Fall golf in beautiful weather and the match play of Presidents Cup

As the leaves change and the days shorten, there’s still time to hit the links and enjoy some of the best golf of the year at any Classic 5 Golf course around the city. It’s always fun to welcome Ed Miller of Pine Ridge Golf to talk fall links, getting great instruction to improve your game and trying to understand the viewing experience and international match play of the Presidents Cup at Medinah this weekend.

Ed and Nestor discussed fall golf conditions, the Presidents Cup, changes in professional golf, and year-round instruction at Pine Ridge.

Fall Golf Conditions

• Cooler temperatures, fall scenery, and reduced afternoon traffic make this an ideal time to play.
• Local courses generally benefited from adequate rainfall and the absence of major heat waves.
• Pine Ridge reported strong course conditions and recently hosted junior and senior tournaments.

Professional Golf

• The Presidents Cup’s team and match-play formats offer a different viewing experience from standard stroke play.
• Ed described LIV Golf as a relatively small disruption and said professional golf is entering a changing-of-the-guard period.
• Younger players are becoming more prominent, with the 2027 PGA Tour season expected to showcase new talent.

Open Questions

• Will professional golf continue to normalize after the LIV Golf period?
• Will the Orioles add pieces and rebound next season?

• Host the Thursday morning broadcast at State Fair as part of the Maryland Crab Cake Tour, featuring Casper Wells and Alan McCallum and discussing baseball, the playoffs, and the labor dispute. (@Nestor Aparicio)
• Host the Maryland Crab Cake Tour event at Pizza John’s next Friday afternoon. (@Nestor Aparicio)

Fall Golf Experience

• Cooler weather and changing leaves improve the playing experience.
• Reduced school-season traffic creates more afternoon availability.
• Fall is typically a strong period for course conditions.

Pine Ridge Programs

• Pine Ridge offers instruction for golfers of all ages through the Baltimore Golf Academy.
• Lessons and practice are available year-round, including indoor options.
• The course recently hosted junior and senior tournaments.

Professional Golf Landscape

• Discussion of LIV Golf’s limited audience and impact on the sport.
• The PGA Tour’s signature events and schedule changes were noted.
• The Presidents Cup features 24 players, team partnerships, and match play.
• Ed emphasized the emergence of younger players and a changing generation of stars.

Baltimore Sports

• Ed expressed cautious optimism about the Orioles’ future after a disappointing season.
• The conversation also referenced the Ravens’ upcoming game in Rio.

Nestor Aparicio 0:02
Welcome home. We are WNST AM 1570 Towson, Baltimore. We are Baltimore positive, positively celebrating 28 years here with a lot of fun this week. I have been doing Kiss stories and the Kiss Space Bird on Thursday morning. We’ll be doing the Maryland Crab Cake Tour presented by the Maryland Lottery, in conjunction with our partners at GBMC, keeping me healthy, keeping me off the French fries and gravy until I get to Pizza next Friday in the afternoon as well. Also, our friends at Farnin in Dermer, Zach Dermer is going to be joining me on Thursday morning breakfast. I have former big league player Casper Wells is going to join us on Thursday morning. Alan McCallum is going to come out. We’re gonna talk about baseball because the Ravens are going to Rio this week and talk about Rio a little bit. And I’ve been talking a lot of rock and roll here. We’re gonna get a little golf in here. Ed Miller’s gonna join us right now from Pine Ridge. They are our partners at Classic Five. We got Presidents Cup coming up this week, so it’s a golf week. But before I even do any of that, like, let’s be honest, dude. You’re a Ravens guy, right? So this is, what do you got for me, man? I mean, I’ll let you let you do sports radio, Ed.

Ed Miller 1:07
Well, obviously, a very disappointing Sunday, kind of hanging over our heads on this cloudy Monday. You know what happened yesterday? You know, it’s kind of a a bummer of a weekend with the Orioles and then the Ravens. It’s been, yeah. Well, let’s forget about those sports. Well, this is where,

Nestor Aparicio 1:23
like, for you, right? You can say, like, look, fall leaves. It’s nice out, dude. You know me. If I’m gonna golf, I ain’t doing it. I go to these Oriole games when it’s 95 degrees because Wendy sends me to Tickets from Curio Wellness, and that’s when she gets stuck with them. And I go, I don’t like 95 degree. I don’t even like laying on the beach when it’s 90 degrees, right? But man, you give me this 72 and this San Diego and the breeze. It feels like I’m up at Pebble Beach and the air’s blowing. I got long hair. The hair, you know, blowing around a little bit. To me, this is when I would want to hit a goal. And certainly, learning the game, you don’t be doing that out in the heat. No offense to these kids that you teach in the summer, but this is a nice time of the year to go out, and if you do play, less people on the course when the kids go back to school. Or yeah,

