From the desk of BTG -

I used to love the eccentricity and booze-fueled nonsense of the Phoenix open of 10 years ago. It was a refreshing reprieve from the monotony of the early TOUR schedule. It’s Halloween for golf. Perfectly acceptable once a year.

But now? The behavior feels commonplace. It’s expected. The event has cannibalized itself. It no longer carries the “edge” it once wielded so proudly.

The gravitational pull of “casual” golf for the layman has resulted in the dilution of what makes golf special and unique. This we can all agree on. The omni-present “bro culture” of Youtube golf is ubiquitous at public courses, and is seeping into unsuspecting private clubs.

So where does that leave the WMPO? Once a celebration of an edge case, it has now become a coronation of the heralded “growth” of the game.

But at what price? At two critical points in the final stretch, fans interjected in the middle of a shot played by Matsuyama. I’m still unsure of how he managed to back off from both of the swings. It’s hard to argue the disturbances didn’t impact the final outcome of the tournament.

With gambling sentiment and usage at an all time high, (and only growing), it’s fair to question if we should continue to extol tournaments which produce unbecoming behavior.

The WMPO was an excellent outlier tourney, but has lost all of its relevance as the game has grown in the direction of the standard WMPO “patron”.

It's Monday morning at 8am. Coffee in one hand, phone in the other. I'd planned a quick call with Neil Lockie, Director of Golf at Dallas National, to discuss a side project on back-office club tech.

Five minutes in, I knew we'd blow past my allotted time. Neil pulled me in with captivating storytelling and a crisp Scottish accent. It's difficult to interrupt passion, and before long we were deep into a heart-to-heart about our shared affinity for private clubs and the game itself.

Our conversation meandered from technology at clubs to what makes the special ones, special. Neil said something to effect of:

“Go spend time at the bar or grill room after the round. Notice if the different tables are talking and engaging with one another”.

This is a brilliant insight into the nature of a club, and more of a way to tell if the membership committee is competent and structured. A well-balanced club should have lively banter and the feeling of community when you step into the bar. It should feel like an upscale version of your college dive. You have your core group of friends, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world if you were told to go sit with three other random guys for a few hours.

Yes, the golf course is important, but if the patio or bar feels like a morgue after the round? It’s probably not a place you want to join.

With demand for golf skyrocketing, many clubs have resorted to exorbitant initiation fees to filter out those not “worthy” of joining the club. This is completely backward.

Money has become the gatekeeper, whereas traditionally clubs solved for “fit” first, and the money was just to keep the lights on. A few clubs (mostly elite, old money New England clubs) have stuck to this tradition. You’ll see many of the new clubs down south and out west slapping huge price tags onto clubs and letting just about anyone in.

While there’s nothing inherently wrong with this approach, it leads to a disjointed membership connected by nothing except money.

Neil mentioned that his ideal club would reverse this trend. With negligible annual dues and a modest initiation, the club would attract a pool of high quality good players who play the game correctly. The club, therefore, can be highly selective of whom it choses to become a member.

For what the club would lack in frills and amenities, it would make up in character and soul. The club would have a heartbeat of it’s own, pumped by the collective shared interests and love between the membership.

The club wouldn’t compete with the new age monstrosities with thousands of local and national members. It would be a simple club with a good golf course and a few hundred members who check the right boxes.

Since I’ve never been, or never will be, a head pro at a prestigious golf club, I asked Neil what the ideal relationship looks like between pro and member.

He said the key to success for a guy in his position is developing true partnership with the board and key stakeholders within the club. The relationship is less about teaching prowess and more about strategic alignment for the club over the next 15 years. The role is about advancing the club’s strategic golf priorities in manner which aligns with the goals set by the membership.

The worst thing that could happen to a recently hired head pro? Getting left on an island without a plan, goals, or strategic vision.

This is a simple, but not easy tightrope to walk.

The Boomer’s days of running clubs has come to and end. Neil made an excellent point about the future of club leadership: the Millennial generation will be stepping into head pro and board roles at clubs over the next few years.

At a club level, Neil noted the the Boomers ran clubs in a way which over-yielded to tradition. The sentiment and strategy for club events, tournaments, etc was/is as follows:

“This is the way it has been done, therefore this is the way it should always be done.”

The Millennial generation will not do away entirely with this blueprint, but according to Neil the younger generation will dust off and pull the innovation lever to infuse some modernity into yearly events and traditions.

This shift is a net positive, as long as the foundational traditions remain untouched. Fresh blood in leadership is almost always a good thing at clubs.

The hour flew by. I heard him order his coffee at Starbucks without saying a word (he’s a regular, and maybe the only Scottish guy in Dallas?) Neil kept apologizing for 'getting on his soapbox’ in his mellifluous accent. I didn't see it that way. We could have talked about this stuff for 3+ hours, easily. And I’m sure we will again at some point soon.

The next set of irons I will own will be blades, for a few reasons.

Now, I’d say I’m a fringe blade player. A vanity scratch, if you will. However, forged blades like the ones below check the two boxes I’m looking for in a golf club.

They will provide extreme feedback on mishits and unmatched beauty.

Golf is a beautiful and feel-based game. My equipment will reflect that. My cocktail-tour mid am dreams may go on hold, but I’ll walk to the first tee with a bag that inspires low scores.

A nod to my conversation with Neil. A modern club with a high taste level. Cool to see.

Jekyll Island Golf Club's Great Dunes course has reopened as a full 18-hole layout following a restoration and expansion by architects Brian Ross and Jeff Stein.

Along with The Park and Cobbs Creek, this restoration intends to serve the public, and is worthy of your attention.

The original course opened in 1928, designed by Walter Travis, but the back nine was abandoned in the early 1940s due to coastal storm damage, beach erosion, and wartime pressures. For decades, the club operated just the surviving Travis nine.

Ross and Stein were hired in 2023 to restore the original nine and create nine new Travis-inspired holes on a portion of the adjacent Oleander course. The result is a traditional out-and-in routing that moves through three distinct landscapes: maritime forest, rumpled sand dunes, and coastal lakes.

Jekyll Island has been state-owned since 1947, and public accessibility remains central to the club's mission. With Great Dunes, Pine Lakes, and Indian Mound, the facility offers different experiences at different price points while hosting junior, high school, and collegiate events.

A public course getting this kind of restoration? Rare. Worth noting.

Rule V: The Rabbit Scrape Rule

"If the ball lie in a rabbit scrape the player shall not be at liberty to take it out, but must play it as from any common hazard; if, however, it lie in one of the burrows, he may lift it, drop it behind the hazard, and play with an iron without losing a stroke."

This rule arose because St Andrews Links had been sold to commercial rabbit farmers in 1799 during the town council's bankruptcy, sparking what became known as the "Rabbit Wars" - nearly twenty years of legal and physical conflict between golfers and rabbit breeders. The course was literally overrun with rabbits, their scrapes (shallow diggings), and burrows.

The distinction is precise: a scrape (surface disturbance) was considered just another hazard you had to play from, but if your ball actually fell into a burrow (the hole itself), you got relief.