Hindsight is 20/20 but hindsight isn't required to realize that 2020 was horrific. Count this yearly post among the many things delayed. Mercifully I have avoided Covid, so far, but I did require two epidurals in the past 150 days to ameliorate a compressed disc, which allows me to identify with the 2020 theme that life is fragile and that nothing is guaranteed. Maladies stress the need to enjoy what you do on a daily basis. Given a wonky wrist which developed a few years ago and now a temperamental back, maximizing time on courses has never been more precious and where I play more selective. GolfClubAtlas’s mission to showcase and discuss where great golf exists rings ever louder. We are off to a grand start with Mike Dutton’s Feature Interview on 9-holers and a profile on one of the most important courses in the modern era, Harbour Town.
Ben, Joe and I continue to strive to make GolfClubAtlas the best it can be. To that end, we intend to freshen its presentation and below is an early stage mock draft:
THANK YOU to everyone listed in the Contribution Section for helping to make the upgrade feasible. Our product remains lean, crisp, and commercial free and we regularly strive to offer quality content via course profiles and Feature Interviews and we wish more people would contribute substantive In My Opinion pieces like Dean Knuth’s recently posted one on William Watson. Early last summer, I warned Chris Buie, who helps me assemble everything into the site, to be prepared for an avalanche of such entries. I erroneously thought people would have the time to knock out treatises on niche subjects about golf course architecture. That didn’t happen but be sure that we hope to inspire more of you to do so.
GolfClubAtlas has no space constraints and is therefore an ideal platform for deep-diving and reflects my enjoyment of ‘long form writing.’ Is this widely shared or am I Victorian and out of date? GolfClubAtlas can always pivot but against a backdrop of so many positive comments, I generally end up at
'if it ain't broke, don't fix it.'
Still, podcasts are the rage and I have been talking with Vaughn Halyard about expanding the mix at GolfClubAtlas. To that end, he and Connor Lewis recently filmed a group of ne’er-do-wells at GCA world headquarters and that will serve as the March Feature Interview. If it’s well received, you have Vaughn to blame and a trend begun! All kinds of interesting people regularly come through Southern Pines/Pinehurst, so there is a potential gold mine of visual content. My technical incompetence remains the only impediment.
I have a worse relationship with technology than I do with putters! ☹
In that vein, my wife gifted me a drone for my May birthday. Eight months later, I’ve yet to understand how to operate it. However, thanks to my wife, we got it airborne over the 4th green at Kiawah in August:
GolfClubAtlas drone lift-off command center - what could go wrong?!
The GolfClubAtlas drone in action, at least somewhat.
Perhaps I will eventually figure out how it takes pictures versus me taking a picture of it?! No wonder Vaughn routinely calls me a tech luddite.
In terms of site statistics, it all seems good. I annually meet with our hosting site and this is what they told me: GolfClubAtlas is a large, stable website that saw 5,000,000 unique page views for the year 2020 with the Discussion Group forum accounting for 40% of that. Over 300,000 sessions were logged on the forum alone, with average session time remained stable from 2019 in 2020 at about 5 1/2 mins. Forty-one percent of the GCA viewership do so from their cell phone (which marks a big shift from being the Monday - Thursday desktop workplace
😉 web site just five years ago). No great surprise, the top 3 regions are North America, Northern Europe and Australia. More specifically, the four busiest are England, California, Pennsylvania and Texas. Happily, the fastest growth in sessions came from Ireland, followed by the UK and Canada. Nearly 200,000 different devices logged in during 2020. Our growth rate was near 5%.
An interesting aside is that 'report to the moderator' button was used less in 2020 than any year prior, a very good thing. Poor adult behavior was on display seemingly everywhere else, we don’t want it here. Dick Daley crystalized GolfClubAtlas by kindly writing,
‘You are all a very special caring international community of fascinating people bonded by a common 'exciting, pleasurable’ sporting activity and all its fields of play.’ Indeed, 2020 set some sort of unofficial record for gracious notes and graceful behavior. Let’s perpetuate it! One man identified GolfClubAtlas as
'a port in the storm.' The notion that a web site can do good for the sport it serves while simultaneously enriching the lives of its own participants is a grand achievement in which
everyone should take pride.
