Betting on golf – growing the game, or just increasing the revenue stream?

Last summer, as the opening rounds of the 2020 U.S. Women’s Open were being played, I read a social-media post relating the news that Sei Young Kim, the pre-tourney favorite and only player in the field with single-digit outright odds, had opened 4-7-5-4, and was four-over after the first four holes. I responded, somewhat in jest, as follows:

“Exhibit # 1 in the case against betting on golf.”

That post prompted an offline response from a longtime golf writer who has made the move into covering the betting side of the game:

“Or... don’t bet a 6/1 favorite? The “don’t bet golf” crowd is silliness.”

“Call me silly, then, because I feel that bringing betting into any sport is never a good idea. Gambling of all kinds has long-standing ties to organized crime, and it enables addictive behavior.”

“Oh jeez. That’s exactly why every single tour/league is fighting to have it legalized. The impact on fan investment/engagement is immeasurable. The NFL is 10% of what it is without gambling/fantasy.”

“Even legalized it’s marginal behavior.”

“…says the vocal minority.”

“Guilty as charged, and no regrets.”

“Can’t tell you how much better my job is since leaving traditional media and covering the game from a betting perspective. Also can’t tell you how many people from those traditional media places are losing their jobs every week and trying to come work for us. Not that any of that will or should change your mind, but dismissing sports gaming as “bad” is a huge whiff right now.”

“To each his own. I guess I’m lucky that I cover golf as a sideline, freelance gig, so I feel no pressure to jump on the betting bandwagon. My objections to sports betting are philosophical, and I don’t see betting improving the sport in any way except to open up another revenue stream for the corporate entities that run it.”

“I have so many friends—let alone Twitter followers, radio listeners, etc.—who were never big golf fans, but have started betting a few bucks on it each week or playing a few DFS lineups, which has turned them into massive fans. For an industry that has literally tried everything to ‪#growthegame the engagement this has forged—from new and often younger fan—is well beyond any other attempt to carve that personal investment.”

“Do they play, or just bet on the pros? Because just betting isn’t ‘growing the game.’”

“Oh, does growing the game only mean people playing more? Why wouldn’t it also mean more people consuming the product and paying greater attention on a more frequent basis? Why should we limit growing the game simply to more people playing?”

“You know, before it morphed into a larger discussion, this started as a joking reference to the wild uncertainty of betting on golf.

No, I don’t think that ‘more people consuming the product and paying greater attention on a more frequent basis’ comprises ‘growing the game’. Gambling on golf, or any sport, reduces the attention on the game to considerations of who wins or loses, or who covered the spread, or whatever, removing considerations of the beauty of execution, the satisfaction of achievement that, to me, lie at the heart of sport.

I am happy for you and all the other media folks who have lost their jobs writing about the actual playing of golf, and have found new homes promoting the gambling side of the game, but ‘growing the game’ means playing the game and/or appreciating the game, even if only as a spectator, for its intrinsic qualities, not increasing the depth of the betting pools. ”

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As I noted in my last comment in the string above, this discussion began as a joking reference to the uncertainty of betting on golf, but I have strong feelings about the other two threads that it branched into: 1) the morality of sports betting; and 2) whether legalizing betting on golf can really be characterized as “growing the game”.

I’m not going to stand up on a soapbox and preach too much about the morality of gambling on sports, but I will say this: Gambling is a known addictive behavior, and it has historically been associated (for good reason) with criminal influences being brought to bear to affect the outcome of sporting events. We all hate those guys who shout things at players on the course, right? You know, the “Get in the hole!” and “Mashed potatoes!” crowd. Well, think about it—how long will it be before some punter with a barrel of cash on a match yells during a player’s swing, intentionally, or steps on a ball in the rough? And what about the possibility of more sinister forces coming into play, like gambling syndicates influencing outcomes from behind the scenes? It has happened in boxing, in horse racing—why not golf?

As for the question of gambling “growing the game”, does increasing the fan base by the addition of eyes on the TV coverage, eyes that are only there because they’ve got money riding on the outcome, mean “growing the game”? Television coverage of golf has started to include the betting line on players that are in contention, and the talking heads in the booths refer to the odds on a player as often as they refer to the difficulty of the shot the player faces, the lie their ball is in, or their stats. It has become ubiquitous, pervasive—even during the TV coverage of the Ryder Cup, a competition that is supposed to be about no more than national pride and bragging rights, with no prize purse at stake, the broadcast made mention of the betting line.

“Growing the game” through betting only increases the revenue stream associated with the game, putting money in the pockets of the tour organizations that sanction it and the other corporate entities that back it and push it as the end-all and be-all purpose behind the game. Betting on golf doesn’t get more people out on the course or the range and it doesn’t increase sales of golf equipment or create jobs in the golf industry—the things that really represent growth in the golf industry, the things that really mean “growing the game”.

Of course, while growing the game means increasing participation and getting more people playing the game, more importantly it means increasing accessibility to the opportunity to play the game. This means making golf welcoming and available to everybody who wants to play, regardless of age, gender, race, or income level.

According to National Golf Foundation data there has been an 11% decrease in the golf facility supply in the United States since 2006, an increase that has been, in their words, “disproportionately concentrated in value-priced courses (less than $40 green fee).” That means that there is work to be done to keep golf accessible and affordable, but is that accomplished by pushing gambling on golf as the next big thing, by including odds and the betting line in televised golf, by replacing an appreciation for the beauty and skill of execution in the game with cold calculation of the odds and anticipation only of the monetary benefit of a player’s performance relative to the betting line?

No—no, it isn’t.

“Make Your Next Shot Your Best Shot”: Latest from Bob Rotella is more of the same: blah-blah-blah, rah-rah-rah ☹ ☹ ☹ ☹ ☹

Golfers are a conundrum, psychologically speaking. They are at once the most hopeful, and most pessimistic, people you will ever encounter—hoping for the best but not daring to expect it, and chasing perfection in an imperfect world, they are certain that a change of clubs, a change in their swing, a new golf ball, a fancy new grip on their putter, a different pair of shoes—almost anything, in fact—will make all the difference. Some change, some magic bullet, is all they need to open up the wonderful world of fairways and greens hit, of putts made; the world of breaking 100, 90, or 80, of low handicaps and strokes given, not gotten.

Professional golfers, as you might expect, take this to the extreme (or at least many of them do.) Take the frustration that we feel as recreational players and multiply it by factoring in the pressure of making a living for yourself— and your caddie, if you have a regular looper—or providing for your family. It’s easy to see how professionals golfers get wrapped up in their own heads and end up turning to “gurus” like Bob Rotella to guide them back out of the dark places their minds go to when fairways elude them and putts don’t drop.

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I freely admit to being skeptical when it comes to mental-game “self-help” books; as a wise man once said, “The very fact that self-help books exist is proof that they don’t work.” In fact, I am more than skeptical: I think they’re pointless nonsense, and Make Your Next Shot Your Best Shot, the latest book from Dr. Bob Rotella, does nothing to change my mind.

Supporting my case for that point of view is the choice of golfer to write the foreword to this book: Padraig Harrington. Don’t get me wrong, I think Paddy Harrington is a great guy; a real gentleman, and one of the best interviews in golf. He gives thoughtful answers to good questions—sometimes rather long and rambling, but responsive and well thought-out. But… Paddy won the Open Championship two years in a row, in 2007 & 2008 (not so unusual a feat, actually—it has been done nine times since 1900, including six times post World War II), and was ranked as high as #3 in the world—and then he decided that he needed to change his swing. 

Why would he do that? He was right up there at the pinnacle of his sport, and even followed his 2008 Open Championship win with a PGA Championship later that year. And the result of changing his swing? Within a couple of years he had dropped out of the Top 25, and a few years later began a slide that saw him bottom out at #385 in the world by late 2014.

