Opinion

  • Bad Golf’s John Robins: “Solving slow play is simple…”

    Monday 29 March 2021

    In his exclusive Today’s Golfer column, award-winning comedian, BBC Radio 5Live host and Bad Golfer John Robins tackles one of golf’s biggest issues – slow play – and thinks he’s come up with the solution. Slow play. It can be a bit of a mystery to the new golfer. In fairness, when your entire brain is focused on getting the ball in the...

  • Meghan MacLaren: “All golfers are frustrated perfectionists”

    Monday 15 March 2021

    Every one of us is capable of playing bad shots, even the game’s Major-winning greats. But as Ladies European Tour star Meg MacLaren explains in her exclusive column, it’s how you react to them that determines so much. Like a lot of people, particularly over the last year, I’ve been through more than my fair share of Netflix. Whether I’m rewatching...

  • Andrew Cotter: “Bryson DeChambeau is the monster golf created”

    Written by Andrew Cotter on Monday 8 March 2021

    Bryson DeChambeau distance drew headlines again as the US Open champion powered his way to his eighth PGA Tour victory at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. But, as our columnist Andrew Cotter muses here, golf must always be a game of skill over power. Tam Arte Quam Marte… I do like to start off with a bit of Latin – it creates an...

  • Bad Golf’s John Robins: “All I can think of is the joy of playing again”

    Monday 1 March 2021

    In his exclusive Today’s Golfer column, award-winning comedian, BBC Radio 5Live host and Bad Golfer John Robins sets out his golf goals ahead of golf’s return in England and reflects on what he’s missed most about the game in lockdown. I do hope with all my heart that this Today’s Golfer column finds you in a state of high anticipation for the imminent...

  • Meghan MacLaren on waiting for golf’s return

    Monday 15 February 2021

    Amid the uncertainty of lockdown, LET star Meghan MacLaren is still in the dark over when the new season will begin again – or how it will look. I vividly remember the December/January off-season that preceded 2020. I’d spent many winter breaks wrestling with the same dilemma – spend the following season on the Symetra Tour, the feeder tour to the...

  • Bad Golf’s John Robins: “Playing with four clubs improves your game”

    Friday 5 February 2021

    In his exclusive Today’s Golfer column, award-winning comedian, BBC Radio 5Live host and Bad Golfer John Robins explains how playing a round with just three clubs and a putter is helping his game. For this month’s column I’ve decided to completely ignore the state we’re in. I’m heartbroken, frustrated, but also grudgingly accepting of the current situation as regards golf, as I’m sure...

  • Meghan MacLaren: “Sponsor’s invites over Major champions is wrong”

    Monday 1 February 2021

    Ladies European Tour golfer Meghan MacLaren is unimpressed that the LPGA failed to find space for Major champions Sophia Popov and A. Lim Kim in their season-ending tour championship. If you are more productive with your time than I am, you might miss the various instances of outrage on ‘Golf Twitter’. The one that amazed – and infuriated – me the most...

  • Andrew Cotter: “It was a privilege to work with Peter Alliss”

    Written by Andrew Cotter on Monday 1 February 2021

    Today’s Golfer columnist and BBC commentator Andrew reflects on his time working with the late, great Voice of Golf, Peter Alliss. “The thing is… if I died now it would really spoil the evening.” The delivery was as crisp and perfectly-timed as all of his lines...

  • Bad Golf’s John Robins: “Practise less to improve your game”

    Monday 4 January 2021

    In his exclusive Today’s Golfer column, award-winning comedian, BBC Radio 5Live host and Bad Golfer John Robins explains why practising less could actually improve your golf. For many golfers, winter is a time where more balls are hit on the driving range than on the course. Bad weather and new year’s resolutions combine to convince us that this year it’ll be different. This January...

  • Meghan MacLaren on trying to play golf without fear

    Friday 18 December 2020

    Meghan MacLaren ponders why, as both golfers and humans, experience gradually erodes the fearlessness of youth. I played a pro-am in the UK recently. My three playing partners were a club captain, a self-made businessman, and the businessman’s 14-year-old son. They were all decent golfers and lovely people, but four hours with the 14-year-old caused me a mixture of intrigue and mild...

