Category: Essays

The Game is Alright

The Game is Alright

Let’s get one thing straight: the numbers are never going to work. They’re not coming back. At least not anytime soon. I’m talking about the swirling brew of statistics that portray golf as an imperiled game, including diminished annual rounds played, the plummeting number of committed players, golf course closings, shrinking memberships, a paucity of…

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Fast Play Manifesto

Fast Play Manifesto

First off, this is not about J.B. Holmes, that poor, maligned social media avatar for tortuously slow play. This is about you, your friends and foes, your family and your foursome. It’s about pace of play. A pox of slow play consumes the game of golf — relentlessly and severely — and we’re no longer…

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What’s Wrong With Augusta?

What’s Wrong With Augusta?

Ah, it’s that time of year—the flowering trees, the treacly theme music, crippling pollen and the lamentation of everything Augusta National gets wrong with its golf course. For many historians and a large sector of architectural observers, criticism of all that Augusta National has lost or surrendered over the decades, including the original design intent…

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Do Not Grow the Game, Preserve the Game

Do Not Grow the Game, Preserve the Game

We’re in trouble. That’s the theme the U.S. golf industry has been gaslighting since 2004 when it became evident participation rates and the number of annual rounds played were in free fall. In the time that’s passed, golf’s powers-that-be have responded to the game’s waning popularity and subsequent economic bottom-out with a unified call to…

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Bringing the Sticks–Golf in Atlanta

Bringing the Sticks–Golf in Atlanta

Let’s get one thing out of the way — the greater Atlanta area in one of the weakest golf markets of all major American cities. Which is ironic because, for many people, Georgia represents a very specific type of American golf ideal. Most of that feeling, of course, is tethered to the fantasy of Augusta National. It isn’t so…

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Houston…Where Are We Going?

Houston…Where Are We Going?

There’s a saying that the solution to a problem is often the simplest or most direct. The American Society of Golf Course Architects, who recently held their annual convention in Houston, doesn’t seem familiar with this axiom. In the last few weeks the organization has issued two “call to arms” promotions, one regarding pace of…

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East Lake: Facts & Myths

East Lake: Facts & Myths

Atlanta’s East Lake Golf Club, the “permanent” site of the TOUR Championship, is not unlike a Marvel Comics superhero. Its been cast into a role it had no intention of playing, resurrected from a lonely downward fate by powerful outside forces, refurbished to be put to use for the greater “good” fighting encroaching evils and blights. This hero has…

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