Mike Nuzzo Builds Three Very Different Nines at Grand Oak Reserve
From aerospace engineer to golf course architect, Mike Nuzzo is helping foster the reemergence of nine-hole courses across the country. The disparate and implausible elements of Mike Nuzzo’s professional background are utterly mystifying. After graduating from Boston University in 1990 with a degree in Aerospace Engineering, the New Jersey native worked for a medical equipment […]
5 Questions with Golf Course Architect Brandon Johnson
Brandon Johnson earned a Master’s degree in Landscape Architecture from Harvard in 1999, before becoming Manager of Design for The First Tee, where he oversaw design and construction of 250 facilities. In 2006, he joined Arnold Palmer’s course design firm and, seven years later, was made a Senior Architect and Vice President of the company. […]
5 Small Golf Brands That You Need to Know
Big brands budget big bucks to ensure media saturation. Lost sometimes are smaller brands which don’t have much spending power, but which still create excellent products. Here are five brands you may not be aware of, but should be. Carbon Putters Colorado’s Carbon Putters has enjoyed critical acclaim without hitting the big time… yet. The […]
Golf, Wine, and Safari in South Africa
By Tony Dear South Africa’s many attractions are hardly unknown. But having just spent three unforgettable weeks there visiting Cape Town, drinking a lot of incredible wine, watching elephants and lions in the wild, and playing a few really good golf courses, I’d estimate it gets about one-fifth the coverage it deserves. Getting there […]
Does the Golf Course Architect Matter?
Ted Vassallo, a retired civil engineer from Vermont, says the identity of the golf course architect wasn’t a major factor when he and wife Jan were deciding which of the seven communities at The Cliffs to move into. “We originally intended building a house up in the mountains at Glassy, which has a Tom Jackson […]
Our Favorite 9-Hole Golf Courses in the Country
By Tony Dear These are our 10 favorite 9-hole courses that anyone can play. Sweetens Cove—South Pittsburg, Tenn. Built on the site of an old course called Sequatchie Valley that was about as dull as a golf course could be, Sweetens Cove opened to great acclaim in 2014. The brilliant minds behind the transformation were […]
Exploring the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail
By Tony Dear Back in the mid-to-late 1980s, the CEO of Alabama’s state employee pension fund—Retirement Systems of Alabama (RSA)—hatched an outlandish plan to build multiple golf courses simultaneously throughout the state, a state never before regarded as a golf destination. Nothing like it had ever been conceived, let alone attempted, but this man hoped […]
First Green Teaches Kids Environmental Benefits of Golf
When Steve Kealy hosts a First Green field trip, he likes to send the kids home with an incentive to protect water quality in their homes and surrounding neighborhoods. “I teach them about storm water and waste water,” says the 27-year Superintendent at Glendale Country Club in Bellevue, Wash. “And I give them four things […]
Get to Know J.P. Harrington, Wedge Mastermind
James Patrick Harrington remembers wrapping his Cleveland RTG wedges in a wet cloth and leaving them in the bathroom overnight to hasten the rusting process. This was sometime in his early teens and the first indication he might be a golf club geek. Twenty years on, Harrington, now 35, has his own wedge label and […]
The 21st Century Wave of Breathtaking Golf Courses
If you like courses that are about real beauty rather than real estate (and who doesn’t?), then you have to agree that we are in the midst of a very special period in the history of golf architecture. Gone, hopefully for good, are the days of large-scale developments anchored on courses whose sole purpose was […]