Golfing News & Blog Articles

We hear it from golfers all the time.

They want to try CBD but aren’t sure which companies to trust.

And that’s not surprising when up to 70 percent of the products on the market are contaminated.

So we did some research to help clear things up.

This brand checked all the boxes.

Maybe he was channeling his inner Danny Noonan working for Judge Smails, who knows, but Oliva Pinto’s U.S. Amateur run ended when his local looper tested the bunker surface and cost a loss of hole.

Brentley Romine with all of the details of the bizarre scene at Bandon Dunes for GolfChannel.com.

David Shefter sets up the quarterfinals here with two former U.S. Junior Amateur winners in the group hoping to match Tiger Woods as the only winner of a Junior and Amateur.

Video of the infraction:

It all came down to the 18th hole.

And then this happened.

The outcome? A 1 up win for Tyler Strafaci. #USAmateur pic.twitter.com/JFJcoSKfFQ

While ESPN and Fox led the annual Sports Emmy Award winners for 2019, CBS took home three awards and Golf Channel one. This Golf Digest item sums it all up.

For CBS at Augusta, two noteworthy Emmys of the technical front:

OUTSTANDING TECHNICAL TEAM REMOTE
The Masters (CBS/CBS Sports Network)

THE GEORGE WENSEL TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
The Masters — Every Shot, Every Hole  (CBS)

And then the equivalent of Best Picture, Album of The Year and TV Series Drama…

OUTSTANDING LIVE SPORTS SPECIAL
The Masters  (CBS)

Segundo Oliva Pinto's caddie inexplicably brushed the sand in a greenside bunker with his hand, costing the player the 18th hole -- and the match -- at the U.S. Amateur on Thursday in Oregon.

Thanks to reader Steve for watching Hard Knocks so I don’t have to hear how Sean McVay has to tell his team where go No. 1 vs. No. 2, but also for the uplifting news that the PGA Tour’s return and some golfer’s misfortune prompted Los Angeles Chargers coach Anthony Lynn to get tested. Who knows how many were spared after Lynn tested positive and quarantined, but no one can say the PGA Tour’s return was not also helpful in educating many, including well-paid coaches on how the symptoms go.

Jeff Miller of the LA Times reports.

He said he was watching a golf tournament during which one participant withdrew after testing positive. He said the golfer mentioned suffering from symptoms similar to the ones he felt.

“If I hadn’t been watching the golf event and saw that golfer complaining about back aches and soreness, I never even would have gotten tested,” Lynn said on the show. “I never even would have known it and probably got [other] people infected.”

I’m taking a wild guess here, but Denny McCarthy in July was the player most likely to have been the one given that he shared more symptons details.

Either way, as we learn more how to deal with this whole modern pandemic thing, it turns out the PGA Tour’s transparency, while painful for the guys who have tested positive, is actually a positive in ways you we can’t always imagine.

Steve Stricker birdied the final hole to shoot 2-under 68 and pull into a five-way tie for the lead after the first round of the Bridgestone Senior Players Championship.

Danielle Kang started her bid for a third straight win on the LPGA Tour with an even-par 71 in the first round of the Ladies Scottish Open on Thursday, leaving the American four shots off the clubhouse lead held by Nicole Broch Larsen.

Harold Varner III tied his career-low round with an 8-under 62 to grab the early lead at the Wyndham Championship on Thursday.

As Titleist’s T-Series irons roll into Year Two on the market, the company is hoping to get you Jacked for Black with cosmetically updated versions of its two player’s distance offerings, the T100S and the T200.

Why Jacked for Black? Because the irons are black and the lofts are jacked and maybe that’s exciting.

(See what I did there?)

Anyway, line extensions are a proven way to reinvigorate products in their second year on the shelf as competition from new products grows. Everyone does it. Titleist’s previous limited black offerings have sold out in a matter of days so it’s not the least bit surprising that the company would take a shot with T100S and T200.

