“It appears to me that the dark has a lot more territory.”

“You’re looking at it wrong, the sky thing. Once, there was only dark. You ask me, the light’s winning.”

Right now, I’m camped out indoors, sheltering from an impending downpour. I spent the morning finalizing my trip to Chardon, Ohio and taking three times as long to do anything. I thought moving was complete once the furniture was built, but I didn’t realize how much infrastructure was in place in my day-to-day life until I had to start building it myself. For instance, that a real kitchen trash can with a lid is the only thing keeping swarms of fruit flies at bay, and that just using a spare cardboard box would invite a multi-front war. Flushing out my sink’s garbage disposal with boiling water was not how I planned to spend half an hour today. 

So, when I checked my phone on the way to practice and realized we’d get pounded by a thunderstorm in 20 minutes, I realized I’d blown the good-weather practice hours to poor planning. I sped through a chipping drill way too fast for it to be effective practice, then got inside just before the storm was supposed to hit. I’ve been doing video work in an indoor-outdoor hitting bay for a while, but the practice plan I’d put together for today will go mostly undone. 

It’s been the subtle ways in which shedding the amateur tag and turning pro feels like I imagine those big lizards feel after molting. There’s this new-skin full-body-sunburn feeling by which everything I do gets my attention a bit more and I’m that much more aware of bumping into stuff. Not checking the weather is a total own goal, and I get the sense I’m commanding only small pockets of what I need to control, and I have a feeling this sort of thing comes with the territory until I’m able to scale things up. 

Case in point: there’s a bunch of guys out on the back range hitting balls right now. The models are absolutely adamant that we’re about to get hammered by this storm, but they’ve been saying it for an hour and it hasn’t rained a drop. The veteran pros apparently know something I don’t, and that knowledge has granted them an hour’s worth more work.

I moved down here last week to chase pro golf. In four days, I’ll fly up to Detroit and drive over Chardon, Ohio to play the Korn Ferry Tour Q-School Pre-Qualifier at Sand Ridge Golf Club. There are roughly 75 of us playing; of those, roughly 35 will advance to First Stage (First Stage is actually the second stage — this has been very easy to communicate to my friends and family who just want to know what I’m up to…). Something around par will probably get through. If I can play my game this week, I think I’ll get through, and I’ll have three stages and 12 rounds of golf between me and membership on one of the PGA Tour affiliate tours. 

But, in a sense, it’s simpler than all that. I’m trying to get good enough at getting the ball in the hole that people will give me money to watch me do it. There are a lot of us trying to do this, and there are only so many checks to be won. And so the margins seem to be such that a better weather forecast and an extra hour’s worth of practice once in a while could make the difference.

If there were ten thousand Tour cards, I think many of us would choose to chase something else. I’m not sure it’s about the golf, in the end. It is, of course, an immense privilege to be able to play golf for a living. But there’s an additional privilege of doing a job that asks for everything you have. If I were doing another job, I think I’d be able to produce work that’s good enough, get in a rhythm, and become something of a system quarterback. For some reason, I feel the call of something that wants me to truly plumb the depths of what I’m made of. I want to do it, but I also want to know if I can. And I’m going to fight like hell to find out.

My game feels good. I didn’t score well today. It’s one of the scarier combinations in competitive golf, in my opinion. My coach and friends agree that my game looks good, and the shots feel exceedingly doable, but the numbers aren’t adding up at the end of the day. 

Today, after getting caught up with move-in stuff once again, I rolled out of the car and onto the first tee. I’d worked out in the morning, so I figured I was already loose and no worse off for not warming up. But midway through the round I realized I had been setting up closed, and I’d started compensating by swinging over the top — this is a familiar pattern for me, the tendency I’m trying to combat right now. By that point in the round, I’d made too many swings to adjust things easily on the fly, and I felt like I was fighting myself pretty much the whole way around. 

I think the consistency that great pros are able to display on a day-to-day basis deserves more recognition than it gets. There’s the obvious sense that going out and playing top-level golf is impressive, but, even as a reasonably good player myself (I did break par from the tips in the wind today), I stepped on multiple bad-habit landmines that I was specifically trying to avoid. There’s a lot that goes into making consistently good passes at the golf ball.

It started raining on us pretty good during the round (for real, this time), and the worst of it started as we walked off the 18th green. But I had work to do. And, while puddles on a putting mirror used to be a reason to go inside and get the work done tomorrow, now it’s an annoyance that has to be tolerated and overcome like any other. The work had to get done. There’s a pride to be taken in it. I know people have done a lot harder work under a lot worse conditions, but there are plenty of guys who aren’t out there in the rain. It feels good to lay out my clubs in my apartment to dry and feel like I did something.

Now I’m showered, sitting at my kitchen table, looking at my apartment’s still-largely-blank walls. I’ve been enjoying the clean look of things during the day, the simplicity, and the feeling of control that comes from an uncomplicated environment. There’s a sense that I’m not being influenced, that the blank walls let me write things for myself. 

But, once the sun sets, they can become a bit more of a burden, a lonely demand to populate the space with my own thoughts. The mind craves some amount of structure. In the daylight hours, the visual simplicity of the space denotes it as a sovereign space in an often chaotic world. But at night, light stops coming in the windows, the apartment becomes the whole world, and the walls start asking questions. 

I’ve been rewatching the first season of True Detective while continuing my set-up chores here, and the main takeaway is that my head’s filling up with a lot of dark, uncomfortable shit, and I should watch something else. But, with all that season’s talk of superstition and stories, I find myself asking: do I have what it takes? Does my own self have what’s needed to pull this off? Cognitively, I believe it’s a bad question. Right now, it’s still up to me. I can pull it off, or I can’t. I don’t think fate or armchair analysis gets to the root of the problem. 

The better question — maybe the only question — is, “What can I do to give myself the best chance?” And that begins with filling my head with something other than dark, existential TV. Still, there’s a Wile E. Coyote feeling to it all — that I know I shouldn’t look down, but, if I did, I’d start falling. And both my intrigue and my discomfort with the word “chance” have me craving an answer, making me want to take a peek. I’d better keep my eyes above the horizon. 

And, just like that, I’m in Chardon, Ohio. 

Going back to yesterday, my last day of practice at home before traveling, everything felt great. Golf felt easy. I had all the shots. As much as this seems wonderful, the truth is probably closer to that of the parable about the Chinese farmer: maybe. Things lined up well today. I’m glad they did. I don’t know why things went so well, and in that sense, I don’t own it. At the same time, I’m not going to try too hard to find out — in high school biology, when you dissect a frog, what you’re left with at the end is not a frog. I made careful note of how I was setting up and brought as much awareness as I could muster to how things felt, and otherwise, I just tried to enjoy it. It was a nice night with a beautiful sunset, and I was hitting spinny nippers all over the green. Life is good. 

