Mike Cullity

Holy Cross Magazine story profiles Ignatian volunteers

My story on the impact College of the Holy Cross alumni are making in the Ignatian Volunteer Corps appears in the Winter 2012 issue of Holy Cross Magazine, the alumni magazine of my undergraduate alma mater.

The Ignatian Volunteer Corps is a 16-year-old organization that offers adults opportunities to serve the poor or work for social justice while pursuing Ignatian spiritual reflection. Most IVC volunteers are retired or semi-retired individuals looking to give back, and several Holy Cross graduates are involved in the organization as volunteers, staff members and board members.

Among the volunteers the article profiles are Bill Waters '67, a retired Rhode Island man who has worked with the poor in Providence; Warren Howe '63, a longtime educator and musician who mentors inmates at a Maryland prerelease center; Jerry Sheehan '59, a retired dentist who helps underprivileged students at a Boston high school with their college choices; and Tricia Brennan '78, a Boston-area minister who helps guide IVC volunteers as a "spiritual reflector."

NH Sunday News article highlights Granite State's 'expert vagabond'

Yesterday's New Hampshire Sunday News featured my story on Matthew Karsten, a Granite State native who is traveling the world indefinitely while blogging about his adventures.

Karsten was working as a nightclub photographer in Miami when he read a book about long-term world travel. For the next year, he pared down his lifestyle, sold off belongings and banked as much cash as he could in preparation for what began as a yearlong, around-the-world journey.

"I felt like I needed a change of scenery, new excitement, but more than just a two-week vacation," he said. "I really needed to do something drastic."

He embarked for Mexico in November 2010 and spent the next year exploring that country and Central America. Living on about $30 a day, he has traveled mostly by bus and slept in hostels, camped out or bunked with locals.

Karsten supports his travel habit with an online business and modest advertising revenue from his blog, expertvagabond.com. His blogging caught the eye of South African tourism officials, who invited him to chronicle his adventures for two weeks there. He left yesterday and plans to seek input from his blog readers and social media followers about how to spend his days.

After a holiday break in New Hampshire, Karsten plans to resume his wanderings, possibly in South America. "I'll keep traveling as long as I can earn an income or until I get bored with it," he said. "And I don't see that happening anytime soon."

 

Golf World piece probes golf flicks

Over the past three decades, filmmakers have continued to display an appetite for golf movies, despite their mixed box-office results. In Golf World's recent Arts issue, my feature on golf movies explores Hollywood's relationship with the game and how it has evolved in recent years.

Although films such as "Caddyshack," "Happy Gilmore" and "Tin Cup" achieved commercial success by treating the game less than seriously, more recent golf dramas such as "The Legend of Bagger Vance," "The Greatest Game Ever Played" and "Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius" have been tougher sells. But despite the fact that increasingly bottom-line driven Hollywood studios have shied away from golf movies lately, independent filmmakers' passion for the genre has kept it alive, as the 2011 releases "Seven Days in Utopia" and "Golf in the Kingdom" demonstrate.

The article reveals the stories behind these two new golf movies and shares perspectives from a few Hollywood notables - including "Tin Cup" co-writer/director Ron Shelton and "The Greatest Game Ever Played" screenwriter/producer Mark Frost - on the joys and challenges of making golf movies.

My take on 'Seven Days in Utopia'

Earlier this month, Golf World published my "Voices" column reviewing the new golf movie "Seven Days in Utopia." The film, which premiered nationwide over Labor Day weekend, stars Robert Duvall as Johnny Crawford, an old rancher and former tour pro who offers golf and life lessons to a PGA Tour hopeful who's stranded in rural Utopia, Texas. Lucas Black, a 28-year-old actor known as one of Hollywood's best golfers, plays Crawford's protege, Luke Chisolm.

"Seven Days" also features PGA Tour player K.J. Choi in a significant role as T.K. Oh, a four-time Masters champion. Stewart Cink, Rickie Fowler and Rich Beem also make cameos as themselves.

Although the film is entertaining for golf enthusiasts and seeks to communicate a noble message, I felt the story fell a club short of a thumbs up. Although it hasn't been a blockbuster, "Seven Days" has garnered a following, especially in Texas, and remains open in select theatres.

Stallings' first PGA Tour win generates follow-up column, radio interview

 

Last Wednesday, just three days after winning the Greenbrier Classic, Scott Stallings spoke to me about  his first PGA Tour victory. Despite earning more than $1 million and earning invitations to numerous prestigious tournaments, Stallings said the best part about winning was having well-known pros such as Steve Stricker, Sergio Garcia, Justin Rose, Stewart Cink and Zach Johnson congratulate him after he arrived in Akron for last week's WGC-Bridgestone Invitational. 

I wrote a follow-up column on the life-changing implications of Stallings' victory for yesterday's New Hampshire Sunday News. I also discussed Stallings on the New England Golf Radio Show, a weekly program on WGAM The Game, New Hampshire's ESPN Radio affiliate.

