By Sally Jenkins
Editor’s note: In celebration of Golf Digest’s 70th anniversary, we’re revisiting the best literature and journalism we’ve ever published.

There are two sacred days on the annual golf calendar: Masters Sunday, which falls on the second Sunday of April, and Father’s Day, on the same day as the final round of the U.S. Open. Everything is turned upside down this year, with the Masters in November and Father’s Day without the Open. Both golf holidays have been linked in my mind because I spent about 35 years observing them on a barstool next to Dan Jenkins.

So as Father’s Day approaches, it seems appropriate to call on his talented daughter, Washington Post columnist and best-selling author Sally Jenkins to give us a little Dan. In the eulogy at his memorial service in Fort Worth last year, Sally remembered his writing: “It had the effortless vault and jauntiness of the music he loved: classic Texas swing. It’s interesting that our father wrote every bit as well and impressively about music as he did about sports, and so much of that tunefulness slipped into his prose. Here is the beginning of his game story on perhaps the greatest college football game ever played, the 1971 meeting between Nebraska and Oklahoma:

“In the land of the pickup truck and cream gravy for breakfast, down where the wind can blow through the walls of a diner and into the grieving lyrics of a country song on a jukebox—down there in dirt-kicking territory they played a football game on Thanksgiving Day that was mainly for the quarterbacks on the field and for self-styled gridiron intellectuals everywhere.”

Sally concluded her eulogy with as good a line as any father could imagine being said about him by his daughter: “When a man like our father goes, it’s an outsized loss. It’s like 100 men have left the room.”

In May 2005, Sally wrote the following story on the occasion of Dan being honoured by the Golf Writers Association of America as the winner of the William D. Richardson Award for consistently outstanding contributions to golf. Note to Dan: Sally her Ownself was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Commentary, as The Washington Post reported earlier this year, “for the breadth and vigour of her writing, which in 2019 was characteristically fearless and forthright.”

Happy Father’s Day. —Jerry Tarde

* * *

My father is, sadly, a fraud. There is the public account of him, and then there is my private one, and the two don’t agree at all. For instance, there is the Dan Jenkins who pretends he’d sooner burn small children with cigarettes than pat them on the head, and then there is the adoring, lenient father I know. There is the guy whose profane wit can force a sharp intake of breath, and there is the husband who has been devotedly married for more than 40 years. There is the cavalier veranda lounger who never seemed to take a note, and then there is the writer I’ve witnessed at home, who works with unswerving concentration.

My brothers and I might be the only people, apart from my mother, who know him for the suave faker he really is. At some point, your childhood becomes your own property, and you see it for what it was. While you were a child, it belonged to your parents, and they cast it in their terms.

“You’re having a happy childhood,” my father told me.

“I am?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I said so.”

My father speared another forkful of Raviolios from my plate and ate them. It was a nightly ritual for him to sit with me and my two brothers and share our supper before he and my mother went out for the evening. On Monday nights we ate Raviolios and they went to P.J. Clarke’s. On Tuesday we had fish sticks and they went to Elaine’s. And so on. The phone numbers of the restaurants were pasted on the wall by the phone along with the days of the week.

Once, someone asked my younger brother what it was like to grow up the son of a sportswriter and author, and his imposingly elegant and successful wife. She was always opening critically acclaimed restaurants, and he was always reinventing forms of journalism and writing bestsellers in alarmingly casual-seeming fashion.

My brother considered the question.

“They were out every night, and when they came home they went to Europe,” he said.

Yet somehow my father, despite his globe-circling, and reputation for enjoying the smartening effects of scotch, managed to provide us with a childhood that was, in fact, happy and healthy. How did he accomplish this? One of his methods was a deceptive sobriety, another was a veiled attentiveness to his family, and yet another was a sly conscientiousness at his work.

The dinner hour was always ours. My parents would sit at the kitchen table with their three children, and their three tall glasses of milk. My father would talk to us while he stole bites of our baby food. Alphabet soup. Creamed corn. Franks and beans. Stouffer’s frozen vegetables.

“Daddy?”

“Yes?”

“I learned a joke today.”

“Tell it.”

“What’s green and lives in the sea?”

“What?”

“Moby Pickle.”

He began giggling helplessly at the absurdity of the joke, and couldn’t stop for the next five minutes, while around him, three pajamaed urchins capsized their milk with delight.

The rest of the world has its view of Dan Jenkins, and I have mine. It’s impossible for me to read his life’s work with professional detachment because for every U.S. Open story, there was a family summer. The combined quality and volume of his writing on golf, as well as hundreds of other subjects, is all the more impressive to me in light of the fact that he managed to produce it while also attending school plays, writing checks to orthodontists, mustering private-school tuitions and lifting the family luggage. All of which he made seem effortless. His fathering style, interestingly, was not much different from his writing style, which is to say, excellence disguised as offhandedness.

Some of the stories, of course, represent absences. But not as many as you would think. He managed to be, despite my brother’s joke, a vividly present father. He often took us with him; we scampered with impunity through press rooms, and carried hot coffee to him, and surely must have pestered him, though he never complained about it. Others might have found him acerbic; we only found him gently or hysterically funny. While his readers might be amazed to discover he had children, his children were amazed to discover he had readers.

