The Loop
Missing Links: Golf's decline in the UK and where have all the nicknames gone?
By John Strege
Stories worth your time, in case you missed them:
In 1983, there were 12 tournaments played in England and Wales, Derek Lawrenson notes in the United Kingdom's Golf Today. Today there are two, "which, funnily enough, mirrors exactly the number of full-time golf correspondents presently employed by newspapers in these isles." An interesting look at the decline of golf and golf coverage in the United Kingdom.
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(Getty Images photo)
Augusta National Golf Club set a precedent of including female members and now the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews and Muirfield Golf Club will vote on doing likewise. Here is Golf World contributor John Huggan's take on the Royal & Ancient Golf Club's impending vote and here is the Scotsman's report on Muirfield following suit.
Matt Fitzpatrick made history by becoming the first Englishman to win the U.S. Amateur and he made news by leaving Northwestern after his first semester. Next week he plays in the Masters. James Corrigan profiles Fitzpatrick in the Telegraph.
We've reported on Jimmy Walker's avocation in astrophotography, which has resulted in NASA using two of his photographs on its Astronomy Picture of the Day website, but Helen Ross has gone into greater detail in this story at PGATour.com, including Walker's visit to the Steward Observatory Mirror Laboratory in Tucson, where the biggest telescope in the world is under construction.
"Where have all the nicknames gone?" the headline on John Paul Newport's column in the Wall Street Journal asks. Newport recalls bygone days of the King, the Hawk and the Silver Scot and laments the dearth of colorful and descriptive nicknames today.
Brandel Chamblee's roommate at Texas was Paul Thomas, an Englishman whose father Dave Thomas was an accomplished player, twice a runner-up in the British Open. Chamblee weighs in on a trip to Scotland he made with Paul in the summer of 1982 and his encounters with, among others, a naked Sean Connery and Jack Nicklaus and renowned artist Harold Riley, both fully clothed.