To me, Paddy Harrington is a great example of the way that pro golfers sometimes can’t get out of their own way—so maybe they do need someone like Dr Bob whispering in their ear—but to me all of this “mental game” stuff is just common sense and can be boiled down to a few simple concepts: Play within yourself, know your game, know (and trust) your abilities; or in the (paraphrased) words of my favorite golf writer, Dan Jenkins (as spoken by pro-golfer character Bobby Joe Grooves in Dan’s golf novel Slim and None): “…keep your mind from jacking with your swing when you haven’t invited it to the shot.”

Maybe it’s because my competitive background is in two very different sports (different both from golf and from each other): motorcycle racing and gymnastics. These are sports in which you are on your own—no caddie holding your hand and giving you advice—and in which the consequences of poor choices or indecisiveness can be severe. In the case of motorcycle racing it can be high-speed crashes (been there, done that); in gymnastics it’s flying off of the apparatus in an unintended manner and landing on something other than your feet (had some close calls…). 

As consequences go, drowning a new Pro V1 in the hazard fronting a long par-3, or three-putting from four feet to turn a birdie into a bogey—well, they sort of pale in comparison, and what this means is that I learned my self-reliance skills in a school of hard knocks, and I didn’t need the words of a self-help guru like “Dr Bob” to guide me on my way.

This book is replete with pithy, self-help-ish chapter titles like “You Are What You Think About Yourself”, “Believing In You and Your Game”, and “A Quiet Mind Will Set Your Talent Free” – all sounding very self-help-seminar-at-the-convention-center, and all very eye-roll inducing.

All I can say about Make Your Next Shot Your Best Shot is that the several hours one might spend reading this book, and the $27.00 + tax that you would spend to buy it, would be better spent at your local golf course, just getting out and playing the game—and figuring it out for yourself.

Langer’s charge at PURE Insurance event is narrowly derailed; K.J. Choi notches first senior win

Pebble Beach, CA – 9/26/2021

While the 2021 European Ryder Cup team were hanging on grimly and putting on brave faces back in Wisconsin at Herb Kohler’s “Monster on Lake Michigan”, Whistling Straits, on the final day of the 2021 Ryder Cup, a former European Ryder Cup stalwart was out on the West Coast making a bid for a victory at a much more hospitable venue – Pebble Beach Golf Links – in the PGA Tour Champions event, the 2021 PURE Insurance Championship (AKA The First Tee Open).

“The PURE Insurance Championship Impacting The First Tee”, to give it its full name, is a low-key event that should be on every Central California golf fan’s go-and-see list. With free admission, small crowds, and a September schedule slot that pretty much guarantees good weather, this event is the best way to watch golf at Pebble Beach Golf Links.

The last three years have seen the event butting up against the PGA Tour’s season opener in Napa in 2019, the rescheduled U.S. Open in 2020, and this year, the Ryder Cup — a PGA Tour Champions event is a hard sell against that kind of competition.

Speaking of the Ryder Cup, the 2021 PURE Insurance event saw a former European Ryder Cup stalwart, Bernhard Langer, in the thick of things, even while his former team were taking an historic drubbing at Whistling Straits, going down 19–9 in the most lopsided result in modern-day Ryder Cup history.

Following a first-round 71 with a six-under 66 on Saturday, Langer came into the final round trailing leader K.J. Choi by two strokes. Choi, who was chasing his first PGA Tour Champions win, opened with rounds of 67 and 68, ultimately posting a final round 68 to cement his first win on the senior tour. That “two stroke” number figured strongly in the final result, both as Choi’s final margin of victory over T-2 finishers Langer and fellow countryman Alex Cejka, and as the value of the biggest stumble of Langer's round.

After starting the final round with a two-stroke deficit, Langer fell further behind Choi through the opening nine, going out in three-under 33 with birdies on holes 1, 5 and 6, while Choi went out in 31 with a birdie on 2 and a string of four more on holes 5 through 8. At Hole #10, the 437-yard par-four that marks the farthest point of the course, his drive came afoul of the left-side fairway bunker complex and he could do no better than coming out to the primary rough with his second shot, from which he took two more shots to get to the green and one-putt for a double-bogey six.

After playing to a birdie on the deceptively difficult par-four eleventh hole on the strength of a beautifully placed approach to five feet below the hole, and two-putting for par on the par-three twelfth, Langer again came to grief at the 403-yard par-four thirteenth hole.

With the hole located in the new “annex” to the green in the back right that is so tempting, and testing, Langer fired his approach shot right at the flag, but couldn’t hold the green. The ball skipped off the back of the putting surface and rolled through the closely mown area before coming to rest just inside the main cut of rough. A delicate chip into the closely mown upslope still carried enough speed to roll out on the down-sloping green to about 12 feet below the hole, but his superbly paced uphill putt performed a 90º lip-out and came to rest two inches from the hole, resulting in a hard-fought bogey that dropped him further off of Choi’s pace.

Fighting back over the remaining five holes, Langer made up another stroke with a birdie on the long, tough par-five 14th hole, shooting from 130 yards out to perfect position on the dining-room-table-sized flat area on the right side of the putting surface that is a traditional Sunday hole location, rolling in a dead-straight six-foot putt for a four

Putting out for par on #15 (and though he could not have known it, just as Collin Morikawa was finishing up with a tie on the 18th hole to clinch the Ryder Cup for the United States), Langer followed up with another par on 16 after his 30+ foot uphill birdie putt drifted right to miss by a bare two inches.

A laser-like approach shot to six feet or so above the traditional back-left flag on the par-three 7th hole led to a welcome birdie for Langer, who then ran into a little bit of trouble off the tee on Pebble’s iconic par-five closing hole. Though Langer, not being a notable long-ball hitter off the tee, would not be expected to go for the 18th green in two, his tee shot’s placement took away any possibility.

Coming to rest toward the right side of the fairway and well clear of the bunker complex, Langer’s ball was nevertheless dead blocked by the remaining fairway tree about 35 yards ahead. While this second shot from that location was a conundrum that might have stumped a lesser player, Langer solved it with a stunning 180-yard stinger that went under the canopy on the right side of the tree, shaping itself along the right-hand curve of the fairway’s edge and never rising higher than perhaps a dozen feet off of the ground.

Langer’s second shot on #18 today might be the best shot seen and noted by the fewest people in the history of this golf hole.

Following his second shot with a well-placed 130-yard pop to the green, the Münchener rolled in the birdie putt from above the hole to finish with a four-under 68 and a three-round total of 205, 11 under par.

In the meantime, leader K. J. Choi was holding onto, but not extending, his lead. Choi ultimately finished his round with a back-nine 37, bookmarking a bogey on 14 with matching sets of four pars before and after to finish at 13-under and clinch his first win on the PGA Tour Champions.

In terms of Bernhard Langer’s round, the difference between him racking up his 42nd senior-tour win (to equal his 42 European Tour wins) and K. J. Choi notching his first came down to the double-bogey on 10, and the bogey on 13 – a fairway bunker and a lipped-out putt. This shows that, even on the 50-plus circuit, the talent pool is deep and the competition is still fierce.

Ben Hogan owns a unique Ryder Cup record that may never be equaled

While the eyes of the golf world are focused on the Ryder Cup this week, I thought that it would be fun to pull away from the drama of the current year’s events to take a look at some Ryder Cup history, and ask a question. What constitutes the “best” record in the Ryder Cup? Is it the most wins, or the most points scored over time? Or is it a perfect record, unblemished by losses, or even halves? And if it is the latter, who has achieved such a record?