 

NH Sunday News golf column foreshadows Stallings' big win

Last week, I was on the leading edge of one of the best feel-good golf stories of 2011. On Wednesday, I interviewed little-known PGA Tour rookie Scott Stallings for my New Hampshire Sunday News golf column. Stallings, 26, grew up in Tennessee but spent part of his teenage summers visiting his grandparents in New Hampshire and playing junior golf around the Granite State. Speaking from White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., where he was preparing for the Tour's Greenbrier Classic, Stallings told me about how his golf experiences during those summers helped him become the player he is today.

A former All-American at Tennessee Tech, Stallings earned his Tour card at last fall's Q-School. After missing his first five cuts in the big leagues, he broke through with a third-place finish at the Transitions Championship in March, earning $374,000. Entering the Greenbrier Classic, Stallings had posted four more top-25 finishes, putting himself in great position to retain his card for 2012 and qualify for the FedEx Cup playoffs.

By Sunday night, however, Stallings had gone from unheralded rookie to PGA Tour winner. With rounds of 70-65-66-69 at The Greenbrier's Old White TPC course, he earned a spot in a three-way playoff with Bill Haas and Bob Estes, which he promptly ended with a winning birdie on the first playoff hole.

The victory earned Stallings more than $1 million and entree among the Tour's elite. Instead of flying to Reno this week for the $3 million Reno-Tahoe Open, he was bound for Akron and the Bridgestone Invitational, a limited-field World Golf Championships event with an $8.5 million purse. He also earned invitations to his first major, next week's PGA Championship, and a berth in next April's Masters.

All pretty heady stuff for a guy who just eight years ago was hiking the hills of Derryfield Country Club, a scruffy municipal course in Manchester, N.H., competing in the Red Ryan CYO Tournament, a staple on the New Hampshire junior scene.

'Extra Mile' cover story explores legendary SNHU hoop coach's journey

My profile of basketball coach Stan Spirou is the cover story of the Spring 2011 issue of The Extra Mile, the magazine of Southern New Hampshire University. Spirou's story is an inspiring tale - an immigrant who followed his parents to America from Greece in 1960, he discovered basketball on an inner-city playground, earned a scholarship to Keene State College and later, as a young coach, led his high-school alma mater to two state titles. Since becoming SNHU's coach in 1985, he has led the Division II school to 14 NCAA tournament appearances, four NCAA regional titles and two national final four berths. More importantly, however, he has invested himself in the off-court success of his players and has made a point to give back by offering annual summer basketball clinics in Greece and supporting local organizations such as Special Olympics New Hampshire and the Boys & Girls Club of Manchester. 

Boston Globe Magazine article highlights leading golf schools

Last Sunday's Boston Globe Magazine featured my article on golf school getaways as part of its spring travel guide. The article profiles three of the nation's leading golf academies - The Annika Academy outside Orlando, the Academy at La Cantera in San Antonio and the Hank Haney Golf Academy at Lake of Isles, adjacent to Connecticut's Foxwoods Resort & Casino. It also relates the story of one Massachusetts woman whose trip to golf school was a life-changing experience.

The Boston Globe Magazine is distributed weekly as an insert to the Boston Globe's Sunday edition, which has a circulation of more than 485,000 readers.

Sorenstam, Rules stories mark debut as Golf World contributing writer

Since retiring from competitive golf in 2008, Annika Sorenstam has devoted herself to myriad business interests (including an Orlando golf academy) and starting a family with her husband, Mike McGee. But few may realize her dedication to the cause of children's health and wellness, for which she has advocated passionately through the Annika Foundation, a nonprofit endeavor on which the Hall of Fame golfer spends close to half her time these days.

I recently spoke with Sorenstam about her work to reduce childhood obesity in America and wrote a "Voices" column for Golf World magazine about her activism. Golf World, which debuted its "Voices" section in January as part of a magazine redesign, added me to its masthead as a contributing writer when it unveiled its new look. A freelance writer for the magazine since 2008, I join a stable of contributing writers that includes noted sports journalist and author John Feinstein and Pulitzer Prize-winner Dave Anderson, a longtime sports columnist for the New York Times.

One of my first Golf World projects of 2011, an examination of the Rules of Golf, was the lead feature in a special rules issue published in early March. The article explores the history of the rules, how they've evolved and the debate they've fueled recently in the wake of high-profile infractions on the pro tours and disqualifications precipitated by TV viewers who report rules violations they spot on golf telecasts.

 

Chatting with Craig T. Nelson

Last week I got a taste of Hollywood when I interviewed veteran actor Craig T. Nelson. Best known for his role as college football coach Hayden Fox on the 1990s ABC sitcom "Coach," Nelson is back in the TV spotlight, playing family patriarch Zeek Braverman on the NBC Tuesday night drama "Parenthood." And his latest film, "The Company Men," opens on Friday. 

In the movie, Nelson plays the CEO of a company battered by the nation's economic woes. The film chronicles the travails of three of the firm's employees - played by Oscar winners Ben Affleck, Chris Cooper and Tommy Lee Jones - after they become victims of corporate downsizing.

I got in touch with Nelson as part of an upcoming golf article I'm working on - he's an avid 7-handicapper - and he offered insight on his current projects during our phone interview. His comments appear in an article I wrote for the TV, Arts & Entertainment section of the Dec. 5 New Hampshire Sunday News.