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.”

Page Break

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. 

I told D.J. that someday I’m going to sit down and rank all my favorite musical performances from those final few weeks on Letterman, because I think many of them are among my favorite pieces of music in the last 10 years.

We don’t usually talk golf in this section of G&T, but you should definitely read 

piece about playing The Old Course in reverse

 that he wrote for Yeti if you missed it a few weeks ago. (I will tee it up there someday, folks. This just made me want it even more.)

book “Movies With Balls” comes out this week

 and it’s a really fun read about sports movies and why we love them. (Rick Bryson is a co-author.) Kyle was a guest 

, and I am (full disclosure) quoted in the book talking about why I love Tin Cup movie so much, and how the sports media would react if someone melted down at the U.S. Open in real life. It’s worth picking up for the section on Caddyshack alone, but I also loved some of the breakdowns of my other favorites like Major League, Dodgeball, Creed and Kingpin.

One of my favorite pieces of filmmaking in recent years was 

 O.J. Simpson documentary “Made In America,” which Tron and I rewatched earlier this year to see if we could do a Perfect Club about. (In the end, we decided that making jokes about a film that examines the complicated racial history of Los Angeles and a double homicide likely committed by a famous athlete did not seem particularly wise, as neither of us is Norm Macdonald.) But I’m really glad we re-watched it, and I was blown away to learn that Edelman made a similar project about Prince for Netflix that (sadly) may never be released. 

 of the New York Times wrote a magazine piece 

(this gift link should work for non-subscribers)

 about why it may never be released, and how it nearly broke Edelman in the five years he spent working on it.

GHIN & Tonic, Vol. 19 (KVV)

For the version of this essay read by KVV, listen to the audio above.

What’s your favorite sporting event that you’ve ever been to?

To be honest, I’d have to think long and hard before choosing mine.

As someone who has worked in sports media for almost 25 years, I’ve been spoiled in ways a teenage boy who grew up in Montana never could have imagined. I’ve been to four Super Bowls and a handful of Masters, several Open Championships and half dozen National Championships, a couple Olympics and even a World Series game. As I get older, it gets harder to pick a favorite. It all blends together into a quilt of adventures.

My 12-year-old daughter, Keegan, on the other hand, has a pretty definitive answer to that question. I know because I asked her Sunday night while driving back to Baltimore from Manassas, Virginia.

The best sporting event she’s ever been to, without question, was the 2024 Solheim Cup, when she watched her friend Lauren Coughlin go undefeated over three days, including a gritty Sunday performance that was essential in holding off a spirited European comeback and let the Americans capture the trophy for the first time since 2017.

It’s still a surreal thing to say out loud: Not only do I have a 12-year-old daughter who loves golf, who will jump out of bed at 6 a.m. and drive to another state with me so we can watch a tournament together, but we’re also lucky enough to 

 someone on the Solheim Cup team, someone who greeted us with a hug on the first tee and immediately started introducing us to her teammates.

I know the LPGA is an imperfect organization, and certainly, from a logistical standpoint, this was an imperfect week. If you were one of the parents who tried to take your kids to the Friday session and had to wait in line for a shuttle for three hours, I can’t imagine you want to hear what a wonderful week me and my kid had walking inside the ropes, fist-bumping American players.

But I will give the LPGA credit for this: I think the organization’s heart is in the right place on a lot of stuff. A year ago, they reached out and asked if I’d be interested in bringing my daughter to Solheim. She could even be a junior reporter if she wanted.

They want more dads to embrace the idea of connecting with their daughters through golf.

Personally, I think we’re a case study of how your DNA doesn’t have to determine your golf swing because while my swing looks like water buffalo in roller skates trying to hurl an ax, my daughter Keegan’s swing inspires compliments from strangers on a regular basis.

Golf has always been flush with stories about fathers and sons who bond over a lifetime of back nine strolls. You can pick up, literally, dozens of books on the subject, some of them moving and some of them maudlin. But there is significantly less literature out there about fathers imparting life lessons to their daughters on the links. There are more women picking up the game now than at any other time in the sport’s history — almost a 15 percent increase since 2020. But a significant part of that growth is being led by young professionals, women who didn’t start playing until they were in their 20s or 30s.

