Jerry Tarde

The first time the term might have been used was at Royal St. George’s in 1999 when golf’s boulevardier Jimmy Dunne was playing a casual match with his friend Frank Brennan while attending Wimbledon. On the long par-3 11th hole, Brennan hit a slight hook into the right side of the green and appeared satisfied with the result as he turned to put away his club. “Hey, Frankie, take a look at this,” chirped Jimmy, as the ball slowly slid off the left edge of the green into a sod-faced bunker that Du…

The first book I remember my father reading was Situation Golf by Arnold Palmer. The first golf tournament I remember watching was the 1972 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach won by Jack Nicklaus. In the way only sporting heroes speak to you, I’ve been rooting for pro golf my whole life, so take this as a lover’s lament, not the grieving of a cynic: Pro golf is broken, and I’m worried about how it can be put back together. We shouldn’t be surprised by the inquiry because it follows a familiar pattern. Br…

You might say it started when W.P. Kinsella wrote a baseball novel in 1982 called “Shoeless Joe” that used the haunting refrain, “If you build it, he will come.” The extraterrestrials of Stonehenge may have had the notion originally, but Kinsella’s mantra expressed perfectly that if you create something worthwhile, people will beat a path to your door. The book became a movie in 1989, and a solitary baseball diamond in an Iowa cornfield romanced a generation. Within a decade two visionary golfer…

Every golfer has a bucket list of courses they want to play, but I prefer to ask friends for their Ice Bucket List: What’s the best drink you’ve had at the best courses? You haven’t completed the Grand Slam until you’ve tasted these four cocktails in situ: 1. Southside Traced back to Al Capone’s Chicago, the concoction of gin, simple syrup, lemon juice, mint leaves and soda is now served at many Long Island clubs but none better than the porch at the National Golf Links. (Maidstone makes a good…

The last time I was in Louisville, birthplace of The Greatest, I went to the Muhammad Ali Center for a meeting of The First Tee Trustees, and he was there. Sports’ most eloquent speaker couldn’t speak. Ali smiled and had his picture taken with each of us, as one by one we said a few words of respect and shared an awkward moment with the heavyweight champion in the final days of his Parkinson’s syndrome. There was a flicker of understanding in his eyes, but that might just be the sportswriter in…

In my garage at home is a red canvas, cylindrical shag bag with a protruding aluminum tube that retrieves golf balls without back strain. It’s my longest serving piece of golf equipment in continuous use. The Original Shag Bag was invented by Clifford Hurd and Ian McDonald in 1948, and the same company, Madewell Products, has manufactured them in the United States ever since. By the early 1970s when I took up the game, owning one was a rite of passage, and every self-respecting golfer had a shag…

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