When Jay Monahan spoke with the media Tuesday at the Players Championship about the current state of PGA Tour Enterprises and the future of professional golf, something crystallized for me in a way it had not previously. That it took me this long to clearly see the chessboard may be evidence of my own naivete, but at least I got there eventually.

Every faction within the PGA Tour is essentially at war.

Some people are trying to survive, some people are trying to gain territory, and some people are losing territory and desperately trying to protect it. No one wants to be deposed, everyone wants to save face, and everyone wants to stay rich.

The PGA Tour Policy Board can’t agree on how to finalize a deal with the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia because they can’t agree on how their own house should be run. The players are locked in a class war with each other. The board of directors and the Tour’s new investors think the players are mostly rubes and naifs in matters of business. The money people want everyone to wake up and start figuring out ways to earn a return on the billions they invested in a flawed product.

In the middle of that war is Monahan, a man who — despite making a litany of mistakes over the last several years, which he again copped to on Tuesday — still somehow managed to earn a promotion amidst all this.

If you’re a consumer of pop culture (as I am), it might sound like a season of Succession. But everything we’ve gathered, after talking to dozens of people, suggests the boardroom squabbling on Tour has far more in common with the plotlines on Veep. Much like with modern politics, the clash of egos and everyone’s thirst for power ultimately creates a stalemate, and in turn protects the status quo. Monahan hasn’t needed to be successful to keep his job, he’s just needed to keep players divided into various factions, insulating himself from being removed.

When Sky Sports reporter Jamie Weir asked Monahan directly if any of the player directors on the policy board had asked him to resign at any point during the last nine months — something that happened in December, multiple sources told No Laying Up — Monahan did his best to dodge the question without giving a straight answer, pivoting quickly into a string of corporate word salad.

“You know, there's been a lot of good spirited debate amongst our board. I don't think that would be a surprise to anybody, you know, given the events of last summer,” Monahan said. “But we are a unified front. Our Policy Board continues to perform and function at a very high level with great support of our player directors, and the formation of PGA Tour Enterprises, with a new board, a new board comprised of four members of SSG, seven players, or six player directors and Joe Ogilvie, who is a liaison director, myself and Joe Gorder, who is the independent director serving on that board. I'm excited to work with both boards. For me, honored to serve as commissioner and now be a member of the PGA Tour Policy Board, and also honored to be CEO of PGA Tour Enterprises and be a part of that board, and committed to working with each of those boards to make sure we're moving this business forward and achieving what we can achieve to its full capacity.”

To be fair to Monahan, he was dealt a difficult hand two years ago when the Saudis showed up on the scene and started handing out money to economically-anxious golfers, but that doesn’t mean he’s handled any of this well. In poker terms, it was like he folded 15 hands in a row, then went all in with ace high, even though it was obvious he’d be called. I talked to a Tour player at Riviera this year who was still pissed that Monahan never even took a phone call from the Saudis when this whole thing started. And when the PGA Tour recruited the 9/11 families to be part of their PR campaign, then turned around had Monahan smiling next to Yasir Al-Rumayan on CNBC, it felt like one of the most hypocritical moves in the history of sports. At a time when the PGA Tour desperately needed a galvanizing leader, he has managed to make every public appearance feel like he’s on an earnings call with analysts and shareholders, trying to put a good spin on another tepid quarterly report.

“There are always things when you look back that you would do differently,” Monahan said Tuesday. “Obviously when you look back to last summer I could have handled that better, and I've taken full responsibility and accountability for that. That's on me. But we've moved on, and we've made so much progress since that point in time and I have learned from it. I've been humbled by it. I think I've gotten stronger as a leader.”

Monahan does have a handful of sympathetic allies within the membership. It would be unfair to say he is universally disliked.

“You look at what Jay has done since he took over,” Rory McIlroy said. “The media rights deal, navigating us through COVID, the strategic alliance with the DP World Tour. I would say creating PGA Tour Enterprises, we were just able to accept a billion and a half dollars in the business. People can nit-pick and say he didn't do this right or didn't do that right, but if you actually step back and look at the bigger picture, I think the PGA Tour is in a far stronger position than when Jay took over.”

Another PGA Tour player texted me Tuesday when I asked for his thoughts on Monahan: “He’s actually great in person, but really struggles in front of cameras. You should see the patience he shows with guys like Grayson Murray. Almost Buddha like.”

But for the most part, reviews from players have been lukewarm at best.

“Trust is something that's pretty tender, so words are words, and I would say in my book he's got a long way to go,” Xander Schaffele told reporters Tuesday, when asked what level of confidence he had in Monahan. “He could be the guy, but in my book, he's got a long way to go to gain the trust of the membership. I'm sure he's got the support of the board, since they were with him making some of those decisions, but for me personally, he's got quite a ways to go.”

When Monahan was asked by Adam Schupak of Golfweek how he felt about Jon Rahm saying he’d lost some faith in leadership, and that was part of what led to his departure to LIV, Monahan was both curt and dismissive, refusing to even say Rahm’s name.

“I'm focused on every single member of the PGA Tour,” Monahan said. “I'm focused on The PLAYERS Championship this week. I'm focused on the great season that we have ahead, and we have made tremendous progress with the SSG agreement that we have, putting ourselves in a position to invest back in our Tour, invest back in our fans, and I'm going to focus on the things that I control and we are as an organization and we are as a leadership team and we are as a board, so that's when I'm focused on.”

When Schupak tried to follow up, asking for clarification, Monahan was noticeably annoyed.

“I just answered your question about what my focus is,” he said.

It was the most tense moment of the morning and left the most pressing question unanswered: What is stopping other players from joining LIV? It’s certainly not their confidence in the commissioner.

“As a leader of an organization, I will want a person like that to take some ownership and say, hey, we made a couple of mistakes, but this is how we're going to rectify it, instead of kind of sweeping it under the rug, which I felt like has been done to a certain degree,” said Viktor Hovland. “So I don't mind people making mistakes. We all make mistakes. But I think when you make a mistake you got to own up to it and say, hey, we're trying to do better here, and this is how we're going to do it.”

The players aren’t helpless bystanders here. They share blame for some of this mess, in part because they can’t form a unified front. Many of the top players want to cap fields around 100 (or less) and force those on the outside to scratch and claw their way into the upper class. And then there are additional factions within those two tiers, like the players who would be willing to let LIV stars like Rahm and Brooks Koepka play in Tour events without suspensions or financial penalties — the idea being that it’s what’s best for the overall product — and those who are furious over the idea.

Scottie Scheffler, typically a measured voice who rarely gets animated, gave a thoughtful but pointed answer Tuesday when asked how he felt about fans getting frustrated that the game can’t be unified.

“I think we're trying to do our best to create the best product for the fans, but we can't control whether or not guys want to leave,” said Scheffler. “If guys want to go take the money and leave, then that's their decision. I'm not going to sit here and tell guys not to take hundreds of millions of dollars. If that's what they think is best for their life, then go do it. I'm not going to sit here and force guys to stay on our Tour. But at the end of the day, this is where I want to be, and we're continuing to grow what we're doing, and what they're doing is not really a concern to me.

