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“One of the things you get from Mike Schmidt, one thing that makes him an original, is that he has a plan and an approach to getting better,” Bamberger said. “And I took a lot from that.”

Schmidt combined his natural athletic gifts with a “cerebral” approach to the game of baseball, Bamberger said. And after Schmidt’s retirement from the pro game, he applied that approach to golf.

“I can’t take the golf club back without a mechanical thought,” Schmidt told Bamberger. “I tell you what, I swung and missed the ball one time because I forgot what my swing thought was in the middle of my backswing.”

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In his conversation with Bamberger, Schmidt went deep on his analytical process. What would Schmidt’s life have looked like if he had applied his talents to golf before baseball? Bamberger thought he could have had a career on par with six-time major winner Lee Trevino, but Schmidt had a different player in mind.

“I see myself as Tom Watson,” Schmidt said.

“Could you imagine devoting yourself to golf and achieving a Watson-like level, versus being Mike Schmidt and achieving what you did in baseball?” Bamberger asked. “Could a life in golf have been satisfying for you as a life in baseball?”

“Absolutely. Absolutely,” Schmidt responded. “To reach that level in golf would be a lot harder than it would in baseball. I guess the really big question is, would I have the mental ability to become a great golfer as opposed to what it took in baseball? I like to say I’d have figured it out in either sport. I would have figured it out.”

As Bamberger noted in his reply, that’s spoken like a real Hall of Famer.

For more from Schmidt, including why he thinks he could have helped Michael Jordan’s short-lived baseball career, check out the full episode of GOLF Originals with Michael Bamberger below.

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There are layers and layers, in every sport. Looking back, he says, he spent too much of his practice time hitting full shots on the range, and not enough on the putting and chipping greens.

“If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’re going to keep getting what you’re getting,” Schmidt says in our latest GOLF Originals episode. He applies that phrase to every aspect of his life.

Schmidt and Tom Watson were both children of the Midwest who were born in September 1949. Schmidt hit 548 home runs without ever trying to hit a single one. He won the Gold Glove as the National League’s best defensive third basemen 10 times. He was, overwhelmingly, a first ballot Hall of Famer. When I suggest, in an hour-long interview that we struggled to edit down to 14 minutes, that he was to baseball what Lee Trevino was to golf, Schmidt said, “I see myself as Tom Watson.”

Fair enough. The joint membership in the class of ’49. Their shared heartland (Kansas for Watson, Ohio for Schmidt) childhoods. Their stoic demeanors. Also, their impatience with false modesty.

When I asked Schmidt if he could have helped Michael Jordan with his hitting, in Jordan’s brief sojourn in the bushes of minor-league baseball, he was certain of it. “I could teach him to hit,” Schmidt said. Note the present tense, like it’s not too late. Schmidt, like Watson, did not lack for confidence. MJ, the same.

I got to watch Schmidt’s entire baseball career unfold and I saw him play golf when he was a 70-shooter. Same guy, really. His approach to both sports was methodical and cerebral. But something he said in our Golf Originals interview really caught me by surprise. He talked about how, in baseball and in golf, he was consumed by “mechanics, worry, fear of failure.” And when he said that, the player who came to mind for me was . . . Tiger Woods.

Woods has never gone deep into his state of mind as an athlete. Maybe, when he’s Schmidt’s age, he will. There are obvious external similarities between the two men. Schmidt, walking to the plate, standing by third base, was never one to fidget, to waste energy, to let himself get distracted. One of the most memorable moments of the 2019 Masters, from my vantage point, came on Sunday on 17, when Woods was waiting in the fairway watching as Brooks Koepka, Ian Poulter and Webb Simpson putt out. Woods just stood at his bag, his hands on it, barely moving for several long minutes, lost in thought.