Ed Miller 2:07
absolutely, absolutely. You hit it right on the head. Number one, the the weather temperature is probably the best this time of year, and then you know as the leaves start to turn, it gets a little little bit more picturesque out on the golf course. But

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Nestor Aparicio 2:19
spring, everybody gets out there too. This time of year is a little bit of this and that. Like people, and we’ve definitely noticed

Ed Miller 2:24
when school started. We’ve definitely noticed a little less traffic out there in the afternoons. A lot less kids. But the ironic part is this time of year, if your golf course is not in good shape, then you’ve probably had a pretty bad summer. So temperature wise, great, and usually the golf courses are in the best condition of the year this time of year. Fall is like great growing weather.

Nestor Aparicio 2:45
No truth that you’re going down to Rio and fixing the turf for the Ravens this week down there, right?

Ed Miller 2:49
No, sir. Oh, they’re having trouble down there now. So you’re

Nestor Aparicio 2:52
you’re been a it it feels like the weather. It’s been a nice summer here, right? Like it hasn’t been soupy crazy hot. I mean, it feels like there’s been a lot of humidity, been water. I mean, I’ve had my lawn cut a lot, you know, where I live. So I’m, I’m just good golf year locally, right?

Ed Miller 3:09
Yeah, yeah, yeah. For the, I mean, for the most part, absolutely no, no big heat waves kind of deal. We’ve had enough rain at night to kind of keep the golf courses wet. Now some courses have had too much rain at night, but for the most part, yeah, everybody has done really well. I think this year better than last year’s weather for sure.

Nestor Aparicio 3:25
All right, on the big picture of professional golf, and by the way, Ed Miller is here. You can find him up Pine Ridge. He’s he’s the pro up there. Teach you how to rip the club, do the thing, drop your kid off. If your wife wants to pick up lessons, if you need to pick up some clubs, and it talk about pastoral this time of year, man. When the leaves start to change on your course, no offense to Mount Pleasant or even Carroll Park, where they have trees, but like your place is like foresty this time of year, right? Oh

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Ed Miller 3:50
yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, 1000s of trees and and all kind of different variety of trees. It’s uh, it is definitely nice when the when the trees start to turn. Laney

Nestor Aparicio 3:58
Valley Road north. Just go up that. You take Providence to come past the radio station if you want, and go up that way. But it’s beautiful this time of year. Now, look, man, we get together azaleas. You know, we got we got Masters. We have we we we have the big trenches over in Europe that we do that in the summer. Do all that Presidents Cup this time of year, but more than that, football focus, baseball playoff start. You know, next week as well, the golf thing and the live thing and the PGA thing and what’s happened this year, it’s we’re getting something of a normalization from a fan’s perspective of the professional game, right, Ed?

Ed Miller 4:34
Correct. Yeah, I think so. I think everything’s starting to round up, and you know, for all the the controversies around live, I’m sure the PGA Tour guys are happy. The kind of money that they played for this year has been has been awesome. I think the schedule for the for the top ranked guys is kind of thinned down a little bit as they get to playing more of these they call signature events. So it’s it’s kind of all wrapping up. As a fan, it takes a little bit getting used to this new. Fall schedule because we’re kind of getting ready to start the 2027 schedule on the PGA Tour, but it’s I think it’s been awesome to watch. And the Presidents Cup for me as a golf fan, it’s always great. You know, 20 it’s only 24 players, 12 from our country, and versus the other 12, and it’s just usually a great, just a great fun time in the fall.

Nestor Aparicio 5:20
Well, live was its own international incident politically. Money, Saudi, dirty money, blood money-all who took it, who didn’t, who’s on Team Trump, who’s not-like the the whole thing. But now, if and Tiger Woods is-I mean, like golf in the news from a professional level for a guy like me, who’s very much on the outside of it, looking in, not living on a golf course every day like you, it it feels like it really was under attack for a couple of years. But it does feel like this thing’s going to get normalized again in the way when a USFL came along for football and went away again. You know, Herschel Walker wound up in the NFL and Doug Flutie went up in the NFL, right? So, and the coaches wound up in the NFL, like all of that, the golf thing, this live thing feels like educate me a little bit. Like

Speaker 1 6:06
yeah, yeah,

Nestor Aparicio 6:06
like it was such a disaster. It was such a stupid idea. It was clearly blood. I could talk about it politically all day, but from a golf perspective, no one watched it, right? Like literally, right? Yeah, yeah.

