Oct 2, 2026 · 5 min read
Why Jason Kelce Bought Into a Nine-Hole Course
The answer says a lot about the kind of golf he actually likes
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Two good ones this week.
Jason Kelce could play golf anywhere he wants and bought into a nine-hole course in the Catskills instead. Tony Finau turned up at his home event with a putter that looks like a hockey stick.
I like both for the same reason. Golf has a way of making us work hard on problems we created ourselves — and those two are coming at it from opposite directions.
The rest of the issue is on the same idea. A putting check that takes ten seconds. A bunker fix that's mostly just trusting the club you're already holding. A wedge deal, and a Nassau for the Saturday game.
Later we're into the lava fields at Black Desert, then opening a whiskey that costs $25 and probably shouldn't.
Let's tee off.
Birdies: Where the Pros Play 🏆
Jason Kelce Can Play Anywhere. He Invested in a Scrappy Nine-Holer Instead.
Jason Kelce could play golf almost anywhere he wants. He bought into a nine-hole course in the Catskills instead.
Sullivan County Golf Club has been running since 1925. That tracks with the golfer Kelce actually is. He grew up on public courses around Cleveland with second-hand clubs from Play It Again Sports. He still goes down Reddit rabbit holes asking strangers to fix his swing. He had a driver built to Bryson DeChambeau's specs.
"I can't hit that thing," he says. "It's atrocious."
He fights the driver so badly he never takes the headcover off. Plays a mini-driver instead.
For all the access that came after football, Kelce still seems happiest with the version of golf where you show up with friends, play whatever game you've got that day, and care slightly too much about a $100 side bet.
Tony Finau Brought a Hockey-Stick Putter to Utah
Tony Finau showed up for his first Bank of Utah Championship with a putter that looks more like a hockey stick.
The Caliber Golf putter puts the grip and the face on the same angle, a setup Finau believes makes the face easier to aim. He's picked a good week to try it — he comes in 100th in the FedEx Cup standings with one top-30 finish in his last 15 starts.
It's a home game too. Finau's from Utah and this is his first time playing the Tour event in his own state, at Black Desert. More on that course below.
Maybe the putter sticks around. Maybe it's gone in two weeks. I mostly like that he's willing to look strange if strange helps him make more putts.
Bogeys: For Us Weekend Golfers 🏌️♂️
Before You Rebuild Your Putting Stroke, Drop a Golf Ball
If your putts keep starting right or left, your stroke might not be the first problem.
Top 100 Teacher Stephen Sweeney uses a ten-second check. Get into your normal stance, hold a second ball just under your eyes, and drop it.
If it lands on or near the ball you're addressing, you're in a good spot. If it drops well inside, your eyes are sitting somewhere that changes how you see the line.
Before you change your grip or rebuild the stroke, check where you're standing. Ten seconds could save you a lot of tinkering.
Stop Trying to Lift the Ball Out of a Deep Bunker
A high bunker lip makes a lot of us try to lift the ball ourselves.
I couldn't be more guilty.
Top 100 Teacher Kellie Stenzel starts somewhere else: trust the loft that's already on the club. Hit the sand, keep moving toward the target, and give the swing enough speed to throw that sand over the lip.
The practice drill is even simpler. Make a few swings without a ball. If you can splash the sand out, you've got a good chance of bringing the ball with it.
The wedge has the loft. You just have to stop fighting it.
Gear Drop: This Week’s Picks ⛳
Cleveland RTX 6 ZipCore Wedge: $129.99
A wedge sale gets more interesting when the club is built for the shots where conditions usually start taking spin away.
The RTX 6 ZipCore is $40 off its regular $169.99 price at DICK’S. Cleveland built the face around its HydraZip system, with different laser patterns depending on loft, while the deeper UltiZip grooves are designed to keep grabbing the ball when the strike isn’t perfectly clean.
The ZipCore weighting also shifts the center of gravity closer to where you actually strike the ball, with the goal of giving you more consistency without turning the wedge into something bulky.
Verdict: This is the one I’d look at if the grooves on your current wedge have seen a few too many bunker shots. It’s a proven short-game club at a price that’s easier to justify.
Callaway Chrome Tour X Triple Track 360 Golf Balls: $47.99
Losing a premium golf ball hurts slightly less when the dozen was already marked down.
