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Pearls of Youth, A Golfer’s Remembrance

June 4th, 2011 | Add a Comment

Pearls of My Youth   by Zachary Michael Jack     My father kept his in a milky plastic pail, a repurposed ice-cream container we shared when first I took up the game. I fetishized his dimpled eggs, taking them out of their cramped quarters for group baths in the industrial-sized, two-basined sink in our farm’s machine shed, where on rainy days they would be individually scrubbed and dried by hand, or, as my dad preferred, bleached to Grade A. Among his dozens of pearls, I developed favorites and least favorites, the ones I’d hold my nose and hit last if I were hitting a whole bucket. I had my totem balls, the balls I’d turn to when I needed a little something extra, as if by their novelty alone they could lend my game an … Read entire article »

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Veteran Cherry Island Pro Tim Berg Discusses Junior Golf, the First Tee, and a Life Spent Teaching

Tim Berg started his golf career in 1964 at Eugene Country Club in Eugene, Oregon, and in the four decades since he has completed the golf circuit–playing the PGA Tour and serving as the Director of Golf at the Pebble Beach, among other high profile achievements, before settling into this current role as Director of Instruction at Cherry Island Golf Course in Sacramento, California. While Berg owns the hardware for the Pacific Northwest Open Championship and Pacific Northwest Senior Open Championship (twice each), his most enduring claim to fame is as an instructor. Pros like Peter Jacobson and John Fought flourished under his tutelage, but Berg’s had his most prolific successes coaching and mentoring amateurs, … Read entire article »

Legendary Amateur George Bernard Darwin Contemplates the Fine Art of Practicing

Bernard Darwin, grandson of famed British naturalist Charles Darwin, enjoyed a dual reputation as a distinguished amateur golfer and a celebrated sports journalist during and after the Golden Age. A one-time captain of the golf team at Cambridge University, Darwin, like Bobby Jones, worked as a lawyer when he wasn’t writing golf or playing it. Unlike Jones, Darwin made his reputation primarily with pen rather than putter, becoming the first to cover golf on a daily basis for such publications as The Times of London and Country Life. His sportswriting has since achieved classic status, especially his chapter on Robert Tyre Jones from Golf Between the Wars entitled, “The Immortal Bobby.” Like American golf writer … Read entire article »

Erin Hills latest, longest in trend toward healthy Midwest majors

Beyond the venerable old courses of the leafy Chicago suburbs, the Upper Midwest isn’t as known as the Coasts for producing elite major championship venues, but newer courses like Erin Hills, 30 miles northwest of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, are giving that old stereotype a necessary update. Opened in 2006, the rise of Erin Hills in major championship golf has been emblematic of the USGA’s recent openness to  upstart public and resort courses sited west of the original Thirteen Colonies. The proving ground for Erin Hills proved to be the 2008 U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links Championship, contested before the course was officially opened to the public. That event confirmed the USGA’s confidence, and at the same time … Read entire article »

AGD Chief edits historic Bobby Jones chapter from Down the Fairway

With the Walker Cup upcoming this September 10-11 at Royal Aberdeen in Scotland, it seems only fitting to conjure the name of Bobby Jones. The Jones heirs recently granted AGD’s chief editor Zachary Michael Jack the rare privilege of excerpting and editing Bobby Jones’s essay “The Biggest Year” for inclusion in the anthology Participatory Sportswriting. Robert Tyre Jones Jr., the quintessential amateur sportsman of the Golden Age, was also a gifted writer and an unusually self-reflective athlete. Holding university degrees in engineering, literature, and law from Georgia Tech, Harvard, and Emory respectively, Jones had both the ability and the inclination to document his unprecedented feel for the game, as the five major books he authored … Read entire article »

USGA’s Mike Davis Shares Amateur Golfing Memories with AGD Editor Zachary Michael Jack

Amateur Golf Digest: Mike, tell our readers about your background in golf?   Mike Davis: I played junior golf and then went on to play collegiate golf, so I did have some background in terms of tournament golf, which I think to some extent certainly helps in the job I’ve got. What I am doing at the USGA is not just golf course set up at the U.S. Open. I’m in charge of the rules and competitions department. I am very involved with writing and interpreting of the rules of golf. I get a little involved with amateur status, in the logistical conduct of all our national championships. So I’m doing a lot of things that everyone … Read entire article »