The idea to play both George Wright and Franklin Park in a day came about last October when Kevin Van Cleef said it was one his golf bucket list. The idea, like all great ideas, stuck with us. We stayed in touch and every now and then we’d remind each other of our plan for a day of local golf decadence in Dorchester and Jamaica Plain.
Read MoreWhen it comes to medals, one gold medal should be handed out, but silver and bronze in an event like golf should have multiple medal winners. Over the next five Olympics, a seven man playoff might be the exception and not the rule. And having seven bronze medalists on the podium would genuinely look ridiculous. But it’s how the event is set up. Stroke play leads to ties. A gold medal playoff would be exceptional, but bronze? Blah.
Read MoreI’ve had my butt kicked by Bethpage Black and watched balls tumble off ledges a Shattuck Golf Course. I’ve hit blind tee shots at Tralee only to never see the ball again. I’ve hunted through endless acres of fescue at courses near and far. I’ve three putted from 15 feet above the holes at countless Donald Ross designs.
Read MoreMichael Thorbjornsen beat Matt Parziale to win the 113th Massachusetts State Amateur in style. A historic match between two national champions at their peak.
Read MoreThe clang of a golfball striking the flagstick will never replace a golf ball rattling around the bottom of the cup. It’s an age old sound that rings through every golfers soul when a ball tumbles over the edge of the earth and into the cup. It’s the sound of success and satisfaction, but I am here to tell you that I’ve decided to eschew that wonderful sound for the satisfaction of making more putts.
Read MoreThe horn blew as we walked off the 17th green at Fall River Country Club. We had been watching the dark thunder clouds roll in slowly, and I prayed after the first rumble that it might be far enough that we could play the final hole before we were called off the course.
My prayers weren’t answered. They rarely are on the golf course.
Read MoreGolf’s major season is coming at us thick and fast which means on every 72nd hole and every post-round analysis we’re inundated with conjecture about the tidal wave of majors that so-and-so will claim now that they’ve finally won their first. Yuka Saso, the 19 year old who won the US Women’s Open is the most recent recipient of this excitement; Hideki Matsuyama was another. I even heard serious discussion about how Phil Mickelson’s PGA Championship at Kiawah might be a harbinger for a mini-wave of major contention for the 50 year-old. Get him on the right course, they say, and he can compete.
Read MoreThe little pine trees along the right side of the fairways seemed innocuous enough. Short and stout, built to create some separation between the 8th and 9th holes. As my golf ball drifted in their direction from the tee box, I assumed my competitive round had started like most of them - with a nervous swing that looped to the right like a kite searching for a gust of wind on a calm day. My playing partners teed off and we headed on down the fairway in search of our golf balls. We had 54 holes of golf ahead of us.
Read MoreShort game instructors are my Instagram models. I scroll through my feed watching James Ridyard and James Oh hit nippy wedges as I wipe the drool from the corner of my mouth hoping to find the secret to what makes it look so easy. Is it their tempo? Set-up? Grip? Do I need to change my name to “James”? Is it just God-given talent that I somehow didn’t receive? I’ll double tap to like (maybe they’ll notice me…) or sometimes I’ll be so bold as to write a comment.
Read MorePhil Mickelson provided golf with it’s latest perfect storm at a course shaped by a Hurricane 32 years ago.
Read MoreOver the last year, I have played dozens of brand new courses as I try to play every course in Massachusetts. I have also returned to courses I have played previously. The courses I am familiar with aren’t always a warm blanket on a cool evening, some of them have their own little demons hiding around the course. Poor shots and big numbers spin in the back of my mind, but so do birdies and great par saves and what iron I like to hit into a particular par 3. The guess work is more limited, and that is a nice feeling. But there can be such a thing as too much knowledge.
Read MoreIn golf’s case, the 9 hole and 18 hole rounds are etched in stone as “proper golf.” A nice neat package of holes. When I poked around the Internet for people’s thoughts on 12 hole golf courses, a lot of what I found was written either in the late 2000s (when golf courses were hurting for money and needed to sell off land) or from 2019/2020 as the game has exploded and courses fill with golfers looking for a safe way to socialize and exercise.
Read MoreThe word “fun” has permeated sports writing and discussion over the last handful of years. In particular NBA and golf media have beaten the word so thoroughly into the ground that it’s lost all meaning. Damian Lillard is fun to watch. The Phoenix Suns are fun to watch. Bill Simmons and Zach Lowe discuss their most “fun” NBA League Pass teams each year.
Golf is the same.
Read MoreIn my experience over the last few years, the five hour round is becoming the norm instead of the exception. I think nowadays golfers plan for rounds that are closer to five hours than four. Unlike me who stands in the threshold of my apartment and foolishly counts out four hours on my fingers, adds in the commute, and declares a return time to my wife.
Read MoreRory McIlroy and Phil Mickelson both experienced heartache at Augusta National. It took Phil a decade of competing at The Masters before breaking through and winning. Rory is chasing the career grand slam and his first Masters win. Their paths have some similarities.
Read MoreEvery good golf course provides variety and challenge and enjoyment. That’s nothing new or earth-shattering, but the next time you play golf with some friends, pay attention to one specific conversation you have and how often you have it. It’s the one you have as you walk off the green and look back down the fairway trying to figure out if there’s another club you could have hit off the tee. The conversation might start with, “I’m not sure driver is the play off the tee” or “I think I’d hit a long iron off that tee next time” or “It might be better to just bang 3-wood up near the green instead of laying back.”
Read MoreCape Cod Country Club is owned by Friel Golf Management who is planning to sell the land so it can be turned into a solar field. This isn’t the only public golf course that the Friel’s are selling off. In Hudson, NH, their father’s 60 year old course is slated to become a logistics center.