There has been real progress made, but golfing dads are still more likely — both statistically and anecdotally — to nudge their sons toward the game than they are their daughters.

I’ve always felt like shining a bigger spotlight on the Solheim Cup would be a way to supercharge additional growth. Let’s be honest, stroke play is often a snooze, even for those of us who love the game. Tethering your daughter to a couch and telling her to pay close attention as someone goes through a two-minute putting routine that’s bookended by two erectile dysfunction commercials sounds like a great way to have her talk 

 you in therapy instead of talk to you in a golf cart.

But team golf is something else entirely.

Team Golf is a party you want to be invited to.

There is music and dancing on the first tee, whether you’re into Taylor Swift, Chappell Roan or Metallica. There are celebrations after putts. There is hooting and hollering and hugging after big shots. There is an infectious joy that radiates from the players and then ripples through the crowd like an electric current.

You could see all that unfolding this week at Robert Trent Jones Golf Course, and see normally demure personalities like Rose Zhang and Nelly Korda bouncing on the balls of their feet and whipping the crowd into a frenzy. Megan Khang was flexing like a professional wrestler after every big putt. Charley Hull strutting from tee to green, a cigarette often dangling from her lips, looking like a radiant, unapologetic movie star.

I love the Solheim Cup because it asks a dozen women, all from very different backgrounds, to bond over something bigger than themselves for a week, and the reward isn’t just a trophy, it’s the satisfaction and pride of knowing you and your brethren are capable of representing more than your individual interests.

If there is a better parenting lesson, I haven’t found it.

Keegan and I talked about all of that over the course of three days. We talked about whether Chappell Roan’s “Hot To Go” would make a good first tee walkup song, but we also talked about when to give putts in match play and when to get aggressive on approach shots and whether you’d rather hit a draw or a fade off the tee on certain holes. We followed our favorite players, but also players we barely knew, studying their games with the intensity of a religious scholar. At one point I couldn’t resist teasing her: If you got to meet Nelly Korda, do you think you'd tell her you dressed up as her for Halloween when you were eight? She turned a beautiful shade of fuschia.

Along the way, something fun happened: Roughly two dozen dads tracked us down to say hello. Maybe read something I’d written about Keegan, or seen pictures of us golfing together, but it was the nudge they needed to start going on similar adventures with their own daughters. Some of them, granted, were still in the early stages, the days where you ride in a cart at dusk and barely hit putts, but returns were promising.

“Make sure you bring lots of snacks,” was Keegan’s stock answer when those dads joked if she had any additional golfing advice.

But if nothing else, it was a good laugh line, delivered by a girl who has, through golf, seen her self-confidence soar in recent years. She also wanted to tell them not to make the mistake I often do of wearing three different shades of blue in public, but we’re not quite there yet when it comes to zingers and strangers.

We’ve all heard that cliche that 90 percent of parenting is just showing up, but in my experience, that simplifies it a bit too much. A lot of parenting is also sharing the things you love with your kids, and watching their own love blossom in whatever direction they choose to take it, like branches of a tree stretching toward sunlight that’s entirely their own.

One of the best things you can do as a dad is introduce your kids to people you respect and admire, because no parent, no matter how wise or funny or rich or good with a wedge they are, is going to have all the answers. You’re better off if you put your faith in the collective strength of teammates, which is a roundabout way of telling you that Lauren Coughlin gave my daughter two gifts this week, each of which I would never have been capable of.

The first came on Saturday afternoon, when we met her on the first tee, and peppered her with questions about her first three matches, all victories. She filled in the details, then uttered a question I suspect Keegan will never, ever forget: Do you want to meet Nelly?

The LPGA captured the interaction and shared it on social media. Maybe you already saw it. But even if they had not, I think it would still be imprinted in my brain, and in my heart, for the rest of my days.

