Golf Compendium

Big Break Indian Wells was the 15th season of the Golf Channel series The Big Break , a competition series in which golfers matched games in various challenges and one cast member was eliminated each week. Big Break Indian Wells aired in 2011, premiering on the network on May 16, 2011. It ran for 10 episodes.

The term "fluffy lie" is applied by golfers when a golf ball is sitting up in high or even long rough, so that there is space underneath the ball between the ball and the ground.

What is the PGA Tour record for winning the same tournament the most years in a row? That record is four — four consecutive wins in the same tournament. It's been done five times, by four golfers.

Betty Jameson was a pioneer of the women's professional golf scene, turning pro at a time when there were probably fewer than a dozen women pro golfers. She won major championships, including a U.S. Women's Open, and was one of the 13 founders of the LPGA Tour. Although her LPGA win total of 13 doesn't stack up to some of her contemporaries, Jameson was one of the most important figures in women's golf in the 1940s and early 1950s.

The Leeds Cup, or Leeds Challenge Cup, debuted in the first years of the 20th century, and for nearly half a century attracted the top golfers among British tournament professionals.

Once upon a time in golf's history, the lands on which golfers played were public lands that were frequently criss-crossed by townsfolk, either walking or riding in (or pushing) carts or wagons. The wheels of those carts and wagons left impressions in the ground — ruts, or tracks. So what would a golf club designed specifically to extricate golf balls from wagon wheel ruts or cart wheel tracks be called?

What is a "cuppy lie" on the golf course? The key in understanding it is to think of, well, a cup. The expression "cuppy lie" is one that announcers on golf television and streaming broadcasts sometimes use to describe the way a golf ball is sitting after it comes to rest. Here's what it means:

How many father-and-son tandems in the history of the PGA Tour have both recorded tournament wins? So far, there have been 10 such duos, and they include a few very big names in golf history.

Dave Ragan was a PGA Tour golfer who won several tournament in the 1950s and 1960s, and also challenged Jack Nicklaus at a PGA Championship. He then spent many years as a highly regarded golf instructor.

2-1-1 is the name of a golf game for a group of four golfers who pair off into two-player teams. The 2-1-1 in the title of the game refers to the number of points available to be won on each hole.

Roger Wethered was a top amateur golfer in Great Britain in the 1920s and 1930s, one who won the British Amateur and made the championship match two other times. But he's probably best-known today as the golfer who almost chose playing in a cricket match to playing in a playoff for the British Open.

In 2010, a fire broke out on Shady Canyon golf course in Irvine, Calif. Another fire hit Arroyo Trabuco Golf Club in Mission Viejo, Calif. Investigators could find no cause for the fires, but had a suspicion that the fires may have started due to sparks caused by a golf club hitting rock.

What is the bomb-and-gouge style of golf? What kind of golf is a bomb-and-gouge golfer playing? Basically, the term means paying more attention to distance off the tee, and less to accuracy: Hit it as far as you can (bomb it) and then, if necessary, muscle the ball out of the rough (gouge it).

What is the biggest gap — the longest amount of time — in tour history between a golfer's first PGA Tour win and that same golfer's last PGA Tour win? The all-time record is over 30 years. Meaning the record-holder's last win happened 30 years after his first win.

Have any golfers won the U.S. Open the very first time they played the tournament? Yes, it has happened five times. But it's been more than 100 years since the last time it happened.

One of the most obscure U.S. Open champs, Joe Lloyd was an English golfer who came to America part-time and became what we now call a major champion in 1897. He also has the distinction of being the first golf professional in France.

Which golfer has posted the lowest scores in back-to-back rounds in a U.S. Open golf tournament? And how low did he go?

The 2020 U.S. Open was the 120th time this major championship of men's professional golf was played. And the champion was the only golfer who finished under par.

The Office Depot Championship was a golf tournament on the LPGA Tour that began in South Carolina and ended in Los Angeles. In six of the nine years it was played, it was won by a member of the then-LPGA Tour's "Big 3."