Well, I can tell you that only one man has, and I’m willing to bet that most golfers, if asked who that man was, would guess and toss out names like Nicklaus, Palmer, or Woods from the American side; or Faldo, Ballesteros, or Montgomerie from the GBI/European side—but they’d be wrong.

That man is Ben Hogan.

Ben Hogan at the 1967 Ryder Cup awards ceremony
Credit: PGA of America via Getty Images    Copyright: PGA of America

Hogan is not a name that comes up much in conversations about the Ryder Cup these days, but it should. The American players who are most strongly associated with the biennial competition include Jack Nicklaus, Paul Azinger, and Phil Mickelson; on the GBI/European side you’ll hear about Seve Ballesteros, Nick Faldo, Colin Montgomerie, and Ian Poulter. Ben Hogan didn’t play in as many Ryder Cups as those big names, or score as many points, but he has one distinction that none of the rest of them can match: he was undefeated, both as a player and as a captain.

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The 1947 Ryder Cup marked the return of the event to the world stage for the first time since 1937, and Ben Hogan’s first appearance in the event, as a playing captain—he remains the only man to have been chosen to captain the American squad without having played on a previous team. Foursomes and singles were the only matches that were contested in those days, and Hogan played in only one match, teaming up with good friend Jimmy Demaret in a foursomes match against Jimmy Adams and Max Faulkner, defeating the GBI duo 2-up.

Played at Portland Golf Club, in Portland, Oregon, the 1947 event was marked by controversy that came at playing captain Hogan from both sides. First, American player Vic Ghezzi, perhaps disgruntled by the serial disappointment of having been selected for three consecutive Ryder Cups that were cancelled by the war—19391, 1941, and 1943—complained that he had been discriminated against by Hogan when the captain eliminated from consideration for qualification the results of several invitational events in which Ghezzi had finished well.[i]

Second, Ghezzi also accused Hogan of pressuring tournaments to ease restrictions on the alteration of grooves on wedges, an infraction that Ghezzi had been accused of earlier that year, an accusation that was reported in the press. It is possible that these reports encouraged GBI captain Henry Cotton in alleging that the Americans were using clubs with illegal grooves. This accusation came to naught when Captain Hogan allowed the Americans’ clubs to be inspected, and all were found to be legal and conforming.

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Hogan’s next appearance in the Ryder Cup came in 1949 as a non-playing captain—the youngest, to this day, in the history of the event. Just seven-and-a-half months after the February, 1949 head-on collision with a Greyhound bus that had come close to claiming his life, Hogan led a nine-man team consisting of four veterans; Sam Snead, Jimmy Demaret, Lloyd Mangrum, and Dutch Harrison, and five rookies; Skip Alexander, Bob Hamilton, Chick Harbert, Clayton Heafner, and Johnny Palmer, against a 10-man GBI squad of eight veterans and two rookies.

The event was again marked by some controversy, on two counts: First, Hogan reopened old wounds from the 1947 Ryder Cup when he leveled charges, on the night before play was to begin, that some of the British players were using irons with grooves that were deeper than were allowed by the rules. Unlike Henry Cotton’s accusation in 1947, the charges were found to have some merit: Jock Ballantyne, the head pro of the host club, Ganton Golf Club in Yorkshire, reportedly stayed up half the night grinding the faces of several sets of clubs to bring the grooves into conformance.

Second, the U.S. team brought along their own provisions, including fresh butter and eggs, half a dozen Virginia hams, thirty pounds of bacon, and some six hundred pounds of Texas sirloin steaks, to a United Kingdom that was still subject to wartime food rationing. The furor surrounding this culinary affront died down when Hogan offered to share the American bounty with the host team.

This was still in the era of foursomes and singles matches only, and while the GBI squad led 3-1 at the end of the Friday foursomes, the U.S. team rallied back in the Saturday singles, winning six of the eight matches to post an overall winning record of 7 and 5.

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Hogan returned to Ryder Cup play in 1951 as a team member. Though thankfully unmarked by controversy, the 1951 event did score an oddity— play was split between Friday (foursomes) and Sunday (singles) so that participants and spectators (presumably) could attend a college football game on Saturday in nearby Chapel Hill, where home team North Carolina hosted the visiting Tennessee Volunteers.

The U.S. team went out to a 3–1 lead in the Friday foursome matches, Hogan and good friend Jimmy Demaret teaming up once again and defeating the GBI duo of Fred Day and Ken Bousfield, 5 & 4.

Despite their strong play on Friday (the three matches they won went 5 & 3, 5 & 4, 5 & 4), the American Ryder Cup squad stayed in Pinehurst and practiced on Saturday, while the visiting GBI squad attended the American football game (and likely wondered at the name, given that only one member of the team ever touches the ball with his foot.) The visiting team, Tennessee, won in a rout, 27–0, but any hopes of foreshadowing for the GBI Ryder Cup squad was crushed during Sunday’s singles matches.

The U.S. team dominated the Sunday singles, 6-1-1, adding 6½ points to their Friday total for a 9½–2½ trouncing of the GBI squad. Hogan, playing in his first, and only, Ryder Cup singles match, defeated Britain’s Charlie Ward 3 & 2. It was to be the last Ryder Cup point he ever scored.

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Hogan didn’t return to the Ryder Cup until 1967, when he took the U.S. squad down the road to Champions Golf Club in Houston, Texas as a non-playing captain.

Not taking it any easier on his team than he ever had on himself, Hogan imposed a 10:30 pm. curfew and early practice sessions on his squad of five veterans and five rookies.

It was evident, however, that Hogan had confidence in his team. At the opening night dinner, after GBI squad captain Dai Rees, a loquacious Welshman, waxed lyrical (and overlong) about the virtues of each of his players in his introductory remarks, Hogan kept his speech short and sweet. After introducing each player by name only, and with his entire team standing, Hogan said, “Ladies and gentlemen, the U.S. Ryder Cup Team—the finest golfers in the world.” 

There was noticeable friction between Hogan and one of his players, though: Arnold Palmer. The two had always had a frosty relationship, and a couple of incidents during the 1967 Ryder Cup only deepened the permafrost.

In an interesting move that would form the basis of the one question I would most like to ask Mr Hogan, given the chance, he opted for his team to play the smaller (1.62-inch diameter) British ball, as was the option in those days.[ii] The decision to play the smaller ball led to a bit of internal controversy between Hogan and Palmer. Details of the exchange vary, but allegedly when Palmer, who had obviously forgotten to practice with the 1.62-inch ball, asked Hogan if he had brought any, Hogan snapped back, “Did you remember to bring your clubs?”[iii]

Of course, it probably hadn’t helped things that Palmer had shown up a couple of days late for practice rounds, and then took a few members of the GBI squad up for a ride in the Rockwell Jet Commander aircraft that he had bought the year before.[iv] After climbing to 8,000 feet and rolling the aircraft, Palmer circled dangerously low over the golf course on final approach before landing. Billy Casper was on the course at the time, and later recalled that when Palmer flew over in the jet, with his wheels down, he was so low that, “I could have hit a wedge over that plane.” Tournament host and Champions Club co-founder Jimmy Demaret quipped, “The only time I’ve ever seen a plane fly under the eaves of a clubhouse.”[v]

The stunt earned Palmer a letter of severe reprimand from the Federal Aviation Administration, and a rebuke from Hogan.

After Palmer and partner Gardner Dickinson won their Friday foursomes matches 2 & 1 over the Anglo/Irish duo of Peter Alliss and Christy O’Connor in the morning, and 5 & 4 over another Anglo/Irish pairing, Malcolm Gregson and Hugh Boyle in the afternoon, Palmer was sat out in the morning for the Saturday fourball (better-ball) matches, a 1963 addition to the Ryder Cup format. This is often seen as a slight against Palmer, who agreed in public with his captain’s decision, and later admitted in private that he was a bit tired.[vi] Julius Boros, who had 14 PGA Tour wins to his credit by this time, and two U.S. Open wins (1952, 1963) also sat out Saturday morning after playing morning and afternoon on Friday.

