evidence during practice rounds early in the week,  but players who went out in the morning wave on the first day of competitive rounds were greeted by high overcast, milder-than-expected temperatures, and virtually no wind. 

The friendly conditions for the morning rounds resulted in a spate of low scores, despite the lush rough and tightened fairways of the course’s championship setup. The absence of wind made it easier for players to hit those narrow fairways, and soft(ish), receptive greens meant that even fliers out of the sticky rough—a mixture of Poa annua, bermuda, and rye grass—stood a good chance of holding the putting surface.

Conditions changed for the afternoon wave, and though the later rounds were played under clear or only partially cloudy skies, the westerly winds that are usual in the afternoon on San Francisco’s west side made all the difference. Building steadily and gusting to 20+ mph by the late afternoon, the windy conditions made hitting greens a chancy proposition, as well as drying and firming up the putting surfaces.

The difference in conditions resulted in a scoring differential of nearly a full stroke from morning to afternoon, though the first-round co-leaders, Australia’s Jason Day, the 2015 PGA champion, and Brendon Todd, of Athens, Georgia, came from each group; Day playing in the morning and Todd in the afternoon wave. Day and Todd, each finishing with 5-under 65s, are followed by a group of nine players at 4-under—a group that includes defending PGA champion Brooks Koepka and 2010 PGA champ Martin Kaymer; and another eight who are two strokes back, at 3-under. Tiger Woods, who could tie Jack Nicklaus and Walter Hagen for the all-time PGA Championship victory record, at five, with a win this week, came in at 2-under.

With Friday’s forecast looking much the same as today’s, the tide will turn, and Thursday’s morning-wave players, though benefitting from a longer rest period and a chance to sleep in, will have their turn playing in the windy afternoon conditions. Today’s afternoon wave will be up at the crack of dawn on Friday, but if the golf gods smile upon them, they will get their chance to work the course in the mild, calm conditions that today’s early wave enjoyed.

However the conditions turn out, it is certain that golf fans, who have been spoiling for major-championship golf since April, will see another full day of exciting play on one of the Bay Area’s best-known and best-loved golf courses, highlighted by the beautiful views afforded by the broadcast’s camera-drones and the ubiquitous Goodyear blimp.

Mix of old hands and newbies top Round 3 leaderboard at PGA Championship

A mix of experienced “old hands” and fresh-faced newbies crowded the top of the leaderboard after an exciting Round 3 at the 2020 PGA Championship at San Francisco’s TPC Harding Park Golf Course. Among them are NorCal native Cameron Champ, of Sacramento, and former Cal Men’s Golf standout Collin Morikawa, a native of Los Angeles.

Sacramento native Cameron Champ is in contention for his first major-tournament title in the 2020 PGA Championship title at TPC Harding Park Golf Course in San Francisco.(Photo by Christian Petersen/PGA of America/PGA of America via Getty Images)

Morikawa, who started the day at two under par, shared low-round-of-the-day honors with 54-hole leader Dustin Johnson and runner-up Scottie Scheffler. His seven-under score after three rounds was good for a T4 finish, which he shares with England’s Paul Casey and 2018 and 2019 PGA defending champion Brooks Koepka.

Cameron Champ opened the current PGA season with an emotional victory at the Safeway Open last October, dedicating the win to his grandfather, Mack, who passed away from cancer soon after the tournament. Morikawa and Champ will be play together tomorrow in the second-to-last pairing, behind Dustin Johnson (-9) and Scottie Scheffler (-8).

Scheffler, 24, of Dallas, has a place in Northern California golf history himself, having won the 2013 U.S. Junior Amateur Championship at Martis Camp Resort in Truckee.

The late stages of today’s third round resembled a game of Whack-A-Mole as players rose through the rankings only to be knocked back down by poor play or just plain bad breaks. The changeable Lake Merced-area weather had the players contending with wind, then calm, then increasing misty and chilly conditions that sapped distance from tee shots, demonstrating that the bucolic Arcadian beauty of the lakeside region can conceal an iron fist in its foggy velvet glove.

Second-round leader Haotong Li found tree trouble off the tee at the 13th hole when one of the notorious Monterey Cypress trees that line the Harding Park fairways grabbed his ball and kept it, as they sometimes do. The resulting double-bogey was followed by a bogey on #14, and another at #16, the drivable par-4 on the Lake Merced shoreline. Five dropped shots and two birdies left him with a 3-over 73, and 5-over, T13, going into the final round.