Bettye Danoff never won on the LPGA Tour, but she still has a very important place in tour history: She was one of the tour's 13 founding members. She had some amateur wins of note in the 1940s, and played LPGA events into the 1970s. Danoff also once ended a 17-tournament winning streak by Babe Didrikson Zaharias.

"Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green" is the name of a statistical category on the PGA Tour that compares a golfer's performance in all elements of the game other than putting against the similarly measured performances of all other golfers in the field.

Below you'll find the list of all the golfers who have earned low amateur honors at the U.S. Open golf championship. The list goes back to the very first U.S. Open played in 1895, when exactly one amateur completed the tournament, thus earning the low amateur honor.

Who are the best amateur performers in the history of the U.S. Open golf championship? Well, the best is Bobby Jones (pictured), given that he won four times. We'll take a look here at all the amateurs who've won a U.S. Open, plus a few other U.S. Open tournament records relating to amateur golfers.

The surprise winner of the 1946 Masters was Herman Keiser. And for decades after he won — for the rest of his life, really — Keiser was convinced that Augusta National Golf Club members had tried to stop him from winning.

"Strokes Gained: Approach the Green" is the name of a statistical category on the PGA Tour that measures a golfer's performance relative to the field in approach shots played into greens.

Horace Rawlins was an English golf professional whom happenstance brought into the field at the very first U.S. Open, which he then won. Rawlins worked at multiple golf clubs in the United States, and still holds two U.S. Open tournament records.

"Strokes Gained: Around-the-Green" is the name of a statistic on the PGA Tour that measures a golfer's performance on shots played from around the green — short pitches, chip shots, bunker shots — against the performance on those shots of the tournament field as a whole.

The Emerald Coast Classic, which was named The Boeing Championship at Sandestin by the time the event ended, was a golf tournament on the Champions Tour from the mid-1990s through the middle of the first decade of the 21st century.

The PGA Tour statistic known as Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee was introduced in 2016, and has been calculated back to 2004 using ShotLink data. "SG: Off-the-Tee" is a measure of a PGA Tour player's performance on drives hit on par-4 and par-5 holes compared to the rest of the field.

In the 1938 U.S. Open, a little-known club professional named Ray Ainsley wrote his name into the U.S. Open record books. Unfortunately for Ainsley, it was for doing something wrong: scoring 19 on a single hole.

Ever hear a golfer (or golf announcer) use the phrase "circle on the scorecard"? If you've wondered what that expression means, it means this: a birdie.

The U.S. Open golf tournament has ended in a playoff many times since its beginning in 1895. Those playoffs have taken place over 18 holes, 36 holes — even, one year, 72 holes. There have been 2-player and 3-player playoffs, but not yet a 4-player playoff.

Arizona Shuffle is the name of a golf tournament format in which the golfers on a team (usually 4-person, but sometimes 3-person teams) are playing their own golf balls throughout, and on each hole a different number of the team members' scores are combined for the team score.

How many golfers have won the U.S. Open wire-to-wire? The total so far is 17, with nine of those leading start to finish but being tied for the lead after one or more rounds; and eight of them leading start-to-finish and leading outright after every round.

A pitch and putt golf course is a course with only short holes — holes that typically are all so short as to require literally only pitch shots and putts.

The British Amateur Championship is run by the R&A, and its official title is simply The Amateur Championship. Many golfers (mostly in the United States) call it the British Amateur to distinguish it from the U.S. Amateur.

Who are the oldest golfers to win tournaments on the pro golf tours? That's the question we answer here. Below is the rundown, going tour by tour, and also including the major championships of men's and women's golf.

The record for most wins in the U.S. Open golf championship is four, and it is shared by four golfers. Two other golfers have won it twice each. And there are currently another 17 golfers with two wins in the U.S. Open.

We've seen lots of golf tournaments over the years played in poor weather. But what's the worst weather ever at a pro tour event? Terrible weather that raked the golf course, yet the tour pros kept playing in it? Ask 100 pro golfers, you might get 100 answers. Unless you ask the golfers who played in the 1973 John Player Classic on the European Tour.