The fate of golf would seem to lie in the hands of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club and the United States Golf Association. Can we expect that they will protect and reverence the spirit of golf?
MAX BEHR
Mike Purkey says the European Tour should insist its Ryder Cup wannabes play at least half their schedule in Europe to strengthen the European Tour and tell us just how much some players really love the Cup. As if they aren't bickering amongst themselves enough already!
There are a couple of great quotes in Steve Habel's Cybergolf story on the dismal state of the design business:
Many golf architects - much like some of the courses they built - will not survive this downturn. "We are just not building very many new golf courses because the banks won't loan any money to make that happen," noted "Open Doctor" Rees Jones said in a recent interview with CNBC. "The golf industry was not included as part of the national stimulus package, but just about everyone else was.
If only that rich imagination of his could conjure up designs as rich as his fictional interpretation of TARP!
And this from analyst Tom Kite.
"There is not much further the design industry can drop, and there are signs that it might be coming back somewhat," Kite said. "But there is still an oversupply of golf courses in much of the U.S. and that supply must be absorbed before any meaningful growth can occur."
I'm not really sure what that means, but it sounded great!
Bernie McGuire reports (thanks reader Mel):
Barclays are keen to extend their sponsorship of the nation's premier golf event after their current deal ends in 2012 and want it switched to a links course from that date.
But Loch Lomond, which has been up for sale since 2008, could lose the tournament as soon as next year.
Woods has never played in the Scottish Open throughout the 15 years it has been staged on the Bonnie Banks.
My invitation to the Tiger Woods media day and conference call for his tournament at Sherwood was once again lost in cyberspace, but who needs pesky bloggers when you can get intelligent questions like this?
Q. First, how are you going to keep the guys from brawling out there after such a tough Ryder Cup? It's a great field from that particular field, too, right?
Oh good one. Bang fist on table!
Q. I was wondering, we talked a little bit about this at St. Andrews, how you're able to separate the personal stuff from the business, and that you've learned to adjust. Is that getting better all the time where you can just play your game and take some of the other junk out of your mind?
Junk?
Q. With Chevron sponsoring this event, talk about the opening of the new learning center in Washington, D.C.?
Ahhh...give that seat filler an extra nine holes of golf!
Q. You're a four-time winner of this tournament. How would you evaluate your chances of winning for the fifth time, given the state of your game and now that you know what the field is?
Good one!
Q. A lot of Koreans want to see you do good, and wondering how many events do you plan to play in next year? What is your prediction, do you think, given the state of your play at the current moment?
I guess that's the Seoul Light And Shopper's correspondent?
Finally, a decent golf question (I'm betting this is when they opened it up to the phone lines...but I wouldn't know).
Q. One of the things, just going back to the Ryder Cup for a minute I never really got to ask you about that over there is, you know, I know Steve's been caddying since he was 12 years old. He's pretty good at keeping clubs dry, but he was unable to keep your clubs dry for most of that week. The other issue was the rain suits which leaked and guys were walking around with very heavy suits. I know these are all little things, but when you look at it, it was only half a point that separated victory from defeat. Do you look back on that and say, you know, maybe we should have figured these things out a little bit better beforehand with the equipment?
TIGER WOODS: Well, there's no doubt.
Oh boy.
I think that those are issues that should be resolved before we get there so they're not an issue while playing. Come tournament time there are always going to be things that pop up, and you just have to deal with them. It happens in every team event I've ever been a part of.
But little things like that, I think could have been taken care of so they weren't an issue. Or at least have been tested prior to game time so that any kind of corrections that could have been made, would have been made.
Someone's not going to be getting a holiday card from the Captainess!
Q. So I remember in April at Augusta I asked you what kind of golfer you wanted to be now, and you said that you wanted to be like you were when you were younger, and you said, at peace. Do you feel now this many months removed from the Masters and in the midst of that storm, that you are more at peace? Another related question, what have you learned about yourself over the last year?
Who let Tony Robbins in the room?
TIGER WOODS: Certainly I'm a lot more at peace now. Everyone's getting used to the new living conditions. The kids are adjusting. I think everyone's certainly more at peace, and so am I, too. I learned a lot about myself, and I learned how things went wrong, why they went wrong, and had to take a pretty deep and introspective look at myself, and there weren't a lot of things I liked about it. But I had to do it, and I did it and grateful that I did. I think that I come from a much better place, much more grounded place now than I ever have before.
And I really pity you media heathens more than ever.
Now, this was interesting, perhaps because it was an actual golf question:
Q. In Wales you seemed on Saturday and Sunday to be delofting quite a bit. You were sailing greens and hitting iron shots quite far, and you looked very frustrated by that. What was going on, and how did you turn that around, because obviously you started hitting it pin-high again in the singles?
TIGER WOODS: What happened was as I've gotten into this system working with Sean, when I get it going well, I'm really starting to swing well and I'm hitting the ball farther. Hitting the ball farther than I ever thought I would. Especially with the conditions not being good, I thought the conditions would take yards off my shot, and it didn't. I was hitting it right through the wind.
That's a good sign. I just had to make the adjustment, and I was able to make the adjustment. Once I made the adjustments, the numbers got right back to where they should be.
But before, the conditions were affecting my golf ball a little bit more than they are now. My shot pattern is a little bit more tight, and with that I'm able to hit the ball through the conditions a little bit better.
Steve and I were both confounded by it, because it was something we haven't experienced together as a team before. Something that was good to see, good to have happen, and it was nice to be able to make that adjustment.
And one more about playing at Riviera next year. Always worth a try even though it never yields an answer.
Q. A follow-up, the importance of you being in your own tournament after a couple of years, also, how that is giving back to Southern California? Then leading into Riviera, is there a chance that you might play there this year, and has Jerry West been in contact with you?