“If the fans are upset, then look at the guys that left. We had a Tour, we were all together, and the people that left are no longer here. At the end of the day, that's where the splintering comes from.”

It’s hard to talk about Monahan’s job performance without acknowledging the tangled web of relationships that exist at the corporate level of the PGA Tour.

SSG, the new investor in PGA Tour Enterprises, is fronted by The Fenway Sports Group. Monahan was an executive vice president at The Fenway Sports Group before he was named commissioner of the PGA Tour in 2017. (He’d also worked at the Tour in various capacities, including as the executive director of The Players Championship.) He was recommended for the job by Seth Waugh, who was at the time the CEO of Deutsche Bank, but is now the CEO of the PGA of America. He went to Trinity College with Sam Kennedy, the CEO of The Fenway Sports Group and president of the Boston Red Sox. The PGA Tour’s vice president ranks are also rife with various Fenway Sports Group alums.

Without seeking player input, Monahan worked with Jimmy Dunne and Ed Herlihy to negotiate a framework agreement with Yasir Al-Rumayyan and the PIF, and Dunne and Herlihy, in addition to being PGA Tour Policy Board members, are two extremely influential members at Augusta National. Some players have been starting to wonder: What are Dunne’s and Herlihy’s motivations in all this?

Even if every decision made during the past year was done in the best interests of the PGA Tour membership, it’s hard not to wonder about the conflicts of interest, and what role they play.

I used to think Phil Mickelson was a kook for implying a web of conspiracies ran the PGA Tour, but when you think about that list of entanglements, or you see PGA Tour policy board members like Peter Malnati, Webb Simpson and Adam Scott nab sponsor invites to signature events, it’s hard not to ask the question: Is this appropriate?

The SSG/Fenway proposal was, according to several sources, one of a dozen proposals the PGA Tour Policy board considered, and the players on the advisory board reached an initial consensus that the Tour move forward in a partnership with the consortium Friends of Golf, backed by billionaires Henry Kravis and George Roberts. But in the end, multiple players splintered off and supported the SSG proposal instead. The proposal Monahan backed ultimately won out, which left a bitter taste in the mouths of some players.

Most of the membership, one player told me, feels like Monahan “continues to fail upward.”

Near the end of Monahan’s press conference, he pivoted away from a question about whether he felt signature events were working and went on the offensive, listing off a series of changes the Tour has made that he wanted to be recognized as accomplishments — moving The Players Championship to March; negotiating with Netflix to have PGA Tour players participate in Full Swing; making gambling a normal, sanctioned part of the sport; forming an alliance with the DP World Tour; transitioning the business to a for-profit entity; creating the signature events series and dramatically increasing purse sizes. And he’s right, those moves do feel significant.

But it’s also true that many of them were done with a whiff of desperation, not in the spirit of innovation. After years of making virtually no changes, the PGA Tour began to scramble once it became clear the status quo wasn’t sustainable.

Is Monahan good at his job? The easy answer is no. Fans are frustrated with the product, ratings are down, sponsors feel squeezed, and the future of the Tour is unclear. But it also depends on who you ask. Some players feel like he’s doing his best in a difficult situation. Monahan shared a story about an encounter with British Open winner Brian Harman earlier that day that made him proud.

“I'm walking in the parking lot today,” Monahan said, “and Brian Harman pulls up in his truck and says he needs to speak to me, and we walk up towards the clubhouse and he says, ‘You know I meant to reach out to you last week,’ he said. ‘These Signature Events are awesome. Everything about the competition and the infrastructure and putting us in the position where we can play at the highest level, it's just, I feel a great sense of accomplishment when I'm at these events.’ ”

Patrick Cantlay took a far more measured approach when asked if Monahan still has the board’s full support.

“I think it's very important that we're all rowing in the same direction, and right now he's definitely our leader, and so it's important that we're all doing our best,” Cantlay said.

The player directors may have wanted different leadership. All signs, public and private, indicate that they did. But they couldn’t outmaneuver him, and now they have to find a way to work with him. Monahan’s one unquestionable strength — cultivating relationships with other powerful people — means he’s going to be in charge for the foreseeable future. If this mess is going to get cleaned up, he’s ultimately going to be the guy who has to do it.

“I am the right person to lead us forward,” Monahan said. “I know that. I believe that in my heart, and I'm determined to do exactly that.”

Judging by how the past two years have gone, it’s difficult to feel optimistic.

The Inexplicable Survival of Jay Monahan

This week at No Laying Up, we’re introducing a new feature called Pen Pals, where two (or more) members of our squad tackle a subject the way degenerate novelists of the 20th century used to — with written correspondence. First up are Kevin Van Valkenburg and D.J. Piehowski on Anthony Kim’s return to professional golf, development that made them wistful for days gone by, and wondering whether we’ll ever see a needle mover again in any of the leagues.

As you know, nobody loves a spicy golf take more than I do. To borrow a baseball analogy, there is something intoxicating about a wily veteran columnist reaching back and throwing 97 with movement when they really feel strongly about an issue. I'll never forget Rick Reilly just torching Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus on the back page of Sports Illustrated when they testified against Casey Martin being able to take a cart under the Americans with Disabilities Act. And who can forget Stephen A. Smith detonating Kwame Brown when the Lakers traded him away for a package that brought them Pau Gasol?

But watching Anthony Kim return to professional golf this week after 12 years away, I feel like it calls for the opposite approach. I want to talk about AK's return with a little nuance, and perhaps use a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer. I remember when Golf Twitter first became a thing in, say, 2013 or 2014, the idea that AK might return and be a force of nature felt like a very real thing. No Laying Up even sold shirts back then with AK's face on them beneath the phrase: "Legends Never Die." And while Kim (thankfully) lived, at some point, an actual comeback seemed almost like an afterthought. I kind of liked that AK became a folk hero instead of slowly crumbling before our eyes, a frustrated, oft-injured pro.

Even two years ago, when I first heard rumors that LIV was trying to coax him into a comeback, I didn't take it all that seriously. What, after all, could we really expect? Bjorn Borg retired from tennis when he was 26 and the No. 1 player in the world, and when he attempted a comeback 10 years later, he got rocked, failing to win even a single set in his first nine matches. Kim wasn't exactly the No. 1 player when he walked away from golf; why not preserve the mystery? The reason that "legends never die" is they don't stick around — all that does is the stories of their best moments.

Of course, I couldn't resist following Kim's return last week. The rollout was typical LIV, overproduced and a little hamfisted, well-meaning but also tone deaf. I'm not sure why we had to pretend like AK had "haters" when he's one of the few guys from the past Golf Twitter seems to love unequivocally. Some of his return also feels rushed because of course LIV can't resist parading its newest shiny object. I wish they'd chosen to tease us with a documentary (maybe even a series) about his decision to return, let the excitement build while he worked on his game and his personal issues, and then rolled him out with an actual team in 2025. But it's possible that's not what he wanted and they're trying to be respectful of his wishes — or his team's wishes.

