The Last Day of Winter(golf) 2017

Wow, what a wild ride this wintergolf season has been, right? The highs. The lows. But really mostly the highs. November through February, the entire period was positively gay with unseasonable warm weather and golfing joy, and not just here. All across the northern latitudes, people wintergolfed their faces off.

How To Play Golf in New York City: East River Bikeway Edition

Golf. You'd be surprised at how accessible it is from the island of Manhattan. One of my favoritest routes to get to golf is the one that runs along the shore of the East River and down the entire "Loisaida" (that's local-slang for "Lower East Side", you honky) to the doorstep of the Staten Island Ferry terminal.

Closing Time, part III: End

I tried to maintain a state of stoic denial as long as I could. I thought I would time-shift my last days of 2014-15 Wintergolf, spreading the posts out in a vain attempt to savor the final good vibes of the season. And so here it ends, most unceremoniously.

The Weekend Runaround

A flurry of activity lately. Weather's been hitting the sweet spot lately--around 40º with windchills. That's about the line that separates the hobbyists and the truly afflicted. This is what I've waited all year for, right? Time to get out there and get it, by train, bus or boat.

The Legitimategolf Reality Tour, volume 1

Mr. F was understandably hesitant to have his actual identity associated with this blog, but there's his hat sitting in the rough.

Over the weekend I had a visitor. One of our brave readers from south of the Mason-Dixon came up to the city for a bit of adventure, personal edification, some light tourism, and to experience first-hand a slice of ghetto golf life.

Due to circumstances we ended up playing Dyker Beach twice in three days. Not the best itinerary, but perhaps good for my Southern friend in that this would at least offer him a deeper, rawer, more immersive experience. This is after all the ground-zero of ghetto golf in the Americas, in my opinion.

Ghettogolf Radio: "Feel the Pain"

Let's flashback to a simpler time--when music still had heart and soul, and the music video was still considered a legitimate form of entertainment--The Nineties! This alternative rock semi-hit by indie guitar rock heros Dinosaur Jr. popped up on my internet radio recently and hearing it I thought: "Wasn't there also a wacky golf-themed video?"

The 2014 Brooklyn Open

This year's Brooklyn Open will be played on Monday, July 7th 2014, just eight months after its debut last October. According to tournament director Rich McDonough, the event was moved up to the summer for the better weather and playing conditions and on account of some construction planned for the fall.

Otherwise it looks to be more or less the same format as last year's, with four amateur divisions and one professional. Find out more and register at brooklynopen.com.

Legitimategolf In The Matrix

Launch monitor technology is everywhere in the golf universe these days. It's employed in telecasts to make the action seem more interesting. It's used as a teaching tool. And when calibrated properly a launch monitor is an invaluable sales tool for the retail industry.

I have mixed feelings. I mean, I suppose technology was instrumental in the discovery of the "new ballflight laws" which I'd consider somewhat relevant to living a good golf-life. But then again when you have rank amateurs freely tossing around terms like smash factor or angle of descent everyone loses, in my opinion. I mean it's natural to be wowed by all the hard data that comes out of these devices, but doesn't it seem that, on balance, worrying over such information creates more issues for golfers than it solves? (Granted I am a sucker for any conspiracy theory that involves the man trying to distract us from the real issues.)

Ghetto Golf, volume 11: Douglaston Park Golf Course, Queens

[This edition of Ghetto Golf was plucked out of the earth a couple weeks ago and stored on a shelf so that it could be enjoyed during these barren times.]

The latest stop on the Legitimategolf New York City Golf Tour takes us out near city limits once again, way out to the neighborhood of Douglaston, Queens. I was hereabouts not that long ago, whacking balls and checking out the instant noodle selection at the Alley Pond practice range. Douglaston Park GC is like Alley Pond in that the Korean flag has been pretty much planted here--this is K-town golf territory now.

Dark Thoughts vol. 7: Raising the dead

A couple days of warm and rain at the start of the week here turned out to be a gigantic boon--it cleaned up most of the snow cover, which had gone all dirty and granulated and hard. More cold temps followed, but a brief window of opportunity opened up late in the week. Now most people probably wouldn't consider 30° F an "opportunity" but hey it's your old pal Legitgolf. Master of layers.

See, golf's great because it's a winter sport and it doesn't even know it (apologies to the late Mitch Hedberg). Seriously, you tell people around the water-cooler that you just got back from skiing in sub-zero temperatures and that makes you some kind of a cool guy. But talk about playing golf anywhere near the freezing point of water and you'll be considered some kind of lunatic. Where's the logic in that? I don't see it.

2013 Season End Watch part IV: counting down the seconds

I managed to get in another 18 this weekend, this time at Dyker Beach. The weather was borderline nice, which made me waffle over the matter about a hundred times before finally giving in.

Since there was (naturally) a lot of people at the course,  I was placed in a foursome which was a little weird for me. Because I'd played most of my golf alone for the last couple of months, it was sort of like a feral child being reintroduced into civilization. They were distant concepts to me, but I was more or less able to recall the etiquette, politeness and small-talk that I had learned in a previous life. Still I managed to step in someone's putting line a couple times.