TIGER WOODS: As far as coming back, I'm always excited to come back to So Cal. This is where I grew up and where I lived most of my life. So for me to come back is always fun. Fun to see friends and go out to dinner with people that I haven't seen in a long time, so I always enjoy that about coming back home. Then playing in front of the hometown fans, it's always fun.
As far as Jerry West contacting me, he hasn't of yet, but there is still some time (laughing).
Rob McMillan reports on 69-year-old Hiroshi Tango being struck by a golf ball at Los Serranos and has the only account I can find explaining how it happened. I thought it was a little odd his etiquette was questioned by the GM. I prefer to think he was a good man playing ready golf.
No wonder Comcast had to move Page Thompson back to headquarters so that Dick Ebersol could take over Golf Channel when the Comcast/NBC merger is completed: he had some common sense ideas for livening up tournament golf. Naturally, none of these will fly with the executive ranks who experience ED drug symptoms when players take their hats off and shake hands at the end of a round.
Still, nice to see someone offering grounded, easy-to-implement ideas. Golf World Monday reports what Thompson would suggest more of:
- More variety of tournament formats
- More match play…draws higher ratings
- LPGA and Champions finishes on Saturday or Monday
- More sounds of the game innovations and expanded use of graphics
Classic finish to today's Frys.com event today, classic post round remarks by champion Rocco (as always) and classic call by Oosterhuis in advance of Rocco's fourth (!?) hole-out of the week.
The video does not include epic shots by Alex Prugh, Bo Van Pelt and Rickie Fowler driving the green at the same hole.
Bradley Klein delivers the news of a USGA return to a place thought to be off the radar for a major event. I doubt this is a setup for a return U.S. Open, despite the widespread and frankly, relentless clamoring for a 2023 Open return to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Jim Furyk's unforgettable triumph over the North Course.
This is probably more of a gift to an executive committee member for time well-served, not that there's anything wrong with that:
The 2015 Amateur will be contested on both the North Course and the South Course, with both courses sharing responsibilities for the 36-hole stroke play qualifier. It has yet to be determined which of the 18-hole layouts will be home to the match play segment of the championship.
Olympia Fields, founded in 1913, at one point included four courses, but gradually sold off some of its land. Its North Course, designed by Willie Park Jr. in 1922, has been home to the Western Open (1933, 1968, 1971), the PGA Championship (1925, 1961), the U.S. Open (1928, 2003), and the U.S. Senior Open (1997).The South Course evolved into its current configuration from a 1916 design by Tom Bendelow and was the subject of a major overall and partial re-routing by architect Steve Smyers in 2007-08. Smyers has been a member of the USGA Executive Committee since 2006 – the only professional course architect ever to have served in that capacity.
In Gene Yasuda's look at the dire state of the golf industry, industry consultant Stuart Lindsay suggested that the PGA Tour deserves great blame for slow play.
It also hasn’t helped that golf’s biggest promoter perpetuates plodding. “We’ve depended way too much on the PGA Tour to market our product for us,” Lindsay says. “And frankly, all they do is market slow play.”
Much of golf’s woes are self-inflicted, and for years, industry leaders, acknowledging their mistakes, have pledged improvements – to make the game faster, family friendly, more affordable. But lip service won’t suffice anymore. Many of the proposed fixes actually work; it’s just a matter of copying those who already have put them in play.
Reading the story, Joe Ogilvie tweeted this in response.
So here's my question: how much of slow play do you blame on the influence of tour golf, versus things like the distance chase and ensuing expansion?
Anticipating the 2014 Ryder Cup disaster that is to be held at the Centennary course at Gleneagles, John Huggan cooks up a composite course at the famed resort as an alternative idea.(Here's the Google aerial if you want to try and follow.)
It clearly makes too much sense, but anything to get more golf played on the Kings, which received this glowing description from Andrew Coltart:
"The King's toys with your depth-perception. And changes in elevation are a huge part of the challenge. The course has so many strings to its bow, areas where we typically don't get tested on modern designs. It is just so much more interesting to play. It stimulates you and wakes you up a bit."
Okay, it's a stretch, but as reader Mark noted the golf connections are tenuous, but Tiger does make an appearance at the end of the latest Taiwanese reenactment video on Brett Favre's saga and well, they've ditched the rugby shirt and got him back in red and black cap. In a doghouse. With what looks like a slimmed down Teddy Roosevelt. Yep, you can't make it up.
Mark Hayes quotes a remarkably chatty agent Mark Steinberg who is pumping up Tiger's triumphant return to Australia this December.
"It has been such a tumultuous year and I think he's really paid the price," Steinberg said from his Cleveland office.
"But it's time to move forward. He has answered all the questions that he's going to answer and I hope that he's heading for a productive week in Melbourne.
"He's really looking forward to coming down. The fans were absolutely tremendous to him last year and he's expecting another good reception."
Steinberg said he did not expect a different reaction to last year's Tiger mania.
"Let's hope not. People in Australia have been so great to him in the past, he's apologised and it's time to move forward and start his new life," he said.
"He's spending a tremendous amount of time with his two kids, which has been great for him."
About those fond memories from last year...
"I've represented Tiger for more than 12 years and it is pandemonium and craziness wherever he goes," he said.
"But I will say that it was ratcheted up an extra notch in Melbourne last year - in a good way, by the way.
Glad we got that clarified.
"The crowd and fans couldn't have been nicer, couldn't have been more welcoming. But it was quite a scene.
"He's got fond memories and he likes to go back and defend where he wins so he's looking for back-to-back wins in Melbourne."
Tuesday, October 19, 2010 at 08:01 PM