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Since its introduction in 1963, the PGA Tour's Q School has routinely been one of the most dramatic, heart-wrenching golf tournaments on the planet. This is where careers are made, and where just as often they're broken before they have a chance to soar. Where did it come from? How has it changed? Why did it disappear, only to return last year? This week, we investigate the institution of the Q School, and the outsize place it occupies in the minds of professional golfers.
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On Aug. 8, Chi Chi Rodriguez passed away at age 88 and left behind him a legacy of a player whose reputation and personality exceeded his relatively modest success. That's how he would have wanted it: Rodriguez was an entertainer at heart, and he always had a joke or an elaborate celebration up his sleeve. But for this child of poverty from Puerto Rico, there's so much that stayed hidden, and it goes deeper than the surface image of a lovable jokester.
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Long before Scottie Scheffler took gold in Paris, and more than a century before Justin Rose won in Rio, Olympic golf existed in the very early history of the Olympic games. This is the incredibly strange story of Olympic golf in 1900 and 1904, when chaos and confusion ruled, and only rarely gave way to Olympic glory.
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In the second part of our early history series, we hone in on Scotland, and take you from the 1400s all the way to the rise of the first clubs—including the ascendancy of St. Andrews—that transformed the sport entirely and laid the groundwork for what it is today.
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Where did golf come from? The easy answer to that question is "Scotland," but the historical record isn't quite so clear. Going back to the 1300s, surviving documents and drawings suggest the story is more complicated than we thought. This week, we're investigating the earliest origins of the game, and asking where it truly originated.
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July marks the 25th anniversary of one of the two most notorious collapses in major championship history when Jean Van de Velde lost a three-shot lead on the final hole at Carnoustie. In the wake of Rory McIlroy's loss at Pinehurst, the Frenchman's late meltdown feels more relevant than ever; not just for the bizarre way it happened, but for his remarkable reaction, both then and in the 25 years since.
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Cyril Walker put together the four rounds of his life in 1924 at the U.S. Open in Oakland Hills, defeating Bobby Jones in the final round and etching his name in golf history. So why don't more of us know him? The sad reality of Jones' life is that he fell into a spiral not long after his greatest triumph, and met a sad end in a New Jersey jail cell. This is his story.
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This summer marks the 25th anniversary of Payne Stewart's triumph at Pinehurst in the 1999 U.S. Open, and as fate would have it, the National Open is back in at no. 2. In this podcast, we examine the life of Payne Stewart in living color, up to his great victory in North Carolina and his tragic death later that fall.
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We've spent a decade wondering when Rory McIlroy will win his next major, but as the PGA Championship heads to Valhalla, we turned our eyes backward, to the last time he pulled it off. On that hot, humid Sunday in Kentucky, Rory asserted his will and claimed his throne atop the sport ... and it was one of those strangest finishes you could ever imagine.
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Before the professional of Tiger Woods ever began, a PGA Tour committee met and determined that Sam Snead had accumulated 82 official wins in his PGA Tour career. As fate would have it, this is the exact number Tiger has landed on as his career seems to be winding down. In this podcast, we go deep on Snead's wins, and why that 82 total is—sorry to say it—highly dubious.
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When Roberto De Vicenzo signed an incorrect scorecard to lose the 1968 Masters, it represented not just his failure, but the failure of several individuals and institutions, including Augusta National itself. This is the story of what really happened that day on the course, and why De Vicenzo is only partly to blame for the greatest blunder in the history of major championship golf.
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What happens when two men who are each forces of nature, in their own way, clash at the most prestigious championship in American golf? When one is rich and handsome and headstrong, but the other is the lord of Augusta National? When Cliff Roberts, the chairman of Augusta, and Frank Stranahan, the playboy son of a millionaire, collided at the Masters in 1948, it was inevitable that something wild would happen. And something did—a controversy that shed a light on two of the strangest American lives in golf history, and gave a glimpse at the paranoia and exclusivity that dominated old Augusta.