For architecture, renovations and restorations continue to enhance the quality of the game around the world and compliment the dozen or so significant new courses that come on-line every year. Club technology marches on, reaching new heights in cost and performance . I have 4 sets of clubs in my garage - a hickory equivalent 7 iron that I can carry 130 yards, a Japanese blade 7 iron that goes 145 yards, a muscle back blade with less loft that’s good for 160 yards and a hyped-up, turned-down, 30 degree beast that I can wallop nearly 170 yards. And guess what? Phil Mickelson would hit it 215 yards! That’s the rub, an ever increasing disconnect between the Tour Player and a single digit handicap player. I heard last weekend in Arizona that a pro was ‘sneaky long’ after he hit it 325 yards!
Is this widening chasm healthy? For me, the women’s game is more relatable and therefore more watchable. However, now I hear that Maria Fassi is averaging nearly 300 yards off the tee, so … yikes!
I updated the 147 Custodians this morning - have a look! The feedback was off-the-charts fantastic from the initial endeavor, so thank you. Rather than add a single course to get to 148, I made more changes. There are several hundred courses/clubs out there that fit my criteria as a Custodian. At one addition a year, many would never get recognized, so the list turned over about 10%. Showcasing high quality golf in less obvious places like Iowa and Cleveland brings genuine pleasure.
What does 2021 hold? Joe recently mused,
‘Recreational golf, while one of the social activities largely spared by COVID restrictions, was significantly affected in several ways, some good, some not. Early in the pandemic, under the dubious concerns of surface transmission; removing flagsticks, raking bunkers and taking caddies became verboten. There was an increase in walking and push carts that became not only fashionable where previously not permitted, but impossible to find. At the same time golf cart usage increased because sharing was not deemed appropriate and quartets, even quintets, zoomed down fairways, resembling a tank assault. With the removal of rakes, bunkers became truly hazardous but often local rules allowed for preferred lies and the old ‘sand tee’ was reborn. The game is played more frequently than ever but looked a little different. Nearly a year on, the ramifications of these Covid modifications linger in many places, affecting the genteel game both positively and otherwise. Let’s hope that ultimately we’ll embrace the core values of the game rather than the expedient aberrations.’
Very true! The game is the game and it doesn’t need to be dolled up to be enjoyable. Surely, music (!) from a cart (!!) one fairway over is an assault on human decency; it’s why one course was expunged from the 147. This web site is definitely not the most glamorous, high tech offering and in some ways parallels my favorite Netflix series, Criminal, set in the UK. The television series features a mere three areas (the interrogation room, the adjacent room behind the mirror, and a hallway. That’s it. No cars flipping, nothing blowing up, just great acting (David Tennant, Sharon Horgan, etc), tight scripts and good cinematography. It’s both mesmerizing and addictive without being showy or flamboyant. Kind of like golf and GolfClubAtlas – artfully focused on reality.
Personally, the pandemic meant less travel and a renewed appreciation for life's day-to-day offerings - languid dog walks; the Queen’s Gambit which provided a respite from being thwarted at every turn by my 17 year old son (who now starts each game without a knight
; and thrashing J.C. Jones (or at least going 3-0-1) when he charged over from Charlotte. Sadly, through scientific research, I proved that having 6 putters in the garage doesn't help you hole more putts than 4. 
I hope that you agree that GolfClubAtlas steadfastly honors its long-running mission to candidly discuss and honestly disseminate valuable information toward the betterment of the sport? If not,
let us know. What can or should we do better? Bottom line is that through good times and bad, GolfClubAtlas will be there, as long as you are. This is a team effort and together we can do much.
Best wishes for a great 2021 from,
Ben, Joe and Ran