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Jones: Everyone has an opinion when it comes to greens

By |  August 7, 2018 0 Comments
Photo: Golfdom staff

Photo: Golfdom staff

“Bellerive’s greens look burnt and patchy” read a headline in yesterday’s e-newsletter from Golf Digest. The title of the email was, “Conditions of Bellerive’s greens brought into focus.”

Golf Digest is a fine publication but the description of “burnt and patchy” is a head-scratcher. The greens look great out here!

They then followed up the e-newsletter with a tweet, and a photo that wasn’t even of a green. Check it out here.

There are areas that are patchy on the very outer edges of a few greens. It’s not anything that is critical, and it’s something golfers will rarely play through or that viewers will see on TV.

Photo: Golfdom staff

Photo: Golfdom staff

Once the tournament kicks off on Thursday, television viewers will see how amazing this course looks, and this story/tweet will be a distant memory (I hope). The crew here at Bellerive has done a phenomenal job in a brutal summer. Everyone knew an August major in St. Louis was going to be tough going. And the crew and the PGA of America’s Kerry Haigh have pulled it off! Golf claps all around. This is going to be a great championship on a great course.

I think the problem is, early in the week, we (the golf press) feel the need to have headlines right away… big, bold headlines that get readers to click on them so our internet traffic numbers rise. And yet, there’s not much going on during the PGA Championship on a Monday. Many players are still arriving, and many haven’t even played the course yet — so it’s hard to get player reactions.

It’ll be interesting to see what players say about the course once they get out there (Tuesday morning storms have kept players off the course.) We’ll do our best to get some quotes directly from players and report back.

All due respect to Golf Digest, a magazine I subscribe to and enjoy. I think viewers and golfers will enjoy these greens at Bellerive, and we’re in store for a heck of a championship.

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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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