by Chris Kretz

Last January, I entered my essay in the Golf Digest/U.S. Open contest, explaining in 100 words or less why I feel I could break 100 at Torrey Pines this June. My essay simply stated how I grew up on a golf course and have a number of club pros, course owners and instructors in my family tree. With all this golf in my bloodline, I decided to become an artist.

It's a decision I don't regret, but I feel there could have been an opportunity for me to be a successful golfer, too. Now, I'm married with a two-year-old son and I run my own graphics and printing business (www.artshowgraphics.com). Like many people, I don't get to golf much at all, plus I live in an area where our season is about six months long. Although I only play 15 to 20 rounds a year, I maintain a 7.6 index at a long and difficult course.

by Jay Flemma

Cybergolf's Jay Flemma attended yesterday's Senate Hearings featuring baseball star Roger Clemens. Though the session focused on potential abusers of steroids and human-growth hormones in Major League Baseball, it also sounded a warning for all athletes - professional or amateur - in all sports. Here's Jay's take on the historic day, and how it ultimately might affect golf.

Washington, D.C. - Like a lyric out of Pink Floyd's "The Wall," Roger Clemens went skating on the thin ice of modern life on February 13th, dragging behind him the silent reproach of a million disdained eyes. Of course, cracks in the ice appeared under his feet and he was left to claw helplessly as the last support disintegrated beneath him. We watched transfixed, horrified, but we could not turn away, jolted to the fence by the lightning strike.

by Blaine Newnham

The mystique of Ben Hogan surrounds our golf club today. We play a game called "Hogans," where you receive a point on a hole only if you hit the fairway, hit the green, and make par or better. A Hogan.

It requires impeccable play. So difficult, so Ben Hogan, So passé in the skyrocketing world of Tiger Woods. I don't think so.

Many consider Golfweek's recent cover photo of a noose depicting the suspension of Golf Channel's Kelly Tilghman stretched the bounds of honest journalism, not to mention good taste. The accompanying "Caught in a Noose" heading - with the subhead: "Tilghman slips up, and Golf Channel can't wiggle free" - has certainly got the attention of readers and golf's powers-that-be, including PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem, who said the imagery was "outrageous and irresponsible."

In a statement released by the PGA Tour, Finchem wrote: "It smacks of tabloid journalism. It was a naked attempt to inflame and keep alive an incident that was heading to an appropriate conclusion."

by Jeff Shelley

The golf club I belong to grinds to a halt on Christmas Day. The clubhouse, pro shop and golf course are all closed. But that doesn't prevent members from playing the course, nor does it keep an annual rite of winter from occurring: non-members who live in the surrounding neighborhoods trekking to our place for a not-so-surreptitious round of golf.

The tradition goes back decades at our 80-year-old course. Indeed, the people who play on December 25th are probably second- and third-generation participants in the tradition. It's pretty funny too, since most members could care less as long as the "invaders" maintain a reasonable pace of play, replace their divots, fix ball marks and keep the course in the shape they found it when they teed off, which is usually on the 10th hole that borders the upper parking lot and is not visible from the pro shop.

Scottish lawmakers are planning to question government ministers and officials about their contacts with executives working on Donald Trump's $2 billion golf development in Aberdeenshire.

Among those to be questioned are First Minister Alex Salmond, Finance Minister John Swinney, Stewart Stevenson, the minister responsible for infrastructure and James McKinnon, Scotland's chief planner. The officials will testify January 16, according to a parliament spokeswoman.

by Aidan Bradley

Just flew from Santa Barbara, Calif., to Punta Cana. Left SB at 6 p.m. and arrived the following day in the Dominican Republic at 3.30 p.m. 21 hours later. The things I do just to photograph grass.

Just flew from Santa Barbara, Calif., to Punta Cana. Left SB at 6 p.m. and arrived the following day in the Dominican Republic at 3.30 p.m. 21 hours later. The things I do just to photograph grass.

by Jay Flemma

In 2005, Golf Digest's Ron Whitten famously asked, "Is Tom Fazio good for golf?" But Whitten wasn't the only one with that question. In his piece Whitten noted, "Golf's leading designer is beloved by many, yet his courses have lifted expectations - and costs - to troubling levels." He went on to say that Fazio's strategy-light, budget-bursting designs should not be the enduring standard for golf design into the future. "Hope not," wrote Whitten, "if you're one who believes that golf should still be a test of thought and skill rather than just a walk on the beach where you never get sand in your shoes."

But this year, I began to notice a disturbing pattern" Fazio telling sportswriters and golf course raters to pay less attention to - and indeed deduct points when rating - classic golf strategies that came over from the U.K., for example - and these are his words - "perpendicular hazards."

by Tony Dear

The idea of Americans vacationing in Vietnam once sounded like a bad idea and the combination of golf and Vietnam seemed an unlikely mix. So how about Americans vacationing in Vietnam AND playing golf there? Too absurd for words, right? But the Ho Chi Minh Golf Trail opened six months ago, and Americans are loving it.

James Sullivan first visited Vietnam in 1992 on assignment for Bicycling Magazine. The Iowa Writers' Workshop grad and a friend had been hired to report on their 1,000-mile ride from Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City but you can still call it Saigon) in the south to the capital, Hanoi, in the north. About halfway there, the two stopped in the imperial city of Hue to buy batteries for a portable cassette player. They stepped into a small kiosk where they were served by a pretty young woman named Thuy. She asked if they could stay a while longer to give her sister an English lesson, which they did happily. It was all Sullivan could do though to stop looking at Thuy. He was smitten.

GCSAA has announced that, beginning in January 2008, it will conduct a national survey of golf courses focusing on pesticide use. The survey is part of a multi-year, first-of-its-kind project being undertaken by GCSAA that will document the environmental stewardship practices and establish an environmental profile of golf courses.

The "Golf Course Environmental Profile Project" is designed to collect information that will allow superintendents and other facility personnel to become better managers, help them operate more efficiently, and lead to GCSAA developing more valuable programs and services. Such information will include details about playing surfaces, natural resources, environmental stewardship efforts and maintenance practices on the golf course.