But I have also thought, watching Woods closely through his career, that there have been many times when he was filled with worry, confused about his mechanics, afraid that he might fail. I felt like you could see it in his face, and sometimes in his shots. I think Schmidt actually identified three of the things that kept Woods on the practice tee for so long, why he punished himself in the gym, why he almost never relaxed on the golf course. A constant wrestling match with mechanics, some deep and motivating level of insecurity.

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It’s amazing how often, in major championships, Woods would have a near-perfect pre-round warmup session, with Butch Harmon or Hank Haney at his side, and then hit an opening drive off the first that went crazily left of wildly right. Woods would figure it out quickly enough. The greats do. But there were moments he could not handle. Way better to have it on the first hole than the last.

If you play golf with Schmidt, and you see him making a slow, purposeful walk from cart to green, putter in hand, it’s hard not to think of the thousands of times he made slow, purposeful walks from the on-deck circle to the batter’s box, bat in hand. He’d have the pitcher in mind then. He has the putt in mind now. Maybe not now now, but certainly when he was playing competitive golf in Florida tournaments and on the celebrity circuit. Woods did the same thing. He walked with purpose.

Woods had, as a younger man, a perfect physique for golf, so strong through the core, but also so limber. Schmidt, for baseball, did, too, a chest that could stop wicked hops when he patrolled third, fast-twitch legs when scoring from second, arm strength and speed that allowed him to hit 400-foot line-drive home runs and throw cross-field bullets from his knees. The late Pete Rose once said of Schmidt, “To have his body, I’d trade him mine and my wife’s, and I’d throw in some cash.”

But what I get from our interview with Mike Schmidt, and what you might get from watching it, more than anything, is how his head was in everything he did.

I asked Schmidt if a career in golf would have been as satisfying for him as his career in baseball. He didn’t hesitate: Yes. He thought it would be harder to do in golf, to enter the pantheon, as he did in baseball. Still, he would have done it.

“I would have figured it out,” he said.

His smile masked nothing. He meant it. The true greats mean business.
 
Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com.

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To date, GOLF Originals has allowed viewers like you to see David Feherty, Tom Doak, Mike Whan, Brandel Chamblee and Padraig Harrington in (we hope!) new and interesting ways. And here, in Episode 6, we bring you O. Gordon Brewer Jr., alongside his namesake son, OHGORDON3, aka Chip.

So, yes, we’re aiming our camera at our patron and, more directly, his father. We do so with pride. OGB is the OG. He’s one of golf’s secret legends, like the late Sandy Tatum or Adolphus (Golf Ball) Hull. Gordon is an original.

Gordon Brewer grew up in a yes ma’am working family — little leisure time, few frills, church on Sundays — in Winston-Salem, N.C. He found his way to golf by going to a mom-and-pop driving range while attending Guilford College in Greensboro on a basketball scholarship. A decade later, he was a husband, a father, a rising corporate executive — and one of the best amateurs in a city, Philadelphia, that is loaded with them.

Gordon played in 42 USGA events, including six U.S. Senior Opens, and won the U.S. Senior Amateur twice. He was the Pine Valley president for a decade and then some. He was on the USGA board of directors for years and won the Bob Jones Award, the USGA’s highest honor, in 2009. Tiger Woods won it this year, for his playing record and his education-centered philanthropy. Gordon received it for his playing record and his golf-to-the-core integrity. There’s a lot of Bob Jones in O. Gordon, and some Ben Hogan, too. He doesn’t need a lot of words.

I first met Mr. Brewer in 1988, at Pine Valley. His golf was extraordinary and so was he, precise in every way. Gordon was even par through 13. Even and quiet. On 14, a long, downhill par-3 over a pond, he rinsed his tee shot and uttered (pretty much) his first words of the round. It was a question for his caddie: “What did you say the yardage was?” Followed by, “I hit the wrong club.”

But the most telling thing about the round came before we played our first shots. (No mulligans. PV is not a breakfast ball kind of place.) I was a reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer then. On the day of our game, there was a front-page story I had written about a 15-year-old Philadelphia high school student and football player who had been stabbed to death by another student outside their school, Frankford High. “It made me cry,” Mr. Brewer said.

