Category: Uncategorized

A.W. Tillinghast was not a fan of templates.

“I have known Charley Macdonald since the earliest days of golf in this country and for many years we have been rival course architects,” he wrote. “Our manner of designing courses never reconciled. I stubbornly insisted on following natural suggestions of terrain, creating new types of holes as suggested by Nature, even when resorting to artificial methods of construction. Charley, equally convinced that working strictly to models was best, turned out some famous courses. Throughout the years we argued good naturedly about it and that, always at variance it would seem.”

That is, Tillinghast was not necessarily a fan of MacRaynor’s template philosophy when it came to MacRaynor’s own template holes. Tillie approved more so of his own concepts, which include the “Reef” and “Double Dogleg” (his “Tiny Tim” was, for all purposes, just a different term for “Short”).

One has gathered more acclaim than those, however: The “Great Hazard” (frequently cited as “Tillinghast’s Great Hazard”…which probably fed into the architect’s noted ego).

Continue reading “Sunnehanna Country Club’s Almost-Greats: Tillinghast’s Favorite Hazard and Its Allegheny Adaptation” »

Having just watched Gary Woodland win his first major at the U.S. Open and, having been one of the slim minority to watch Jeoungeun Lee6 win her first career major, we now turn our attention to the third, and least relevant of the U.S. Opens: The U.S. Senior Open. With no offense to the gentlemen involved—many of whom had very illustrious careers—they are now living a non-PGA reality much more rewarding than the Web.com tour. We do not feel compelled to pay as much attention. That said, sometimes these guys play some bitchin’ courses that slide under the attention spans of everyday golf travelers. University Ridge, the home course for both this year’s Senior Open and the University of Wisconsin Badgers—is a decent course. If we were Badger students, we’d be happy have an affordable RTJ2 route at our disposal.

The Big Ten has several class-act (ha) golf courses among its members. As a Buckeye, we’re biased toward the Nicklaus-By-Way-Of-Mackenzie gem that is the Scarlet Course. Purdue students get discounted rates at a pair of courses from the Dye(s), and Michigan offers two different experiences with one Mackenzie layout and one Dye adventure. But you know about these (maybe). So we decided to set out in search of something different.

Continue reading “A Dwarf Star Among Big Ten Giants: Rutgers University Golf Course & Lessons For Campus Courses” »

We at BPBM are stunned by numbers and perception on a weekly basis, and not just in terms of “we probably should have clubbed up for that slope.” No…it’s usually album sales. “How could Ariana Grande outsell <INSERT NAME OF FRENCH BLACK METAL BAND>?” But this week it was different. As golf course architecture nerds, we were thrilled with the lead-up to the U.S. Women’s Open. On one hand, there was the salivation from a design standpoint, as The Fried Egg and others pushed the Country Club of Charleston, a lesser-known Seth Raynor Gem. And surely the Hank Haney controversy could only push viewers to the event, right?

Continue reading “How to Build A Winning (Read: Moneymaking) U.S. Women’s Open? Design? Location? Tiger Woods?” »

Slicers, Hookers, Cutters is a monthly rundown of the best and worst albums released during the previous month. Let’s be real…there’s only so much time we can dedicate to albums every month, so feel free to tweet @BethpageBM and let us know what we missed. Understand, of course, that we may have actually hated the garbage you recommend…so if you don’t see a social shout-out for that release, you’ll just have to sit there and wonder whether we missed your comment…or whether your taste is terrible. This crushing paranoia is all part of the doom metal experience.

Continue reading “Slicers, Hookers, Cutters: Best Metal Albums, May 2019” »

Grass has an enormous impact, both on metal and on golf. But, unfortunately—while grass is readily celebrated in metal blogs—it gets skirted around far too often within golf blogs. That’s why most viewers of the Genesis Open were bemused by the word “kikuyu,” and curious as to why analysts so frequently mentioned it. The reason for such focus is, of course, because it’s important, dammit.

And that’s why, this week, we’re wasting our time on a subject you—our valuable readership—don’t think you care about! And we will use the cookies on your internet to find where you live if you think about skipping this week’s post.***

*** = Not how the internet works.

There was a point, up until 2016, where the PGA Tour shifted gears between the Honda Classic and Arnold Palmer Invitational (at PGA National’s Champions Course and Bay Hill) to The Player’s Championship at TPC Sawgrass. You don’t need much more than Google maps to spot the difference in design from Bay Hill to Sawgrass, but it went a bit deeper than that. As implied earlier, it came down to grass. Specifically on the greens.

Continue reading “TifEagle: Explaining Favorite Florida Bermuda Grass at Bay Hill, PGA National, TPC Sawgrass & More (Plus a Ridiculous Trump Interview)” »

What does golf and black metal have in common? The following are two typical conversations held with your snobbish golf friend and your snobbish black metal friend, respectively:

Continue reading “Your Golf Snob Friend and Your Black Metal Friend are Exactly The Same.” »