Category: Features

Expanding The PGA’s Charitable Impact to Las Cruces, New Mexico: A Modest Proposal

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You may hate the PGA Tour’s course setups, schedule, the major it shares a name with (or all of the above), but chill for a moment and consider the significant social impact the Tour has had. We’re serious! We’re discussing social good on a website named after Black Metal!

During the 2018 PGA season, the Tour had a combined $190 million “charitable impact” on communities / organizations that hosted an event. For the most part, it’s not difficult to find where these numbers are coming from. The FedEx-St. Jude Invitational obviously benefits the title hospital. Jack Nicklaus is an avid proponent of Nationwide Children’s Hospital in nearby Columbus, and the Memorial Tournament behaves accordingly. The biggest single-year donator on tour was The Players Championship, which brought in $9.25 million for affiliated charities. But it can get better.

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Tim and Eric Awesome Show: 2 Guys Keeping Donald Ross Classic on Muni Budget at Shennecossett Golf Club

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Today’s news included the final day of play at the Oakland Hills South Course for nearly two years, as Gil Hanse sets in to renovate the course…probably ramping it up for a potential U.S. Open pitch in the decade to come. Is this necessarily good news? Hopefully, but maybe not. The Scioto Country Club, near to BPBM headquarters, has recently announced a total remodel to restore its Rossiness. On one hand, it’s a bit of a mislead; most of these restorations will be implemented to address member concerns following the previous round of work, which were made to host the U.S. Senior Open during 2016. Still, we should feel grateful that memberships are seeing fit to maintain Ross’s signature on his layouts at all.

It hasn’t always been the case. While Scioto’s last round of edits came in an effort to challenge pros, many of the Scot’s courses have met a muting of his personality for what can essentially be filtered down into two camps: apathy and, of course, budget.

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Brookline’s New Composite Course Routing for 2022 U.S. Open, and The Increasing Lameness of Stroke Play

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Here we are now, three years out from the 2022 U.S. Open, and we can’t think of a better time to start commenting on the course that the competitors will see*.

*= Look, BPBM isn’t exactly that influential so this will probably be the last chance we get to play The Country Club before the U.S. Open / ever, so we’re going to go ahead and write a post about it. And yeah, we’ll probably run it again in the weeks leading up to the actual 2022 U.S. Open. Here’s our angle: We’re reporting on the 2022 U.S. Open before it was cool to report on the 2022 U.S. Open.

That said we do have a bit of a not-so-hot scoop provided by our playing partner (well-regarded within the world of golf blogdom and course analysis): The routing of the 2022 event itself.

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The Tree at No. 3: BPBM’s Boss Writes on Pete Dye, Kiawah’s Ocean Course, and One Notorious Live Oak for ‘The Golfer’s Journal’

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BPBM’s boss, Ryan, played a bucket list round at Kiawah’s Ocean Course during 2017. Almost everything was perfect. Almost. Teeing off at No. 3, he was saddened to learn that the fairway live oak—the one he had played countless times via Xbox, the one that Rory McIlroy had gotten stuck during the 2012 PGA Championship—had fallen. Despite his par on the hole, that regret lingered, and he would pitch an obituary for the tree to The Golfer’s Journal. That narrow concept became an exploration of a species, a golf course, and especially of the man who designed it.

The brass at TGJ were kind enough allow us to publish the first section as a preview, and we wholeheartedly encourage you to pick up a copy of the Winter 2018 issue and read the rest. Not only because it’s an excellent publication—true, engaging feature stories…not wedge reviews… and exquisite photography—but because Ryan doesn’t really pick up steam until Part 4. Anyway, consider picking one up.

For now, enjoy Part 1 (note that edits may have been made for length in the actual, published version):

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