A few months ago, I was in Montreal, covering the Presidents Cup. During one of the press conferences - if memory serves, it was to the end of the event - Gary Player launched on a mini-tirade about the need to bring golf to more countries. He said, using the Presidents Cup as an example, that such an event should start being held in eastern Europe. He singled out the former Eastern bloc countries as one of the regions into which golf desperately needed to make inroads. Hey, he’s got a supporter in me. As I’ve written elsewhere, golf has been ...

Go on, admit it, I know you’ve been wondering where former U.S. Open Champ Michael Campbell has been up to all these years after his victory in 2005. Well, he hasn’t been doing much, but it seems that he’s still the marquee draw for the The Michael Hill New Zealand Golf Open, which celebrates its 100th anniversary this week. The European PGA Tour is reporting that the Kiwi will become the “official Ambassador to the New Zealand Open” this week. He’s won the event once before. He’s pledged to donate his winnings - NZD 1.5 million - to the New Zealand ...

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. - Golf is a relatively straight forward game, not difficult to comprehend even at its most arcane. And even the best golf courses in the world have more in common with the rank-and-file than not. Fundamentally, if you’ve been on one golf course, you’ve been on them all.(I’m talking fundamentally, folks.) So I wonder why all these starters around Myrtle Beach feel the need to preface your round of golf with a 10-minute rundown of “rules” and “instructions"? On a recent trip, it started as an oddity, morphed a bit into an impertinence and finally settled firmly ...

I’ll say this at the outset: I often agree with much that TravelGolf.com’s Chris Baldwin has to say. Not everything, but a lot. More often than not, Baldwin is spot on with his takes on the game, and I usually admire his willingness to take unpopular positions and hang his opinions out there. That bit of throat-clearing now over, I did a double-take at Baldwin’s most recent blog entry: Impossible to overestimate the impact of Justin Timberlake as new host of Las Vegas’ PGA tournament. Yes, it seems that Baldwin thinks that boy-toy Timberlake is really going to have them lining up ...

NORTH MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. - Should an 18th hole be hard or easy? Should it let you down softly into the clubhouse and give you a jolt of confidence (all the more important after a tough round)? Or should it make you work to get home. A hammock hole (just lay back and relax), or a hole that brings things to a dramatic and challenging finish? I think most of us would agree that the answer lies somewhere in the middle. No one wants to get a beat down on the home hole, especially if the round has not been going, ...

Justin Rose was recently crowned the European PGA Tour’s Player of the Year, winning the coveted Order of Merit and simultaneously snapping most of our attention away from what were other, more marquee Euro tour golfers that seemed to be having a hell of a 2007. There was Angel Cabrera winning the U.S. Open. There was Padraig Harrington winning the British Open. Euro Tour veteran Ernie Els seemed to wake up during the second half of the year and contend in nearly every event the was playing in. But there was Rose hoisting the storied Harry Vardon Trophy. I thought: Rose? He ...