Hey Everyone,

Last weekend I played in the Chilly Willy, a four-club scramble at Ponkapoag GC in Canton. It’s the fourth year I’ve played in it. It’s a super fun event where every team makes chili that gets judged and added to the 18-hole score.

With winter golf coming, I recommend trying some wonky golf formats, like a four-club scramble, alternate shot, or playing with a half-set. Scores don’t count for the GHIN right now, so you might as well enjoy a round in a different way.

Ponkapoag GC was one of the six courses I featured in my latest video about courses with potential. There’s so much to be said about Ponkapoag. I’d imagine every state has a Ponky that has tons of potential and no leadership to deliver a solid experience.

If you are interested in a golf trip, I have partnered with The Golf Trip Guys, who are running a trip to Hilton Head in April. It’s called the Spring Training Classic. Co-founder Sean Toland joined me recently on the podcast (watch on YouTube).The trip is a great opportunity to shake off the rust before next year’s season and meet some new people. Grab a friend and book this fun trip. Details.

News and Notes:

Megan Khang reaches LPGA Tour Championship: This week marks Khang’s ninth time playing in the CME Globe Tour Championship. NINE! The 26-year-old has been on tour for *checks notes* nine years. An incredible accomplishment. A story of consistency, to be sure. She shot 69 (-3) on Thursday and is in T17.

Alexa Pano misses LPGA Championship: After a long trip to Asia to acquire as many points as possible, Pano skipped the penultimate event to rest up for one final push to crack the top 60. She looked poised to make it after an opening with rounds of 67 and 64 in the ANNIKA. She ended up shooting 72-71 on the weekend and finished 65th on the points list, five spots outside the cut line. Last year, Pano won an LPGA event and reached the LPGA Tour Championship in her rookie year.

Michael Thorbjornsen goes low: He’s baaaaaaack. Thorbjornsen shot a 64 (-8) on Thursday in his first round on the PGA Tour since withdrawing from the Black Desert Championship five weeks ago. Last year, Ludvig Aberg won this event. He was the 2023 PGA Tour U winner. Thorbjornsen was the 2024 PGA Tour U winner.

MassGolf announces Player of the Year Awards: Here’s a link to all the winners

Class of 2025 College Commits: I collected as many commitments as I could find for players and teams around New England. You can see them all here.

If you have any results or stories that you think would be great for the newsletter. Send them to [email protected]. I’d love to highlight some high school and college golf this fall season. So if you’re connected to a program, send along results or highlights.

Tom Fazio is who I thought he was

This week, Volume 30 of The Golfer’s Journal arrived in the mail. I cracked it open and was drawn immediately to the Tom Fazio interview. I don’t know a lot about Fazio other than that he loves to move land, millions of cubic tons of land, to build golf courses.

The interview drove that point home.

Before we continue, let me get some things out in the open.

First, I don’t really like Fazio courses.

Second, I understand that people do like Fazio courses.

Third, the people who like Fazio courses are wrong.

I kid, I kid.

Fourth, here’s a quote from an interview he did for the Golf World (I found it on Waterville Links’ website).

It might set the tone…

I haven’t played many Fazio courses.

His Buffalo Ridge design at Big Cedar Lodge was my least favorite of the trio of courses at that resort by far. Water features galore! I played his course at Wild Dunes in South Carolina and was stunned at some of the shots I had to hit from people’s backyards. It’s a course that received very high praise when it was built in the 1980s. I just didn’t get it. 🤷 

I’ve also been pretty lukewarm on courses like Wollaston GC. According to his website, his only other original design in Massachusetts is The Oaks Course at The International. I’d say The Oaks is probably my favorite of this collection.

Fazio is 79 years old and a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame. He is prolific, building and renovating hundreds of courses. His portfolio includes courses in 38 of the 50 states and nine courses in eight countries, but he said he never had a real passion for building abroad. He wanted to be home with his family whenever he could.

In an interview for Waterville Links, where he did renovation work, Fazio said he built 4-5 courses a year during the building booms in the 1970s and the 1992-2007 windows.

While he’s built hundreds of courses, Fazio is also the lead design consultant at Augusta National and Pine Valley.

As he gained notoriety, he was hired to work on classic courses. Some of those did not go well. Most notably, in the last decade, Andrew Green restored Inverness in Ohio. In the late 1970s, Fazio eliminated three holes from the original Donald Ross design and made three new ones in preparation for the 1979 U.S. Open (Imagine an artist touching up the Mona Lisa with a pixie cut…).

Here’s how Fazio described it:

One could argue that Fazio was a product of his era. In the 1970s, courses were being built at a crazy clip—3o0 a year from 1970 to 1974. The concern wasn’t about maintaining, or creating, history; it was about having more spectators at tournament courses and having space for houses and real estate on other new builds. Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer had made the game popular. There was money available.

Fazio went on to discuss the “ease” of designing a course on land that was always destined for golf.

“Now if you go to sandy sites, like the natural, rolling sites in the middle part of the U.S. or in the upper lakes of Michigan or Wisconsin or anywhere where there’s sandy terrain, it’s easy to build a golf course,” he said. “Somebody who has never done it will have a lot of fun because it’s easy.”

Easy? Sheesh.

Yes, it might be easy to build a golf course that’s serviceable. I don’t think if you plopped some Average Joe in Pine Valley, he’d be able to conjure up what George Crump and his buddies created.

