Nosing Out Pebble Beach

In the days before Tour players had their own caddies, they took potluck with loopers recruited from nearby clubs. Thus I got a bag in a couple of Cleveland Opens played back in the Vietnam War era.

I saw things that popped in my teenage head like fireworks: galleries; gallery [...]

What’s Old is New Again!

Some joker brought a giant thermometer to our game at Old American Golf Club last week. As the needle nosed toward 115, James Monroe began to pant after the exertion of pressing the accelerator pedal on his cart, and Dan Strimple cut back on the twitches and tics in [...]

GOD PLS SEND RAIN

The message on the portable marquee outside a Hill Country church could have been speaking for our entire drought-stricken state. Not that I picture God as a voice in the drive-through at a cosmic fast food restaurant. “This is God, may I take your order? Rain…a meaningful relationship with a [...]

While researching a book a on the ’91 Ryder Cup, I paused today to consider the greatest RC team of all time—the 1981 US squad. And I paused a while longer to recall the captain of that team, Dave Marr.

Marr was part of a continuum of Texans who led our side in the biennial [...]

I tried on the prima ballerina’s tutu before her final scene in Swan Lake.

I kicked a few field goals on the Super Bowl turf before the before the teams came out of the locker room. I ran the bases at Fenway Park before Game Seven of the World Series…

Finding the right metaphor for [...]

On a cliff in a thatched roof bungalow 700 feet above a turquoise river in primeval Mexico, Gilbert Freeman serenaded the night with Led Zeppelin, Joni Mitchell, Pink Floyd, and some Sinatra-sounding guy with clarinets and a string section. The music bounced off the soft roar of the Rio Gallinas emptying into [...]

What the?

The David Leadbetter Academy at Champions Gate in Orlando comprises a manicured expanse of tees and target greens with a luxury hotel on one side and a luxury golf course on the other. But amidst the spit-and-polish in the clubhouse hangs a photograph as discordant and jarring as a whipped cream [...]