The Golfer's Journal Podcast

With Aronimink Golf Club set to host the KPMG Ladies PGA Championship, Tom Coyne and Casey Bannon pay the Donald Ross blue-chipper a visit in search of the real stories behind two of golf’s most under-appreciated characters: John Shippen and John McDermott. As it quickly becomes apparent, you can’t talk about America’s first Black golf professional and caddie-turned-U.S. Open-champion without the ‘Mink. 

The USGA Museum has been closed to the public for months. But that didn’t stop TGJ Senior Writer and podcast host Tom Coyne from finagling an all-access tour in preparation for the U.S. Open at Winged Foot. Alongside Museum Director Hilary Cronhim, he finds Mickey Wright’s jewelry, the original sheet music to Winged Foot’s fight song (because every course should have a fight song),  the most clutch putter of all time, and a vault holding some of golf’s most valuable artifacts. 

“I’ve always said that if other architects would stay out of Virginia, then I’d stay out of their states too.” After a late introduction to the golf design game, Lester George has made good on his promise to dominate the Dominion state. His in-state roster now consists of top-100 projects like Kinloch, the quietly explosive Langley Air Force Base, and the mindbender at Ballyhack. And that’s where he crashes our 2020 Broken Tee 2-Man to discuss how the military shaped his eye for topography, his affinity for surfing despite never hopping on a board, unloading his car collection and an upcoming Seth Raynor project. 

Charles Lindsay describes himself as “a conceptual artist-adventurer, whose work synthesizes ideas about technology, time, eco-systems, and semiotics.” And he believes playing a ton of golf falls into that description. Lindsay joins host Tom Coyne for a wide-ranging discussion on golf’s relationship with hunting, the search for extraterrestrials, becoming unlikely playing partners with John Updike and how he created the book of hilarious golf images that are featured in TGJ No. 12.   

Ken Wang has a degree in economics from MIT, is the brother of fashion designer Vera Wang, and, most important to us, is the founder/owner of the Pete Dye-designed Pound Ridge Golf Club in New York. He joins Tom Coyne to discuss his fervent belief in public courses, how Dye got what he wanted in the design, the democratization of the game, and how Vera plays “Bill Clinton golf.”

COVID, cheating, distance debates, course closures and a lack of diversity—golf’s recent news cycle has been gloomy. But it’s not all bad out there. Host Tom Coyne called some folks from around the golf world who have some good news to share. He went beyond the headlines and found the Navajo Nation’s booming dirt course; a staggering drop in suicide rates thanks to the Veterans Golfer’s Association; a little guy’s big time 15-footer; a 50-day Pinehurst trip, and a heartwarming update on Ireland’s Carne Golf Links. Five reminders of why we love this game.

Colton Craig is a 27-year-old golf-course architect and founder of the Perry Maxwell Society. Over the past year he’s quit his apprentice gig, opened his own design firm, visited every Maxwell design in the U.S., and become a first-time father. He unpacks the trials and tribulations of his journey over nine holes at Maxwell's first design, Dornick Hills, with assistant Editor Casey Bannon. 

You know she teed it up with the men. But there’s still much to learn about Annika Sorenstam’s trailblazing PGA Tour appearance at the 2003 Colonial. Featuring candid interviews with Sorenstam and Aaron Oberholser, along with journalists and marshalls who witnessed it first-hand, host Tom Coyne and TGJ Assistant Editor Casey Bannon re-live the controversial resistance from male and female pros, the electricity on the first tee, the legacy of Sorenstam’s accomplishment, and her shocking four-word declaration that started it all.  

Before there was the broken tee, there was the original one. Host Tom Coyne and Assistant Editor Casey Bannon dive into the remarkable life of Dr. George F. Grant—the second African American graduate of Harvard Dental School, and inventor of the wooden golf tee in 1899.   

Ken Kearney went from a decorated Irish amateur player to a career in finance to golf-course architect. For his next big challenge, he wants to shrink the game.