Nelly Korda leaned over and asked my little Keegan if she was a golfer.

“Yeah,” my daughter answered with a mixture of wonder and trepidation.

“She has a great swing too,” Lauren quickly chimed in.

Nelly Korda, owner of one of the most elegant golf swings in history, nodded with approval.

The following day, things were looking dicey for the United States. They’d built a big lead the first two days behind Nelly and Lauren and Rose, but now Europe was surging, and every match felt vitally important. Lauren was down three to Maja Stark at one point, but we’d watched her claw back to even. If the United States was going to hang on, Lauren couldn’t lose her match.

When Lauren hit her approach on the 17th hole to 15 feet, and Maja hit hers to four feet, I started preparing a dad speech in my head.

It was about how loving sports often means you have to learn to absorb massive disappointment. There is no script, just like in life, and sometimes you’re going get crushed by the thing you love. I planned to remind her — probably through my own tears — that Lauren had so much to be proud of for the week, it just wasn’t her day, or the United States’ day. But I kept the speech to myself and instead posed a question.

“I think Lauren is going to make her putt,” Keegan said.

I said a prayer to the golfing gods as I watched the ball trickle toward the hole. Then I let out a roar when it tumbled in.

Keegan and I hugged like true believers, even though my faith had wavered, while hers apparently never did.

She made up the difference for both of us.

We didn’t even mind when Maja Stark rolled in her own birdie. We knew Lauren wasn’t going to lose, not after being tested like that. And on 18, she earned a crucial half a point, setting the stage for Lillia Vu to win the Cup with a tie in the very next match.

I can’t get you inside the ropes at an LPGA event, but if you’re listening to this, and you’re lucky enough to have a daughter, take her out on the golf course this fall.

Bring a speaker. Learn the words to Taylor Swift or Chappell Roan songs. Put a club in her hand. Bring lots of snacks.

You’ll be blown away by the gifts you might get in return.

The True Gift of the Solheim Cup

I am absolutely filled up after the PGA Tour offseason. East Lake feels like it was ages ago. I used the time to fight down the number of tabs I have open, which currently stood at 73 open on the various Safari and Chrome windows on my laptop and 488 tabs on my phone. Made some progress last week but we're still not in a great spot on that front. However, I only have 43 total emails in my inbox, which is a win.

Randy really stretched the bounds of the “GHIN” category in the last G&T by writing about his dog, Arthur. This week, I’m going to reset us by getting really literal and talking about my actual handicap index and address some of the haters in the process. 

Barstool released a video last week in which Riggs (who seemingly plays 10x more golf than I do, yet has an impossibly unathletic move) challenges an internet commenter to a match. While I think a concept stemming from handicap manipulation accusations would’ve been more interesting/applicable in a stroke play format, that they pulled in an internet hater and then put him in the cauldron is something we’ve been talking about for years as a fun “what if” but never had the bandwidth to put it in play.

This comment, from a prolific hater of ours on YouTube, is what got me going on this topic a couple of weeks ago:

People see me play golf on camera and it’s often not pretty, which can be chalked up to a combination of factors: Playing on camera isn’t easy - filming a round is a pain in the ass and often results in various stops and starts. Sometimes good shots get edited out. Sometimes bad shots get edited out. I’m 38 years old, have two kids, and until recently, hadn’t worked out in a decade. I have an ugly over-the-top move, and many of the videos we’ve filmed this year have been the morning after a cross-country flight (and sometimes the day of that flight, or on another continent), and I’m the least flexible person on the planet. 

All of this adds up to a potent, high-variance, feel-based combination that can yield drastically different results round-to-round. I rarely warm up at this point — and usually play better when I don’t — and I’ve practiced twice this year and I often go weeks without playing. All of this is deeply self-inflicted and unnecessary, and I’m in the early stages of fixing it (

as are Casey, Cody and DJ - if you haven’t seen our latest video

I’m a 1-handicap because the GHIN system says I’m a 1-handicap. And there seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of (or refusal to accept) how the system actually works. To refresh: the system only looks at your last 

 best score differentials to par when factoring in slope, rating, and conditions that day. At any given point, despite my volatile and streaky nature, the best eight rounds of my last twenty are usually pretty good. These rounds tend to come in the middle stretch of golf trips, after I’ve gotten a few days of golf under my belt, have found the bottom of my swing, and have mixed in a free afternoon to rest up and stretch.

