The Golfer's Journal Podcast

He wasn’t the biggest, flashiest or longest, but one look at Paul McGinley’s resume—four European Tour wins, three Ryder Cup titles as a player and one more as captain—clearly shows a legendary career in the game. But golf never came easily to the scrappy Irishman. McGinley spills his secrets for success to host Tom Coyne, reflecting on his love for Gaelic football, attending high school with Padr...

Sandbaggers, ball-droppers and lie-fluffers, oh my! Getting cheated in golf can stay with you—just ask host Tom Coyne, who still can’t forget an interclub incident from 1986. So we decided to name names: We speak with experts who break down golf’s various scammers (behold, the “cheating non-liar”) and investigate what exactly leads someone to cheat at the ultimate game of honor.  Along the way, we...

Yes, in TGJ No. 14, Coyne chronicled the hellish battles he and four others had with substance abuse and how golf in a sober league became an unexpectedly vital part of their journeys to recovery. But in this pod, it's clear that busting each other’s chops is also a big part of it. In a surprisingly funny and hopeful conversation, Coyne and two members of the league discuss golf’s longtime kinship...

What are you left with after 19 years as a communications executive for the PGA Tour’s biggest events? A jukebox of epic tales ranging from the parking-lot chase with Tiger at Doral, a front row seat for the Keegan Bradley-Miguel Angel Jiminez greenside clash, and a late night meal at an Atlanta Waffle House where he shared a special drink with a stranger the night Arnold Palmer passed. TGJ Editor...

Nashville-based singer-songwriter Ben Rector writes from a place of vulnerability, forming a bond with his fans by letting them behind the curtain. And while he and host Tom Coyne have just recently met, they sound very much like old friends on this episode. During their conversation, Rector discusses the best places to peg it on tour, golf in the Nashville music scene, life as an independent arti...

College football fans know the legendary writing, podcasting and Twitter rants of Spencer Hall. But what does he know about golf? Just enough to be dangerous. Hall joins TGJ Editor Travis Hill to discuss his story in TGJ No. 14 about Ray Ray Whitley, a virtual golfer Hall created to survive an early-quarantine sports black hole. They go on to workshop some golf takes like how Phil Mickelson is a w...

If you’re open to it, the game can provide some life-changing surprises. So it is with Mike Madden and host Tom Coyne. Madden, son of legendary NFL coach and broadcaster John Madden, and Coyne never knew each other before they teed off. Now, Madden is passing him secret turducken recipes and they’re talking about a trip to play in Ireland. This conversation retraces the steps of their round at Phi...

 It’s been a hell of a ride. In the early 1950s, he was watching declassified rocket explosions filmed by his father. During the 1960s, in the shadow of Riviera, he learned the game from Willie Hunter by flying 4-irons into the Pacific. In 1964 he helped produce some of the first music videos, and by 1966 he was part of the revolutionary Bones Brigade that introduced skateboarding to Europe. Over...

Fresh off his byline in TGJ No. 13, Golfer’s Journal Contributor Chris Solomon returns to the show to talk about the inspiration behind “Infinite Loop,” the brotherhood behind the traveling carry bag that’s now been around the world twice, how to properly pitch a TGJ story, and the fear that comes when putting pen to paper. 

This week on TGJ Digital we released “Now What?” — a new feature where contributing writer Will Bardwell asks a variety of golf industry members the big question: After golf’s biggest summer in decades, what will, and should, once-struggling golf courses do with their unexpected revenue? Assistant Editor Casey Bannon connects with Bardwell to go beyond the reporting of the piece, and further the c...

With Aronimink Golf Club set to host the KPMG Ladies PGA Championship, Tom Coyne and Casey Bannon pay the Donald Ross blue-chipper a visit in search of the real stories behind two of golf’s most under-appreciated characters: John Shippen and John McDermott. As it quickly becomes apparent, you can’t talk about America’s first Black golf professional and caddie-turned-U.S. Open-champion without the...