French golfer Alex Levy has been withdrawn from the Celtic Classic, which started on Thursday.

I thought there were too many great stories and fascinating possibilities to dwell on the Brooks-being-Brooks comments prior to the 2020 final round, but with other players chiming in and Koepka’s final round collapse, he felt the need to speak.

Golfweek’s Eamon Lynch followed up with Koepka Wednesday. You’d think he was an epidemiologist with vaccine news given the space given to the put down of his peers’ major totals. Nonetheless I think Brooks has dug another hole, this time with top 100 peg board owners.

Koepka: Obviously, a lot came from it. I don’t mind the pressure of that stuff. I put more pressure on myself than anything external. At the same time, I didn’t back it up. That’s my own problem. Part of being someone who talks openly and truthfully is that sometimes I come off cocky or arrogant, and it can backfire if you’re not going to play good. That’s exactly what happened.

Lynch: Were you shocked at how poorly you played?

Koepka: Yeah. I got stunned at the bogey at 2 and other ones at 7, 8 and 9. By that point, I was already out of it. I was just trying to cheer Paul [Casey] on because he had a chance to win and my shot was long gone.

Lynch: Based on the social media conversation, half of golf fans seem to appreciate you as a competitive beast and the other half dislike you as a mouthy jerk. Are you okay with that?

Koepka: I think there are layers to that question. I’m not the typical golf guy. I don’t know how else to put that. We didn’t belong to fancy country clubs. I’m not someone who can’t wait to go play those exclusive courses around the country. It doesn’t ‘ooh’ and awe me like it does other people …

Qualifying medalist and rising Alabama senior Wilson Furr advanced to the second round of match play in the U.S. Amateur on Wednesday, beating Chiba's Aaron Du 6 and 4 at Bandon Dunes.

Jeremy Krinn on Twitter gets the credit for the take on Jim Nantz’s Masters motto above.

As for this new, hopefully short-lived tradition, ESPN.com’s Bob Harig reminds us how much Tiger Woods fed off of crowd support in winning the 2019 Masters.

"It was special to have that kind of support, that kind of backing,'' Woods said last fall. "I was going up against the best players in the world. I was trying to come from behind for the first time [to win a major]. And that support was so important.''

Woods clearly understands the current circumstances. He said as much last week at the PGA Championship, where there were no spectators. Golf has done tremendously well in this climate for more than two months, playing each week behind closed doors.

And having the television product for an unprecedented November at Augusta National will still be a highly anticipated and hugely interesting sporting event, with anticipation centering around the look of the place in the fall, how it will play and all manner of golf-related aspects to a year that is off the rails.

One question also answered by Harig: for the first time, there will be merchandise sold online to some. Presumably it’ll lean heavily toward items already made sporting 2020.

It will offer those who had tickets or badges for this year a special "exclusive'' opportunity to buy merchandise online, a potential windfall but one that can't make up for all the hardship of this year.

We all look for a trigger to make our swing feel like a knife cutting through butter. You know that feeling when everything clicks and your ball just take off with unexpected power and your friends ask you if you have been working out. Sure I work out but it’s timing that creates excellence in my swing. Get the panic out of your swing by feeling the STEP that makes your swing effortless.

I got this idea when watching a few videos about the rocking motion from your trailing foot to your lead foot. Be happy with a 90 mile per hours swing and just let your arms go for the ride. As you feel your swing reach the top, take that moment to feel the momentum of your club shifting more body weight to your leading foot. YES, that’s the STEP that I’m talking about.

Start your STEP forward at the top of you swing during the change of direction for your club. If you rush your swing, you will miss the weight shift STEP. Baseball batters STEP forward as they lung into their forward swing. You may even notice golfers who turn their foot forward (or STEP forward) as they transfer their weight to the leading foot at the top of their swing.

It’s a strange feeling if you have never PAUSED for your weight shift at the top of your swing. You will feel like you are delaying your swing but that momentum shift to your leading foot actually allows you to start opening the leading side of your hip and pressing with your trailing foot as your arms drop.  Then release your wrist through the bottom of the swing.