At various points during NLU, I’ve been called a sandbagger and a vanity cap, sometimes at the same time, which is interesting! I would rather be getting strokes from Soly, Neil, Ben and Cody, and have a far higher floor and a lower ceiling than I currently do. Something in the 3.6 range would be very comfortable. Unfortunately, I can’t pick what my handicap is!

I came into 2024 as a 2.1 handicap, before going up to a 3.8 in mid-February after some exceptional scores from 2023 fell off. I then got in gear with some good rounds in March, June and July that got me down to 0.9. Currently sitting at 1.4 and it’s trending in the wrong direction. I’ve posted 50 rounds this year. 28 of which were in the US and 22 internationally (I think I missed posting a couple of rounds from Australia, particularly RM West; I’ve also played quite a few rounds of alt shot that obviously aren’t post-able, so the total rounds played is higher. I’ve posted nine rounds from my home club, which is nearly twice as many as last year’s total already. Average score this year is 78.1, with the low round of the year an even-par 71 at Bel-Air on the fourth day of a trip there and the high round of the year the 87 fired at Colorado Golf Club during the event we hosted a couple weeks ago. Truly bleak, to the point that I’ve made the decision to shut it down for a few weeks, work on my body and reboot it from scratch before we get into the fall. Tear it down, rebuild, forgive, forget, things of that nature.

this from Brendan and Joseph over at TFE on the upcoming renovation work at TPC Craig Ranch

. I am fascinated to see how much lipstick they can put on that pig for $15MM #RememberTheFive #CJK5H

We had our Summer Festival out at Colorado Golf Club a few weeks ago and I was blown away. Bill Coore & Ben Crenshaw are two of the best to ever do it, and this is among their best work. It combined the feeling of alpine prairies that you get at Bandon Trails with long vistas and brilliant short par fours and some of the topography you see at Prairie Dunes. The par three short course was best in class, too. Can’t wait to get back. I am grateful to our friend 

 for making the trip out to Colorado to shoot for us and memorialize the day - here's a sampling of my favorites:

I want to shout out Golf Course Graveyard Instagram account. Always sends me down an interesting wormhole each time a new post goes up.

The other day I found myself watching The (Golf) Channel and they had a documentary called “Peter the Great” and it brought back so many memories of watching the European Tour in the mornings when I was early on in my love of golf. Alliss was a big part of that. I yearn for similar coverage these days. What an interesting man. I’m unable to find a link to any information on the Golf Channel Film, but 

here’s what (I think) they adapted it from

 and it’s just as good. Worth your time!

 Instagram account got on my radar in February and I watch every reel that goes up. I try to casually keep tabs on golf fashion, but the way that Raymond organizes, curates and delivers information is remarkably creative and draws you in. He’s got a good eye and a way with words, even if sometimes the golf fashion scene can make me roll my eyes.

Basically a consumption log of the past month or so.

We were out in Denver for the BMW Championship and I had a truly elite meal while out there. And no I’m not talking about the Shanahattan I had at 

. Instead, it was at an Israeli/Mediterranean place called 

. I thought about going back the next night but couldn’t make it work. That good. Will plan my trip around it next time I’m in Denver. Also failed to take any pics because I was so locked in on the food and the convo.

