After staring into my crystal ball during the rain delay at the PGA Championship: (Bear with me, there is a Chicago angle.)
A few months ago the members of Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Maryland were asked to extend the contract for Tiger Woods’ PGA Tour event, the AT&T National. The current contract runs through 2011 – Woods would like to keep his event there through 2017, a six-year extension.
The original contract was for five years, starting with the inaugural event in 2007. Congressional’s board of directors recommended the tournament be held on its Blue Course for an additional six years – a three-year contract, 2012 through 2014, plus an option for three more years.
Last July 30 more than 350 club members attended a meeting to hear Woods and PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem make in-person formal presentations encouraging the extension. Members were sent ballots asking them for a yea or nay on the deal. One report said the results were supposed to be tabulated by August 18, another said Labor Day.
So far, no announcement has been made.
Originally Woods also said he was hoping to keep the tournament’s July 4 dates because they were a perfect time to honor the nation’s military – and his father’s service.
“I want our golf tournament to be there in perpetuity,” Woods said on the eve of this year’s event. “It is an unbelievable golf course and in our nation’s capital on our nation’s birthday. The stars couldn’t get aligned any more than that. Hopefully, we can keep it there.”
That Woods was in love with the July 4 dates distressed me because those were the dates of the old Western Open at Cog Hill. While I may be jumping the gun here, looking into my crystal ball I don’t see a real bright future for the FedEx Cup in its current incarnation. It needs fixing. Immediately. Or embalming.
Maybe it’s just me, but my perception last year was that we were constantly bombarded with news and hyperbole about the FedEx Cup and its playoff format. We all grew tired of it.
This year, it’s like they decided to keep the whole thing a secret. The first leg of the playoffs – the Barclays – just wrapped up. The TV ratings (the real reason Finchem created the FedEx Cup in the first place, as a vehicle for the networks to keep throwing wads of money into Tour coffers to offset low numbers when Woods doesn’t compete) while unannounced at this writing are rumored to be pretty poor, just like every major since the U.S. Open and playoff.
There is no buzz this year. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Ought. Naught. Cipher.
The FedEx Cup is a colossal dud because after the PGA – unless it’s a Ryder Cup year – fans turn their attention to other sports. From what I can tell, despite the hype, not too many golf fans give a rat’s patoot about it. Nor do they give the same rat’s patoot about the “drama” over which players would qualify for the final 144 spots in the playoffs. Yawn.
I’d sure love to get an honest answer from somebody at FedEx to the question: “Do you feel you’re getting your money’s worth this year?”
I like to get the same answer from somebody at BMW, sponsors of the BMW Championship, which will be contested in two weeks at Bellerive CC in St. Louis this year as part of the PGA Tour’s master plan of rotating The Event That Used to Be the Western Open. While the Tour originally planned for Cog Hill here in Lemont to host in odd-numbered years – and hoped to secure three other sites in the Midwest for the even-numbered years, turns out only Bellerive and Crooked Stick in Indianapolis were willing to host. Hazeltine National near the Twin Cities said thanks, but no thanks. It will host next year’s PGA Championship.
So it returns to Cog next year for three straight years. In 2012, it will be at Crooked Stick as not to compete with the Ryder Cup at Medinah. That it plays in St. Louis this year is good timing for Cog Hill, which is undergoing a $4 million-plus restoration by Rees Jones.
So what worried me was that should the FedEx Cup lose its title sponsor’s interest and financial support (no big stretch), what would happen to Chicago’s PGA Tour stop? If the FedEx Cup failed due to lack of interest, what would BMW do? Would it continue to sponsor a regular PGA Tour event in Chicago? Does it feel it’s getting the bang for its buck as expected?
I’ve been preparing an obituary for the FedEx Cup for the last six months, and I’m sure others will be joining in over the new few weeks. I don’t care what the do to the format, it will be hard to generate fan interest.
But the good news for Chicagoans coming out of Bethesda, Maryland is that the membership of Congressional – as part of the contract extension – would now like the dates for the AT&T National changed from Fourth of July week (Tiger’s preference) to dates before Memorial Day, mid- to late-May.
That would re-open the old Western Open dates, just in case. While some officials from the Western Golf Association don’t care for the Fourth of July Week dates, what dates would they prefer? Certainly not the week before, during or after a major. And certainly not the current dates of the BMW Championship – in early September, when the kids are back in school, the Bears and college football dominate weekends, and baseball pennant races are heading into the home stretch.
Not only would a Chicago regular PGA Tour stop in early September be up against all of the above for spectator attention and dollars, but it would get very little space in daily newspapers at that time of year. Right now, we’re seeing a ruthless downsizing in the number of pages in sports sections and it doesn’t look like it’s going to get much better.
With their event coming up next week, I won’t bother any WGA officials right now. But I think it would be a legitimate question to ask if they have a backup plan – and backup sponsor – just in case.
Adding an additional WGA-administered event to increase revenues for the Evans Scholars Foundation is NOT the answer. The LPGA Tour had a three-year run in the Chicago area a few years ago thanks to title sponsor Kellogg-Keebler. There was no buzz, and they couldn’t give tickets away. (Actually, they did paper the house, but the attendance was still poor.) This even though every big name was in the field – Annika Sorenstam, Karrie Webb, Lorena Ochoa, Natalie Gulbis, Cristie Kerr. The LPGA Tour is in big trouble right now, having lost four of its title sponsors and events on next year’s calendar. The feeling is it will lose more as current contracts expire and are not renewed. Sponsors are wary that the Tour is becoming too Asian-heavy and hard to market in the U.S. , and the announcement that the tour will be all-English starting next year may be a kneejerk reaction to that.
The Champions Tour also ain’t what it used to be. It originally generated a lot of buzz and drew some pretty good crowds in Chicagoland during the 1990s when Nicklaus, Palmer, Trevino, Player, Floyd and Rodriguez were still competitive and the product was entertaining to watch. But the last three years of its presence here, the name-recognition of the product had declined and the fans stayed away.
COG No. 4 TO REOPEN THIS FALL As we announced on The Chicagoland Golf Radio Show a few weeks ago, Frank Jemsek told me since the grow-in is slightly ahead of schedule it is likely he’ll be able to have a “soft” opening of his newly-restored (Rees Jones) Dubsdread PGA Tour course sometime this fall.
He wants to give his Dubs regulars the first shot at tee times. No word yet on the inevitable new green fee.
Most of us on this side of the pond didn’t place much stock in the selfish rant by Hunter Mahan as transcribed by Golf magazine last week. After all, Mahan is not at the top of anybody’s list of go-to sources – but we all know controversy from any quarter usually gets front page, above-the-fold treatment.
Here are those comments, and please note: Mahan has never played in a Ryder Cup, so all of his comments are based on hearsay:
“Phil Mickelson and Tiger — their time is worth money. And for the PGA of America, the Ryder Cup is a moneymaker like no other. They don’t have to pay anything. I think when [Mark] O’Meara said players should get paid for it or some of the money given to their charities, I think [he said that] because the PGA takes so much out of the event that the players don’t really get anything. Is it an honor to play? Yes, it is. But their time is valuable. This is a business.
“I think Europe really, really takes it seriously. I think the U.S. does, too, but not like Europe. For one, every place they hold a Ryder Cup in Europe is a place on the European Tour schedule. That’s really smart because right away they have an advantage. The PGA of America could care less about winning it, honestly. They pick a site where they’re going to have the Senior PGA, the PGA and the Ryder Cup, which means less money they have to pay out to get more money. And from what I’ve heard the whole week is extremely long. You’ve got dinners every night — not little dinners, but huge, massive dinners. I know, as players, that’s the last thing we want to do. We want to prepare ourselves. That’s part of the whole thing: you’re just a slave that week. At some point the players might say, “You know what — we’re not doing this anymore, because this is ridiculous.”
On PGA Tour players refsuing to play:
“Don’t be surprised if it happens. It’s just not a fun week like it should be. The Presidents Cup is fun. Jack just makes it fun. We had a great time, we really enjoyed each other’s company. From what I’ve heard, the Ryder Cup just isn’t fun. The fun is sucked right out of it. That’s the word I hear a lot.”
Anybody out there feel sorry for poor Hunter Mahan? I mean, having to attend as guest of honor fancy dinners with gourmet wine and cuisine? Being treated like a king? Being given free, custom-tailored clothing to wear not only to those dinners, but for three days of playing golf? Plus clothing and social activities for the wives? For having someone else pick up your every expense for that week and kiss your butt while doing it?
Have many today’s PGA Tour players become so mercenary and spoiled and self-centered that they can’t play for the honor of their country one week every two years? Is it no longer an honor to be named to a Ryder Cup team?
Despite what Mahan says, they’re not playing for nothing, as they may have you think – each of them designates a charity with which receives a healthy sum in their name from the PGA of America’s proceeds.
Now it seems a cadre of British writers have picked up on this theme, expanding it to make the claim that most PGA Tour players share Mahan’s gripes and will mutiny. To the point where some writers are saying that in the near future, American players will refuse to play in the Ryder Cup unless they’re paid handsomely. Of course, no names are named.
Think the fact that the USA has lost five of the last six Ryder Cup Matches – the last two by lopsided ass-whuppings – has anything to do with this greedy line of thinking Mahan reveals? Maybe the PGA of America should change the format, paying only the winning team. Or pay all players who win matches.
That’s not all the British writers are up to. They are also calling for the “impenetrable quadrangle” to be ripped apart, for the Masters and PGA Championship to be declared non-majors and that one World Golf Championship stroke play event and one match play event become the third and fourth majors.
This stems partly from the fact that the U.S. PGA Tour has stolen most of the thunder and many of the players from the European Tour because of the bushels of money being distributed. It’s roots are in jealousy, and so they are trying to stir up a controversy where one may not exist.
TIN CUP Billy Rosinia, the golf pro and manager of 9-hole Flagg Creek GC and practice range in suburban Countryside (the one near LaGrange), was first alternate in the U.S. Senior Open qualifier at Hillcrest CC.
Rosinia, 52, the 2007 Illinois Senior Open champion, got into the field of the national championship at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs when Larry Nelson withdrew.
“I’ve played in a couple of Western Opens, but the difference is this is a major,” Rosinia said. “Just the atmosphere of the USGA running the event and the preparation for it, the way that Broadmoor has accommodated the players, has been unbelievable.”
Rosinia not only made the cut tied for 22nd, but finished at 13-over tied for 40th and won himself $12,575.
Others with local ties in the championship include: Jerry Vidovic, head golf professional at The Meadows GC in Blue Island; Jeff Sluman, Champions Tour regular from Hinsdale; Gary Hallberg, Champions Tour regular who grew up in Barrington; Tom Studer, accomplished amateur from Joliet; and Tommy Robinson, golf course superintendent at Ravinia Green CC.
WHAT’S THE SECRET? I think most of us are at the age where we suffer from little aches and pains, worse on some days, easy to ignore on others.
It is our generation that has zoomed Alleve and Advil to the top of the charts and into nearly every golf bag in the country. Having played a variety of sports including college football, and in my 50s, I have not only my share of nagging reminders from those days, but vivid memories of some of the injuries I suffered. Sprained wrists and ankles, twisted knees, broken ribs, dislocated toes, a femoral stress fracture, pinched nerves, broken and dislocated fingers (16-inch softball and boxing). And how long it took to recover, despite following the implicit instructions from some of the best athletic trainers in the business, and that includes my friends who served in that capacity on the Chicago sports teams I covered and were kind enough to volunteer their help.
Like most of us, I often reach for over-the-counter pain pills when one of those nagging reminders becomes a problem. Those little pills usually do the trick to mute the pain, but they contribute nothing toward healing.
So I couldn’t help but wonder what was the magical treatment that Padraig Harrington took following Wednesday’s practice round (prior to the Open Championship) – where he could only take three swings and was in intense pain with the wrist injury he suffered a week before, to the point where if he were not the defending champion, he would have withdrawn. By the next day... well, you know the story – he won the whole enchilada again.
I can’t find any answer and don’t believe any golf scribe asked Harrington what rehabilitative procedures took place in less than 24 hours to get his wrist “healthy” enough – not only to play four rounds of golf, but four rounds of golf where he constantly had to chop his ball out of the deep hay. Which is a great place to find hand and wrist injuries on links courses.
