With the biggest and bling-iest show of the movie awards season coming up Sunday, it seems only right and fitting (like a 48 extra-long green jacket on Justin Thomas) to offer a look at some of the golf course industry's annual awards, The Grainys, from the January issue of the trade mag … [Read more...]
The Green Game
Green is the color of golf, and it’s the word we know for the philosophy and practice of sustainability, responsibility and kindness to our golf environments. It means a golf industry that pays attention to nature and lives in harmony with green and growing things and the life that calls a golf course home.
The Queen’s Island Tour, Day Three: Storey Creek
CAMPBELL RIVER, B.C. -- It's a latter-day trend at golf courses in northwestern North America. Got trees? Thin 'em out, limb 'em up, cut 'em down. Gearhart Golf Links on the Oregon coast took out 400 shore pines, and it turned the oldest club in the Northwest into a new golf course. Sahalee … [Read more...]
The Nicklaus Nine
LAKEWOOD, Wash. -- One is a Northwest icon, universally respected by his fellow pros but not a household name in the greater world of golf. The other is Jack. When Ken Still called his friend Jack Nicklaus, a few years back, he had a simple message: Buddy, you gotta design a back nine for the … [Read more...]
World History Tour, Day 3: Gearhart Golf Links
GEARHART, Ore. – It took 200 dump-truck loads to cart away the trees, uprooted so as not to leave stumps behind on the golf course. It looked like a war zone, they say, but the course never closed for a minute, even during the thick of it, and this week, more than a year and a half after the … [Read more...]
A last look at The Lone Fir Tree
It survived a working gravel and sand mine. It lived on through the abandoned site's conversion to a championship golf course. It's a Douglas fir tree, not very large or symmetrical, but now that the U.S. Open is here (and soon to leave), it makes No. 15 at Chambers Bay Golf Course the postcard … [Read more...]
Masters Week: The price of perfection
I’d love to see Augusta National, and play it, and watch The Masters in person, but with today’s crazy-good electronics, it’s the major made for TV. Only one other golf tournament in the world – The (British) Open Championship – compares as a television spectacle. If Augusta had any blemishes, the … [Read more...]
The Firestorm Tour, Day Two: Gamble Sands unveiled
BREWSTER, Wash. -- It was a question David McLay Kidd was ready, maybe even eager, to answer. Yes, Gamble Sands is a true links golf course. "As a Scotsman, I have the right to defend it," said Kidd, architect of Gamble Sands Golf Course in Brewster, Wash. , the newest course in the … [Read more...]
This damn game 6: Dawn Patrol, with woodpecker
IN THE EARLY MORNING, some days, the dew glistens in the brilliant sunshine and makes a golf ball disappear in plain sight, like it was just another point of light among millions. Today was cloudy, more burnished silver than yellow-gold shiny, and golf balls were easier to find in the odd places … [Read more...]
Where the salmon are safe and the golf is good
SHELTON, Wash. – A golf round, almost by definition, is a walk in fields of green grass, through wildlife habitat, alongside rivers, lakes, ponds or seas. If it sounds pristine, it pretty much is. There remain disbelievers -- those who think the beauty and unstinting green must have … [Read more...]
Splendor in the grass, and all it has to do is grow
Noble Hendrix is the kind of environmentalist who’d rather do it than talk circles around it. He’s firmly in the practical environmentalist camp, rather than the theoretical/philosophical/political, where even people of like minds can find much to squabble over. Golf courses grow grass. No … [Read more...]
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