Popsicles run DEEP in the Schuster family. My dad, aka “The Franchise,” used to house dozens of freeze pops in one sitting. Then he went to the traditional “Popsicle” brand, before switching to their sugar-free version. My younger son Gustav is completely off ice cream these days and addicted to popsicles, or “posspickles” as he thinks they’re called. 

 entered my life about two months ago and I haven’t looked back since. There are half a dozen flavors I like and it’s sort of a dealers choice on which stores have which ones. Thus far, in order of favorite to least favorite, I’ve had the Rainbow Fruit Snacks, Star-Spangled Flag, Summer Sunrise, Blue Wave, Tropical Paradise Punch, and Watermelon (which is the only flavor I haven’t liked - an upset because I usually love all things watermelon.) I’ve seared the top of my mouth from eating too many of them on multiple occasions. An all-around elite product with simple, natural ingredients, and they don’t stain your mouth.

Weather is cooling off in Jax and I’m looking to get back into the cadence of gardening and cooking over the next few months with some increased time at home. I also want to do something extremely nerdy and organize my golf pencils (the one thing I collect from every course I play.)

Currently reading a book called “How To Read Water: Clues and Patterns from Puddles to the Sea” - I feel like I’m surrounded by it and don’t really understand it like I should. Plus, it’ll help my fishing.

A confluence of Legos, geography/climate and logistics.

Brian Kelly losing his mind. That’s not going to end well down in Baton Rouge.

Northern Illinois beating Notre Dame. In the past, this would’ve made me happy because of ill will toward Notre Dame (see: Kelly, Brian), but I like Marcus Freeman and think he’s moving that program forward and going through some growing pains and I legitimately hope he succeeds. This was all due to NIU Coach Thomas Hammock letting the gravity of the moment overcome him, speaking from the heart, and acknowledging all the kids who stuck with him. Along with Big Randy, I follow MAC football pretty closely and the transfer portal and NIL have completely gutted rosters over the last few years in a way that’s made it more difficult than ever to build a coherent program at a mid-major. Coaches spend a few years developing a class, only to have the top 20-30% get plucked away by a power conference school after a strong sophomore or junior season. To see a guy who played at NIU come back, do it the right way, experience the ups and downs and go on the road to beat the fifth-ranked team in the country as a 30-point underdog by dominating the line of scrimmage and overcoming bad officiating is why I watch college football. That resonated.

Seeing fans of other sports realize the depravity and ineptitude we’ve been dealing with from NBC’s golf broadcasts the last few years makes me happy because I know we weren’t the crazy ones. Jason Garrett is driving Notre Dame fans NUTS as the color analyst on their games. This past weekend’s primetime Colorado-Nebraska game featured Colt McCoy in the second chair in what I believe was his first-ever college football broadcast appearance, and it showed - he sounded like he was falling asleep at various points throughout the game, and then when he did try to liven things up there were whiffs of the 

 from the early internet. That’s not even Colt. The halftime studio show was abhorrent. I’m told that NBC having a second NFL game (in Brazil, no less) stretched them thin this week and they didn’t have a bench to draw upon, which, gosh, feels like something that could’ve been foreseen.

Between the budget cuts, an arrogance that pervades the entire organization, the disdain with which they treat the audience, and the wrong people getting promoted, it’s tragic to see what’s happened to a once-proud organization. It remains to be seen if their best-in-class (outside of the pregame show) Sunday Night Football production is falling off, too. Can’t wait for them to get their hands on the NBA!

Juxtapose everything above about NBC with this fantastic 

Bryan Curtis piece on Fox’s courtship of Tom Brady

 that digs into Fox's approach to talent. TB12 didn't exactly crush his debut, and while I disagree with throwing him right into the fire there's no doubt he'll get better and find his footing. Fox has built a deep bench and it stinks that Greg Olsen's competence led to him being considered a solid backup plan. 

 Somewhat related: YouTube TV! Finally cut the cord from Comcast and made the switch. What took me so long?

The Jaguars! Hope springs eternal. I’m hoping that Brian Thomas Jr. is everything I thought Calvin Ridley was going to be!

The U.S. Open ruled. Major championship tennis continues to be at the apex of the sports viewing ecosystem.

My fantasy baseball squad made the playoffs in our NLU league and looks to be on a collision course with Soly’s Infinite WAR franchise for the finals. It’s a keeper league that allows future draft picks to be traded, and I’ve completely leaned into that. Imagine the LA Rams of the last decade mixed with the 1997 Florida Marlins. I haven’t just mortgaged my future, I’ve got a reverse mortgage on it, too!

