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 they … [Read more...]
You read it here first
Please: No wagering whatsoever should result from the insider knowledge you will absorb from these U.S. Open predictions. It wouldn't be fair to all the other people, millions of them, for as many reasons, who don't read in this space. Dustin Johnson won't repeat. Martin Kaymer won't win … [Read more...]
The Hawaii swing
Here in the World HQ of Grey Goatee Nation, we stare at a forecast for several inches of snow, and we sigh. A round of golf in the sunshine is a prospect seen only dimly down the days. Thus we consider the PGA Tour, which annually opens the New Year with back-to-backers in Hawaii, the … [Read more...]
The Queen’s Island Tour: Postscript
The back nine, especially, at Storey Creek Golf Club feels like a walk through the deep woods -- quiet and cool, breathtaking. The course's civilized amenities seem worlds away. In that setting, there is bound to be wildlife, and there was, but the biggest creatures -- deer -- were abundant and … [Read more...]
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...]
Is that a bread crust? Will it make me happy?
I can't say I know what a happy yak is supposed to look like, but I think now I'll know an unhappy yak when I see one. I have to think happiness, relative to its opposite, is far outside the existential ruminations of the yak, and the wildebeest, too, which is what I thought all those yaks … [Read more...]
Don Whitt: Tied with Nyquist for Kentucky Derby wins
The second leg of racing's Triple Crown gives entrée to bring up the only golf tournament ever named for the Triple Crown's first leg. According to the crack Grey Goatee Research Team, there really was a Kentucky Derby Open on the PGA Tour, contested for three years in the late 1950s at Seneca Golf … [Read more...]
The Open, Day 2: Will it be Willett?
2:55 p.m. St Andrews time (6:55 a.m. PDT) He's making it look easy, Danny Willett is, and he's the easy story early in this rain-delayed second round at the Old Course. I'm wondering who he is, too. The things you learn when you check in with the crack Grey Goatee research staff (suddenly … [Read more...]
Sahalee Country Club a major forerunner in the Northwest
Sahalee Players Championship carries on legacy of premier championship golf in the region by Craig Smith WHEN YOU LOOK at how much Pacific Northwest golf history has been made at Sahalee Country Club, you might think the course opened in 1869, when Washington was a territory, instead of … [Read more...]
The Firestorm Tour, Day Three: The lightning round
WINTHROP, Wash. – They take pride around here that the back side has such a different character from the front. That’s saying something at a nine-hole golf course. At Bear Creek, here in the Methow Valley in the North Cascades, they didn’t just move the blue tees 10 or 15 yards back or forward of … [Read more...]
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