Golf Compendium

If you want to become a great putter — or even just improve from bad to average — you'll have to spend time on the practice green, bent over your putter, making strokes. Developing feel and touch in putting requires plenty of practice, but the long hours standing in a bent-over position on the practice green can wreak havoc on your back, hips and neck. Most golfers understand the need to stretch and warm-up before hitting full swings on the practice range. But did you know that it is just as important to warm up and stretch before practicing putting?

A "split fairway" in golf is a fairway that, at some point on its route to the putting green, splits into two distinct fairways, offering the golfer the option to play to one side or the other. It's a way for golf course architects to provide some variety and some extra options for playing strokes off the tee and into greens.

Which golfers have suffered the most match losses in the Ryder Cup? The all-time record-holder is also one of the all-time great golfers, and the guy tied for second-most Ryder Cup defeats is, arguably, the best golfer ever.

The U.S. Senior Women's Open is a golf tournament conducted by the United States Golf Association (USGA) for top women golfers of ages 50 and over. It is one of 14 USGA championships.

The tournament called the Home Depot Invitational at its end is perhaps better-remembered as the PaineWebber Invitational, a golf tournament on the Champions Tour. It was played for more than 30 years in North Carolina.

The Evian Championship is one of the five major championships of women's professional golf. It is the most-recently created, too, dating to 1994 — but only being recognized as a major since 2013. Which golfers hold the Evian Championship scoring records?

Bob Rosburg was a longtime PGA Tour golfer, a successful one, and the 1959 PGA Championship winner. He later enjoyed a long career as an on-course analyst on ABC TV's golf broadcasts in the USA. Everyone called him "Rossie." But long before all that, Rosburg was a childhood golfing prodigy. And I just stumbled across the newsreel footage to prove it.

Before there was Gary Player, before there was Bobby Locke, there was Sid Brews. Brews, although English by birth, became the first South African golfer to achieve international notice. He won more 30 tournaments in South Africa (mostly in the 1920s and '30s, but even into the 1950s), but also won in Europe and the United States.

Have any golfers won the British Open the very first time they played that major championship? Yes, it has happened multiple times — 10 times, in fact, including the very first* and the 2021 Open Championship.