There is an anecdote about Tiger Woods that I’ve thought about endlessly.

It came from an interview Tiger gave when he was on the cusp of turning 40. For the majority of his career, Tiger treated interviews like interrogation sessions. Journalists could try to pry information out of him, try and convince him to share his emotions, his perspective, his wisdom,  but his job — as he viewed it — was to withhold. Any vulnerabilities he revealed might be somehow used against him. It was his job to maintain the aura that surrounded him like a protective charm, to keep almost everyone at arm’s length.

But as he wrestled with the idea that his career might be over, there was a subtle shift in tone, in the way he told stories. He began to see the value of letting his guard down, of letting us inside his world, if only briefly. Thus, weeks before he turned 40, he opened up in a surprise interview with Time Magazine about a moment that made him wonder if his golfing life was finished.

He was practicing in his backyard, gently hitting flop shots over a bunker, when something in the movement tweaked a nerve in his spine. He crumpled to the turf, and could not get up. Pain radiated through his body. He was all alone, as he often liked to be — no security, no friends, no family to distract him. Just the quiet rhythms of golf and his own thoughts. He didn’t even have his phone, so he could not call for help. He might have shouted, but on his vast estate, who would even hear him? The greatest golfer of his generation, likely the greatest golfer of all time, lay twisted and broken in his own backyard, uncertain of what to do next.

Tiger’s daughter Samantha, 10 years old at the time, came looking for him.

“Daddy, what are you doing lying on the ground?” she asked.

“Sam, thank goodness you’re here,” Tiger replied. “Can you go tell the guys inside to try and get the cart out, to help me back up?”

The rest of the story — the miracle back surgery, the unlikely return to golf, the improbable Masters victory — has been well chronicled. But that moment in the yard, and Tiger’s willingness to share it, was the first time I felt like I could relate to him, if only a little. I am not good at golf, but I’ve had a back so sore I could barely walk, and I’ve felt humbled and disappointed by life. I’ve tried to be a good dad through a divorce. There was a larger metaphor there, even if he was merely hinting at it. In his weakest moment, Tiger was sharing that he’d been rescued by the love of his daughter. Instead of deflecting vulnerability, or perceiving it as weakness, he was leaning into it. 

I thought about that story years later, when Tiger was on the back nine at Augusta, trying to close out his 15th major.

I was at home on my couch, sulking because I wasn’t in attendance. I had covered the previous three Masters, but had not been tapped by my employer for this one.

As I watched Tiger strategize his way around Amen Corner, I was having trouble enjoying the moment. I hated myself for thinking it, but selfishly, I wanted someone else — anyone else — to win. Just for a moment. Not because I was rooting against him, but because I wanted to be there when he pulled it off.

As a journalist, I missed Tiger’s prime. I’d spent half my life writing about football. I saw layers in the game, and details too, that produced interesting stories. I’d written about Tom Brady and Peyton Manning and Aaron Rodgers over the course of 11 years at ESPN, a place where the appetite for more football stories could never be satiated. But golf writing, an offseason gig I’d come to late in my career, started to feel strangely spiritual to me. The quiet rhythms of the game, the way tension hung heavily but wordlessly in the air in big moments, the way the ball knifed through the sky and made you hold your breath as you traced its intended arc, all of it brought me — and I have no better way to describe it — joy. I wasn't particularly romantic about golf’s haughty traditions, and I loathed its exclusionary history, but playing the game and writing about it in my 20s and 30s helped me find my tribe.

By the time I had the chance to see Tiger in person, I mostly had to write about the way the game broke him. I even penned a column imploring him to transition into coaching, an endeavor that clearly gave him joy. But there was always a flicker of hope buried somewhere inside me that he wasn’t truly finished. As it grew larger that Sunday in 2019, I realized I had spent more hours and years than I could count anticipating this, wanting this, awaiting this. It was like the arrival of Halley’s Comet. There would be no second chance. I needed more time.

My daughter did not see it that way. Her 7-year-old brain could sense my discomfort. Around the 15th hole, she crawled into my lap and became highly invested in the outcome. Tiger Woods, a man whose last major victory came four years before she was born, was suddenly her favorite golfer. For years, I’d been trying to explain to her why he was special, but for the entirety of her life, he was little more than a grainy figure on YouTube. Now here he was in real time, offering her proof that I had not been exaggerating his gifts.

I teared up as we watched Tiger seal the win, watched him hug his own kids just behind the 18th green. Something in me had shifted. If I’d been in Georgia, I would have witnessed history, but I would not have shared that moment with her.

Later that night, Chris Solomon, the co-founder of this website, texted me: 

Come on the podcast tomorrow. Tell me what you would have written about Tiger.

And if you ever want to come work here, just know, we’ll find a place for you.

Four years later, my daughter remains a golf obsessive. We frequently practice putting in our backyard, and have plans to erect our own driving range net soon. (Pray for the neighbors.) She asked for a box of Pro V1s in her stocking at Christmas. Charlie and Tiger playing together this year in the PNC Championship was basically her Super Bowl. She rages after bad shots, a habit I can’t tell if she picked up from me or Tiger. At night, before bed, we read at her insistence chapters from Tiger’s instructional tome 

Every day, I am thankful for how it played out.

After thinking about it a long time, I decided to run toward joy.

Today is my first day with No Laying Up. I’m going to serve as NLU’s Editorial Director, a title we made up because it sounds interesting and we wanted something that could cover just about everything. It turns out, you can do that at a small company. For now, I’ll anchor the expansion of our written content, lead some new content for Nest members and continue annoying you with my ridiculous Gary Player impression.

Sometimes life, and golf, gives you exactly what you need when you least expect it.