Last night, packing took several hours. I don’t like travel very much, and I usually just sleepwalk through it all and trust the transportation system to get me from point A to point B. Add to it that this trip felt more important and more foreign than most, and I was dead convinced I was going to forget something totally vital, and also decided that I needed to do laundry, and was monitoring several college football situations — and next thing I knew it was 1 am. Nerves are weird. 

Flashing forward to now (and skipping the travel day I was effectively unconscious for), I just watched Patton Kizzire’s win at whatever the Safeway is called now. I’m a massive fan of his. I lived in St. Simons, GA (where I’ve just moved now) during my COVID gap year from school, and Patton always made himself available for brain-picking when I saw him. He gave me some invaluable advice when he could have just put his head down and kept working. It’s easy enough not to take the time to tell a nervous 20-year-old to believe in himself — no, really, believe in yourself — but he did. Plus, his chipping action is obscenely smooth — he makes chipping look like cornhole with spin. That win couldn’t happen to a better guy, and if you’re not already a fan, you should be. 

In his post-round interview, he was asked what worked this week, and he said: “I stayed disciplined. I…I stayed extremely disciplined.” Reflecting on any time golf has gone right for me, it’s been wildly simple, and any answer worth giving is no more complicated than a single word. That “discipline” is the very thing that worked appears deeply profound. 

If “discipline” is the key, then the question, for someone making their first pro start, is what exactly to be disciplined about. And, in the spirit of faking it ‘til I make it, I’m deciding that’s to be myself and nothing else. I’m going to play my brand of golf the way I know how, and I’m not going to let anything about the moment tell me differently. I’m going to do what I do, and I’m going to be who I am, and that’s going to be it.

I have to admit that I don’t think I’ve been entirely honest to this point. Up to now, I’ve felt that the truth has to include some reflection of the fact that being a new guy entering an industry with zero job stability includes some level of doubt and confusion and fear. Unfortunately, these sorts of things are interesting to read about and unpack, and they make for interesting storytelling. 

With that said: I really don’t see these things as 

. There’s been moments of doubt, and there’s been moments of confusion, but the times I feel the most like myself — the most 

 to myself — are times like right now. Right now, I can see that it’s the same game I’ve always played, and that I’m really damn good at that game, and that what I have in me has what it takes to play great golf. I hope the other stuff is interesting, but I’m not sure it’s illuminating, because it’s something other than God’s honest truth that I can do this.

In the same way that your dumbest buddy thinks he could fight a middleweight contender but would never mess with the big dude at the bar, I find myself watching Tour golf and thinking “I can do that” while being intimidated by guys on their third run through Q School while I’m making my first pro start. There’s this sense of an efficient market hypothesis in pro sports: that the guys here are wearing staff hats and paid to use someone’s towel because they’ve figured out all the things I haven’t yet. But, at the end of the day, I’ve put a lot of work in, too. We all start at even par. And I know that I can do it.

The natural question here is: if I’m so sure that all of my doubts are mere illusions, then why spend so much time writing about them? And I think the answer, beyond the fact that writing about them feels artsy and “deep”, is captured better by one of my favorite memes than I could ever hope to write:

And so, despite stubbornly hanging on to things that do not serve me, I know — deep down someplace where only the truth lies, I know — that I am good enough.

So, on the drive back from my last practice round, I asked myself: what would make me feel most free going into tomorrow? And I answered that I wanted to own my transition move and feel creative and present. So I’m going to rehearse that transition with a mini club in my hotel room, and then I’m going to finish this novel I’m reading, and then I’ll go to sleep knowing I’m going to kick ass tomorrow. 

9:40am, when balls go in the air, is the start of a great thing.

If you’re looking for more detail than that, I don’t much care to give it. I played the par 3s +6. I hit it over the back of 8 greens and was chipping from bad spots all day. My distance control SUCKED. I putted defensive and scared. I fanned a two-footer, something I haven’t done in probably a year. I lost 3.5 shots around the greens (mostly from chipping from truly horrible places) and another 4+ with approach play and putting each. It all just fucking sucked. 

Honestly, I felt I was swinging it solid. Commit to shots well. Just couldn’t hit a yardage to save myself. Feels like some funhouse mirror bullshit, that I show up to an event feeling solid and do reasonably well executing my gameplan and all of a sudden I’m damn near DFL. 

I’ve played a lot of shit golf in my life, and I’ve gotten pretty good at spitting blood and standing back up, but for fuck’s sake it’d be nice not to get knocked down in the first place. I’ve spent a lot — a LOT — of my life waking up early, putting in the work, and keeping straight and narrow to try to get the best out of myself and specifically avoid the thing that just happened. 

If you told me right now that I’d never feel like this again if I drove a railroad spike into my foot every day for a year, I’d roll out of bed every morning and put one in each foot just to make sure. I’m deathly serious about that. And if you think that’s unhealthy, then I promise you that whatever’s in me that makes me balk two-footers and swing over the top instead of slotting it — when that’s the ONLY THING I’m making sure I feel — I’d tell you that whatever that force is, I promise it’s massively carcinogenic. 

Because if there’s one thing that’s most important to get across, it’s this: I desperately, desperately want to be telling a success story. I have no interest in telling the story of how some kid gave pro golf a run and had a lot of fun before going on to work some real job. If I wanted to find myself, I’d backpack around Europe: it’d be cheaper, I’d visit more interesting places, and every failure of mine wouldn’t be posted on the fucking internet. I’m doing it because I want to be great, and I’m writing because I want to capture the process of becoming great. Maybe there’s a very nice version of this whole journey that ends with some pleasant self-acceptance that I gave it my best shot but pro golf isn’t my thing, but, in no uncertain terms: FUCK THAT. 

I really, truly believe I can shoot 66-66 and get myself back in this. Gun to my head, I believe it. Apparently, that’s contingent on waking up in the real world tomorrow instead of the haunted house I was in today. But I know it’s in me. I know it.

Connor Belcastro: The Q-School Diary

Hand up! We missed the end of the month by a couple of days. But we are excited to bring this interview with NEST Member Connor Belcastro. Connor graduated from Princeton University last Spring with a major in Philosophy while playing on the men's golf team. Since graduation, he has relocated to St. Simons Island, GA, to practice full-time in pursuit of his dream of playing on the PGA Tour. In his free time, Connor writes about the game he loves.


His latest piece for the website can be found here: 

2024 Nest Podcast

Nest Podcast

Episode 59: September 2024

If you missed it, catch up on my colleague 

 from last week. The heater that she’s been on for the last few weeks between travel, music and activities is pretty wild, and I read about her trip to Ireland with wistfulness. I rue the fact that it’s been well over five years since my first and only visit to Carne. On top of that, Casey and her husband Jon visited Mulranny, a rustic little links about 30 miles south of Carne that had been firmly on our itinerary for 

, until we realized nothing was going to pull us away from what remains one of the all-time days in NLU history on that links in Belmullet.