Dark Thoughts: vol. 4: 2013 Season End Watch

We got some snow this week, and now it's being followed up by freezing temperatures for the forecastable future. Which means we are now at the point where every round, just might be the final round of the 2013 season. Now I try not to assign too much significance to the passing of Gregorian calendar-based intervals; the more salient point here is that each round played in these precarious times, just might be the last round for a really f'n long time.

I don't really feel that in my gut that it's the end, nor are there any major storm events on the horizon, but you just never know. Back at the end of '10, hard winter came early; the golf season was slammed shut right after Thanksgiving and wasn't revived until March. Really dark times.

Ghetto Golf vol 9: Kissena Park GC, Flushing, Queens

The clubhouse--very much the standard-issue NYC parks institutional style.

We're well into December and yet, the Legitimategolf NYC Golf Tour rolls on. Believe it!

Q: What do you think of Flushing, Queens?

A: I think it's a great idea.

[From a joke book I read when I was nine.]

Kissena Park is way out east in deep Queens, just past the much more well-known Flushing Meadows Park, which is known to most people as the home of the tennis US Open, the New York Mets and the 1964 World's Fair. If you're anything like me you're probably wondering what the hell is a "kissena"?

Ghetto Golf, vol. 8: Pelham Bay GC, Bronx

Located way, way up in the northeast Bronx, Pelham Bay is perhaps the most remote, far-flung course within the New York City golf matrix.

Dark Thoughts vol. 3: Scenes from a botched weekender

It was seasonably cold over the weekend. The plan was to arrive two and half hours before sunset, and hopefully blast my way through a super-fast, super-twilight 18. On a day like this, who could be teeing off at that time?

I badly miscalculated the situation though and ended up making a mess of the whole mission.

Insane Tee-Time Deals From Around The World

The theme of this week is bargains.

I'm sort of a latecomer to the world of online tee times--for most of my golf life, I'd just buy the yearly "early twilight" discount card offered by our local courses; that was pretty much the extent of my tee-time bargain-hunting.

But as of this year that discount card no longer exists. Who could really miss it though? As I found out before long, there is a whole wide world of even better deals to be had on the internet.

A Guide to... Winter Golf, Part 1: Layering

If you are a golfer who happens to live in a semi-temperate climate, where courses stay open through winter, and your temperatures hover around the freezing point of water, you should consider yourself lucky once November rolls around.

Apologies to those of you in year-round temperate zones, you Californians and Floridians and the like, but in golf terms you are not as lucky as you think. With no offseason, you get no break from the epidemic of slow play or the mind-numbing douchebaggery of the super-casual set. In a lot of warm places the "offseason" is arguably among the worst times to play golf, with "Canadians" and other weirdos migrating in from the upper latitudes, clogging up courses and inflating greens fees.

Also let's face it, living in a winter-less climate dulls the senses. One of the great joys of life on Earth is experiencing that first flush of spring after a long dark winter, getting back on the course and feeling in one's bones the redemptive power of the sun awakening you and every other living organism around. Another of life's unlikely pleasures is that of coming back inside to a hot beverage, after a few hours of chasing pars in the cold. It is these such contrasts that remind you that you are alive, right?

Legitimategolf Diaries: Autumn special

In the last post, I pretty much welcomed in the winter golf season. Early in the week, the temps sunk to around 40 degrees (F) so eagerly I took to Dyker Beach GC hoping to get in a fast one.

To my satisfaction the temperatures kept most people off the course, but when I got there I was surprised to see a still-very lush environment, still in the flush of fall--guess I was a little premature with that last post. So, I thought I'd put up some photos for those who might enjoy a bit of fall foliage.

Dark Thoughts, volume 1

For most of us, the golf season is winding down. The auspices, mounting for weeks, can no longer be ignored, even by the most optimistic among us.

Ghetto Golf, vol. 7: Silver Lake GC, Staten Island

Bye, home. See you in a few.

I've been in New York City for over a decade; I've been a NYC golfer since 2005. Yet in all that time, like a lot of Manhattanites, I've never set foot on the island known as Staten; never had a reason to. (After a while this becomes a weird, snobbish point of pride--never been there, never will!) Despite what the NYC transit map inaccurately depicts, it's not that close to Manhattan, and then there's that forbidding $13 toll charge if you want to cross the Verrazano Bridge by car.

But last week after the Brooklyn Open had finished, I was waiting at the bus stop in front of Marine Park when a tournament volunteer saw my clubs and struck up a conversation. He asked if I had ever played in Staten Island, and sang the praises of one of the courses there, Silver Lake. What's more, he claimed, getting there by ferry from either Brooklyn or Manhattan was quick and easy, even more so than the trip to Marine Park which, let's face it, is closer to the Atlantic Ocean than to actual New York City proper. Even for a lot of Brooklynites on the opposite edge of town, the trip to MPGC is forbiddingly long.