Ambience. Simply put, nothing matters more when debating the merits of various 19th holes around the United States.
Ambience.
Simply put, nothing matters more when debating the merits of various 19th holes around the United States. So say Golfweek’s Best 800-plus raters who were polled to determine the top 10 golf course bars and restaurants. More than 400 votes were cast to establish this list.
Views are important, but not everything. Same goes for the food. The drinks menu matters, of course. Service is key. But none of these alone is enough to earn a place on Golfweek’s Best initial list of top 19th holes that includes three private clubs and, perhaps more importantly, seven spots where anyone can grab a seat.
The Tap Room at Pebble Beach Resort in California (Courtesy of Pebble Beach)
Instead, it’s all about the vibe. A chance to relax, just hang out. Enjoy a sip, the conversation, the golf and the heritage. It can be difficult to describe what makes one space a better hangout than others, but you know it when you see it. And then you never want to leave.
Check out Golfweek’s Best ranking of Top 10 19th holes. And by that,
we mean not just on this website. Go see for yourself.
The PGA Tour is back and columnist Eamon Lynch says any COVID-19 setbacks could have catastrophic consequences throughout the sports world.
Much as we like to focus on personalities, the PGA Tour is really all about numbers posted: hole scores, round totals, cash earned, FedEx Cup points awarded, charitable dollars raised, eyeballs watching. All of those figures matter at this week’s Charles Schwab Challenge in Fort Worth, but they carry considerably less import as the Tour resumes action amid the COVID-19 pandemic. (Note: amid, not after, since cases are spiking across the country, not least in Texas.)
Instead, the number that matters most to the Tour at Colonial Country Club is zero.
Zero positive tests among players and caddies.
Zero drama.
If the Schwab Challenge were to be the most boring, uneventful 72 holes of his tenure as Tour commissioner, Jay Monahan would heave a sigh of relief.
The typical barometers of a good week on Tour — exciting finishes, superstar winners, scoring records — simply don’t matter as much. The yardstick being used in the coming days is much more daunting. Golf is a guinea pig for the greater sports world, and a misstep or health issue will have ramifications far beyond the Tour’s carefully-constructed resumption.
Fans will of course notice everything that is amiss at this most unusual of tournaments.
Rather than presiding from his traditional 18th hole tower, CBS’s Jim Nantz will plow a lonely furrow in front of a monitor in a remote building at Colonial. His sidekick in the booth, Nick Faldo, will chime in from a studio 1,100 miles away in Orlando.
The course will seem naked, stripped of the grandstands from which crafty players have long been accustomed to expect a fortuitous bounce or generous relief.
There will be no spectators, the very lifeblood of sport drained from the proceedings until at least the Memorial Tournament in July. (That’s not entirely bad, since it provides a respite from the smattering of meatheads whose hollering plagues too many telecasts).
The last time golf’s best player hit balls in such eerie silence in Fort Worth was when Hogan was practicing 15 minutes away at Shady Oaks.
World No. 1 Rory McIlroy heads the best field Colonial has ever hosted. The top five players in the world ranking are all here, and 16 of the top 20. There are 148 men in the field, 101 of whom have won on Tour, the kind of wheat-to-chaff ratio seldom seen outside the Seminole Pro-Member.
It’s almost enough to make one overlook those competitors who might have been better served watching from home.
Like Keith Clearwater, who won here two years before McIlroy was born. Now 60 years old, Clearwater still takes his spot each year as an ex-champion grandfathered into the field. He has made only seven Tour starts outside this event in the last 15 years. The last time he made a cut in any Tour event was 19 years ago, in 2001.
He’s not even the oldest guy in the field. Tom Lehman, 61, is here on the same senior pass 25 years after his victory. So too is Olin Browne, also 61 and the ’99 champ. And David Frost, the ’97 winner, who is just 10 days younger than Clearwater. All of them are younger than Bernhard Langer, who turns 63 this summer. He’s here alongside Scott McCarron (54) and Steve Stricker (53) as sponsor’s invites.
PGA Tour stop or Cocoon cast reunion?
None are taking a spot in the field from anyone else, to be fair. This is an invitational event, and a sponsor may do as it pleases with invitations. It’s entirely fair if Schwab wishes to invite winners of the Cup it generously finances on the senior circuit (Langer and McCarron in this instance). All of the aforementioned have earned the right to tee it up, though continuing to exercise that right might warrant reflection. If nothing else, we should at least commend this higher-risk demographic for heading back to work in a pandemic.
