Pay attention to the weatherman over the last week, and you would be led to believe Tuesday would be a golf washout at Bandon Dunes. I’d been checking the weather about three times a day over the last week, and Tuesday looked to be the worst day: rain all day with highs topping out in the mid 40s. It’s hard to really look forward to the sound of your alarm clock in the morning when you’re anticipating that kind of punishment - even on the finest of links. So what happens? Well, by the time we woke up, the rain’s ...

Golf course architect David McLay Kidd is one hot tamale. He’s a relative up-and-comer and I’m not horribly versed in his works, which include Bandon Dunes down the road and Fancourt in South Africa. But I do know any designer who lands the St. Andrews No. 7 project has more street cred than that internet fighting sensation Kimbo Slice. I had the opportunity to get a sneak preview of one of Kidd’s newest courses slated to open this summer: Tetherow Golf Club in Bend, Oregon. Bend is a little city in the central Oregon desert that has experienced an incredible ...

After just a few days in Oregon driving between Portland, Sisters and Bend, I feel like I’ve already visited three different golf destinations - and I haven’t even been to Bandon Dunes on the Pacific coast yet. Courses twenty minutes apart from each other are in their own micro climates. If I’m driving tomorrow and a left turn runs me smack dab into a flock of penguins camped out around an oasis of palm trees, I wouldn’t raise an eyebrow. I’ve already seen roadside sheep and llamas. I was especially surprised to discover Oregon even has a desert climate ...

For golfers coming to the Grand Strand who want to spend as little time as possible in the car without being in the epicenter of Myrtle Beach, there are two options I would suggest over the rest: Pawleys Island or Little River. Little River is about a half hour’s drive north of Myrtle Beach, just past North Myrtle Beach below the North Carolina State line. Here’s what’s great about Little River: the land rolls a little more than just about everywhere else. There are great natural elevation changes of up to 50 feet, and the Intracoastal Waterway offers some fantastic ...

Trevor Immelman is a slowpoke golfer and not very animated on the course. His blowout of the field today didn’t make for very compelling television (had I known, our group definitely would have played an extra nine this afternoon instead of rushing home to watch). It’s hard to really get behind a major champion who shot a final-round 3-over with no real threats. My opinion of the guy changed at the press conference. I love a guy with a self-deprecating sense of humor. “I hadn’t been looking at the leaderboard all day, but I figured I must have been doing ...

Trevor Immelman may be cruising his way to a green jacket, but he’s doing so going 45 in a 65 in the left lane with his blinker on. Immelman and Brandt Snedeker teed off at 2:30 pm. It’s 7:00 now and they just barely teed off the 17th, they are nearly two holes behind the group ahead, Paul Casey and Steve Flesch. Have they been put on the clock? I think Jim Nantz is getting sleepy. At the very least, he’s texting his agent demanding overtime comp. Now it looks like my local news is going to be bumped. When ...

Brandt Snedeker just drained a prayer on 12. Immelman is looking at bogey but will still hold a three shot lead going into 13 at the Masters. We counted Snedeker out yesterday as he bogeyed Amen Corner, then he rallied in furious fashion. There is no quit in this guy. If he can get two or three more birdies like he did yesterday, he could mount the comeback everyone thought Tiger Woods was ripe for. Woods’ miss on 13 probably sealed his fate. Now it’s him versus Snedeker and Flesch for second. Can someone tell me what happened to Paul ...

WorldGolf.com has been featuring a piece highlighting the advances of Martha Burk’s crusade against the members of Augusta National for too long without a counterpoint. William K. Wolfrum, WorldGolf’s resident liberal who is up to pick any fight against The Man, wrote a feature on the infamous feminist Burk and her organization shed some light on just how deep they continue to go after Augusta National and the corporations that support it. The Women on Wall Street organization is hitting Augusta’s members where it hurts: in the checkbook. According to Burk, they’ve won lawsuits totaling up $70-80 million versus ...

It doesn’t take a genius to see that Tiger Woods is really grinding out there at the Masters this afternoon. His good shots aren’t good enough. His bad shots, judging by his facial expressions, seem catastrophic. He can’t make any putts, and it’s going to be hard to stick any shots that close in this wind (unless of course you’re leader Trevor Immelman, who is throwing darts). Woods failed to birdie both par 5s on the front nine. He probably needed both to have a shot at contending for the Green Jacket. Looking at how intense he is, and the ...

