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Disparate golf destinations

By |  September 11, 2017 0 Comments

Seth Jones

If my Adidas golf shoes could talk, they would have said, “Jones, what the heck is going on here?”

And for good reason. My recent golf weekend should earn some kind of prize in terms of disparate golf destinations. In less than 48 hours I went from the PGA Championship host course in North Carolina to a night golf tournament on sand greens in Kansas to a Topgolf event at an NFL stadium in Missouri.

Friday morning, bright and early, I was in Charlotte, N.C., hanging out with my friends at Quail Hollow. The 2017 PGA Championship host course was immaculate. Jordan Spieth told Golfdom, that even after all the rain, “The course is absolutely fantastic, it’s so pure.” What a tremendous finale to the 2017 major championship season. To check out our extensive coverage of the PGA Championship — where we interviewed some of the biggest names in the game as well as the key members of the crew — visit Golfdom.com. And to see some of the photos we took, check out this month’s two-page Golfdom Gallery.

A delayed flight home gave me barely enough time to stop by the house to grab my sticks. I had a 7 p.m. tee time at Baldwin City (Kan.) Golf Course. The town of 4,500 has a 9-hole course with sand greens.
From Quail Hollow’s perfect greens at 7 a.m. to Baldwin City’s perfectly imperfect sand greens at 7 p.m. I’m glad such a drastic change in golf surroundings can’t cause the bends.

I’ve played at Baldwin City before, but it’s been years. My playing partners had to give me a refresher on the rules of etiquette for playing sand greens: Try not to walk around too much. Anything within a flagstick length of the cup is considered good. Take turns raking the greens in a circular motion once the hole is completed.

Oh, and don’t look down as you rake, because it will make you dizzy. (That advice was given just a moment too late.)

But that evening round at Baldwin City will be a summer of 2017 highlight. Nine holes at dusk on an ideal Kansas evening. Stop for a barbecue. Then nine holes of night golf with glow-in-the-dark golf balls. I even saw a shooting star.

The next afternoon I was off to Arrowhead Stadium, home of the Kansas City Chiefs, to play Topgolf Crush. Hitting bays were set up in the club level of the stadium (I don’t get up there too often) and the boys and I smacked low-flight golf balls toward targets spread out on the NFL field below us.

Hitting golf balls in an NFL stadium has a novelty to it, but it’s not the same as playing golf. Our hour-long match ended quickly and we retreated to a local sports bar, where much of the conversation was about how much fun night golf was the previous evening.

So, while this was no weekend in Monterey, it was memorable for how unorthodox it was. Email me and let me know if you’ve had a more diverse golf weekend, and what the circumstances were.

Allow me to formally introduce our newest columnist, Mr. Joe Gulotti, “The Walking Greenkeeper.”

Joe is a superintendent in Delaware and the author of a hilarious blog that you can check out at thewalkinggreenkeeper.com.

Associate Editor Grant “Buddy” Gannon discovered Joe when he was cruising on Twitter and saw Joe tweet out a link to his blog. Buddy told me he thought Joe’s writing style would fit in nicely with Golfdom. I read through the blog and had to agree. I got him on the phone and we quickly snatched him up. Good news: According to Joe, Golfdom is his favorite turf publication. So, we really do make a good match.

Welcome to the pages of Golfdom, Joe!

This article is tagged with and posted in Columns

About the Author: Seth Jones

Seth Jones, a 18-year veteran of the golf industry media, is Editor-in-Chief of Golfdom magazine and Athletic Turf. A graduate of the University of Kansas School of Journalism and Mass Communications, Jones began working for Golf Course Management in 1999 as an intern. In his professional career he has won numerous awards, including a Turf and Ornamental Communicators Association (TOCA) first place general feature writing award for his profile of World Golf Hall of Famer Greg Norman and a TOCA first place photography award for his work covering the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In his career, Jones has accumulated an impressive list of interviews, including such names as George H.W. Bush, Samuel L. Jackson, Lance Armstrong and Charles Barkley. Jones has also done in-depth interviews with such golfing luminaries as Norman, Gary Player, Nick Price and Lorena Ochoa, to name only a few. Jones is a member of both the Golf Writers Association of America and the Turf and Ornamental Communicators Association. Jones can be reached at sjones@northcoastmedia.net.


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