Hey Everyone,

This week, it was officially announced that Maplegate CC was sold for $25 million to NextGrid, a solar company. For the last few years, every season felt like it might be the last one for the Bellingham course as rumors swirled about a sale.

The course has an interesting, while short, history; it was built in 1988 by the owner Leonard French with some help from Phil Wogan, who designed the greens. Throughout its existence, the course remained in the family. Leonard French passed away in 2017, and his two daughters ultimately decided to sell it.

There won’t be any window of time in the spring when people can play golf. The course is officially closed.

This is the second course that the area has lost in the last few years. Nine-hole Bungay Brook, which I found quite charming, was turned into a housing development. Glen Ellen CC, about 25 minutes away from Maplegate in Millis, also closed in 2017.

So here is the tentative count for public golf holes lost for 2026 (let me know if I missed anything…):

Toss in the renovation at Leo J. Martin, and that’s 83 holes in the state that won’t be usable next year. This also puts more pressure on the Leo J. Martin renovation to be good and sustainable into the future. Muni golf will have a larger weight to carry.

On the bright side, Atlantic CC (Plymouth, Mass.), whose sale has also been rumored, will remain a golf course for the foreseeable future as the town halted any sort of development on the course.

Ok, lets get to the News and Notes.

🌽 The Korn Ferry Tour starts this Sunday down in the Bahamas. Robbie Oppenhiem is in the field. Live Scoring

🏌 Davis Chatfield fired a 64 and finished second in the one-day Abacoa Classic on the Minor League Golf Tour. Fellow PGA Tour member Eric Cole edged him by one shot. Chatfield will head to Hawaii for the Sony Open next week to kick off his first season on the PGA Tour. Results

🏅 James Imai (Brookline, Mass.) won the Wekiva New Year’s Classic in Florida. He shot 66-72 for a one-shot win. He earned $1,300. Results

🏌‍♀️ A new women’s version of TGL’s indoor golf is coming, and if Megan Khang isn’t involved, then what are we even doing… that’s all.

📆 I have put together a comprehensive list of results and schedules for all the Division 1 men’s and women’s teams, along with any Division 1 results for any golfer who hails from the Bay State who plays D1 golf in Massachusetts and beyond.

Check it out here.

🍑 Ryan Downes is playing in the Jones Cup down at Ocean Forest in Georgia. It’s an elite field that includes a handful of Walker Cuppers and marks the beginning of the amateur season every year. It starts on Friday. Live Scoring

🍊 Isabel Brozena, Molly Smith, and Lillian Guleserian are in Florida for the South Atlantic Women’s Amateur Championship, aka The SALLY. It’s one of the oldest women’s amateur events in the country. Connecticut Women’s State Amateur champion Yvette O’Brien is also in the field. Live Scoring

Last week, Burke and Jed joined me on the podcast to draft the most important shots in the majors from 2000-2025. It was a lot of fun. We each picked five shots, snake draft style. And then tossed out a bunch of other shots in an honorable mention section.

Spotify I Apple

I also shared three courses that I actually think might be better to play in the winter.

Pining for Kapalua

The PGA Tour should have started this week at Kapalua. However, a water dispute in the late summer turned the course brown and put the event in doubt. When the issue continued, the event was cancelled. No Laying Up had an episode this week detailing what happened.

It stinks not to have Kapalua this week. It was a slice of paradise in a grey part of the year for so much of the country. It seems likely the tournament won’t ever return, and that the Sony Open, also in Hawaii, is also on the chopping block as the PGA tries to rein in a bloated schedule.

The thing that losing Kapalua made clear was that it’s good to miss something. It’s good to want it back. There have been years when Kapalua rolls around, and I’m not ready to watch pro golf. It feels like there wasn’t any reason off-season. Last year’s event started on January 2 due to the way the calendar fell.

In December, Harris English let slip in a press conference that the PGA Tour might just punt (pun intended) on competing with football.

“The talk of the Tour potentially starting after the Super Bowl I think is a pretty good thing because we can't really compete with football,” English said. 

Will that be the case? I don’t know. Dylan Deither of Golf.com wrote about a bevy of options and possibilities for next year.

What I do know is that an off-season and an opening event should work together to make the beginning of any season worth talking about.