Look again at the writing of Dan Jenkins, and ask yourself if it could have been as effortless to write as it is to read. Peruse the easy rhythms and the jauntiness of phrasing, and yet the unfailing truthfulness and the nail-on-the-head precision in each description. Consider the fact that, despite the ease with which the sentences pass, he almost never employs a shopworn, overused word, but rather finds the unexpected one, which also happens to be utterly right.

Which is the real Dan Jenkins, and which is a cunning veneer? I’ll step aside and let someone else answer the question.

“Do you understand,” my mother once said, “how hard your father works?”

The answer was no, at the time I didn’t. It’s only as an adult and a colleague that I’ve come to understand. Small things, details, return to me, and make more sense now. The curious fact that, though he was reputed to love his cocktails, I never once saw him drink at home. The steady metallic sound of a Royal typewriter as I went to sleep, and the sound of it again in the morning.

As an adult, I reread the old work and I look at the new work, and what I see in it is this: a constant stripping away of pretence, and of the profligate excesses of feeling that surround sports, to find the real people and truths underneath. An unwavering effort to think about things plainly and thoroughly, the better to describe them. Sound judgments, about what’s funny and not, what’s poignant and not, what’s worthy and what is not. Constant restless experiments with form, and a lifelong refusal to go with the crowd, or to mail one in.

He comes from a generation of writers that adopted a demeanour of perpetual nonchalance, cigarettes dangling. He didn’t talk much about writing. He never said, “Don’t be a writer; you’ll sentence yourself to a life of excruciating self-doubt and criticism.” He never said, “It’s one of the hardest professions in the world.” He never said, “It’s ditch-digging, it’s breaking rocks with a shovel.” Instead, his instructions were his example.

He did say this: “Dad loves his work.”

As a writer, I drew three lessons from him: the absoluteness of his concentration, the contrariness of his thinking, and the depth of his respect for good writing. All of which together can only be called a kind of integrity. “Learn your craft,” he told me. “And don’t ever let a thing go until it’s as good as you can make it.”

So I do something others don’t, when it comes to my father. I take him seriously. God knows, somebody has to.

The post Another side of Dan Jenkins appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Now is not the time for golf to look the other way.

By Jerry Tarde
In these troubled times of protest against racism and injustice, too many golfers look the other way. That’s the illusion of golf at the top: Country clubs and pro tours create an artificial world where the grass is always green and the lunch buffet is free of charge. Even the highways that lead to these courses run out of sight from poverty. Golfers go from home to club with nothing in between. It’s hard to see the real world from the players-only dining room.

That’s why tragedies like these emerge from nowhere when we should have seen them coming. One golfing president’s brother, Bobby Kennedy, said it best on the night Martin Luther King Jr. was killed: “The vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together,” he said, “want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land. Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.” Almost every major city in America rioted that night in 1968, but not Indianapolis—where Bobby Kennedy spoke.

Golf is still on this journey in 2020, from exclusion to inclusion. “The Greatest Game of All” has had a slow start, but it’s going in the right direction. There are more minority members accepted in clubs, more programs like The First Tee that benefit inner-city kids, more charitable support to combat poverty. But events of the last few months—the pain of a pandemic and the violence of injustice falling heavily on black and brown people—show decidedly that we need to accelerate golf’s journey of understanding.

There are no muny polo fields. Certain games are so rooted in the privileged class that they have a limited future. They’re hobbies of the rich. But we do have muny golf courses—ours is a game of the people. It began that way in Scotland with shepherds and greenkeepers. Even now, 79 percent of American golf is played at public-access courses, not elite clubs. There’s hope for golf’s future.

Like America, the sport has a painful past. It was just 60 years ago that the PGA of America restricted membership to “Caucasians only.” Thirty years ago, we endured another shame when an Alabama golf club hosting the PGA Championship admitted “we don’t discriminate in any other area except the blacks.” Pro tours and country clubs opened up after those scandals; progress proved more elusive. There are fewer black pros on the PGA Tour today than in the 1970s due to unintended consequences: the decline of caddies, which had been a feeder system, and the growth of other major sports that proved more attractive for minority athletes.

What’s being protested in the streets today is more serious than tee times, but golf is a part of the underlying economic inequality at issue. Here’s our pledge:

—We at Golf Digest will commit to making the images and subjects of our golf content as well as our staff better reflect the diversity of the world around us. Both the game’s population and our own record here have been inadequate.

—We will continue to advocate for more access and affordability.

—We will increase our coverage of municipal golf—the lifeblood for attracting minority participation.

—We will support the golf industry’s collective efforts through The First Tee, in which 48 percent of participants represent minorities.

—We will promote sustainability in all its forms, because we know the ravages of climate change hit the poor and minorities the hardest.

—And we golfers promise to use our voice and influence to make gentle the life of this world.