Haven’t been drinking much wine (or anything else) this summer. Just too hot and I've been focused on sleeping better. But when I have been indulging, it’s mostly been my friend 

. I’ll chill it down a bit and it’s just so versatile with whatever we’re eating. Light, fun, and kind of zippy on the tongue. I’ve canceled a few of my wine club memberships and doubled down on Darling, as it’s what I’m always reaching for.

GHIN & Tonic, Vol. 18 (TC)

Every summer night when I was a kid, I would sleep on the pull-out couch in our basement. It was cooler down there than up in my room, and there was a little TV where I could watch Baseball Tonight several times over, soaking up highlights (again and again) until I could barely keep my eyes open.

In the morning, I would wake up and play baseball, often by myself. Since I couldn’t pitch to myself, I would hurl a tennis ball against the garage, then get into my crouch and try to hit it over the house and into the backyard. I was a righty hitter, but had to play this game left-handed, because the second story was on the pull side, and I was trying not to break our windows.

I only broke a window once, at least from what I remember. Looking back, our next-door neighbors were ridiculously patient with me as I peppered their house with pulled foul balls.

When I grew tired of hitting, I would fire the tennis ball for hours against the brick pylon between our two garage doors, pretending I was painting the corners of the strike zone. I threw so many imaginary pitches, a wear pattern started to emerge on the brick. It’s decidedly not on the corners of the strike zone and might explain why I spent a fair amount of my high school pitching days craning my neck to watch balls sail over the outfielder’s heads.

That wear pattern still exists to this day at my parents’ house, a permanent reminder of what it felt like to be a kid who loved a sport in ways he couldn't begin to put into words.

I can’t say exactly when Joey Votto became my favorite professional athlete to ever walk the earth, only that it happened the way these things sometimes go, gradually, then suddenly.

He didn’t sneak up on me, necessarily. I saw his name in Baseball America. I read the scouting reports. I understood he might one day be a contributor to the ballclub. But it never crossed my mind that he might be The Dude. If you polled Reds fans in 2005 or 2006, I think 90 percent of us would have told you Jay Bruce was The Prince Who Was Promised. He was the Beaumont Bomber, the generational talent who had the potential to be a savior.

Votto seemed, by comparison, like just about any other prospect. There’s potential there, sure, but is there anything special?

He was a little older than Bruce, and he arrived with considerably less sizzle. A Canadian kid from the suburbs of Toronto, Votto’s approach to hitting in the minors was methodical, whereas Bruce’s was instinctual. Votto had a great ability to avoid making outs, and if he had a strength, it was his patience. Every at-bat was a chess match. Votto, vs. the pitcher. Bruce, by comparison, dominated minor league pitching with pure talent, particularly in 2007, when he was Baseball America’s Minor League Player of the Year.

It was easy to get excited about Bruce, and all the potential wonders soon to unfold. I had not one, but two Jay Bruce jerseys. I even sprung for the authentic one at a time when I absolutely should not have been spending $200 on a jersey, just because I could not stand how cheap the letters and numbers looked on the back of the replica.

It was hard to get excited about a guy with an excellent walk rate.

Baseball, however, was in the midst of what can only be described as a modern enlightenment, a sea change of strategy and thinking. It would take years for it to permeate the public consciousness, but Votto was at the forefront of the idea that the most important skill a hitter could possess was to avoid making outs. Home runs, hits and RBIs still mattered — and he compiled plenty of those traditional stats — but they didn’t matter quite as much as simply getting on base as often as possible.

Counting stats has traditionally ruled the day with baseball fans, but it led us all to very faulty conclusions. To this day, if I surveyed pretty much any audience with the question of who was the better hitter between Joey Votto and Tony Gwynn, the majority would almost certainly choose the wrong guy.