The past several years away from golf (at least writing regularly about it) gave me plenty of time to think about what it means to me, and what it means to others. Not only did I miss Tiger’s win at Augusta, I missed Phil’s win at Kiawah. I decided I could not stomach missing whatever once-in-a-generation celestial event came next, only to be surprised when the next one turned out to be the arrival of LIV.

What LIV lacked in sentiment it more than made up for with intrigue. At Centurion Club outside London, I shadowed Phil Mickelson as much as I could, longing to chronicle the return of the swashbuckling, shit-talking artist who was a magnet throughout my youth. That I instead saw him operate like a hollowed out, zombified version of himself was disconcerting, but interesting in its own way. I left England wondering how different the landscape of professional golf might look in 2023 if Greg Norman’s father would have simply hugged him more, snuffing out his inner Bond villain instead of fueling it. I also left with the understanding that it would take years to sort out the winners from the losers.

The professional game, despite its massive influence, is also only a fraction of what matters. Golf is a funnel, and while greatness exists in the narrowest part, what feeds into it is just as important. It has zero impact on my regular Sunday game with friends, where shooting 78 on a humid afternoon with a hot dog at the turn and a handful of warm beers still feels like a series of small miracles. Those stories — not necessarily my own, but ones like it — are worth telling too. At No Laying Up, I finally feel like I have the chance to do both.

I remain in awe of Tiger, though, and his commitment to an idea that rewards should be earned, that no answers are as satisfying as the ones found in the dirt. Some of his philosophies are corny, but I’ve realized in studying him over the years, so am I. I also missed his wistful but hasty march across the Swilcan Bridge this past summer. If he ever makes it back to St. Andrews, I know I’m going to be in attendance, notebook in hand, scribbling down whatever details I can. This is the last gasp of the greatest athlete of my lifetime, and whatever magic he has left, I want to see it with my own eyes.

I doubt there will be a 16th major. A fused back and a crooked leg is so much to overcome. In all likelihood, I missed my chance. But something about his stubborn insistence to keep on trying, the refusal to shut down his pursuit of one more (or three more) is just as compelling. I’ve been wrong about him in the past. But it’s been fun to be wrong, those moments when I’m surprised and elated by an outcome I once deemed a fantasy. I hope I’m wrong repeatedly.

Someday, I know, one of my daughters may have to pick me up when I am broken. There will be a time when my body, or my mind, deteriorates to the point where I cannot hide my weaknesses from them. But that’s okay. There is much to be done in the interim, courses to see and memories to make and majors to cover. All any of us can hope for is that we’ve led a life that makes someone we love want to find us when we’re vulnerable, someone who will prop us up, nurse us back to health, and steer us toward the proper tees, confident this is right where we belong.

Kevin Van Valkenburg spent 11 years at ESPN as a senior writer, and 11 years prior to that at the Baltimore Sun. He lives in Baltimore with his wife and three daughters.

"Comets"

Lakareber Abe is the newest No Laying Up Young Hitter!

Lakareber Abe, our newest Young Hitter, will be teeing it up this week at the Carlisle Arizona Women’s Golf Classic (presented by Her Majesty the Governor) in Mesa, along with fellow squad members Lauren Coghlin and Meghan MacLaren.


Lakareber turned professional in 2018 after a stellar career at the University of Alabama.  Her 2018 and 2019 Symetra results include 50% cuts made and three top 25’s each year, the highlight being a T26 at the 2019 Symetra Tour Championship.

Lakareber had a hot start to the 2020 season with her high finish of T3 at Florida’s Natural Charity Classic in March just prior to the COVID shutdown.  After the restart, she made 4 of 9 cuts, including a T25 and T28.  She finished the year 41st on the Symetra money list.

While attending the University of Alabama, Lakareber’s honors included SEC All-Freshman (2014-15), Second Team All-SEC (2015-16), SEC Academic Honor Roll (2015-16), Third Team EGCA All-American (2015-16), SEC Academic Honor Roll (2016-17), and Second Team All-SEC (2017-18).  She holds the school record for low tournament round after her 63 during the 3rd round of the 2016 Mason Rudolph Championship.  In 2018, Alabama made it to the final match against the University of Arizona at the NCAA National Championship.  The final team match included at least six current professional golfers, including Haley Moore who birdied the 19th hole for the win over Lakareber.


Currently, Lakareber reports her strengths are her irons and wedges, and her driving and putting have improved the last few years.  She continues to work on her game around the greens, which you know…..tell me about it.


A native of the Houston area, Lakareber got introduced to golf through her family.  Her father began bringing her and her older sister Tezira to the First Tee when they were 11 and 9, respectively.  Lakareber first broke 80 about two years later, and first broke par around age 12 in a U.S. Kids event.  Tezira played her college golf at the University of Texas and is now a lawyer.  As the daughter of Ugandan immigrants, Lakareber is an important presence in the women's game and we’re looking forward to following her success.

No Laying Up could not be more excited to support Lakareber in all of her endeavors.  If you want to #getinvolved and check out more of the story, follow these links:

Young Hitters:  Welcoming Lakareber Abe

Madelene Sagström is the newest No Laying Up Young Hitter!

https://twitter.com/NoLayingUp/status/1352039902641324034

(Cover photo courtesy of Madelene Sagstrom Instagram)

Madelene is poised for a breakout on the LPGA tour this season. She is the defending champion at the Gainbridge LPGA, the next stop on tour, albeit at a different course this year, Lake Nona (shoutout Nona Blue and G-Mac’s sliders). That event in Orlando is Feb 25-28, with the tour slowly ramping up play for the rest of the 2021 season.

Madelene becomes the first Young Hitter to have won on a Big Tour, and takes over the highly watched spot as Best Young Hitter Never to Have Won a Major.