Golf at its best informs your world. The world as it is and as it should be informs every aspect of Gordon’s life. You’ll hear the word integrity often in this 10-minute mini-doc. There’s a telling story in it, father and son playing in an event at Pine Valley, and father calling a penalty on his son and teaching him a lesson, one that has informed every aspect of Chip’s life since then.

In a manner of speaking, Callaway’s support of this series is a wee gift to this game, helping us explore interesting lives and interesting people in the game, in interesting places. (We shot Feherty in Las Vegas. We shot the Brewers in Pine Valley, N.J.) I only wish Sandy Tatum and Golf Ball were still alive. They would have been great for this series. If you have suggestions of people we should feature, please send them my way, famous or not. I’m trying to get the retired lefthander CC Sabathia now. I know from talking to him that golf has improved every aspect of his life. Gordon Brewer would say the same. It’s a starting point for a lot of things, including a place in this series.

Try to contain yourself as you watch him play pitch shots in this video. He’s 87! The rhythm! Hard to imagine pitching it with better rhythm at any age.

Gordon loves baseball, basketball, golf, competition. His son and his daughter and his long, long marriage have all been enriched and shaped by golf and its values. Some would snicker at that sentence, but those people are not, as an old editor used to say, of golf. Gordon is. I once introduced Gordon to a baseball lifer named Joe Pignatano. He was a Brooklyn Dodger and Los Angeles Dodger who hit into a triple play in his final at-bat. When Gordon, then the club president, approached us, I thought we might be in trouble for slow play, for loud play, for something. Nothing of the kind. Gordon shook Joe’s hand, and they talked about Koufax. 

Topgolf is a huge part of Callaway’s business today. I remember Chip telling me about Topgolf years ago, under the tree at Augusta. It didn’t sound like a fit for Callaway to me. Shows you why I type for a living. Chip knew how his father found his way to golf, by way of a driving range with a little stash of baked-out clubs. It did the job. Now imagine a driving range with good balls, new clubs and cold beer?

The father could see the whole thing. He knew from his own life and times: If you can get people to golf, it’s a good thing. Here’s Gordon.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com.

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The three-time major champion might be known for freakishly bombing the golf ball off the tee at age 52, but Harrington’s still a pretty darn good all-around player, and his putting can still give him a chance to win against players half his age.

Since putting’s always the great equalizer in golf, Harrington’s here to help you improve in this key area. Sure, distance control is important, but if you don’t know where your line is, you won’t have any chance of leaving a putt close.

So what’s a simple (yet unorthodox) way to find your putting line? Harrington recently revealed his answer to our Michael Bamberger on GOLF’s Originals (and talked about a bunch of other topics, too), which you can see in the video below. (Ed. Note: The tip begins at the 5:42 mark in the video below.)

Try this putting hack from Padraig Harrington

In the video, Harrington rounds up some amateur golfers to show them what to look for on the green in order to effectively aim better while putting.

“See that over there [pointing to the ground], that’s pale. That’s downhill,” he says. “See the way that’s darker [pointing to a different spot on the green], that’s uphill.”

It might seem too simple to just check the shadow of the putting surface, but Harrington says it’s just one way to identify how the ball will roll. He also shares a little tip of the pros when it comes to how the grass changes over the course of a day.

“The low side of the cup will fray up during the day, so if you see a broken part of the hole, aim away from it,” he adds.

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Next, Harrington discusses the importance of a putting routine, and how the end of it is more crucial than the beginning.

“The important thing in your routine is the end of it, not the start of it. Somebody getting obsessed with the first part of their routine is irrelevant,” he says. “I don’t like people standing over the ball, that’s the worst thing you can do — I want movement.

“But I have given up on the idea that I need exactly two waggles. I’d rather go when I feel like I’ve got a good look at the target and a good picture of the target.”