Please do not misconstrue my intentions. I have no suspicion that Harrington used any illegal drugs or painkillers.
But I’d really like to know what drugs and techniques got that wrist turned around 180 degrees in less than 24 hours, don’t you?
ASIAN INVASION In the recent British Women’s Open, 14 of the top 21 were Asian players, including champion Ji-Yai Shin of the Korean LPGA Tour. Another Korean, Inbee Park, won the Women’s U.S. Open last June.
How is it that our American players have been so suddenly rendered toothless? Do the Koreans have more desire? Better instruction? More talent? More discipline?
Might soon have to expand the Solhiem Cup to include a third continent, methinks.
PGA TOUR DOESN’T GET IT If you listen to the suits from the PGA Tour – aka The Boys from Ponte Vedra Beach – everything that has anything to do with professional touring golf is just hunky-dory right now, thank you. In fact, it’s not hard to find their quotes saying the PGA Tour is about to rise to the next platform... er, level.
I can tell you they’re not happy when critics evaluate what’s really going on and come up with the conclusion that the PGA Tour is in trouble. My best guess is that some of the PGAT suits are believing the stuff they’re shoveling to sponsors, that everything will be just dandy just as soon as Tiger Woods returns.
Everything won’t be dandy when Tiger Woods returns. Because that doesn’t solve the growing dilemma of how to keep title sponsors happy when the world’s number one player – the Tour’s One Man Show – never plays in their events.
No matter what the PGA Tour thinks, the effects of high prices for consumer goods is starting to erode live events and sports sponsorships. Evidence to this are the growing number of empty seats at NASCAR events – NASCAR being the model PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem used to design the season-long points chase leading up to a climactic event, the Fed Ex Cup.
Another problem is facing NASCAR teams. The rough economy has made it increasingly tough to find sponsor dollars, and unlike five years ago corporations aren’t lining up with fists full of cash, eager to jump on board.
Back to golf. The LPGA Tour, equally oblivious on the surface, is desperately trying to find title sponsors to fill three or four vacancies for next year. Right now it appears it might lose the Fields Open, the Ginn Tribute and the SemGroup Championship. (SemGroup LP filed for Chapter 11 bankrupcy last week.) All this after Safeway earlier this year dropped its sponsorship of the event in Phoenix.
There is no way the TV networks are pleased with recent PGA Tour golf telecast ratings. While the PGA Tour marketing machine continues to drum into our heads that “[all of] These Guys Are Good”, most golfers are too savvy to believe it. While Anthony Kim may be the game’s next big star, the simple business fact – and professional touring golf IS a business, a very BIG business – is that he’s not going to attract additional TV viewers and sell tickets. If another Woods-like player with the skills to hit so many magic shots so often in crucial situations ever comes along, it won’t be in our lifetimes.
I really don’t think the PGA Tour had a plan for life without Tiger. And its wishful thinking that all will be hunky-dory when Tiger returns is much akin to whistling past the graveyard.
Here in Chicagoland, the telecast of last weekend’s Canadian Open was competing for sports viewers with both the Cubs and White Sox – both at the top of their divisions and with serious post-season aspirations – and the Brickyard 400, one of NASCAR’s major events. Be honest. Have you ever heard the name Chez Reavie before you saw his name in Monday morning’s newspaper? (If your newspaper even carried an account of the Canadian Open larger than three sentences in the “Sports Capsules” slot.)
The lack of star power at the recent Canadian Open (bad dates, week following the British Open) – with Billy Mayfair, Steve Marino, Glen Day, Briny Baird, Kevin Na and Nicholas Thompson all trying to catch Reavie – made for a pretty boring television. Whether to watch the telecast (and ignore the Cubs, White Sox and NASCAR) or head outdoors on a beautiful, mid-summer Chicago afternoon is only a choice to be made by a fool.
The third-round of the Canadian Open on CBS had an 0.9 overnight rating in metered markets, down 18 percent from a 1.1 in 2007. The fourth-round overnight ratings on CBS were a 1.4, down 18 percent from a 1.7 in 2007 when Jim Furyk won.
Even the recent British Open didn’t produce the normal (expected) TV numbers. I don’t know who wouldn’t find Greg Norman in the hunt at a major at age 53 must-see TV. But somehow the ratings dropped about 17 percent from a year ago.
So how far away is golf title sponsors beginning to lose interest in the current way that PGA Tour presents its product and the benefits derived from same? I used to think there was too much golf on TV, and right now I’m seeing nothing to change that opinion. Shoot, in order to stimulate some interest in their event, the folks at the Reno-Tahoe Open have had to resort to bringing in golfdom’s No.1 circus act, Michelle Wie. And starved for exposure, Wie jumped at the opportunity. Why she chose this route over the Women’s British Open seems like another goofy decision – maybe an “in-your-face” because she wasn’t happy with her DQ at the State Farm Classic.
Sad, ain’t it?
Maybe the PGA Tour is finding out it is not recession proof after all, and my guess is that we are going to start seeing a period of contraction just as we’ve seen in the golf equipment and golf course industries. Fewer events for smaller purses.
Today’s PGA Tour players should kiss Tiger Woods on the seat of his pants because they will never have it this good again. There’ll be mutiny in Ponte Vedra Beach when the day comes where the Tour has to tell its members it’s cutting payouts due to a reduction in title sponsor interest and lower TV contracts. Right now, even mediocre players can make over a million bucks in winnings a year, and don’t think the players on the Nationwide Tour don’t know it. That’s the carrot they’re chasing, and in this contraction scenario the Nationwide Tour will have less events and only a few top players will be able to earn enough in a season to make a good living.
Forget about what you’re seeing at your local gasoline pumps and grocery stores. Right now, the PGA Tour is one of the most grossly overpriced and vastly underperforming products on the market.
No asterisk needed for ‘jolly good show’ from Birkdale Mid-July, 2008
Even without the world’s number one player in the field, the Open Championship turned out to be, as proper Englishmen would say, “a jolly good show.”
But it took a matrimonially-rejuvenated 53-year-old warhorse on unsteady legs and a tough-as-nails Irishman who played with a wrist that could hit only two shots during Wednesday’s half-hole practice round to make it happen.
Doesn’t say much for the rest of the international field, does it?
Maybe the key to the stellar performances turned in by both Padraig Harrington and Greg Norman was the near absence of pressure in the early going. Neither one of them walked to the first tee Thursday morning figuring to be around for the weekend, let alone playing together in the final group on Sunday.
Norman was at complete mental ease in the middle of his honeymoon after recently marrying America’s tennis sweetheart, Chris Evert. Harrington’s wrist was so bad Wednesday night he flirted with the idea of withdrawing – he said the only reason he did not pull the hook was because he wanted to defend his title.
No, this time the pressure was on those who immediately follow Tiger Woods in the World Rankings because, like next month’s PGA Championship at Oakland Hills, this British Open title was “available”. And therefore expectations were high. Some will write that No. 2 Phil Mickelson, who is light-years behind No. 1 even when he plays on a broken leg, botched yet another opportunity to pick up his fourth major.
The last time – at Torrey Pines, Lefty’s home course – blame was assigned to a pukey driver, and “bad luck”, according to Mickelson’s chief excuse-maker, Dave Pelz.
“I give Tiger all the credit in the world but I’m a stats guy,” Pelz told The Independent at the opening of one of his renowned short-game schools at Killeen Castle in County Meath.
“I look at Mickelson’s worst three drives and he made two doubles and a bogey and then I look at Tiger’s worst three drives and he made eagle, birdie, par. Tiger’s three-under, Phil’s five-over. Tiger’s drives were worse than Phil’s, yet finished in better spots.”
This gets even better.
“When Phil hit his bad three woods they went in the deep six-inch rough; when Tiger hit his bad ones they went into the next fairway or the trampled-down dry dirt,” Pelz said. “So if you’re going to miss, miss big and have a unique set of circumstances when your knee hurts so bad before the tournament that all you do in the build-up is putt all day, every day and go on to make 75 footers, 50 footers, 40 footers...
“That actually might not be a bad way to do it,” he continued. “I mentioned it to Phil. Of course, it’s not just luck. It is lucky when a 75-footer hits the hole and goes in, but it’s not lucky that he hits it so near to the hole. It might have gone eight foot past but he probably wouldn’t have three-putted as he was putting so fine.”
Boo-hoo. Can’t wait to hear the pompous Pelz roll out the statistics-backed excuses for Lefty’s performance at Birkdale. This time, Mickelson blamed his putting. But unlike Tiger, and Harrington, Lefty still hasn’t learned the shots and the strategy to win a British Open. His game is through the air, and it fits links-style golf like a car tire on a bicycle. He was among many who struggled just to make the cut, and for the second straight major looked lost out there.
Same with two-time Open champion Ernie Els, whose poor opening 18 left him close to missing the weekend. And two others whose names were mentioned often in the pre-Open hype, Geoff Ogilvy and Vijay Singh, didn’t even get close to making the cut.
“I think consistently day-in and day-out that’s as challenging a wind as I’ve played for four days,” said Mickelson. “I really struggled on the greens and I didn’t play to the level I would have liked. Consequently my score wasn’t what I would have liked.”
Duh.
Where was the Justin Rose we heard so much about? Lee Westwood? Wasn’t this supposed to be Sergio Garcia’s big breakthrough following his wins at The Players? At least Ian Poulter made a run before Harrington slammed the door on him with two birdies and an eagle coming down the stretch. And an unbaptized amateur, Chris Wood, managed to outplay 90 percent of the world’s greatest players for four days, and came within a one stroke of earning an invite to next year’s Masters. Actually, most of the American contingent never has a chance at contending in the Open Championship because it is a style of golf so radically different than what they’re used to playing – superbly-conditioned PGA Tour courses, where bunkers are not much of a hazard and the areas off the fairways still see regular mowing.
The American game is played mostly through the air – high, booming drives and equally high-trajectory approach shots designed to land soft and stop quickly on receptive putting surfaces. Across the pond, the conditions quite often dictate playing the ball on the ground – hitting low, running shots into greens and hitting low, controlled trajectories off the tee in an attempt to stay under the omnipresent wind. Links-style golf also requires a mystery writer’s imagination, because on those greens you often have to hit the ball to Point A to get the ball to finish near Point B, the quadrant where the hole has been drilled.
So the Young Turks of the PGA Tour with their “bomb and gouge”-style of muscling golf courses had no hope of competing at Birkdale, had they even been able to get into the field. Heck, the course played at less than 6,900 yards Sunday. But you had to use your noodle and adapt to the changing weather conditions. Most did not.
Harrington won because he carefully designed a game plan for himself – one that didn’t include hitting a lot of drivers – and he stuck to it through 72 holes. Norman didn’t win because on Sunday he employed the old Greg Norman-style, “balls-out” game plan – which might have worked again had The Shark’s legs held up through the entire fourth round.
Make no mistake, Greg Norman won a lot of events by being able to out-muscle golf courses. He also lost the lead in a lot of majors on Sunday because of that style. But let’s not forget he won this championship twice, evidence he understands the vagaries of links golf.
This time, he was still hitting the shots but doing it on fatigued pins that aren’t used to walking golf courses six days in a row. And anyone who knows anything about the golf swing will tell you that gassed legs make it hard for a player to stay with the swing through the ball.
But even at age 53 Norman still has plenty swash left to buckle, and still is a fan favorite – if not a sympathetic figure, thanks to all of the miracle shots pulled off by lessers to cheat Norman out of wins at the last. He is one big emotional scar, and he was professional golf’s Main Man for quite a long run before Tiger came on the scene. He has always played by the seat of his pants, and possesses good enough skills to still get away with it – at least for 63 holes.
He was great for the TV telecasts, like days of old. The sight of the still well-chiseled body and flapping blond mane brought back many memories, with (because of the extreme winds) Norman’s gunslinger hat the only thing missing.
How quickly people forget that for many years Norman was TV’s go-to guy, just like Tiger Woods is today. TV directors constantly switched to show Norman’s birdie putts even if he was 8 shots off the lead. He was a favorite of CBS’s legendary Frank (The Ayatollah) Chirkinian, who made the dynamic Aussie the focal point of any event he produced.