Madelene’s track record on those big stages is pretty strong:

T-11 at the 2017 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship (Olympia Fields North Course)

T-17 at the 2018 U.S. Women’s Open (Shoal Creek Club)

T-20 at the 2018 Women’s British Open (Royal Lytham & St. Annes Golf Club)

T-23 at the 2020 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship (Aronimink Golf Club)

 were impressive, to say the least.  Highlights included wins at the 2009 Swedish Junior Stroke-play Championship and the 2011 French Junior Championship, and a spot on the winning Swedish team at the European Ladies' Team Championship at Golf Club Murhof in Austria.  In total, Madelene’s junior career saw 11 wins, 10 second place finishes, and 21 top 10’s.

 for the LSU Lady Tigers team at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana from 2011-2015.  She was the 2015 SEC Player of the Year, 2015 First Team All-American, and a finalist for the ANNIKA Award which is presented annually to the top female U.S. collegiate golfer.  During Madelene’s senior year she set a season record for stroke average at 71.48, the first LSU women’s play to average under 72 for a single season.  She carded 23 of 33 rounds of par or better with 2 wins (3 total at LSU).  Over the summers Madelene returned to Sweden and represented her home country in the European Women’s Team Amatear competition.

Madelene earned her LPGA card after killing it on the Symetra Tour in 2016 – three victories to earn Rookie and Player of the Year awards, respectively. Madelene also represented Europe on the 2017 Solheim Cup team as a captain’s pick of Annika Sörenstam.

Sagström had a solid end to 2020, making cuts in 8 of her last 9 starts, a solo 10th and T-13 among them. Madelene competed in the 2021 season-opening Diamond Resorts Tournament of Champions, a no-cut cash grab, so business is boomin for 2021.

As usual, the bag is niiiiice. NLU livin that C-Suite life alongside the Four Seasons Orlando, which also happens to be the home course of one Julio Bell, aka “La Maquina.” 

No Laying Up could not be more excited to support Madelene in all of her endeavors.  If you want to get #involved, check out:

https://www.instagram.com/madelenesagstrom/?igshid=pb4d4vqeh80j

https://www.lpga.com/players/madelene-sagstrom/98642/overview 6

And to see more of Madelene’s game, check out the Wild World of Golf episode with her, Annie Park, Soly and “Stuck in Traffic” Lefty Tron at the Winter Park Nine: 

https://nolayingup.com/videos/wwog/wild-word-of-golf/wild-world-of-golf-winter-park-9-madelene-sagstroem-and-annie-park

Young Hitters:  Welcoming Madelene Sagström

Tron and I made the trip up to South Pittsburg, Tennessee this past weekend for “The Ringer.” He gathered 60 golf junkies to help get the word out about his project in his home state of Tennessee called “The Buck Club.” He’s engaged King Collins Golf Design on the project, has all 18 holes laid out, as well as some bonus holes. He talks about how his world travels have influenced this golf course, and how Sweetens Cove synced him up with Rob Collins. Take a look at the video, and please do whatever you can to visit Sweetens Cove.

VIDEO: Zac Blair unveils his plans for the Buck Club at The Ringer at Sweetens Cove

Sponsor Exemptions are a hot topic in the golf world these days on the heels of Steph Curry’s appearance at last year’s Fannie Ellie Mae Classic on the Web.com Tour and Tony Romo’s upcoming spot in the field at the Corales Punta Cana Resort and Club Championship on the PGA Tour. Critics of these exemptions point to the more deserving players who aren’t getting a spot.

In my opinion, those gripes are misplaced, as these unrestricted sponsor spots usually never go to the guys who are next on the list or to promising up-and-comers. Tournament organizers can do pretty much whatever they want with them (there are also restricted spots, which have more strings attached). Agents often call in favors (often leveraging the appearance of a star client who 

 in the field to demand a spot for one of their lesser-known players – not a great look). Tournaments sometimes give a spot to a local club pro who has game (no issue with that). Past champs on hard times plead for a spot – Mike Weir gets starts, past-PGA Tour champs who are within a few years of the Champions Tour get spots to prep (shoutout Frank Lickliter 2.0), etc. Those are the beneficiaries of many of most of these spots.

Let’s look at the case of Steph Curry – one of the best athletes on the planet. He sold a ton of tickets, got people pumped up about a Web event about which they’d otherwise be unaware, helped keep the sponsor happy on a tour that needs more sponsors (especially for events in California and the Southeast) AND he held his own in the process? That seems like a huge win for the tour, and the sport at large.

Is there a line? Absolutely. But thus far the organizers have used discretion as to the celebrity element (though 

). Although there are certainly whispers of some under-the-table dealings with spots at certain events (not dissimilar to the wink-wink appearance fees on the Euro Tour), recipients of those spots have at least been qualified (until last week).

Esta es la otra Colombia ?? de la que me siento orgulloso ????mientras los entendidos del golf colombiano celebraban un mal golpe y se burlaban durante la primera ronda , estos Valientes niños defendían mi trabajo y mi nombre, se enfrentanron contra aquellos que tomaban vídeos y los hacían vírales para generar destrucción, ojalá el gremio del golf colombiano que me atacó tanto por jugar mal y por todas las razones que desconozco, aprendan de esta Colombia , felicitaciones Valientes ?????

 (@lamaquinajcb) on Feb 11, 2018 at 6:23am PST

Now let’s look at last week’s Web Tour stop down in Bogota, the 

which failed to use any discretion whatsoever. You may have seen some tweets about Julio Bell (pictured above, and better known colloquially by the self-glossed nickname “La Maquina”). Bell entered the event under suspicious circumstances and proceeded to shoot 93 in the first round and 105 in the second round. Below are Bell’s autumnal scorecards from both rounds:

 There was talk of La Maquina blaming his high scores on the fact that he couldn’t hit driver on the range (facility tops out at 220 yards). Digging deeper, it appears “La Maquina” 

(make sure to click through to the photo gallery; some gems in there). He recently underwent a massive equipment change, swapping out the Titleist sticks 

 and joining the battalion of PXG troops. He also participated (albeit as an amateur) in the venerable Diamond Resorts Invitational event a few months ago.