Saturday afternoon saw the two rested players, Palmer and Boros, paired up against Scotsman George Will and Irishman Hugh Boyle in a hard-fought match. The American pair were 4-down at the turn, and battled back to a 1-up win that was the closest U.S. victory of the afternoon.

The Sunday singles matches were dominated by Captain Hogan’s American players 5–3 in the morning and 5½ –2½ in the afternoon, for an overall score of USA–23 ½, GBI–8 ½.

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Ben Hogan’s record of three Ryder Cup wins doesn’t sound too impressive compared to the points totals toted up by some modern-day players, but his opportunities to rack up points was limited by the war years, and by the fact that his Ryder Cup playing days came before the addition of a day of fourball matches between foursome and singles. In one category, though, he stands out above all others: he is the only man whose Ryder Cup record, both as a player and a captain, has that pair of zeroes after the win count: 3–0–0. 

Ben Hogan – undefeated.

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[i] Dodson, James; Ben Hogan: An American Life, pg. 213

[ii] The Montreal Gazette; October 20, 1967 

[iii] Sampson, Curt; Hogan, pg. 229

[iv] https://www.arnoldpalmer.com/aviation

[v] Dodson, James; Ben Hogan: An American Life, pg. 475

[vi] Feherty, David & Frank, James A.; David Feherty’s Totally Subjective History of the Ryder Cup, pg. 146

Late-Sunday Cal-Stanford alumni matchup at Fortinet Championship goes Cal’s way as Max Homa wins

“I’d rather be lucky than good” was one of my late father’s favorite sayings, but what’s hard to beat is someone who’s both—and that sums up 8-year Tour pro Max Homa’s final round at the Fortinet Championship pretty well.

Opening the tournament with a 5-under 67 was a good start for the 2013 Cal grad, but following the 67 with an even-par 72 must have made for a tense Friday evening—he was not to know this, of course, but no one else who carded an even-par round on Friday finished better than T-22, and 18 of those who did, missed the cut.

Still, Homa’s five-under standing was good enough to make the cut with a shot or two to spare, and a Saturday pairing with fellow SoCal native and notable positive-thinker Phil Mickelson may have been just what the doctor ordered for him. After a so-so one-under opening nine in which he balanced two bogeys against three birdies, Homa and Mickelson had a chat and decided that they both needed to get something done on the back nine.

It worked. Mickelson ran off a string of five birdies after a bogey on the 12th, and Homa birdied six of the nine holes, including a string of three to close out the round, with no bogeys, for a back-nine 30. The “moving day” 65 put Homa in a five-way tie for 3rd, two strokes behind co-leaders Maverick McNealy and Jim Knous.

Homa and McNealy ran off identical 33s on the front nine on Sunday, and Homa slipped back by a stroke with an untimely bogey and the par-4 10th hole—but it was at the 12th, a relatively straightforward 393-yard par-four, that things began to get interesting.

Homa’s drive strayed right and ended up in a reasonable lie in the right rough, leaving him 94 yards to the back-center flag. Trusting in the advice of his caddy, Joe Greiner, Homa lofted a shot to the center of the green that took three hops and rolled on a curving left-to-right path right into the cup for an eagle—and all of a sudden he was one back of the leader McNealy. Skill? Yes, but even Homa admitted after the round that it was a lucky shot.

Stanford grad McNealy, whose game had cooled off after a second-round 64, opened his fourth-round back nine with a string of six pars, while Homa followed the pitch-in eagle on 12 with a birdie on 13 to tie the lead. For the next three holes nothing changed, as the two carded identical pars on holes 14 through 16—and then came the 17th hole.

Max Homa hit two pure shots, one from the tee and one from the fairway that landed 18 feet above the hole, and rolled in a tricky right-to-left downhill slider to make birdie, and take over the lead, by a stroke, from McNealy.

McNealy, on the other hand, fared rather less well on the 17th hole than his namesake automobile—a nondescript compact marketed by Ford in the 1970s—ever had in the marketplace.

Coming over the top with probably the only bad swing he had made all day, McNealy’s tee shot at the 361-yard par-four hit a tree on the right and dropped well short, leaving him farther from the hole—189 yards—than he was from the tee. His second flew the green, and his chip from the trampled-down rough behind the putting surface raced by the hole on the downslope and ran off the front of the green. Another chip, from the front apron, left him an 11-foot bogey putt down the hill, which narrowly missed, followed by a two-footer for double-bogey that finally dropped.

And just like that, Max Homa was the tournament leader by three strokes.

A sloppy but routine par at the 18th by Homa put McNealy in the unenviable position of having to hole out from the fairway to tie the round and force a playoff. That fairytale scenario didn’t pan out, but the young man who literally grew up on Pebble Beach Golf Links before his family moved to Hillsborough, on the San Francisco Peninsula, when he was a teen, and who was more interested in hockey than golf before walking on to the Stanford Men’s Golf team, showed his fortitude on the final hole. With a calm that showed that he had put the relative ugliness of the previous hole behind him, he striped a center-cut drive down the final fairway, followed by a beauty of a shot to the back of the green at the par-five 18th, rolling in a 32-foot eagle putt to cement a solo second-place finish.

It was an exciting final-round tussle between a SoCal kid who came north to play college golf for public university Cal-Berkeley, and a NorCal native who made his mark on the team for the exclusive private university across the bay. This was Homa’s third win, and second in his home state, and while McNealy is still looking for his first PGA Tour victory, this tournament, and his narrow miss to finish second at last year’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, show that his fans are not likely to have to wait long before he hoists a trophy on the PGA Tour.

Day One is in the books at the 2021 Fortinet Championship

Given the variety of weather and playing conditions stress that has plagued the PGA Tour’s Napa Valley stop in recent years—high winds, fires, smoke-filled skies—a day that begins under a cool, grey overcast and finished under clear, sunny skies, with only light, fitful breezes, has to be considered a total win. Such was Day One of the 2021 Fortinet Championship at the Silverado Resort and Spa.

Tournament spokesman Phil Mickelson had a fair first round, opening with a 2-under 70, slotting him in at T-34 at the close of play; it was a good fit with his opening round record here at Silverado from 2016 through 2020: 69–69–65–75–71. The two other most notable names in the field, and the two top-ranked players at Silverado this week, World #1 Jon Rahm, and 2021 Masters champ and #20-ranked Hideki Matsuyama, had mixed results, due mostly to moderate to poor performances on the greens. Matsuyama closed out the day with a 3-under 69, T-23; while Rahm carded an even-par 72 to sit T-104 at the end of the day.

Sitting atop the leaderboard at the end of the first round was Kansas native and ASU grad Chez Reavie, who carded a 7-under 65 on the strength of Top 10 rankings in both Strokes-Gained-Approach and Strokes-Gained Putting. Tied for second behind Reavie are American Cameron Tringale and Canadian Adam Hadwin, both a stroke back at 6-under 66.

Among NorCal-adjacent players, SoCal native and former Cal Men’s Golf player Max Homa got his tournament off to a strong start with a 5-under 67, T-4. This is by far his best first-round performance on Silverado’s North Course, where he has opened with rounds of 72, 80 (ouch!), 72, and 70 in his past recent appearances.

Three Stanford Men’s Golf alumni, Patrick Rodgers, Maverick McNealy, and Joseph Bramlett, are next in the pack of NorCal-connected players, at 4-under, 3-under, and 3-under, respectively.

