Book Review: “The Golf 100”, by Michael Arkrush ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️☆

Michael Arkrush is a sportswriter with more than a dozen books to his credit, but one who was unfamiliar to me before this title came to my attention. His previous books have focused largely on either boxing, basketball, or coaching. He does have four previous books concerning golf, but I have only read one: Getting Up and Down: My 60 Years in Golf – an autobiography of Ken Venturi that he cowrote with Venturi, and it wasn’t until I looked up his back list that I realized that he was associated with that title.

From the first page of The Golf 100 I realized that I had been missing out. Arkrush is a writer with a casual but effective voice who writes with a touch of bantering humor.

The Golf 100, by Michael Arkrush, is full to the brim with informative
biographical sketches about one hundred of the top golfers of all time.

He set himself quite a job – as the author himself acknowledges, ranking the Top 100 golfers of all time is not so much a tough task as an impossible one, and the content of this book is sure to elicit plenty of questions and disagreement over drinks at the 19th Hole of any golf course frequented by literarily or historically inclined golfers (1).

There’s no arguing, in my mind, with the Top 10 (though if he hadn’t ranked Ben Hogan within the Top 5 I might have found myself firing off a strongly worded letter…), or even the Top 20. The further down the list one goes the more room there is for argument, but in reality, the further down the list you go the less it matters – if you are prepared to argue about the relative placement of Leo Diegel and Harold Hilton in the list of the Top 100 Golfers of All Time you should probably look for a different hobby.

Many of the names found in the bottom fifty places of the list may be unfamiliar to all but very dedicated students of the game’s history – some of the names were vaguely known to me but I couldn’t have told you much about their accomplishments before reading this book. And therein lies the raison d’être of Mr Arkrush’s efforts – the value in this books lies less in the actual ranking of golfers than it does in identifying the lesser-known personalities on the list and giving a quick sketch of their careers and accomplishments.

Quick sketch is the operative word here. The author gets through the list of 100 names in a little over 350 pages. Most of the listings range in length from three to a little over four pages; Tiger Woods rates six and a bit, and Jack Nicklaus, eight pages. Frankly there’s sometimes not a lot to say about the golfers in the lower ranks, but there is value in what the author does include, for example: John McDermott, #100, the 1911 U.S. Open winner, suffered a breakdown a few years later and spent most of his life in mental institutions; or Larry Nelson, #89, a self-taught golfer who hadn’t even picked up a club before he turned 21, taking up the game after returning from a tour as an infantry squad leader in Viet Nam. Nelson won the 1983 U.S. Open at Oakmont, closing with two under-par rounds and clinching the win over Tom Watson with a 60-foot putt that must have looked a lot like the putt that recently clinched the 2025 U.S. Open for J.J. Spaun.

Argue as you might about their places on the list, every golfer in this book deserves mention, and each has an interesting story attached to their name.

I could quibble over the structure of many of the short biographical sketches that make up this book; Arkrush sometimes shows a disorienting tendency to work through events that occurred later in the subject’s career, then jump back to formative events from their early life. He also sometimes skims over details that beg for another sentence or two of explanation and then leaves the reader hanging – for example, he mentions that Bay Area golf star Juli Inkster borrowed clubs from Patti Sheehan to play, and win, the 1981 U.S. Women’s Amateur (her second of three in a row), but doesn’t mention why. A bit of research (maybe a phone call?) and a couple of lines added to that section could have added a neat little anecdote to the story.

So, this book isn’t perfect, but it is really, really good, standing up on its own and also as a gateway to further reading for the history-minded golfer whose interest is piqued by the short sketches it presents; the three-page bibliography is a good start on further exploration for the curious reader. Father’s Day may have come and gone already this year, but for the golfer with a late-in-the-year birthday, or as a Christmas gift, this book is a serious contender for the gift list.

1) Given the opportunity, I would like to have a talk with Arkrush about the non-inclusion of Bay Area pro George Archer, the 1969 Masters winner who struggled with a learning impairment that left him unable to read any but the simplest sentences; he could only write his own name.

Flashback: Aussie comes out on top in “Lee vs Lee” 2012 Girls’ Junior Championship final

In honor of Aussie Minjee Lee gritting out a tough win this weekend at the KMPG Women’s PGA Championship – joining fellow Australian women Jan Stephenson and Karrie Webb as a three-time major winner – I would like to revisit my story (for a former outlet) of her record-setting 2012 USGA U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship win at Lake Merced Golf Club in Daly City:

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Given the number of girls in the ranks of girls’ and women’s golf who are either Asian-born or of Asian ancestry, it was almost inevitable that this would happen – Lee facing Lee for the USGA’s U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship. It is a tribute to the truly international flavor of girls’ and women’s golf, however, that the two young ladies who faced off over 36 holes of match play golf today at Lake Merced Golf Club, though sharing Korean ancestry, hail from countries on different continents, in different hemispheres, on opposite sides of the largest body of water on the planet, and are from cities that are 9300 miles apart.

