Flotsam and Jetsam

As I settle back into home after five days in Park City, let's see if we can make a dent in a rather long blogging to-do list.

• Writing at its Local Knowledge blog, Jerry Tarde posts a remembrance of golf writer Charles Price on the 20th anniversary of his death.  Tarde posts an excerpt from a 1993 letter from Price on the elements of good writing, which I'll share in full:

The reader: Write as though your reader is an ignorant genius. He doesn't know anything, but he's capable of understanding everything. In other words, never write down to him, never labor a point. He may have spent all his life in Moosejaw, Alaska. But he could still have an I.Q. way beyond your own.

Clarity: Write everything as though it will make sense 50 years from now. That's not the same as saying your prose should seem deathless. Some of O.B. Keeler's accounts of Bobby Jones winning a championship read as though they happened yesterday. Putting the situation another way, don't write as though you are "hip." How people popularly put things today may already be on the way out. In 1956 the most popular lyric in America was "Some enchanted evening." Six months later it was "You ain't nothing but a hound dog."

Logical construction: Everything must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. In writing they must interconnect, like the three rings of logic. The first ring is your proposition: what the hell is this piece all about? The second ring contains the proof of the proposition. The third ring draws a conclusion from the proof. The trick, though, is to make the third ring interconnect with the first somehow. Thus the reader is reminded of whatever it was you were trying to prove.

Increasing your vocabulary: Everybody has three vocabularies: The largest is the one you read with. You can gather the sense of an unfamiliar word from its context. Next is the one you write with. It permits you the luxury of second thoughts. The smallest is the one you speak with. Since nobody likes to put his foot in his mouth, you only use words that are second nature. Consequently, the only way to improve all your vocabularies is by reading. The others follow.

Reading: Read what you ought to read, not just what you want to. Three hours a day is an absolute minimum. Any writer who can't find those three hours is in the wrong business.

I know that's a long excerpt, but it's all good advice.  Shackelford believes Price belongs in the Hall of Fame and specifically recommends his Golfer at Large, which will go on my golf reading list.  At some juncture, I'll do a Golf Necessary Bookshelf post. 

• Phil is a go for Phoenix, according to PGATour.com.   Back injuries are notoriously fickle, so I do hope he knows what he's doing.  He loves this event (he went to ASU and considers Phoenix his second home town) and desperately wants to defend, but it would be a real shame to put the temainder of the season at risk.  However, at age 43 and fighting psoriatic arthritis, one has to ask why he's chasing big appearance fees in Abu Dhabi.  I know he doesn't fly coach like the rest of us serfs, but is the travel really worth it?

• Match-Play MIA's:  Bob Harig reports at ESPN that Tiger is likely to skip the Accenture Match Play next month.  Given that Phil Mickelson and Adam Scott have already announced the intention to skip it, as well as the fact that Accenture's sponsorship contract is in its final year, this event seems to have more issues than a teenage girl with acne.  Gee, Commissioner Ratched Finchem, could it be the result of a truly dreadful golf course (notwithstanding that the course was built by Jack specifically to hold this event), could it be that the golf calendar has gotten too crowded or perhaps it's unwise to hold the event in the foothills above Tucson where it snowed last year?  In any event, we could be headed to a repeat of the 2001 event held in Australia, and that riveting Steve Stricker-Pierre Fulke final of which golf fans still reminisce. 

• Golf World has published a ranking of the best 100 modern golfers, which can be found here.  The ranking begins in 1980 and only measures PGA Tour performance (sorry, Seve) plus the four majors.  Seems like a profligate waste of pixels, as Jack, for instance, is ranked No. 4, between Phil and Veej.  But as I noted above, the rankings begin in 1980 and therefore include only 3 of Jack's 18 majors, yet somehow Jack in his dotage was better than all but 3 other modern golfers.  Silly, no?

• Shackelford posted on and linked to this Q&A with USGA Executive Director Mike Davis.  As Shack notes, Davis seemed to take yet another unnecessary swipe at NBC, which should make NBC's last Open telecasts from Pinehurst delightfully awkward.  The award of the USGA television contracts to Fox, which has never previously broadcast golf and will have no other golf events on their schedules, was completely unexpected and exposed the dark underbelly of the USGA, as detailed in Ron Sirak's long articles on the contract award and subsequent coup.  It's easy to make fun of them, but such turmoil in the games ruling body is unsettling, and it would be nice to have a clear understanding of their mistreatment of NBC.

• Brandel Chamblee posts companion pieces at Golf Channel's website, starting with the 5 worst developments in golf in the last 50 years and then, of course, follows it with the 5 best. BC is one of the better analysts of the game, and most of the items are unobjectionable, though I'll respectfully disagree with him on anchoring.  He'll earn some kudos for his acknowledgement of Tiger after their recent cage match, but I'll give him a shout out for reminding us all of Champagne Tony Lema, a prodigious talent that we lost far too young.

• The Dubai Desert Classic, where Tiger and Rory have been lured this week, has a new twist on the hole-in-one bonus, per Rex Hoggard at Golf Channel.  They've certainly upped the ante, with a $2.5 million bonus for an ace on the 17th hole on either Saturday or Sunday.  The catch is that the 17th is a Par 4, though it could play in the 295-325 yard range if, as expected, they move up the tees to heighten the drama on the weekend.  Could be a dilemma for a player in contention, as the bonus far exceeds first prize money, though likely not certain appearance fees.
• The PGA of America has posted the photo below of the entry gates to Augusta National covered in snow, a rare event:

I have the perfect companion piece, the photo below of the Road Hole under similarly rare snow: