Fat Guy Golf Monthly

This is just a spot to highlight a few pages on the site every month, based on such whims as where I've been playing lately, good seasonal destinations, where the Tour's playing, and other favorites.

November 2011

Daufuskie Island SC's Melrose Course- "One Island Too Far"  I recently stumbled on a great ESPN.com Outside The Lines article by my favorite feature sports writer, Wright Thompson, about this former 4-1/2 star oceanside Jack Nicklaus course. A poster child of the real estate excesses of the '80's & '90's, the Daufuskie Island Resort it was built for went bankrupt. Its Melrose course was a mower's crankshaft away from being abandoned, held together on less than a shoe string by a couple of seriously dedicated (crazy) guys at the behest of the bankruptcy court judge. It's still open, and in remarkable shape. You have to take a 45-minute boat ride to get there. Anybody can book a weekend at Bandon Dunes. If you're a golf adventurer, this is the pentiultimate golf adventure in the States.

Fat Guy's Sports Bar Golf Trail- The thick of football season is the perfect time to go exploring America's best sports bars. Here's a "golf trail" I put together pairing some of the best sports bars in the country (as ranked by Sports Illustrated, the major golf mags, my usual web sources, and a few of my own nominations thrown in), paired up with a good nearby "6-pack-hidden-in-your-golf-bag" course.

Fat Guy's Latest Round- Wilmington (DE) Country Club Yes, it's private and hoighty-toighty, but this is the dream we all dream of. 36 classic holes designed by Robert Trent Jones (the tougher South course hosted the 1971 U.S. Amateur and recently received a $4.5 million Keith Foster renovation), located on part of a former DuPont estate, a long tree-lined entrance drive, a TPC-level short game complex, a range with heated computerized hitting bays for winter swing analysis and lessons, and the grill room serves up some of the best snapper soup in the country.

Horrible Bosses Golf Weekend- Woodland Hills CA. I had fairly low expectations of this movie going in, and went to see it primarily because it happened to be in theaters on one of a handfull of nights my wife and I have had a babysitter in the 4 years since my son was born, plus the fact that Jennifer Anniston was supposed to be some kind of oversexed maneater in the film. Imagine my shock when it turned out to be the funniest movie I'd seen since The Hangover two years earlier. Here's how to do a golf weekend like Dale, Kurt, and Nick would.

Fat Guy's Link Of The Month- Zane Lamprey's Drinking Made Easy www.drinkingmadeeasy.com. I've been a fan of Zane Lamprey's pub-crawl travelogue/drinking-game/show ever since the first episodes of his original series, Three Sheets, aired on Spike back in about 2009. He's since changed networks to HD Net and changed the name of the show to Drinking Made Easy. In each episode, Zane and his crew descend on a city and explore its best bars and local beers, spirits, drinks, and wines. It's basically the same show as Three Sheets, and recently they've started to run alot of new first-run episodes from out of the way towns like Boise and St. Augustine. Zane's website has cool episode guides from both shows (which I incorporate into my local profiles when I can), and an even cooler line of drinking clothes and gear (like the sweet baseball cap that has a bottle opener built into the brim).