by Happy holidays from your friends at Fried Egg Golf.
We don’t ask for much, but the staff got in the festive spirit and came together to compile our holiday wish list for the game of golf. We’ve got something for everyone: LPGA and TGL requests, slow play thoughts, silly season ideas, and more.
Andy Johnson
This is a personal submission, as I look at the great golf courses I have yet to see, they are for the most part international. This year I would love to make 2+ international trips. I recently went back through my year and so many of my most fond memories came from our trip to Ireland and Northern Ireland. I find myself daydreaming about Baltray on many days and I am eagerly anticipating my return to Scotland in April for a Club TFE trip. Life is busy and there are a lot of opportunities to do other stuff but I would love to make at least one (or two) more trip abroad in 2025. The top of the wish list is the Northwest of Ireland, New Zealand, and England.
Brendan Porath
Going with a self-focus on this one and a very cliche wish: golf lessons. You get to a point in your life when the die is cast — you’re in a certain level of physical shape or lack thereof, your career is settled, you are who you are, and free time for self-improvement or change feels impossible or a silly pursuit. I’ve told myself this when it comes to actually working on my golf game and swing. This does not have to be the case! Commit to a change in your life, commit to getting better, no matter how old or how busy your life may be. When my wife asked what I wanted for Christmas, and this was my response, she laughed. But I am going to try to pursue this. So some further instruction and committed practice time, along with some needlepoint coasters, is my golf wish for Christmas.
Garrett Morrison
I’m begging Mac Daddy Santa for the fortitude to stick with a yoga program. After my recent two-week golf binge in the Melbourne Sandbelt, I’ve concluded that things are moving quickly for my body—specifically for my thoracic spine, lower back, and hip flexors. It’s getting bad, folks. Something needs to change.
Less self-centeredly, I wish that the costs of golf course construction would decline or stabilize. Do you want the supply of affordable public courses to continue expanding and meeting the needs of new golfers? Would you like recreational golf to avoid becoming purely a niche luxury sport? Then you’d better hope that the price tag for building new golf courses doesn’t keep getting bigger in 2025.
Meg Adkins
All I want for Christmas is for professional golf to figure out its slow play problem. I know it’s a trendy topic lately with rounds surpassing the six-hour mark and some of the best players in the world voicing their frustrations, but it’s been an issue for years and there’s been zero meaningful action to fix it. This year, there seemed to be a slow play story almost every week. Thursday and Friday rounds didn’t finish even during summer months with plenty of daylight. Fans took to social media clocking the most egregious offenders and their elaborate pre-shot routines. Players understand their tour’s policies are far from ironclad and don’t fear being put on the clock or falling behind the group ahead of them. The only consequences that would actually speed things up are penalty strokes, but those are on the brink of extinction. It’s time for golf to have its MLB pitch clock moment. Make the sport more watchable, reward the skill that is quick play, and bring on the drama of a slow play penalty on the back nine on Sunday of a major.
Will Knights
I would like the players involved in TGL to truly, sincerely, give it their all. I’ve written many many times in this newsletter over the years about how team competition cannot and should not be the central focus of professional golf. But I do think it can be an entertaining side show. It’s why the scarcity of the biennial Ryder Cup has so much juice when it rolls around compared to the complete apathy of many towards whether or not the Iron Heads beat the Fireballs.
In the dead of winter, I do think a weekday product with big names having fun and actually trying could be an entertaining escapism experience. Of course, the risk is that anything short of maximum effort from the players will result in an awkward product that is just another wring of the golf industry rag that we’ve experienced so many times in recent years.
Effort, that’s what I’d love to see this holiday season.
Joseph LaMagna
My Christmas wish is that 2025 is the Year of Scottie Scheffler. Burn it all down. Win 10 times with a strong performance at Bethpage and a couple major championship trophies. Just keep being Scottie Scheffler, which has come to connote dominance. Let everyone fight over money and try to fix the sport while you stack trophies.