Yes, Norman may have had many tragic finishes, but only because he was so often in position to win. Let’s not forget he won 87 professional tournaments, after all. I will always wonder if it was a coincidence that Norman quietly disappeared as Tiger Woods came on the scene in 1996, as if Shark was passing the baton. After a lifetime of close calls, perhaps Norman’s collapse in the 1996 Masters was the death blow to his psyche.
Harrington showed on the back nine what lessons he learned a year ago. He made the shots that count on the finishing holes, the true sign of a champion. His brilliant eagle at 17 (following two birdies) that gave him a four-shot lead heading into the final tee ensured any small hiccup there caused by the pucker factor wouldn’t cost him the title. That four-shot lead gave him enough confidence to make good swings at the last and finish with – exhale – a ho-hum par.
Meanwhile, I’ll expect the complaints and excuses about playing in the extreme conditions will continue from the usual whiners right up to the opening tee shot at Oakland Hills. I guess a lot of today’s players have never heard the old Scottish bromide: “Nae wind, nae golf”.
“Never once did I hit a shot that you would do normally,” whined chorus leader Colin Montgomerie. “Not one in a normal way. It was all wind and keeping it down and getting it up, whatever the case may be. It was just difficult all round.”
Bravo. Very entertaining. And I think it’s good medicine for the rest of us who find golf addictive and frustrating that once in awhile we can sit back and enjoy the world’s greatest and most-pampered players suffer a bit for their craft.
YA GOTTA FIGURE Padraig Harrington’s successful title defense at Royal Birkdale will give a boost to Chicago-based Wilson Golf. Harrington has been using its equipment and wearing its logos since 1998, one of the few tour players on Wilson’s pad – and certainly the most prominent.
One of the marquee-name players sponsored by Wilson was John Daly, and that association ended early thanks to Daly’s antics. But that was a long time ago, in the days when Wilson was using golf’s bad-boy to push its ill-fated Whale Driver and Ultra [rock-hard] golf balls in the early-to-mid-1990s. Unloading Daly’s contract was one of the first orders of business when Jim Baugh, the genius behind Wilson’s tennis success, was moved over to resuscitate the dying golf division. Baugh next changed the philosophy of the company to creating game-improvement equipment for the average player, but not at the expense of Wilson’s successful line of equipment [i.e., Staff forged blades] for highly-skilled players.
Wilson then signed Vijay Singh, but that association wasn’t as productive as Wilson had hoped, and here’s why: You see, the media had convinced the public Singh’s torturous practice routine was the reason for his success on the golf course, which made it tough to convince consumers that his equipment was elevating his game (like most other manufacturers market their products using tour pros).
Singh’s endorsement contract with Wilson expired at the end of the 1998 season – fresh off his first major win, in the PGA Championship at Sahalee – and his agentwas asking for something in the neighborhood of $3.1 million per year to renew. Wilson politely declined, and Singh signed with Cleveland Golf.
That opened up funds for Baugh to sign Harrington, a European Tour player who showed potential.
Of course, anything can happen when players use your equipment. Wilson’s contract with Paul Lawrie, a marginal player at best, paid off big when Lawrie caught lightning in a bottle enough to get himself into a playoff at the raucous Jean Van de Veldt British Open at Carnoustie in 1999, after the Frenchman threw away a three-shot lead on the final hole. Lawrie beat Van de Veldt and Justin Leonard in one of the goofiest playoffs in Open history. Wilson made out like a bandit that day, because the steady drizzle forced Lawrie’s caddie to employ the use of a huge golf umbrella all day – resplendent with huge Wilson logos in addition to the logos plastered all over Lawrie’s hat and outerwear – and Wilson’s brand received several hours of primo TV exposure for free.
Now thanks to Harrington, Wilson’s logo filled TV screens all around the world for many hours. There is a company that keeps track of product/logo exposure seconds and minutes for major corporations. I’ll see if Wilson will make that information available and if so, print it here.
By the way – Wilson Staff equipment dominated Harrington’s bag at Birkdale: Dd6+ driver, FYbrid 5-wood, Ci7 series 3- and 4-irons (rifle 6.5), Pi series 5-iron through pitching wedge, and prototype Tw9 wedges (54 and 60 degrees). Harrington, the 16th repeat winner in British Open history, is one of eight past or current Wilson Advisory members to raise the Claret Jug. The list includes some of golf’s most legendary players who previously recorded Open wins in 1932, 1946, 1961, 1962, 1976, 1981, 1995, 1999 and, of course, 2007.
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If a product sounds too good to be true, it probably is
July, 2008
Ever since e-mail has become the medium du jour of the public relations and marketing industries seeking to deliver their clients’ messages to print and broadcast media, opening the Chicagoland Golf e-mail boxes on a Monday morning has become a painful, yet fascinating experience.
In the old days before the publishing business went completely electronic, press releases arrived at our office via U.S. mail. This was an expensive proposition. PR firms had to pay healthy prices to physically print out the press releases, fold them, stuff them into envelopes, perhaps include a few slides or photographic prints, and apply first-class postage and the mailing label. The activity was self-policing; to hold down expenses at a reasonable level the PR people maintained a finely-tuned mailing list, which included the most important print and broadcast outlets and anyone else that might actually use the information in the release.
Not anymore. There must be 20 bazillion marketing folks out there with our e-mail address and they all contribute to the email diarrea. On any given day, 200 to 300 of them send stuff that we wouldn’t use in a million years. But they can afford to do this because their cost of broadcasting their clients’ press releases to every media outlet on the planet is almost nil. So the next guy that tells me about the wonderful world of instantly moving information over the Internet for free just might get a punch in the schnoz.
I say Mondays are particularly fascinating because every manufacturer who has ever given a professional tour player free clubs, shoes, clothing, golf balls and whathaveyou (in most cases paying the player handsomely to use those items) feels a morbid need to alert the golf media world about their relationship should their player happen to win a golf tournament the day previous. I have received press releases shouting to the rafters that Player X won the Mint Suppository Open wearing their company’s spikes on his shoes.
Let me inject that my cynical nature forces me to see the dark side of the equation – the man behind the curtain we’re not supposed to pay attention. Have you ever wondered about the 30 players using the same product who missed the cut? Huh? You can also tell by the wording of the press release whether or not the player is being paid by the manufacturer to use the items. I get press releases that say “Seven players who made the cut at the Mint Suppository Open were using a Smash-O driver.” This is because those companies are too cheap to sign those seven players to an endorsement contract, but still want to reap some benefit from the players’ performance.
I write this because the other morning I got a press release from a company that apparently makes the world’s greatest golf tee. Here are some snippets of the text of that release – I have removed any identifying names, etc. because I refuse to believe that this product does what the manufacturer claims, and I’ll tell you why down the page. Here we go:
XXX Golf – maker of the No. 1 performance golf tee on Tour – confirms that three top-10 finishers at the PGA Tour’s Buick Open relied on its patented XXX tee.
Let’s stop there. What exactly does “relied” mean? Why do they avoid using the word “used”? And who awarded them the “No. 1 on Tour” designation?
We continue, with underscores mine to highlight key phrases:
A part of 102 major Tour wins – including 29 PGA Tour victories – since its 2004 debut, XXX is the only performance tee with radius posts that span the width of a golf ball dimple. This unique feature creates the lowest coefficient of friction of any tee, eliminating deflection at impact and increasing ball speed and control off the tee. The XXX has been scientifically proven via a series of rigorous independent robotic tests combined with extensive player testing to provide improvements of up to 12 yards distance and 9 yards accuracy.
Whoa, now. An extra dozen yards on drives just because I bought a package of XXX tees? Shoot, I just had Frank Thomas, the former 26-year USGA technical director and current equipment expert, on the Chicagoland Golf Radio Show. When he was the USGA’s guy in charge of checking out golf equipment to make sure it conformed with the Rules of Golf, he told me on numerous occasions that if there actually was a product like a golf tee that really and truly gave a player an advantage in either distance or accuracy or both, the USGA would rule it non-conforming. Here’s the definition from the Rules of Golf, my underscore:
Tee: A “tee” is a device designed to raise the ball off the ground. It must not be longer than 4 inches (101.6 mm) and it must not be designed or manufactured in such a way that it could indicate the line of play or influence the movement of the ball.
So the XXX tee – by allegedly providing extra distance – certainly would qualify as “influencing the movement of the ball” by allegedly making it go farther.
Yet this from the tee company’s CEO:
“It is no surprise that week-in and week-out on the PGA Tour players using the XXX consistently finish high on the leaderboard. Our tees provide an advantage in distance and accuracy that is unmatched by other products.”
But since the company does not divulge the names of those players, how can we authenticate any of the claims?
I called Dick Rugge, the USGA’s Technical Director to discuss the manufacturer’s claims for its tee. He said the USGA in the past has received golf tees seeking to be ruled conforming to the Rules of Golf. I read him the XXX tee’s claims.
“If those claims were true, than the tee would likely be non-conforming,” said Rugge.
Plus, the best evidence is this, something I learned a long time ago:
If there actually was a product that gave a player a distinct advantage over all other similar products, EVERY player on Tour would be using it. They can’t afford not to use such a product, if one existed – they are out there making a living.
So let’s list what we know to be facts:
• If the XXX tee performs as the manufacturer claims in the above press release – providing a measurable advantage in distance and accuracy off the tee – it would fail a USGA test for not conforming to the Rules of Golf.
• The XXX tee has not been ruled non-conforming by the USGA.
• If the XXX tee did what is claimed, any player using it in tournament play (like on the PGA Tour) should be disqualified for using non-conforming equipment.
• Not one player on any tour has been disqualified for using the XXX tee.
You can draw your own conclusion. You can comment on my blog at chicagolandgolf.com.
I also invite the manufacturer of this tee to explain how it can perform as claimed and still conform to the Rules of Golf, which prohibit such a device. I chose not to give them any publicity here by revealing the name of the product, but they know who they are. In fact, maybe the best idea would be to let them do it live on the air, on the Chicagoland Golf Radio Show, at which time we’ll reveal the name.
THINK TIGER’S MISSED? The overnight national TV ratings for Sunday’s fourth round of the AT&T National on CBS were down 48 percent, from a 2.9 to a 1.5. The third-round overnight ratings were down 35 percent, from a 2.0 to a 1.3.
On the other side, the overnight ratings – also on CBS – for the weekend’s LPGA event, the P&G Beauty Northwest Arkansas Championship, just plain stunk. Saturday’s rating was a 0.7 and Sunday’s rating was a 0.6.
If all the LPGA Tour players’ family and friends had tuned in, it would have pulled an 0.8.
Just kidding.
EXPANSION PLANS: Much-heralded Erin Hills Golf Club just hosted its first national championship, the U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links Championship. Here’s the latest gossip:
Seems like Erin Hills owner Bob Lang is already planning to build another 18 holes on the pristine site northwest of Milwaukee. Sure, and he’s got plenty of land for it.
In addition, Lang plans to build a number of guest cottages alá Pine Valley and Augusta National. Right now, Erin Hills is more than a few miles from the luxurious type of lodging his high-roller guests are willing to pay for.
Apparently Lang will seek outside investors to raise capital for the expansion.
Adding a second course makes perfect sense. History shows Lang knows how to do business, almost at the genius level. A second course will keep most guests on-site for an extra day, and studies show facilities with a marquee course plus one other tend to generate 3-day-minimum stays – playing the marquee course on Day 1 and Day 3 with a break on the “other” course in-between. (Not unlike Disney in Orlando, which built huge water parks to keep visitors on-site for an extra couple days – because its research showed guests were leaving the property with a couple of days left in their vacations, to go to the East Coast beaches for a couple of swimming days.)
That’s why he’s looking at building intimate cottages for overnighters. Just like Pine Valley, which is what I believe Lang was conceptualizing when he said two years ago he was building not a golf course, but a complete “golf experience”.
Don’t underestimate Mr. Lang. There is nothing to say his second course can’t or won’t be of equal stature to the first, as one Worm Castings blog (chicagolandgolf.com/blog1) comment opined. All I know is, in my two visits to Erin, Wis., everything I’ve seen is first class.
And don’t be surprised if someday he builds an airstrip on the property.
Another note: I expected some fairly decent crowds to attend the Publinks, if for no other reason than to walk around the course that Wisconsin golf writers insist will soon be slated for a U.S. Open. But that wasn’t the case, we hear. Reports said crowds consisted of little more than family and friends of the players. That’s a shame.