Ed Miller 6:17
It seemed like it definitely. You know, even I watched a couple toward the end, just to see the fans and how many people were actually at the at the actual golf course, and definitely not the same as a PGA Tour event. And you know, even though I was kind of open to it, because you know, as a golf fan, I like to watch professional golf, and I I stay up late and watch the European tour and stuff like that. So I was was kind of excited to see another you know league where you can see the top notch players, but what they well,

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Nestor Aparicio 6:43
you think if you need it or not. Like back when wrestling had WWE and TNT, like you know, do you need? We have the bananas with baseball, Ed. You know what I’m saying? Like you know what I mean? The Harlem Globetrotters. You know, there’s always sort of a side light to being involved with this, but the PGA always kind of stood for these are the best players in the world, you know. And you can have their other hockey leagues, but there’s only one NHL. There’s other, and the soccer’s different, right? Where people talk about Bundesliga or Premiership or Serie A or you know, and ups and downs or whatever. But there’s never any question. Golf never really had that sort of thing happen where this happened, and it didn’t work out so well. And I guess that will come back to the normalization of these majors that hopefully you and I and Tom Pearson, everybody, classic five will be talking about next year and the year after that. That it will become. We’ll look at these couple of years as being sort of like COVID years for golf in some way, right?

Ed Miller 7:38
Yeah, exactly. Small asterisk on it, you know. And the truth is there’s there’s just a handful of players as a fan that you’d want back on the PGA Tour from Live and you know like the the big names and just you want to see somebody challenge Scottie Scheffler but you know you mentioned Tiger Woods and and we’ll just say this Live was a small blip on the on the old golf radar so to speak but at my generation being a huge Tiger guy, a Phil guy, and all those, it’s uh, this seems like the true changing of the guard this year. And 2027 is going to be a neat, neat year where we’re going to have to focus in on a lot of these new names, new golfers, and hopefully some exciting golf in 2027.

Nestor Aparicio 8:16
Ed Miller’s here. He is the PGA golf pro at Pine Ridge. They’re part of the Classic Five golf family. Let’s see if I can do it. See if I can do it. Carroll Park, Clifton Park, Mount Pleasant, Pine Ridge, and Forest Park. I don’t want to get R.J. mad at me. That’s pretty good. Now I’m not reading off a sheet. That’s just me off top of my head. But he is at the one at the top of Delaney Valley Road. So get off on the top side of the Beltway, go up to the forest for the trees, and find Pine Ridge, and you have the top tracer technology up there. They can teach you the game. You can play digitally. You can play courses. Do all sorts of weird stuff. Presidents Cup this week and these 24 golfers and where we are internationally, just in the world, and Trump and Liv and like all that. The golfers themselves in the tournament. This is a unique sort of style, and you kind of play, right?

Ed Miller 9:03
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It’s not, you know, obviously you’re part of a team format. You’re playing 36 holes the first two days, and you’re forming partnerships with somebody on your team. It’s and the neat part about you have to learn

Nestor Aparicio 9:15
about it in order to follow it this weekend, right? It’s a whole you got to get. It’s like it’s like backer at or or pay out poker. You got to get the rules, right? Like literally, right? Yeah. Well, it’s neat because most of the time we’re

Ed Miller 9:24
watching stroke play events on TV, and this is all what they call match play. So it’s kind of one on one, one hole at a time. You earn your points, and you move on.

Nestor Aparicio 9:31
Scoring’s weird when they talk about it. Sounds like rugby scoring or something. It’s weird. Yeah.

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Ed Miller 9:35
Yeah, but this year’s team’s going to be neat. They got half the team is in their 20s for the American side, and like I said, a true changing of the guard. One of the guys on the team’s only 21, and yeah, future of golf for the PGA Tour and American golf looks really bright. I actually sound.

Nestor Aparicio 9:50
All right, so you get the kids off your course up at Pine Ridge. Do you miss miss it? Is it like there’s an energy about summer? I mean, it’s kind of like the Jimmy Buffett song. Like I’m going Ocean City this weekend to see what. When the kids leave the boardwalk and go back, like I don’t know what happens down there. I haven’t been Ocean City in the off season forever. It’s not off season this week. I’m 100,000 people down there, but like there is a point for the golf course where like I’m sure the first May when kids start coming, it feels and and trends and smells and. But I mean, I’m sure you’ve taught kids all summer, and they fall in love with the game, and they’re there this weekend too, right?

Ed Miller 10:23
Oh yeah, absolutely. Heck, yesterday we had a 80 kid junior tournament. Really? Yeah, yeah, and then and then ironically, this morning we had a 80 some players senior tournament. So yesterday, average age 15. Today, average age 75. That’s a

Nestor Aparicio 10:38
Sunday and a Monday, right? Yeah,

Ed Miller 10:40
right. Exactly. I’m

Nestor Aparicio 10:41
closer for the happy hour special on Monday afternoon, especially after the Ravens lose.

Ed Miller 10:45
Especially after the Ravens lose, absolutely.