PJ Clark
Dear Golf Santa,
I know you’ve got a lot going on right now. People are wishing for new equipment testing, a rollback, maybe even a PGA Tour-PIF deal. I’m here to humbly ask for something much, much simpler. In fact, it’s not even really a gift for me!
I would like one (1) PGA Tour win for Cameron Young in 2025. I would no longer like to be made fun of for my blind faith when it comes to my fellow New Yorker. And for the sake of the product, the PGA Tour could really use a few players to make a leap in 2025. Why not Cam?
Golf Santa, if you could use some magic powers to get him off the schneid, I truly believe Cam can win a second time all on his own, maybe even in the same year! The PGA Tour needs this. The U.S. Ryder Cup team – playing at a course where he’s won before – needs this. For the sake of my sanity, I need this. I’ll leave some extra cookies out as a thank you in advance.
Abby Liebenthal
I would love to see the LPGA elevate its place in the greater sports world in 2025. A new commissioner isn’t a completely blank slate, but it’s a new start and should feel that way within the organization and its athletes. As a gift, I’d like to see LPGA players in more storytelling mediums, whether that is on social media or represented in content. Can we get a Full Swing episode with LPGA Tour players? Or what about an Untold documentary about the Korda family? How many memes and viral moments have we seen come from this type of storytelling? It’s time. And because I’m greedy, I’d like to see some creative sponsorships at the LPGA – give me Sephora, Unwell hydration, Spritz Society, or Whole Foods. If I have to watch commercials (another gift: more cameras at tournaments, please), at least they’re products that make me feel seen.
Also, I could really use a new travel bag.
Beau Scroggins
A dream holiday gift would be seeing San Francisco’s Lincoln Park Golf Course receive a comprehensive renovation and redesign. This municipal course occupies one of the city’s most remarkable parcels of land – a precious resource in a city where every square foot counts. The property’s natural features are extraordinary: dramatic rolling hills, sweeping ocean vistas, and stunning views of the Golden Gate Bridge. Adding to its unique character, the course borders the Legion of Honor, one of San Francisco’s most architecturally significant buildings.
While the property may be modest in size, recent successes like Sedge Valley demonstrate how creative design can maximize limited space to create an exceptional golf experience. The potential for Lincoln Park is immense – with thoughtful renovation, this historic course could be transformed into a world-class facility worthy of its spectacular setting. Though the exact redesign solution may require careful consideration, the opportunity to reimagine this San Francisco treasure is simply too compelling to ignore.
And BTW I still want to play at Cypress Point. Where are you on that one Santa? Been asking for almost a decade now.
Cameron Hurdus
As we wind down another holiday silly season of golf, one thing I’d love to see next year during this time is some sort of throwback event. The most interesting golf we watched this year was when great players had to manufacture and execute great golf shots at great golf courses: Pinehurst No. 2, Augusta, and Royal County Down.
How about a two-day, Ryder Cup-style event at Seminole with persimmon drivers, 1970’s blades, and balatas? Watching guys have to adjust to smaller sweet spots, different spin rates, ball flights, and yardages would be a blast and you know what, they’d figure it out, because they’re really good.
Adam Woodard
Two words: match play. I want more of it, please and thank you.
I’m not saying the Tour Championship should be a match play event (that’d be cool, though) or the PGA Championship should go back to a match play format so it could have an identity (okay that’d be really cool), but it’s crazy to me the PGA Tour schedule doesn’t have a match play event anymore. The LPGA still does. Even LIV Golf has some match play in its Team Championship.
I understand the argument against it is tied to money, sponsorships, TV windows and not being guaranteed the big names make it through the bracket. But how many times did we hear PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan mention “fans” this year? He said fan 30-plus times in his press conference the week of the Players Championship. Watching 72 holes of stroke play week in and week out gets boring. So take the financial hit, and give us fans something different that we can enjoy.
This piece originally appeared in the Fried Egg Golf newsletter. Subscribe for free and receive golf news and insight every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