I didn't wake up at 3 a.m. on Friday to watch his debut, granted, but I did watch the highlight reels. Mostly what I came away thinking was: I hope he still finds joy in this, and he's not being steered down this path by anyone who doesn't have his best interests at heart. I don't care about him hitting shanks or starting Day 1 in DFL after shooting 76. I just don't want him treated like a circus act by an organization that's desperate to catch the attention — any attention — of fans.

For legal reasons, any similarities between the likeness of AK and what appeared on those t-shirts is purely coincidental.

I've tried really hard to just sit with the AK stuff (instead of hucking #takes), mostly just to try to figure out how I actually feel about it. Obviously, the feelings are mixed. I'll say upfront that if he has the desire to play competitive golf again, then I'm sincerely glad he's doing so (even if my selfish preference would be to keep my memory of him preserved in a YouTube snow globe).

But even now, I think my first reaction to his comeback news remains my biggest takeaway: Imagine the pro game getting so disillusioning that this news could become... borderline uninteresting. If you've been a hardcore golf fan for the past 15 years, it's almost unfathomable. I think back to the days when we would lose our minds about a DM... from someone who saw a text... about someone who had heard a rumor... that a friend had seen AK hitting balls. The myth of Anthony Kim became way more powerful than the person ever could have been. I don't think people realized (or cared) that his career had become more like a meme – the perfect antidote to all the cookie cutter, EA Sports create-a-player drones of the PGA Tour. What's more fun to talk about? Webb Simpson or the idea of Anthony Kim? I honestly never even really thought about what it would be like if he actually came back.

It's 5:09 p.m. on Friday afternoon. AK's full round is available and accessible to watch on many platforms. I just haven't. I'm sure I will watch the highlights at some point. But none of it feels pressing, which is such an unexpected place to be.

I saw a few swing videos this week. I know he shot 76. I know he hit a shank. I know he wore a collared shirt. Other than that, I couldn't tell you all that much about "

" so far, other than I always pictured the dancing being a little more fun than this. I'm rooting for him to play well. I just don't really need to watch it. Maybe that will change.

Today, I've gotten two (2) text messages about his first competitive round in 12 years. LIV 

posted the highlight of his first competitive tee shot

 since 2012. Thirty-eight accounts retweeted it. This is a pretty pointless measure of what's successful and what isn't. But it's pretty good proof that the community that poured gas on the meme is a lot different.

On one hand, putting this all on LIV is probably slightly unfair. The whole world of men's pro golf feels so fractured and arbitrary outside of the majors that I'm not really running to the TV to watch anything, let alone downloading an app to watch LIV Golf Jeddah at 3 a.m.

But let me ask you this: How would this week feel differently if AK chose to make his comeback at Riviera or Phoenix or Torrey Pines?

I've been thinking about your question all morning. There would have been more buzz, certainly. I think the support from fans would have been massive. But would it have faded just as quickly? I don't think he would have broken 80 at Riv or Torrey, so maybe this was part of the strategy. I don't think a return to the PGA Tour was ever realistic, certainly at this point in his life. It's clear LIV is rolling him out there before he's ready to compete at a high level, which seems counterintuitive to their overall fight for credibility.

I suspect AK's team looked at what LIV was offering — guaranteed money, guaranteed starts, a relaxed environment, very few media obligations — and saw it as a no-brainer.

I actually want him to play well. I hope he does have better golf in front of him, in time. One of the dumbest possible narratives is that people like me are rooting against him to make some broader point about LIV or the PGA Tour. But I also feel a bit about his return like I did when George Lucas dropped "The Phantom Menace," or when Arrested Development returned for Season 4. Talking about something in the abstract, when it's nothing but potential in your mind, is a lot more interesting than being disappointed when it can't live up to years of buzz and expectations. The people who spent all weekend on Twitter telling anyone who would listen that "Actually, AK's return was incredible, and making 11 straight pars on Saturday after 12 years away was amazing!" are a lot like the people who tried to talk themselves into "Revenge of the Sith." It's fine if you want to pretend you liked it, but we don't need to lower the bar to the floor just because we had to wait so long between episodes.

Every time I think about AK, I think about something Randy once said: People may need to grasp that golfers are inherently uncool. Part of Kim's appeal, though, is that he was kind of cool, particularly to a generation of Asian kids who didn't have many role models like him. I got a note from an NLU listener last month who wanted me to know that, for Korean Americans of a certain age, AK was almost like their version of Allen Iverson. He had swagger, he was cocky, he played fearlessly, and he didn't apologize to anyone for who he was. Maybe he didn't maximize his potential, but he made a stuffy sport seem fun. I don't know if Kim has spent much time thinking about what he meant to people, but if he has, I hope that gives him some motivation to keep going when doubt creeps in.

I'll leave you with a bleak, but perhaps appropriate question: Would the best case scenario for Anthony Kim even make a lick of difference for golf? I'm not even talking about LIV or the PGA Tour. Let's say Kim grinds for the next 18 months and by some miracle, starts contending in majors. Let's say he even wins one.

Brooks Koepka and Jon Rahm winning majors hasn't brought additional eyeballs to golf. Ratings are bleak across the board.

What difference would AK rising from the ashes make for ... anyone?

I think the "best case scenario" question is an interesting one. If we're truly allowing ourselves to picture him contending in majors, then yes, sure, I think that would bring eyeballs and excitement to the sport in a way that almost no one else is capable of (more on this in a second). The chance that it happens once is incredibly small. The chance that it happens over and over again, in a way that somehow permanently raises the tide of professional golf? The Haters, wherever they are, probably like their chances on that one.

Like you, I'm obviously rooting for this, even if I know it won't happen (and it's wildly unfair to expect it to happen). Like Tiger in 2019 or Phil at Kiawah, I guess that the unbelievable does happen from time to time in golf. I mean, Blockie kind of contended at a PGA! Why couldn't it happen in a one-off occurrence? (Other than the fact that he has no eligibility and we haven't seen him play 72 holes in 12 years.)

I think what's more likely is that he has a hot week and contends at a LIV event. What that means, I have no idea and would have to think more about. I'm sure that any win would be a massive personal triumph after all he's been through. Like you, I hope any notoriety and relevance is fueled by good play instead of him becoming a sideshow. There's been so much talk in the past few years about pro golf being "an entertainment product" and my hunch is that we're about to be reminded that the entertainment is still mostly derived from watching good performances. I tried watching a bit this weekend and once the novelty of seeing him swing wears off, it's hard to get up for caring too much about the dude who is 25 back through 36 holes, no matter who it is.

You mentioned Rahm and Koepka not really moving the needle for casual fans in the way AK does and I do think it's interesting to think about why that is. (I also think Koepka does more of this than we think for a generation younger than ours.)

My guess is that, even though most of them know how silly this is, golf fans accidentally compare every player to Tiger Woods. There will never, ever be another Tiger. But, man, there are a really small handful of guys that, for different reasons – their play, their age, their swagger – at least let you think for a second that there could be.