Bell claims to have picked up golf as a passion four years ago and thusly moved to Florida to train with “Coach Joey D,” who trains Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka, among others. 

sheds light on his life in and around the South Florida golf community. Throughout Friday there were widespread rumors abound that Bell had bought his way into the tournament by way of a sizable fee AND that he’d also be in the field for the aforementioned Punta Cana event.

Then, after his 105 on Friday, Bell declined to turn in his scorecard and went AWOL.

Word from my friends in the scoring trailer is that Julio “The Machine” Bell wouldn’t turn in a card after that 105 and got DQ’d. If you’re gonna shoot it, own it.



— Edward Loar Tracker-When Birdies & BBQ Collide?? (@EdLoarTracker) 

After the social interwebs predictably erupted with the no-card news, Bell issued a press release on Sunday via instagram in Spanish and made sure to include his various social outlets plus his WhatsApp number (both original and translation below):

On Sunday I reached out to Mr. Bell via WhatsApp for comment:

Bell’s recollection didn’t quite jive with what I’d heard, so I reached out to three well-placed sources who were on the ground in Bogota and witnessed the saga play out. They confirmed the following:

After he didn’t turn in his card, officials searched the premises for him, to no avail.

On Saturday morning the promoter in charge of the event located Bell, who relayed that he wanted to meet with Web.com Tour officials (who simply wanted his card).

Sources attributed Bell’s sudden change of heart to the realization that scores were posted online anyway, and would display despite the NC/DQ.

Bell then attempted to come back onsite anyway but was denied entry to Country Club de Bogota.

Officials have contacted Florida State Golf Association to investigate how his club validated his scores (he was listed as a +1.3 handicap).

The tournament promoter adamantly expressed (to media, officials and players alike) that no monies exchanged hands for the spot in the field. This claim was met with skepticism.

I expected this post to summarize a straightforward bit of absurdity, yet it yielded both troubling results and impassioned feedback from players I reached out to. To put it bluntly, guys are pissed.

Circling back to the recent discussion of sponsor exemptions, and specifically that of Curry, many critics cited the integrity of the competition as a concern for letting a celebrity compete. However, Web officials ran the Curry deal through the highest levels of Tour hierarchy, vetted his game, and grouped him with guys who confirmed they’d like to play with him and endure the extra attention.

 on the same tour and then failing to crack 90, all while playing with two legitimate professionals who were randomly paired with him while trying to earn a living. That is the very definition of compromising the integrity of the competition. Those two unwitting participants, 

, are both promising players who are fronting sizable expenses each week to make a living on the Web.com Tour (Stanger fresh out of UVA with a storied collegiate career, Knous out of Colorado School of Mines and having bounced around for a bit between the mini-tours and with partial Web status this year). Said expenses were abnormally high over the past month with events in the Bahamas, Panama, and Colombia. While some might say that this is the stuff you have to deal with on the mini-tours, I’d argue that the Web.com Tour isn’t a mini-tour. The top 62 players out there last year earned at least six figures before expenses. Add to that the carrot of a promotion to the PGA Tour and this is as close as you can get to the big show.

That both Stanger and Knous proceeded to make the cut is staggering. Stanger finished T20, banking nearly $7K, and Knous finished T16, taking home nearly $11K. Both were good sports about it on Twitter, but neither should’ve never been put in that position to begin with.

 tour event with a guy who shoots 93, 105 the first two rounds. I get sick for round 1, then make the cut on the number, and shoot -5 on the weekend for a t-20 finish.



— Jimmy Stanger (@jimmy_stanger) 

He was kind, played pretty fast, and stayed relatively out of the way. We did have a seizable crowd who clapped every time he hit the golf ball. Otherwise, I would say he hit some shots a guy who shoots 105 would hit.



— Jimmy Stanger (@jimmy_stanger) 

Shout out to my friends at Country Club de Bogotá, they’re the best in the business! Glad I could take advantage of the early season start and battle to a top-20 finish. 

, a member of Country Club de Bogota, reached out to express his dismay at how this incident reflects upon the relatively nascent golf community in Colombia and to offer some background on how this all went down:

“This week’s show with ‘La Maquina’ demonstrated to the world (again) how we handle things for money. As a golfer I am still fighting to make things right, what happened this week was all about money and not golf.



“I am 21 years old, finishing my undergrad in the Bay Area at at Saint Mary’s College in California. I am a scratch golfer and basically eat, sleep and breath golf. With a friend of mine we are starting a blog to show the world the real golf talent in Colombia. The organizer of the tournament is German Calle Jr. He gave Country Club de Bogota a spot (I participated in the qualifier, which was won by Daniel Faccini), gave spots to two professionals (Ricardo Celia and Sebastian Muñoz) and one to Mr. La Maquina. La Maquina has spent a lot of money promoting his fake profile and attends PGA events to take pictures with pro golfers so that people back in Colombia think he is actually a part of that group. He also paid different Colombian media outlets to show that image of him. Now they are trying to get away with it by saying that Julio Bell was simply “invited” to the tournament.

The other recipients of exemptions finished as follows: Sebastian Muñoz (69-69-75-70, T47); (Ricardo Celia (75-69, MC); Daniel Faccini (74-76, MC)

I reached out to another member of Country Club de Bogota, who confirmed the facts put forth by Durán and affirmed the sentiments he espoused. A quick google search yielded 

 Mr. Bell has received in his native country. Digging deeper into the recesses of Colombian Golf Twitter, there is a dedicated #GrowTheGame cohort who despise the message this sends about golf in their country:

Increible que en este pais el profesional en formacion que mejor 2017 tuvo como lo es Nicolas Echavarria no tenga cupo para el Web de Bogota y un pedazo de chambon como lo es Julio Bell si.
La corrupcion esta a todos los niveles en Colombia.