Minjee Lee, 16, of Perth, Australia, raises the Glenna Collett Vare Trophy after winning the 2012 U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship at Lake Merced Golf Club. She is the first Australian to take the title.
(Photo Credit: J. Mummert – USGA)

Alison Lee, 17, is a Southern California girl from Valencia, CA, in the Santa Clarita Valley; Minjee Lee is a 16-year-old Aussie from Perth, Western Australia. Despite the geographical distance between their home cities, on the golf course at the final of the Girls’ Junior Championship the competition between the two was as close as close can be.

Starting the morning round under a blue sky, rather than the usual marine-layer overcast that had greeted early rounds all week, Alison took a 1-up lead right out of the gate with a birdie 3 at the opening hole. They halved the next two holes, then Minjee squared it up with a par to Alison’s bogey at the fourth. Another string of three halved holes followed before Minjee went one up at the par-3 eighth hole.

Using a forward tee box, #8 was playing about 133 yards to a flag tucked back right and guarded by a bunker. Both girls went for the flag and were in good position in the back lobe of the green where the hole was cut, but Minjee was closer, and made her birdie putt to go 1-up.

Halving #9 with pars, they made the turn with Minjee 1-up, and stayed that way with a halved hole at #10. The young Aussie won another hole at #11, with a birdie to Alison’s bogey, then another string of three halved holes came and went before the next change in score, this time in Alison’s favor, when she parred the long par-3 fifteenth as Alison bogeyed. Halving the last three holes, they went to the lunch break with Minjee one up over Alison.

While the players, officials, and spectators broke for lunch, the grounds crew went out to make a few changes to the course setup for the afternoon round. No hole locations were changed, but the tee markers were moved to different locations on holes 2, 3, 8, and 12.

The second round opened with another string of halved holes, but the Alison made a clutch 25-foot putt on the 137-yard par-3 third to keep from going to 2-down.

Alison made up ground on her opponent at the par-4 fifth hole, making a clean approach from the right fringe and two-putting for par, while Minjee pulled her approach into a left-hand bunker, got out cleanly but missed the par putt

The match remained all square through the next two holes, then at #8, the par-3 where Minjee had made her move to go up in the match in the morning round, Alison made a move. Stretched to 168 yards for the day’s second 18 by the move to a different tee box, the hole played the reverse of the morning round – Alison birdied, Minjee made par, and now Alison was 1-up on the round

At the long par-5 ninth hole Alison got to the front fringe in two, while Minjee’s second shot, a low stinger, bounded and ran across the green and into the rough just off the back side. Alison’s chip to the back left flag ran 20 feet past, but she made the putt for her second birdie in a row, while Minjee chipped on and two-putted for par. Alison was now two up.

The first two holes of the final nine were halved in par, then Alison went to 3-up when Minjee’s tee shot at the 168-yard twelfth hole hit short and rolled down the hill below the green. The Aussie chipped on to about eight feet below the hole, then two-putted for a bogey four, while Alison made a clean two-putt for a par.

With a 3-up lead in hand Alison was feeling good as the match came to the 66th hole, the par-4 thirteenth. Both girls striped their drives to the bottom of the drop-off fronting the green – but here is where the match started to slip away from Alison.

After a good drive to the low approach area below the green, Alison chunked a 50° wedge into the right greenside bunker. She splashed out cleanly, but missed the fairly simple 4-foot downhill par putt she was left with. Minjee flew her approach shot to the green for a 20-foot uphill birdie putt. She left it short, but rolled in the par putt– and on the heels of Alison’s mini-meltdown, picked up a shot and was only two down.

Alison’s errors compounded at the par-4 fourteenth hole when she pushed her drive into a right-hand fairway bunker and pulled a fairway wood seeking to get out of the bunker and onto the green. She topped the ball, which ricocheted off of the low shoulder in front of the bunker, killing its momentum so that it rolled out no more than forty yards down the fairway. Her medium-iron approach ran well past the hole, and with two putts, she put up a five to Minjee’s four, and gave back a hole – she was now two up with four to play.

With two bad holes behind her, Alison was feeling the pressure, and must have sensed the match starting to slip away from her. She pulled her tee shot at the long par-3 fifteenth into one of the deep bunkers left of the green, then rocketed her sand shot 20 feet past the hole, two-putted for a bogey against Minjee’s routine on-in-one, two-putt par, and squared the match.

At the par-4 sixteenth, Alison’s drove about 220 yards to the right-center on the fairway, with Minjee in equally good position just a few yards behind. Flying her approach to a spot 25 feet above the front-left hole location, Alison missed a curling downhill putt for birdie, slid the par putt past by a hair and dunked her third putt for bogey. Minjee’s approach had left her with a more straightforward uphill 5-footer, and she two putted for an easy par to go 1-up, taking the lead in the match for the first time since the 21st hole.