And that’s the conundrum, ever more so as we age and our families grow and the business grows: how to balance exploring the new and revisiting the old? Some of my most cherished memories have come upon second and third visits to places - digging deeper on a course and it revealing more and more over several loops or in a different season, reconnecting with people who became friends the first time around, taking pride in going back to somewhere that left an outsized impact on your journey, wanting another crack at a certain shot. On the other hand, there’s always that next place to go to, even within the same region. I’m jonesing to get to Gamble Sands, but I’m also intent on getting back to Gearhart or Chambers Bay. Royal County Down is on the list. Does a trip back to Carne get tacked onto that one? There’s only so much time to go around. And when you look at it all in totality it becomes daunting and intimidating, especially when factoring in non-golf trips, family trips and other hobbies.

The Dunhill Links is this week on the east coast of Scotland, which makes me realize it’s been over six years since I’ve been back to the Highlands. You can bury me at Brora or Dornoch, and yet somehow I went twice in 2018 and have never been back. Another New Zealand trip, Iceland, getting down to Hobart, Portugal, half a dozen different regions of England, Argentina, Japan, South Africa, Northern Europe, Western Canada, a dozen different parts of our own country. As we sit here doing 2025 and 2026 planning, how do you balance the familiar and the unknown? There’s always the risk of going back to a place and it not living up to that first trip, or that group of people you were with, or the conditions you got. Or heading to a new spot in search of some magic and being let down and wishing you would’ve just taken the opportunity to head back to the place you loved the first time. These certainly aren’t problems - it’s part of the magic. And there’s no right answer or recipe. The biggest thing is committing fully to each trip and planning it in a way that there’s enough depth and variety and adventure that it’s impossible to have a bad time. And if it all adds up to something a lot greater than the sum of its parts, you file it away and don’t let anything stop you from getting back there, even if it’s a decade down the road. If you bring a friend or two to enjoy it without the cameras.

Speaking of the Dunhill, I always love running through 

 to see which amateurs are playing, who their partner is and who host Johan Rupert paired them with. Plenty of intrigue beyond the bombshell news of “Steamboat Jay” Monahan (and his partner, Billy Horschel) being grouped with The H.E. Formerly Known as Andrew Waterman (and his partner, Stinger GC standout Dean Burmester.) The breadth, depth, and randomness will amaze you…Google and Wiki wormholes galore. Excited to see what comes of this, if anything, especially on the heels of some interesting comments from Rory the past month or so around his future schedule. My hope has been that he and the Euro Tour call the PGA Tour’s bluff and leverage PIF to underpin some legitimate DPWT-sanctioned global events at venerable venues and dare Jay to stop guys from playing in them.

Smackdab in between two of the venues for the Dunhill sits The St Andrews Links Castle Course. On our visit to Scotland in March and April I made it a point that we saw this one firsthand, as we’d read and heard such polarizing things about it. Most notably, Tom Doak, in his Confidential Guide, bestowed a “zero” rating on the course (which is different than a “one” on a scale of 1-10), signifying in Doak’s words “a course so contrived and unnatural that it may poison your mind, one I cannot recommend under any circumstances.” Most of the time I’ll do a bunch of research before I go to a course I’m curious to see, but in certain instances, I refuse to do any and want to go in without a frame of reference and see it with fresh eyes. While knowing the backstory, and the subsequent softening of greens and various nips and tucks, I’d never really even seen pictures of it. See what we thought:

As I continue to detox from some of the side effects of the FedEx Cup (nausea, vomiting, Wet AMD) and dive deeper and deeper into Euro Tour coffee golf (quite a run we’re on, having had brilliant weekend coverage from Crans, County Down, Wentworth, and Madrid in consecutive weeks), it’s becoming more and more obvious just how contrived and broken the PGA Tour schedule is. That made last week’s Presidents Cup, which should serve as a fun changeup to the weekly grind and an ascendant property that should be gaining momentum after a strong showing at Royal Melbourne in 2019, feel like a reminder of everything we’re up against an International team depleted of talent by LIV defections, a captain doing favors for his countrymen at the expense of his team, a largely disinterested city disconnected from the event, a wholly disinterested broadcast partner, a tour favoring government subsidies and familiar venues over genuine interest and exciting venues, and a lopsided competition that feels like a contrived version of the Ryder Cup on a dull canvas. Amazing that a sport (and it goes well beyond one organization) can manage to mess up an international team match in golf, something inherently magical!, that badly.

In more upbeat news, in addition to the Dunhill, I’m excited to watch the Korn Ferry Tour Championship. It’s at a new venue this year up in French Lick and the Pete Dye course should be a nice change-up to what turned into sort of a slog the last few years about 90 minutes southwest of there at Victoria National. Always fun to see new venues on TV and I’ve always heard good things about both courses at French Lick (the other is a Donald Ross.) And there’s genuine drama with cards and promotions on the line - even with the (de?) evolution of the PGA Tour, the jump from KFT to a full tour card is immense and life-changing, and there’s more depth than ever on KFT. Of the 75 guys in the field, 17 have already clinched cards, with another 13 up for grabs, and plenty of jockeying for priority ranking even among those who have locked up status.

Page Break

Lastly, on the golf front, I’m still working through my thoughts and reflections from attending the Saturday round of LIV Chicago. I took at least a hundred pictures and short videos and would love to stitch them into a narrated reel and then I’m going to write something, too. My experience paralleled a lot of 

 over at The Fried Egg. It’s a low-stakes social gathering - basically a music or food truck festival (sans good music) and they should probably lean more and more into that element and the social. 

I have also realized that I am so deep into the bit of being a Cleeks fan that I’ve turned into an actual Cleeks fan, and I plan to write up various scenarios as we enter the offseason and restricted free agency begins. Incredibly stupid.

And yet, it's an interesting thought exercise in evaluating how someone with an unlimited pocketbook and virtually no constraints reimagined what a golf tournament should look like, how similar it actually is under the surface, and how it might affect how the overall landscape looks moving forward. The how and what with LIV are interesting, but the 

 looms over everything and a pervasive emptiness looms if you dig too deep. Bottom line: seeing the carts staged for the shotgun start and then all the players heading out to their assigned holes was positively surreal.

Since I last wrote one of these, I flew up to New York for a couple of days getting lost in the city, picking up my sons’ Swedish passports, eating some great food, reflecting on the year so far (more on all of that below), and realizing on the flight up that it was 9/11, which was an unexpected occurrence. Those couple of days coincided with a lot going on in the city: Fashion Week, NBA Owners Meetings, and a surprise meeting between Jay Monahan and the PIF. Again, meeting with the Saudis in New York. On 9/11. Things are moving down the line toward some sort of resolution, however slowly, but the how is important, too. And I’m not sure what’s worse: that either there’s not someone to vet these decisions for common sense and baseline humanity, OR that someone is doing so and deciding to do it anyway, especially after those same people prepped Monahan 

 and helped him formulate an entire strategy built around using the 9/11 families as props. That the same people are still in charge is bleak, especially when you consider the hundreds of other strategic missteps, unnecessary own-goals, loyal lieutenants ousted for various misdeeds and just general incompetence.