No matter how bad the Reds were during certain stretches of his career, no matter how far away they were from being competitive, he believed that every time he walked to the plate, the people watching (even if they were Cubs fans!) deserved his best effort.

I could cite a hundred different stats that would paint a picture for you, but here is perhaps my favorite of all: In 8,746 major league at-bats, Votto popped up once to the pitcher.

When Votto announced his retirement last week at age 40, I was surprised how hard it hit me. It was the end of an era for me, and thousands of Reds fans. But mostly I was grateful. I was grateful he never had an at-bat in the majors for anyone but the Reds, having spent 17 seasons in Cincinnati before one final stint in minors with the Blue Jays. I was grateful he came into my life when he did, and that he drew me back to baseball when I thought I’d left it behind.

I was grateful — in the end — for everything I got to witness.

He was only two years older than me, which seemed hard to believe when I was living through my 20s. Professional athletes never feel like they’re supposed to be your peers, but then one comes along, right as you’re coming of age, and suddenly the ebbs and flows of their career become a touchpoint for certain periods of your own life. If you’re lucky, they become a constant, a reminder of home, even as you live through job promotions and break-ups and celebrations and disappointments.

Votto made his major league debut in 2007, hitting .321 in 84 at-bats, but it wasn’t until 2008 that he grabbed a permanent spot in the Reds line-up. That was the same year I graduated from Miami University and ventured out into the world. I landed a job in Chicago, and I rented an apartment on West Patterson, 180 yards west of the stadium. We were so close that when you watched Cubs games on television from our living room, you could hear the roar of the crowd filter through the windows before the broadcast could catch up, the promise that something exciting was unfolding, somehow outracing your eyes.

I hated the Cubs, but the Reds meant more to me than I can properly put into words. I don’t really know why. They never did anything in my childhood to deserve the love, and through the 2000’s, the franchise was essentially in disarray.

But for some reason, I lived and died with every series, and when they came to town, I had to be at every game. For a weekend series, I might splurge for bleacher seats. But a Monday night game, you could catch me up in the rafters after scalping a $10 ticket in the 3rd inning.

The team was still mediocre, but Votto was already a force by 2009. I took almost a perverse pleasure in watching him torment Cubs fans. He understood his role in the rivalry. He’d trash-talk their fans, particularly kids, in the most playful way possible. He won the MVP in 2010, and he could hit at any ballpark, but his numbers at Wrigley were always especially good (.321 average; .422 OBP; 1.029 OPS) and I can remember sitting in a sea of Cubs fans, night after night, and feeling like: 

Being a die-hard fan of a sports team you grew up with — especially when they’re a small market team — isn’t particularly easy. You dedicate so much time and energy and free time to it, hopeful there will be a payoff that makes it all worth it. Votto was one of the few athletes to ever make me feel like every minute of my time spent was worthwhile, and in 2012, it felt like his moment, and the Reds’ moment, had finally arrived.

Their pitching was incredible. The line-up was solid. They had guys under contract, or under control, for several more years. They weren’t big spenders, but a long-term approach to team building had finally paid off. In the middle of the line-up was Votto, our patient magician. His OBP was a ridiculous .

No Laying Up

Writing

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

GHIN & Tonic, Vol. 19 (KVV)

The True Gift of the Solheim Cup

GHIN & Tonic, Vol. 18 (TC)

A Farewell To My Favorite Athlete

GHIN & Tonic, Vol. 17 (Randy)

On Lydia Ko and Destiny

AIG Women's Open: What to Know Heading Into the Weekend

GHIN & Tonic, Vol. 16 (D.J.)

How I Found Scottie Scheffler

GHIN & Tonic, Vol. 15 (KVV)

What's Burning At The Killhouse? August 2024 Check-In

GHIN & Tonic, Vol. 14 (TC)

GHIN & Tonic, Vol. 13 (KVV)

GHIN & Tonic, Vol. 12 (TC)

The Open 2024: Scenes from Xander Schauffele's Victory

The Open 2024: Every Reason to Get Out of Bed Early Sunday Morning

A Plea to the Postage Stamp