Everyone understands what will constitute a best-case scenario by the time we reach Sunday night in Fort Worth, and also the worst. A positive test among players, caddies or officials — all of whom traveled there, increasing their potential exposure — would fuel skeptics who think the Tour is taking unnecessary risks and rushing its resumption. No amount of testing or safety protocols will change those minds. And even a drama-free outing in Texas just shifts that onus to next week’s RBC Heritage in South Carolina, and beyond to Connecticut and Michigan.
In that respect, PGA Tour players — whether Rory McIlroy or Keith Clearwater — really are now just like the rest of us, reckoning with a macabre new reality that means having to assume a certain amount of health risk just to go about the humdrum tasks of our workdays. Having assumed that risk, everything else is up to fate. And not even Jay Monahan has sway over that.
Paul Azinger is the perfect chap to meet for a round of cocktails at the 19 th hole. Face it, the guy likes to talk. Likes to laugh. Is passionate and intense. And does he have stories. In a life spanning 60 years now, Zinger won the 1993 PGA …
Paul Azinger is the perfect chap to meet for a round of cocktails at the 19th hole.
Face it, the guy likes to talk. Likes to laugh. Is passionate and intense. And does he have stories.
In a life spanning 60 years now, Zinger won the 1993 PGA Championship, 12 PGA Tour titles and two more on the European Tour. Captained the U.S. to victory in the 2008 Ryder Cup. Played on winning Ryder Cup teams in 1991 and 1993. Spent 300 weeks in the top 10.
He held his own against the best in the world, including Seve Ballesteros, Nick Faldo, Greg Norman, Jose Maria Olazabal, Ernie Els, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and his late best friend, Payne Stewart.
And he kicked cancer’s butt.
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Now Azinger talks a great game as the lead analyst for NBC and Fox.
“Well, I love golf,” Azinger said in a chat with Golfweek. “I can’t tell you how much I love the sport and how much I love watching it. I love playing the game.”
While he’s “chomping at the bit” to get back to work, Azinger has kept busy sheltered at his home in Bradenton, Florida, since the COVID-19 global pandemic halted play on the PGA Tour in March.
“I just don’t let myself get bored as much as anything,” Azinger said. “Self-isolating isn’t too bad. I’ve done a lot of work around the house. I’m neater than I think I am. I can clean if I want to.”
The current state and the fear of the unknown concerning the coronavirus is mindful in some ways to Azinger’s successful battle against cancer that began in 1993 when lymphoma was discovered in his right shoulder blade. Chemotherapy and radiation treatments as well as Azinger’s perseverance conquered cancer.
“When I first heard the words, ‘You have cancer,’ immediately it was sort of a similarity to hearing there is a virus going around and we’re all going to have to shelter in place,” Azinger said. “When I heard what the treatment was for (cancer), that’s when I knew it was a big deal. This, you’re just trying to avoid the treatment.
“It’s a weird situation. For a long time there, we all but wondered if we could get it and could it make us sick enough that we could succumb. And that’s just a terrible feeling. And that was similar to the feeling I had when I had cancer, for sure.”
On a lighter note
Azinger’s love for motorcycles: “It’s a feeling of freedom.”
Playing against Tiger Woods at the zenith of his powers: “We were watching something we thought we would never see.”
His love for the Ryder Cup: “The whole patriotism aspect.”
Johnny Miller, Paul Azinger and Dan Hicks in the NBC booth during the third round of the 2019 Waste Management Phoenix Open. Photo by Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images
Azinger also addressed comments he made about Tommy Fleetwood and Lee Westwood ahead of the final round of this year’s Honda Classic that turned him into a European Tour punching bag. One word – that – got Azinger in trouble when he said you have to win on the PGA Tour. Fleetwood, a five-time winner on the European Tour, was trying to win his maiden PGA Tour title.
“A lot of pressure here,” Azinger said on the broadcast. “You’re trying to prove to everybody that you’ve got what it takes. These guys know, you can win all you want on that European Tour or in the international game and all that, but you have to win on the PGA Tour.”
That European Tour. Oops.
“I’m sure I’ll be some bulletin board material for them at the Ryder Cup,” Azinger said. “I respect all wins. I try to use good grammar when I’m in the booth and I failed big-time on that one. And it didn’t come off quite as I hoped.”
Eventually, Azinger will get back into the booth and is a long way from sitting in a rocking chair and reminiscing about a good life lived.
“I’m still looking to make today a great day, tomorrow a great day,” he said. “I want to continue to try and achieve in charitable ways, be better as a person. I want to contribute to the game of golf in whatever capacity I can. Try to make the game grow and help the game come back from this devastating virus.”
Scroll up to watch Steve DiMeglio’s discussion with Paul Azinger.