So if you struggle with putting and can’t quite get comfortable using the flatstick, taking the above advice from Harrington should help you improve. Whether that means using your eyes to see the light versus the dark shades on the surface, or understanding how to structure the best routine, hopefully your confidence will grow.

You can watch the full Originals episode with Padraig Harrington below, and get other great golf tips by following GOLF’s YouTube channel.

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It goes without saying that Harrington makes an subject for Michael Bamberger’s GOLF Originals series. In the latest episode, Bamberger caught up with Harrington on the range at the recent Dick’s Sporting Goods Open, a PGA Tour Champions stop in Endicott, N.Y.

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“To use that old Ben Hogan line that everybody knows, ‘The secret’s in the dirt,’ the secret is in the dirt,” Bamberger said. “And I think one of the reasons we gravitate toward Padraig Harrington is he’s been in the dirt himself. He’s figured it out and he’s here to share things with us, and really, along the way, help us with our own golf game.”

One of Harrington’s many charms is the fact that he enjoys engaging in pro-ams, obligatory weekly staples on the pro tour circuit that many pros aren’t fond of. But in Endicott, Bamberger got to see Harrington in his element alongside his group mates for the day.

Throughout the round, Harrington was happy to dole out advice.

“It’s not like he exudes joy, it’s just like, he loves what he does so much, it’s contagious,” Bamberger said.

At one point in the round, Harrington hit a shot with a fairway wood from the rough. Bamberger asked if Harrington thinks about moving the ball forward in his stance when he’s faced with a shot like that. Harrington answered in typical thoughtful fashion.

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“That’s experience. Trial and error,” Harrington said. “Because moving it up could be right, and it could be terribly wrong. It’s trial and error.

“If you’re trying to be a decent player, you need to go and play on your own, late in the evening time when you can play two or three balls, and experiment.”

Harrington then shared some sage game-improvement advice that he gave to some young players in Houston.

“Play wild golf,” he said. “You need to be wild. Hit it everywhere. Learn to play from all over the place. Because hitting it straight is an easy skill that you’ll learn when you’re 18, 19. But having that ability, to know what shot to hit in each situation, you can only get that by being a little bit out there, a little bit wild. Going for par-5s and taking all shots on and doing silly stuff when you’re practicing, and knowing when not to do it when you’re playing tournaments.”

For more from Harrington, including a sneaky putting hack to try, check out the full episode of GOLF Originals with Michael Bamberger below.

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Then, to keep this party going, check him out next week at Carnoustie, when the new World Golf Hall of Fame inductee will be looking to win his first British Senior Open. Padraig Harrington is huge fun to watch.

This guy is all in on every practice swing, every swing swing, every word out of his mouth. He’s as original as anybody playing this game today. He’s also the fifth victim in GOLF.com’s original series called . . . GOLF Originals. David Feherty in March, Tom Doak in April, Mike Whan in May, Brandel Chamblee in June, and here’s Paddy. 

You can watch him free, here and now, on this page. Is this a great time to be alive, or what? 

You want to hear about how to hit a hybrid out of the rough? We got Paddy on that. Or what went wrong with Rory on that 30-inch putt on 70th hole of the U.S. Open? Paddy weighs in. Or what it was like to play with Greg Norman in the last twosome, final day, in the 2008 British Open? Or what it’s like to play in a pro-am with Harrington as your pro?

Hint: Harrington likes playing in pro-ams, but if you’re going to play with him, you better be able to handle the truth. At a senior event last month, in Endicott, N.Y., near Binghamton, Harrington played with an amateur who described his experience playing high school baseball but showed no instinct or knack for golf at all. Harrington was baffled.

“Yalook incredibly unathletic,” he said.

Pro instructed am to make a horizontal baseball swing with a golf club. (That’s Bill Murray’s go-to pre-shot move.) The fella stepped right into an imaginary pitch. Harrington had the guy make that same swing at a golf ball at his feet. It was instantly a hundred times better.

“OK!” Harrington said. “Brilliant!”