The implication that moving heaps of land to build a golf course on a “bad site” is harder than using the natural contours comes across as out of touch. According to The Golfer’s Journal, in order to build Frederica in Georgia, “Seven million cubic yards of sand soil were moved to create the highest ridge in the county, and more than 1,000 live oaks were transplanted onto the property.”

Fazio’s website calls Quail Hollow, Pinehurst No. 8, and Shadow Creek his “iconic designs.”

It took $47 million to build Shadow Creek in Las Vegas. It’s hosted the LPGA Match Play and the PGA Tour’s CJ Cup. You can play it… but it’s cheaper to attend the Ryder Cup. Peak season is $1,250… per person.

Nature’s Canvas Sculpted into Perfection are the words that welcome visitors to Fazio’s website.

Finding an excellent property in Nebraska’s sand hills or the coast of Oregon is challenging, no doubt about it. Fazio seems to come from the school that great golf can be built anywhere. As long as the money is there.

However, what's interesting about sites that provide great grounds for golf is the options that those types of properties offer architects. How do they choose a routing when so many might present themselves? I remember a quote from one architect about seeing 100+ holes on a site and the challenge of trying to figure out the best 18.

Fazio seems uninterested in that type of design.

Donald Ross built one of the most expensive courses of its time. George Wright required $1 million and insane manpower to make the land “golf-able,” so I understand that sometimes land needs to be moved and altered to make a site work.

“If you could go back and interview the great architects in the past they would have told you they would have done something different if they had been given more resources,” he told the Golf World. “Just imagine how AW Tillinghast would have reacted if you gave him a Caterpillar D8 bulldozer, or if he had seen Tiger Woods hit a ball in his prime.”

I’m not sure Tilly would be digging up millions of tons of cubic sand and transplanting 1000 trees. But I never met the guy.

The final blow for me was when Fazio shared where he likes to play golf.

“I generally play my own courses because I’ve done so many. It’s great right here [in South Florida]. I go to Emerald Dunes, Jupiter Hills, McArthur, or the Floridian.”

Talk about an echo chamber.

Double Click(s)

1. Tiger Woods from May 1996 - October 1997

   1. Wins Haskins Award (College Golf PoY)

   2. 1996 Pac-12 PoY

   3. 1996 NCAA Individual Champion

   4. 1996 Pac-12 Individual Champ

   5. Signs largest Nike and Titleist deals by a golfer at that time

   6. 1996 PGA Tour Rookie of the Year (2 wins)

   7. 1996 Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year

   8. 1997 Masters Champion (sets scoring record)

   9. 1997 Reached No. 1 in World Ranking

   10. 1997 Money List Champion

   11. 1997 PGA Player of the Year (4 wins)

2. Golf.com released their Top 100 courses in America last week. Six Massachusetts courses made the list: The Country Club (No. 21), Eastward Ho! (No. 50), Old Sandwich (No. 62), Essex CC (No. 65), Kittansett (No. 68), and Sankaty Head (No. 92).

   Newport CC (No. 77) was the only other New England course to make the list.

   I’m not one to care too much about rankings. I do think it’s probably an important exercise for massive publications to do because it gives a snapshot of the golf landscape and what’s popular and en vogue.

   Golf, like most things, lives within a cycle. Trends become overused, and new trends replace them.

   Andy Johnson, on his Fried Egg podcast, made an interesting point while using, as only he can, an odd analogy. He said he was home recently, digging through a closet, and he came across a pair of Birkenstocks that he had in high school. They’re popular again, but for a long time, they were not. The same can go for golf courses and people's tastes for various golf designs and experiences. Some courses chase what’s popular, pumping money into changes, while others know what they are and aren’t worried about sitting in the closet for a bit before their design becomes a tastemaker again.

   I am interested in seeing the 101-200 list. Some courses are comfortable there and others, who just lost a spot on this Top 100 list, might want to chase a ranking and make changes to their course.

3. They also released their Top 100 Courses You Can Play. George Wright (No. 70) and Taconic (No. 73) were the Massachusetts picks, and Cape Arundel (No. 63) in Maine were the New England selections. I feel somewhat validated that GW and Taconic are two courses I suggest people see. I’m not going out on a limb when I say it, but they are two courses that have the strongest sense of place and design chops of the public Bay State courses I’ve played.

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When I’m not golfing…

I’m reading…

⚽️ I enjoyed reading this Atlantic interview with Inigo Turner, the Adidas designer behind this year’s Manchester United jersey.

I’m listening to…

🎵 Aha Shake Heartbreak by Kings of Leon is one of my favorite albums.

🎼 Beethoven Blue by Jon Batiste is awesome. A mix of Beethoven with the blues.

I’m eating…

🍜 Mr. H makes wickedly delicious Dan Dan Noodles. The restaurant is in the Seaport, but I didn’t go. Tiff brought leftovers home this week.

I’m drinking…

🍎 It’s apple cider season. Have yet to dabble with the spiked side of things.

I’m watching…

🇮🇪 We watched the first episode of Say Nothing this week. All ten episodes were dropped at once. It’s on Hulu and FX.

🤷 Put on “Before the 90 Days” this week because, truthfully, I needed a break from the news. Just a ridiculous show.

New here? Reached the bottom?

Hell Yeah.

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Bay State Archives

• A list of golf courses open in the winter.

• Bay State Picks: Best courses you can walk for less than $60.

• Bay State Picks: Nine-hole courses to play before or after work

• Bay State Picks: 18 public golf that is worth your time

• Bay State Picks: Easy 18-hole public walks

• Bay State Deep Dive: Myopia Hunt Club

   

• "On Course" New England Journal Podcast

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• Amateur Golf Podcast

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