Callaway’s 2024 Chrome Tour X Triple Track 360 Sports Matter balls are $7 off their regular $54.99 price at DICK’S. Chrome Tour X is Callaway’s firmer, higher-spin option in the Chrome Tour family, with its biggest advantage showing up around the greens.
The 360 Triple Track lines wrap around the ball, so you can use them to aim putts without spending five minutes drawing a line on every ball before Saturday.
There’s also a nice extra here: DICK’S donates $2 to its Sports Matter Foundation for every dozen sold.
Verdict: Premium balls rarely need much help disappearing from a sleeve. If you already play Chrome Tour X, this is an easy chance to stock up and get the alignment aid built in.
A better round.
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Bourbon: Life on the 19th Hole 🥃
⭐ Course of the week ⭐
Black Desert Resort — Ivins, Utah
You don't need another reason to watch the Bank of Utah Championship this week.
But the golf course might be the best one.
Black Desert is Tom Weiskopf's final design, 7,500 yards of Southern Utah with green fairways cut between black lava fields and red cliffs. It's hosting the PGA Tour right now, but it's a public resort course you can book once the tournament clears out.
The lava is what gets your attention.
The width is what makes it interesting.
There's generous room off the tee throughout, but the angles change quickly if you pick the wrong side. The 14th is a 297-yard drivable par 4. The closing hole is a 533-yard par 5 with lava and bunkers shaping the whole trip home, into a green modeled on Augusta's fifth.
Where you'll lose shots: seeing all that width and assuming it means you can hit driver wherever you want.
How to play it smarter: decide which side of the fairway gives you the cleanest next shot before choosing the club. Black Desert gives you room, but it doesn't always give you a good angle back.
Would I make the trip? Absolutely, and I'd make a weekend of it — which is also how you make the golf cheaper. Non-resort rates climb to $450 depending on season; staying at the resort brings it down to $250–$325.
The rate includes:
Golf cart
Forecaddie
Practice-facility access
Food and non-alcoholic drinks during the round
If I'm paying that much, I'm staying until somebody physically removes me from the putting green.
This Week’s Pour
Tallbird American Whiskey
A whiskey this cheap sounds suspicious in 2026.
That's basically the point.
Wanderfolk Distillery in Guthrie, Oklahoma just released Tallbird — a blend of seven-year-old straight bourbons from Bardstown Bourbon Company in Kentucky and TN Distilling in Tennessee, aged in Oklahoma and bottled at 93 proof.
No elaborate secondary finish. No collector's box. No price tag that requires a family meeting.
The suggested retail price is $25.
Tasting notes:
Aroma: marzipan, cardamom, citrus and mango
Taste: butterscotch, graham cracker and a little leather
Finish: sweet and creamy, with a tres leches kind of finish
That sounds like a lot happening for twenty-five bucks.
Verdict: This is the bottle I'd grab when friends are coming over and I don't want to spend the night watching somebody pour my expensive bourbon into Coke. It has enough weight to drink neat but still makes sense in an Old Fashioned.
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One Last Thing
I've got a putter in my storage unit that was going to fix everything. A training aid I used twice. A set of irons because a guy told me the ones I had were holding me back.
All of it felt like progress at the time.
Buying the thing is a decision. Practicing is a habit. One takes five minutes and feels like you did something. The other takes months and feels like nothing, right up until it doesn't.
I do the same thing away from the course. New system instead of the hard conversation. New tool instead of the boring work that actually moves something. It always feels like I'm solving the problem. Usually I'm just buying time away from it.
Golf is honest about it faster than most things. You get to the first tee and find out you brought all the same problems with you.
This week's putting fix takes ten seconds. The bunker one is trusting the loft already on the club. Neither costs anything, which is probably why they're easy to skip.
I'm not giving up on tinkering. I like golf too much for that.
But this weekend, I'm trying the simple answer first.
If that fails, there's always the whiskey.
See you next week,
Adam
Adam Rosen
Editor-in-Chief, Birdies, Bogeys & Bourbon
P.S. Answer: B. A Nassau is three separate bets: one on the front nine, one on the back nine, and one on the full 18. The game takes its name from Nassau Country Club on Long Island.
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