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Nestor Aparicio 10:48
Get somebody how they can come and play and learn to play. And I’ve already endorsed. First things first, the weather’s great. Like you’re going to come out and play around. This is the time of year I think to do it. Yeah.

Ed Miller 11:00
Well, somebody who’s grown up in the Baltimore area and playing golf my whole life, golf is for the diehards, I guess you could say. Golf is still an all-year sport. There will be people out there playing when it’s 40 degrees and in the high 30s. You know, you just got to dress for it. But if you still want to learn, I mean, no time is actually a bad time. We can take you inside. We can still do outside. But Pine Ridge is the home of the Baltimore Golf Academy. We have Jaleeda Stack, who’s been there for a long time, and you know we teach golfers of all ages, and we’ll teach all year round. So it’s like never too late to start. Come on out and learn golf here at Pine Ridge or any of the other Classic Five golf courses, because, like I said, we’re an all year sport. You just got to wear some long sleeves this time of year, but you’re usually still good to go and come out with friends and family and learn some golf.

Nestor Aparicio 11:47
I’m gonna be driving down the coastal highway on Friday, seeing Hootie and the Blowfish. I go past all the putt putt, and putt putts. It’s it’s it’s a starter drug. I mean, it really is for for golf. So absolutely, Ed Miller’s ready to to serve you up with some lessons and some fun if you’re young, old, or young at heart. He is there for you over Pine Ridge, our Classic Five family. Been joining us all year long. It’s been a great year here. And Ravens in Rio, man, I hope that the grass holds up as well as the grass is held up at Pine Ridge this year. Okay, for this week, I am a little bit concerned about that. You got anything on the Orioles too? I know you’re an Oriole guy. I

Ed Miller 12:22
just huge, Oriole. You know, just kind of the the the roller coaster here toward the end of the season. Just when you think they’re not going to do well, then they they actually played pretty good after the trade deadline. When he, I mean, the Kalsar

Nestor Aparicio 12:33
play in Denver sort of awakened us, and then that was the that was just literally the end. That was like,

Ed Miller 12:39
yeah, no, and you know, as a sports fan in general, I’m still excited about the future of the Orioles. I mean, I’m a little nervous after this year, but hopefully the Orioles will rebound next year, and you know, we’ll pick up one or two pieces, and we’ll get moving in the right direction, and you know, kind of go from there.

Nestor Aparicio 12:53
Yeah, you and I just got in that fight about to live in the PGA. Where do you see the Where do you see the Major League Baseball players and the Players Association get together? Where do you see that this off season? Yeah, how that’s going to go. So from your lips to David Rubenstein’s ears, that we play some baseball next year. Ed Miller’s up at Pine Ridge. He’s doing golf. It’s all things Classic Five Golf Presidents Cup this weekend. Ravens in Rio this weekend. I’m wearing my Raskin global gear. Leonard Raskin is flying off to Corcovado and and he’s going to be doing sugar loaf and be doing doing the little green and red Brazilian meat thing there, and hopefully watching the Ravens take on the Dallas Cowboys this weekend. Luke is out in Owings Mills as long as they allow him before they take off. I’m at State Fair on Thursday doing breakfast as part of our Maryland Crab Cake Tour, presented by our friends at the Maryland Lottery Hub to Kiss Face Bird. If you’ve been following along on our 28th anniversary, you know I got a lot of rock and roll going on. I don’t think I have any yacht rock in this top 28. I Kiss is number 28, and to honor that, it is the Kiss Face Bird with some Paul Stanley stories as well. Our friends at GBMC are keeping me healthy and off of French fries and gravy. So far, that might be a problem next week. We’re going to be at Pizza John’s next Friday. That is the second in the afternoon. We’ll be there all afternoon eating pizza and swallowing some aggression if we lose to the Cowboys on on on Thursday or excuse me on Sunday as well. And we’re Thursday. We’re at State Fair in the morning. So and we’re doing baseball. Casper Wells is coming out. Allen’s coming out. We’re going to talk about the playoffs. Talk about the labor dispute and at least when the Ravens lose, Ravens win, Orioles win, Orioles lose. Done that. Rock and roll is so close to my soul because I’m always a winner when we’re rocking and rolling. So we’ll be doing these 28 story count ads this week. John Mayer and AC/DC, and AC/DC by the way, playing to Philly next Tuesday night. So it’s gonna be great week around here. My thanks to Ed Miller and everybody at Classic Five, including the Maroon Group putting that together, and Emma and our friends all season long, making our golf journey good and giving me people who know what they’re talking about. Because you know me, I’m just I’m just slapping around and and like trying to hit the old pro golf down in Ocean City. Back for more. We’re Baltimore positive. Stay. This.