Rory, Spieth and AK are the three guys from my time watching golf. Your mileage may vary.

There's something about seeing that potential, and getting in on the ground floor of something that feels like it could change the entire sport, that just makes those guys stick with you forever. It's so irrational and emotional and unfair and it's not something anyone else can replicate or cultivate. But those are my main characters; the guys that make golf worth watching for me.

Ninety-nine percent of golf careers are long slogs of incremental progress and, if you're extremely lucky, the window of being transcendently great eventually opens for a short time. But golf fans are smart enough (and cursed enough) to know it's not going to be open long enough to win 15 majors, let alone 18. Of course we should all enjoy greatness as it happens (shout out to Scottie Scheffler), but that's just not how sports work for most people. It's so much dumber and more emotional than that. You want to think you're watching someone that could be the best ever and that you have some obligation to have seen it in real time. That's what makes it fun.

For some guys that window cracks open when they are 20 years old and it creates a phenomenon. The result is true superstardom, but the trade off is a set of brutal, inescapable expectations they have to carry around for the rest of their career. We've seen it with Rory at the majors and how crushing that pressure can be. But now AK almost feels like he's found a loophole. He gets to keep playing. He gets to be a star and play for massive purses. He can hang it up again whenever he wants because the stakes don't really matter. I'm happy that he gets to play golf again. I just don't really know where it leaves us as fans.

Is any of this making sense? Is it time for Augusta yet? Please bring us home with your parting thoughts.

Pen Pals: What to make of Anthony Kim's return

a little bit of golf, a little bit of entertainment, and a little bit of life, too.

What’s your favorite MUNI in America and why? (This is different than public courses; resort courses don’t count for this answer.)

Lots of directions you could go with this one. Charleston Muni and Memorial Park are great examples of cities investing in their spaces. Gold Mountain and George Wright are examples of proud cities that do an excellent job of maintaining the excellence in front of them. I could talk about Marias Valley GC, the course that raised me, and the community that fearlessly backs it. But I will embrace my new home, and gush on the cities of Dallas and Fort Worth. Each is different in its own way, but to me, Rockwood (The Rock), Cedar Crest and Keeton stand above the rest. Design-wise, I personally enjoy The Rock the best. But feelings, both current and into the future bring me back to Cedar or Keeton nine times out of ten. Both are run by leaders not only in Texas but on a national level: Ira Mayo and Tony (and Ty) Martinez are leading their clubs into the future. They make golf cool again and encourage people from all different backgrounds just to come out and try the game. We need more Iras, Tonys, and Tys in golf.

- It’s probably Jacksonville Beach Golf Club for me. Seeing what that course looked like when I first moved to Jacksonville in 2012 (BAD!) and seeing it today is truly inspiring and proof that municipal golf works and thrives with the right people around. Since moving, I’ve been delighted to see how many great munis there are here in Milwaukee and have to give a special shout-out to Brown Deer Park. Bo Van Pelt never won at Jax Beach.

First answer that comes to mind is Wilmington Muni in Wilmington, North Carolina. That place activated something within me, and I immediately wanted to go back out for more holes. A Donald Ross course that was challenging in all of the right ways, wonderfully maintained, yet accessible and inexpensive. It’s a unicorn. I still think about that place and it’s been 4.5 years since we were there.

But I also have to give a shoutout to what is now my hometown muni, which is Jacksonville Beach Golf Club. Watching that green space become the community meeting center during COVID taught me something about the importance of well-run municipal golf courses. In just six years of living in Jacksonville, I already have so many memories thanks to the fact that we have a well-maintained municipal golf course.

I like to make clear distinctions between “best” and “favorite.” I don’t think Old Works in Anaconda, MT is the “best” but in the United States, it’s definitely my favorite. I always felt in awe of the whole setting and story, a golf course built on the ruins of a copper and ore mine with elevation changes, black sand in the bunkers, and a creek that runs through the course. Anaconda is such an important town in Montana’s history, and I love driving into town, playing golf, and then having a beer at Club Moderne. The course has almost gone out of business a few times, but somehow it’s hung in there. I was in my 20s before I ever played a single round at a country club, so Old Works felt special, like I had graduated to the next level of golf.

Upset of the year to not see Winter Park 9 chosen by anyone below - that place is unlike anything else in America…but it’s also in Orlando, which disqualifies it for me because playing it requires traveling to Orlando. 

A bunch of different directions we could go here - George Wright in Boston, Wilmington, Chambers, Charleston, Memorial Park in Houston (slaps), Swope (shoutout to Ben), Keney Park in Hartford, Gold Mountain, even Corica in Alameda. And plenty I haven’t seen yet - The Park in West Palm, Buffalo Dunes, and 

gestures wildly at the munis in Cleveland

But I’m gonna go with one that Neil and I played just once almost a decade ago that has stuck with me - Whitefish Lake Golf Club in Whitefish, Montana. A 36-hole facility owned by the city and leased out to the non-profit, volunteer-run Whitefish Lake Golf Association (which if that makes it not a muni…whatever), Neil and I played the 

 in late August 2016, and it was a delight. The south starts off in pretty standard fashion, then by the 6th hole, you’re down at the shores of Lost Coon Lake and play the next seven or eight holes down near the lake before working back up toward the clubhouse. The routing truly makes you feel like you’re on a journey, and reflects the patchwork set of tracts that were donated to the city by civic-minded individuals at various points for the construction of a golf course, and the views are wonderful. I have not played the 

, but by all accounts, it is even more dynamic than the South and provides views out toward Glacier National Park. The land for both courses is dynamic and rolling but not to the point of feeling like up-and-down mountain golf. Further, the facility sits at 3,000 feet of elevation, which adds a half-club variable in there, the conditioning is dialed, there’s a nice driving range, it’s located a few blocks from town on the main drag, 

 is among the best in the area, the back deck is the golf is affordable (and strikes a good balance between using tourists to subsidize season pass holders, and nordic skiing and sledding on the grounds during the winter season). Probably not the 

 muni, but definitely my favorite and represents everything I’d ever want to see from a muni. And it warms my heart to see Torrey Pines and Bethpage omitted from everyone’s selections!

For me, this has to be Jeffersonville Golf Club in West Norriton, PA. Opened on what used to be an old horse track in 1931 and designed by Donal Ross, West Norriton Township purchased it in 1972. Superintendent Rich Shilling has done an amazing job of taking the 2000 restoration that was done and pushing it even further forward. A brand new clubhouse opens there this summer, and I can’t wait to see the new putting green and updated digs. It’s a favorite of almost every person in the Electric Phactory (Philly’s NLU Roost) for a reason. Affordable, fun, challenging, a wicked 18th hole green complex, great match play venue, pride in what they do, etc…checks all the boxes.

Homer pick here. I have to go with Swope Memorial Golf Course in Kansas City, MO. It is, in my opinion, the most architecturally interesting public in the city that also has pedigree. My favorite part about playing a muni is envisioning what it once was or could be. Swope gets my brain firing on all cylinders. It is my favorite because it is the one I think about most wanting to restore and is great fodder between friends.