The post Our pledge during troubled times appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Peter Thomson joined the Golf Digest staff as a contributing editor in 1986. At the time, I wrote in the editor’s letter: “Thomson is best known to America as a player, but internationally he is recognised as an architect, writer, administrator and statesman. He once ran for Parliament in his native Australia and was narrowly defeated. He is credited with founding the Far Eastern tournament circuit, ranging from India to Japan. He is unique in the sport, a reader of hardcover books, kind of an outdoor intellectual.”

After winning a tour event, it would be common to see him accept the trophy, then go into the press tent and roll a piece of paper into a typewriter carriage, and rap out a report on the final round as the golf correspondent to far-flung newspapers. He was the rarest of athletes who didn’t just talk his stories into a tape recorder to be cleaned up by a ghostwriter; like Bobby Jones, Thomson laboured over his own syntax. Trying to entice the five-time British Open champion to write a column for Golf Digest, I invited him to our offices in Connecticut, and we went to lunch down the road on this beautiful fall day at a typical New England restaurant called the Red Barn. In a private, wood-panelled room, we had an animated discussion about a wide range of potential topics.

What clinched it for me was one sentence. I asked his opinion of Jack Nicklaus’ design work. Jack was the No. 1 architect at the time with Pete Dye 1a, and their influence reshaped modern architecture worldwide. “Nicklaus courses,” Thomson said, parsing his words, “are like Jack himself—grim and humourless, with sharp edges.” Even if you didn’t agree with his assessment, you had to recognise the mind of a columnist who would stir and shake our readers.

Following is the first column he wrote for Golf Digest, in February 1987. It refers to a statement made by Jack Renner, who played the PGA Tour from 1977-’88. Known for exceptionally straight driving, Renner had his most historic moment come in the scorer’s tent leading the 1983 Sony Open in Hawaii by a shot over Isao Aoki, who proceeded to hole out his 120-yard wedge on the last hole for an eagle to win. Renner’s good humour at the time demonstrated a sense of perspective for the game that endeared him to Thomson. Jack, now 63, lives in San Diego. Peter continued to travel the world, design courses and offer incisive commentary until his death at age 88 in 2018— Jerry Tarde

You don’t have to be a weatherman to notice a change in the climate. Just read Jack Renner’s quote about the U.S. Open course at Shinnecock Hills last year.

“I’ll tell you what’s great about Shinnecock,” he said. “No railroad ties and no greens in the middle of lakes. There are choices here, options. The modern golf course removes strategy and options from the game of golf. It’s a defensive game. You just try to keep away from trouble. Here there are three or four ways to play most holes.”

Peter Thomson, 82, five-time British Open champion
(Photo by J.D. Cuban)

Does this mean what I think it does? Have railroad ties and greens in lakes had their day? Passed out of fashion like Bermuda shorts and fins on Cadillacs? Are the cold, grey skies of depressing winter giving way to warmer days of celebration and good fun? I, for one, hope so.

The truth is, the TPC at Sawgrass and courses of that ilk are hell to play. Such courses were designed and built for the amusement of spectators, not for the pleasure of playing. They were born in commercialism as part of Commissioner Deane Beman’s bold plan to make the PGA Tour self-sufficient by the staging of tour events in its own stadiums. Built into these arenas are the features that make for colourful television—the horror stretches of water and wilderness, railroad ties and savage sawgrass, areas within it might be hoped a front-runner will come to grief to the sniggers of the multitudes watching from the high mounds. The mixture of these patterns makes for the photogenic aspect that magazines and calendars lap up, the reflection of green grass and trees in calm, blue water. (Out West you can even have snowcapped mountains mirrored in the hazards.) It sells a load of real estate but has little to do with golf and, more often than not, gets in the way.

What we are seeing in these courses are not practical innovations, but distortions of dimensions—not works of art but caricatures.

The whole sorry business stems on the one hand from the silly attempt to keep winning scores up at around par for four rounds, about 288. Winning scores in the early 1900s were near the 300 mark, but they steadily declined with the advancement in clubs and balls and the tremendous improvement in course maintenance.

To Thomson, TPC Sawgrass represented golf courses built for TV viewers instead of golfers. A contrast would be Royal Melbourne (above) in his native Australia. (Photo by Carlos Amoedo).

Winners of major championships, in this day and age, should crack the 270 mark, but for some nonsensical reason the game’s authorities decided that scores should hold at the par mark. To counter low scores came the mucking about with the course, distorting its length and width, and the conversion of nonhazard areas into “penalty zones.” The result of this misguided policy is the present-day competition for the most outrageous and bizarre.

On the other hand is the modern axiom that a golf course will sell real estate, and that the more notorious the course, the higher the surrounding land prices. The trick for the developer, as devised through his architect, is to build something that is photogenically stunning, however impractical, extravagant or absurd. Never mind the golfer, that most gullible of all citizens. “Just get us into the colour magazines” seems to be the working theory.

The effect of this kind of marketing is to lead the game of golf down the garden path. By pounding out the message endlessly that golf is a gambit of tortures, and that it is somehow plebeian to play an entire round of golf with one ball, commercialism is doing a great harm to a noble sport.