Like I mentioned up top, great stop in NYC. Stayed in Brooklyn this time around at the William Vale Hotel in Williamsburg. Very hipster, but great views and outstanding restaurants nearby, namely 

, which hit the spot for cocktails, some good vino and French standards. Stopped in to see Neil and little Pete, who is such a happy little dude. One of the highlights of the trip was a Nepalese Uber driver, Tsering, who picked me up in Brooklyn, then we picked up Casey in Midtown, and drove us up to see the H&B guys in Armonk. Fascinating story. He walked me through how the area he’s from in Nepal is growing like crazy and changing rapidly. Been on a run of great Uber drivers the last few months, including one in DC named Mohadin who was a bona fide #BallKnower.

Anyway, Casey and I then rode Amtrak down to DC, which was delightful and popped into 

, which is always a favorite stop for Indian food, before heading southwest to go to the hotel we were staying at for Solheim. Solheim was unexpectedly a logistical hot mess, but refreshing and fun, nonetheless. After our live show on Friday night, Cody and I took Casey, Randy and Meg Adkins to a 

 nearby for their first experience. Another highlight of the trip - I think we melted Randy’s brain.

The big letter hat trend should be running out of steam soon, hopefully.

I mentioned the Saturday detour to Chicago for LIV - left the hotel at 7am, got to the course just after the gates opened at 10am. Will save the meat of the on-site experience for another piece, but speaking of meat, I was back to the airport by 5pm and popped into both Tortas Frontera AND got a Chicago-style dog at O’Hare. A true highlight only eclipsed by getting upgraded to one of the outdated layflats for the sub-two hour flight back to Dulles. Met the gang for dinner and was in bed at a reasonable hour. Sunday singles were great at Solheim and then we recorded the live show and flew home that night.

NOBODY, I repeat NOBODY wants to read about how my fantasy baseball team fared this season…but I’m going to tell you anyway, because it got me back into being a casual fan of the game. So thank you to Soly for setting up the league, and to Rob Manfred for pushing through the rules changes that made it a lot more watchable than when I stopped watching over a decade ago. And congrats to Soly on his impressive (and tainted) victory. This is also a test to see if he reads these. He won the league, fair and square, after the nearly-impregnable roster I assembled had an off-week in the semis against a hot Polos Hermanos squad (my totals would’ve beat both guys in the other semifinal matchup) and then absolutely went off for nearly across-the-board season totals in the final week that had everyone’s jaws on the floor and made the championship matchup look like the last-place game. The good news is it’s a keeper league and I mortgaged the entire 2025 season for success this year, so I’m devoid of good keeper options AND traded away a bunch of draft picks. Shoutout to David Tepper! Anyway, hats off to Soly on a great season. We may be adding a couple of expansion franchises over the offseason!

I’ll let you figure out which team is mine ;)

On the homefront, it’s been a weird last month of weather here. Mostly quiet hurricane season, yet fourteen inches of rain in the first half of the month (like just a constant drizzle every day) rolling in from both coasts of the peninsula of Florida. The path of the hurricane that rolled through late last week and then northward wasn’t that dissimilar from the a few others we’ve had here in NE Florida the past couple of years, except it moved through remarkably fast, which usually limits the damage from coastal flooding due to on-shore winds, less time for wind damage to trees and structures, etc. It rolled in on Thursday evening around 8 pm and by 11 am Friday morning I was out on the golf course and it was sunny, if still pretty windy. We had a couple of big branches down and an afternoon's worth of clean-up in the yard, and these storms leave me with an immense amount of respect for the power they generate and also for a local utility company in Beaches Energy that does a stand-out job keeping our electricity on. I can count on one-hand how many times it’s gone out in seven years of living here. More than anything, I’m just thankful for health and safety.

The difference with this one was the amount of rain that fell in the days before the storm up there combined with how localized those effects are up there in those mountain ranges with the rivers and watersheds. I’ve spent a lot of time up in those parts: Asheville, Brevard, Highlands, Lake Lure, Boone, Waynesville, and driven all through those parts of I-40 and I-26 that got washed away. Fishing, skiing, hiking, lake houses, exploring Asheville, etc. It’s staggering to consider the amount of water needed to cause that level of flooding, and then the human toll and destruction. I’m devastated for those people up there, as nice as you’ll find anywhere. And that’s not to diminish anything here in Florida, but people here know what they’re signing up for and there’s a level of preparedness and expectation for these storms depending upon what part of the state you’re in, for better or worse. A tropical system like this moving that rapidly and intact up through Augusta/Aiken/Greenville and then into NC is crazy, and then combining with an existing low-pressure system. All of this brought memories of Hurricane Opal in 1995 - we were living in Toronto at the time and it’s seared into my memory how nasty that storm was, a thousand miles away from where it made landfall.

A smattering of low-stakes but quality social accounts I’ve been into the past few months:

This guy @GfedGoCrazy basically either sneaks into stadiums and arenas or hangs out well after the game and snoops around. Very stupid. But his recurring observations and comparisons between facilities always draw me in. Here’s a great sampling from a place that’s long piqued my curiosity.

This one is a local Jax guy, Wes Davis. Never met him. Love his stuff. I don’t go fishing even close to as much as I want to, and this account always reminds me of a whole world that we’re surrounded by here in Northeast Florida that you forget about being on land. 

This is Ra, aka Rasheen Bailey, who goes by Hoodfishing Entertainment on the socials. The stuff he catches down in South Florida is wild. Lakes, canals, off-shore, in-shore, you name it. I didn’t see him post for a few months and didn’t realize he got shot a few months back, but he’s back on it now. His insta is a good view at what he’s about and there’s plenty more on his YouTube (also, I guess 

?... but I’m taking that with a grain of salt). Pretty popular follow, so you may already follow him.

On the subject of hurricanes and tropical weather, 

 on X is among my go-tos for the tropics, off-beat weather analysis, and an entry into some other niche accounts. Highly recommend! Levi Cowan aka 

 and want to highlight it here, too, as it’s really good and shits all over a Bain & Co alum. “

: Instead of transforming the sneaker giant into a high-tech powerhouse, John Donahoe pissed off partners and disappointed fans.” Some laugh-out-loud anecdotes in there, and some crossover with the one I linked last time about Disney. The guy got shitcanned less than a week later, but not before collecting over $100M over his five-year tenure, during which Nike stock was down 10% (and over 20% this year.) Good riddance.

Very excited for this one from friends of the program Steven Godfrey and Ryan Nanni - “

” We’ll have them on the TrapDraw to dig in. The first episode is out now and explores the first suspect: TV.