  • Bad Golf’s John Robins: “Golf helps my mental health”

    Tuesday 8 December 2020

    In his exclusive Today’s Golfer column, award-winning comedian, BBC Radio 5Live host and Bad Golfer John Robins talks World Handicap System confusion, what golf offers those with disabilities and the role the game can play in boosting mental health and tackling loneliness. For someone whose task it is to chart the life of a bad golfer, lockdown 2.0 did pose something of a...

  • Andrew Cotter: “I question the rationale behind golf courses being closed”

    Written by Andrew Cotter on Monday 23 November 2020

    TG columnist and BBC commentator Andrew Cotter is struggling to understand why golf courses are closed during the latest coronavirus lockdown and believes a “tiresome perception” of the game is to blame. You catch me, dear reader, at a slightly low ebb. Yes, I realise, such is the way this year has gone, that I might have to readjust my mood-parameters,...

  • “The LET event in Saudi Arabia was anything but ‘cool’.”

    Written by Anthony Harwood on Friday 13 November 2020

    Professional women’s golf was played in Saudi Arabia for the first time with the LET’s Saudi Ladies International at Royal Greens Golf and Country Club. But should professional golf tours play in a country which has faced widespread criticism for its human rights record? Anthony Harwood, former Daily Mail Foreign Editor, doesn’t believe so and explains why those playing in the Ladies...

  • Bad Golf’s John Robins: “I have never been wetter in clothes”

    Thursday 12 November 2020

    In the second of his exclusive Today’s Golfer columns, award-winning comedian John Robins, one half of YouTube’s Bad Golf, reflects on the wettest round of golf of his life and shares his tips for playing when the heavens open. Last month, I didn’t just play golf in the wet. I played golf on the wettest day the UK has ever seen.

  • Meghan MacLaren: “Every athlete is a human first. Too often we forget that.”

    Thursday 5 November 2020

    Today’s Golfer columnist and LET star Meghan MacLaren admires sports stars who are honest – both with themselves and with fans. I played a practice round recently for an event on the Symetra Tour in Florida. One of my playing partners asked the other to video one of her tee shots. There’s nothing unusual about that. When we are caddie-less, we...

  • Andrew Cotter: “Golf offers relief from coronavirus”

    Written by Andrew Cotter on Monday 2 November 2020

    As we head towards a second Covid-19 lockdown across England, TG columnist and BBC commentator Andrew Cotter explains why golf offers enormous relief and escape from Coronavirus. The champions dinner of hermetically-sealed takeaway food. The azaleas and magnolias lying dormant amidst light flurries of snow. And the sanitised Green Jacket being handed over by Tiger Woods – dangling it on a...

  • Bad Golf’s John Robins: “My foolproof plan to break 90”

    Friday 16 October 2020

    In the first of his exclusive Today’s Golfer columns, award-winning comedian John Robins, one half of YouTube’s Bad Golf, explains how he ‘solved golf’ to break 90 for the first time… and how you can do it, too. Hello and welcome to my new Today’s Golfer column. I’m sorry to say that it’s not going fix your slice in five easy steps,...

  • Meghan MacLaren: “Sophia Popov gives us all hope”

    Tuesday 29 September 2020

    Today’s Golfer columnist and LET star Meghan MacLaren explains why Sophia Popov’s AIG Women’s Open win at Royal Troon answered her own demons and gave hope to golfers everywhere. This year’s Women’s Open was the classic rags-to-riches Cinderella story. The kind that brings a tear to the eye of even the most hardened, storied golf journalist. RELATED: Breaking down golf’s stereotypes It was...

  • Meghan MacLaren: “Tough golf courses reveal the best players”

    Thursday 27 August 2020

    LET star and Today’s Golfer columnist Meghan MacLaren loves a golf course that tests your mental game as much as your shotmaking. Is it just professional golfers who always find something to complain about? Or is it golfers, as a breed? RELATED: Tested – This Year’s Best Drivers Since Covid-19 hit the world and we all had our beautiful game taken away from us,...

  • Meghan MacLaren: “Lockdown made me feel lost”

    Thursday 30 July 2020

    Ladies European Tour star and new Today’s Golfer columnist Meghan MacLaren reveals she has learnt a lot about herself during the Coronavirus lockdowns. When the pandemic hit properly and my purpose got taken away from me, I felt a little lost. Lockdown made me realise how much I need competitive golf for my overall happiness. RELATED: Andrew Cotter – “I don’t understand why...