These trends have been raging now for two decades or more. The consumer has had precious little say in the matter. The free market has not been in effect, he has been caught up in a mad competition of propaganda.

Yet there is a ray of hope. There are signs of a change of season as a few brave professionals like Jack Renner are beginning to speak their minds. But the little man should be heard from, too. Not the land speculator or investor, but the golfer who loves the game.

As for me, when I first took to journalism, my kind but stern mentor laid down the principle that if grandmother couldn’t understand what I was writing about, it was a lousy piece of composition. If my grandma can’t play it, it has to be a lousy course.

The post PETER THOMSON: Looking for golf courses my grandmother would love appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Jerry Tarde
Pete and Alice Dye are gone now, less than a year apart, both in their 90s. They were my golfing parents, but I wasn’t an only child. They treated so many of us like their kids—praising us when we did good, disappointed in us when we failed, but always rooting for us. “Golf Digest still the best,” Alice wrote in a note that arrived home the weekend she died. Earlier, she wrote: “Pete doing just OK. He still hits balls, plays 18 some days and still kissing the girls. Just wanted to say hello. We miss you.” We all miss them now.

Over 40 years of friendship, Pete taught me everything I know about golf and a bit about living. Here’s the abbreviated version:

MARRY A STRONG WOMAN. Alice and Pete had an equal partnership, and it worked for their 68 years together. I once commissioned a portrait of architecture’s First Family, including sons Perry and P.B. If you looked closely, Alice was holding a machine gun.

AIM AT THE HAZARDS. On most courses, you steer away from bunkers, trees and water. On Dye courses, you do the opposite. Hit tee shots close to the danger, because that’s where Pete’s approach angles open up best. Isn’t life that way?

IF

SOMEBODY GIVES YOU A PUTT, PICK IT UP. One time Pete and I were partners playing the seventh at Pine Valley when our opponents conceded me a long two-footer for a net birdie. “No,” I demurred, “I think I should putt this one out.” “I’ll kill ya,” Pete shouted, charging across the green. “Pick it up, you SOB.”

EAT A GOOD BREAKFAST EVERY MORNING. Pete’s favourite was poached eggs sprinkled with Grape Nuts, a side of chicken, plain yoghurt and a Diet Coke.

WEAR THE SAME UNIFORM DAILY. Oscar de la Renta, his neighbour at Casa de Campo in the Dominican Republic, sent Pete 100 pairs of khakis at a time. Pete wore khakis, a short-sleeve white or blue shirt, and work boots every day of his life. When dressing up, he put on a blue blazer.

DON’T BUY A CAR, RENT IT. This is one I didn’t follow, but Pete always drove rental cars. He beat up and muddied them so badly during course construction, some rental agencies kept his car on the back lot and delivered it to him at the airport in the condition he left it.

BE JOYFUL IN COMPETING. “Pete loved to play golf with you,” Alice wrote me toward the end. Despite competing in U.S. Opens and Amateurs, Pete derived joy out of beating a broken-down scribe, as he called me. Our last match was at Gulfstream in Delray Beach, Fla. We got to the 17th hole tied. I had a kick-in par left before Pete theatrically pitched in for a birdie 2 and cackled with delight all the way up the 18th hole to win 1 up.

GENIUS IS IN THE CRAFT, NOT IN THE ARMWAVING. “Pete doesn’t talk about designing courses,” said Tom Doak, another of his children. “He talks about building them.” It was typical of Pete to spend 150 days on-site. I once got up at 5:30 with Pete to check on the newly redesigned fifth green at the TPC Sawgrass before the turf was laid. He’d spent seven hours the day before riding around and around on a Sand Pro, a miniature tractor designed to rake bunkers. Every pass moved 1/16th of an inch of topsoil. Still unsatisfied, he rode the Sand Pro for another hour, and then began the tedious process of checking the contours with a surveyor’s transit. He called it “rubbing the earth.”

CREATE GREATNESS, AND YOU DON’T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT BUDGETS. Pete’s most famous patron was Herb Kohler, who invoked the words of Edward Bennett Williams after hiring George Allen to coach the Washington Redskins: “I gave him an unlimited expense budget, and he exceeded it.” Pete’s version: “Every time I broke a budget, Herb would have another heart attack.”

THE BEST HOLES HAVE HALF PARS. The great equalizers are the 2½, 3½, 4½. He wanted golfers to expect to make a birdie. Then he constructs the area around the green so challenging, an errant shot is unrecoverable. Good players don’t mind making a bogey with a 2-iron approach, but it drives them crazy with a half-wedge. “Now I’ve got those dudes thinking,” he said. “It weighs on their minds the hole before and the hole after.”

TIP LIKE YOU’RE RICH. Especially ice-cream servers who don’t expect anything. It makes them happy, and the ice cream tastes better.

GO WITH YOUR INSTINCTS. When Pete was working on Crooked Stick, he couldn’t decide whether to put a bunker or a lake right of the par-4 16th green and asked the board of governors for its opinion. The board voted to put in a bunker. Pete put in a lake. The club president asked him why he disregarded the board’s decision. Pete replied: “Because the board has never been right about anything!”