The pair halved seventeen in a heartbreaker. Alison got on in two from the right side of the fairway, but her 8-foot downhill birdie putt hung on the lip of the hole, but wouldn’t drop – she made par. Minjee had left her approach from the right rough in the rough below and right of the front entrance to the green. With a little popped-up flop shot, she had four feet for par – made it, and went one up with one to play – dormie.

On the dramatic par-5 closing hole, both girls made good drives, then pulled their second shots into similarly tough situations on the left side of the fairway, below a pine tree that blocked the approach to the green. Alison ran a well-judged bump-and-run shot up to a position on the green few feet below the front-left flag; Minjee was in the rough and totally blocked by the tree from a direct line to the flag – she ran her approach low and right to a position on the apron below the green. She flopped it onto the green from there, leaving herself 4 feet for par.

From her spot on the collar of the green, Alison had one chance to ensure an extension of the match – make a 6-foot birdie putt. It wasn’t to be, however – the putt slid by the hole by a narrow margin, and after Minjee made her par putt, she was the victor at +1.

The win at Lake Merced makes Minjee Lee the first Australian girl to get her name on the Glenna Collett Vare Trophy; Alison Lee, who has now played in her last (of six) Girl’s Junior, will never see her name there. The Valley Girl from Valencia has one more year of high school golf ahead of her, then she will join the ever-strong UCLA women’s golf squad, where she will undoubtedly make a fine addition to the team.

How Bay Area-adjacent golfers fared over first two days of the 2025 U.S. Open

A number of golfers with ties to the Bay Area teed it up at Oakmont Golf Club for the 2025 U.S. Open. Here’s a look at how they fared over the first two days of competition:

Collin Morikawa – A SoCal native who played for Berkeley Men’s Golf from 2015 to 2019, Morikawa tops the list of golfers with Bay Area connections after the first two days of the 2025 U.S. Open. Rounds of 70 and 74 have him sitting at 4-under, T23, seven strokes back of 36-hole leader Sam Burns.

Morikawa has the strongest major tournament cred of any NorCal player in this year’s Open, with wins at the 2020 PGA Championship at Harding Park in San Francisco, and the 2021 Open Championship (aka the British Open) at Royal St George’s Golf Club in Sandwich, England to his credit.

Maverick McNealy – The young man who was named after a 1970s Ford compact car sits one spot back of Collin Morikawa on the U.S. Open leaderboard after 36 holes. A 2017 graduate of Stanford University, McNealy turned in one of only six below-par rounds on the second day of the tournament, a one-under 69. Added to his opening-round 76, that leaves him in a nine-way tie for 36th at +5.

McNealy, who is the son of Sun Microsystems co-founder Scott McNealy, grew up at Pebble Beach and in Portola Valley, on the San Francisco Peninsula. He has one PGA Tour win to his credit, the 2024 RSM Classic, and narrowly missed out on a win at the 2021 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, where he finished second to Daniel Berger. His highest finish in a major tournament is T23 at the 2024 PGA Championship.

Sadly, Morikawa and McNealy are the only Bay Area-adjacent golfers who will be playing on the weekend in Oakmont. Others with Bay Area connections who won’t be playing the final rounds include amateur Jackson Koivun, who was born in San Jose but grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and is a rising junior at Auburn University; Mark Hubbard, a native of Denver, Colorado who played his college golf at San Jose State from 2007 to 2011; Kevin Velo, a native of Danville and former San Jose State Spartan who turned pro in 2020; and James Hahn, of Alameda, a 2013 Berkely graduate who notched his first PGA Tour win in 2015 at the then-Northern Trust Open at Riviera Country Club.

Procore Championship is returning to Napa’s Silverado Resort

PGA Tour golf comes back to California’s wine country in three months as Procore Corporation returns for its second year as the presenting sponsor of the Tour’s Napa stop, at the famed Silverado Resort & Spa, September 8–14.

Practice rounds and pro-am events start tournament week off, Monday through Wednesday, 8–10 September, with competition rounds beginning on Thursday the 11th.

The tournament has a long and varied history, stretching back to 2007 over three venues (Scottsdale, Arizona’s, Grayhawk Golf Club; CordeValle Golf Club in San Martin, California; and the current venue – Napa’s Silverado Resort & Spa) and three previous sponsors – Fry’s Electronics, Safeway, and Fortinet.

While the tournament’s spot in the PGA Tour calendar has remained fairly constant, its place in the scheme of things has not as the Tour veered from a calendar-year schedule to a split-year schedule and back again. Before the switch to a split-year schedule in 2013, this event’s early fall placement made it a post-Tour-Championship staple for newer players and fading veterans looking to boost their bank accounts while the big names took time off before the next year’s season opener in Hawaii. Starting in 2013 the event, as the Safeway Open, became the Tour’s season opener, and the awarding of FedEx Cup points boosted its appeal to players who wanted to get a jump on the year-long chase to the Tour Championship.