He prods and he gives. It’s all in good fun, every last bit of it.

Harrington notes, in this 15-minute mini-doc that is an instructional video by happy accident, that the golf swing basically is the baseball swing, and in both you’re swinging a stick at a ball. Harrington’s father was a police officer who could play any sport. Harrington is the youngest of five boys. If only his unpretentiousness were contagious. Golf needs more Padraig Harringtons. But there’s only one, and we got him here.

At Troon, his Thursday-Friday tee times are late/early. Phil Mickelson is in the threesome in front of him and Darren Clarke is in front of Mickelson. Three Open winners in their 50s, all in a row. Clarke won the 2022 Senior Open. Mickelson hasn’t played in one. Harrington wouldn’t miss it. He loves playing tournament golf. He loves talking about the swing. He loves teaching the game, by which he means helping you realize that, to some significant degree, you have to figure it out for yourself. There will be future major winners who have unlocked some of the mysteries of the game for themselves, as Clarke and Harrington and Mickelson have done. But not all that many. It’s at the root of Harrington’s immense appeal. Add that to this: When he was 20, the namesake son of the Garda officer and boxer figured he’d become an accountant.

He didn’t become an accountant. Two years after the death of his father, for whom he was named, Padraig Harrington went on an epic run: the 2007 British Open, the 2008 British Open, the 2008 PGA Championship. Those three wins alone made him a Hall of Famer, but there was lots more where that came from.

My colleague Darren Riehl and I saw Harrington, alongside four amateurs of varying skills, at a senior tour event, the Dick’s Sporting Goods Open, at a public course, the En-Joie Golf Club in Endicott, about a week after his Hall of Fame induction. You could have warmed a pizza slice on a cart path, the day was so hot. If Harrington had missed a dessert course in the past month it was not evident. He was hitting it all over the map, but also over, under and around trees. (The course has a lot of trees.) He got mad at Darren and me — or maybe I should just say me — by causing him to miss an on-course food truck with our endless questions and documenting. I would have taken the over on him shooting 216 or higher, even par for the three-round tournament. He shot 15 under and one by a shot. Three trips to Endicott. Three wins.

I told Harrington that I could draw a straight line from Lee Trevino to Nick Price to him, for understanding the game, playing it at the highest level, having a knack for teaching it in terms anyone could understand. He liked that. He told us he liked pro-ams, that pro-ams helped him with his own golf. You can get more than a taste of all of that, here on this GOLF Originals presentation. You do want to get better, don’t you? Paddy’s here to help, without being all warm and fuzzy about it.

What a relief.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com

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This shift can largely be attributed to the advancements made in technology. Now, more than ever before, hitting the ball far (and straight) is simple. And, thanks to data, we can see that the long ball is the foundation for elite golf.

The numbers takeover doesn’t stop there, though. Number-crunching is also key in decision-making when on the course. Thanks to ShotLink data, players can assess risks like never before.

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This risk-mitigation strategy is great for posting high finishes on leaderboards. But, according to Brandel Chamblee, it’s also robbed the game of something in the process.

“Is it more exciting golf?” Chamblee asked on the most recent episode of GOLF Originals. “Everybody is a card-counter now. They know where they should hit it. Less chances taken. Less risks taken.”

Mitigating risk is the name of the game these days. So too is protecting high finishes on the leaderboards. With so much money on the line week in and week out, not to mention world ranking points, taking risks is more consequential than ever before. One missed shot could be the difference between hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“It’s less about winning,” Chamblee said. “Because world ranking points have currency and open doors. FedEx Cup points have currency and open doors. It used to be just victories had currency and opened doors, but that’s not the case any more. Finishing second still opens doors — more doors than it used to, because you get world ranking points, FedEx Cup points. There’s less sense of bravado in the game.”

Chamblee went on to explain that he understands why this trend has taken hold in the game, but he believes it has damaged the entertainment product of professional golf.

“I think people pay to see — stop what they’re doing to watch — people who dare to be different,” he said.