If you don’t rush at the top of your swing, you can feel your weight shift forward as your LAZY arms let your club lags from the top of your swing and then whip through the release with more power through impact. MAKE SURE YOU FINISH YOUR SWING or you will leave the face of your club open for a push or a slice.

The TPCesque marble tee signs are aging gracefully

After Torrey Pines next year and Bethpage’s Ryder Cup in 2025, the major event schedule mostly returns to country clubs or high end resorts (I’m not sure how we’ll characterize Frisco’s PGA Championship course under construction, but it will be open to the public).

As Garrett Morrison wrote in lamenting the winding down of muni major sites, San Francisco hasn’t quite gotten what it hoped for with the $23 million renovation PGA Tour Design Services 2003 effort and the grifting that could have funded refurbishments on all of the city courses.

Still, there is no price to put on the images that came out of San Francisco on east coast prime time and the perfect conclusion to Harding’s resurrection. The course will have just that much more cache when it becomes the regular site of a Steph Curry-hosted fall Tour event and while it’s not a major, the schedule is booked well down the road with no obvious opening until 2031 or so.

While the front nine can get redundant or downright goofy at the 8th, as I noted here with the ShotLink evidence on my side, the back nine presents a pretty stout set of holes and grand conclusion. While the 16th may not be a future template hole, the scatter charts demonstrate a huge variety of ways it was attacked over four days. Not many holes, including Riviera’s vaunted 10th, can make that claim in the era of protein shake six packs and packages of bacon for breakfast.

With the distance discussion in mind, Golf.com’s Jonathan Wall reports on a project to identify the difference between late 20th century balatas and today’s ball. Fresh out of the package and tested with a robot, you’ll be shocked—shocked!—to learn that the ball and elite player launch conditions lead to incredible spikes in driver distance, not so much with irons.

The data and conclusions are useful for two obvious reasons: to diffuse average golfer whining about the tremendous loss in distance they would experience by a tweak of existing equipment regulations, and just how much fitting, spin rates and technology are impacting skill. In other words, the robot became a lot less athletic when hitting a balata.

Please check out the whole piece but Wall’s conclusions are fascinating, including these:

5. If ball spin is utilized to limit distance, this could potentially affect players with different swing styles in different ways. Players with lower spinning shots — for example, an “inside/out” path below 2,400 RPMs spin — will be less affected than a player who plays a power fade — slightly “outside/in” path at 2,600-2,800 RPMs spin — with the same clubhead speed. A universal ball would provide different results based upon its design parameters.


6. If you were to combine the modern-day Tour driver with a Tour-level balata at mid or mid-high spin, a distance loss of 40-plus yards is possible. 


7. Wedge spin is approximately 2000 RPMs higher on the Tour-level balata versus the modern-day solid-construction.


8. Driver distance loss varies based upon launch conditions.


9. 6-iron distance loss is roughly 1 club shorter when comparing the two balls. 


10. An increase in wedge spin would cause some players to adjust their swing to adapt to excessive spin produced with the Tour-level balata and modern-day wedge.

I’m sure point 10 will lead to first world sob stories of cruelty to the youth of golf, but since they get on launch monitors and adjust all the time, I’m confident they will not be permanently harmed in such a process.

Augusta National hoped by waiting so late in the year to hold the 2020 Masters it would have a shot at roars in Amen Corner. Alas, it won't. Why this major being played in eerie quiet will be so different than all the others.

The Masters Tournament rescheduled for November will take place without spectators or guests, due to the coronavirus pandemic that postponed the event from its original date.

Not a huge surprise given the times and the prediction from Augusta’s mayor last week.

Note the “hopefully” in 2021 line in Chairman Fred Ridley’s quote.

Zach Johnson was selected Wednesday to receive the Payne Stewart Award. The award goes to the player who best exemplifies Stewart's value of character, charity and sportsmanship.