Brooks Koepka, who unlike Tiger Woods and Jordan Spieth, is going into the final round with a shot at a new line in the history books for a third consecutive PGA Championship, got a big dose of “leaderboard gravity” with a string of bogeys on holes 13, 14, and 15. Only a well-executed birdie on #18, the result of a 170-yard approach shot to six feet above the hole, and the clutch birdie putt that followed, pulled him out of an eventual six-way cluster of players at six-under.

Arguably leading that group of six-under finishers sitting T7 after 54 holes is Clovis, California’s, Bryson DeChambeau. The former SMU golfer won the 2015 USGA Amateur Championship, and was NCAA champion as a junior, but dropped out before his senior year and turned pro when SMU was suspended from NCAA championship competitions for recruiting violations.

DeChambeau posted a 4-under 66 today to finish the third round at six under par. Known for his length off the tee after undertaking a “bulking-up” regimen of weightlifting and protein shakes during the PGA Tour’s hiatus, it was, ironically, a 95-foot putt from the front edge of the 18th green that was the highlight of his round today, for a final birdie that lifted him into the top dozen finishers after 54 holes.

Final-round play gets underway tomorrow at 7:00 a.m. local time, with online coverage on ESPN+ beginning at 10 a.m., switching to ESPN online and on television at noon, with CBS-TV taking over from ESPN at 3 p.m.

Record hopes still alive for Woods, Koepka, and Spieth in PGA Championship

The three players I highlighted in my pre-tournament story, Tiger Woods, Brooks Koepka, and Jordan Spieth—all of whom were coming into this week’s PGA Championship with a line in the history books hanging on a win this week—are all still alive, so to speak, in the pursuit of their respective accomplishments. But much like what Magic Max said of The Dread Pirate Roberts—“It just so happens that your friend here is only mostly dead, … mostly dead is slightly alive.”—there are varying degrees of “still alive”.

Brooks Koepka, the 2018 and 2019 PGA champion, is in good position to successfully defend his title going into the final two days of the tournament.

 (Photo by Darren Carroll/PGA of America)

Tiger Woods, who is chasing the PGA Tour all-time wins record and a co-leader spot on the all-time PGA Championship wins podium; and Jordan Spieth, who would lay claim to the Career Grand Slam with a win this week, just scraped their way into the weekend today.

Tiger, after an opening-round 68 in which he made nearly 115 feet of putts with the backup Scotty Cameron putter he brought out for the occasion, couldn’t buy a putt today; his Strokes Gained-Putting score dropped from 1.249 to -1.671. He hit more fairways—nine of 14, vice seven yesterday—but fewer greens; indeed, his SG scores were worse across the board except for off the tee. He scraped into the weekend at even par, one stroke to spare against the +1 cut line, and unless the Big Cat scares up a Big Change in his game on Saturday and Sunday his pursuit of those records will have to wait for another weekend, and another year, respectively.

Jordan Spieth, on the other hand, who cut it even more fine, making the cut on the number with rounds of 73 and 68, saw an uptick in his play today. His stats improved across the board, compared to Thursday—he gained 3.3 strokes on the field today, overall—and a lone bogey at the par-four 18th hole was the sole black mark on his round. Still, going into the weekend trailing the leader, China’s Haotong Li, by nine strokes, and with 57 guys above him on the leaderboard,  his chances of eking out a win aren’t looking good.

And then there’s Brooks Koepka. The man who has won more majors (four) than regular PGA Tour events (three) saw his game dip a bit today, but rounds of 66 and 68 put him squarely in the pack of six players who are two strokes back of the 36-hole leader, Li. Koepka was getting on-course work done by his trainer during today’s round, for a tight adductor muscle—“It’s no problem,” he said in a post-round interview—and his stats slipped across the board from Thursday to Friday, Tee-to-Green and Putting most significantly. 

All three played early-late for the first two days of the tournament, and the extent to which the afternoon conditions—generally windier, and with greens firmed up by a day’s worth of sun (mild, San Francisco-by-the-sea sun, but still sun…)—affected their results is open to speculation. Tiger and Spieth will be going off earlier on Saturday; 9:50 and 8:40 a.m., respectively; but Koepka, with his high finish over the opening two days, will again be playing in the afternoon, with a 2:40 start time. With no significant changes in the weather forecast being predicted, those early start times may prove to be the more favorable.

Still, it’s Koepka, with a red “-6” next to his name on the scoreboard going into the weekend, and a history of coming from behind in majors—he was three shots back going into the final round in five of his last eight majors, and finished outside of the Top 10 in all but two—who stands the best chance of coming out of this weekend with the Wanamaker Trophy, and another line in the history books, in hand.

