Author: Sean Ogle

This was one of my first takes on my favorite courses that I’ve played. It was published as our 2015 list, and it should be stated that this was a list of my personal favorite courses I’d played at the time – and is not a list of what I think the best courses are. See our latest top 100 list for a full breakdown of how I rank courses. The Breaking Eighty Top 50 Courses in the World 2015 #50: Pumpkin Ridge (Ghost Creek) – Portland, Oregon The public side of the 36 hole property, Ghost Creek is one of those courses I…

Earlier this year I was playing at the Cal Club in San Francisco. Within a few holes, I began to notice the swing of the guy I was playing with. It’s tough to describe, but every single shot he hit had that perfect look and sound. It was like the difference between watching an amateur and a pro or plus handicap. But here’s the thing, just a few months prior, he was a 15 handicap – hardly a pro golfer, yet he had a swing that would have made me assume he was scratch. When I played with him he had…

Been awhile since you’ve seen a course review from me, hasn’t it? Well, I had this minor detail of getting married to attend to – so I apologize for the delay – especially considering I have some great stories to tell. You may have seen a post last month about my first of two golf trips this past June. What I haven’t talked much about was the second trip. It all started in May when I received an email from the PR person for General Motors. It read something like: “Hi Sean, We have a bunch of fleet vehicles we…

I first heard of Nice Shot golf gloves when I was at the PGA show this past January. There was a bit of a buzz around the company due to their somewhat edgy concept of having their “nice shot” logo emblazoned on the middle finger of their gloves. I didn’t get a chance to talk to them, and frankly found the concept kind of gimmicky, so I didn’t think much of it. Then a few months ago they reached out and asked if they could send over a glove. I figured I’d give it a shot and went out to…

Grab the SwingTalk on Amazon here. Over the last few years I’ve tested out numerous swing devices and gadgets, and never found one that I was 100% in love with. Because of this I was pretty excited to get hands on with one of the latest products to hit the market, the SwingTalk swing analyzer. There were a few aspects about this I was particularly excited about. The first is that rather than clicking onto the club shaft, or attaching to your glove, the sensor simply screws into the butt of your grip – which I find to be much less…

Portland has a surprisingly large boutique golf community. We’re home to golfclubs.com, Jones Bags, Mackenzie Bags, and my personal favorite Seamus Golf. Despite the growing network of people I know in Portland, I had to fly all the way out to the PGA show in Orlando to finally meet Akbar, the founder of Seamus. Why Seamus Golf Has the Best Golf Headcovers Seamus Golf brings things back to basics. They make golf accessories such as head covers, ball markers, divot tools and more – but the cool thing is that everything they do is hand made in Portland…and the craftsmanship…

Wow, it’s been a few months since I’ve done a proper course review. Unfortunately with summer obligations, a conference for 3,000 people, a wedding to plan, and a business to run – my time has been (and will continue to be) relatively limited to put together the full course reviews. That said June has probably been the best month of golf I’ve ever had. I realized I hadn’t made much progress in my Top 100 goals over the past 6 months – so I went all out and planned two trips nearly back to back. I was going to write about…

I’m not going to lie, up until my trip to Scotland last fall, I’d only heard of Galvin Green in passing – and I thought it was some stodgy golf brand geared towards guys more than twice my age. However, on my trip I was visiting some of the most historic golf courses in the world, and they all seemed to have one thing in common: They all carried excessive amounts of Galvin Green in their pro shops. So here I am in the most storied places in golf, which also happen to be some of the wettest and windiest places…

At this year’s PGA show in January I had the pleasure of meeting Alex Holderness and John Bourne for the first time in person. We met through mutual friend, Al Vikmanis (founder of the fantastic Round 4 Putters), and I could tell immediately that I liked the guys. One of my goals here at Breaking Eighty is not just to highlight cool tech products or review top courses – but it’s also to help you find the best new golf products on the market. And the latest golf polos from Holderness and Bourne completely fit that bill. I’ve been talking about these guys…

Well it’s been a minute since I’ve done a proper Top 100 review of any kind. Honestly, things have picked up on the business front, and it’s kept me from spending the 4+ hours it takes to edit photos and get one of these up. However, I really enjoy doing them, so this marks my effort to get back into doing it. Last October I was at a conference in Charlotte, so naturally being this close to Pinehurst I had to take a few extra days and take a little golf trip, right?! Over the course of 4 days I…