Photo by Benoit Beaumatin on Unsplash
With no live tournament golf to watch (except for the Outlaw Tour), you might feel that this is a great opportunity to clean out the garage or fix the squeaky hardwood floor in your bedroom. Not so fast – there’s lots of great content on YouTube to keep you from being productive. Here’s what I’ve been watching lately:
Masters Final Rounds
Augusta National has been gracious enough to post the final rounds as they were broadcast from every Masters tournament from 1968 to the present. It’s an amazing time capsule of hall of famers, players you’ve never heard of, players you’ve forgotten, and players who should have won but didn’t.
All of the obvious favorites are there – Jack’s sixth victory in 1986, Phil’s first victory in 2004, or Tiger’s wins in 1997 or last year. But after watching all of them (!), my favorite year was 1975. Before seeing it, I knew Jack won, but that was about all. It was a three-way scramble to the finish on the back nine between Jack, Johnny Miller, and Tom Weiskopf that any of them could have won. Great pants, great golf.
Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf – Nicklaus vs. Snead
You might be aware of this series of matches from the 60s and 70s (and they brought it back in the 90s). The PGATour just remastered and cleaned up an episode from 1963 where 23-year old Jack Nicklaus played 50-year old Sam Snead at Pebble Beach. That would be interesting enough, but they also had Jack watch the episode in the present day and give his thoughts throughout the episode. Really interesting stuff. Hard to believe they made so many birdies with those wristy putting strokes, persimmon woods, and crappy balls. And you needed a one-iron in your bag in those days apparently – those guys were fearless.
The course itself was amazing as well. Its bones haven’t changed much at all, except for the 5th hole that Jack redesigned in 1999 (he has some interesting comments about that effort). But the course conditions then were a lot different from today’s finely-manicured specimen – the greens back then were really bumpy, the fairways looked somewhat neglected, and the sand was really powdery (most lies there were fried eggs).
Golf Gods
I’m not exactly sure why this series of videos is called Golf Gods (I think there’s something that didn’t quite translate into English correctly, kind-of like those old Mentos commercials), but they’re a great collection of trick shots, fails, incredible shots, and gratuitous hot girls playing golf. There are six Golf Gods videos so far, and while you won’t feel like you’re smarter after watching them, you’ll want to watch them all.
There are a lot of golf cart shenanigans in these videos that would be potential Darwin Award candidates. I always thought it was overkill when you have to sign a waiver to rent a golf cart until seeing a large number of idiots wrecking their carts in these videos. I used to think I was being naughty when I did doughnuts in the wet grass, but there are some true jackasses out there risking their lives. And thankfully someone had their camera rolling for our entertainment.
Respond in the comments with your favorite videos!
talkingtoafade.com 