In recent years, the PGA Tour has just kind of started in the wake of New Year’s Eve and in the shadow of the NCAA and NFL Playoffs.

Do I wish I could turn on Golf Channel every evening this week and watch golf in Hawaii.

Of Course.

Has missing it made it clear that golf might need to generate some scarcity and disappear for a true off-season? Yes.

Now the question is… can they pick the right events to eliminate because Kapalua should be one of the them. It’s just the example, sadly, that many needed.

Sports, Gambling, and YouTube

Speaking of more golf, over the holidays there was the Match and the Golf Channel Games. Two made for TV events that tried to generate a bit of fun.

For some time now, people have wondered why the PGA Tour hasn’t created more post-produced golf competition content that can fit into a tighter window.

The Match and the Golf Channel Games were both live events that drag on like a Saturday morning round at your local muni.

The quick and dirty answer is gambling.

Live sports mean gambling.

Recorded sports mean no gambling.

At this point, viewers are inundated with sports props, over/unders, and parlays during any live sport. It’s insane but it’s also become so regular that you don’t notice it unless you really step back and pay attention.

Between in-broadcast live bets and commercials with Jon Hamm, Shaq, and Kevin Hart it’s everywhere.

Where is it not?

YouTube Golf.

Even the wildly popular Internet Invitational that Bar Stool and Bob Does Sports organized didn’t need it to draw eyeballs. Sure, they were playing for money, but so are guys in The Match and the Golf Channel Games. They just aren’t playing to make viewer bet money.

What’s also crazy is that you can’t watch the Golf Channel Games on YouTube in full. It’s all chunked out into highlight packages. So a month later, Golf Channel can’t even just have a one-hour, well-produced, action-packed episode.

Instead, Golf Channel has been airing full broadcasts of events from 2025.

They’re even replaying The Big Break ahead of a new season that will give the winner a spot in the PGA Tour’s Good Good Championship.

I’m looking forward to watching that. The old seasons were great. It was Survivor meets golf.

Popping on whatever YouTube golfer you like is a nice respite from the live sports experience. I love going back and watching old NLU Tourist Sauce and Strapped episodes. There’s a relationship they have with the audience. Good Good, Bob Does Sports, and Bryson do the same. You can be invested in sports without being invested in sports.

Watching people play golf without the gambling lines splashed across the screen or Jon Hamm telling you to download an app is lovely. And I love Jon Hamm.

Creativity…even if it’s forced… is awesome

Chris Gotterup hit a very cool shot in his TGL debut on a hole called “Stinger.” The design forces players to hit… you guessed it… a stinger.

Now, will Augusta rush out and stick a massive cliff hanging over the left side of the 17th fairway after seeing this?

Probably not… but they have the money to do it!

But what this showed me was these guys have shots and ability that we never get to really see on the PGA Tour.

Gotterup isn’t even an elite ball striker. He was 41st in Strokes Gained this past season. But he won the Scottish Open and then the next week in the Open Championship he finished third.

The unserious setting of TGL allows for this type of risk and ridiculousness.

The only time we get to see this type of shotmaking is when wind and rain are part of the equation because players have no event organizer to blame when it blows 35 mph or rains.

Smaller clubheads or spinnier golf balls would help the cause.

We’re probably far beyond that being a reality.

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I’m reading…

🎯 This article about 18-year-old Luke Littler, the Dart World Champion is worth a read.

Last year, at 17 and in his first full year on the professional circuit, he became the sport’s youngest world champion, beating the previous holder of that title, Michael van Gerwen, 7-3 in the final and drawing comparisons to Pele and Serena Williams.

I’m listening to…

🎸 The first week in January is the kind of week that requires a bit more focus than most as we all come out of our holiday haze. This Focus Playlist is always a help.

🎹 My friend Scott puts out his 100 songs of the year every year. Every year I listen to it and realize I am not cool or on the cutting edge. Listen to his selections here.

🐷 My brother’s band PigPen Theatre Co. released a new EP this week called Out of the Overture. Three songs, all worth your time.

🎙 Ray LaMontagne’s Trouble is kinda built for winter.

I’m watching…

🏈 We’ve got Patriots playoff football this Sunday! 8 pm. Can’t wait.

This piece made me think about golf…