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The Official World Golf Ranking has never enjoyed the prominence it has today, but it's not the good kind of prominence. With some of the world's best players no longer receiving points since they're with LIV, the OWGR is under fire, and even LIV-neutral observers think it might be dying. But what is the OWGR? How does it work? How did it come about historically? This week on Local Knowledge, we go deep on the system that is reeling, and might need a eulogy before long.
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If you only knew the late Pete Dye as a funny and somewhat crotchety old man, and if you only know a little about his life's work, from Sawgrass to Whistling Straits, you might not have the sense of his hard edge—how he pursued his creative visions with zealous focus, and how we would say what he needed to say and do what he needed to do to see that vision to fulfillment. With his wife Alice, he forged one of the greatest design careers ever, and his sheer genius led the way at every turn.
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If there's a Jackie Robinson of golf, the title goes to Charlie Sifford, the first black man to be a full member of the PGA Tour. Every part of his journey was difficult, from the obstacles that kept him from competing with the best players in the world until he was almost 40, to the virulent racial hatred he faced once he got there. But unlike some of his fellow athletic pioneers, Sifford never softened, even in his later years as the world tried to make it right by showering him with awards. As he told one reporter, "If you'd been through what I've been through, you wouldn't be smiling either." This is his story.
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It has been almost 12 full years since Anthony Kim last hit a shot on the PGA Tour, and in that time, he managed to almost disappear completely. But the legend around him has grown in his absence, and now, as he's on the precipice of possibly playing once again, we look at the life and career of one of the most intriguing golfers since Tiger Woods. Who was he, where did he come from, and what happened when it was all over? Is the mystery something that can ever be explained, and can our fascination with him survive his return?
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The idea that is currently splitting professional golf in half was born around 2010, scribbled in a feverish bout of inspiration on yellow legal pads. The author was Andy Gardiner, a corporate finance lawyer, and ideas weren't his only strong suit. Over the next decade and more, Gardiner used his connections high in the worlds of golf and business to forget a relentless and occasionally brilliant campaign to bring his idea to reality. It was called the Premier Golf League, and depending on who you believe, it may have come to the very precipice of success. In the end, even with big investors like the PIF, the PGA Tour outmaneuvered Gardiner and the PGL, and consolidated its power over the game. When the PIF came back with the full war chest at its disposal, it carried key components of Gardiner's idea, and even some of his top lieutenants, but not Gardiner himself. But when you tell the saga of LIV Golf and its war against the PGA Tour, Gardiner remains one of the most fascinating figures; one who got so close, and whose idea is even still rocking the sport. This is his story.
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In May of 1981, in the parking lot of Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a man named Johnny Martorano killed his 19th victim. His target was the millionaire businessman Roger Wheeler, owner of a company called Telex that employed 5,000 people in Tulsa alone. Wheeler had been successful his whole life, but when he delved into a mob-connected business, he didn't realize in time that the men he became involved with were more dangerous than the average business rival. A network of corrupt FBI agents and the infamous Winter Hill Gang, including their leader Whitey Bulger, got nervous when Wheeler asked too many questions, and set in motion a crime whose effects are still felt today—and it all happened on one of the most renowned golf courses in America.
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The saga of John Montague is one that simultaneously feels like pure fantasy but is also purely American. In 1932, Montague appeared in Beverly Hills seemingly out of nowhere, and through his jaw-dropping golf game, became friends with the biggest stars in the world. Word of his exploits spread far and wide, and when Grantland Rice wrote about him in a national column, the mystery deepened. Why, if he was so good, wouldn't he play in any tournaments? As that mystery unraveled, so too did the life of Montague, who was in fact an escaped criminal from New York named LaVerne Moore. The saga of Montague remains one of the most perplexing, fascinating side stories in the history of amateur golf.
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The word "cheat" is golf's one-syllable powder keg, and whenever it appears, fireworks follow. That was the case at the first-ever Skins Game, in Arizona in 1983, when Tom Watson pulled Gary Player aside along with a rules official to privately accuse him of breaking the rules at a critical moment in the event. A reporter was close enough to listen in, and when the story ran, two of the sport's foremost figures were embroiled in controversy. This is the story of two strong personalities, impressive and difficult in their own unique ways, butting heads on a controversial day that lives on in both men's legacies.
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