Harding Park in San Francisco. It’s the perfect example of a historic parkland course in an urban area that checks all the boxes for me. It’s a championship course with history, fairly priced (I was able to play it for $50 as a city resident though I’m sure that price has gone up since I left S.F. in 2016), an easy walk, beautiful setting, and the pace was always good (I never felt like they stacked too many tee times). It’s also an example of how a successful public/private partnership can bring a 

I’ll be the one to say Winter Park 9. It’s enchanting but so fleeting – in the best way. Similar to how I felt as a child toward its neighbor, Disney World.

Popular choice, but I have to go with Jax Beach. It’s the muni I’ve played the most, and I’ve also never tired of playing it. It has all the ingredients I need: walkability, fun and interesting greens, several very unique holes, all the while being in consistently pretty good shape (and sometimes in exceptional shape!).

Scottie Scheffler is in a frustrating place with his putting, perhaps getting stranded in the no-man’s land between art and science and technique. What do you think about in your own game when you line up a putt? Take us through your process.

I simply read the putt and try to react to that with confidence. On the one hand, I have a lot of confidence in my ability to read greens (less so when grain becomes a big factor), on the other, I have zero confidence when I start thinking about my stroke (shoutout to the claw) so I try to commit to a line (and really a spot/high point) and then step up and react to the putt instead of standing over it thinking about it and letting doubt to creep in. Keeping it simple, trusting my line, and rebuilding my confidence has done wonders for me over the last eighteen months. The faster the greens the better I typically putt, so trying to pick very specific, aggressive spots on slow greens has been a priority of late to improve when they’re not slippery.

*checks tapes* I’m the last person who should be answering this question. My process changes a lot, which could be why I struggle at times. But you never know when the next “fix it” moment is going to happen if you don't try something new first. What do I do: Get an overall picture of the green while I am walking up to the green. Mark my ball. Look at my putt down the line. Walk around and look from the other side. Try to walk on the high side of the putt back to my ball. Wait my turn. Pick my spot. Set the ball down all white side up. Reacquire my spot while taking my stance. Think speed looking at my spot. Eyes back down to the ball. No practice swings. Hit putt. Keep my head down just a bit longer than I want to. Look up and hopefully see the ball going in, or at least rolling past the cup to get a decent feel on how the putt will break coming back.

Since hearing Rory talk about it at the 2014 Open Championship, I’ve really liked the idea of “spot” putting – picking a spot somewhere in the line (usually at the apex) that the ball needs to roll over. There is no better feeling than having a 30-footer that you know is in with 20 feet to go because you rolled it over the pitch mark you were looking at.

First thing I do is start picturing the different ways it could go in. If I ram it, what would that line look like? Medium speed, what would that look like? Drip speed, what will that look like? That helps me decide where I’m going to line up the ProV1 arrow. I do not follow that line religiously, and it took me a while to get comfortable with that. It’s a guideline, and it does not have to be exactly right to be helpful. I’m still thinking about how to get the ball moving towards the hole with the best chance of going in. I then picture an empty sleeve of golf balls in front of my ball, and try to roll it straight through that on my line. I’ve already lined it up, the only thing I can do is hit the mark right in front of me, and the rest should take care of itself. It’s a lot easier to picture hitting the spot right in front of you than it is the hole in the distance.

I’ve recently started gripping it stronger with my hands farther on the underside of the grip. Last thought, just make it.

I’ve learned that I can’t get too technical. That doesn’t work for me. I’ve tried using a line on my ball and it’s a disaster. What does work best for me is just trying to focus on my start line. I actually love when greens have some sort of discoloration to them because I can pick out a dot three feet in front of me that I’m trying to roll the ball over on its way to the hole. If greens are perfect and green, it gets harder for me to envision a dot. Outside of that, just try to make square contact and trust my initial read.

I don’t try to think about anything too much. I find I play my best golf when I have no thoughts running through my head. But generally, I have a routine. I’ll walk up to mark my ball - if it is on the opposite side of the green, I will try to look at it from across as I go to mark it to get a sense of what the green is doing. Then I will mark it, and give it a look with my eyes from behind it to see if I can sense the break (if any). Then I usually will straddle the line about ⅓ and ⅔ of the way to the hole and feel it with my feet to try and confirm what my eyes see. I’ll pick a spot on the green to aim at, line up the line on my ball on that line, and get set up as Justin Hueber taught me last year - not too far away from the ball! Right hand on the grip first, then come in with the left. If it’s a long putt, I may take a practice stroke to test “speed” aka how far back I need to take the putter. Then I just take it back and let it go! I have learned that I need to trust my initial gut on the line and speed; they are usually pretty good. If I start second-guessing, that’s when the bad stuff happens.

Terrible answer here but not much. Line is always on my mind - be it a spot to hit or one side of the hole. I spend a lot of time walking around the hole to make my best guess at the line. Once I am over the ball, all I think about is trying to flush the putt. I consider pace to be all feel and athleticism so I truly don’t think about that at all.

I’ve really struggled with consistency in my putting stroke over the years, and you know what hasn’t helped? Seeing it on camera a lot. I get in my own head about how it looks; how long and slow my follow through has been, how it almost looks like I will double hit the putt, how quickly my head comes up to peak at the ball. I become way too conscious of my stroke over the ball, and that leads to a bad stroke as I “try” too hard to make a “good” stroke (often a stroke that’s imitating what I think it should look like on camera).

Yes, it becomes a vicious cycle where I’m thinking about everything but 

. Lately, I’ve found success with a combination of two ideas. The first is Brad Faxon’s concept of 

. Making my putting more of an athletic endeavor by continuing to move my feet and hands before pulling the putter back has freed me up to focus more on making putts instead of making good putting strokes. The second change is sticking to a consistent pre-putt routine and not worrying about if my practice putting stroke feels good or not. Sometimes this pre-putt routine changes round to round, but I’ve been good about maintaining the consistency of the routine throughout the round I’m playing. A key component of this is staring at the hole during practice strokes to ensure I’m not analyzing the practice stroke before my putt.

You know those extremely pixelated memes with 2000s clip art? That’s what my brain turns into every time I try to line up a putt: an epic, noisy disaster. I read greens as well as the text usually appears in those pictures, so I really just zero in on my putting stroke and hope for the best. It works…fine until I’m so mentally broken by three putts that the meme turns into a grainy, unidentifiable chain letter.

 Great question! I really had to think about this. And unlike my former self, I’m no longer needing to mentally miss any putts. Instead, I try to ‘see’ the putt as best I can either standing behind the ball or squatting behind it. I want to picture how a putt that goes in will roll and move towards the hole. Then, feeling comfortable with that, I’ll try to pick out a general starting point, usually in reference to the cup (cup outside left, right edge, etc). Moving over the ball, I shift my focus to the speed of the putt and try to feel the proper weight. Once I feel good there, I line up as best as can (sometimes I’ll adjust my initial read standing over the ball), and away we go. I’ve found that when all else fails, if I can hit putts with proper pace good things usually happen.