Not one Tour player qualified to take Tiger's place Mid-June, 2008
When I first heard the news about the extent of Tiger Woods’ leg injuries, I sat in shock, just as you must have done.
The announcement had news we all dreaded, that Tiger Woods’ injury was far worse than anyone could have imagined. Not only did he win the 108th U.S. Open Championship playing on a severely-damaged knee, but he was also playing on a broken leg.
Woods withheld the details about his knee problems as to not overshadow the U.S. Open. His respect for the championship dictated that the main storyline out of Torrey Pines be that about the golf, and nothing else.
We all assumed that the excruciating pain he played through for five days was an after-effect related to his surgery eight weeks ago to repair cartilage damage. Now it turns out that the cartilage damage occurred in the aftermath of an injury to his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) suffered while running near his Orlando area home a few weeks after last year’s British Open Championship. That injury was not made public until two days following his U.S. Open playoff victory.
In the process of rehabilitating the knee following his post-Masters surgery, Woods’ intense workouts caused two stress fractures to his left tibia – in layman’s terms, the shin bone, the larger of the two bones in the lower leg and the one that supports most of a person’s weight. Doctors have told Woods that those hairline cracks will heal completely in time. The pain Woods was suffering at the U.S. Open originated from the stress fractures, not so much from the damaged knee. It would be safe to say that as long as Woods would need to rest six to eight weeks for the stress fractures to heal, the decision was to use the down time to finally repair the damaged ACL.
People close to the Woods’ camp say his doctors told him weeks before this Open he needed two or three weeks on crutches and up to six following weeks of rest to heal the stress fractures. Supposedly Woods told them “No, I’m playing the U.S. Open, and I’m going to win.”
So to win this Open at Torrey Pines, he eschewed good advice. Woods himself said as much following the playoff victory. “I’m not very good at listening to doctors,” he told the media.
I guess not.
There is no reason to believe Tiger Woods won’t come back at 100 percent because he has the strongest work ethic I’ve ever seen in a professional athlete.
But in the interim, what will happen to professional golf? I can tell you that the ripples of him missing the rest of the season will affect things that no one can possibly predict right now. He’ll miss the last two majors of the year, the British Open and the PGA Championship. He’ll miss the Ryder Cup, the FedEx Cup playoffs and the Tour Championship. I think if you look at the marketing plans for most of those events Woods figures heavily in the marketing.
Sources close to the Woods’ camp also say he plans to remain visible through making extra appearances, but provided no details.
I’m sure right now there are a lot of disappointed folks in St. Louis who were eagerly anticipating Tiger’s presence at Bellerive for the BMW Championship. So we have to wonder how his absence will affect ticket sales. Same thing at Oakland Hills for the PGA, where the question facing golf fans in a tight economy is “Is the cheapest ticket option – the $350 weekly grounds pass – worth that price if Tiger isn’t going to play?”
Let’s talk about the BMW, for which the late Western Open gave its name, its life and its history.
St. Louis golf spectators must feel as cursed as Cubs fans right now. They were expecting Tiger Woods to play in the FedEx Cup BMW at Bellerive in early September. But now that the game’s No. 1 attraction has put himself on the shelf for the remainder of the season, the event will be seen in an entirely different light.
Those same fans have every reason to feel cheated. They missed out on a previous chance to see Woods in 2001. In advance of a World Golf Championship event that year, Woods played a practice round at Bellerive on September 11. But later that day terrorists attacked the U.S. The tournament was canceled the next morning.
“Everything was going great – until [Tiger’s announcement],” BMW Championship tournament director John Kaczkowski said the other day. “If you’re a golf fan in St. Louis, you’ve got to feel snakebit.”
Woods is the defending champion in the FedEx Cup/PGA Tour playoff event. The inaugural BMW was held at Cog Hill last September, and will rotate back to Lemont next year for three straight years. The event is administered by the Western Golf Association, based in Golf, Ill., a suburb north of Chicago, stewards of the former Western Open.
“We’ve had a few callers to our office that have asked for a refund, which is to be expected,” Kaczkowski said. “I’m surprised we haven’t had more.”
Of course, the BMW tickets were sold to attend an event, with no guarantee to see any player in particular, just like any sporting event. Or Broadway show. Except this time, no suitable understudy on the planet is available to fill the void left by the absence of a Tiger Woods.
The folks in Ponte Vedra Beach right now are reaching for the Maalox. While they will not admit it, they know darn well that the PGA Tour has turned into a one-man show despite their long-term marketing plan designed to diminish that fact (“These guys are good.”). And now that its one-man show will be on the shelf for the rest of the year, what will be the implications? Ticket sales (especially walkups) and corporate hospitality for any event that Woods might have played in will surely suffer. They’ll also have to convince their partners, the TV networks, that they’re still getting a quality, attractive product for their telecasts, yet historical evidence shows Tiger’s absence diminishes TV ratings by more than half. And lower ratings means the networks must lower the prices on their commercials, which means they will make less money and therefore struggle to break even.
It will take a while for the PGA Tour brass to come to terms with Woods’ sabbatical. The first words out of PVB came from PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem, who sent Woods a verbal get-well bouquet, saying all the right things:
“For an athlete as talented and competitive as Tiger Woods, taking the rest of the season off must have been an incredibly difficult, yet necessary decision, one that we understand and support completely,” Finchem said.
Like they had a choice to NOT support it.
“The fact that he needs additional surgery only makes his performance and victory at last week’s U.S. Open all the more impressive,” The Timothy said. “First and foremost, our concern – as it would be for any of our players facing surgery or illness – is for Tiger’s health and overall well-being, both on and off the golf course. We wish him the best toward a speedy recovery.” I guess he’ll address additional concerns – if any – at another time.
But Kenny Perry, honest to the core, didn’t hesitate.
“Tiger is our Tour,’’ he said, short and sweet.
In the Jack Nicklaus era, there were plenty of marquee names that could fill the void had Jack ever suffered a long-term absence at any time in his career... Greg Norman, Tom Watson, Nick Faldo, Gary Player, Seve Ballesteros, Arnold Palmer, Lee Trevino, Ray Floyd, and at one time Fred Couples and, yes, even John Daly... but today there isn’t a single player who can step up to carry the load, selling tickets and attracting TV viewership. Phil Mickelson? Fuggetaboutit, he fails more than he succeeds. Ernie Els? Retief Goosen? Adam Scott? Jim Furyk? Sergio Garcia? Stewart Cink? Or any in the army of players who have “undeveloped potential”?
Nope. Not a potential Superman in the group.
The Tour is in big trouble.
Let’s hope this Open isn’t like watching waterboarding
June, 2008
The 108th U.S. Open will play out at Torrey Pines this weekend and I will be watching with mixed emotions. The USGA decision to take this year’s Open to the second public course in history – a muni – came right about the time the first U. S. Open on a public course played out on the Black course at Bethpage State Park.
Of course, I felt that Cog Hill deserved to be the first non-private, non-resort course to host the National Open. I still do. While that’s already been done twice now, Cog Hill could still be the first privately-owned public facility to get one. Chicago deserves it, and so does the Jemsek family.
I find it reassuring, though, that Torrey Pines needed a makeover treatment from “The Open Doctor”, Rees Jones, before the USGA would take a serious look at the course. And that’s exactly what’s going on right now at Cog Hill.
The big buzz leading up to this U.S. Open has much to do about the course setup. A lot of people – myself included – have felt the courses have been getting progressively over-the-top penal, to where the winner in each of the last two years was five-over-par.
That might give the giggles to the pipe-and-tweed crowd, but it is like watching the finest players in the world get waterboarded for four days straight. Let’s hope Torrey Pines provides us with entertainment that’s not painful to watch. Change rules to reflect how people play When the United States Golf Association’s Rule regarding amateurs accepting prizes for holes-in-one changed in 2006, my first reaction was “It’s about time.” (The Rule was amended to allow an amateur golfer to accept a prize of any value for a hole-in-one made while playing a round of golf.)
This ended the dilemma facing amateur golfers (99-plus percent of all golfers) when at a charity outing they holed a tee shot where an automobile or other prize of great value was the award for an ace. They technically became a “professional” if they accepted the car (or any other prize valued at more than $750, which according to the Rules prohibited future participation in amateur-only events and other things like club championships.
Really. Who among us would turn down a car in order to preserve our eligibility to play in the Fall Two-Man Scramble at our home course?
So this Rule change was made to reflect reality, the way amateurs were actually approaching the decision. Now why can’t the Rules reflect the way people play?
The Chicago Tribune’s Eric Zorn reached a similar conclusion a few weeks ago, where he asked his Change of Subject blog readers if not playing strict USGA rules is considered “cheating”. My response was no, that very few golfers do play 100 percent by the book.
I’ve long written that the Rules of Golf – in some cases – should take into consideration more how people are playing the game and to improve the game by speeding it up. Or maybe have two different sets of rules, to reflect how the game is actually being played.
The set of rules we have now would apply to golf as played by touring professionals and high-ranking competition amateurs, who comprise a teeny one percent of the people who play the game. For them, leave the book alone.
But for now, I’m talking about the rest of us, the 99 percent who mainly play social/recreational golf.
We play for fun. That’s what keeps the $62 billion-a-year game alive and the cash registers ringing.
And we may be moving in the right direction, albeit very slowly. Like, in 2002, for the first time, the USGA finally admitted that there are two kinds of golf being played – tournament and recreational.
Quite an epiphany there, eh?
And that revelation did not cause the earth to heave and rend, either.
Just about all of us fit into the latter category, although some of us do dabble in serious tournament golf once in awhile. I believe each has its place.
Now, in the past I have been accused of being a heretic for expressing this blasphemous concept.
But a book of Rules for recreational golf would be nothing more than setting down on paper the Rules 99 percent of golfers employ.
It would be no different than the rules used in high school, college and NFL football games compared to the rules agreed upon when a bunch of college buddies re-enact the annual Turkey Bowl in the local park. (Where there are no first-down markers, which are integral to the formal version of the game.) Or when we as kids played baseball with less than nine players to a side – with right field “out”. In fact, I doubt as a kid I ever played a game outside an organized league where each team had the full compliment as professed in the Rules of Baseball.
Most importantly, it would be a change designed to speed up the game at the social/recreational level, to make it more attractive, to inject some energy into stagnant rounds-played numbers, a much-needed fix to a problem long identified as one of the reasons people play less or abandon the game altogether. It would eliminate the inevitable arguments that arise among friends when someone in the foursome decides to cite an obscure rule to call a penalty on another player.
Who could quibble with that?
This is why provisos for serious-golf things like the “one-ball provision” and “scouting ahead of your ball with a cart” aren’t in the Rules proper. They are in the Appendix, or on a local rules sheet, “The Terms and Conditions of the Tournament” handed out to competitors.
So it has always been my opinion that some of the Rules don’t consider the way golf is actually being played. In many cases, this because the rulesmakers themselves don’t have to play the game like we do.
To wit: your ball goes into a bunker and settles into a deep footprint left by some inconsiderate moron who couldn’t bend over to pick up a rake. Or, your ball lands in the middle of the fairway and into an ugly, unrepaired divot-hole.
Yeah, I know. Play it as it lies. Rub of the green. According to Hoyle.
But most of the guys who make the rules for the rest of us are members at high-hat private clubs, where caddies meticulously rake the bunkers after each use, fix ballmarks on putting surfaces and repair divot damage in the fairways. They police the entire green, to ensure conditions are optimum.
I’d like to invite the USGA rules-makers to come out and play public golf with me for a week, so they can see how WE have to play the game. That’s “we” as in the 90 percent of all golfers, those who play public golf.
And what the USGA needs to realize is that no one in that 99 percent social/recreational golfer category has to play by its rules, either. (There are over 37 million people of all ages who play golf in the U.S., according to the National Golf Foundation. Of that number, only about 90,000 are USGA members. That’s roughly 1 in 400 golfers, hardly a ringing endorsement. Or about 6 for each of the nation’s 16,000 golf courses.)
While golf’s version of Hoyle goes through great pains to create a set of fair rules, it’s all voluntary. The only people the USGA governs are those who volunteer to be governed. As long as you play the holes in the correct order, don’t damage the golf course and don’t hold up play, you can play by any rules you want.
And that’s how most golf is being played.