Previous sponsor Fortinet, an internet security firm, took over sponsorship from Safeway in 2021 with the openly admitted goal of possessing not only a prime venue in the heart of Northern California’s wine country, but THE prime spot in the PGA Tour schedule – the season opener.

Fortinet Senior VP Jim Overbeck was ambivalent, on the surface, about the change back to the calendar-year season when asked about it at a pre-tournament press conference in 2022, but the handwriting was on the wall, and the network security firm – who I always felt saw the tournament as a combination networking event and corporate party that just happened to have a golf tournament attached – pulled out of their deal with the PGA Tour and left the event’s local organizers scrambling for a presenting sponsor.

Current sponsor Procore, a construction management software company based in Carpinteria, California, is in the second-year of the two-year commitment they signed up for last year. Who knows where the event will go from here – but for now golf fans can once again look forward to enjoying good food, good wine, and world-class golf action at a handsome venue overlooked by the golden hillsides of the Napa Valley.

General admission tickets start at $55 per day and include access to PGA TOUR competition, all fan zones, and public viewing areas. Children 15 and under are admitted free with a ticketed adult (up to four per adult). Daily parking is available for $25 and can be purchased in advance online.

For a $250 daily ticket, fans looking for an upgraded experience can elevate their day at the Redwood Club, an all-new VIP shared hospitality venue behind the 18th tee. Amenities include front-row seating, a hosted daily lunch, beer and wine service, a full cash bar for spirits, and upgraded restrooms.

Ticketing information for the tournament is available online at https://procorechampionship.com/tickets/, and if an up-close, behind-the-scenes PGA Tour experience is what you are looking for, check out volunteer opportunities at https://procorechampionship.com/Volunteer/.

The NCGA’s all-new Poppy Ridge debuts May 31

Very few AGAs (1) in the United States own and operate their own golf course; in fact, only four (the NCGA, and the Oregon, Washington, and Colorado AGAs) do so, and of those four only one—the Northern California Golf Association—owns and operates two courses. Those two courses—Poppy Hills, in the Del Monte Forest on the Monterey Peninsula; and Poppy Ridge, in the midst of the vineyards and golden hills of the Livermore Valley in Contra Costa County—present two very different golf experiences encompassing the wide range of landscapes that comprise “NCGA territory”.

Poppy Hills, which opened in 1986, was the first course in the country to be built and operated by an AGA. The wooded property, which is also home to NCGA headquarters, underwent a major renovation in 2014 that improved drainage across the entire property, reduced irrigated acreage, and replaced the late-1980s-vintage irrigation system with a modern system. Now Poppy Hills’ ten-years younger sibling, Poppy Ridge, which drapes across a rolling landscape of golden hills and lush green vineyards southeast of the City of Livermore, is reopening after an even more comprehensive reworking that has resulted in what is essentially an entirely new course.

The 17th green at the new Poppy Ridge gleams in “golden hour” sunlight, overlooked by rolling hills and the soaring wind turbines that line a distant ridge. (photo credit: Joann Dost)

 

 “If you were to ask people what is a postcard of California wine country, this would be it – Jay Blasi

The new Poppy Ridge will be an eye-opener for players who were familiar with the 1996 Rees Jones layout. The original 1996 design was made up of three nine-hole loops—appropriately named Chardonnay, Merlot, and Zinfandel. This configuration allowed flexibility and variety for the golfers who came to play there, but suffered from compromises in routing and terrain that made walking the course untenable for most golfers, and could lead to time-consuming rounds of golf. The new layout, designed by course architect Jay Blasi based on guidelines provided by the NCGA, has what I consider to be a more sensible use of 27 holes of golf; it now consists of an 18-hole championship layout and the Ridge 9, a nine-hole course with seven par-4 holes and a pair of par-3s.

“We basically started over, and we built a new golf course on top of a site that used to have a golf course.” – Jay Blasi

The new layout is so different from the 1996 design that even longtime course employees have had to relearn their way around the property. Players familiar with the old Poppy Ridge will note that the 18-hole course is laid out over territory that comprised the Zinfandel nine and part of Chardonnay, mostly north of the clubhouse, while the Ridge 9 encompasses part of what used to be the Merlot nine and some of Chardonnay.

Toned Down, But Still Challenging

One of Jay Blasi’s main goals for the redesign was to improve walkability on the new 18-hole championship layout. While still a hilly course, walking 18-holes at around 6500 yards (the blue tees) is now some 2,000 yards shorter than the original setup, with 400 feet less elevation change overall.