Among the former winners of this event that are in the field this year, Emiliano Grillo (2015), Brendan Steele (2016, 2017), and Kevin Tway (2018) all came in at 2-under 70, while Cameron Champ (2019) struggled to a 1-over 73.

It’s good to be back

The COVID-19 pandemic and the resultant lockdowns have led to big changes in everyone’s lives, and a part-time, freelancing golf writer like myself missing out on a few of the golf events that come to the Bay Area is of minor importance; nevertheless, it felt great to walk into the media center for the 2021 Fortinet Championship at Silverado Resort and Spa on Wednesday morning of tournament week.

A golf tournament media center is a busy place; there are always conversations going on and heads bent over the ubiquitous laptop computers. Writers and photographers come and go, heading out to the course to watch a specific player or group of players or to conduct an interview, or returning to transcribe notes, write stories, or process photos. Things quiet down in the late afternoon and evening, especially Sunday evening, when the writers who are on deadline are pounding their keyboards in earnest, thinking fast and typing faster in order to get their stories in on time.

I may not be a week-to-week denizen of golf tournament media centers, but I have spent my share of time in them over the last nine years, and they have become familiar places to me. It began with the 2012 U.S. Open at the Olympic Club—and if that’s not starting by jumping into the deep end, I don’t know what is. Since then I have covered seven more USGA championships: another U.S. Open, at Pebble Beach; two U.S. Women’s Opens, at CordeValle and the Olympic Club; two Girls’ Jr Championships, at Lake Merced Golf Club and Poppy Hills; a Jr Amateur Championship, at Martis Camp; and a Women’s Senior Amateur at CordeValle.

I have also been privileged to cover the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and the First Tee Open at Pebble Beach; the Schwab Cup Championship at TPC Harding Park; and the Frys.com Open / Safeway Open / Fortinet Championship at CordeValle, and now Silverado Resort and Spa.

Along the way I have met, and in some cases gotten to know either as nodding acquaintances or good friends, a number of the prominent names in golf coverage, both locally and nationally—people who cover the game for a living, and from whom I have learned much just by listening and reading their work. It felt strange to be a “new kid” again when I started my side gig as a golf writer, especially after having achieved something like “elder statesman” status in my engineering career, but fresh starts keep a person young, I believe, and I have enjoyed the opportunities I have had to meet those writers whose work I have been reading for years, and to learn from those pros.

Though they have been only a small part of my life, I missed the hustle and bustle of a media center during my time away due to the lockdown. It’s an environment that couldn’t be more different from the engineering-office workspaces I have been inhabited since 1981, and as I come close to bringing down the curtain on a 40+ year mechanical engineering career, I hope to be able to extend my side-gig golf-writing career to semi-fulltime status, and continue to spend time in tournament media centers.

Watch this space over the next four days as I bring you stories and insights from the PGA Tour 2021/2022 season opener—the Fortinet Championship at Silverado Resort and Spa.

A leavening of big names enriches the field in Napa this week for PGA Tour season opener

Before the PGA Tour’s changeover to the split schedule in 2013–2014, the events which were played in the Fall and early winter, after the Tour Championship, were known as the Fall Series. These tournament were generally played by a mix of young guns, mid-packers, and former greats who had slipped off their game—players who had to scramble for starts in the regular season and were looking for opportunities to play their way into, or back into, the mainstream events of the Tour.

With the onset to the split schedule some things changed, and some things stayed the same. FedEx Cup points and a shot at a Masters berth were added to the plate for these events, adding further incentive for their traditional fields, but the fields generally remained the same, with few of the big names wanting or needing to tee it up and play before the traditional season-openers in Hawaii in January.

The newly revamped Fortinet Championship (formerly the Safeway Open; before that the Frys.com Open) sits in a somewhat precarious spot in the schedule this year—after the FedEx Cup and the week-long PGA Tour “off-season”, and immediately before the Ryder Cup. The crème de la crème of American players are in Wisconsin practicing at Whistling Straits with Ryder Cup skipper Steve Stricker, so some of the big names that golf fans would love to see this week won’t be in the field. Despite that, there will still be plenty of talent, and a few big names, striding the fairways of the North Course at the Silverado Resort & Spa in Napa later this week.

One big-name early commit is fan favorite Phil Mickelson. Mickelson was the official tournament spokesman for event during its four-year run as the Safeway Open, thanks to his association with tournament organizers Lagardère Sports, and has remained in that role after the handover to cyber-security company Fortinet as presenting sponsor of the event. Presumably he doesn’t need to be in Wisconsin this week to prep for his role as a Ryder Cup vice-captain.

One surprising, and very welcome, name in the field this week is Jon Rahm, the current holder of the World #1 ranking and a member of the 2021 European Ryder Cup team that will be in Whistling Straits next week.

You have to read down the OWGR list to #20, Hideki Matsuyama, for the next top-tier name that is appearing in the field at Silverado this week, hopscotching over a bunch of guys who will be teeing it up at Whistling Straits next week, on both squads. Webb Simpson and Kevin Na round out the rest of the Top 30 players who are in the field this week.

Plenty of other notable, recognizable names are in the field, though, such PGA Tour stalwarts as Charley Hoffman, Charles Howell III, Matt Kuchar, Pat Perez, Jason Dufner, Brandt Snedeker, and Harold Varner III.

Former champions of the event who are in the field this year include Sangmoon Bae (2014) and Emiliano Grillo (2015) from the Frys.com Open days; Brendan Steele (2016, 2017), the first Safeway Open champ, who liked it so well he came back and did it again the next year; and Kevin Tway (2018). Other players of note whom fans will be able to see this week are Danny Willett, who benefitted from Jordan Spieth’s 2016 Masters meltdown to take home that year’s green jacket; and newly named PGA Tour Rookie of the Year, Will Zalatoris.

Players of particular interest to Northern California golf fans include 2019 winner Cameron Champ, of Sacramento; Kevin Chappell, out of Fresno and UCLA; former Stanford Men’s golf team members Patrick Rodgers, Brandon Wu, San José native Joseph Bramlett, and Hillsborough’s Maverick McNealy; Cal Men’s golf graduates James Hahn, of Alameda, and Max Homa; former SJSU Spartan Mark Hubbard, and Sacramento native and Fresno State grad Nick Watney.

Book Review: “A Course Called America”, by Tom Coyne ⭐⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2-⭐

Having Exhausted the British Isles, Tom Coyne Gets Exhausted in America

Tom Coyne has become a phenomenon in the world of golf. He has a minor golf-related novel to his credit, A Gentleman’s Game (2001), which was made into a movie; and he followed it up with a non-fiction book, Paper Tiger, documenting his 2004 attempt to make it to the PGA Tour. In 2008, married and a father-to-be, the college English professor then undertook to walk the perimeter of Ireland—yes, walk—and play all the links golf courses (and drink in all the pubs) that got in his way.

His Irish golf journey was documented in 2009’s A Course Called Ireland, a book that was very well received, and was followed in 2018 by A Course Called Scotland—in which he documents a run through the links courses of Scotland (with detours to the English courses of the Open rota, and a few other notables), an attempt to qualify for the 2015 Open Championship at St Andrews, and his journey through the beginnings of sobriety.

How to top those Irish and Scottish journeys? What else but take on the wide-ranging variety of courses in his native land, the United States—thus was born A Course Called America.

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I’m late to the party reading and reviewing A Course Called America, I know. It’s not like I didn’t have an early start—I received a bound galley for early review, but I found my self stopping and starting my reading of the book, then diverting my reading time to other books in my to-be-read stack, and the next thing I knew nearly four months had flown by since the book hit the street.

Part of the reason for the procrastination and delay was that, well… I just wasn’t drawn in to the narrative of Coyne’s hop-scotch, criss-cross journey across the United States “in search of the Great American Golf Course” as I had been by his previous book, A Course Called Scotland.