It’s still Popsicle SZN here in Jax and I continue to explore the full slate of JonnyPops offerings, with my current favorite being Blue Wave. Otherwise, lots of sparkling water lately - a friend turned me onto Topo Chico’s Blueberry flavor (excellent for cocktails!) and Orange/Ginger flavor. Tastefully executed flavors that taste natural and not over the top.

Told Randy a bit about the surprise within our family when we got to the park a couple weeks ago to realize that our 4-year-old and 7-year-old were playing one another in a flag football game. WHAT. A. MORNING. In hindsight, it’s among the highlights of parenthood thus far and made me really thankful for both of our boys, their friends, and the way they all treated one another. Would recommend! Will try to post some highlights on Instagram, too.

GHIN & Tonic, Vol. 21 (TC)

"Your miss here should be to the left," the caddie told us. “There's a big bunker behind that right side hill.” We were on the 2nd hole of the Kilmore Nine of Carne Golf Links in Belmullet, Co. Mayo, Ireland. This was also the 2nd hole of proper links golf I'd ever played. In Europe, on the west coast of Ireland, that “hill” was a dune that looked like a mountain.

As we walked up to the green, the bunker revealed itself, and I laughed. As large as that hill looked from the tee box, it was monstrous up close. The sand behind was peppered with green grasses and went at least halfway up the hill's height. It looked like a protective dune seen down the Jersey shore but at least ten times the height.

Carne was the first of four rounds we played over eight days in Ireland. We started thinking about the trip back in January with friends from our golf club in New Jersey. Our friend, Brian, had family from Co. Mayo. He had visited many times before but never really played golf there. Going together let us split up planning duties: He would handle hotels and non-golf activities while I took care of tee times.

Over the next few months, while my husband, Jon, and I packed up our house in New Jersey and moved across the country, I researched where to play. Knowing that Westport, Co. Mayo, would be our home base, it became clear that we should target the last three courses featured in Tourist Souce Ireland: Carne, Co. Sligo, and Enniscrone. I made up an itinerary, and in May, we pulled the trigger on airfare (United, of course) and hotels. Just like that, our first overseas golf trip was a reality.

In a world where resorts are booked solid 18-24 months in advance, it was a pleasant surprise to be able to book the times and days with each course that worked perfectly with the rest of our itinerary (more about the non-golf activities we did down in the Tonic section below).

Carne was course number one on my shortlist and happened to be the first course we played. We weren't the only ones checking it out that week: Actor and director Ed Burns was also there with a full crew working on a new film called 

. The course was buzzing with activity from the filming - trailers, lighting rigs, the works. In the pro shop, we met up with our caddies and, of course, chatted with Fiona and Gerry of Tourist Sauce fame.

Filming was taking over a few holes, so we played a special “alternative” course routing to work around it. We started with the Kilmore Nine and then a composite nine made up of holes from the Wild Atlantic Dunes routing. It was everything I had envisioned in my head and then some. I was in awe of the massive scale of the dunes and the views of the Atlantic Ocean.

I could have played better. I lost around eight balls, which was not ideal, but I didn't care. Just walking with Jon, Brian, and the caddies - having a laugh, looking at vista after vista - was enough to make it an unreal day. The wind was down, the sun was up, and vibes were high. Guinness was had at the end of the round. Perfect day.

The next day involved some non-golf activities, but we took advantage of the late summer light by heading up to Mulranny Golf Club for our 2nd round of the trip. Mulranny is down a narrow road off of the N59 on the coast of Clew Bay, about 30 minutes north of Westport.

The small pro stop wasn't staffed when we arrived just after 5 pm. I followed the posted instructions to sign in on the log, put €25 in a tiny envelope with my name on it, and dropped it into a tiny slot to pay. As we were going out to find the 1st tee, someone came in from the back to see if we needed help and told us we could make a free cup of tea or coffee. If you wanted one, push carts were locked up like Aldi grocery carts, released when you put €3 into the box.

The course has existed since 1896, has 18 tee boxes for nine greens, sits right on the bay next to a beach park, and has sheep that wander the entire course and act as the groundskeepers. Barbed wire fencing encircled every green to keep the sheep off the putting surfaces; you entered them through a gate held shut with a bungee cord loop. There’s a local rule about what to do if your ball comes to rest adjacent to the fencing or in animal droppings (free relief). It was unlike any course I'd ever played. The wind and mist coming off the bay challenged you as you made the trek around the course’s 2800 yards.

We had time for one loop of nine before we had to join our friends for dinner back in town, but I would put this course on my must-play list if we ever find ourselves in the area again.

I’ll save the last two rounds for my next installment of G&T!

After our TPI experience with Dr. Greg, I also decided it was time to get an actual golf coach out here in Las Vegas. I have been going to TPC Las Vegas monthly since May to work with Matt Henderson. We’ve been working on setup and weight transfer—getting my lower body moving forward before my backswing—things of that nature. I feel like I’m hitting my irons better and more consistently than ever. I look forward to more sessions and practicing as I work on my goal to get to a 15 index by the end of the year (currently sitting at 17.1). 

The Solheim Cup was an amazing time. We talked about it on the Solheim wrap-up pod, but the energy from the crowd was great. It truly did feel like a celebration of women’s golf. It’s so nice to go to a pro golf event without people yelling “mashed potatoes” or “get in the hole” after every tee shot. The scene around 14 green during Sunday singles felt massive. It was fun to run into so many friends who came from up and down the East Coast to attend, and it was great to meet so many NLU fans out in the wild.

Dublin and The GAA All-Ireland Football Final

This trip to Ireland was my first, so we started in Dublin to do some of the super-touristy stuff, like visit the Jameson Distillery and Guinness Storehouse. I had never had a Guinness in the States, so I was excited to have my first one AT Guinness. I can only describe the experience they have set up there at the St. James Gate Brewery as an EPCOT Center attraction but for beer. I enjoyed the floor about Guinness’ marketing and advertisements the most in the actual “museum,” but the main attraction was having a pint up on the top floor of the building overlooking Dublin. It was my first of dozens of Guinness drafts that week.

The real reason we started in Dublin instead of going straight over to Westport was to attend the GAA All-Ireland Senior Football Championship. Our buddy Brian is a massive 

 fan (always rooting for Co. Mayo, of course), and it was the number one thing on his to-do list this trip. Gaelic football is strictly an amateur sport — players, coaches, etc.. are prohibited from being paid for playing. There are local GAA clubs all over Ireland where people learn and play traditional Gaelic sports. Each county in Ireland puts together a team to compete against other countries annually. The county teams play in different provincial championships to get down to 16 teams who all play in a knockout tournament until two counties are left for the finals. This year, Galway and Armagh were in the final, which was played on July 28th.

