3M Open

TPC Twin Cities



Smoking Those Meats

Dutch Ladies Open reaches the creative tee marker summit with mini Big Green Eggs

Try as we might, we can only resist the #brands incursion into every facet of professional golf so much. And one of those areas where resistance is futile is the burgeoning creative tee marker practice. These otherwise insignificant accoutrements are perfect for the social media age, where little bits of whimsy crash ashore and then recede back out of our consciousness into the great data lakes.

Well, dear reader, we have climbed to the creative tee marker summit thanks to many a cargo-shorted cook's favorite backyard smoking apparatus. I do not know the circumstances under which Big Green Egg, a company that primarily makes ceramic smokers and originated out of Atlanta, came to be the title sponsor of the Dutch Ladies Open at Rosendaelsche Golf Club on the Ladies European Tour. But I am grateful they did, because now we have mini-smokers for tee makers and Paul Bunyan-sized smokers for course decorations.

The super market shopping carts, the paint cans, the courier trucks, the chickens that kids decorate to give each their own individual flair -- all of these are fine and welcome tee marker decorations. The same goes for the understated classics. We are, after all, talking about tee markers and even in this bitterly divisive internet world, it would seem hard to provoke strong opinions about tee markers. But some are objectively better than others and these little smokers are the new standard.

The holiday weekend approaches here in the United States, where outdoor cooking of all forms is celebrated. Perhaps they can make them functional for kids (with appropriate parental supervision) and some of the diminutive golfers out there.