Reworking the routing to tighten and smooth the transitions between holes involved moving some 250,000 cubic yards of soil. In many cases moving that volume of earth is done to add, or increase, contouring, but in this case that work was done, as Blasi told me, “…to soften the property, to make those transitions more manageable and easier to walk. We weren’t moving dirt to make things more exciting; the landscape was already big and beautiful and exciting—we were doing it to kind of tone it down a bit and make it more suitable for golf.”

There’s no denying that the Poppy Ridge property is a dramatic and dynamic piece of landscape on which to build a golf course. It is a property of rolling hills on which some holes rise to meet you, some lay out in front of you in full view, and others test your faith with a blind second shot. It is also criss-crossed with deeper cuts, such as the area where the drop-off-a-cliff par-three 17th hole was built. Playing at distances ranging between 154 yards from the championship (orange) tees to a mere 67 yards from the most forward tees (green), the vertical aspect of this dramatic little one-shotter will challenge a player’s club-selection skills. Its neighbor, the par-three 14th, teases with an uphill carry—more so from the forward tees—over an area of native growth; a friendly hillside to the left of the green is a safe aiming strategy for the daring carry on this hole.

Another of the goals for the new course was to make it fun and playable for all levels of golfers. Compared to the old course there is less water in play, and less sand in play. The fairways are wide and accommodating, but careful attention to placement for the approach shot will pay off, and most of the greens are open at the front to allow the ball to be run up onto the green—flying it high and landing it soft will not be the only option for hitting and holding greens.

That’s not to say that the course will be a walkover for the more highly skilled player; once in position to go for the green, careful inspection of the contours around the greens will show that there is usually a safe side and a risky side, so skillful placement of your drive or second shot will often be key to having a safer approach.

A good example of this is the par-four 6th hole, the first hole that I played during the recent preview day scramble. The fairway is wide and confidence-inspiring, as most of the fairways on the new course are, but you must be mindful of where you place your tee shot. A drive to the right side of the landing area yields an inviting approach to the green, while landing too far left leaves your approach shot blocked by mounding that leaves you facing a blind shot (2) to a (thankfully), generously sized green. In turn, the mound on the left side forms a backdrop that can help direct an overcooked approach shot, even from good position in the fairway, back onto the green.

The greens at Poppy Ridge are well-contoured, with challenging but not drastic shaping. An interesting design feature that applies to the greens as a whole is that their size relates to the difficulty of the approach shot—holes that are likely to require a long-iron approach have larger greens; those that are going to be taken on with a wedge or a short iron give the golfer a smaller target to aim at. It is risky to judge the greens of a brand-new golf course; they will always need some bedding-in time before their true character is revealed, but I think that golfers will find the greens at Poppy Ridge testing, but fair.

Teething Problems?

As I mentioned above, the new course is intended to be fun for all skill levels. Each hole features five teeing areas accommodating a range of standard yardages from 7,010 (orange) to 4,225 (green).While good in theory, my group—with one playing from the tips and three from the golds—found that the forward tees were stretched so far ahead of the longer tees that staying connected was problematic, and that, when playing from a cart, getting from the cart path to the gold or green tees often required trekking through native areas.

Another new-course teething issue that we encountered was confusion about the location of the teeing areas in the corner of the course where the 13th green, 14th tees, 18th green, and 17th tees are all clustered within a small and quite hilly area. Better signage and better definition of the teeing grounds themselves would go a long way toward eliminating confusion for players that are new to the course (as everyone will be in the near term.)

A Strong First Impression

Even with only one round on the new layout under my belt, I have already selected a favorite hole—the par-five 4th. This uphill three-shotter plays longer than the scorecard yardage thanks to the elevation gain, and while fairly straight, hands you a peek-a-boo second shot that teases the possibility of getting onto the green in two. A low, running shot with a fairway wood or hybrid might get you there if you thread the needle between a trio of smallish but well-placed bunkers placed right-left-right along the way to the putting surface. I hit one of my better 3-wood shots in recent memory on this hole and just caught the first, and largest, of those bunkers or I might have found myself, maybe not on the green in two, but certainly within Texas-wedge territory.

Windy conditions will be a testing proposition at this somewhat exposed course. It is dotted with native oak trees, but not lined with the fairway-defining rows of tall trees of a typical parkland course that would protect play from the wind. The green of the 4th and the entirety of the 16th hole are the highest points on the course, I believe, and special attention to the strength of the wind, especially in the afternoon, is warranted there.

“If you are an out-of-town guest, if you’re coming from the Midwest or the East Coast, I would venture to guess that two of your three best public options in Northern California are Poppy Ridge and Poppy Hills.” – Jay Blasi

Course designer Jay Blasi, the NCGA, and everyone associated with the creation of the new Poppy Ridge can be justifiably proud of this new course. It is a property that will take some familiarization to come to terms with, but I think that the variety of the golf holes, and of course the newness of the layout, will tempt players back again and again to build course knowledge and test strategies for assaying its dramatic landscape. It’s a good thing, then, that 60% of the NCGA’s membership lives within 60 miles of this stunning new addition to the bounteous variety of Northern California golf.