Read MoreThere’s nothing like walking a golf course. The clubs clanging off each other, the blood pumping, the mind clearing. Like a mountain climber, the golf walker must consider what they wish to carry on a given round. Beers (or… soda…) provide a weighty start and a light finish at the summit. A pessimist might stash away too many golf balls, the optimist, too few. In the fall, an extra layer or winter hat might require space in the bag, too.
Read MoreSome golf balls spend their eternity clanging around in a drawer or a compartment in the trunk of a car. Others sit on a wall plaque commemorating a hole-in-one or a favorite round. Others rest deep in the woods, after rattling through the trees. It hears the occasional group crunching through the forest but can’t call out for help. It watches time go by, leaves turning and growing, rain falling, sun blazing. The cycles of the year slowly helping the ground swallow the ball up until it’s completely buried, never to be found by another golfer again.
Read More
Taconic’s 15th hole.
The parishioners rush through their prayers; their voices echo off the stain glass as each faithful servant finishes the “Our Father” at a different time. The priest’s sermon doesn’t drone on and on to the point of death inducing boredom, he seems more interested in setting the world record for transforming wine and bread into the body and blood of Christ. It would make Usain Bolt blush.
This is church in Ireland, held at breakneck speed. In and out in 35 minutes. The experience was a joy for a young boy used to hour long church services in America. My family would often joke about the mismatched church experiences. Ireland, a slow paced, “no bother” kind of place shouldn’t be rushing through Mass. It’s the home of St. Patrick, it’s a Catholic stronghold, a beacon of spirituality for the rest of the world. The religious spoken word sprint belongs in America, home of the micro-machine man. American’s are always in a rush, until they get to church, then everything slows to a screeching halt.
This same conundrum exists on the golf courses of both countries. The Irish play fast golf. Hit it, find it, hit it again. No frills and no bother. Maybe it’s the constant threat of rain that puts fire in the heels of Irish golfers. 18 holes and church on a Sunday morning in Ireland might take you 3.5 hours total. You’re lucky if you’re making the turn in that amount of time in the United States.
Golf is growing.
It’s growing slower. Most course rangers drive their carts around too nervous to ruffle any feathers and tell people to hurry up. The combination of hard seltzers and an “I paid to be here” attitude is quite combustable. Starters stand on first tees, shoulders slumped in defeat, telling a 1:30pm tee time that finishing before a 6:30 sundown might be a challenge because “it’s all backed up.” Many golfers are spending more time watching golf on the golf course than actually playing the game.
The challenge with pace of play in golf, especially weekend public golf, is tricky. On the one hand, people should be learning to golf. It’s an outdoor, active, lifelong sport. It’s a social sport, allowing for connection, and this CoVID summer has proven that golf is the perfect combination of being social, active, and outdoors. Otherwise, we’d be reading about crowded hiking trails and streams of people taking selfies on mountain summits. On the other hand, it should be played far more efficiently than it is. A day of golf is turning into a day of golf. A 30 minute drive to the course, a 4.5-5 hour and a 30 minute drive home is basically the entire day. Tear yourself out of bed early to beat the crowd? Sure, that’s sometimes a thing, but the early bird doesn’t always catch the fast-round worm. A Thursday morning round at 7:41 last week, as a twosome, took four hours.
The solutions are all available to us, there’s just no conviction to make it work. Rangers need to “Range” if you will. Push groups ahead if they fall behind, give groups a 9-hole check-in. If you’re behind after 9-holes, you don’t get to play the 10th hole (or the 11th if you’re way behind). Obviously, the fear of this mentality is that it might turn people off to the game. It’s too intimidating, too stuffy, unwelcoming to the newbie. All valid arguments. Not everyone has a friend in their lives that can usher them around a course and give them the tricks of faster play. Some people just suck and it takes them a really long time to play. If you really suck, you shouldn’t be keeping a sharp tally of your score and you shouldn’t be too worried about the tee shot you blew into the woods. Let it go, drop a ball, and continue on.
The biggest issue is just a simple awareness that we are all sharing this massive field with pins stuck in random spots. We all chose to chase a ball around and whack it with a stick. No one is more or less worthy to be there and play golf. However, this is where golf courses could really help themselves out in the long run if they did hold everyone accountable to some pace of play expectations.
Irish golfers don’t worry about their handicap and rarely play stroke play. On No Laying Up’s excellent Tourist Sauce episode about Bandon Dunes, David Mclay Kidd says that most golfers in the British Isles play stroke play once a one to keep their handicaps up to date, aside from that, they don’t care. They’re playing match play, and all they care about is winning that day’s match. When the hole is won, the hole is done. Americans are obsessed with the optics of the golf experience and their handicaps are a big part of that (I can be part of that epidemic myself) . Church, in some ways, is the same. The Irish don’t feel the need to spend longer than they need in church or on the golf course. They have no desire to prove anything to anyone about their religion or their other religion.
There are plenty of other possible explanations for the different golf and church experiences in these two countries.
Maybe the pace of play, and the pace of church, in Ireland is fast because they have other things they’d like to be doing, too. They value their time and want to spend it in different ways. Maybe they’re more aware of the people they are sharing the course with. Maybe they choose the proper tees to play from. Maybe they’re treating 18 holes more like a hike, not worrying about score all the time, and getting on with it. Maybe the rhythm of their prayers in church has found its way into their golf. Maybe, church and golf are so spiritually aligned that they’re the same thing to the Irish. Play fast and pray fast, I wonder if there’s a Saint for that.