This the USGA needs to understand and admit. Here’s a great idea: the USGA could stay with one rule book, and list the “basic” rules – the rules for recreational golf – in the front of the book. Then move a few more serious-golf Rules ignored by social/recreational players into the Appendix or other area designated strictly for governing tournament golf.
What priority is more important? Being sticklers for rules, or getting the golf industry healthy again?
Tie-breaking format for Players needs quick deep-six
Mid-May, 2008
One of the first orders of business as soon as the PGA Tour hierarchy gets back to work should be to deep-six the current sudden-death playoff format for The Players Championship.
Warning: my personal bias toward the style of golf architecture embraced by the Stadium Course perpetrator-designer is about to bubble over.
As it is usually set up, the course is fun to play for the legion of hackers who travel there from all points just so they could tell their friends played it once. The course beats the crap out of them, which puts them in a dreamy stupor that manifests itself in a wild buying binge of expensive, logoed stuff in the golf shop, to wear on their home course back home to trigger “Hey! YOU played the Stadium Course at Sawgrass?”
That’s how golfers get their money’s worth – it is also one of the great mysteries in golf, the weird sort of camaraderie shared among golfers when everyone else in your foursome is being carried off on their shield, too.
I’m lucky to have played there a total of six times, dating back to the early days, when it truly was unplayable for even 10-handicaps. I’ve played there with golf writers and with total strangers. I’ve played in the wind and rain. I played in beautiful, calm weather when the deep blue sky was filled with popcorn clouds buttered with sunshine.*
*Note: this is the most cloying metaphor I’ve ever written in my life, and I’ve managed to sneak it into a story once every year since I first wrote it in 1974. I have now completed my obligation for the calendar year 2008. But I digress...
I’ve tried to play it “careful” at the Stadium Course, but that’s really not my style of game. I guess the thought that always prevailed when I teed it up there was “I didn’t come all the way down here just to lay up.”
On the other hand, I never got overly aggressive down there, either – mainly because I remember vividly the carnage that occurred when one of my playing partners (a 6-handicap) announced to all within earshot on the first tee that he was not going to let the course’s thorny reputation intimidate him, that he planned to be in full-attack-mode for all 18 holes no matter what happened. He left six sleeves of golf balls on the front nine along with his entrails. On the way in, he even laid up on the par-4s.
Some things one never forgets. I kept my ball dry 4 of 6 times on the 17th hole. (And I’d argue one of those two misses shouldn’t count. I was in a group on a media day that pulled the short straw, having to start on 17 in a shotgun, which I thought as unfair as Sunday’s sudden-death playoff. Still sleepy-eyed, all four of us rinsed our tee shots at 6:30 a.m.)
The 17th hole at Sawgrass is indeed a novelty, one of the all-time great flashes of marketing brilliance from Pete Dye. During The Players, it generates a tremendous amount of interest from on-site spectators and TV viewers, the same type of morbid curiosity we see when traffic on the expressway slows down to take a long look at a high-speed, blood-and-guts-everywhere wreck.
While there are those in Ponte Vedra Beach who are infatuated with that stupid 17th hole on the Stadium Course, there is absolutely no sane reason to start a sudden-death playoff there. The concept is ridiculous on a day with no wind, let alone on a day when winds are swirling and wildly snapping flags.
Personally – and if they wish to recruit any more golf media members to worship at the altar of the “fifth major” concept this is a must – I think they need to script a tie-breaking finale far better than dragging the already-battered combatants back to that tee box to start a playoff with a life-and-death iron shot.
The intent of a true sudden-death playoff means the players complete at least one hole, tee-to-green. On a well-chosen hole, a lousy tee shot can still be mitigated by a terrific approach. Or two lackluster shots offset by either a great chip or a tremendous long putt. In other words, an opening shot only one foot off-line doesn’t end the playoff.
But at TPC Sawgrass, simply miss the green on the playoff hole by 6 inches with your tee shot and you’re dead. Fini. Kaput. Iced. Virtually no opportunity to make a spectacular recovery shot, knocking the ball up close to salvage a brilliant par. After your first ball gets wet, you need a heroic chip from the drop area and a one-putt just to save bogey. Sorry folks, but that ain’t the way to end an odyssey of 72 grueling holes in what they want us to believe is an elite event.
Far better would be a three-hole playoff – 16-17-18 – decided by aggregate score over those three holes. And by the way – there was absolutely no reason Jimmy Roberts should’ve gone ga-ga over former PGA Tour commissioner Deane Beman’s sudden flash of self-proclaimed brilliance in coming up with the name “The Gauntlet” to describe the three closing holes at Sawgrass. The cartoonish Roberts, who might be better-suited as host of a Saturday morning children’s TV show, spent far too much airtime gushing over Beman’s idea, which I’d hardly classify as “creative”.
As an aside, Roberts’ Saturday post-round interview with Sergio Garcia was one of the most inept and inappropriate I’ve seen since TV weenie Jim Gray hijacked Pete Rose during Game 2 of the 1999 World Series after Rose was introduced as a member of the MLB All-Century Team.
Reportedly, some of the PGA Tour brass weren’t pleased, either. Roberts asked Garcia three questions: if it was frustrating to hit the ball so well all day and not make many putts (“They just didn’t go in today.”); if he could identify the problem with his putting (“They didn’t go in.”) and finally Roberts said “Well, obviously you’re going to the practice green to work on your putting.” To which an obviously irritated Garcia said curtly “No, I’m not.”
Back to naming the finishing holes. I suppose it’s fitting that this topic was injected into the Sunday broadcast by the retired commish, who has an abject fear of blending into a crowd. Beman’s sad legacy apparently calls for him to keep popping up to remind us that The Players Championship and the TPC Network and the Stadium course at Sawgrass were all his ideas. And the very concept that those last three holes be anointed with their own catchy name is yet another thinly-disguised attempt at somehow equating The Players and Sawgrass to the Masters and the Augusta National, which has the classic Amen Corner.
The name “Amen Corner” just happened by itself, coming from a 1958 Sports Illustrated story by the legendary Herbert Warren Wind.
It wasn’t forced, like they’re trying to do at Sawgrass.
Course conditioning expectations need reality check
May, 2008
For the past two weeks I could not stop thinking about the effort by the Augusta National membership called “Golf Goes Worldwide” – asking golfers who visit their website (www.masters.org) to submit ideas on how to get people playing, watching and talking about golf.
I’ve already offered my two cents. I suggested opening up their exclusionary membership policy, allowing non-”privileged” children to attend the Masters, and most importantly starting to enforce their pace-of-play policy which sets a target time of 4:45. For threesomes in the first two rounds of the Masters, this year the times on those two days were 5:17 and 5:37 – just awful. It was just as bad on the weekend.
Now if they really wanted to help the golf industry – and this will never ever happen until the USGA plays 10 consecutive Opens at public courses – they’d cut back on their golf course conditioning program. A little brown, a smidgen of imperfection here and there wouldn’t hurt anything.
You see, once CBS started televising the Masters in color, showing the vivid, verdant, lush fairways and greens, every member at every private club across the country wanted his own course to look exactly the same. As a result most golf course superintendents found a few extra dollars making their way into their maintenance and conditioning budget. In most cases, memberships which wanted the “Augusta National-look” for their own course could easily afford it.
That was then. This is now.
Public courses didn’t become infected by this “perfect-conditions disease” until the late 1980s. For years, public golfers had no problem playing on bluegrass fairways because the green fees were low – and very few of them ever had the chance to play the close-mowed bentgrass fairways of private clubs. So they weren’t yet spoiled. Most public courses in those days set the blades at two inches and had the guy on the tractor pulling the gang mower cut the place wall-to-wall.
Then we began seeing appear a phenomenon known as “ultra-upscale public courses”. They offered premium clubhouse amenities and just about everything else you’d find at an old-money private club – meticulous conditioning including bentgrass fairways watered to a deep green by expensive automatic irrigation systems. They popped up like mushrooms to meet the business-entertainment needs of high-rollers who for whatever reason did not join a private club – even though they could afford one.
The ultra-upscales enjoyed a pretty good run while the economy was strong and golfers were flush with disposable income. Even mid-range public courses switched to expensive bentgrass fairways because their golfers were willing to play the up-charge.
But they kept building. And building. And building.
The “throwaway” courses – those basic, average-conditioning public tracks – suddenly began disappearing under real state developments because they had fallen out of favor.
Then another thing happened. The golf course industry was excessively overbuilt. Too many courses and not enough new golfers to fill them.
More cause and effect. As public golfers’ course-conditioning expectations continued to rise, so did green fees. After all, somebody had to pay for the vastly-improved (and almost mandatory) top-notch conditions.
The same thing is happening at a lot of private clubs that have been hurt by rapidly declining membership.
A lot of golfers are licking their chops going into this season figuring most public golf courses will be offering green-fee discounts more often than ever due to the economy. What I would tell them is in exchange for your local course lowering its prices a bit this season, how about doing your part to help their bottom line by slightly lowering your course-conditioning expectations, say 10 to 15 percent? Just like a lot of people are struggling to make ends meet these days – or just plain survive – so are many golf courses.
As I said, a little brown ain’t bad. Personally, I like playing on firm, dry fairways that give my tee shots a little extra rollout. Yeah, every golfer would love to pay $25 for 18 holes with cart on a golf course that looks like the Augusta National. But that’s just a TV-created pipe dream that cannot happen.
WIE WILL PLAY IN SPRINGFIELD: We could have “Wie Weeks” here in Illinois in July.
As you may have read in The News Hole on our website, Michelle Wie accepted a sponsor’s exemption to play in the 2008 LPGA State Farm Classic at Panther Creek Country Club in downstate Springfield July 14-20.
I also have to wonder if the PGA Tour John Deere Classic offered Wie a sponsors exemption for the fourth straight year. The JDC is the week preceding the SFC – July 10-13 – and Wie would already be here in Illinois, so it is feasible she could play in the Land of Lincoln two weeks in a row. She owes them that much after accepting an invite last year and pulling out claiming injury. In fact, she WD’ed the previous year, too.
First year at the JDC (2005) she MC’ed by one stroke; second year she WD’ed with what was announced as “heat exhaustion”.
Last year, she withdrew long before the event due to injury. I guess what we’d like to know is if she was invited again to enjoy the hospitality of the Quad Cities, but turned it down. TD Clair Peterson has eight sponsors exemptions to dish out, although some may be committed automatically.
Actually, the Illinois Women’s Open is the week following the State Farm Classic, and I’d certainly entertain her request for a sponsors exemption – that way, she could ostensibly play three straight weeks here.
But she’d never play at Mistwood. The course and our field would beat her up too much, and her fragile pysche could never withstand the loss.
DUBIOUS RECORD: Ryan Moore came close to ending an obscure drought a week ago, according to The Associated Press.
Get this: It has been 5 years since a USGA champion has gone on to win on the PGA Tour, dating to Brandt Snedeker’s U.S. Amateur Public Links win in 2003.
Moore had the most celebrated amateur career this side of Tiger Woods, sweeping the U.S. Amateur, U.S. Amateur Public Links and NCAA title in 2004. Then he managed to earn his card without having to go through Qschool. But it has been a slow road since he turned pro, most of that brought on by a series of injuries.
Even so, there hasn’t been much success from prominent amateurs who turn pro. Since Woods completed his amateur career with an NCAA title and his record third straight U.S. Amateur title in the summer of 1996, only six USGA champions and three NCAA champions have won on the PGA Tour.
The USGA champions were Snedeker, Matt Kuchar (‘97 U.S. Amateur), David Gossett (‘99 U.S. Amateur), Hunter Mahan (‘99 U.S. Junior Amateur), D.J. Trahan (‘01 Public Links) and Trevor Immelman (‘98 Public Links). The three NCAA winners were Troy Matteson (2002), Charles Howell III (2000) and Luke Donald (1999).
GOAL, TORREY PINES: The USGA has accepted 8,390 entries for the 2008 U.S. Open. Ninety-two percent of the total entries were received online, including 1,192 in the final two days applications were accepted (April 22-23). The USGA received 102 entries online in the final hour.
The last entry to arrive was from Keith Stone, a 39-year-old amateur from Chelmsford, Mass., who beat the 5 p.m. (EDT) deadline by 56 seconds.
