It feels a little bit like off-season as we’re touring France’s Rhones-Alpes region this week. This is skiing country for the most part, but in the summertime, it’s still a very scenic and leisurely place to enjoy France, whether you’re on the hike and bike trails or teeing it up on an area golf course. It also seems somewhat void of tourist crowds, which I often associate France with, at least in the south of France and Paris. We’ve been in St. Etienne, Grenoble and now Correncon, and there hasn’t been much of a commercial tourist feel at all, though ...

If you’re a golfer who’s always dreamed of playing for Pebble Beach Golf Links but didn’t want to pony up the dough, you might want to listen up. If you’ve always had a soft spot for animals as well, you may as well get your credit card out. That’s because a special has just been released at Pebble Beach that doesn’t come around very often. In celebration of the 80th anniversary of the San Francisco Zoo up the road, a generous benefactor has bought rooms in the Pebble Beach Lodge and blocks of tee times on Pebble Beach and Spyglass ...

It seemed like right when Hunter Mahan’s approach to the 16th green of Bethpage Black struck the flagstick and catapulted about 60 feet off the green, it began an anticlimactic backslide at the U.S. Open, going from a classic finish to one that won’t be remembered for much else besides bad weather that practically rendered half the field out contention by Friday afternoon. Instead of a finish that had crowd favorites Phil Mickelson and David Duval, plus a surging Mahan and the lead group fighting to keep their ships afloat, we saw a remarkably stable two-shot win from relative unknown ...

Every single year leading up to the U.S. Open, we hear the same prediction from a variety of golf pundits: “This is going to be a long-hitter’s golf course.” We heard it last year at Torrey Pines South, when the longest golf course in U.S. Open history was presented. And in the playoff was a long-hitting Tiger Woods and Rocco Mediate, playing “old man golf” with the reliable, relatively short draw. And heading into this week, Bethpage Black was going to play long, thanks to A.W. Tillinghast’s many raised greens and an as usual U.S. Open caliber setup. Then, heavy rains ...

Tiger Woods or Bethpage Black’s rowdy fan base? Both stand to be equally formidable opponents for my U.S. Open pick (and my pick to win every single major championship until he finally gets one): Sergio Garcia. In 2002, Garcia was the main antagonist of the New York galleries (who’s etiquette was so bad it may have been considered off-color at an after-hours cock fight in Hoboken). It all helped aid the global sentiment of Americans at the time as being classless, vulgar imbeciles. So not only does Garcia enter the U.S. Open with a golf game not in form and ...

In a somewhat startling announcement made by the USGA Monday, the 2014 Men’s and Women’s U.S. Opens will be staged back-to-back weeks at the Pinehurst Resort that June. The advantages to hosting both opens at the same venue in consecutive weeks are numerous. For starters, the USGA team won’t have to go anywhere for two weeks, so the infrastructure and manpower required to stage such an event can get extra cozy in their accommodations before packing up shop for the next event. And the Pinehurst Resort of course, will surely be giddy at the thought of two straight weeks of ...

Sweden’s Anna Nordqvist showed poise well beyond her years on Sunday at the LPGA Championship, shooting a practically flawless round en route to a four-shot win for her first LPGA tournament win - and a major championship to boot. Despite a world ranking of 214 heading into the week, her swing and poise drew comparisons to her hero, Annika Sorenstam. One of the secrets in her bag may very well be her positive swing thoughts. Captured by Scott Serio at Eclipse Sportswire, here’s a sneak peak at one of the ingredients in her level-headed arsenal, a page in her notebook ...

Over at ESPN this afternoon, PTI found time in their rundown to debate the LPGA without mentioning which tournament was even being staged this week. Instead, it was regarding the Twitter fiasco that won’t go away. Both Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser agreed Twitter was not good for in-round updates. But Kornheiser’s proposed solution to make TV coverage better was interesting; player interviews between shots and holes once in awhile, like the NHL does on the bench, and the NBA does at halftime (plus coaches interviews at the quarter breaks). That’s a very constructive and possible solution to boost in-round ...

Home to the Golden Bear himself, of course Columbus, Ohio is going to serve up some of America’s best golf courses. Most of them, however, are private, including prestigious Muirfield Village Golf Club. I’m told it’s a great course, perhaps the Augusta National of the Midwest, but good luck scoring a tee time. Other nationally-recognized area privates include the Alister Mackenzie Scarlet Course at Ohio State University and Scioto Golf Club. At this golf blog, however, we could care less about those. We’re interested in the ones that welcome anyone willing to plunk down a green fee, and just outside ...

The Barefoot Resort’s Love Course is back open ahead of schedule after closing due to the area’s spring wild fires at the end of April that spread through the North Myrtle Beach forests. 70 homes in the Barefoot Resort were reportedly lost due to the fires, and some of the wooden bridges on the course were damaged. The golf course is reported to be in fine shape however, and the fires did little damage to the highly-rated Davis Love III design. Originally slated to open June 1st, the course opened this past Friday. The next door Fazio course suffered ...