What’s a TV show you’ve never seen, but wish you could make time for? Could be a classic or something lighthearted.

Oh gosh, this would be easier if we were doing what’s a TV show you have seen. I’ve never seen The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Veep, The Simpsons, The West Wing, Friends, Lost, The X-Files, Six Feet Under, Atlanta, Homeland, whole seasons of Mad Men, etc. etc. etc. When I dive in, I really dive in (Curb, The Wire, Succession), but I really don’t watch that much TV and when I do it’s either American Experience-type PBS stuff, Top Chef, or documentaries. So on that front, two that I’m going to commit to watching all the way through are Arrested Development (bc I’ve loved the dozen or so episodes I’ve seen) and Mad Men (to piece together the arc of the entire series).

I think some of my reluctance in diving into this is the way people talk about Breaking Bad. I liked BB a great deal. It was an entertaining watch. It also annoys me when people place it on the same tier as The Wire, The Sopranos, Succession, The Leftovers, Deadwood. It shouldn’t annoy me. People should be allowed to like what they like. I realize even voicing that opinion makes me a snob. But Breaking Bad was not as good as any of those shows. I hear Better Call Saul is, to many, even better, and that it might be more my speed, but I just can’t sit down and commit to it.

I haven’t seen a lot of what people consider “prestige” TV. The Wire and Game of Thrones come to mind. Lost is another one. But I have no desire to sit down and watch any of those now, either. I started The Curse and I really want to finish that one. I started Emily in Paris because I wanted something light that was nice to look at as I have been packing up things in the house and that fit the bill.

The Wire comes to mind for me here. I think I would still love it but we have a firm rule in this house - no shows more than 5 years old may be watched when we are together. I’d also like to watch Game of Thrones since everyone around me has seen it but it feels like too steep a hill to climb.

Mad Men. I’ve started it twice. The first time it was a little slow for me, but I was willing to give it another try. The second time the show became a casualty of too many streaming platforms (circa 2021). I can’t remember if it was on Paramount+, AMC+, Hulu (with or without live sports), or some other now-non-existent streaming platform. I remember refusing to pay for another service and getting very frustrated with the ad breaks. I will try to give it another shot in the future if it becomes a little easier to watch!

- I don’t watch a lot of TV, and I really wish I was better at it. I know it’s super basic, but I had an aversion to Friends for a long time until one time on a trip I needed TV noise to not feel so alone. I wasn’t really paying much attention to it – but I found the color palette extremely relaxing. I’d like to sit down one day and give it my undivided attention. I’ll also add The Wire, which I got a few episodes into and enjoyed. Unfortunately, at my pace, I probably won’t finish it until about 2045. That’s not a knock on The Wire. The truth? I struggle to watch live-action, fictional TV unless I’ve got someone watching with me (I don’t have this problem with movies). I typically watch a lot of YouTube or anime. Here’s my answer for the anime people: One Piece.

 I’ve never watched “The Sopranos” all the way through, so I guess that’s my answer.

Are you a cat person, a dog person, both or neither? Explain your reasons.

Dogs. Period. Point blank. We currently have Julius Peppers (1-year-old Australian Shepherd), and have said goodbye to two mini Aussies that Alex had since before we even met, River and Rugby. Neil and I grew up with Labs. I’m highly allergic to cats, which is fine, because I don’t really understand the point of cats - they’re so emotionally detached and standoffish. I love the way dogs take on the personality of their owners, their undying loyalty and empathy, and how much fun we have with ours in the neighborhood and at the beach. Truly a best friend.

Dogs. I am very allergic to cats. And I don't understand people's fascination with them.

- Dog person. I’ve had dogs since I was a kid and it’s hard to picture life without them at this point. They just make me happy. My wife and I laugh at least once a week about the idea that two small, furry creatures just live inside our house and roam around as they please. It’s the best.

Have gone from neither to a cat person since meeting my wife. She had a senior lady cat when I met her and she quickly became my buddy in her final years. I was amazed at how heartbroken I was when we put her down. We now have two young cats that are very entertaining and make us laugh and are relatively easy to take care of.

I grew up a dog person, but as an adult, I subconsciously decided I had very little interest in pets. Too much work and worry. My wife, however, talked me into adopting a cat. He slowly won me over. She added a second cat while I was away on a work trip, pretending that we were just “fostering” him. I learned to love him fairly quickly, so we kept him, which I suspect was the plan all along. Now I’m a cat guy. Life comes at you fast.

What's Burning At The Killhouse: Feb 2024 Check-In

I was not sure, standing in that room, that I wanted to hear him sing Cover Me Up.

I told my wife I didn’t think he would play it anyway, that it might feel too awkward, and too raw, to share with an audience. His entire career, Jason Isbell has been willing to share pieces of himself — in interviews, in documentaries, and especially in his songwriting. But after news trickled out two weeks ago that he had filed for divorce from his wife Amanda Shires, I would not have blamed him for wanting to pull back a bit. Cover Me Up might be his most famous song, it might even be his best song, but Isbell had written it about Shires, about the way her love had saved his life when he was drowning in the throes of drug and alcohol addiction. Most nights, he sang it to her (whether she was present or not) as if it were both a promise and a prayer, as an ode to the idea that love can save, and even redeem, someone who is lost or feels unworthy of being saved.

Unless you’re only familiar with the Morgan Wallen cover, you cannot hear Cover Me Up and separate its importance from the story of Jason and Amanda. While there is probably a lesson there in the dangers of engaging in parasocial relationships, particularly with celebrities, bringing listeners into their world has always been part of their appeal. Isbell’s songs resonated with people like me not just because his lyrics were literary, but because the details he chose seemed grounded in truth. He possesses the rare-but-essential talent where he can lift something specific from his own life, but still make it feel universal.

I had not planned on seeing him when he and his band, the 400 Unit, passed through Baltimore this week to play The Lyric. I’d missed the early window for tickets, and the venue sold out quickly. The days when my friends and I could see him in a half-empty Baltimore bar have come and gone. I am wistful for them sometimes, but grateful Isbell lived to play bigger rooms and reap the rewards. I did not love the idea of being gouged with fees and markups by StubHub or Ticketmaster, so despite several inquiries from friends, I had planned to stay home.

Curiosity, however, got the best of me. I shelled out for a pair of tickets the night before the concert, and Stubhub got the rest of me.

On some level, I wanted to see how he was doing and be reassured that he was still upright and steady. It was an odd sensation, the desire to check on a stranger. (I have met him once, after a show at the Beacon Theater in NYC, but he would not remember it, nor would I expect him to. There is even a line in 24 Frames about the never-ending blur of people like me, and forgetting their names.) But if I’m being honest, he doesn’t feel like a stranger. That is the allure of a talented artist, whether it’s Taylor Swift or Kendrick Lamar. They share enough about themselves that you think you see a reflection, no matter how hazy, of your own life.