For more from Chamblee, check out the entire episode of GOLF Originals below.

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But during one of his U.S. Open appearances when he was still playing on the PGA Tour, he thinks he might have been a little too free-flowing.

During filming for the latest episode of GOLF Originals with Michael Bamberger, Chamblee recalled his six U.S. Open appearances and how good it felt to qualify for them, as he got set to call this week’s action for NBC for the first time.

“I always had two thoughts upon qualifying,” Chamblee told Bamberger. “I was like, really cool. I get back to the room. I think: Tremendous sense of accomplishment. But immediately I would I would also have a tremendous sense of trepidation.

“It’s like you go there and you’re a little off your game and you can look like a complete and utter fool.”

Chamblee recalls how Pinehurst made him and the rest of the field look foolish in 1999. Chamblee finished tied for 46th that year at 18 over par in just his third made cut at a major.

After shooting 77 on the final day, Chamblee said he had heard that just two players found the difficult par-4 16th in regulation Sunday, which plays as a par-5 for regular member play. That’s when Chamblee said he let the heat of the moment get the best of him.

“I think I said, when signing my scorecard that day, ‘Why don’t you just change it to a par-3? There’d only be two less people hit it in regulation,'” he said. “You’re frustrated. You’re in the heat of the battle. You’re in a trailer. And when I left there, I thought, I’d like to have that moment back. It probably wasn’t my nicest moment.”

For more U.S. Open insights and commentary from Chamblee, check out the full episode of GOLF Originals below.

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Those spots included Merion Golf Club, host of the 2013 U.S. Open won by Justin Rose and, you could argue, lost by Phil Mickelson. Indeed, you can’t talk about modern U.S. Opens without talking about Mickelson, whose six runner-up finishes continue to make him an intriguing storyline, even this year.

Chamblee has been critical of Mickelson for turning his back on the PGA Tour, but as he and Bamberger revisited the site of one of Mickelson’s most costly errors — his hooded wedge on the par-3 13th at Merion — Chamblee revealed that that moment encapsulated a lot of what he likes about Mickelson.

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“The things that make you great, you can’t turn those off,” Chamblee said. “And with Phil, for all the criticism he gets about flushing that wedge over the back of the green — I mean, he won 45 times and six major championships. So to what credit do you give his curiosity and the incessant nature to know everything that you need to know about his game, is given to those 45 wins in six major championships. So if he loses one along the way, I would say it’s a net huge positive.

“That’s what sports are all about, you know, giving it your all, and data be damned.”

Chamblee said Mickelson’s go-for-broke style is becoming more of a rarity in the modern game, where players are more reliant on safety and taking less risk — and that’s kind of a shame, because players like Mickelson are more fun to watch.

“There’s less sense of bravado in the game,” Chamblee said. “And everybody’s more or less being coached to the middle. I’m not criticizing it. I understand it, but I think people pay to see, stop what they’re doing to watch, people who dare to be different. And that’s what Phil was.

“Look, I have my criticisms of Phil, but I’ll never criticize his golf, or him taking risks, or him trying to outsmart the game,” Chamblee continued. “As much as people want to criticize him for thinking he knows it all, I always found him to be very fascinating.

“I love that side of Phil, that curiosity.”

For more U.S. Open insights and commentary from Chamblee, check out the full episode of GOLF Originals below.

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Chamblee, the NBC Sports golf analyst, who will be working this week’s U.S. Open from a perch above Pinehurst’s 18th green, was in Louisville for the PGA Championship. He went home in Scottsdale for a few days and then went on brief but irresistible boys-will-be-boys multi-state golf trip. He returned home again for a few days, woke up early on Memorial Day and flew from Phoenix to Philadelphia, en route to the Marriott in downtown Lancaster, Pa., and U.S. Women’s Open at the Lancaster Country Club. But before heading there, my colleague Darren Riehl (the producer of this series) and I took Brandel on an afternoon-into-evening tour of some U.S. Open garden spots, Philly-style.