UNDULATION OVER SPEED. Pete told me the ideal green speed was no more than 9 on the Stimpmeter, and the challenge should be in the contouring of the greens. He even liked convex greens that repelled shots. He questioned the tour-pro principle that good shots should always be rewarded and bad shots punished. “Only the very best player can survive a bad result after a good shot and compose himself to play the next one,” he said.

WORK LIKE YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT MONEY. When Jack Nicklaus’ design fee was $1 million, Pete’s was $100,000, except when he did it for free. He loved the simple life. He and Alice ate dinner at home every night on side-by-side TV stands while watching “Jeopardy!” He accurately described his thatched-roof compound in the Dominican Republic as “seven orange-juice stands.”

DON’T PUT ANYTHING ON PAPER. Pete never did blueprints or even sketches. He walked the land and improvised. PGA Tour commissioner Deane Beman once demanded a drawing of the TPC Sawgrass “in case you die before it’s done.” Pete turned over a place mat and scratched out the back nine that eventually was framed in the clubhouse. His genius will outlive us all.

The post How Pete Dye taught one of our editors everything he knows appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Harry How

On the other hand, since I put my handicap police hat on, I’ve had numerous people reach out to me, including Larry’s father, with glowing testimonials about the future NFL Hall-of-Famer (Imagine how good he’s going to get when he finally retires?) and current GOAT of net scoring in golf. So perhaps it’s not right to label him a sandbagger. Although, to be fair, anyone who has ever won a net competition (myself included) has received some ribbing about their handicap. Also, I have never played a full round with Fitzgerald, so I can’t properly evaluate his current 9.0 handicap. Yep, that’s definitely how we should settle this debate. Larry, invite me out to Seminole or Whisper Rock for a few rounds and I’ll be the judge. Preferably, before the cold front arrives here at the end of the week. Either location works for me. Let’s do this. Please.

WE’RE BUYING

Nick Taylor: How has this guy only won once before?! Faced with windy conditions and a pairing with a living legend who everyone was rooting for, this Canadian channelled Clint Eastwood and said, “Make my day.” After a back-nine stumble, a chip-in on 15 and a rare birdie on 17 gave him a four-shot, life-changing win at a place where just last year he announced a life-changing moment.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Byy0P05Fhx2/?utm_source=ig_embed

And now:

https://www.instagram.com/p/B8aTH1NlnGz/?utm_source=ig_embed

Pretty cool.

Victorian Open/Min Woo Lee: While Golf Twitter bitched (a bit too much) about coverage of the AT&T Pebble Beach, this tournament rightfully drew rave reviews. Or rather, tournaments with simultaneous European Tour and LPGA events happening on the same course while men and women played for the same purse. Congrats to the two winners, Min Woo Lee and Hee Young Park:

2 trophies. 2 wins. 1 equal purse ? #VicOpen pic.twitter.com/YVgOND8tIQ

— DP World Tour (@DPWorldTour) February 9, 2020

Lee is particularly impressive. The 21-year-old Aussie who won the 2016 U.S. Junior was already the longest hitter on the European Tour despite weighing only 165 pounds. But he might have put on a few LBs celebrating his first win:

We think @Minwoo27Lee enjoyed his maiden tour win… ? #VicOpen pic.twitter.com/bE151za4KW

— DP World Tour (@DPWorldTour) February 9, 2020

He just needs to work on his celebrations with his caddie:

We can all relate to this… ?@Minwoo27Lee #VicOpen pic.twitter.com/OpC83PEfEz

— DP World Tour (@DPWorldTour) February 9, 2020

Then again, so do most tour pros.

Golf Digest: That’s right, GOLF DIGEST. Editor-in-Chief Jerry Tarde partnered with Nick Taylor, received some serious Sunday airtime in that group that also included Phil Mickelson and Steve Young (NBD), and some serious praise from CBS’ Jim Nantz, who noted Taylor had “the calming influence of Jerry Tarde every step of the way.” Our boss did pretty well golfing his own ball too as he and Taylor finished T-2 in the Pro-Am, which is basically a win, because, well, Larry Fitzgerald. And how about Jerry’s sweater game?

Straight fire! OK, now we’re heading into potential brown-nosing territory. And Team Taylor/Tarde finished five shots back despite Nick winning the tournament by four, so it’s not like Jerry played like Tiger at Pebble in 2000. OK, now we’ve gone too far the other direction. . . Anyway, staff writer Daniel Rapaport picked up Matthew Fitzpatrick’s staff bag and helped his Northwestern buddy make the cut:

Not the finish we wanted but what an unbelievable week! pic.twitter.com/etUHs4MsOw

— Dan Rapaport (@Daniel_Rapaport) February 9, 2020

Talk about a great side gig for a golf writer. Dan, you’re bringing in donuts or something the next time you’re in the office.

WE’RE SELLING

Ernie Els not captaining: After leading a spirited challenge at the 2019 Presidents Cup, the Big Easy said he’s done being the big cheese of the International squad. Too bad. The team seemed headed in a positive direction.