Poppy Ridge opens for play on May 31st, and the tee sheet is already full a few weeks out, but I urge everyone in the region to experience this new course as soon as they can.

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1) Allied Golf Associations, the local golf associations that collaborate with the USGA to support the game of golf in the country.

2) Despite a bit of friendly advice from the guide who led us out to the tees at #6, this is exactly what I did...

“Playing Dirty”, by Joel Beall – a “compare-and-contrast” examination of the current state of the game of golf ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️☆

Playing Dirty, by Golf Digest senior writer Joel Beall, is the newest book from the golf specialty publisher Back Nine Press. An intriguing mix of thoroughly researched investigative journalism and golf sentimentalism of the Golf in the Kingdom school of golf writing, it is a “compare-and-contrast” exercise between what might be seen as two wholly unrelated aspects of the game of golf.

The book combines a hard-news journalistic examination of the current state of men’s professional golf, specifically the effects of the influx of Saudi investment, with a somewhat dreamy-eyed look into the experience of the game as (when?) played in its ancestral homeland, Scotland. While I am myself essentially immune to the more spiritual side, if you will, of the golf experience, I deplore the grotesquely cynical approach that has been taken by the professional players who have taken the Saudi shekel, of which Joel Beall offers a concise examination.

The portions of the book that deal with the current kerfluffle in the men’s professional game are thorough, well presented, and obviously well researched—and while I for one have grown somewhat weary of reading about Saudi Arabia, the PIF, LIV Golf, and the current state of the seemingly unending negotiations between the PGA Tour and the golf-obsessed Saudi money-man Yasir Al-Rumayyan, I found a smile creeping across my face as I read the sections in Chapter 3 in which Beall skewers the LIV Golf membership, their tournament format, and the twisted rationalizations employed by the men who have taken Saudi blood money to participate in these farcical exhibitions; in these opinions we are brothers.

“LIV is a moral crisis masquerading as a golf league.”

   – Joel Beall, Playing Dirty

(You will note that I specifically define the affected aspect of the game as men’s professional golf, because for all the bandying about of the well-worn phrase “growing the game” in LIV Golf communications and the scripted diatribes delivered by LIV Golf members, it is only men’s professional golf that is affected. There is no aspect of this issue that has any impact whatsoever on the recreational game of golf as it is played by millions of people all over the world, beyond, perhaps, arguments over post-round drinks.

Not only that, but a clear-eyed assessment of the supposed “rupture” of men’s professional golf can only come to the conclusion that it is a tempest in a teapot, an over-reaction by Jay Monahan and the PGA Tour leadership to the departure of a handful of mostly fading former stars and the pick-up of some unproven newbies who lacked confidence in their abilities to make the grade in the meritocracy-based pro game as it is played on the PGA Tour.)

As for the other side of the coin: the “hie me away to the misty links” portions of the book, well, this is the bread and butter of the folks at Back Nine Press and an area where our viewpoints diverge somewhat (see my review of their 2022 release Swing, Walk, Repeat by Jay Revell.)

Beall hits the reader with this stuff right from the get-go, in the introduction, starting up with the story of an itinerant seeker-after-truth named Hess (“just Hess”) who dabbles in real estate and personal training to support his true purpose in life—playing golf. This side of the book segues into examinations of, among other things: the differences between golf in the United States and in Scotland, caddies, lists of the greatest golf courses in Scotland, descriptions of the aforementioned great courses (and others that didn’t quite make the cut), the joys of and proper ways to conduct a Scottish golf pilgrimage, etc., etc., etc. …

Don’t get me wrong, I would love to take my golf clubs to Scotland. It is, after all, the land of (some of) my ancestors, the origin of my surname, and the birthplace of the game—and I have enough of a sense of history to acknowledge the importance of that last fact. What wears me down is the insistence on attributing an air of mystical importance to the experience, a practice which I attribute to a man with whom I share a hometown—fellow Salinas, California native Michael Murphy, the author of the aforementioned Golf in the Kingdom.

Murphy’s book originated the idea of “golf’s mystical journey”, perhaps as a counterpoint to the aspirational country-club ideal of golf as the game was interpreted when it came to the United States. While golf is an everyman’s game in Scotland, and despite the fact that 75% of the golf courses in this country are open to the public either as daily-fee or municipal facilities, the non-golfing public-at-large in the United States view golf as an elitist, members-only activity for RWMs (Rich White Men). It is an image that has proven to be difficult to shake, and in the wake of the popularity of Michael Murphy’s pretentious little tome, many a golf writer has swung that pendulum to the other extreme, extolling the mystical, soul-healing qualities of this crazy game especially when played in Scotland.