After Brandt Snedeker’s third consecutive bogey on the 13th hole, I pronounced him toast, banishing him to the land of Masters pretenders with Justin Rose and Ian Poulter. His bounce back, notching two consecutive birdies on 14 and 15, followed by an even more impressive 3 on 18 has him in the final group going into Sunday. This turnaround was nothing short of remarkable. Snedeker is a true master at damage control. If golf doesn’t work out for him, I’m sure he’d make a fine CEO at Bear Sterns. Who thought he had it in him? He has this goofy, ...

Las Vegas-based sports talk DJ Papa Joe Chevalier invited me onto his drive time radio show Friday afternoon to elaborate on a Friday morning blog that caught his eye. Papa Joe calls the Masters an “anachronism", which is beyond any WorldGolf.com writers’ vocab (probably other than know-it-all Ph.D. Kiel Christanson). For the layman, that means “out of its place in time". Of course, once I got into the discussion there were few five-syllable words tossed around…Papa Joe and I talked about all the things the Masters & Augusta National can get away with that other institutions can’t, like how can ...

Tiger Woods has somehow found his way back into the Masters after putting together by far his finest nine of the tournament, shooting a 33 on the backside of Augusta National this afternoon. It’s Tiger and a bunch of newbies without any major experience at the top of the leaderboard. Brandt Snedeker, Paul Casey and Trevor Immelman are all youngsters with no major wins. They have yet to crack under pressure like Justin Rose, Ian Poulter and plenty others. I wouldn’t like Tiger’s chances as much if Phil Mickelson, Vijay Singh and Jim Furyk were able to keep pace. But ...

For being one of America’s most old fashioned country clubs, Augusta National & the Masters sure are ahead of the curve in terms of live Masters coverage from all angles. I don’t know about Martha Burke, but I’m all too willing to kick the ladies to the curb here if that means having total 360 access this week. We don’t have to wait until 4 p.m. to watch ESPN’s live coverage thanks to multiple channels broadcasting the back nine online at Masters.org, including the “Amen Corner” channel and my favorite, the “15 & 16″ channel (15 is my favorite hole ...

When players compare scoring conditions at Augusta National to the U.S. Open, it isn’t a compliment. But that’s all we seem to be hearing after Day 1 of the Masters. “It felt like a U.S. Open out there,” Woods told ESPN, who scored an eagle but no birdies in an even par round. More analysts agreed. “We’re not hearing the ‘roar’,” said Woods and plenty others, referring to the back nine which is accustomed to yielding a slew of birdies and eagles. There were only three eagles Thursday, including one from Woods. These guys know it’s a major, right? I ...

Phil Mickelson isn’t my favorite golfer, and he’s certainly not the best out there. But if I can get a front row seat to watch any PGA Tour player for 18 holes, it’s gotta be Lefty. It seems like every round of Mickelson’s these days is a wild adventure, full of duck hooks, bail outs, miraculous chips and long prayers to save par. He has more hot and cold moments than a recovering junkie. How can Mickelson stomach this insanity round after round? I feel my own hair falling out, blood pressure rising every time is see him peering through ...

If I were a betting man, I’d be all over K.J. Choi at 35-1 odds to win the Masters. Here’s why: K.J. has a 4th place finish at Augusta in recent years and over the last two years has been one of the most consistent players on tour and has a knack for playing well in big events. He won this year’s Sony Open in Hawaii, but what I really like is that he’s finished in the Top 20 the last five events. You know he’s going to show up and be in contention here. He hasn’t won a major ...

When I first heard that Tiger Woods was passing on the Masters Par 3 tournament, for an instant I thought it was disrespectful, considering he spoke so glowing about it in an earlier interview. Then, thanks to ESPN’s coverage of it this afternoon, the first year it’s been televised, we were all given a glimpse into what the Par 3 event really is. And now I’m ready to proclaim Tiger a noble genius for boycotting this shameful, exploitive spectacle. Henrik Stetson and his daughter, who couldn’t be more thrilled to be part of such a spectacle - From ESPN Wednesay ...

