Local Knowledge – Details, episodes & analysis

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.

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.

When Roberto De Vicenzo signed an incorrect scorecard to lose the 1968 Masters, it represented not just his failure, but the failure of several individuals and institutions, including Augusta National itself. This is the story of what really happened that day on the course, and why De Vicenzo is only partly to blame for the greatest blunder in the history of major championship golf.

Golf gambling has taken off in recent years, and it figures to grow even bigger. How did we get here? In this episode, we examine the game’s rapid embrace of what was once considered a seedy pastime, and why golf seems particularly well suited to benefit from legalized gambling. We’ll look at how golf’s massive amount of data has allowed gamblers to wager on seemingly every aspect of the game, and why some players are apprehensive about its influence on the sport.

Ken Duke’s 65 at the 2016 Players Championship isn’t close to one of the lowest rounds in PGA Tour history. It’s not even the best round ever at the Players. So why does it qualify as the greatest round in Players history, as well as one of the greatest rounds in the history of golf? In this episode of Local Knowledge, Alex Myers tells the story of a journeyman pro’s improbable round on a difficult scoring day at the Players, along with the backstory of how our measurement of golf performance has grown more sophisticated in recent years. In talking to Columbia University professor Mark Broadie, the creator of golf’s strokes-gained statistic, Myers explores how advanced metrics have altered our understanding of golf, and has helped everyone from tour pros to average players understand where they excel and where they most need improvement.

There is no draft in pro golf. When most young players try to make a go of it on tour, they’re on their own, which means the expenses of tournament fees, travel, and caddies can add up in a hurry. In the absence of the type of endorsement contracts given to top prospects, some players have to get creative, and that means relying on wealthy backers who help front the costs in exchange for a potential return on their investment and the entertainment of having skin in the game. In this episode of Local Knowledge, Daniel Rapaport looks at how certain golfers have come to rely on “sugar daddies" in their early years on tour, and how those relationships vary from one to the next.

Jan Stephenson won 16 times on the LPGA, including three majors, but in the 1970s, the tour sought to market the Australian as more than just a talented player. From her photoshoots in a nightgown or in a bathtub full of golf balls, Stephenson faced backlash from fellow competitors who thought marketing players’ appearance diminished their abilities as athletes. Yet the controversies around Stephenson didn’t end there. She dated a series of famous men, was once removed from a golf course and brought to a psychiatric hospital, and lost her game when a mugging left her with broken fingers. In this episode, Keely Levins looks at Stephenson’s journey on tour, the criticism she faced, and the underrated career she carved out as a result.

A golf rules official’s responsibilities cover a broad spectrum. They set up the course, oversee playoffs, and determine when a golf course is playable in a rainstorm and when it isn’t. Perhaps most important, they help golfers decipher the game’s complicated rules at pivotal moments throughout a tournament. In this episode, Alex Myers talks to retiring rules officials Slugger White and Mark Russell of the PGA Tour, and John Paramor of the European Tour about the highs and lows of their long careers, and which parts of the job made them sweat most.

After a 91-day hiatus caused by the surge in COVID-19 cases, the PGA Tour returned last June and continued uninterrupted through the end of 2020. Through positive tests and logistical details that ranged from how to keep score to how to give volunteers coffee, the season was unlike any that came before. In this episode, host Dan Rapaport and Golf Digest editorial director Max Adler explain how the tour navigated the uncertainty of a pandemic to resurrect its schedule.

Conventional golf wisdom has said long drive competitions and tournament golf are two entirely different disciplines. But the gap has closed in recent years, and Kyle Berkshire, the No. 1 ranked long driver in the world, is out to prove his 150 mile-an-hour swing speed would give him an advantage even over the best players in the world. In this episode of Local Knowledge, Alex Myers examines what Berkshire needs to do to make the jump from professional long drive to the PGA Tour, and why the time might be right for him to do so.