Quinn Rooney/Getty Images

Rory McIlroy’s taste in movies: I love nearly everything about Rory McIlroy, especially his running interview series with the Independent’s Paul Kimmage. HOWEVAH, McIlroy made a real bogey with his assessment of “La La Land”:

To be clear, I have no problem with him crying at a movie. “The Shawshank Redemption” gets me every time. Obviously. But “La La Land”?! And specifically the music of “La La Land”?! Rory, let’s go see a real musical sometime.

Bryson DeChambeau’s fitness ranking: All power to Bryson for getting yoked this off-season, but he’s the 24th fittest athlete on the planet? Really? He’s fitter than, oh, I don’t know, Russell Westbrook? Or DK Metcalf?!

Or any NFL player for that matter? Even the kickers are jacked. Or . . . Brooks Koepka? Sure thing, Sports Illustrated. That being said, I love how this list just stokes the silly Brooks/Bryson feud. Live look at Brooks right now:

ON TAP

The PGA Tour heads to La La Land (Get your tissues ready, Rory!) for the Genesis Invitational, AKA that event Tiger hosts at Riviera, which always prompts lectures from all the golf architect geeks on Twitter. Get ready for a week of hearing about the 10th hole!

Random tournament fact: Tiger Woods has never won in 10 starts as a pro at Riviera, the most times he’s ever played a PGA Tour course without winning. He also teed it up as an amateur in 1992 and 1993, missing the cut both times. Rest assured, you will be able to recite all these facts from memory by week’s end.

RANDOM PROP BETS OF THE WEEK

—Larry Fitzgerald will be let back onto Pebble Beach property next year if he still has a 9 handicap: 1-MILLION -to-1 odds

—Tiger Woods will finally win at Riviera this week: 18-to-1 odds (Actual odds)

—Rory will be ribbed for his “La La Land”/”Pretty Woman” comments this week: LOCK

PHOTO OF THE WEEK

Check out this incredible shot Tim Herron took of Pebble Beach’s 18th hole:

Thankful to wake up at one of my favorite spots on earth today. @attproam pic.twitter.com/gLRKdQuZ8E

— Tim “Lumpy” Herron (@PGALumpy) February 6, 2020

Kidding.

Just an FYI, I found this beautiful pic on the inter web as I can barely take an in-focus shot with my phone!

— Tim “Lumpy” Herron (@PGALumpy) February 7, 2020

Same, Tim. Still, it’s a great photo. By whomever took it.

VIRAL VIDEO OF THE WEEK

Shout-out to Sam Harrop for this fantastic song parody about Tony Finau’s lack of wins. The Charles Howell and Rocco Mediate lines killed me:

Many of you will know by now that music is my first love (though golf's pretty high to be fair)

So…I decided to pen an ode to Tony Finau, set to the tune of an REO Speedwagon classic. As you do.

First time I've done something like this, so go easy on me ?

RTs appreciated! pic.twitter.com/9FpX6cB2aw

— Sam Harrop (@sam_golf) February 6, 2020

And good to see Tony is a good sport:

?? loads of funny lines. I dig it bro @sam_golf after the next win I'll be looking for the remix! https://t.co/Kelhg5qnBT

— Tony Finau Golf (@tonyfinaugolf) February 7, 2020

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“There’s more than just guys, you know. It just makes sense. We should do this more often. The fact that this happens only once in a year is just nonsense.” —Geoff Ogilvy on the Victorian Open. Well said, Geoff. And Ogilvy had Golf Twitter in a tizzy talking about karma as he grabbed a share of the 36-hole lead in the event. Too bad there’s no such thing as karma and he finished last among the 38 golfers who made the three-day cut.

THIS WEEK IN CELEBRITY GOLFERS (NOT NAMED LARRY FITZGERALD)

Seeing Macklemore take six practice swings before topping one off the tee was tough, but the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am still produced some fun celebrity moments with Bill Murray. As usual. Here he is sweeping a putt in backward:

Does it get any smoother? ?pic.twitter.com/JlmZ6WOnxR

— GOLFTV (@GOLFTV) February 10, 2020

THIS WEEK IN CELEBRITY GOLFERS (NOT AT PEBBLE BEACH)

The Rory McIlroy-Caroline Wozniacki engagement didn’t last, but it looks like the former World No. 1 women’s tennis player has held onto a thing or two from her ex when it comes to the golf swing:

Glacier golfing! (Don’t worry the balls were bio degradable) ??‍ pic.twitter.com/huon1S49HZ

— Caroline Wozniacki (@CaroWozniacki) February 6, 2020

Very impressive.

THIS WEEK IN PGA TOUR PRO-WAGS PUBLIC DISPLAYS OF AFFECTION

Justin Thomas used his off week to give the two special ladies in his life a nice night at a Las Vegas Golden Knights game:

https://www.instagram.com/p/B8WpnhNBu5a/?utm_source=ig_embed

Awww. And JT, if that’s your girlfriend’s idea of a romantic night out, she’s definitely a keeper.

