COUNTRY CLUB OF WHISPERING PINES (PINES) Whispering Pines, N.C. Ellis Maples, 1959 Kyle Franz, 2026 $150 Course #728 Franz managed to transport Maples’ solid midcentury routing to both the 1920s and 2020s via big sandy scrapes, broad rolling fairways and properly tuned greens.

FINAL: The latest in a long line of lifeless 76s left me tied for 10th in my first National Links Trust Championship - the first of many I hope to play in. Someone fix my lag putting, please! The event and the organization overall are an indispensable counterpoint to golf’s creeping affordability crisis. Their mission is boosting golf’s accessibility and camaraderie without high-cost gatekeeping. Golf needs that sort of leadership right now. The NLT Championship fills an essential spot in the competitive golf calendar: a mid-amateur event that centers the public-course golfer and therefore is not based around high-end private golf and does not cost an arm and a leg to play in. Northwest Golf Course in Montgomery County, Maryland, was a wonderful host venue. Congrats to champion Nabeel Khan, who drove 7 1/2 hours from Ohio with wife and children in tow to play, and who will return home a champion of a great American golf tournament. I’ll have more to say about all this at @GOLFPASS this coming week, but for now, a huge thank you to the National Links Trust and their steadfast partners for this event, which represents the best of this great game.

Sitting in 6th place, 3 shots back, thru 18 holes at the @links_national Championship. Weather turned out perfect for R1. Damp and 30 degrees cooler today - let’s see what we’ve got.