I stumbled across this great find from Geoff Shackelford’s golf blog, who was alerted to it by a reader of his… The Masters dunce/patron who disrupted play on No. 17 Sunday during the Tiger-Phil showdown has spoken out - at length - about his antics. It’s good he has, too, because Area 51-err–Masters officials won’t even acknowledge the occurrence. Deseret News reporter Brad Rock, who deserves kudos for landing this exclusive interview, did an in depth interview with Salt Lake City’s Steven Davis, a 5-handicap. Click here for the whole interview. According to Davis, the snobbery of the Masters had gotten ...

When it became apparent many of the greatest athletes in the world were going to use Twitter to fill us in on their glamorous daily lives, sports fans everywhere became giddy about it. Maybe Terrell Owens would instantly TwitPic an image from a Las Vegas hot tub filled with showgirls - or John Daly posts new song lyrics from a late night jam session with Kenny Chesney. Or Dwight Howard posts “just watched A.I. take 12 shots of Jager in an hour at the club!” But for every time an athlete actually says something on Twitter of any substance, there ...

Golf Digest Ireland has released its Top 100 golf courses in Ireland ranking, and there is a very noticeable upset at the top. Portmarnock Golf Club near Dublin has been given the top spot for 2009, now rated higher than Royal County Down, a mainstay near the top. According to the magazine it was for “key improvements, especially run-off areas on several greens”. Look, I’m all for praising courses for renovations and improvements, especially when its to centuries old links that need a good deal of upkeep every so often. That said, unless these improved green runoffs at Portmarnock now feature ...

As if we didn’t need anymore evidence that Caddyshack is the bible for all things golf. According to the report posted by TheSmokingGun.com, the judge ruling over the Andrew Giuliani vs. Duke University case found he could best explain his ruling in favor of the university by using Carl Spackler analogies from Caddyshack. From the NY Daily News: Dixon wasted little time teeing up Giuliani and backing Duke, even employing references to classic golf movie “Caddyshack” to make his point, according to a copy of the decision posted Wednesday on TheSmokingGun.com. Dixon quips that Giuliani’s attempt to use a particular legal ...

We’ve all taken our shots at Michelle Wie over the last two years as she went from a teen phenom with limitless potential, to a cautionary tale of young, misguided talent. But if the LPGA is going to stop the bleeding of sponsorships and events and emerge as a stronger, more relevant tour, we all need to put on our Wie Warrior hats. I was just thumbing through a piece in the New York Times about the state of the LPGA, and it’s easy to see the writing on the wall: The tour is losing money, sponsorships and tournaments at ...

Does anyone else hate the idea of a computer waking them up in the morning when they’re staying at a hotel? I for one, can’t stand when I’m asked to type in my wake-up time using military time in the evening, or when a radio station or computer voice wakes me up in the morning. Humans instinctively don’t trust technology, which is best reflected in movies like Terminator and 2001: A Space Odyssey. This is because a human knows if they screw up, they get fired. When a computer screws up, they get defragmented. Personally, I want that fear instilled ...

Recently named Ryder Cup Captain for the American team Corey Pavin is already trying to push his weight around a little - all 110 pounds or so of it. He’s calling on his two top-ranked American players to participate in next month’s Wales Open on the European Tour at Ryder Cup host Celtic Manor. From BBC Sport: “Anybody who is going to be on the team, I would love them to get over to Wales to check out the Celtic Manor course,” said Pavin. “I expect both Phil and Tiger will be on the team so I’d be more than happy ...

I got my first look at an A.W. Tillinghast design yesterday in San Antonio at Brackenridge Park Golf Course. I’m surprised I haven’t played a Tillinghast before (I’ve played a Tillinghast-inspired course, Shaftesbury Glen near Myrtle Beach), but I think that’s because I’m a Midwestern native and lived in South Carolina for awhile, and he didn’t have an imprint in those parts region like he did in the northeast. The designs he did do in Ohio and Michigan, like PGA Championship host Inverness, are mostly private. Click here for Wikipedia’s full list of Tillinghast designs. San Antonio, where I was ...

It’s amazing how easy golf can be when you hit fairways off the tee. We see it every weekend playing our own ball (I hit four fairways this morning at the Quarry in San Antonio - and my iffy score reflected it). In the Players Championship, it was the difference between Tiger’s final round plus-1 (not all that bad considering the field) and Henrik Stenson’s blistering, bogey-free 66. It was the cool and collected Swede who “drove for dough", hitting almost every fairway over the weekend. Thanks to his tee ball (and a 3-wood that goes as far as ...

I was just perusing through Golf Digest’s list of the “50 Best 19th Holes” between watching action of the Players Championship, and it inspired me to crack open a Bud - and go down memory lane, thinking about my own favorite 19th holes. Surveying their list, what bugs me most is that many of their picks are private clubs like the Country Club at Brookline and Oakmont. Now, you would hope a couple hundred thousand dollars in initiation fees would warrant a decent clubhouse bar. But I’m more concerned about the 19th holes we can all have a drink in ...

One of WorldGolf.com’s more passionate readers and writers of links golf in the U.K. and especially Scotland has written in asking for my opinion. From Shanks: BTuck, I’d love to read your comparison of golf in northern Scotland to the East Lothian and St. Andrews area. I’ve thought it over as I’ve been replacing my suitcase’s waterproofs and wool hats with shorts and sunscreen for San Antonio this weekend, and the differences are plenty: What’s great about East Lothian is, despite it’s close proximity to Edinburgh, the towns all feel very rural and old fashioned. There are no North American chains, ...

Having just been in East Lothian for a week at the end of April, the rumblings around the area were that Muirfield was a lock for the 2013 Open Championship. That was confirmed this week, as it was just announced that Muirfield will in fact be the venue in 2013. The Open was last staged here in 2002, when Ernie Els won in a playoff (Thomas Levet, anyone?). The course is always considered by many of the pros as one of the most-respected tests of all the Open Championship rotation courses. And as the home course of the Honourable Company ...