Who’s chasing history at the 2020 PGA Championship?

The circumstances under which the 2020 PGA Championship is being played—a global pandemic, no spectators on course, a timeframe reversal back to its usual August time slot, and a first-time appearance at an iconic San Francisco venue—are enough to afford the event a highlighted spot in the golf history books. Beyond those circumstances, though, there are three players in the field this week who are chasing history above and beyond a single major championship victory: Tiger Woods, Brooks Koepka and Jordan Spieth.

(Image © 2020 Christian Petersen/PGA of America)

Coming into the tournament Woods stands on the threshold of an all-time wins record with the possibility of breaking his tie with Sam Snead at 82 total victories, and maybe even more significant than that, a win in San Francisco this weekend would bring him one step closer to equaling Jack Nicklaus’ major victories record.

Woods tied Snead’s long-standing record of 82 PGA Tour victories in grand fashion in 2019 when he recorded his fifth Masters win after a 14-year drought in the event; the 2019 Masters chop also moved Woods one step closer to sharing the top step on the all-time major-victories podium with Jack Nicklaus, marking his 15th major victory—three less than Nicklaus, with 18; and four more than Walter Hagen, who with 11 majors is the only other member of the double-digit-wins club in professional majors. A win this week would also elevate Woods to the top step of the “PGA Championship wins” podium, which he would share with Nicklaus and Hagen.

Another player who will be spotlighted this week for the potential of an historic achievement is Brooks “Mr Majors” Koepka. With two consecutive PGA Championship victories in his pocket, Koepka is going for a hat trick this week, and while not a record, a win at Harding Park would make him only the second player, after Walter Hagen, to take the PGA Championship title three years running.

Hagen, by the way, was PGA champion four years running, 1924 – 1927, after having won it in 1921. The cup awarded to the winner, the Wanamaker Trophy, mysteriously disappeared after his 1927 victory at Cedar Crest Country Club, in Dallas; Hagen claimed that he gave it to a cabbie to deliver to his hotel. Leo Diegel, who won the PGA Championship in ’28 and ’29; and Tommy Armour, the 1930 champ, had to make do with a firm handshake and a smile from then-PGA president Alex Pirie.

The trophy resurfaced in the fall of 1930, a few months after that year’s event, when workers clearing a warehouse in Detroit found the massive silver cup in a trunk. The owner of the warehouse? The Walter Hagen Company. Hmmm…

Last but not least comes Jordan Spieth, who is chasing probably the most elusive of the potential records that are in the mix this week on the shores of Lake Merced—the Career Grand Slam.

Spieth jumpstarted his run at this career goal in 2015, his third year on the Tour, when he took home the Masters and the U.S. Open titles and served notice that the others were within his grasp with a T4 finish in the British Open at St Andrews, and solo second, three strokes back of Jason Day, in the PGA at Wisconsin’s Whistling Straits.

After a T2 finish in the 2016 Masters, the result of an infamous meltdown at the 12th hole, Spieth went into something of a tailspin where the majors were concerned; he didn’t crack the Top 10 again in any of the Big Four until the British in 2017, where he edged the majorless Matt Kuchar for the win at Royal Birkdale.

Since that time, however, Spieth has sputtered. His record in the majors in the interim ranges from a third-place finish in the 2018 Masters to a T65 at last year’s U.S. Open, just down the coast from Harding Park at Pebble Beach Golf Links, with only two other top-ten finishes in that time. He hasn’t won a regular PGA Tour event since the 2017 Travelers Championship, and is 12-for-49 for top-10 finishes since 2018.

Still—coming to the shores of Lake Merced for the first West Coast PGA Championship since Sahalee, in the Seattle area, in 1998; and the first in California since the 1977 event at Pebble Beach Golf Links; and with Masters, U.S. Open, and British Open titles to his credit, the 27-year-old Dallas native has his sights set on the tournament he needs to win to put that last notch in his tally stick.

“It’s probably the No. 1 goal in the game of golf for me right now…. I’d love to be able to hold all four trophies, and this is the one that comes in the way right now.”

– Jordan Spieth 

Spieth is already keeping company with some pretty big names, men who lack just one of the four majors in their CVs —

• Walter Hagen, Masters
• Lee Trevino, Masters
• Tommy Armour, Masters
• Sam Snead, U.S. Open
• Phil Mickelson, U.S. Open
• Byron Nelson, British Open
• Tom Watson, PGA Championship
• Arnold Palmer, PGA Championship

—and a win this week at Harding Park will vault him into even more illustrious company, that of the five men who have claimed each of golf’s major titles at least once: Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, and Gene Sarazen.

