The Fore Golfers Network (FGN) is a weekly podcast celebrating the greatest, most confounding game on earth. The FGN Podcast features exclusive interviews with golf's top personalities, a Tool Box equipment review segment, and a Road Trip feature highlighting top golf destinations around the world.
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on:
11-18-2023
Welcome to the Fore Golfers Network/Michigan Golf Live Podcast Ep 407 - PGA Hope - The Story of Mark Hitchcock
Our special guest is Bay City, MI resident Mark Hitchcock. Mark served honorably in the US Army Reserve for 10 years with the 980th Quartermaster Company.
Mark progressed to the rank of Sergeant and took on several additional duties within his unit, most prominently serving as his unit’s Duty Appointed Retention NCO while also bearing responsibility for his squad and duties of his MOS as a Petroleum Supply Specialist. During his service, SGT Hitchcock earned the Army Commendation Medal, 3 Army Achievement Medals, 3 Army Reserve Components Achievement Medals, National Defense Service Medal, Iraq Campaign Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, 2 Armed Forces Reserve Medals w/ M Device, Army Service Ribbon, Driver & Mechanic Badge / Driver-W, as well as several Certificates of Achievement. For service in Iraq, his unit was also awarded the Meritorious Unit Commendation for exceptional service during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Mark learned about PGA HOPE from one of his volunteers while serving as an Event Manager for the Alzheimer’s Association who was aware of his prior service and love for golf. During the program, Mark, who never took a formal lesson prior to this program, not only learned some critical skills that have improved his golf game, but also helped him connect with many fellow Veterans and provide a sense of focus and purpose he didn’t realize was missing in his life since leaving the service, using the game of golf as the catalyst.
----------------
Subscribe to the FGN Podcast
Check out our other sports pod: Church Pew Sports
TEXT or CALL (989) 272-2383 to share your thoughts, comments, suggestions, and questions
11-08-2023
Welcome to the Fore Golfers Network/Michigan Golf Live Podcast Ep 406 - Streamsong Resort & Central Florida Road Trippin' Fun
The MGL TV crew just returned to the freezing rain and plunging temps of late fall after a stunningly beautiful and warm journey to Central Florida for a TV shoot at Streamsong Resort. In addition to our time at Streamsong, we toured many of the region's top attractions, activities, and restaurants to showcase golf, life and fun in the area.
This podcast special brings together elements from every aspect of the trip - interviews at each stop of the journey and then a fun "behind the scenes" recap with our team - Bill Hobson, Gregg Hall, Larry Hemmerly, & Kenny "G String" Geddings.
Enjoy our podcast version of the road trip and be sure to plan your winter escape to visitcentralflorida.org
----------------
Subscribe to the FGN Podcast
Check out our other sports pod: Church Pew Sports
TEXT or CALL (989) 272-2383 to share your thoughts, comments, suggestions, and questions
11-03-2023
Welcome to the Fore Golfers Network/Michigan Golf Live Podcast Ep 405 - A Conversation with Nick Watney & Bob Estes
During the "Shootout at Horseshoe Bay Resort" we had the chance to sit down with 2 veterans of the PGA Tour and PGA Tour Champions to learn how they approach the decades long pursuit of perfection, performance, and excellence. Both Bob Estes and Nick Watney have enjoyed tremendous sustained success at the highest levels of the game and their insights will help golfers of every level get better at the game.
BOB ESTES
Having enjoyed uncommon longevity and playing success on the PGA Tour since turning pro in 1988, the former University of Texas All-American Estes made the cut in 446 of the 656 events he played on the PGA Tour. Estes won four PGA Tour events (with 10 career runner-up finishes) and amassed more than $21 million in career earnings. He has played in more than 100 events on the PGA Tour Champions with 10 top-five finishes and nearly $3 million in earnings.
NICK WATNEY
Northern California native and Fresno State University walk-on turned three-time All-American, Nick Watney has won five times on the PGA Tour and has ranked as high as ninth in the Official World Golf Rankings. His first PGA Tour win was at the 2007 Zurich Classic and his most recent came in 2012, at The Barclays. In 2010, Watney recorded top-10 finishes in both The Masters and the U.S. Open and he represented the United States at the 2011 Presidents Cup.
----------------
Subscribe to the FGN Podcast
Check out our other sports pod: Church Pew Sports
TEXT or CALL (989) 272-2383 to share your thoughts, comments, suggestions, and questions
10-30-2023
Welcome to the Fore Golfers Network/Michigan Golf Live Podcast Ep 404 - Horseshoe Bay Resort - Texas Road Trip Special
We're still marveling at our journey to the incredible destination called Horseshoe Bay Resort, situated in the Texas hills about 45 minutes outside of Austin. Come on along for a special "road trip" edition of the FGN podcast and meet a few of the team members that make every guest feel at home on and off the course!
