If you’ve been to St. Andrews, Scotland, there’s a good chance you’ve been to The Jigger Inn, the famous pub next to the Old Course Hotel. If not, you’ve missed a true taste of the “Auld Grey Toon.” Now the toon—er, town—and the Inn, which still inhabits its original 1850 building, are offering a new taste, the eponymous Jigger Ale, which will only be sold on ... Read more

One story regarding the birth of golf goes something like this:  a group of shepherds watching over their flocks along the eastern coast of Scotland in the late 1400s or early 1500s became bored.  Armed with the tools of their trade – namely crooks – and acting on the natural male instinct to hit things – in this case, pebbles (or, as some have suggested, ... Read more

Still flying well under the golf world’s radar are the unfortunate plans of Herb Kohler to make the game’s ancestral home, St. Andrews, a little more private. As I reported a few months ago, Kohler—who deserves credit for other undertakings in golf, notably his American Club in Wisconsin—submitted the winning bid for Hamilton Hall, the iconic edifice just to the right of the Royal and Ancient’s ... Read more

Okay, the first thing I have to say in this debate is: I wish it had been my idea. But it wasn’t. The “Tale of the Tape” format used to compare The Home of Golf and The Home of Golf in America comes courtesy of my peer, friend and too-occasional playing partner Brandon Tucker, Senior Writer for WorldGolf.com. I admit to having a slight bias in all ... Read more

The morning was cold and a cutting wind blew over the Old Course like a knee in the groin.  As my friend and fellow golf writer Tom Harack and I watched a couple of guys we knew teeing off on the first hole of the most famous golf layout on the planet-- a gorgeous, rugged place of power and pilgrimage, a sacred place of homecoming ... Read more

When visiting the Louvre, in Paris, for the first time, it was all I could do to keep from sprinting between great vaulted halls housing masterpieces that were as stirring as they were renowned: the Mona Lisa here, a gallery of dark, moody Rembrandt’s there, works from the Italian Renaissance around another corner. I always feel the same giddy anticipation when standing in the salt breeze ... Read more