Golfing News & Blog Articles

GolfMagic.com’s Andy Roberts listened to John Daly on the Full Send podcast so we don’t have to and shared a key exchange. The topic was Tiger’s jab at John Daly for taking a cart and a purported apology from Woods at the recent PNC Championship dinner.

Sitting behind a beer, ashtray for his diabetes-assisting cigarettes and a plate of fried chicken, Daly offered this regarding Tiger:

"Yeah, but he didn’t know the facts because the media, ‘the media’ (sarcastic gesture) didn’t tell him I had diabetes and I had a bad two knees and my hips out and all this stuff," Daly said on the podcast. 

"He apologized to me at dinner the other night. I mean, he’s fine. I love Tiger."

You know John is right. No one could look at him sitting there smoking, drinking and looking like a man just a few years under 100 and know he’s unwell.

Despite £3.3m in emergency support from the UK government during 2020’s pandemic, Trump properties at Turnberry and Balmedie show the businesses lost £4.7 million. Severin Carrell reports for The Guardian.

The resorts reported heavy losses due to their enforced closure during the lockdowns: the headline loss for Turnberry was £3.4m, after a £321,000 profit in 2019, and £1.3m at Balmedie, compared to a loss of £1.1m in 2019.

The story notes that this is the ninth consecutive year that Trump International near Aberdeen has reported a loss.

Also from the filing: the Trump’s blamed also Brexit for impacting the family business, notes The Daily Beast’s Justin Rorhlich.

Three months before he won the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Donald Trump gave himself a new nickname: Mr. Brexit. After the nation voted to break away from the rest of Europe, Trump appeared at Turnberry, his golf course in Scotland, and commended the Brits who “took back their country.” He later said Brexit was “a great advantage for [the] UK.” But, in true Trumpian fashion, Brexit wasn’t great for Trump personally. According to a financial disclosure filed with Scottish authorities and signed by Eric Trump, Brexit “impacted our business as supply chains have been impacted by availability of drivers and staff, reducing deliveries and availability of certain product lines.”

Golf Australia’s Jimmy Emmanuel reports on the first-ever Sandbelt Invitational hosted by Geoff Ogilvy and Mike Clayton, won by 31-year-old Brady Watt the former World No. 1 amateur and Perth native. The four-sandbelt course featured, men, women and amateurs. Grace Kim won the low woman pro title.

Emmanuel writes:

All four will leave the event and the spectacular Peninsula Kingswood extremely happy. But so will Clayton, Ogilvy and co. who have created something extremely special that has proven big names and big tents aren’t the recipe for tournament success. Quality courses and a unique learning opportunity for young players a winning combination that might draw the other sooner rather than later.

And in a follow up column, Emmanuel raved:

The four layouts that welcomed the likes of Herbert, Ogilvy, Peter Fowler, Su Oh, Grace Kim and others were the stars of the show. All four are ranked in the top-20 courses in the country and setup as if the Australian Open was finishing on the grounds the day they welcomed the field of a little over 60.

They weren’t bluffing down there at the Global Home regarding February’s Saudi International and preventing as many as thirty top players from playing the same week as the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

Nobody messes with Jay Monahan! He is the Sheriff of all…wait, what?

The potential defectors get to abandon one of the biggest events on the PGA Tour calendar and their punishment will to play Pebble Beach-Spyglass-MPCC over the next two years? All while collecting huge appearance fees and possibly laying the groundwork for fundamentally disrupting the PGA Tour’s business?

Tony Soprano, he is not. Guess Jay’s in the holiday spirit?

Back in July Golfweek’s Eamon Lynch reported that players would be denied releases to play the event believed to be a precursor to a Saudi Golf League. But now Lynch is first to report the releases will be granted for the February 3rd-6th event but with “strings attached.” Some really, really thin strings.

The game has grown! And America barely added to the increase of 5.5 million or so people who identify as golfer.

For Immediate Release:

14 December 2021, St Andrews, Scotland: New research figures revealed by The R&A and Sports Marketing Surveys (SMS) show golf has enjoyed a significant increase in popularity worldwide since 2016 with over five-and-a-half million additional golfers taking up the sport.

The number of total golfers globally has increased from 61 million to 66.6 million in a five-year growth period, surpassing the previous high mark of 61.6 million set in 2012. The measure includes club members and non-member independent golfers playing nine or 18 holes and users of driving ranges in markets where course availability is limited.

The new figure reflects a positive trend in golf in which participation levels are now rising worldwide after a period of decline. This was recently highlighted in the 2021 European Golf Participation Report, which highlighted that over 10.6 million golfers now enjoy playing full-length courses on the continent – a healthy increase from the 7.9 million last monitored in 2016.

After the relentless attention the Associated Press’ Stephen Wade gave the Olympic golf course project in Rio—none of it positive—it’s nice to see the same news organization covering a golf-related game grower in Rio who has created the “City of Golf” training ground.

From Diarlei Rodrigues' and Mauricio Savarese’s story about Marcelo Modesto.

A caddie for four decades, the 54-year-old Modesto has opened a golf training center in the most violent area of the favela. Without public or private funding, from just a sheer passion for the sport, Modesto has attracted 100 kids to the ground in hope of starting some on the path to becoming professionals, or doing something to get off the favela streets.

The City of God golf training ground is part of a program that hopes to develop children from one of Brazil’s most violent favelas into budding golfers who are invited to use the course from the Rio Olympic Games in 2016.

Their introduction to golf is rudimentary, at best.