Despite my impatience with tales of healing journeys to the mystical homeland of golf, I recognize the counterpoint comparison that the author is making in this book when he contrasts that side of the game, as pursued and experienced by devoted amateurs, to the cynical and unholy, if you will, pursuit of more money than a person could reasonably want or need, by professional golfers.

In Playing Dirty Joel Beall has, I believe, drawn a thoughtful comparison between two widely disparate aspects of the game of golf, contrasting the pursuit of the pure enjoyment of the game by devoted (if somewhat obsessive?) amateurs with the stubbornly obdurate pursuit of obscene wealth, in total disregard of the moral objections to the source of that wealth, by professional players who have, in many cases, already profited enormously from their ability to play this maddening game at a high level.

This book captures a snapshot of the current landscape of the game of golf which will be appreciated by thoughtful students of the game, and looked to, I think, by future scholars of the history of golf.

Does men’s pro golf really need “reunification”?

There have been plenty of social media posts made and column inches written in the golf magazines lately on the issue of healing the rift in men’s professional golf. In a recent Golf.com article, Adam Scott is quoted as saying that a “reunification[1]” agreement whereby LIV Golf defectors[2] would be welcomed back to play PGA Tour events is one way forward. Flip-flop king Rory McIlroy has gone on record saying that reunification would be “the best thing for everyone”[3]—but does the men’s professional game really need the players who have signed on with the Saudi-backed league to come back to the mainstream fold? What is there to be gained from it?

The Saudi pick-up league, initially headed up by the perennially butt-hurt Greg Norman, lured players with promises of big paychecks, which they delivered on, and OWGR points so that LIV players could still earn their way into the four men’s majors, which they have not delivered on. This classic bait-and-switch played on the “have-my-cake-and-eat-it-too” mentality of entitled and/or desperate pro golfers, some of whom may in the near future be looking back wistfully on the good old days scrambling to make cuts and a paycheck.

Let’s look at a few of the golfers who play for LIV Golf and what they bring to professional golf. We’ll start with the chief rabble-rouser:

Phil Mickelson – Fan favorite, multiple-event winner, record-holder for the oldest ever to win a major championship, FIGJAM Phil (as he is known around the Tour) has won more money on the golf course (and lost more betting on sports, including golf) than most people would earn in a dozen lifetimes, but he has for years been at odds with the PGA Tour leadership on the subject of money. As in, why don’t the players, who provide the content, get more of the cash that the Tour rakes in from TV rights, video content, etc.?

Phil raised a storm of controversy when he phoned golf writer Alan Shipnuck in May 2022 and bared his breast concerning his decision to throw in his lot with Greg Norman in his Tour-busting alliance with the Saudi-funded LIV Golf League. The storm increased in intensity when he back-pedaled, whining that the conversation had been off the record (reader, it wasn’t–gkm). He allowed as how the Saudis were “scary motherf**kers” to work with, but he was going that route in order to gain leverage to try to squeeze more gelt out of the PGA Tour (in much the same manner, I imagine, as his bookies might have been putting the squeeze on him to settle his gambling debts.)

Aside from his record-breaking 2021 PGA Championship victory, which truly was a performance for the ages, Phil had been increasingly fading into a non-presence, last playing any non-major events on the PGA Tour in late 2021 and 2022, making only one cut out of three cut events – a T-36 finish at what was then the Fortinet Championship. He hasn’t exactly set the world on fire in his time playing LIV Golf’s team scramble format, either, carding only two Top 10 individual finishes since 2023.

So, does the PGA Tour need to bring this contentious, antagonistic, aging member of the over-the-hill-club back into the fold?

Dustin Johnson – DJ, as he is known, may be the quintessential laid-back, no-worries guy. Long of limb and stride, and long off the tee, Johnson was also fading in the stats when he accepted the Saudi gelt. In his last season playing non-major Tour events he managed two Top 10 finishes and eight cuts made in 10 cut events—not exactly covering himself in glory.

Other issues have clouded Johnson’s PGA Tour career, such as a six-month suspension in 2014 for drug use (marijuana, cocaine), and at the best of times it has seemed that the slow-walking, slow-talking (slow-thinking?) South Carolina native is only out there playing golf as an easy (for him…) way to make a lot of money and support a laid-back Low Country lifestyle. His LIV Golf record is no barn-burner, either, with two wins and eight Top 10 individual finishes in the first two full seasons.

