Stuart Franklin(Photo by Stuart Franklin/Getty Images)OLD WESTBURY, N.Y — There are hard courses, there are absolute bulls, and there is Shinnecock Hills. One of the five founding USGA clubs, the Southampton venue is consistently ranked as one of the toughest tracks by Golf Digest panelists. It's an opinion evidenced in past U.S. Open scores at Shinnecock, with just two players breaking par in the championship's last visit. If a player wants to test their mettle, there's no better examination in the country.
Unless you're Justin Thomas, that is.
The Player of the Year favorite, speaking with the media at Glen Oaks Club on Wednesday ahead of the Northern Trust, mentioned that he and Rickie Fowler visited Shinnecock, home of next year's Open, over the weekend. To say they tamed the beast would be putting it lightly.
“It was soft and slow. Rickie and I played it and we both shot the easiest 65s ever,” Thomas said. “I'm almost like upset that I did that becaus..

Sam Greenwood(Photo by Sam Greenwood/Getty Images)OLD WESTBURY, N.Y. — It's the smile that sticks with you. The unorthodox swing — a short, compact, forceful motion that looks he's waving a carnival high-striker hammer — catches the eye. His half-hitch, half-saunter stride also captivates. Even with golf's engaging crop of players, his interaction with fans — stopping countless times for handshakes, autographs and photos — is noticeable. And you'd be lying if you didn't say his skin color, different from that of the marshals, media, gallery and his peers, didn't grab your attention. But it's Harold Varner III's smile — a gleam that would shine through a solar eclipse — that sticks with you.
One that was especially bright in Long Island on Wednesday. And why wouldn't he be smiling? That Varner's here signals an incontrovertible truth: the clock didn't strike midnight on his Cinderella story.
To many PGA Tour players, the Nort..

Photo by Gregory HeislerBecause Billy Payne had studied up on everyone from the king of Bhutan to Arkansas' favorite son, he knew what to say to Bill Clinton, and how to say it. So Payne suggested they play golf sometime. When Clinton said yes, the smiling Payne added a promise. He told the president of the United States and the leader of the free world, “I'm gonna whup your ass.”
There came a heartbeat's silence from Clinton.
Then, a roar of laughter.
“You had two strong leaders, two sons of the South in Billy Payne and Bill Clinton,” says Mack McLarty, a boyhood friend who became Clinton's most trusted political adviser. “The president had met 'Billy Payne'—the strong, entrepreneurial, Southern charmer—a hundred times before he met Billy Payne. What Billy said, he said in just the right manner.
“The president loved it.”
Payne had been just another Atlanta lawyer shuffling real-estate papers. Clinton had been the boy governor of a state that didn't m..