— Esteban Restrepo (@ERestrepo17) 

(translation: Its incredible how in this country the best player of 2017, Nicolas Echavarria didn’t get the spot in the Web.com held at CCB and a piece of crap like Julio Bell did. Corruption is in all levels of Colombia.)

Creo que todos los golfistas del pais coincidimos en la misma opinion de Julio Bell. Pero el que si pelo el cobre esta semana es el Sr. German Calle Jr. Que habla y habla de como el crece el golf en Colombia y esta semana se vendio y vendio a los golfistas de este pais por $$$



— Esteban Restrepo (@ERestrepo17) 

(translation: I think that all golfers in the country have the same opinion of Julio Bell. But the one who paid it all this week was Mr. German Calle Jr. He talks and talks about how golf in Colombia is growing and all he did this week was to sell himself and the golfers of this country for $$$)

Naturally, I turned my attention to Mr. German Calle, the tournament organizer/promoter, whose Twitter profile reads as follows: “Golf Entrepreneur/President of Golf Link.” GolfLink also plays some sort of role in putting on the aforementioned 

Corales Punta Cana Resort & Club Championship, 

as well as the now defunct Servientrega Championship, a Web Event played in ’15 and ’16 at TPC Cartagena.

GolfLink was honored with the Web.com Tour’s President’s Award in 2016

, given annually to “the tournament of the year.” In addition, the feedback I’ve gathered from Web Tour alums and current players supports that acclaim and they say the crowds come out in droves and that it would be one of the top tier Web events in the United States. While the Web Tour has thus far elected to accept the negative chicanery that comes along with an otherwise stellar event, a deeper look into the inner-workings of this event may be in short order. Tour leadership made definite strides for 2018 and listened to player feedback (in terms of consolidating the schedule, easing cross-country travel, and bringing on new sponsors/events). I imagine this issue might make it on the agenda of improvements for 2019.

As for who would’ve been a better recipient of Julio Bell’s spot – the runner-up of the ’17 Abierto de Colombia (a stalwart event on that PGA Tour Latinoamerica circuit and the country’s national open) springs to mind. That player, 

 would’ve been a fantastic addition to the field and a player of interest to the fans.

I reached out to Mr. Calle to ask about payment, handicap verification and the process for selecting participants. Mr. Calle has not responded as of yet. I also reached out to a spokesman for the Web.com Tour, who politely declined official comment. I did dig into the Tour’s policy on exemptions, which states that they are at the sole discretion of the individual tournament provided the player meets the handicap index requirement of 0.0. In this case, Mr. Bell’s +1.3 index at 

 (the Four Seasons Orlando Resort’s course, designed in 2014 by The Faz) passed the objective measure. Of course, there’s always the subjective element that the tournament could’ve employed when a guy who calls himself “The Machine” shows up and proceeds to look like a guy who can’t break 90 during the practice rounds (I’m told there is precedent for that on the Champions Tour).

We will keep this article updated with any new developments as necessary. (Awaiting comment from the Florida State Golf Association’s Director of GHIN Services, as well as the head golf professional at Tranquilo Golf Club.)

The FSGA responded and directed me to section 9-2a of the 

 Sebastian Munoz qualified on his own merit and did not receive a sponsor exemption. Instead, a player out of the Dominican Republic named Hiram Silfa received that exemption and shot 81-82 to miss the cut. Looking at Silfa’s record he’s played almost exclusively in tournaments managed by GolfLink over the past few years, which raises some questions. In addition, Justin Hueber (fully exempt on Web Tour + friend of the pod) reached out to share a funny tidbit. He won the 2016 Colombian Open, had some conditional Web status that year and reached out to the tournament regarding a spot in the event. He did not hear back until three weeks ago, when they sent him an email stating that they’d already given the spots to local professionals. At that point the request was nearly two years old.

Scott Blanchard, Head Golf Pro at Tranquilo Golf Club, replied and stated “it is the club’s policy to not comment on any of our members.”

La historia de La Máquina

“Justin Thomas, Jordan Spieth, Rickie Fowler, all the young guys who came up through the college system and have had immediate success on the PGA Tour…they’ve always done that. Whether it’s the AJGA, or in college, or summer amateur tournaments, they’re just physically and mentally prepared to do what they have to do. And then there’s guys like me–late bloomers that have to go through the grind–and that’s probably the other 90% of us who are doing this for a living at our age.”

David Wetterich is a professional golfer. At 24, having graduated Cincinnati LaSalle High School in 2010, he is a year older than the first two professional golfers he names above. And while the new crop of Tour players like Thomas and Spieth are winning PGA Tour titles, making millions of dollars, and fighting for major championships, Wetterich is taking a much more winding road–in more ways than one.

If David’s last name sounds familiar, it’s likely because you’re familiar with his second cousin Brett. A rookie on the PGA Tour in 2000, Brett Wetterich bounced between the big show and the Nationwide Tour (now the Web.com Tour) before regaining Tour status in 2005, winning the 2006 Byron Nelson, and qualifying for that year’s ill-fated U.S. Ryder Cup team. At one point in 2007, Wetterich was ranked as high as 21st in the world.

While Brett was putting together his run, his cousin David (along with David’s two younger brothers Daniel and Matt) was growing up in a golf-crazy household in the suburbs of Cincinnati. “We watched all weekend when he won,” David says of Brett’s ‘06 triumph. “I remember that being an exciting time for us. I remember a few days afterwards, I listened to a radio interview of him, and stuff like that kept me more interested in the game. My family name [being] on the PGA Tour…gave me a little motivation.”

