Columbus, Ohio, site of this week’s Memorial Tournament, is arguably America’s top golf city, particularly in the private sector. Though it ranks 14th nationally in terms of size, the high-end clubs in and around the city make it a major player in the golf world. Of course, there’s Jack’s Place—Muirfield Village, site of this week’s Memorial.(#37 in the GOLF Magazine list of world-wide Top 100 Courses) There’s Scioto (#71) where young Jack learned the game from legendary instructor Jack Grout. There’s The Golf Club (#48) a Pete Dye beauty. And there’s Double Eagle, (#31 on Golfweek’s America’s ...

A gas explosion inside the new Ocean Course clubhouse kitchen at Kiawah Island Golf Resort injured four construction workers this past Friday, course officials said. Two of the workers were taken by helicopter to a hospital burn unit in Augusta, Georgia according to course and hospital officials. The Ocean Course is readying to host the Senior PGA Championship later this week, arguably the highest-profile event that’s come to Kiawah’s marquee golf course since the infamous “War by the Shore” Ryder Cup in ‘91. Some readers might recall the trauma of that contest, with Mark Calcavecchia shanking his tee shot into the ...

Deane Beman was the first Hall-of-Famer to swat a ball at what was to become the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, just south of Jacksonville. On February 12th, 1978, the then-PGA Tour commissioner hit a ceremonial drive into 415 acres of wooded wetlands and swamps, filled with creatures both snuffling and slithering. It was part ceremonial, part celebratory, as the Tour had just purchased the morass for a single dollar bill. In the ensuing decades, practically every contemporary Hall-of-Fame member and modern golf star have followed Beman onto the property. This puts the ...

Was I the only observer struck by the similarity between Scott Verplank’s fall-to-the-knees manuever after holing the short putt to win the Byron Nelson Classic the other day, and the comparable “I can’t believe it” moment of Ben Crenshaw, back in ‘95, when he won an improbable second Masters? Avid PGA Tour fans might recall that Crenshaw won the title just days after serving as a pallbearer at the funeral of mentor and long-time instructor Harvey Penick, who taught him the game at Austin CC in Texas. Verplank, a Dallas native, might not have had the same lifelong bond with Lord Byron ...