Horseshoe Bay Resort is one of America's largest golf resorts and is the original Texas lakeside resort destination. It is located 45 minutes from Austin on more than 7,000 picturesque acres of the Texas Hill Country and along the spectacular shores of constant-level Lake LBJ. The AAA Four Diamond resort is the only waterfront resort in Texas and is part of the Crescent Hotels & Resorts management company’s distinguished Latitudes lifestyle hotels and resorts division. It features four championship golf courses designed by World Golf Hall of Fame members Robert Trent Jones Sr, and Jack Nicklaus, as well as the exciting 18-hole natural grass Whitewater Putting Course.
Horseshoe Bay Resort has invested $100+ million in a property-wide renovation and new construction. The work included new guest rooms, suites, and multi-room units, as well as renovation of the golf courses and facilities, dining experiences, meeting spaces, and more. The resort also features a world-class spa and health club, tennis facilities with 14 courts, bike rentals, hiking trails, lake activities with a full-service lake marina and boat valet service, nearby wineries, and a private airport. For more information and reservations visit www.hsbresort.com
----------------
Subscribe to the FGN Podcast
Check out our other sports pod: Church Pew Sports
TEXT or CALL (989) 272-2383 to share your thoughts, comments, suggestions, and questions
10-16-2023
Welcome to the Fore Golfers Network/Michigan Golf Live Podcast Ep 403 - Alan Shipnuck - LIV And Let Die
We welcome in best-selling author Alan Shipnuck to talk about the investigative work he invested into the writing of LIV and Let Die: The Inside Story of the War Between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf
No journalist on the planet has taken a deeper dive into the origins, personalities, controversies, bizarre twists and turns, and soap opera dramatic moments in the formulation and fight for survival that accompanies LIV Golf and the PGA Tour's attempts to thwart mass defection.
If you like "behind the scenes" stories, the latest from Shipnuck delivers big time.
Alan Shipnuck, the New York Times bestselling author of Phil, returns with a major new work of insider reporting on the battle for the soul of professional golf between the PGA Tour and the Saudi-funded LIV Golf League.
Over the past two years, professional golf has been at war, and Alan Shipnuck has been our most trusted correspondent on the front lines. Following closely on the heels of his bestselling sensation Phil, Shipnuck turns to the conflict that made Mickelson, and many other top golfers, villainous in the eyes of the public: LIV Golf’s controversial—and belligerent—storming of the professional golf world. (LIV’s unofficial motto, immortalized on hats gifted at a staff party: “F--k ’Em All.”)
In LIV and Let Die, Shipnuck delivers the inside story in real time, with fly-on-the-wall reporting from the yachts where LIV was hatched and within the corridors of power as the PGA Tour flailed to fend off the threat. Shipnuck has traveled seamlessly between both tours—having countless conversations with players, caddies, CEOs, agents, financiers, lawyers, flaks, fans, and Instagramming wives—to deliver a no-holds-barred account of the most chaotic moment in golf history. Anyone who has a stake in professional golf lined up for an interview with Shipnuck—because they knew everyone else was talking to him, too. The disruption to an old, proud sport was largely conducted in the shadows, but LIV and Let Die delivers numerous revelations about what really happened, and why.
Shipnuck’s unparalleled access and award-winning reporting chops provide rich portraits of the brand names at the center of this sprawling tableau: Greg Norman, Rory McIlroy, Brooks Koepka, Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Jay Monahan, His Excellency Yasir Al-Rumayyan, Donald Trump, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Dustin (and Paulina!) Johnson, Pat (and Ashley!) Perez, Patrick (and Justine!) Reed, Bryson DeChambeau, Jimmy Dunne, and many more.
Bankrolled by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, LIV Golf has upended the men’s professional game with vast riches—blatant “sportswashing,” from the mouth of Mickelson himself. Says Brandel Chamblee, “I think the LIV players are in a morally indefensible position, with a willful blindness to the consequences of their action, making them complicit to the ongoing atrocities.” Rory McIlroy said of playing a tournament alongside LIV golfers, “It’s going to be hard for me to stomach.” But the battle to thwart LIV revealed a deeper struggle within the game. “The Seminole guys, the Augusta National guys, they’re used to having all the power in the golf world,” says LIV’s Peter Uihlein. “They don’t like to be challenged. They’re not used to it.”
The bitter feuding (and trolling) between the PGA loyalists and the LIV camp made the battle between the tours deeply personal—but for the top leaders of the two tours it was strictly business, and in a series of secret meetings they reshaped the future of the sport. LIV and Let Die provides the previously unknown background and crucial context to understand the armistice between the tours that shocked the world in June 2023.
Long known as the most fearless writer on the golf beat, Shipnuck has delivered another hotly anticipated book packed with juicy nuggets and in-the-room-where-it-happened action...think Bob Woodward moonlighting on the sports desk. LIV and Let Die is the definitive account of the biggest (non-Tiger) golf story this century and a lively page-turner that in places reads like a spy thriller.
----------------
Subscribe to the FGN Podcast
Check out our other sports pod: Church Pew Sports
TEXT or CALL (989) 272-2383 to share your thoughts, comments, suggestions, and questions
