GHIN
An update on real GHIN, as the USGA pushed out the GHIN Rewind this week and mine contained some surprises. We’ll dig deeper this week on the podcast, but I’ll get it started here.
- I will likely end the year at a 2.1, the exact same spot I started. The 61 rounds is light.
- I played at least eight rounds of alt shot that I couldn’t post (many at home) and then played another six rounds on courses that aren’t rated or postable.
- Of the scores I posted, I love seeing the variety: 43 different courses across 61 rounds. Seeing new courses is why I play golf. My “hardest round” also turned out to be the absolute best round I played all year - a 1-over par 72 at Western Gailes on a windy, grey day. It wasn’t the lowest score of the year but it was absolutely the best golf I played, and the 76 rating and 146 slope make sense. On the flip side, the “easiest” course I played according to the ratings is the Lagoon Course at my home club, Ponte Vedra Inn and Club. This could not be further from the truth. It’s a sub-6000 yard par 70 that’s rated as a 68.4 and 126 slope. This year the superintendent grew the rough up, the greens are fast, there’s water everywhere and there are six par-3s, six par-4s and six par-5s, and it’s HARD. Members and guests tend to scoff at it because of the yardage, but if I wanted to sandbag I would play there on a weekly basis and my index would shoot up.
- We’re recording our beginning of 2025 “Goals” podcast in the coming days, and I’ve already decided one of those goals is going to be 100 rounds posted.
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Here's what I had going on in 2024:
- My friend Garrett Morrison from Fried Egg Golf is down in Melbourne, Australia this week on a whirlwind tour of the Sandbelt and I am positively jealous. I cannot wait to return down under, and get to Hobart and Perth and Kangaroo Island and back to Adelaide on the next trip and then dig a level deeper in Victoria to see Yarra Yarra, Commonwealth, Woodlands, the various courses at The National, and Healesville. Balancing that and a proper New Zealand trip is going to be a tricky thing over the next 18 months.
- Speaking of Australia, the Australian Open (golf, not tennis) is a disgrace in its current iteration. Pitiful purse, paltry corporate support, sparse crowds in Melbourne, a neutered golf course setup, and a contrived co-ed format that’s great in theory and a mess in practice and short-changes both genders. National opens need to be celebrated and the winners rewarded with exemptions into the majors, but that’s also a two-way street and they need to be serious competitions befitting their title. Based on conversations with nearly everyone I know in Australia, I’m close to placing a fatwa on the entire Golf Australia organization. Get it together!
- I am grateful to the dozens of people who reached out and offered up dozens of the “old” version of the Cypress Point Club plastic ballmarkers and then sent them through. I mean, look at this thing!
- This is how I feel after Cal Club into Sea Island into Tree Farm into a father/son trip to Boston into Thanksgiving into Ohoopee into Randy’s wedding and then back to Ohoopee and then down to West Palm for TGL Media Day (seeing “The Spear” and “The Temple” in person is going to be majestic) this week, and I think I need to detox/chill out at home for a few weeks and get my feet under me:
Recent recommendations:
- I really enjoyed this recent podcast conversation between Andy Johnson and Bob Crosby. My friend/oft-collaborator Wolfie has told me repeatedly that Bob Crosby might be the smartest, most enlightened dude in golf, and this episode certainly supports that.
- Speaking of Wolfie, we recorded a “Best Golf Countries” Office Hours episode that will be coming out later this week. It’s my favorite OH ep we’ve done yet - be on the lookout for it. And in the meantime, catch up on our recent episode on Lost Golf Courses.
- On the newsletter front, Kyle Porter’s conversation with Rufus Peabody last week in his Normal Sport newsletter was fantastic. Rufus is someone who the more I learn about him, the more fascinated I become.
Tonic
- I took my older son Freddie up to Boston before Thanksgiving for a Celtics game and to show him where he was born. It was great to go up and also a reminder of how much I don’t miss the weather and gray and cold. We hit Pammy’s, Modern, the Celtics facility thanks to some gracious hospitality from a friend, got to see Anthony Edwards in person, saw a Celtics win, and Freddie was a trooper as we walked a lot. Fun weekend!
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