David used that motivation to secure a spot on the golf team at Division 3 Wittenberg University, in Springfield, Ohio. “I always had some kind of talent at [golf],” he says of his decision to pursue the sport after high school, “and I was better at it than other sports, so I decided I wanted to play in college.”

It’s not a stretch to say that Brett Wetterich’s mid-2000s success had a hand in the golf careers of all three of his cousins. David’s youngest brother Daniel is a sophomore on the golf team at Ohio State, and his middle brother Matt is a senior on the team at Xavier.

David was an All-American in 2012 at Wittenberg, and credits his coach for giving him the chance to compete at the collegiate level. “My coach Jeff Roope saw something in me, and ended up pushing really hard to get me. I ended up deciding to go there and it was a really good decision.”

At Wittenberg, Wetterich got a taste of the competition he’d be facing in the pro ranks right from the start: “I think I got to play in damn near every tournament all four years I was there. Glad I made that decision; playing gave me more experience and helped me learn throughout the whole playing process.”

Despite the strong memories of his cousin’s PGA Tour glory, Wetterich says that his consistent play and continued success at Wittenberg were the driving forces behind his decision to turn professional: “If I hadn’t gone there, I don’t know if I would have played golf; it kind of altered my decision as to what I wanted to do these days. But I am where I am now, and I kind of like my job.”

So where exactly is “here,” for Wetterich? Well, during the summer months, that question largely depends on the location of the nearest campsite.

The MacKenzie Tour – PGA Tour Canada is the lengthy name for golf’s Double A circuit – the stepping stone to the Web.com Tour. A series of 12 events spanning the breadth of Canada, the tour has produced a slew of PGA Tour players including James Hahn, Tony Finau, and JJ Spaun. It’s a place to find the true grinders of the game – Canadians, Americans, Latin Americans, and even a few Europeans and Asian players all competing for purses that rarely exceed $200,000. Only the top 5 players on the money list at the end of the season earn Web.com Tour cards, with just the # 1 finisher being guaranteed full status on the Web.

Last season David Wetterich and his roommate Ryan Linton, a former standout player at Southern Cal, were two of the many pros trying to figure out how to play as many MacKenzie Tour events as possible without breaking the bank. The pair live in Pinehurst, so living at home was out of the question. Hotels and motels get expensive (and monotonous) quickly. And then Linton had a brilliant idea.

Why not drive from event to event, and live in the back of a camper?

“At first i was brushing him off like, ‘He probably won’t go through with it’–it didn’t seem exciting or appealing at the time,” Wetterich says of his initial reaction. Linton was gung-ho on the idea from the jump, and played well enough in a few Canadian qualifiers to gain conditional status on the MacKenzie Tour. Then he made his final pitch to Wetterich.

“He said, ‘I’m doing this, and I got a camper that’s big enough to fit one more person, and I’d like for you to tag along. We’ll have the time of our lives this summer,” David says. It was a compelling offer, and Wetterich finally caved.

The rig was a 21-foot Starcraft that just barely fit two grown adults comfortably (“We made a bed out of the seating area for me, since it was his camper, he got the queen bed,” David says). They stayed either at campsites or, on some occasions, in the golf course’s parking lot (no word on night putting sessions). They had a shower, though they didn’t use it much, preferring to bathe either at campsites or the course. And unlike many young adult males living together, they cooked their own dinners most every night. Calling in a delivery pizza to a camper at a golf course sounds like a good way to get arrested.

As life doesn’t work the same way it does in Disney scripts, the pair’s grand adventure was marred by the logistical and performance-related difficulties inherent in, you know, actually playing pro golf. Wetterich didn’t have any kind of status on the MacKenzie Tour, and had to Monday qualify into the three tournaments the pair played in. That meant a lot of late Sunday driving, and a lot of tired Monday golfing. Even still, the experience was one of the best of his young life. A sample of the extensive answer he gave on his description of his weeks on the road with Linton:

I didn’t get status so it was a coin toss if I was going to go. I missed the first Monday qualifier. The second one was in Victoria a week later and I said, ‘I’m gonna do a couple of them and see where it goes.’ I planned on being up there for two weeks, and I stayed up there the whole season. I flew into Vancouver, took the ferry over to Victoria on Vancouver Island, and Ryan picked me up from there, and we ended up going from one coast of Canada to the other. I went home for a week and met him in Ottawa, and he did a little chunk of the countryside by himself, but it was still a blast, it was the time of my life.

In addition to playing golf as a job, the guys managed to sneak in some bonus rounds across the Great White North, including a few at world-renowned Banff Springs in Alberta, Canada. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon.

Golf wasn’t the only thing on the agenda during David and Ryan’s excellent adventure, as they had some of the continent’s best scenery and hiking at their front door. “Every night we’d have a campfire going when we could,” says David, “and we went on a lot of hikes, especially in British Columbia–we’d go on hikes everywhere we went.”

The MacKenzie Tour, like other smaller golf tours around the world, presents a challenging arena in which to succeed. Since the season is so short, it’s sometimes a matter of catching lightning in a bottle. “A lot of it is about timing; getting hot at the right time,” Wetterich says about this phenomenon. “Many guys have had one good month and it has springboarded them to the next level, or sometimes all the way up to the top.” Both Wetterich and Linton are still looking for that run of success – they missed the cut in each of their three tournaments.

Even though he didn’t see immediate success on the MacKenzie Tour, and acknowledges the tough road in front of him, Wetterich has no hesitation in his voice when asked if he’s going to run the whole thing back in 2017: “I plan on it…The plan is for both of us to get status and play the tournaments, not the Monday qualifiers.

“I know exactly how much it’s gonna cost, and the whole camper thing really cuts back on costs… I don’t know how much hotels were up there, but I feel like we were saving a lot of money at the campsites because they were only 40, 50 bucks at the most per night.”