I have been very happy to see so many demonstrators protest during China’s Olympic Torch runnings in various cities in the world over the last few weeks. It’s no secret that this year’s Summer Olympics are a lightning rod for controversy. Think about it: we’re now over a century into the modern Summer Games and golf is still not a medal sport. The inhumanity of it all is enough to take it to the streets. Golf is now a global game. Excluding soccer, maybe the global game (at least more so than Judo). Even the countries of the former Eastern ...

We can debate what constitutes the “best” major endlessly. We do know what the worst one is: the identity-less PGA Championship, which is little more than a “U.S. Open Junior". So between the remaining three events in the grand slam, The Masters, U.S. Open and British Open, each makes a convincing argument. But it all comes down to which major YOU, Mr. Joe Average 15-handicap Pencil Pusher, would win if you could only win one major. For me, it’s unquestionably the British Open. There’s something vindicating about being handed a golf trophy by a man with a British accent. But ...

The last player to take down Tiger Woods in a head-to-head showdown was Phil Mickelson. So why isn’t he the favorite to oust Tiger’s Grand Slam bid this weekend? There are a few fashionable upset picks this week: Geoff Ogilvy, Justin Leonard, Ian Poulter, even veteran Fred Couples has some wily old golf writers feeling nostalgic. Fellow blogger William K. Wolfrum is even going with Sergio Garcia. I think we can all agree that a bad putter doesn’t win at Augusta National. Yet Mickelson, who won earlier this year at Riviera C.C. (another classically designed course built in the ...

Because a “Why Tiger Woods will win the Masters” blog shouldn’t need more than about a sentence ("He’s Tiger, dude."), here are the reasons he will come up short this week at Augusta and lose his Grand Slam bid in its first leg. - Course conditions: Last year, Augusta National was not the Augusta we know and love. Thanks to a windy cold front mixed with already incredibly firm greens and a harder-than-ever course set up, it scored more like a U.S. Open. The “roar” we’ve come to know and love about Augusta was gone. It revealed a somewhat fluky ...

Maybe it’s the LPGA’s unfortunate scheduling, slotting their first major of the year on the same weekend as the Final Four, but the lack of coverage of the Kraft Nabisco Championship is pathetic. I’m not what you’d call a “Die Hard” LPGA fan, but I feel like doing some Saturday afternoon cleaning, and a first browse through my channels reveal a choice between NASCAR highlights, NBA Inside Edition and South Park episodes I have saved on my DVR. I’d rather watch an LPGA major over any Tiger-less PGA Tour event or any Champions Tour event, yet those are on TV ...

Making the rounds on YouTube this week for anyone who missed Friday’s action of last week’s Zurich Classic like I did is Bubba Watson’s on-air frustrations with playing partner Steve Elkington. Click here for the (edited) incident and post-round Watson reaction. First off, Golf Channel’s director was obviously asleep at the wheel leaving Bubba’s boom mic hot for that long. Secondly, analyst Nick Faldo’s response to the situation “Ummm…I’d like to change the topic and share with everyone some culinary delights…” was a cowardly dodge, or maybe all the analysts at G.C. are gun shy after the recent Tilghman controversy… ...

I began to comment on Kiel Christianson’s blog post, “American Society of Golf Course Architects makes design recommendations to speed play“. Then I realized I was about 400 words into my rant (probably because this Saturday at Tidewater we teed off a half hour late, played in over five hours and barely made it in before dark) and figured I may as well post a more thorough response. This is a critical issue, because if golf is going to stay healthy, its time frame needs to adapt to our busier schedules. There are numerous causes for slow play. The biggest, bar ...

There are some golf writers I’ve met in my travels who deem the Old Course in St. Andrews overrated. They argue that minus the history and the Swilcan Bridge, it’s a mediocre design with plenty of flaws. To them I say, “Well can the course you think is better be played in reverse?” I am obviously not in the “Old Course is overrated” camp. It’s one of the most exciting golf courses you’ll ever play, thanks largely in part because it rewards the long ball (the fact my “miss” is usually a hook helps) and massive, firm double greens. You’ll ...