Much is made of the planning and set up of his meanderings, organizing convenient travel to a large number and bewildering variety of golf courses, in all fifty states of the Union. From an all-dirt (no spikes allowed) nine-hole layout on an Indian reservation in Arizona to some of the most revered and prestigious golf courses in the country—including every course that has hosted a U.S. Open—Coyne teed up a golf ball on 295 courses (at least one in every state) for 301 rounds of golf, playing with everyone from local “muni Bobs” to captains of industry (how do you think he got on at places like Cypress Point, Riviera, and National Golf Links of America?)

The trouble, at least for me when I would pick up the book again, was that all the rushing around meant that Coyne was very limited in the amount of page space that he could devote to many of the courses, and while some prestigious and/or distinctive courses got a chapter, or most of one, to themselves, many were mentioned only in passing. All in all, the narrative is less cohesive than in his Ireland and Scotland books; that is what made it difficult for me to stick with the book.

I will admit to jumping ahead to the Northern California chapters—San Francisco, California and Pebble Beach, California—out of order, and then re-reading them when I got to them in reading order, and I feel that Coyne did justice to our little corner of the golf world. I mean, what’s not to like? With layouts like Cypress Point, the Cal Club, Pasatiempo, Pebble Beach, the Olympic Club, Sharp Park, Harding Park, and Pacific Grove Golf Links, we are blessed with an embarrassment of riches (even if most of us will never set foot on some of those hallowed fairways.)

All things considered, I was leaning heavily toward no better than a four-star rating as I approached the final chapters, but his write-ups of the time he spent in California (Northern and Southern) and Hawaii, and especially closing out the book as he had begun—writing about his dad, clinched the last half-star.

I’m still not sure that Coyne made a definitive choice for the “Great American Golf Course”; but frankly, I think that there is no such thing. The variety of golf courses in the United States is reflective of the wide variety of the terrain that is available to build on, and the great variety of the people that build those courses and play the game. And while Tom Coyne may not have nailed down a candidate for the Great American Golf Course, he has certainly introduced his readers to the rich variety of courses there are to play in the USA, and similarly to the wide range of American golfers who play them. In so doing, he has done our country, and all golf fans, a great service.

NorCal golf fans can be proud of our 2021 Solheim Cup rookies

Despite the fact that the American 2021 Solheim Cup squad went down to a narrow defeat at Inverness Golf Club over the Labor Day weekend, two NorCal players who were making their first Solheim Cup appearances put up performances to be proud of.

Yealimi Noh of Team USA plays her shot from the fifth tee during her Monday Singles match against Mel Reid of England. (photo credit: 2021 Getty Images)

Mina Harigae of Monterey, and Yealimi Noh of Concord—the first a relative veteran and the other early in her career as a professional golfer—acquitted themselves well against a European squad that came to the event in fine form. Harigae is a four-time California Women’s Amateur champion (2001–2004), and Noh won the 2018 USGA Girls’ Junior Championship at Poppy Hills Golf Club, the home of the Northern California Golf Association.

Harigae, who turned pro in 2009, racked up a 1-2-0 record in her first Solheim Cup appearance. She and partner Lexi Thompson dropped their Saturday Fourball match to a dominating performance by Anna Nordqvist and Matilda Castern, and Harigae fell to experienced Solheim Cup hand Céline Boutier (4-0-0 in 2019) in the Monday singles, 4 and 3.

Noh, who is in her second year as a professional, having turned down a golf scholarship to UCLA to go pro at 18, finished the weekend 2-1-0. She was blanked in the Saturday Fourballs when she and playing partner Brittany Altomare lost a close match to Britain’s Georgia Hall and Leona Maguire of Ireland. Maguire dominated the event and set a Solheim Cup record by putting 4-1/2 points on the board for the European team in five matches.

The Monday singles saw Noh pitted against veteran UK player Mel Reid, a pro since 2007 who has played on three Solheim Cup teams: 2011, 2015, and 2017, coming into this year’s event with a 4-6-2 record. The 20-year-old from Alameda ran up an early lead, winning the first four holes against Reid, and fought off a late rally by the 33-year-old from Derby, England, winning the match on the 18th hole.

Harigae and Noh, paired together for a Sunday Fourball match, scored a win against Sophia Popov of Germany and Céline Boutier. The rookie duo established an early lead over their opponents, and were three up at the turn. Boutier and Popov, the 2020 AIG Women’s Open (Women’s British Open) winner, battled back to square the match at the 13th hole, but eventually fell to a renewed onslaught by the NorCal duo, who put up birdies on three of the last four holes against the Euro pair’s run of pars.

The Solheim Cup will return in 2023 at the Finca Cortesín Golf Club in Casares, near Málaga, Spain before switching back to an even-years rotation in 2024 to avoid conflicts with the Ryder Cup. Venues beyond 2023 have not yet been set.

Tense times at the Solheim Cup after rules controversy

It just wouldn’t be a US–EU team competition, be it Ryder Cup or Solheim Cup, without a rules controversy. This stems in part from the heightened level of tension at these events—representing your country (or continent?) and all—and in part, I believe, from the participating players’ unfamiliarity with the rules of match play, which most of them rarely play.

The incident I am referring to occurred at the 13th hole of the Inverness Golf Club, during the afternoon four-ball match pitting Nelly Korda and Ally Ewing of the USA against Nanna Koerstz-Madsen and Madelene Sagström of the EU squad. Korda had an eagle putt to win the hole which curled up and stalled right at the edge of the hole. The American player sagged to her knees in disbelief, and before she even had time to get to her feet, Sagström rushed in and scooped up the ball, effectively conceding the tap-in birdie. Sounds straightforward, right? A no-brainer concession of a kick-in putt, right?

Wrong…

In accordance with a pre-match agreement between the two captains and rules officials, the official following each match has the right—and the responsibility—to step in and make a ruling even if not called in by a player, and that is exactly what happened. The official with the match felt that the ball was overhanging the lip of the hole, and invoked Rule 13.3a, which states that “…if any part of a player’s ball overhangs the lip of the hole, the player is allowed a reasonable time to reach the hole and ten more seconds to wait and see whether the ball will fall into the hole.”

The two Euro players contended that the ball was not overhanging the hole, and was obviously in a position such that it would not have fallen. Sagström was adamant that she would “…never pick up a putt that had a chance to go in.”

The problem is that whether or not it seemed obvious that the ball would not drop, since it was overhanging—which was confirmed by video review—Korda was entitled to the chance to get to the ball and wait 10 seconds just in case it did drop. Sagström deprived her of that chance, and in accordance with one of the quirkier rules of match play, the putt was considered holed for eagle. The win on the hole gave Korda and Ewing the lead in the match, which they never relinquished, going on to win 1-up over Sagström and Koerstz-Madsen.

Reactions to the controversy on social media, which broke mostly—but not exclusively—along lines of U.S. / European Union allegiance, included accusations of cheating; outrage that the American duo called in the official; and declarations that, in the interest of “fair play” and sportsmanship the Americans should have given back the point by conceding the next hole.

Let’s go through those reactions one by one:

Cheating

Who cheated?

The Americans? No—all Nelly did was to play her ball, and watch it narrowly miss dropping in for an eagle. Neither she nor her playing partner, Ally Ewing, called in the official—indeed, both of them were equal parts mystified and upset at the ruling.

The officials? No—the official with the match invoked a rule which, though perhaps somewhat obscure, is perfectly valid, and two other officials agreed that the ball had indeed been overhanging the lip of the hole, confirming the first official’s call.