David Wetterich lives on the fringes of professional golf. He counts his second cousin Brett and PGA Tour winner Jim Herman as friends that he can go to for advice, but his name has yet to crack the year-end MacKenzie Tour Order of Merit listing. His story probably sounds familiar to countless other aspiring PGA Tour pros. So often when we turn on CBS on Sunday morning and are greeted with shots of kitesurfers above the lush fairways of Torrey Pines, we forget about the thousands of players toiling in obscurity, digging divots on out-of-the-way driving ranges, and sometimes sleeping in camper vans in an effort to make a few cuts, and perhaps put together a career-changing run.

For now, Wetterich is planning his 2017 schedule. But this process is a bit different for David than, say, Jordan Spieth. In between practicing for a few Florida mini tour events and Monday qualifiers, Wetterich is working and caddying around Pinehurst. Three months out of the year he works in Cincinnati, cutting and scrapping spare aluminum to save up some money. His first big test comes the weekend of April 18-21, at the MacKenzie Tour Q-School tournament at PGA Village in Port St. Lucie, FL.

The plan, as always, is to succeed, and then hit the MacKenzie Tour with Linton again this summer. A few Top 5’s, maybe a win, and there’s a chance to move up to the Web.com Tour. And as we’ve seen with Wesley Bryan, a couple of victories there can be life-changing.

Of course, when you’re on the road, it’s hard to see the (Canadian National) Forest for the trees: “Canada was fun–we went from one coast to the other, from Vancouver and Victoria to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. It was a really fun time and I definitely look forward to doing it again. I think the whole camper thing enhanced the whole tour for Ryan and I. We got to have some fun and see a different country.”

There are many routes that lead to the PGA Tour, as evidenced by the huge diversity of origin stories and home countries represented on leaderboards and at the top of the OWGR every week. Wetterich is hoping that with a strong showing on the MacKenzie Tour, a little luck, and a lot of camping, his road winds its way up to the highest levels of pro golf.

You can follow David’s journey this summer on Instagram 

Camping Across Canada: David Wetterich’s Summer on the MacKenzie Tour

 is a Sophomore on the Georgetown golf team majoring in Economics and minoring in Journalism. The piece below was written for his fall semester journalism class, and he received an A.

Thomas Pieters is standing in the 11th fairway of Royal Troon Golf Club.

It’s the final round of the 2016 Open Championship, and by this point, Pieters is well out of contention to win the tournament. So as he stands up to his seventh (yes, seventh) shot on the long par four 11th hole, still miles away from the green, he’s just about reached his breaking point. He gives the ball a whack, and seconds later has successfully impaled the nearest gorse bush with two halves of a former golf club, snapped over his knee in fury. And in the ultimate display of irony, the ball rolls onto the green. In fact, the NBC commentator describes it as the best approach shot of the day at the 11th hole.

Fifteen seconds of airtime on the NBC broadcast, and that was the last anyone heard of the intriguingly ironic episode.

Anyone, that is, who hasn’t met the fine gentlemen of No Laying Up.

Three friends had a group text; it dated back to their college years at Miami University (Ohio), and these guys loved talking sports. Chris “Soly” Solomon, one of the group members, explained how he and his friends had long discussed starting some kind of sports blog.

“Some of the stuff these guys came up with, the running jokes, they were too good to keep private,” said the 30-year-old Soly.

Though not necessarily golf specialists, they decided that their proposed blog would focus on golf. In late 2013, Soly and his two friends, Phil “Big Randy” Landes and Todd “Tron Carter” Schuster, opened a Twitter account under the name “No Laying Up.” In search of technical help, they enlisted Todd’s younger brother Neil, the group’s resident San-Fran techie, to help them develop the blogsite that launched on January 1, 2014.

Just shy of three years later, four guys and a group text has transformed into a brand with 66,000 followers on Twitter and tens of thousands of weekly page views on their blog. They cover events around the country. They have interviewed the best players in the world.

But they all have full-time jobs outside of golf. They live in three vastly different time zones. And they have only been together in person once.

The short answer, as “Young Neil” Schuster, 27, would say, is that they provide “hot takes” on the world of golf.

“We’ve stuck to having fresh, funny content,” Neil told me in an interview, “even as our fan base has grown.”

Thomas Pieters’ club enjoys its last moments in one piece.

Golf isn’t exactly a sport gushing with humor. A sport dominated by rich white dudes, wearing collared shirts and tailored slacks, reacting (supposedly) like first-class gentlemen to whatever the competition throws their way? Thrilling.

No Laying Up doesn’t quite take that view of the game.

Look no further than #TourSauce, a 2014 invention by the NLU crew that has since found massive appeal on Twitter. The concept, brilliantly simple, is that certain actions on the golf course can only be performed by PGA Tour players without said action looking completely ridiculous. Tiger Woods, for example, is known to twirl his club with a definitive flourish after hitting a good shot. But if a 20-handicapper playing on Sunday morning with his buddies tried that move? He’d be laughed off the course.

Back for a moment to our club-snapping friend, Thomas Pieters. His temper tantrum in any non-professional golf setting would have been nothing short of absurd, not to mention that the ball ended up in a great position. So when it happened, Twitter exploded with tour-sauciness. A few seemingly obscure seconds on NBC would eventually become the most popular #TourSauce of 2016.

“The greatest #TourSauce in history,” tweeted CBS sportswriter Kyle Porter, posting a video of the club-snap-throw incident.

#TourSauce is not by any means the only example of NLU’s sense of humor, but it might be the best one—just simple enough and just brilliant enough that it finds the perfect appeal among fans. But even referring to NLU’s collective “sense of humor” doesn’t quite do them justice. These guys are individuals.

“We realized that we all have different opinions about almost everything,” said Soly.