For the majority of the show, it seemed like I might be correct about my prediction. It was a rock show, one pulsing with energy, and the look on his face was a mixture of joy and liberation. He tore through tracks off his new album, Weathervanes, and in between, he told stories about his wilder days visiting Baltimore, about doing cocaine and shooting pool at the Otto Bar, about taking acid and wandering for hours (through a crowd of thousands) at the Virgin Festival in search of Derry deBorja, his future keyboard player. He played Decoration Day, the song he composed about his family’s violent history that helped him write his way into the Drive-By Truckers, and me and a room full of other Subaru-driving, caucasian dads in Patagonia vests bobbed our heads in a hypnotic rhythm.

He even sang the song Elephant, but in what I think was a real-life example of subtle irony, at no point during the night did he address his own elephant in the room, his recent divorce. It’s a little unsettling to watch someone share so much of his life for so long, and then have that openness backfire when life turns out to be more novelistic than a fairy tale.

I know the opening chords to Cover Me Up about as well as any song ever written. When I got remarried a few years ago, one of my best friends played them on the guitar as my wife-to-be walked down the aisle toward me. (He’d spent months practicing, determined to get them just right.) I have sung the words to Cover Me Up loud and unapologetically over the years, in my car and in concert halls, but also gently, little more than a whisper, on porches lit only by streetlights, or on the shores of a handful of Western Montana lakes, lit only by the moon. On my left forearm, a lyric from the song is tattooed in blue typewriter ink, a reminder of home and all its different meanings.


Yet when he started strumming those familiar chords, I was still caught off guard. Of course he was going to play that song, I realized. How naive I was to think otherwise. It’s part of a musician’s job, to give people what they want. Besides, while a great love song is personal, and born out of inspiration, it represents a moment in time. It’s not a marriage. Sometimes the best you can hope for is that its sentiment lives on in others.


Songs can also take on different meanings with the passage of time, a phenomenon that has fascinated me as I’ve grown older. Sitting in The Lyric, listening to Isbell sing, I thought about Joni Mitchell re-recording “Both Sides Now” at age 57, and how certain lines — ”something’s lost but something’s gained, in living every day” — grow richer with each passing year. Perhaps, my wife suggested, one of Cover Me Up’s most moving lyrics will evolve in his mind and grow to represent his daughter, Mercy, instead.

Home was a dream, one I’d never seen, till you came along.

There is a story that Eddie Vedder once told about the song “Alive,” a song he’d written in anger as a young man to help him cope with the death of his father. He sang it for years, in packed concert halls and eventually huge stadiums, before it began to evolve. One night, Pearl Jam’s lead singer looked out from the stage at a sea of people and listened to the crowd singing his own words back to him. He realized being alive was no longer a curse, it was a gift. The audience had changed the song’s meaning, and by doing so, saved him once again.


I do not know what Jason Isbell will think about when he sings Cover Me Up on this tour, or in the years ahead. He has sung it thousands of times, and I suspect he could sing it on autopilot as needed. I do know, firsthand, that divorce is complicated, and that some scars don’t ever heal, they just evolve into a state of tolerable permanence. In time, finding fault for all that went wrong seems like a pointless endeavor, like wasted time.

If you’re lucky, and you put in the work, happy stories (and hopeful songs) can emerge from the wreckage. You learn to co-parent and you learn to forgive. You swap out sad songs for happy ones. You try to convince your children that their love stories will be different, that one day they’ll meet someone they want to hold tightly, even long after the magnolias bloom.

Kevin Van Valkenburg is the Editorial Director of No Laying Up.

Jason Isbell and The Elephant In The Room

 receive a member gift in January (so January 2024 is a Nest gift for all 2023 members). The member gift is a surprise and is meant to be a thoughtful collection of items that Nest members will find useful and unique.

For context, here is an overview of the 2023 Nest member gift:

We actively try to avoid your standard golf gift and member/guest-type products, and as the Nest membership grows, it’s harder and harder to find a gift that’s universally loved. This positive and negative member feedback has led to one of my favorite Nest traditions: The community reaction to the Nest member gift on our message board.

Before we get into some of my favorite responses in the thread, I think one Nest member summed up what I love about this annual tradition so much.

Juxtapose that response with these two, and you get a true thrill ride of discourse worth your time:

If you are a Nest member who’s unfamiliar with the message board, this would be a great time to jump into the 

 and get involved (just start scrolling down, don’t worry about hopping into the thread mid-discussion). Another good starting point and a post I highly recommend reading in its entirety is 

KVV’s impassioned defense of the Shoe Horn

If you are not a message board user, below is a selection of my favorite commentary from this year’s Nest gift thread.

The Nest member gift alternate uses category: My favorite type of post.

The Nest member gift sincere feedback category (always appreciated): 

The creative meme category (crowd favorites):

The Nest Member gift malcontents (who are essential and valued in this annual discourse): 

Nest Member Gift Reactions

LOS ANGELES — It’s always been a little strange to watch people get emotional about Tiger Woods’ clothes. When we found out in December that Woods and Nike were parting ways after 27 years together, I understood the split had news value. I suspected it would stun people within the golf industry, and it did. But I was surprised at how much people cared about a 

 partnership. One of my friends even joked that it was like hearing your parents announce they’re getting a divorce. (At least, I think it was a joke.)


When Woods showed up at Riviera Country Club this week clad in his new Sun Day Red brand, sporting a logo that looks like you’re watching an emaciated skeletal cat sprint through the zombie underworld, I felt similarly unmoved. Nike didn’t hit iconic shots or win majors, Woods did. But Woods did say something that made me briefly ponder whether even I was being too cold. He was asked whether he might be able to get back the rights to his iconic TW logo, the one he wore splashed across his hat for two decades, and he replied with surprising curtness.

“I don't want it back, I've moved on,” Woods said. “This is a transition in my life. I've moved on to Sun Day Red.”


I kept thinking about his answer as I watched him play his first round on Thursday, a sloppy 1-over 72 that was his first official start on the PGA Tour since the 2023 Masters. Lining every fairway, there were hundreds of Tiger Woods fans, many of them sporting some version of that TW logo he no longer wanted any part of. They held up their phones and craned their necks, trying to capture every shot and store some version of it in the cloud or in their mind, but really what they were longing for was a version of Woods that no longer exists.


He is not chasing that version of himself anymore.

What this new version will look like probably needs more time and reps before it takes shape. There are times when Woods looks stiff, and every bit of 48-years-old, like on the 18th hole on Thursday when he shanked an 8-iron sideways into the trees from the right side of the fairway.

“Definitely, I shanked it,” Woods said. “My back was spasming the last couple holes and it was locking up. I came down and it didn't move and I presented hosel first and shanked it.”

There are also times when he does magical shit that makes you believe he could still make this final chapter of his golfing life compelling and memorable. He made five birdies and six bogeys, but a par he made on the back nine turned out to be as memorable as any. On the 13th, he blew an iron well left of the green, leaving himself a nasty chip from a sidehill lie. It looked like he had no chance to get up and down.