The USGA Museum has been closed to the public for months. But that didn’t stop TGJ Senior Writer and podcast host Tom Coyne from finagling an all-access tour in preparation for the U.S. Open at Winged Foot. Alongside Museum Director Hilary Cronhim, he finds Mickey Wright’s jewelry, the original sheet music to Winged Foot’s fight song (because every course should have a fight song),  the most clutc...

“I’ve always said that if other architects would stay out of Virginia, then I’d stay out of their states too.” After a late introduction to the golf design game, Lester George has made good on his promise to dominate the Dominion state. His in-state roster now consists of top-100 projects like Kinloch, the quietly explosive Langley Air Force Base, and the mindbender at Ballyhack. And that’s where...

Charles Lindsay describes himself as “a conceptual artist-adventurer, whose work synthesizes ideas about technology, time, eco-systems, and semiotics.” And he believes playing a ton of golf falls into that description. Lindsay joins host Tom Coyne for a wide-ranging discussion on golf’s relationship with hunting, the search for extraterrestrials, becoming unlikely playing partners with John Updike...

Ken Wang has a degree in economics from MIT, is the brother of fashion designer Vera Wang, and, most important to us, is the founder/owner of the Pete Dye-designed Pound Ridge Golf Club in New York. He joins Tom Coyne to discuss his fervent belief in public courses, how Dye got what he wanted in the design, the democratization of the game, and how Vera plays “Bill Clinton golf.”

COVID, cheating, distance debates, course closures and a lack of diversity—golf’s recent news cycle has been gloomy. But it’s not all bad out there. Host Tom Coyne called some folks from around the golf world who have some good news to share. He went beyond the headlines and found the Navajo Nation’s booming dirt course; a staggering drop in suicide rates thanks to the Veterans Golfer’s Associatio...

Colton Craig is a 27-year-old golf-course architect and founder of the Perry Maxwell Society. Over the past year he’s quit his apprentice gig, opened his own design firm, visited every Maxwell design in the U.S., and become a first-time father. He unpacks the trials and tribulations of his journey over nine holes at Maxwell's first design, Dornick Hills, with assistant Editor Casey Bannon. 

You know she teed it up with the men. But there’s still much to learn about Annika Sorenstam’s trailblazing PGA Tour appearance at the 2003 Colonial. Featuring candid interviews with Sorenstam and Aaron Oberholser, along with journalists and marshalls who witnessed it first-hand, host Tom Coyne and TGJ Assistant Editor Casey Bannon re-live the controversial resistance from male and female pros, th...

Before there was the broken tee, there was the original one. Host Tom Coyne and Assistant Editor Casey Bannon dive into the remarkable life of Dr. George F. Grant—the second African American graduate of Harvard Dental School, and inventor of the wooden golf tee in 1899.   

Ken Kearney went from a decorated Irish amateur player to a career in finance to golf-course architect. For his next big challenge, he wants to shrink the game. 

Contributing Editor D.J. Piehowski makes his return to the TGJ Podcast—reading his thorough TGJ No. 11 profile on the reverse routing at remote Silvies Valley Ranch. Fellow TGJ contributor Neil Schuster joins him to add commentary and context from their homestead into Eastern Oregon’s rugged frontier.   

No place is safe from the ravages of the COVID-19 virus, even host Tom Coyne’s beloved Carne Golf Links on the remote Western coast of Ireland. The shutdown there has left scores unemployed and the course’s future in doubt. Carne chairman Gerry Maguire takes us there as he reads from the personal diary he kept during a week from hell.

Host Tom Coyne serves as our commanding general on this docu-pod exploration of golf through World War II in the 1940s—the last time golf was forced to mark and step away. 

Renowned sports psychologist Dr. Bob Winters returns, this time to answer subscriber questions about golf's new normal.  

This is the 17th Players Championship for TGJ editor and grizzled vet Travis Hill. He gave newbie Casey Bannon one day to find a Sawgrass story he hadn’t heard. Challenge accepted.