Brooks Koepka – Brooks started his pro career in 2012 busting his hump on the Challenge Tour, the (then) European Tour’s equivalent of the minor leagues. He traveled so much that he had to have extra visa pages added to his passport, won several events, and in 2014 stepped up to the PGA Tour. He enjoyed success, if somewhat focused, in the big league of golf – his nine wins include back-to-back U.S Opens in 2017 and 2018, two Phoenix Open wins (2015, 2021) and three PGA Championship titles (2018, 2019, 2023) with the last coming after he kissed Yasir Al-Rumayyan’s ring in 2022, hauled a wheelbarrow-load of money home, and put the PGA Tour in his rearview mirror.

I remember when Brooks was a humble, soft-spoken newbie on the PGA Tour, telling the assembled media at the 2014 Fry’s.com Open about eating horse meat in Kazakhstan, and other tales of the Challenge Tour, in between going through the shots of his tournament-leading second and third rounds. No one could have been more surprised than I was when he morphed into a brash, prickly “big name” in pro golf with a fragile ego and more major wins than regular tournament victories. Koepka has played consistently well since jumping ship, with five Top 10 finishes in 2023 and four in the 2024 season – but would PGA Tour fans (or PGA Tour members) welcome him back?

Patrick Reed – Reed has been a lightning rod for controversy over the years. He came up as a hard-scrabble Monday qualifier, playing his way into six PGA tour events in 2013 to earn his card for the 2014 season, but controversy has haunted his footsteps from the beginning. There were hints, and later outright accusations from his Augusta State teammates, of cheating and marginal off-course behavior, and both on- and off-course controversy in his years on the PGA tour. There was the “embedded ball” incident at Torrey Pines in 2021, his “Captain America” schtick at the Ryder Cup matches over the years, and his wife, Justine, ran a (then) Twitter account called @useGolfFACTS which was a badly disguised Patrick Reed propaganda account. His LIV Golf record is in the upper echelon, with five Top 10 finishes in 2023 and three in the 2024 season, but perhaps the jump to a guaranteed prize, Sunday-scramble, team golf format league has taken the shine off of his “Captain America” persona.

Bryson DeChambeau – What can I say about Bryson DeChambeau that hasn’t been said by scores?[4]Sure, he has won two U.S Opens – the first, in 2020, by dint of a show of bomb-and-gouge golf that gave the lie to the “just grow the rough really deep” school of thought when it comes to reining in modern-day bulked-up big hitters; and the second, just last year at a woefully overmatched Pinehurst #2, by playing well and waiting for Rory McIlroy to make a mistake (which, sadly, he did).

Quirky, mouthy, prone to using (and misusing) big words that most golf fans (and golf writers) don’t understand anyway, DeChambeau has always reminded me of that one nerdy only child with social-skills issues that we all knew when we were kids – the one who spent a lot of time around grownups, vying for their attention by showing off his awkward braininess. A physics major at Southern Methodist University who dropped out after his junior year[5], he was nicknamed “The Scientist” for his meticulous, technical approach to golf, but as a career mechanical engineer with an actual degree to my name I can tell you that a good 50% of the “technical content” he spouts is nonsense.

The quirky kid from Clovis, in California’s Central Valley, is a YouTube star now, embracing video sensationalism to “build his brand” as the kids say these days, and was a fan favorite while still on the PGA Tour. Fans might welcome home back to the home of real competitive golf – but does he deserve it?

Jon Rahm – Let’s wrap it up with the Big Man from Arizona State, the guy who told the world that he had made plenty of money and was staying with the PGA Tour, the organization that had made him, like it had the other players profiled above, a multi-millionaire. (By show of hands, who thinks that his representation team were negotiating with the Saudis at the very moment that he said this?) It has been reported that Rahm, whose physical size (6' 2", 220 pounds) is apparently matched by the size of his ego, has flattered himself that his jump to the Saudi golf league with a contract worth $300 million would be the impetus that would heal the schism and make men’s professional golf one big happy family again, though the last 20 months of ongoing negotiations between the Tour and LIV Golf representatives give the lie to that thought. Can the bitter taste that his “surprise” money-grab exit left in the mouths of players and fans be washed away sufficiently to allow his return?

There are a host of others, notable and not-so, who could be put up as examples, but compiling even the brief list above has left a bad taste in my mouth.

The bottom line is, does the PGA Tour really need these guys back? Like any athletic endeavor, professional golf experiences turnover as players age out of ability, or desire to play. Is the public recognition of the fading stars, pedestrian journeymen, and struggling newcomers that currently inhabit the LIV Golf roster such that losing them to the three-ring (round) circus LIV Golf tournaments will hurt the sport as played in the traditional, and more competitive, manner that it has been for decades?

I don’t think so.

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[1] (Meaning a common competition pool for all men’s professional golf’s players across different tours or leagues, not necessarily a conjoining of the tours themselves.)

[2] (My descriptor, not his.)

[3] (By “everyone” I think he means his bank account.) 

[4] (Gold stars for those of you who recognize the reference.)

[5] (Because recruiting violations by the football staff brought a lockout of ALL SMU athletics teams from national championships for a year.)