However — because he is Tiger Woods — he chose to hit a buttery flop shot that went nearly 40 feet into the air. You could hear the gallery gasp as they watched the ball climb. It landed softly and nestled just behind the pin. He tapped in for a four.


“I'm just making adjustments on the fly like that and the feel for a round and how to make those adjustments, I haven't done that in a while,” Woods said.

His hands, he says, are more important now than they’ve ever been. It’s one of the reasons, Woods says, he doesn’t have a coach at the moment. A coach would have thoughts on technique, but because of the state of his body, he has to rely primarily on feel.

“I don't have the same speed I used to have, I don't have the ability to practice the same amount of hours, but I still do work on making sure that I can hit the ball on the middle of the face,” Woods said. “One of the reasons I don't have a coach right now: What my body does day to day, week to week just looks kind of different. I can't really model myself or fit any kind of model -- a lot of it's my hands and my feel. I built this golf swing the last few years, four, five years based on my hands and what that feels like. What that looks like, I don't -- sometimes it doesn't look pretty, but I can still hit the ball flush.”

There is an element of Woods showing up at Riviera Country Club each February that has started to feel like golf’s version of the 1993 movie Groundhog Day. Each year, he walks gingerly around the property, having undergone a vaguely-explained medical procedure in the offseason. He cracks a few jokes, reminisces about his first PGA Tour debut here at 16, and expresses gratitude that he can be around the guys again. He’ll mention that he missed the trash talk, the needling. He believes he can win, otherwise, he insists that he would not be in the field (even though he is the tournament host).

This year, however, feels slightly different. He’s in less pain, but he’s still not quite healthy. He’s going to play more than he has in recent years, but no one knows how much. The optimist and competitor in him are trying to negotiate with his pragmatist side.

“As far as the physical ups and downs, that's just part of my body, that's part of what it is,” Woods said. “That's all right, I accept it and accept the challenges.”

He is in transition. He has moved on, and nostalgia doesn’t interest him. A memo even circulated within the PGA Tour this week informing employees that no historical footage of Woods in Nike gear was to be shared on tournament social channels going forward. Every image of him from now on will have to feature him wearing Sun Day Red.

The past, no matter how many people still want to cling to it, will have to remain the past.


Tiger Woods is Trying to Move On

There are about 40,000 golf courses in the world. Math tells us 400 courses should therefore qualify as one-percenters based on their quality. But golf courses can appeal to different people for different reasons.


Like football coaches and pound cake, there are many good golf courses, but few truly great ones. There are probably 1,000 golf courses that could be reasonably argued to belong in that one-percent club. But only fifty or so are above debate. The Nick Sabans of golf courses.


The PGA Tour makes its annual stop at one of the greats this week, The Riviera Country Club. Setting aside the modern Players Championship, Riviera has been the biggest week on the Tour’s schedule for decades.

Riviera hosted their first LA Open in 1929. MacDonald Smith won by six shots. Smith’s clubs hang in the Riviera clubhouse, a gift to the club from Ben Crenshaw.


The place oozes major history. Ben Hogan won the 1948 U.S. Open here. Hal Sutton held off a charging Jack Nicklaus to win the 1983 PGA Championship. In 1992, Riviera’s iconic elevated first tee is where 16-year-old Tiger Woods took his first swing in a professional tournament.

More history is coming soon to Riv. The Women’s U.S. Open in 2026, the Olympics in 2028, and the Men’s U.S. Open in 2031. It will be a run of professional golf tournaments unequaled in history.

So why Riviera? What did they do to deserve the acclaim?

The West Coast viewing time zone certainly doesn’t hurt. But mostly, it’s the golf course.


It’s only a couple of miles from the beach, but you’d never know that when you’re playing Riviera. Set down in the Santa Monica Canyon, today Riv is almost surrounded by palaces inhabited by the rich and famous of Los Angeles.

The hillsides that border Riviera were almost empty when George Thomas and William Bell went to work sculpting their masterpiece in 1925 and 1926. The pair had already built or redesigned a couple of dozen courses, including the Los Angeles Country Club and Bel Air, but it was at Riviera where Thomas’ genius for design and Bell’s artistry during construction reached their zenith. Thomas knew early on the course had the potential for greatness, telling a local newspaper “it will vie for America’s best in every detail.”

The great Dr. Alister MacKenzie agreed. MacKenzie stopped by Riviera while he was working on a masterpiece of his own up at Cypress Point. He was quoted as saying:


“Thomas had not only provided for every shot known to the game, but he had devised the sportiest and most interesting settings in which to make them, not overlooking such niceties as the direction of sunlight and the force of prevailing winds.”


The best and worst who have played Rivera over the past century are all in agreement. Legendary L.A. Times columnist Jim Murray had been a member of Riviera for over 40 years – and had never broken 90 – when he wrote, “I know and love every blade of grass on Riviera, every eucalyptus tree, every barranca, every sand trap, even the one in the middle of the sixth green.”

He later went on to say, “The worse it treats me, the more starry-eyed I get.”

Ben Hogan had better results. Hogan once called Riviera’s par-3 fourth hole “The greatest par-3 in America.”

In 1994 he wrote a letter to the club which included the statement, “The golf course was always such an inspiration to me, but the members hold a special place in my heart, as well.”


Three years later Hogan spent three days at Riviera filming a commercial for his company's new golf clubs. It was believed to be the first time the reserved Hogan had left his hometown of Fort Worth in ten years.


For Sam Snead it was the opening hole that was his favorite, because of the wide variety of outcomes that are possible. Opening shots are played from a claustrophobic tee box. Making 3 is a real possibility for today’s pros, but as Snead pointed out, there is out-of-bounds down the entire left side of the hole, which can bring big numbers into play.


Ron Whitten, longtime architectural editor for Golf Digest wrote about the sixth hole: “In the field of golf design, where imitation is passed off as inspiration, a truly original hole is as rare as an amateur architect. Which makes the Sixth at Riviera all the more remarkable. It was a true original, created by an amateur designer.”

Johnny Miller says of the ninth: “This is a tremendous hole for three reasons…” and goes on to describe in detail the challenges of the tee shot, the approach, and putts on the green.


The short tenth is one of the more discussed holes in golf because of the options for play off the tee and the severity of the green. The hole has become a trigger point for many in the debates on modern equipment and distance. Less known is that Thomas’ original version of ten had no bunkers anywhere on the hole. Or that Thomas’ idea for the hole came from the 12th at Pine Valley. Ben Crenshaw thinks it’s one of the most fascinating greens in golf.


Raymond Floyd said of the eleventh: “This is probably as good a par 5 as you would want to play anywhere.”

Fourteen and sixteen are two mid-length par 3s that show the beauty of Bell’s bunker work.


And the famous uphill eighteenth is Jack Nicklaus’ favorite hole on the golf course.

Writing

The Inexplicable Survival of Jay Monahan

Pen Pals: What to make of Anthony Kim's return

What's Burning At The Killhouse: Feb 2024 Check-In

Jason Isbell and The Elephant In The Room

Nest Member Gift Reactions

Tiger Woods is Trying to Move On

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