The first entry received was from Joseph Tumpach, a 31-year-old professional from Naperville, Ill. The youngest golfer to enter was 12-year-old Rico Hoey of Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. The oldest applicant was 79-year-old Harris Moore Jr., a professional from Los Angeles, Calif.
Overall, the USGA received entries from golfers in all 50 states and 68 foreign countries.
Actually, Tiger handed Immelman the green jacket
Mid-April, 2008
No matter what you saw on TV, it was Tiger Woods who presented Trevor Immelman with the green jacket for 2008.
Defending champion Zach Johnson only performed the formality of physically slipping the jacket onto Immelman’s shoulders, first for the worldwide TV audience in the Butler Cabin and again at the real ceremony on the 18th green.
Woods had plenty of chances to make a lead-grabbing move, but left his putting touch at home and didn’t capitalize on a single one. Simple as that.
He may have played on a damaged knee, but that was his choice and to his credit never used it as an excuse. In fact, no one knew of his surgical plans until after the surgery, when he briefly mentioned it on his website.
Unfortunately, not a lot of surprises Sunday. As expected, most of the wannabes ahead of Woods starting the day began to wilt just as the Magnolia and Azalea blossoms will do over the next 10 days. One by one, they succumbed to what the Augusta National now becomes on Masters Sunday – a mental torture chamber. First Paul Casey, then an extremely-game Steve Flesch, and finally gutsy Brandt Snedeker – all fought the valiant fight only to discover they don’t have all the shots needed to win the Masters on the new Augusta National. Nor the focus.
I speak for many of us when I say I hope the members at the Augusta National are pleased with how they’ve bastardized what once was the greatest major. I sure hope they are finished screwing with the golf course. Because what they’ve done over the last 10 years is turn what was once the most exciting Sunday of golf on the calendar into a boring, lackluster, cheap knockoff of the USGA’s worst nightmares. Did you see anyone “going for it” on Sunday? Not on CBS you didn’t.
Because nowadays you can’t. Even if they would’ve soaked the greens all night long to make them receptive, the stout winds snapping the flags and the bright sunshine would had them firm and crispy by noon. It was nearly impossible to get the ball close to the pins, which on the quick, Stimp-15 Augusta greens are always in places meant to embarrass players.
Now that they’ve allowed kids to enter free, what you saw Sunday was probably the biggest crowd in the last 20 to 25 years. But you’d never know it by your ears. Sadly, loud groans have replaced the explosive cheers that once echoed off the verdant hillsides and through the canyons of tall Loblolly pines. That’s because galleries don’t cheer “boring”.
Maybe it is someone’s macabre idea of “fun” to invite about 100 of the greatest players in the world, put them on the most beautiful and well-conditioned golf course on the planet at a time of year when we’ve all been golf-deprived for over six months, and then do everything possible to embarrass and humiliate them.
“It’s a pretty good test of golf,” Jim Furyk offered early in the week. “I mean, it used to be a lot of fun to play. It’s not fun anymore, but it definitely got a lot more difficult.”
You’re not alone there, Jim.
Even the second-best golfer in the world, Phil Mickelson, went home muttering to himself, frustrated by not being a factor. This was supposed to be his major, right?
Once again, Woods could not get a feel for the diabolical greens at the Masters – actually, no one could. Heck, he shoots 68 in the final round and he earns his fifth green jacket. But it was not to be. It was almost cruel to watch him play his heart out and give another supreme effort only to have nothing to show for it but second place. Lost in the shuffle will be the fact that Woods had a better final round (par 72) than everyone ahead of him on the Sunday morning leaderboard – by three shots. Immelman (75), Snedeker (77), Flesch (78) and Casey (79).
Can you believe it? A guy shoots three-over 75 on Sunday and still wins by three?
So Woods’ quest for a Grand Slam will have to wait another year.
With a little luck on the greens, which he didn’t have all four days, Woods could’ve easily shot that 68 to finish and win with 9-under. (Incidentally, that’s what I said I’d take for final score Saturday morning on the radio. The Golf Channel’s Brian Hewitt said he would have taken 7-under at that point and gone and sat in the clubhouse. I’m just a better guesser. But I digress.) This is not to say Immelman isn’t a worthy champion. He has won championships at every level.
As I pointed out in my Worm Castings blog earlier in Masters week, Trevor went nose-to-nose with both Woods and Vijay Singh at Cog Hill in the final round of the last Western Open (2006) for his first PGA Tour victory.
I’ll never forget the way the hard-nosed Immelman finished that one – the 28-year-old South African needed to two-putt from 32 feet above the hole to seal the victory. (All day, Immelman failed to fail under intense pressure from Woods, who mounted one of his famous Sunday charges. You remember that day – in the middle of his heroics, Woods knocked his tee shot on the par-4 10th hole at Dubsdread onto the collar of the green.)
But instead of safely two-putting Dubs’ 18th from 32 feet for his first PGA Tour win, Immelman drilled the downhill putt (with 9 feet of break) center-cut for a two-shot margin.
What got into him at Augusta? He’d missed the previous week at the Houston Open.
Perhaps Immelman calmed himself at Augusta with the thought of what he’d already been through in the last few months – that being the leader on the back nine on Sunday at the Masters doesn’t even come close to the life-altering horror of hearing you’ve been diagnosed with cancer. And the ensuing surgery and recovery.
Way to go, Trev.
RANDOM THOUGHTS: Somehow, Nick Faldo was on the air for four days without sneaking in a shameless, free plug for any of his sponsors. Methinks the avoid-commercialism-at-all-cost membership at Augusta National might frown on that. In that same vein, kudos for the four-commercial-minutes-in-one-hour format.
Might I also add how refreshing it was to listen to a lengthy golf broadcast without once hearing anyone stump for the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup Evaluation Series (FECES)?
I have to salute the Augusta National membership for its “Golf Goes Worldwide” initiative, asking viewers to go online at masters.org and post their ideas on how to grow the game. On the other hand, 16 years ago the “finest minds” of the top golf organizations met for the same purpose. Golf Summit ‘92 produced some great ideas for improving a game that had yet to peak in this country. Virtually none of those ideas were put in action. Now that the game’s warts are showing, should we expect the Augusta National members to succeed where the country’s biggest golf organizations have failed miserably?
OK, here are my ideas for “Golf Goes Worldwide”:
I have attended the Wednesday Par-3 contest several times. None of those times did I ever see anything that resembled what was televised as the 49th edition. It used to be a quasi-serious competition. Now, allowing the children of the competitors to participate was a noble concept and accentuated the club’s effort to grow the game. On the other hand, the expanded participation dragged out the playing times to the point where the last groups were in danger of not finishing because of darkness. And because of all the excess foot traffic around the holes, the last groups of the day didn’t have a prayer of making a decent-length putt, either.
If the Augusta National membership wants to entice children to take up the game of golf, then it needs to get out front of the slow play those same children see when watching the pros on TV. Masters tournament director Fred Ridley, an Augusta member and past USGA president, emphasized early in the week that they reduced the 18-hole target time by seven minutes this year. To a new goal of 4 hours, 45 minutes – FOR A THREESOME! Sheesh. And our local public courses expect our foursomes to finish in four hours to 4:15?
I guess the next question would be “Why even talk about a target time?” The playing times the first two days were 5:17 and 5:37 – the latter 53 minutes over the target.
The weekend was equally slow. When was the last time anyone was penalized at the Masters for slow play?
In fact, no one on the PGA Tour has been penalized for slow play in the last 16 years. Yep, sixteen. 1-6. Four times four. No typo.
Another thing I’d suggest if the Augusta National membership really and truly wants to move the game forward, then they need to stop being the poster child for exclusionary membership policies and find a way to invite a few women members.
And finally, while some writers have loudly lauded the club for letting children in for free (when accompanied by a fully-credentialed patron), I’d like to see a way busloads of kids from the First Tee program and other junior golf programs would get some access, too. The way things set up now, badgeholders (all of whom are well-to-do or better) are bringing in their own privileged offspring, who could have attended in previous years on one of their parents’ tickets. Now badgeholders still use their extra tickets to bring their adult friends AND can their kids. Why not make them use their tickets to bring in their own children, and open the gates to those who otherwise would never get to see a Masters in person?
The Augusta National membership deserves a standing ovation from anyone sitting in front of a computer screen watching the “Amen Corner Live” and “Masters Extra” live streams on www.masters.org from the golf course. The smallish screen of previous years has been replaced with one at least six times as large. The controls for switching from one stream to another are very user-friendly, as is the pulldown leaderboard in the upper-right corner.
While new Masters chairman Billy Payne has infused his superb sense of public relations into the Masters following the reign of terror of Hootie Johnson, he still needs to do more then cut down a few of the new trees along the right side of No. 11 to undo Johnson’s 10 years of damaging “renovations” (read that “Tiger-proofing”) that have drastically changed the very character of the championship.
It’s no longer fun for the players to play, and watching Tour players move through the course like they’re walking on broken glass doesn’t make for a very compelling TV, either. Unless they do something drastic between now and next April, the famous Sunday back-nine charge at the Masters will exist only in history.
In my last column, I wrote that I hoped we wouldn’t see a U.S. Open being played at the Augusta National Golf Club, but that’s exactly what happened again for the third straight year. Knowing PGA Tour players as well as I do, I think you could take it to the bank that if this tournament wasn’t a major rich with history, very few of the marquee-name players would attend.
By the way, ESPN proved to be a solid new partner for CBS Sports. (Better it than the talent-devoid Golf Channel, which could use some major improvements in the production-values arena, too.) Thank God someone was enough of a clear thinker to leave Chris Berman where he belongs, too, in New York.
I understand CBS sees the Masters (along with the NCAAs) as the jewel of its sports portfolio. But each year, it seems the tone of the broadcast becomes more and more stiff, more and more obnoxiously reverential – announcers speaking in funereal, hushed tones; stately, formal bumper music that makes me drowsy; commentators holding back, afraid to make a fatal mistake alà Gary McCord and Jack Whittaker.
It’s a golf tournament, for chrissakes. And right now, it is in dire need of a major overhaul.
Let’s hope fun of Sunday at the Masters is restored
April, 2008
Mother Nature, to make amends for an unusually snowy and chilly winter (and as a kickoff to Masters week), provided golfers in the Chicago area two weekend days with terrific weather – sunny, clear and in the mid-60s. Perfect conditions for golf.
So now that we’ve officially kicked off spring, we can turn our attention south to an annual ritual – Bobby Jones’ Invitational, contested on a former fruit orchard that has become hallowed ground to anyone who considers himself a serious player.
To me, what has always been one of the most charming and narcotic aspects of the Masters is that it has always exhibited a distinct playing character, unlike any other major. It has attracted in the past plenty of attention because of positioning, coming first on the schedule, as if to rescue us from doldrums left by long, snowbound winters. The Masters offers more than rich history and a superb golf storyline – the views of the golf course are magnificent and breathtaking, thanks to a talented superintendent, a bottomless maintenance budget and the tournament committee choosing dates when the azaleas and magnolias are all exploding their colors. And now HDTV.
I also believe it is everyone’s favorite major because it is the only one contested over the same venue every year; anyone who fashions themselves a serious golfer knows every nuance of every hole, especially on the inward nine, where television’s unforgiving eye has spent the most time.
There’s history everywhere you look – the spot on the 10th and 11th greens where Scott Hoch missed short putts that would have won him the green jacket, instead of gifting it to Nick Faldo; the spot right of 11 green from where Larry Mize hit the miraculous, Hail Mary Pitch to win a playoff that denied Greg Norman a jacket; the creek in front of 13 green where Curtis Strange walked in owning the lead, rolled up his pant legs, then left the jacket for someone else to win; the patch of grass in the 15th fairway, where Chip Beck decided to lay up, instead of trying for eagle; the 16th green, where Jack Nicklaus won at age 46 with a stunning birdie, and where Tiger Woods holed a hope-to-hell birdie flop to win a year ago. Moments scribed indelibly on every golfer’s brain.
But the members at the Augusta National are in jeopardy of having their tournament lose its character. Over the last 11 years, they’ve added over 500 yards of length, rough and hundreds of trees to the venerable course – in an effort to throttle today’s equipment and players.
You’ll remember it all began when Tiger Woods shot 18-under to win by 12 strokes, the first of his four green jackets in 1997.
The impetus for all this change can be credited to former Augusta National chairman Hootie Johnson, who claimed the club’s desire was to have today’s players hitting the same approach clubs as were being employed 30 years ago.