The Europeans? Well… on the face of it, all that can be said of Madelene Sagström’s actions is that she unknowingly broke a rule by being so quick to pick up the ball in conceding the putt. Though Sagström contends that she picked the ball up in the certainty that it wasn’t going to fall, the glass-half-full crowd might say that she rushed in and picked up the ball so quickly because she was afraid that it would fall in for an eagle—whether in ignorance of the rule, or in the hope that no one else would recall the rule and apply it. That line of thinking is a little too conspiratorial for my taste; I think that she acted innocently, if in ignorance.

Outrage

This one is quickly put to bed, and would never have even been brought up by anyone who paid attention to the broadcast of the events. The match official acted on her own, in full accord with the pre-match agreement between the two team captains and the rules officials. The complainants who claim that this ruling would mean that you have to wait for any ball, anywhere on the green, to drop are both ignorant of the text of the rule and ridiculous. Those who claim that the ball clearly wasn’t overhanging are guilty of, at best, wishful thinking, and at worst, willful ignorance. The officials reviewed it, they ruled that the ball was overhanging the lip of the hole, and that therefore Sagström had broken Rule 13.3b when she picked up the ball—the result of which, in match play, is that the ball is treated as holed with the previous stroke, with no penalty to her opponent.

Concession

This is the most ingenuous reaction of them all—the contention, widely ballyhooed about, that Nelly Korda and Ally Ewing should have conceded the 14th hole in protest, or something, of the ruling on the 13th green.

Folks, the Solheim Cup is a competition—not a tea party, not a friendly weekend match among friends, but a serious competition between professional athletes, people whose raison d’être is winning. That is not to say that winning cannot be accomplished in a gracious, civilized manner—it can, and indeed should be—but there is no basis, even within the bounds of sportsmanship and fair play, to give a point back to your opponent which they lost through precipitate action in ignorance of the rules.

Pressing this point in social media discussions in the immediate aftermath of the ruling resulted in my being accused of being unsportsmanlike and having no sense of fair play. I was also told that I will never have another putt conceded to me for the rest of my life.

My response to all that is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

I don’t know if conceding the next hole would have been against the rules, but I am pretty sure that it would have earned Nelly Korda and Ally Ewing a stern talking-to from Captain Pat Hurst, and possibly from some of the co-captains, and the rest of the team. The ruling was odd, and unexpected, and possibly outside of the experience of the players involved, but it was correct.

To sum up…

The point of the rules of golf, even the complex, obtuse, or seemingly unnecessary ones, is to remove uncertainty. Many of the people who weighed in on this situation in the online discussions that I was witness to were adamant that Nelly Korda’s ball would never, never, have fallen in to the hole, and they are probably right. In the absence of a sudden wind gust, an earthquake, or an explosion nearby à la the closing scenes of Caddyshack, that ball would not have fallen into the hole for eagle.

But you can’t be absolutely, 100%, certain that it would not have fallen—and that’s where Rule 13.3a comes in. Nelly was allowed to take a reasonable time to get to the hole, wait ten seconds, and tap the ball in for birdie if it hadn’t fallen. Whether out of ignorance or malice, Madelene Sagström took that possibility, remote as it might have been, away from Nelly—and paid the price.

And I’ll bet she keeps her hands in her pockets, and away from her competitors’ golf balls, from now on…

Fortinet Championship: New kids on the block look forward to their spot on the PGA Tour calendar

It’s a fact of life in the world of corporate sponsorship of sporting events that sponsors come and go, and though not as regular as the changing of the seasons, it is as inevitable as the tide. The time has come, in that irregular cycle, for a much-loved Northern California event—the erstwhile Safeway Open, held at Napa’s Silverado Resort and Spa for the last four years, is turning over a new leaf to become the Fortinet Championship.

The Mansion at Silverado Resort and Spa, on the east side of the Napa Valley, once the home of United States Senator John Miller. (photo courtesy Silverado Resort and Spa)

Fortinet is not a name that you will necessarily be familiar with unless you are a commercial IT professional; they are a 20-year-old Silicon Valley company, headquartered in Sunnyvale, that provides enterprise security services to businesses, and educational and government institutions. The $4 billion company stepped in to take up the sponsorship of the season-opening PGA Tour event when Safeway ended a four-year run as title sponsor in 2020.

Fortinet has committed to a six-year run as title sponsor of the event, with an option for a seventh. Asked during a media day press conference last week if the company is committed to keeping the event at the Napa Valley venue, Fortinet’s Chief Marketing Officer John Maddison said that while they are not contractually obligated to the Silverado Resort and Spa, they consider it an ideal location for the event for their purposes.

The new title sponsor will be conducting a cyber-security symposium during tournament week along with partners IBM and CDW, among others, but while the IT executives and professionals are schmoozing and networking, golf fans who are just looking for a nice day out on a beautiful golf course will still get to enjoy good food, drink, and post-round entertainment, along with some golf competition on the Johnny Miller-designed North Course at Silverado Resort and Spa.

The full list of competitors for the 2021 event isn’t known yet, but Phil Mickelson, who stepped into the role of tournament spokesperson during the Safeway Open period (I’m going to miss those big cardboard Phil cutouts at my local Safeway…) through his association with sports-marketing firm Lagardére is continuing his commitment to the event. The 2019 winner, Cameron Champ, a NorCal local from Sacramento, is also committed to the tournament. Champ’s non-profit, the Cameron Champ Foundation, will hold a pro-am and a charity golf tournament on the Monday of tournament week, September 13th.

More information on the event, including parking, food and drink, volunteer and sponsorship opportunities, ticket sales and the lineup for the Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night live music concerts can be found online at https://www.fortinetchampionship.com

Equipment Review: Edge EX irons from Ben Hogan Golf ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

August 5th, 2022: I felt that I should post an update to this article to share some sad news – the Ben Hogan Golf Equipment Company is no more. I wrote about it here.

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Let’s get this out of the way right from the start—I am a big fan of everything Ben Hogan. Though I first got my hands on a golf club in junior high school, I didn’t really get interested in golf until about 18 years later, when I was introduced to the golf writing of the legendary sportswriter Dan Jenkins.

Jenkins, like Hogan a native of Fort Worth, Texas, started covering Hogan’s career as a college freshman writing for the old Fort Worth Press. His admiration for Ben Hogan rubbed off on me through my reading, and my interest in all things Hogan eventually extended to the golf clubs manufactured by the company Hogan founded in the early 1950s, Ben Hogan Golf.

Over the years I have acquired four sets of Hogan irons of various vintages (most recently a nice 3–PW set of Hogan Apex Plus cavity-back irons with the rare Apex 4 graphite shafts), so it was with much interest that I followed the revival of Ben Hogan Golf as an equipment manufacturer back in 2016. I tested and reviewed their original Fort Worth irons back then, and was very impressed by their design, build quality, and performance, even though I felt that their use of loft numbering rather than traditional club-numbering designations was a bit odd.

Jump forward five years to 2021 and we find the reboot of the Ben Hogan Golf Company going strong, having defined the direct-to-consumer business model for golf clubs. I have been keeping my eye on the company’s offerings since 2016, and a couple of months ago I took advantage of their demo program to try (and buy) my first new driver in more years than I care to admit. When I first saw the new Edge EX irons I knew I would have to try them, too.

Why the Edge EX?

I was drawn to the Edge EX, Ben Hogan Golf’s new entry in the “Game-Improvement Irons” category, by their resemblance to the Apex Edge irons of the original Ben Hogan Golf Company (of which I own a pair: new-old-stock 5-iron and 6-iron with Apex 4 graphite shafts), and by the fact that though they are labeled “game improvement” they don’t have that “shovels for duffers” look that is so common to many entries in the category.