Are Flagsticks and Bunker Rakes Worse Than Electric Scooters?

Over these months of quarantine (or years? I don’t know—time has lost much of its meaning lately…), with a wide variety of businesses (including golf courses, which are my area of concern) forced to close for months, and then to reopen only with wide-ranging restrictions in place, and under threat of closure for non-compliance, I have noticed one sector that seems to have sailed right along with no slow-down or even significant interruption in their business: the operators of those ubiquitous little electric rental scooters and bikes, outfits like Lime and Bird (which are the most common in San José, California, where I live.)

Except for a slight slowdown in their business as a secondary effect of fewer people going to work and going out to eat, etc., resulting in some reduction in the usage of their vehicles, nothing seems to have changed for these companies. I know that I still see them littering the landscape in my suburban neighborhood on my daily walks with our dog—which is what prompted me to wonder, “If I can’t touch a flagstick or a bunker rake when I go play golf, why are these little scooters and bikes still out and about, where anyone can touch them, and with no one rounding them up and disinfecting them?”

Given that a little bit of common sense and the observance of appropriate hygiene protocols are all that is really required to guard against the transmission of the COVID-19 virus, it seems awfully unfair that golf courses were shut down for two months, putting a lot of financial stress on their employees and owners, when these scooter & bike companies were not. And while golf courses are now open they are under strict protocols, such as no bunker rakes in use, flagsticks must be left in the hole, restrictions on the number of people in the clubhouse/pro shop, etc., and they can be shut down for non-compliance—yet the use of rental scooters & bikes is totally unrestricted.

I sent a query to the my local County Health Department about the situation, which yielded this response:

“There are currently no restrictions in place such as those that you have described unlike a grocery store that can assign workers to clean and sanitize the carts between users. For anyone that wants to use these devices for travel, it is strongly recommended to wipe the surfaces that must be handled/touched by the user before riding a scooter or bike. Also consider wearing gloves* as a precaution as well as washing your hands before and after riding.”

* ( The reference to gloves is disappointing coming from the county health department, as it has been widely advertised that gloves are just another surface to pick up the virus. Unless you remove and discard them before touching another object, or your face, they are pointless.)

Scrolling through the website for Lime scooters I found this statement on a support page entitled “Keeping cities safe during COVID-19”:

“We have enhanced our cleaning methods and increased the frequency of cleaning and disinfecting our scooters.”

Elsewhere on their site they have this:

Steps we’re taking to keep our communities safe

• We have enhanced our cleaning methods and increased the frequency of cleaning and disinfecting our scooters.
• We are distributing hand sanitizers in our facilities. All of our mechanics and operators in the field are required to wear gloves and wash their hands regularly.

I have contacted Lime asking about their protocols for “cleaning and disinfecting” their scooters and received only a parroting of the statements on their website in response. Frankly, I don’t see how they can keep up with maintaining cleanliness on such publicly accessible vehicles, which stay out on the streets for long periods of time and are handled by untold numbers of different people.

Compared to a golf course, which is a contained, controllable environment, and one in which, with a little common sense and attention to hygiene protocols, a safe environment can be maintained, rental scooters and bikes which are widely accessible to the public at large, and which are not regularly accessed by the business which owns them for maintenance or cleaning (only when they are reported broken), are a relative menace.

I don’t intend to condemn the scooter-rental folks here; in fact, I feel that the application of common sense by folks who make use of them—such as a quick squirt or wipe-down with an alcohol-based cleaner, would make them perfectly safe to use. No, I am taking to task the local health authorities for an uneven and prejudicial approach to locking down businesses as part of the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

 The disruptive, and in my mind, over-the-top, restrictions which have been placed on golf-course operations, on top of the financial burden of two months of non-operation in prime golf weather (well, at least here in California) are indefensible in comparison to the shoulder-shrug response to the uninterrupted operation of rental bikes and scooters. Members of the public who use golf courses and other shared public-access recreational facilities have not been trusted to be proactive in their attention to hygiene when confronted with potentially shared contact surfaces, yet the county health department’s response to queries about the use of rental scooters and bikes is, basically, “You handle it.”

Update: On the evening of July 27th I received the following message from Lime customer support – “For now, we’re temporarily pausing Lime service to help people stay put and stay safe. We'll keep you updated.”