But an excess of tinkering with the layout and over-the-top, penal course conditions (firmness of greens) has drained the players of the cautious Sunday aggressiveness that is the thumbprint of the Masters.
Oh, the flags were in their usual and customary Sunday positions. But the back-nine greens that produced so many entertaining Sunday afternoons – final rounds peppered by frequent lead changes accompanied by explosive cheers from galleries down in the hollows farthest from the clubhouse, chilling voices echoing up through the trees – those greens have been anything but receptive.
So the last two Sundays at Augusta have been, well, boring. Nothing personal against Zach Johnson, a self- proclaimed “average guy” from Iowa, but I can’t get excited watching a Tour professional play every par-5 for four days as a three-shot hole. Sorry. Hand me the remote.
Part of the charm and character of the Masters has always been a final-round course setup that allows – no, make that “encourages” – chasing players to “go for it.” The last two years there was no thrill of a chase. Instead, the greens were linoleum-severe with the usual brutal hole locations, thereby neutering any runs by the gamblers. Would-be chasers had to roll the ball gingerly, not so much to make putts, but rather to avoid three-jacking. If the greens are the same this time, maybe they oughta allow players to leave the head covers on their putters.
Which brings me to my point: we already have a major championship course set up like this root canal every year, on Father’s Day Sunday. We don’t need another.
BULLETPROOF? The other morning on “The Chicagoland Golf Show” scribe Len Ziehm and I were discussing the immediate future of professional golf events in light of the downturn in the economy. I’ve been told many times during economic downturns the PGA Tour has been “bulletproof” in the past.
“I don’t know if we’re impervious,” PGA Tour commish Tim Finchem said recently. “We have a lot of long-term stuff with fundamental building blocks at the tournament level. Ads and TV ratings are on a shorter leash, but so far we haven’t seen any falloff.”
But the relative cost of title sponsorship today with its $5 million-plus payouts vs. the late 1970s days of $175,000 purses cannot be compared. Remember, the Western Open was able to function without a need for a title sponsor until 1987.
TV numbers for events with Tiger Woods jump 65 percent, and go even higher if he’s in contention. Whether his colleagues have the guts to admit it or not, Woods single-handedly has created more undeserving millionaires (meaning no additional effort required on their part) than illegal stock tips. What happens if he suffers an injury or suddenly decides to retire? What is the appraisal value of the PGA Tour without Woods? 35-40 percent of what it is today?
On the PGA Tour, the Tampa event has seen title sponsor PODS pull out of the remaining years of its contract, leaving open the possibility that event will disappear. Jack Vickers last year pulled the plug on his baby, The International, at his Castle Pines GC – claiming the lack of Tiger Woods in his field prevented him from locking up a new, well-heeled title sponsor. There are rumblings at least two other events may see their title sponsors abdicate.
Many crowds have been unusually sparse this year – I wonder if Chicago-based Northern Trust, after taking on the title sponsor role this year, was pleased with the light turnout at Riviera CC in Los Angeles. It was pitiful. Are financially-stressed fans slashing tournament ticket buys from their disposable income allowance in favor of less-expensive entertainment?
Consider also that single-day tickets for the 2008 PGA championship proper at Oakland Hills in nearby Detroit aren’t being made available, as has been the practice in the past at other sites. Cost for the cheapest week’s badge? 350 bucks!
For comparison, at Medinah in 2006, the average fan could walk up Sunday morning and still buy a ticket, which was the expressed intent of the membership. Yet some ignorant media consciously chose to misinterpret that as a negative, that Medinah couldn’t sell out the event.
There’s more. Over on the LPGA Tour, Safeway has ended its relationship with the LPGA’s International golf tournament at Superstition Mountain Golf and Country Club in Arizona.
This is not a minor event. It always draws fields and crowds consistent with the four majors.
“Despite attracting the largest crowds on the LPGA, as well as all of the top female players in the world, the East Valley event will be looking for a new sponsor in 2009,” said Tom Maletis of the Portland-based Tournament Golf Foundation. “Safeway had been the sponsor for the past five years at Superstition Mountain, but the latest two-year extension ran out this year.”
While the Pleasanton, Calif.,-based grocery chain will end its role in Arizona, it will continue to sponsor the Safeway Classic in Portland. TGF owns and manages both tournaments.
Stay tuned.
DuPage uses eminent domain to grab Country Lakes
March, 2008
In a real estate condemnation trial that lasted only three days last December, a DuPage County jury decided Country Lakes Golf Course in Naperville was worth $1.25 million less than the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County offered for the property several years ago.
But it may not end there. Smart money and history says Robert Krilich Sr. and the land trust that owns the 240-acre parcel will appeal the condemnation decision, which could take years to go through the courts. The owners were seeking $20 million for the golf course and adjacent property.
The jury’s $10.7 million selling price came as a surprise to everyone.
“Our attorney said that’s really unheard of for a jury to go with the lower appraisal, and we [originally] offered him $12 million,” said FPDDC chairman Dewey Pierotti. “Years later, with all the [legal] costs and expenses added to it, he’s getting $1.25 million less than we offered him. In my lifestyle, that’s a big number.”
The county began proceedings in 1999 to condemn the 18-hole course in northwest Naperville. At the time, it claimed a need to manage stormwater in the area.
This is how governments usually frame these types of lawsuits. Because previous to the controversial 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision (Kelo v. New London), they couldn’t just say “we want your land” and take it. There had to be a sound reason for the “public good”, usually environmental, which is fashionable these days. But ‘tis strange this is how DuPage County keeps enlarging its golf course portfolio.
It has never built its own course. It did, however, build a third nine holes at Maple Meadows.
Makes me wonder if that $68 million countywide referendum in November, 2006 to acquire more open space and land for the forest preserve would have passed if it was presented as a plan to fatten its collection of golf courses. This in light of the county trying desperately to balance its budget.
Stormwater management. Which interestingly enough is the same reason given for acquiring two of its three other courses, Oak Meadows (former Elmhurst CC) and Maple Meadows (former Brookwood CC), which hug both banks of Salt Creek just north of I-290. The private owners of Elmhurst CC (east side of the creek) didn’t want the land used as anything other than a golf course, so they sold it to the county in 1986 for $6.4 million. Brookwood CC, on the west side, was taken from its owners through a contentious condemnation lawsuit in 1991. Brookwood owners received $7.9 million.
The county also owns Green Meadows, the former Black Horse. It was purchased to prevent a developer from building on the land.
Perhaps one factor may have influenced the jury in the Country Lakes trial. Standard to published reports on these proceedings was the inclusion of irrelevant, negative references to Krilich serving time in federal prison, a controversial “booby bar” outing at the course, or a violation of landscape debris being dumped in an environmentally-sensitive area. A high percentage of previous articles in both the Naperville Sun and Daily Herald contained these “juicy” tidbits despite the fact they are not germane to the issue.
I get the feeling from reading these news reports and the politicians’ quotes contained therein that we’re all supposed to be relieved DuPage County is riding in on its big white horse to save us all from this tawdry golf course and its shady owners. Makes me wonder if in appeal the attorneys for the golf course would claim the unnecessary and irrelevant publicity about the course and owners tainted the jury.
Don’t touch that dial.
Check our Worm Castings blog at www.chicagolandgolf.com for more stories on the Country Lakes condemnation, and for several posts on DuPage County also moving to condemn 105 acres of a future golf course site at St. Andrews GC – another land grab of private property by the forest preserve district.
Is that snake oil on your wrist? Nope, it’s a Q-Ray bracelet
Decided to spend one of those snowy winter evenings catching up on some reading. To continue a story we broke in February, 2003, and have been following through the courts and updating ever since, I decided to read through the Court of Appeals opinion following the recent denial of the appeal of the manufacturers of Elk Grove Village-based Q-Ray bracelets in the 2003 Federal Trade Commission v. QTC (Q-Ray) fraud case.
While grinding through legalese can often be dry and tedious – almost as bad as reading the New York Times – I actually found it entertaining because the judge who wrote it had a sense of humor.
Chicagoland Golf got involved in this story back in 2003 because these bracelets were being marketed so heavily to golfers. For a time it seemed a large majority of players on all tours, male and female, were wearing Q-Ray bracelets. The not-so-subtle implication was that they worked as the manufacturer claimed, virtually eliminating pain and ostensibly helping lower scores. And that’s exactly what Q-Ray claimed. Pain-free, better swing, lower scores.
Just about everyone has seen the infomercials – they once littered the Golf Channel at all hours – which were filled with gushing “testimonials” from “satisfied customers”. Most of these infomercials were filmed in the company’s exhibit at the annual PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando.
We were hoping to save some of our readers from becoming suckers and sending this company their hard-earned cash. For cheap pieces of crap with “magical powers”.
The retail prices for the bracelets sold during the period covered by the lawsuit – 2000 to 2003 – ranged from $49.95 to $249.95 – a mark-up of over 650 percent, according to the court’s original findings in 2005. What’s even more galling is that these quack-device hustlers were so brazen, Q-Ray’s web site once warned consumers about “imitators”.
Hah! Someone was actually knocking off a fake bracelet? I’m surprised Q-Ray didn’t sue for patent infringement.
On the other hand, they don’t grant patents for products using scientific principles that don’t exist.
In a 10-page opinion, Chief judge Frank Easterbrook of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit wrote:
For the Q-Ray Ionized Bracelet, by contrast, all statements about how the product works—Q-Rays, ionization, enhancing the flow of bio-energy, and the like—are blather. Defendants might as well have said:
Beneficent creatures from the 17th Dimension use this bracelet as a beacon to locate people who need pain relief, and whisk them off to their homeworld every night to provide help in ways unknown to our science.
Defendants’ business was a profitable one; that much, at least, they concede. (It is so profitable that they continue to carry it on despite the injunction that requires them to stop making most of their old claims for its efficacy. Today it is sold with testimonials and vaporous statements.)
According to the district court’s findings, almost everything that defendants have said about the bracelet is false.
Here are some highlights:
• Defendants promoted the bracelet as a miraculous cure for chronic pain, but it has no therapeutic effect.
• Defendants told consumers that claims of “immediate, significant or complete pain relief” had been “test-proven”; they hadn’t.
• The bracelet does not emit “Q-Rays” (there are no such things) and is not ionized (the bracelet is an electric conductor, and any net charge dissipates swiftly). The bracelet’s chief promoter chose these labels because they are simple and easily remembered —and because Polaroid Corp. blocked him from calling the bangle “polarized”.
• The bracelet is touted as “enhancing the flow of bio-energy” or “balancing the flow of positive and negative energies”; these empty phrases have no connection to any medical or scientific effect. Every other claim made about the mechanism of the bracelet’s thapeutic effect likewise is techno-babble.
• Defendants represented that the therapeutic effect wears off in a year or two, despite knowing that the bracelet’s properties do not change. This assertion is designed to lead customers to buy new bracelets. Likewise the false statement that the bracelet has a “memory cycle specific to each individual wearer” so that only the bracelet’s original wearer can experience pain relief is designed to increase sales by eliminating the second-hand market and “explaining” the otherwise-embarrassing fact that the buyer’s friends and neighbors can’t perceive any effect.
• Even statements about the bracelet’s physical composition are false. It is sold in “gold” and “silver” varieties but is made of brass.
Six area courses to be sold in blockbuster deal
November, 2007
A few great thoughts, minor scoops and war stories from the cluttered notebook, mailbox and mind of an ink-stained wretch:
BLOCKBUSTER DEAL:
This column has learned that six 18-hole golf courses in the Chicago
suburbs will soon be sold in a blockbuster deal, perhaps worth
somewhere near $60 million.
It would be the largest sale of golf properties in local industry history.
Sources
say the American Golf Corp. will sometime in December sell its Tamarack
GC in Naperville, Eagle Brook CC and Mill Creek GC in Geneva, Fresh
Meadow GC in Hillside, Ruffled Feathers GC in Lemont and Mission Hills
CC in Northbrook to Eagle Golf Corp. of Texas.
Four are public
courses; Mission Hills and Eagle Brook are private clubs. All courses
are part of residential developments except for Fresh Meadow.
Eagle Golf already has a presence in the area with a management contract with Bull Valley GC.
A manager for one of the courses on the block was asked if the new owner plans to retain current employees.