This difference in opinion has led to each member of the group using separate Twitter accounts. While the blog provides a common medium for them to promote the NLU brand, the four different Twitters allow the guys some individual freedom and give their fans an extremely diverse perspective. It explains why they never run out of “fresh, funny content”—the guys are amusing in their own styles and enticingly hilarious as a whole.

I have plenty of friends who are funny, and plenty of them have Twitter accounts, but none of them have 66,000 followers. Clearly, the four guys at NLU have something besides humor that has enabled their tremendous success over the past three years.

The first part of the story lies in the nature of traditional golf media outlets, which are very, well, traditional.

“When you’re talking about traditional sports media, it has a tendency to want to describe people as heroes or villains, and usually heroes” said Shane Ryan. Ryan is the author of the 

Slaying the Tiger: A Year inside the Ropes on the New PGA Tour

, a book that offers in-depth profiles of many of golf’s up and coming stars. He feels that his initial unfamiliarity with the golf world gave him a great perspective on golf journalism as a whole when he wrote the book.

“It’s like all individual sports, if you treat players really nicely, you’ll get more access,” he said, “and that means that [journalists] want to lionize these people, make them larger than life.”

Neil agrees. “A lot of what we saw early on was that golf coverage is very buttoned-up. Getting press passes and things like that is difficult,” he said. “It’s like any country club, right? You have to belong.”

Soly, Neil, Tron and Randy did not belong, and in many ways still don’t, to this well-established world of golf journalism. At the end of the day, they’re just golf fans. Their approach would have to be different, both in content and delivery.

“Twitter is a great medium for golf,” Neil explained to me. “It offers you the chance to be an outsider and still have an impact. There’re so many personalities and so much going on during a tournament that you don’t see on TV…Twitter helps you keep track of that.”

It’s true—golf doesn’t keep you glued to the TV screen in the same way as a basketball or football game, which means that the viewer has plenty of time to browse through social media while watching a tournament. It creates a unique second dimension of golf coverage, one that had gone mostly ignored by mainstream golf journalists: a social-media-based conversation among the fans. NLU complements, rather than conflicts with, TV coverage of a tournament.

Post-Ryder Cup Twitter post from NLU, one of the most popular of 2016

“People wanted a voice, or voices, of people who talk about golf the way you talk about golf at the bar with your buddies,” said Soly. “We wanted people to see our stuff and think, ‘I’d never read that on someone else’s website.’”

Jack Musgrave, 21, an avid reader of NLU and an NCAA Division I golfer, found just what Soly was describing.

“It’s stuff that a golfer’s golfer wants to know,” he said. “Their content comes from the perspective of a real golf fan.”

NLU has provided that source of golf-fan viewpoint that the game needs. Their informal, have-fun-with-it attitude is contagious, and people have responded with emphatic support. Not to say that the size of their following is not important to them, but it would be worse to think that they’re only in it to rack up as many followers as possible.

Brothers “Tron Carter” and “Young Neil” rock their NLU gear at the Tradition Unlike Any Other

“We aren’t motivated by page views or storylines,” Soly said, contrasting NLU with other for-profit sports media. Musgrave articulated a similar point, saying that most golf media outlets “are too caught up on what they think their customers want to read.”

This claim that they aren’t in it for the “page views” is illustrated perfectly by the fact that the blog doesn’t run ads, a decision that gives readers a clean-cut experience. They’ve had offers to change that, according to Neil, but as of now the group’s only source of revenue comes from selling their custom 

“Even now, with a lot of followers, growth isn’t really our goal,” said Soly. “It’s still about reaching out to people who really want to talk golf with us”—something that most of golf media has apparently missed.

Part two of NLU’s success story began in the early morning hours of November 27, 2009, when Tiger Woods wrecked his Cadillac Escalade outside his Florida home.

I call this the unofficial birthday of the PGA Tour’s next generation, though certainly no one would have known that at the time. But in the seven years since the crash, the world has seen Tiger confess to his affairs with multiple women, deal with a plethora of surgeries on different body parts, rise back to the top of the world rankings after a phenomenal year in 2013, and finally take a back-injury-induced sixteen months off from golf from mid 2015 to December of this year. Tiger has been beaten up.

Daniel Berger, 23, gives a rare smile after his first PGA Tour win at the 2016 FedEx St. Jude Classic

In his place, a new generation of stars has taken control of the sport; five of the top ten players in the world are in their twenties. 23-year-old Daniel Berger, ranked 31st in the world, described the mentality of these new players.

“It’s a little shocking for the veterans who have been competing against the same guys all their careers,” he told me. “Now they have all these young hungry 21-year-olds who want to play 30 weeks a year.”

Hungry is the right word—these guys are dominating golf and ushering in a resuscitative vitality to the sport. NLU’s founders, all between the ages of 27 and 32, felt the impact of this shift and responded to it.

“I think it definitely opened up a window,” said Neil, referring to the influx of incredible young players, “because these guys are much savvier with, well, they’re just like us. They’re using social media, they’re on Snapchat.”

Soly had a similar perspective: “The young guys embrace this social media age so much…it is kind of a unique opportunity right now.”

This brings us to one of the most remarkable things about NLU: their social media hasn’t just connected them to other golf fans, it’s connected them to the players, particularly this younger generation of them. And, I should note, the players that NLU connects with aren’t just guys looking for some extra publicity. When I spoke with Soly, he had just posted his interview with four-time major champion and second-ranked golfer in the world, Rory McIlroy. An 

 interview with perhaps golf’s biggest star, after Tiger Woods. How did he pull that off?

Jordan Spieth, Rickie Fowler, and Smilie Kaufman on “Spring Break” in 2016. High probability of a pull hook.

Writing

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Dublin, Ireland Golf Trip, Part II: The K-Club

Dublin, Ireland Golf Trip, Part I: The Island Golf Club

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