The final is played at Croke Park in Dublin, which holds over 80,000 fans. Tickets are distributed by the GAA and the county boards of the competing county teams. It is basically the Super Bowl of Gaelic football. Brian was able to secure us seats through some of his local Irish connections. I decided to root for Galway once they made it to the finals. Everyone else backed Armagh.

It was about a 2-mile walk from our hotel to the stadium. It was a perfect summer day, and it seemed that everyone in the city was either on their way to the game or already at a pub waiting for it to begin. It felt like a giant party the whole walk. As we got closer to the stadium, there were people with tables set up at almost every street corner hawking Galway and Armagh gear. I secured a Galway bucket hat to show my support, which became a good way to start conversations with people as we made our way to the game. 

Of course, with all the teams being 100% amateurs, they each have sponsors to help pay for everything. Galway is sponsored by Supermac’s, which is an Irish fast-food franchise that started in Galway in the 70s. What I could not stop giggling at is that they are also the exclusive operator for Papa John’s in Ireland, so the backs of all the jerseys have the Papa John’s logo (Supermac’s gets front of jersey billing). 

Croke Park was massive. It was the largest sporting stadium I have ever been in. The pitch is out in the open, but three sides of the stands all have a cover to protect you from the elements. Our seats were in the second-to-last row, across from the team benches. The one end had what looked like a standing room, also out in the elements. It reminded me of the River End at the Philadelphia Union MLS games.

There was so much pomp and circumstance before the game - marching bands, both teams parading around the entire pitch waving to fans - even the Irish president was there. Everyone in the stands wore shades of maroon for Galway and orange for Armagh. Colored smoke bombs were going off and there were so many flags - it was rocking. They do serve alcohol at the game, but you aren’t allowed to bring it to your seat, which made the pre-game concourses very crowded. I had watched a few YouTube videos on the rules and general overview of how Gaelic football was played, so once the action started, I found it very easy to follow along. 

In the first half, there was a bit of a to-do when people realized there was a 

herring gull that could not get itself off the pitch

. He wandered, on foot, around the turf as the game went on around him, completely unbothered. He was a hit on social media as well. After about 25 minutes, they were able to rescue the bird and take him to a wildlife rescue center, where he got some pain meds and fluids and recovered fully — he had an injured wing, which is why he didn’t just fly off from the pitch on his own.

In the end, Armagh was victorious. They were the only team to score a goal worth 3 points, which meant scoring by getting the ball past the goalie into the net, as opposed to Galway, who only scored 11 single “points” by kicking or heading the ball over the net between the uprights. After the game, we hung out near the stadium for an hour or so, chatting with Brian’s friends who had come down from Armagh for the game. I took a lot of flack for my newfound Galway fandom, all in good fun. Would recommend going if you ever have the chance to see Gaelic football in person.

Another big Irish sporting event was going on the week we were there in Galway—the 

. This was another first for me, having never been to a horse race event before. We decided to go on Thursday, known as Ladies Day. It is a big social to-do, especially that day, with prizes not just for the horses racing but also for women to take home “best hat” and “best dressed” awards and prize money.

We stopped in Galway earlier in the week where the girls on our trip procured “fancy hats” to wear to the race. They were really fascinators and they were definitely not ones that would win any awards, but we wanted to have some fun being involved in the traditions of the day. I felt like Eliza Doolittle going to 

On Thursday we donned our hats and headed down the 90 minutes or so from Westport to take in the races. I spent the entire time on my phone learning (and then teaching everyone else) how to place bets on the races. We had “splurged” for reserved seating in one of the big grandstands where each floor had bars and tote windows for betting on the races. If you didn’t want to bet at the tote windows, you could go out and find many bookmakers with little stands around the race grounds. The tote betting is like parimutuel betting instead of betting on straight odds with the bookmakers. I stuck with using the tote windows and made some bets for each race we would see that day. I didn’t win a ton, but rooting for “my horse” in each race was fun. 

I couldn’t believe how many people were at the races. It was packed. Like literally hard to walk anywhere once the afternoon came without being shoulder-to-shoulder packed in like sardines. Most of the university-aged kids had already taken off their fancy heels to switch to flip-flops. Lines for restrooms were massive, same for food and drink. There was a race about every 35 minutes, and for those 2-3 minutes each time, things stood still as people watched the horses come around the track, but then back to placing more bets and getting more Guinness.

I’m glad we went and got to experience something new. It definitely felt like the social event of the summer for Galway.

I love golf, but music is my first love, especially going out to see bands. This month has been a live music paradise for me. I’m on a run of shows right now that fills me with so much energy while simultaneously making me feel old.

First up was seeing The Killers celebrate 20 years of Hot Fuss during their residency at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace in their hometown of Las Vegas. I’ve been seeing this band since 2004, and they never disappoint. The opening five songs of Hot Fuss is a perfect side A of an album. The band sounded as tight as ever, and the set design and lighting were perfect for this run of shows.

We were off to the East Coast two days later to catch four Pearl Jam shows — two at Madison Square Garden and two at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia. I love seeing Pearl Jam live as no two shows are the same. The set list changes daily, audibles are called, and you never know who may show up. Night one at MSG, we went with some of our golf and music friends — young hitter Lauren Coughlin, who was having some fun before heading down to the Solheim Cup, and our buddy Dags, who also plays on Neil’s softball team in NYC. Night two was the 50th time Pearl Jam has played in New York City. The set list was a banger, including songs I hadn’t heard live in a while, like “Not For You” and “Glorified G.” The big “Rockin’ in Free World” jam at the end of the encore included an appearance by Little Stevie from the E Street Band (or Silvio from the Sopranos, take your pick).

In Philly a few days later, I had a feeling I would see some special shows. PJ always has had a massive Philly fanbase and so many iconic Pearl Jam moments have happened there. The four shows to close out the Spectrum in 2009, playing TEN front-to-back in 2016, etc…and night one in Philly this time around was no exception. We got the Singles soundtrack trifecta with them playing 

. Night two in Philly was also great; so many big hits played. I am not a religious person, but going to a Pearl Jam show is the closest to church that I will get — the feeling of 18,000 people singing in unison is a great feeling.

GHIN & Tonic, Vol. 20 (Casey)

The question, posed at the beginning of 2024 by a 11-year-old girl, seemed innocuous at the time: 

I had no idea that my answer would set in motion an actual tournament, a meaningful clash of meaningless-but-serious golf. At the time, however, the answer seemed obvious.

He wasn’t mad, per se. Please do not write in the newspaper (or Slack) that he was mad. He was definitely not mad.

He was just a little surprised — okay, maybe annoyed is fair — that I would declare something like that based on a 

. When I tried to point out that Ben had recently shot a 65, and Soly was last seen on camera during Tourist Sauce: Australia applying horse tranquilizer to his back, it did not table the discussion. Instead, NLU Slack messages flew at a furious pace.

You cannot just declare something like that, we ultimately agreed.