“At this point, that’s what they’re leading us to believe,” he said.
Stay tuned.
FEDUP CUP:
Okay, so the PGA Tour has made some “tweaks” to the FedEx Cup playoffs
– most prominent the decision to move the Tour Championship to the far
side of the Ryder Cup and giving the winner $9 million in cash right
away with $1 million deferred, instead of the entire wad not being
available until the player reaches 45.
CBS Sportsline’s Steve Elling says a more powerful entity than the tour had influence in the payout decision.
“[PGA
Tour commissioner Tim] Finchem said governmental pressures contributed
to the tour’s decision to back away from giving the FedEx winner’s
bonus out in deferred payment ... elected representatives in
Washington, D.C., are taking a long, dim look at large deferred payment
plans.”
Well, the decision to move the Tour Championship to
later dates was a no-brainer, seeing that with the original
mid-September dates you run the risk of playing on a course with
heat-damaged turf – which is exactly what happened at East Lake in
Hotlanta.
But nothing has been done to “encourage” the game’s
top stars to play all three of the playoff events, perceived by many to
be a problem after Tiger Woods, Ernie Els and Phil Mickelson each took
off one week during the playoffs this year. One also wonders if Tiger
and Lefty participated just to do their share to launch the event;
right now, I’ve got even money saying one or both will blow it off next
year.
And while the Tour keeps running “computer models” to test
the points system, those same computers last fall failed to address the
possibility that a person with a huge lead like Tiger Woods could play
only two of three playoff events, win one and have enough points to win
the whole enchilada without even showing up for the Tour Championship.
That kills the concept that all of the marquee names would play all
four events – a concept that was sold to event organizers and their
title sponsors.
What didn’t change was the concept of FedEx Cup
points, a silly exercise solely to have people repeat the title
sponsor’s name as often as possible. The points standing in 2007 were
nearly identical to the money list, which doesn’t have a sponsor’s name
welded to it.
More tweaks may be announced after another meeting
in February. Personally, I’d like to see the fields reduced for each
playoff event to make it more of an honor. Having ostensibly 19 players
in the FedEx Cup playoffs who had to return to Q-School this December
doesn’t add high drama, quality or glitz. Start with the top 120, then
cut to 80, 60 for the BMW Championship and 30 for the Tour Championship.
BACK TO SCHOOL?: The final 2007 PGA Tour money list
was determined when the Tour’s seven-event Ho-Hum Swing was recently
completed. Or the desperate “chase for a card” or whatever the PVB
hyperbole factory calls it.
The events are strictly third-tier,
nearly void of marquee name players and like tour events that oppose a
major, winners do not get an invite to the Masters starting next year,
as will this year’s “authentic” champions.
Each year the top
125 players earn their tour cards, and its been a mad scramble the last
few weeks for those near the cutoff line. Ending up in the first spot
on the outside looking in (No. 126) is Ben Curtis, who backed into a
major championship when Thomas Bjorn self-destructed at Royal St.
Georges in the 2003 British. But as part of his prize package, Curtis
received a five-year exemption to the Tour. It will expire at the end
of 2008.
Notables expected to head for PGA Tour Qualifying
School Nov. 28 to Dec. 3 at Panther Lake GC and Crooked Cat GC in
Winter Garden, Fla., include Ted Purdy (127), Harrison Frazar (131),
Robert Gamez (132), Billy Andrade (150), Bob Tway (154), Dickie Pride
(159), Janzen (160), Chris Riley (161), Glen Day (163), Duffy Waldorf
(166), Kirk Triplett (173), Joey Sindelar (174), Olin Browne (175),
Paul Stankowski (178), Greg Kraft (179) and John Daly (188). They will
all be exempt to the final stage. Brett Quigley finished at No. 130,
but is expected to get a partial medical exemption.
By the way,
2007 was the last year anyone who received the old 10-year exemption
could have been eligible under that umbrella. Starting with majors won
in 1998, the automatic exemption was cut to five years. The old
standard would have helped Lee Janzen, who’s been struggling lately and
will head to Q-School after finishing well out of the running at No.
160. Janzen won the 1998 U.S. Open, the first year the exemption was
cut back to five years.
As an aside, still fully-exempt for
winning a PGA Championship or U.S. Open prior to 1970 are Al Geiberger,
Jack Nicklaus, Jack Burke, Jr., Billy Casper, Don January, Arnold
Palmer, Gene Littler, Gary Player, Dow Finsterwald, Bob Rosburg, Jack
Fleck, Raymond Floyd, Lee Trevino, Doug Ford, Orville Moody, Ken
Venturi, Bobby Nichols and Tom Watson.
Wouldn’t it be a hoot
if those guys started showing up again for an occasional event, if for
nothing other than selling a few extra tickets and providing
interesting Wednesday interviews in places like Milwaukee and the Quad
Cities?
STILL BUILDING: Marengo-based
course builder Golf Creations has broken ground in Downstate Sherrard,
Ill., on a new Jack Nicklaus Design project that, due to its proximity
to Moline, has drawn an extraordinary level of involvement from another
name brand, John Deere.
Trees are being cleared and grading is
underway at Fyre Lake National Golf Club & Marina, where Golf
Creations field operations manager Kevin Stieneke hopes to rough out
nine holes and lay irrigation before the snow flies. Chris Rule, the
Nicklaus design architect presiding at Fyre Lake, anticipates a spring
2009 opening for the 18-hole, 6,600-yard, par-70 layout. It has not
been announced if the club will be public or private.
Golf
Creations is the sister division of Marengo-based Lohmann Golf Designs
and builds the designs of other architects. However, this is the first
time Golf Creations has been tasked with building a Nicklaus Design.
FINALLY:
Usually the modus operandi of our Winter issue is to cram in as much
content as we can because the next print issue won’t be forthcoming
until sometime in March. That’s not the case during the regular season,
when we’re always inside of two weeks to the next issue.
But now
with ChicagolandGolf.com up and running, we never have to “sign off”.
We have a lot of exciting things planned for the site, soon to include
an interactive blog. Stop by and bookmark us.
Have a safe and happy holiday season.
11-19-07
Brent Wadsworth's Links Across America concept to grow game is worth a look
A few great thoughts, minor scoops and war stories from the cluttered notebook, mailbox and mind of an ink-stained wretch:
PROPOSED SOLUTION?
I have written numerous times over the years that from my perspective,
most initiatives to “grow the game” have been little more than lip
service – golf organizations throwing cash at the problem and hoping
someone at the grass roots level steps up and does something. As long
as they keep a few grant dollars flowing downstream, those
organizations will tell you yes, they’re doing their part.
While
we hear about a few, scattered “award-winning” junior golf programs,
they really haven’t done much to “grow the game”. We have seen
well-publicized celebrity photo-ops of programs in the inner city,
where the kids don’t have access to clubs or money to play on a golf
course. We have seen in the past “Junior Clinics” in the suburbs where
kids are bused from the city to get a 5-minute lesson and a T-shirt,
hit some range balls, eat some hot dogs and drink Cokes, and go home
with a useless 5-iron. We have seen junior golf programs that are not
much more than thinly-disguised tournament schedules for the offspring
of private club members.
How can we truly determine if any of
these programs are “growing the game”? Simple. Ask golf course owners
if the results are showing up on their tee sheets.
You know the answer.
Now I find someone who might have a viable solution.
The
other night I went to hear Mike Small speak at a banquet for the First
Tee of Aurora, which itself is an impressive and well-organized
program. Sitting to my left was Plainfield’s Brent Wadsworth, whose
best-in-the-biz Wadsworth Golf Construction Co. has built over 680 golf
courses in 44 states in the last 50 years.
Bubbling over with
vibrant enthusiasm, Wadsworth told me about a new initiative he’s
envisioned. Links Across America will involve developing feeder short
courses (6-hole and 9-hole par-3s) across the country to provide
desperately-needed access to golf – especially for youth. His plan will
also include families and individuals with disabilities and injuries
from all ethnic backgrounds.
Over the past few years, we’ve lost
too many par-3 and executive-length feeder courses to development,
which has greatly hurt participation numbers.
As I wrote in
this issue’s page one article, the golf industry failed miserably in
creating new players while it was building and opening thousands of new
courses over a 20-year boom period. In the May, 2007 issue, I reprinted
the “grow the game” concepts from Golf Summit 1992. There were some
great ideas in that white paper, but no one ever carried them out.
So what we need is both salient ideas and people to roll up their sleeves. Wadsworth thinks he has the answer.
He’s
funding the startup of Links Across America through his Wadsworth Golf
Charities Foundation. Using Andrew Carnegie’s model for the
establishment of libraries nationwide, Wadsworth feels that like the
literacy created by Carnegie’s libraries, the premise is that golf can
be a good and powerful teacher.
Links Across America would solve
the problem of affordable access. The Wadsworth Foundation would
partner with communities, park districts, YMCAs, developers, existing
courses with available land, hospitals, and forest preserve or school
districts which could donate land and operate the facility.
Next,
Wadsworth establish teams of Company Partners from the golf course
construction and golf facility industries who would whenever possible
donate their talent at no charge (course construction would be done at
cost) to create the feeder short courses. Finally, the Wadsworth
Foundation would work with the ownership group to secure Funding
Partners interested in paying for the cost of a Links Across America
course and have it named after their company.
The preliminary
response from park districts and municipalities in Chicagoland has been
very positive. Right now, the Foundation is focused on assembling the
team of Golf Course Builders and will follow with teams of architects
and golf course construction suppliers. There’s a very real possibility
that the first two Links Across America models will be built in Joliet
and Oswego.
WHADDA YOU THINK? Have you heard about the “accomplishments” of Jacqueline Gagne, aka “The Hole-In-One Lady?”
Someone
has been sending me press releases about this unfolding saga all along
– I’ve read them with a raised eyebrow – but when the totals reached
four and five within a few short weeks, I decided it had to be a hoax
and refused to give her any publicity until her records could be
substantiated.
Gagne did rope in some gullible media types to
toot her horn, though – Golf Digest, Golf World, USA Today, The London
Times and The Wall Street Journal, according to her website.
Gagne
claims she can “read the green” from the tee box on a par-3 and uses
that information to place her shot. Now there’s a red flag if I ever
saw one.
Best part is, she’s only been playing the game for
about five years. In the last six months, she claims to have played
about 120 rounds of golf – in which she now claims to have made 16
holes-in-one.
In the November Golf Digest you’ll find a
fascinating piece about this person written by Dave Kindred. The
Harvard math wiz quoted in the story says the odds against making 16
holes-in-one in six months are
2,253,649,101,066,840,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1.
Gagne
claims witnesses to some of her aces; Kindred says half of them never
returned his calls, and of those who spoke with him, none even saw her
shot hit the green on the “lucky” holes, let alone see her ball go into
the hole. Her playing partners were usually looking for her ball where
they thought they saw it fly – in greenside bushes or bunkers, where it
wasn’t to be found. Then Voila! Someone finds Gagne’s little pill in
the bottom of the jar. Sixteen times in 118 rounds, according to
Kindred, which computes to something like one hole-in-one every 29
par-3 holes.
Anyway, it’s a fascinating story if only for the prominent, apparently naive media that were sucked in. Kindred writes: “Gagne
twice appeared on CBS television’s ‘The Early Show.’ Co-anchor Harry
Smith began the first segment saying, ‘Oh, do I love this story.’ Later
he brought her to New York, where he enlisted golf analyst Peter
Kostis. When Gagne revealed that she reads the green from the tee,
Kostis declared that ‘the first clue’ to the holes-in-one. Then she
made a few swings, and Kostis liked what he saw. His conclusion: ‘It’s
the real deal.’”
Egad.
WHY NOT?
If other athletes aren’t already jealous of Tiger Woods, what will they
say when Woods rolls out his own brand of sports drink next year under
an endorsement deal with Gatorade.
It marks a couple of firsts
for the world’s No. 1 golfer – his first U.S. deal with a beverage
company and his first licensing agreement. Gatorade said it will
introduce “Gatorade Tiger’’ in March, with more products to follow.
Woods even picked out the flavors himself, with the drink available in
a cherry blend, citrus blend and grape.
Terms are said to be for Woods to receive as much as $100 million over five years.
Drinking it just before playing golf will help a person hit the ball longer and straighter.