The quarantine has resulted in a significant financial hit to golf courses for the shutdown period, followed by operation under severe restrictions and hastily contrived half-measures such as raised cups or cup inserts to avoid touching the hole when retrieving a ball, removing bunker rakes, shutting off on-course water fountains, and requiring that flagsticks remain in the holes at all times—all under the threat of permanent closure if the operational restrictions are not adhered to

I expected better from the people whose business it is to look out for public health—but unfortunately I have, in recent months, become accustomed to being let down by public officials in whom I should be able to place my trust.

Where to Go When Travel Opens Up Again: Villa del Palmar Resort & Spa

After four months of varying levels of lockdown, and with golf courses finally opening up—but with restrictions including limited pro shop access, no bunker rakes, reversed cups and no—or solo-rider-only—golf carts, golfers (like most everyone) are ready for a return to something approaching a pre-Covid-19 normal. A big part of this highly anticipated return to normal operations is the resumption of golf vacations.

High on my own list of resort courses to visit when travel is once again a viable option is Baja California’s Villa Palmar Resort and Spa, home of the Rees Jones-designed TPC Danzante Bay. Located on the Sea of Cortez side of the Baja peninsula, 316 miles north of Cabo San Lucas near the coastal town of Loreto, Villa Palmar is just the ticket for vacationers who are looking for the desert-and-ocean ambience of Baja California without the hustle and bustle of Cabo.

The Villa Palmar Resort & Spa occupies a prime location overlooking Ensenada Blanca (White Cove), a short drive south of the town of Loreto. (photo by author)

Diligent readers of the works of John Steinbeck may recognize Loreto from his recollection of a visit there in March 1940, as recounted in Sea of Cortez:

“When we came back from the early morning collecting we sailed immediately for the port of Loreto. We were eager to see this town, for it was the first successful settlement on the Peninsula, and its church is the oldest mission of all.”

I had the opportunity to visit Villa Palmar on a media jaunt in 2016, when the golf course was still an 11-hole layout near the coast, with the routing for the remaining seven inland holes just being laid out. Even though the golf course was only partially finished at the time, the resort’s facilities—rooms, dining, pools, and spa—were in full operation, and operating at a high level of quality. The rooms were clean, spacious and fully-appointed; drinks and dining were top-notch, and the eleven completed holes of the golf course were all that one would expect of a Rees Jones-designed layout.

I was very impressed, during that 2016 visit, by the overall operation of the resort. Being situated in a relatively remote location, Villa Palmar is, by necessity, highly self-sustaining. Fresh water is provided by their own in-house reverse osmosis water purification plant, and their Operations department includes comprehensive employee-training facilities, where workers drawn from the residents of nearby Loreto are trained in all aspects of the resort’s operation.

The first phase of the golf course to open, in 2016, consisted of holes 1 and 9–18, plus the practice facility. Construction was started in February 2014, and the now world-famous par-3 17th hole was moved to its stunning clifftop location in November of that year. Construction on holes 2–8 began in November 2016, and the full 18-hole layout opened on December 8, 2017.

With its dramatic cliff-hanging location overlooking the waters of the Sea of Cortez, TPC Danzante Bay’s par-3 17th hole is destined to become one of the best-known short holes in the world. (photo by Joann Dost, courtesy of Villa Palmar Resort & Spa)

The stark beauty of Villa Palmar’s remote, yet accessible, location gives travelers the feeling of being removed from the outside world. Knowing that international travel can make even the most remote locations vulnerable to influences from the outside, however, it is comforting for visitors to know that the resort recently received a Secure Travel Seal from the World Travel & Tourism Council, which informs travelers of resorts around the world which have adopted global health and hygiene protocols.

In addition to golf, activities to which the resort offers access include hiking, mountain biking, and horseback riding in the neighboring Sierra de Giganta mountains; and swimming, paddle boarding, kayaking, whale watching, and world-class fishing in the blue waters of the Sea of Cortez. Also available are boat tours of the islands which dot the waters of the UNESCO World Heritage site just offshore. Hotel perks include a fitness center, salsa dance lessons, and movie nights for children.

Complimentary shuttle service to town enables guests to explore historic Loreto and visit the 1697 mission that drew John Steinbeck and Ed “Doc” Ricketts to the port town during their scientific expedition to the region 80 years ago.

If you are looking for a quick autumn or early-winter getaway this year, consider the resort’s unlimited golf or spa package, which is available through December 20, 2020. The three-night stay package includes access to unlimited golf, with cart, per adult—which can be replaced with a variety of spa treatment packages or other resort activities. Getting to Villa Palmar is simple, with easy access via Alaska Airlines out of LAX, and either Calafia or Volaris out of Tijuana.