THIS WEEK IN PHIL BEING PHIL

I would have moved this up to the “buy” section, but it was already getting too long. But even with a tough finish, Phil Mickelson had himself a great week. Just days after saying he’d turn down a potential special exemption into the U.S. Open if he didn’t qualify, Mickelson nearly took care of that himself with a third-place finish. And he did it with his usual flair. Only Phil would be able to pull off a bunker shot like this AND immediately rank it:

Some par saves rank higher than others.@PhilMickelson said this one is in his top 5.#QuickHits pic.twitter.com/6Kvjkaiyg2

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) February 8, 2020

Then the following day, he got up and down from here!

"He's not giving up yet."

Phil continues to thrill. Wow.#QuickHits pic.twitter.com/ENryORGr4M

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) February 9, 2020

He may be outside the top 50 in the Official World Golf Ranking, but he’s still the game’s No. 1 content king. And it would be a travesty if he’s not battling the grandstands at Winged Foot in June. Again, CONTENT.

THIS AND THAT

Phil Mickelson became the third player (Sam Snead and Raymond Floyd) to record a PGA Tour top 10 in 30 consecutive seasons. Now that’s some impressive, um, phitness. . . . Editor-in-Chief Tarde hopped on this week’s Golf Digest Podcast to talk about that Pebble Beach experience and tell a great Phil story:

https://soundcloud.com/user-96678684/golf-digest-editors-incredible-sunday-in-the-final-pairing-at-pebble-beach

And finally, check out this guy who was really ready to mark his golf ball. At Costco.

Spring can’t get here soon enough.

RANDOM QUESTIONS TO PONDER

Does that dude belong to a good golf club?

If so, does he need a fourth?

Can I bet on Larry Fitzgerald at Pebble Beach next year?

The post Larry Fitzgerald defies the odds again, Rory McIlroy’s ex shows off her golf swing, and Rory cries at the movies appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Sam Weinman
Jerry Tarde has been the editor-in-chief of Golf Digest for four decades. He’s won Lifetime Achievement Awards, played money matches against major champions, and if we thought he wouldn’t be reviewing this post, we might confess to levels of deep-rooted resentment.

And that’s all before factoring in Tarde’s experience last weekend playing in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. The appearance was Tarde’s ninth as an amateur contestant in the Crosby Clambake, and when paired with Canadian pro Nick Taylor on Tuesday night, there was little to suggest this one would rise above all others. Taylor had won one PGA Tour event, an opposite-field start, in 2014, but on Thursday, he eagled the first hole en route to an opening 63. Then he shot 66 on Friday. By Sunday afternoon, Taylor was wrapping up a four-stroke wire-to-wire win at one of golf’s most iconic venues, and Tarde was left to assess where it ranked on his already lengthy list of indelible golf moments.

“Well the whole week was the best week I ever had in golf. And Sunday was just off the charts.” said Tarde, who alongside Taylor finished T-2, five strokes behind winners Kevin Streelman and Larry Fitzgerald in the pro-am portion. “As my daughters kept telling me, ‘It was at the top of the bucket list and you didn’t even know it was on the bucket list.’”

After stealing time on the CBS broadcast in a group that also included Phil Mickelson and his partner, Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young, we asked Tarde to join the Golf Digest Podcast (19:50 mark) to share his vantage point into final-round competition, and the uncommon dynamics that go with it. For instance, did he know when to leave Taylor alone on the back nine? Was he aware when cameras were on him? And did Mickelson, ever the gamesman, try to get into even his head (Spoiler alert: yes)?

Also on this week’s episode, Alex Myers, Keely Levins and I discuss the most impressive part of Taylor’s win, try to make sense of Mickelson’s surprising stance on this summer’s U.S. Open, and weigh in on the latest distance debate. Have a listen:

https://soundcloud.com/user-96678684/golf-digest-editors-incredible-sunday-in-the-final-pairing-at-pebble-beach

The post Golf Digest’s editor-in-chief played in the final group at Pebble Beach, making your best golf moment kind of lame by comparison appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Dave Shedloski
Sunday is a big day for Golf Digest at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

In his ninth appearance in the tournament, Golf Digest editor-in-chief Jerry Tarde made the cut in the pro-am for the first time. And the fact that he is paired with Canada’s Nick Taylor, the tournament leader, means that he might steal a few minutes of air time on national television as he’ll join Taylor and Phil Mickelson and his partner, Steve Young, in the final pairing.

Nice company. And at iconic Pebble Beach Golf Links.

“I’m happy to sell my spot to the highest bidder,” Tarde, who also is the global head of strategy and content, Discovery Golf, said jokingly. “This is amazing. Nick is playing nice, calm and balanced golf. We probably would have made the cut just on his ball alone. I’ll have the best view of all how the ending unfolds.”

Taylor, whose 2015 Sanderson Farms Championship victory is the 31-year-old’s lone PGA Tour title, will attempt to become the second player to go wire-to-wire for victory. The other is Mickelson, in 2005, as if he needed more incentive in his title defence. After a 69 Saturday at Spyglass Hill, Taylor leads Mickelson by a stroke and Day by three at 17-under 198.