Soly, after all, was a gamer. Did he need to remind us that he’d finished ahead of Ben the last two years at our Nest Invitational Tournament? (He did, in fact, remind us.) Sure, Soly might not be a young man anymore. He might not be playing 80 rounds of golf a year. He might have the creaky back that most fathers develop when they spend endless hours bouncing and singing Baby Beluga at bedtime. But he would not hand over the belt without a fight. Ben needed to go out and prove it.

“When you shared that information, I was flattered,” Ben told me. “I appreciate that people can see that I have the tools to be very good. However, it spiked the anxiety a bit because I hadn’t really shown it yet.”

To be the man — as Ric Flair taught us — you gotta beat the man.

And by the way, Tron, Neil and Cody (and maybe even D.J.!) deserved a shot in the ring. Randy and Casey and I were happy to play our role too, either as seat fillers invited to the Oscars, or as the red shirts quickly killed off in the first 20 minutes of a Star Trek episode. We’d slap it around, drink Spotted Cow and make a few bogeys, but all eyes would be on the main event. We reached Erin Hills, charged up our camera batteries, descended on Milwaukee, and put a peg in the ground right after the PGA Championship.

Now that the dust has settled, and the footage has been polished and released, we can definitively declare that Ben Hotaling is NLU’s Champion Golfer of the Year. You can 

, and enjoy the way Ben surgically picked his spots at Erin Hills, leaning on his driving iron and his unflappable poise to win in dominant fashion by seven strokes.

You might not be as familiar with Ben as you are with those of us who appear regularly on the podcast or in our video content, but he’s an essential part of our business, focusing his talent behind the scenes on our video and social media. He is a maniacal workhorse. It’s possible that letting Ben serve as the project manager and editor of a video where he wins a fake tournament by seven shots was a bit like when Jack Nicklaus used to win tournaments on courses where he was the designer, but we have no reason to suspect (unlike the 2016 PGA Championship won by Jimmy Walker) this took place on a green screen. The skeptics will remain skeptical, but the results ought to speak for themselves.

“Listen, was it a bit like when Bryson hit it all over Pinehurst and kept drawing good lies?” said Tron Carter, who held a share of the lead for a brief spell midway through round one round before ultimately finishing 11 shots back. “Who can say, really.”

Golf has been a big part of Ben’s life since he was roughly 10 years old. His grandfather (who worked at River Ridge Country Club in Raleigh, North Carolina) got him into the game and didn’t hold it against him when he drove a golf cart into a bush during a club event. When he moved to Massachusetts near the end of elementary school, he started to take the game more seriously.

“My neighbor — also named Ben — would spend his days hitting shots in his front yard,” Ben said. “Everyone in the neighborhood had acreage, so we would hit shots from yard to yard. That experience blossomed into summer days spent at the local muni.”

He realized he had a little bit of talent when he won a scholarship to play at Lake of Isles golf course in Connecticut. One boy and one girl from each age group was selected to receive weekly lessons and have unlimited access to the course. Looking back, it was a massive year for his development as a golfer.

“Candy bars and Gatorades were free so I would go up there to practice most days during the summer,” Ben said.

However, by his own admission, his development stalled in high school.

“There wasn’t anyone that was all that good on the teams that I played on, so breaking 40 in a nine-hole match was looked at as very solid,” he said. “It was after college wrapped that I realized I, in fact, was not that good! I was getting beat by 60-year-olds on the regular.”

Growing up helped him reframe golf in his life. He still loved practicing for hours with the hope of getting better, but the results were less important. When Ben and his college friend Zach Brough decided to build a 7-hole, Par 3 golf course on Brough’s land outside Kansas City, it put him on a serendipitous path to eventually join No Laying Up in 2020.

“What I love about the sport is that it reflects my life in so many ways,” Ben said. “When I am doing well at work, as a husband, now as a father, as a friend, there is no better feeling than being free on the golf course. When I am not feeling free on the course, I know I need to pick it up in some other part of my life. Traveling, seeing new places, and meeting new people is fun and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. But the feeling of being present on the golf course when everything in my life is going as I would hope is unmatched for me.”

If there is a shot that Ben will remember most from his victory, it’s the wedge he hit into No. 4 at Erin Hills in the final round. He had just made back-to-back bogeys, and he was starting to feel the pressure a little, the special kind of pressure that only an imaginary event with meaningless stakes can apply.

“I’ve seen this movie before,” Ben said. “Playing really solid and letting it slip away from some silly mistakes.”

 I could try to describe it — it landed like a heavy raindrop and zipped toward the pin like a house cat pouncing on a helpless mouse — but you could just watch it by clicking the link above. This isn’t a newspaper and this isn’t 1987.

“That wedge locked me right back in and gave me the confidence to get it done,” he said.

The duel between Ben and Soly that we all hoped to see never truly emerged. In fact, Soly briefly gave the producers a scare on Day 1 when he flirted with the cut line before steering his way into the final four. Soly did ultimately finish in second, but 

as Rick Reilly once quipped about Tom Kite and the 1997 Masters, that would be akin to saying Germany finished second in World War II.

Soly has already been deep in the lab this summer, essentially reevaluating everything.

“This was a wake-up call for me,” Soly said. “I didn’t realize how much my physical condition had deteriorated until I got fatigued on the back nine walking Erin Hills. I’ve mistaken being able to swing with my current back situation with being healthy. So it was a wake-up call for me to get in the horse barn, start working out on my fitness, getting my legs stronger, getting speed. It wasn’t as much Ben blowing away the field as I was disappointed in my complete lack of ability to apply any threat at any point. It just felt like I had no power in my body to do anything.”

There are already rumors of Soly allegedly getting deep into the Stack System training program, but we cannot confirm them (because, as always, no free ads). With twins on the way, Soly will double his newfound perspective to next year’s NLU Club Championship, but it will be interesting to see how his back holds up to the rigors of three bedtime routines.

“From that moment on, everything changed,” Soly said. “Everything is on the table. Any kind of horse steroids, creams, horse electrolytes, everything is in play from here on out, because I will not be embarrassed like that again.”

The coveted Yeti Bucket Trophy awarded to the winner will be prominently displayed at the Hotaling household this year. And Ben has no interest in giving it back, or resting on his laurels.

“Super boring answer here but I am going to continue preparing like I would do even if I hadn’t won,” he said. “More lessons. More self-reflection. More reps. More time in the gym. I desperately want to be good - and not just beat my colleagues good. I want to be a stalwart in Kansas Mid-Am golf. I want to win something for the history books someday. This is a great step and validation that the drive to not waste my potential is worthy.”

Tip your hat to him. Wear your white socks high in tribute.

Say it out loud with all the reverence you believe it does or doesn’t deserve:

Ben Hotaling, Champion NLU Golfer of the Year.

