50 Things That Changed Golf

Since its introduction in 1963, the PGA Tour's Q School has routinely been one of the most dramatic, heart-wrenching golf tournaments on the planet. This is where careers are made, and where just as often they're broken before they have a chance to soar. Where did it come from? How has it changed? Why did it disappear, only to return last year? This week, we investigate the institution of the Q School, and the outsize place it occupies in the minds of professional golfers.

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On Aug. 8, Chi Chi Rodriguez passed away at age 88 and left behind him a legacy of a player whose reputation and personality exceeded his relatively modest success. That's how he would have wanted it: Rodriguez was an entertainer at heart, and he always had a joke or an elaborate celebration up his sleeve. But for this child of poverty from Puerto Rico, there's so much that stayed hidden, and it goes deeper than the surface image of a lovable jokester.

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Long before Scottie Scheffler took gold in Paris, and more than a century before Justin Rose won in Rio, Olympic golf existed in the very early history of the Olympic games. This is the incredibly strange story of Olympic golf in 1900 and 1904, when chaos and confusion ruled, and only rarely gave way to Olympic glory.

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In the second part of our early history series, we hone in on Scotland, and take you from the 1400s all the way to the rise of the first clubs—including the ascendancy of St. Andrews—that transformed the sport entirely and laid the groundwork for what it is today. 

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Where did golf come from? The easy answer to that question is "Scotland," but the historical record isn't quite so clear. Going back to the 1300s, surviving documents and drawings suggest the story is more complicated than we thought. This week, we're investigating the earliest origins of the game, and asking where it truly originated.

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July marks the 25th anniversary of one of the two most notorious collapses in major championship history when Jean Van de Velde lost a three-shot lead on the final hole at Carnoustie. In the wake of Rory McIlroy's loss at Pinehurst, the Frenchman's late meltdown feels more relevant than ever; not just for the bizarre way it happened, but for his remarkable reaction, both then and in the 25 years since.

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Cyril Walker put together the four rounds of his life in 1924 at the U.S. Open in Oakland Hills, defeating Bobby Jones in the final round and etching his name in golf history. So why don't more of us know him? The sad reality of Jones' life is that he fell into a spiral not long after his greatest triumph, and met a sad end in a New Jersey jail cell. This is his story.

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This summer marks the 25th anniversary of Payne Stewart's triumph at Pinehurst in the 1999 U.S. Open, and as fate would have it, the National Open is back in at no. 2. In this podcast, we examine the life of Payne Stewart in living color, up to his great victory in North Carolina and his tragic death later that fall.

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We've spent a decade wondering when Rory McIlroy will win his next major, but as the PGA Championship heads to Valhalla, we turned our eyes backward, to the last time he pulled it off. On that hot, humid Sunday in Kentucky, Rory asserted his will and claimed his throne atop the sport ... and it was one of those strangest finishes you could ever imagine.

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Before the professional of Tiger Woods ever began, a PGA Tour committee met and determined that Sam Snead had accumulated 82 official wins in his PGA Tour career. As fate would have it, this is the exact number Tiger has landed on as his career seems to be winding down. In this podcast, we go deep on Snead's wins, and why that 82 total is—sorry to say it—highly dubious.

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