Taylor and Tarde, who plays to a 12.1 handicap index and a 12 this week, are sixth in the team standings at 23 under, four shots behind 2018 winners Kevin Streelman and Arizona Cardinals wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald.

Daniel Rapaport, a Golf Digest reporter, also will be inside the ropes on Sunday. He has been the caddie all week for Matthew Fitzpatrick, who made two eagles and two birdies on the inward nine at the Shore Course at Monterey Peninsula Country club to shoot 68 and make the 54-hole cut at six-under 209.

Even while paired with a hot player, Tarde has been able to contribute six strokes to the team total, including three on Friday when they played Pebble Beach. Tarde, a former winner of the PGA of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism, says his plan for Sunday, as it has been all week, is to help Taylor where he can and move to the side when he can’t.

“It’s what you’ve done all week, really, so the routine isn’t any different,” said Tarde, whose mobile phone was active Saturday evening as he received countless texts and phone calls from friends. “I’ll just try to keep hitting good shots. The hardest thing, given the circumstances, is trying to play your normal game.”

In truth, Sunday is, more accurately, one of two special days for Golf Digest this week. In association with the tournament and the Monterey Peninsula Foundation, Golf Digest sponsored the presentation of the Arnie Awards that went to Jordan Spieth, NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Young and country music artist Toby Keith for their commitment to giving back through their charitable endeavours in the spirit of golfing great Arnold Palmer.

Perhaps by the end of the final round, Tarde will be holding a trophy of his own.

The post Golf Digest editor Jerry Tarde, leader Nick Taylor’s partner, in final group at Pebble Beach on Sunday appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Jerry Tarde
Peter Thomson, 88, died this week and took common sense with him. He was one of my early counselors in the game, always reliable for straight advice steeped in erudition and experience. My opening line with him was always the same cliché: “Between the two of us, Peter, we’ve won five British Opens.”

He joined the Golf Digest staff as a contributing editor in 1986. At the time, I wrote in the editor’s letter: “Thomson is best known to America as a player, but internationally he is recognised as an architect, writer, administrator and statesman. He once ran for Parliament in his native Australia and was narrowly defeated. He is credited with founding the Far Eastern tournament circuit, ranging from India to Japan. He is unique in the sport, a reader of hardcover books, kind of an outdoor intellectual.” After winning a tour event, it would be common to see him accept the trophy, then go into the press tent and roll a piece of paper into a typewriter carriage, and proceed to rap out a report on the final round as the golf correspondent to far-flung newspapers.

American golfers got a dose of his playing talent when he returned to competitive golf with the Senior PGA Tour and promptly won 11 tournaments. I remember him doing a clinic for our editorial staff once when someone asked the unfortunate question, “How far do you hit your 7-iron?” Peter silently replied by dropping three balls next to each other on the practice ground: one in a good lie, the second he stepped on, and a third on a tuft of rough. Making identical swings, he hit the 7-iron what looked to be 140, 150 and 160 yards. “Next question,” he said.

Over lunch at our offices in Connecticut, I once asked him about Jack Nicklaus’ design work. “Nicklaus courses are like Jack himself—grim and humorless, with sharp edges,” he said.

In his first column for Golf Digest (February 1987), he wrote: “When I first took to journalism, my kind but stern mentor laid down the principle that if my grandmother couldn’t understand what I was writing about, it was a lousy piece of composition. I’ve come to carry this along into golf architecture. If my grandma can’t play it, it has to be a lousy course.”

Peter told wonderful first-hand stories like the time USGA Executive Secretary Joseph C. Dey Jr. approached on the first tee at Oakmont in the 1953 U.S. Open: “Joe came up to our threesome and stood before the legendary Ben Hogan with a clear enough message: ‘Ben, your group was too slow yesterday. We would like you to speed it up today,’ followed by the unfailing courtesy for which Joe was world renowned, ‘if you don’t mind.’“ ‘If you are thinking of giving me a two-stroke penalty, then give it to me now so I know where I stand,’ Hogan said.

“‘There’s no need for that,’ Joe said. ‘We just want you to play faster.’ And looking at Sam Urzetta and me, he added, ‘That goes for each of you.’ ” (It was the year Hogan won his fourth U.S. Open.)

We have many memories of the great man always dressed in blue blazer and gray slacks with an R&A necktie. I was walking to the course with Executive Editor Mike O’Malley one morning during the 1996 Open at Royal Lytham & St. Annes when we heard his familiar voice from behind, slowed down to enjoy his company, and Mike asked him what his favorite Open venue was. A long pause, several steps, and finally: “This one, Lytham,” said Peter, who won his five from 1954-’65 at Birkdale, St. Andrews, Hoylake, Lytham and Birkdale.

The last time I saw him was at the R&A Members Dinner in 2015 at the Old Course. After the entrée and before dessert, it was announced that Tom Watson was about to play up the 18th fairway in the gloaming of his last competitive round at the Open Championship. We all respectfully filed out to stand on the first tee and watch Old Tom finish. Peter was standing nearby. I said to myself, Among the three of us, we’ve won 10 British Opens.

The post Peter Thomson: Remembering the outdoor intellectual appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.