There’s a lot you can take from that two-week snapshot but let me suggest this: The man is on the front door of 62, he’s been immersed in the game for almost 50 years — and my sense is golf has never meant more to him than it does now.

Our first stop was the Ivy Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia. We went there to see Willie Anderson’s gravesite. You may know that Willie Anderson was a Scot who won four U.S. Opens. I told Brandel that the boxing legend Joe Frazier was also buried at Ivy Hill. He knew. Brandel told me that the tennis legend Bill Tilden was buried at the Ivy Hill. I didn’t. The things this guy knows.

Brandel talked about Anderson with such intensity you might have thought Willie A. was a golfer Chamblee saw as schoolboy golfer in Texas. Anderson won his Opens in 1901, ’03, ’04 and ’05. It frustrates Chamblee that so little is known about Anderson’s swing, to say nothing of his GIR stats.

Chamblee is a golf original, and a GOLF Original, the fourth in our monthly lineup that, to date, has brought you David Feherty in March, Tom Doak in April, Mike Whan in May and now Chamblee. Nobody has ever combined an encyclopedic knowledge of golf history with an ability to analyze swings and data as Chamblee does. If you want to know more about modern golf and how it is played, you really should read Brandel, listen to Brandel and watch Brandel.

“Golf gets in your blood,” he says here, in this 25-minute GOLF Originals mini-doc video that shows sides of Brandel Chamblee you don’t get to see in his regular Golf Channel appearances. “You can’t get away from it,” Chamblee says here of the game. You can’t get away from it, and Chamblee doesn’t want to, anyhow. His May itinerary, and everything he shares in this video, will tell you that.

We went from Anderson’s gravesite to Merion’s 13th tee to the fairway at the Philadelphia Country Club where Byron Nelson holed a 1-iron on his way to winning the 1939 U.S. Open. Chamblee knew Byron Nelson. He did not know the Philadelphia Country Club, with its hilltop tees and in-the-valley greens. (The stroke-play portion of the 2026 U.S. Amateur will be played there and at Merion.) You could sense Brandel’s joy, walking the course where Nelson won his lone Open and Sam Snead blew his best Open chance with a fourth-round triple bogey.

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I love the fact that Chamblee made our rounds in Philadelphia wearing a tailored blazer, a nod to the manners of some of his forebears, most notably the pro Chamblee most brings to mind, the urbane Dave Marr, a fellow Texan with Manhattan sensibilities.

Brandel knows how many U.S. Opens Snead would have won or played off for the title had he shot last-round 69s. He knows because he looked it up and shared it with us as we took in the Country Club. A kid played by us. His swing speed was astonishing. His grip was, too — wildly strong. Chamblee watched with something like wonder.

Brandel Chamblee has strong and informed opinions about LIV Golf, the proposed golf-ball rollback, the sanctity of golf’s rulebook, and we, as ordinary golf-on-TV viewers, are lucky to have them. But what we see here is the roots of it all, his deep, great immersion in this game.

“Every day to wake up, and have some purpose, that keeps you going?” Chamblee says. “It’s a gift.”

Chamblee has said a million of words over various broadcasts over the past 20 or more years. He might say a million more. Those two sentences, shared with us on a fairway at the Philadelphia Country Club, deserve to live forever.

It was past 8:30 p.m. when Chamblee left Philadelphia Country Club, and, after a roadside dinner as he drove west to Lancaster, closing in on midnight on Memorial Day when he made it to his hotel. A few days later, I saw him at the U.S. Women’s Open. I apologized for how long we had kept him. “I enjoyed it,” he said. I don’t think he was being polite. He played in six U.S. Opens. He’s been part of a broadcast team on another 20 or more. He had never been to Willie Anderson’s gravesite. He had never been to the Nelson plaque. He was learning stuff. He’s always learning stuff. This week, he’ll put that knowledge to good use.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com

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