Kevin Van Valkenburg is the Editorial Director of No Laying Up

High Socks, Dad Backs, Determination: Who is the NLU Golfer of the Year?

 I’d encourage you to set this edition of G&T down and come back to it after you’ve taken it in. Not because I am going to spoil the result, but because it’s a piece of content we’re really proud of, one that was painstakingly pulled together with humor and artistry and whimsy. It was born from a question one of my kids posed six months ago: Dad, who is NLU’s best golfer?

If you have watched the NLU Club Championship, at least part one, then I’d like to take this opportunity to address something about my own game that’s been plaguing me in recent years, and I think having an entire round on tape for the first time since Strapped: Baltimore finally helped crystalize things for me.

I cannot stop beating up on myself on the golf course.

And it’s both embarrassing and unbecoming.

A year ago, we had the first edition of what we’re calling House Meetings at NLU, where we gather together on a stream and talk about the state of our golf games. As an exercise, we threw out a topic: What’s one thing we would borrow from another golfer at NLU if we could steal from them?

The answers were fairly predictable: Cody’s tempo, Soly’s fearlessness over short putts, Ben’s power, Tron’s bulldog approach in match play. But Ben made everyone chuckle when he said he’d like to steal something from me: My high expectations, because I seemed livid after every shot when I didn’t hit it perfectly.

It was all in good fun. He was just trying to tell me not to be so hard on myself. Golf is a hard enough game, and no one needs to talk about how much they suck after each imperfect swing.

But my on-course self-loathing, I understood, had now mushroomed into my entire golfing personality. The phrase my grandfather used to calmly deliver to his sons and daughters — 

I’m sorry to say this, but you’re not good enough to get this mad

Even though I was aware it was becoming a problem, I couldn’t rid myself of it. I didn’t even have to play poorly for the monster to come out. This year, I played in the club championship at my country club, and was slotted into the 4th handicap bracket, guys who are 10 and under. I actually won my first two matches, shooting 81 and 77. But by the second match, the guys in my group informed me that the next time I hit a shot and snarled, turning away in disgust at what I perceived to be poor contact only to have it land on the green, I owed the foursome a bucket of beer. I laughed, but I got the message.

In the championship match, I birdied the first hole to go 1 up and started to dream about how cool it would be to say I won a flight at my club championship. I then proceeded to play like garbage for the next 13 holes and lose 5&4. I looked like a guy who couldn’t break 90. Briefly flirting with the idea that I might be okay at golf sent me into a tailspin.

I’m not sure how exactly we arrived here. I’ve read the Bob Rotella books that everyone recommends, as well as Zen Golf. I bought the audiobook version of Lynn Marriott and Pia Nilsson’s Vision54. But none of it has stuck with me for very long.

 at golf. I know I’m a hack. I know I swing over the top and my lower body looks encased in cement and that I have the swing of a beer-league softball player. But a lot of days I can fool myself into thinking I’m okay, which is probably the story of most golfers. No one would look at my swing and imagine I could break 80, but sometimes that happens, even in matches where I have to hit every cup and abide by every rule. When it doesn’t happen, I’m probably subconsciously eager to be critical of myself because I want to be first in line to do it. I don’t want anyone to quietly whisper to themselves: This guy thinks he’s good?

It’s an interesting psychological pickle, and I’m not sure how to overcome it. I have a mixture of Jon Rahm’s anger and Jordan Spieth’s need to outwardly process all my demons and none of their talent.

Instead of trying to break 80, I think a good goal for me this fall will be to try and play a round without uttering a single negative comment about my swing, the contact or the result. That might be too big of an ask after years of fear and loathing, but I kind of like the ambition of it.

A country club that had existed in Baltimore for more than 100 years died this month.

It wasn’t my club. In fact, I’d been there only a few times for junior tournaments, and sadly never played the course. But I certainly admired Hillendale Country Club’s reputation. It wasn’t pretentious or ostentatious. The members all felt like they knew each other. It was a solid, community-oriented club. Johnny Unitas was a member there for 25 years, and the club still had a statue of him and a framed jersey of his in the lobby.

If you’re a daily fee golfer, I suspect it’s hard to feel sad about a country club disappearing. You might even experience a whiff of schadenfreude. But I’m bringing it up here because of the way it died.

One minute it was alive, the next it was gone.

Normally you’d imagine a country club might die after a long period of decline. It would be in hospice care for some time, then eventually get shut down with dignity. Hillendale was shut down with little more than a week’s notice to the membership. There was an email asking members to attend a meeting, then the announcement that it would close in eight days.

Even in the months leading up to its closure, Hillendale was still adding members, still accepting big checks for an initiation fee. The year prior to shutting down, it renovated the bar, added two simulators, and re-did the irrigation system. The week before its closure was announced, it opened a new $500,000 short game area that Loyola University had donated to the club.

The way one member described it to me was like going out for a walk and getting hit by a car.

The financial details are mildly interesting but ultimately unimportant. The club had a lot of debt, I was told, and they had been quietly kept afloat by a wealthy member, someone who expressed genuine interest in buying the club. When he ultimately decided not to buy the club, it was essentially over. There is some talk that he could still purchase the club now that it’s in bankruptcy court, but no one really knows. Even if by some miracle it did roar back to life, it would never be the same.

The one aspect of the whole affair that made me want to share its fate in this column was the living wake its members put on in its final days.

They held an impromptu tournament and hired someone to play the bagpipes all day long. They paid for a bloody mary bar. They shot off fireworks.

“It was kind of a weird, sad celebration,” one member told me. “Every time you played a hole, you thought: Well, here is my last chance to ever birdie this.”

Some of the members had been there since they were kids, playing in the same foursomes going on 25 years. Now they were saying goodbye to not only the course where they’d spent half their lives, but their routines and the relationships that went with them.

By the end of the week, the pro shop was bare. All the inventory had been sold off. Everyone wanted something with a logo on it to serve as a totem for a place that meant a lot to them but now was just a memory.

A couple of things I read recently that I wanted to recommend:

 excellent piece highlighting the behind-the-scenes campaign

 to try and get Bob Kraft in the NFL Hall of Fame. It’s always fascinating to watch billionaires get so worked up over their legacy. It’s a nice window in the shame that is modern sports documentaries, where the subject almost always has (or demands) editorial control.

about Warren Zevon’s complicated legacy

, which originally ran back in 2018, but is worth reading every time it hits my timeline on Zevon’s birthday, especially if you’re a Zevon fan. It also led me to track down this Dawes rendition of 

“Desperados Under The Eves” on the final week of Late Night with Dave Letterman. 

Connor Belcastro: The Q-School Diary

Episode 59: September 2024

GHIN & Tonic, Vol. 21 (TC)

GHIN & Tonic, Vol. 20 (Casey)

High Socks, Dad Backs, Determination: Who is the NLU Golfer of the Year?

GHIN & Tonic, Vol. 19 (KVV)

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