The hybrid cavity/muscle-back “Open Cavity” design, which the Edge EX has in common with the Apex Edge of 20 years ago, is a proven way of combining the low/rearward mass placement that is instru-mental in helping get a ball up in the air with the (moderately) wide sole that helps make these clubs friendly in the hands of mid-to-high handicappers.

The open-cavity back and perimeter weighting of the new Ben Hogan Edge EX irons combine for its high-launch characteristics and forgiveness on mishits. (Photo by author)

Speaking of the sole, the Ben Hogan V-Sole design, which combines a high-bounce leading edge with a low-bounce trailing edge, is a big contributor to the player-friendliness of the Edge EX, easing turf inter-action across a wide range of conditions.

The dual-camber Hogan V-Sole design helps the Edge EX irons work smoothly through a wide range of turf conditions. (Photo by author)

The thickish topline of the Edge EX, while a feature that is disparaged by aficionados of butter-knife blades, is evidence of yet another “friendliness factor” design feature: the perimeter weighting which increases forgiveness on mishits.

While some may not care much for the topline view of the Ben Hogan Edge EX irons, the perimeter weighting that it represents increases forgiveness on mishits. (Photo by author)

Other features I like are the lofts and gapping which are employed in the Edge EX design. The people at Ben Hogan Golf believe in con-sistent gapping—all of their iron sets use 4º loft increments—and the Edge EX irons use lofts that are two degrees stronger than their Icon and PTx Pro irons for that little bit of extra help, distance-wise, for the players for whom these clubs are designed. (It is worth noting, how-ever, that the Edge EX lofts are two to three degrees weaker than offerings in the same category from most other manufacturers.)

Personally, I think that a high launch is more desirable than the potential distance gain from jacked-up iron lofts, and higher-lofted irons are easier to hit, so Edge EX lofts that are only a couple of degrees stronger than Hogan’s player’s irons seem a reasonable compromise to me.

Demo-ing the Edge EX

I took advantage of Ben Hogan Golf’s demo program to try out the Edge EX for myself. As part of the tryout I did a bit of a comparison test against the 7-iron from my current gamers, the Sub70 Golf 639 CB irons with stiff KBS Tour-V 90 shafts, as well as the 7-irons from three of my sets of vintage Hogan irons: Apex Plus with Apex 4 (stiff) steel shaft, Apex Plus with Apex 4 graphite shaft, and Edge CFT with Apex 3 (regular flex) graphite shaft. My demo Edge EX 7-iron was fitted with the KBS Tour 90 S-flex shaft.

I chose to play off the Edge CFT, a lesser-known offering from the old Hogan Company, against the Edge EX because it is a similar open-cavity design, but with a Compression Forged Titanium (ergo “CFT”) face brazed into a stainless-steel body. The use of strong, lightweight titanium for the face, in conjunction with the open cavity back and perimeter-weighted design, maximized forgiveness in these clubs which were, in my estimation, ahead of their time and never fully appreciated for their playing qualities.

In two range sessions with the Edge EX and my lineup of comparison clubs I particularly noted the similarity in feel and ball flight between the Edge EX and the Edge CFT, which I attribute to the similarities in design shared by the two. Both feature a high, controllable ball flight and a smooth feel at impact (even if you’re not wearing a nickel-sized bald spot into the center of the club face.)

The loft of the Edge EX 7-iron, at 32º, was two degrees stronger than the clubs I was comparing it to, and relying on eyeball evaluation of ball flight alone I judged it be similar in distance, with higher ball flight (in my hands), especially compared to the older Apex Plus irons, regardless of shaft material. The V-Sole design of the Edge EX allowed the club to work smoothly through even the less-than-ideal turf conditions at the range where I was testing the club (they move the ropes on Mondays, but I was only able to get to the range on weekends—because I still have a day job—so the hitting areas were generally a bit chewed up.)

Despite its standard lie and regular-sized grip, rather than the 1º flat and midsize grip that is my preferred setup, I found the demo Edge EX to be a comfortable, consistent club to play with, and even in the hands of this high-handicapper (slightly higher than average, I admit—I need to get out and play more golf) it is workable, right and left, if you feel the need to play with ball-flight shape.

The bottom-line result of my club testing of the Edge EX—two range sessions, comparing shots to some vintage Hogan irons and my current Sub70 gamers—is that slightly more than a year after buying the Sub70s, I am contemplating the purchase of another new set of irons.

To be honest, if the folks at Ben Hogan Golf were to combine the updated open-cavity design of the Edge EX with the titanium face technology of the 2003-vintage Edge CFT, I wouldn’t be thinking twice about that purchase.

Book Review: “The Murder of Marion Miley”, by Beverly Bell ⭐️⭐️⭐️☆☆

Given that The Murder of Marion Miley is about the murder of a talented and in her time, well-known, American amateur golfer, I debated whether to place this review in my golf-related blog, Will o'the Glen on Golf, or my book-review blog, Will o'the Glen on Books. Solomon-like, I decided to have it both ways and post it in both.

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Though this book reads like fiction, Marion Miley was a real person, and the broader outline of events described in the book actually happened: 27-year-old Marion and her mother, Elsie, were shot and killed during a late-night break-in and robbery at the Lexington, Kentucky, country club where they shared an upstairs apartment. Marion’s father, Fred Miley, formerly employed at the Lexington Country Club, was still married to her mother, but had taken a job at another golf club, in Cincinnati, Ohio, and lived apart from his wife and daughter.

Marion was a well known amateur golfer who competed against, and often defeated, such legends of the women’s game as Glenna Collett Vare, Babe Didrikson, and Patty Berg. Amateur golf being a much more glamorous and high-profile game at the time, Marion was a well-known name, and rubbed elbows with such famous personalities as Bing Crosby, and the former British king, Edward VIII, and his wife, the twice-divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson.

The timing of the events recounted in the book, just over two months before America’s entry into the Second World War on December 7, 1941, meant that this story has largely been relegated to a footnote in history. Beverly Bell’s efforts to bring the story of Marion’s death to the attention of the public 80 years after the fact are well intentioned, but, in my assessment, fall short of the mark.

The novelization of true events is a problematic task, even when preceded, as was done in this case, with an author’s note disclaimer that “(a)ll dialogue and journal writings are imagined.” Given the amount of the text that is given over to such imagined entities, the imaginary content seriously overtakes the factual, and I couldn’t help but think, after closing the cover on the final pages of the book, that this was a case of a strong magazine article being teased out to book length, and doing a disservice to the story in the process.

I found the book’s structure problematic, opening as it did with a clinical—and not for the squeamish—description of Marion’s injuries from the two bullets that took her life; even more problematic were the subsequent random meanderings of the narrative voice between a variety of points-of-view: the police investigating the crime; Marion’s father, as he attempts to deal with the loss of both his wife and daughter at one stroke; Marion’s best friend, Frances “Fritz” Laval; and the perpetrators of the murders. The constantly changing voice was confusing, and made it difficult to keep track of both events and characters—some of whom, it turns out, were fabricated from the whole cloth by the author.

Given the fact that the publisher, South Limestone Books, is an imprint of the University of Kentucky Press, I was also surprised by instances of clumsy phrasing and sentence structure which an attentive and competent copy editor would have caught and corrected. Such matters detract from the overall impression of a book, more so perhaps for technically savvy readers than for others, but they can be like little trip-stones that interrupt one’s reading by interjecting a jarring sense of discord into the flow of the story.

I will stop short of a full dismissal of this book, but I cannot, in conscience, give it a strong recommendation. Marion Miley’s life and tragic death is a story that was worth the telling, and it’s unfortunate that this effort falls so far short of what the story of her life deserved, because given its relatively minor status in the larger scheme of the events of the time, even within the confines of the game of golf, it is unlikely that there will be another attempt.