Weekend Notes

We've got some of this and some of that for you today...  spanning the globe as we do on your behalf.

Female by Mail - Shackelford points us to the announcement from the R&A that vote on whether to allow women members will take place by mail, allowing all of the estimated 2,500 worldwide members to participate.  From the club's press release:

25 July 2014, St Andrews, Scotland: A postal ballot among members of the Club on a motion

to admit women as members will be conducted prior to the announcement of the result on 18 September 2014. This replaces the vote that was previously scheduled to take place at the Club’s Business Meeting on that day. By taking this decision all members can take part in this historic vote.

In a separate post at The Loop, Shack continues his "What They Said and What They Meant" riff, providing this translation:

"A ballot is to be sent by mail because many of members of the Club still do not use email. The motion to admit women as members, a portion of the population we still rather unbelievably do not allow in our club. The vote will be announced on Sept. 18, 2014. Not coincidentally, that is the day Scotland votes on its independence, ensuring this embarrassing situation is tucked deep into the Empire's newspapers the next day. This postal ballot replaces the potentially disastrous vote that was previously scheduled to take place at the Club's Business Meeting on Sept. 18 and which might have only been attended by those still hoping for a big, all-things 19th century comeback. By taking this decision to all members, including those preferring the 20th century and even the handful who have faith in this new 21st century, all members can take part in this embarrassingly historic vote."

Your humble blogger takes comfort in the realization that there's at least one person less likely to be invited to join the R&A.  But the fact that an organization that was formed in the 1700's would, you know, have older members that don't use e-mail shouldn't surprise us.  Nor should the fact that their membership policies change a bit more slowly than we'd like.  I understand that the Wrath of Khan will descend upon them if the vote goes the "wrong" way, but shouldn't we be a tad more supportive during the process?

I don't think I'm any less cynical than Geoff, but my interest is more in understanding how the wider balloting might affect the outcome.  I had initially assumed that Peter Dawson felt that he could better control the balloting of the in-person attendees, but now I'm not quite so sure.  

Chicks Dig the Long Ball, PGA Championship Edition - As previously noted, the PGA of America is going Back to the Future or some such thing at Valhalla.  We're long on press releases today, but I'll let them tell it:

The 96th PGA Championship at Valhalla Golf Club will host the return of the PGA

Championship Long Drive Competition, which originated in 1952 when the Championship was conducted at Big Spring Country Club in Louisville. 

During a practice round on Tuesday, Aug. 5, all players will be offered the opportunity to hit one tee shot from the No. 10 Tee. The ball will have to come to rest in the fairway to be eligible to win the Long Drive Competition. 

Awards will be given to the top three finishers with winners receiving a money clip inspired by the one that Jack Nicklaus received in the first of his two consecutive PGA Championship Driving Contest titles in 1963. That year, Nicklaus, using a persimmon driver and wound golf ball, hit a winning drive of 341 yards, 17 inches.

I wasn't aware that the event was first held at a Louisville PGA, so that's kinda cool.   And the money clip, the original of which is pictured above, is also great.  But I had a stand alone event in mind, yanno one with yardage stripes like a football field.  Doesn't sound like we'll see much of it on television, which seems like an unforced error.

My prediction is that Tiger will play only the front nine on Tuesday.  

Midterm Grades:  The newly-created International Crown has reached its midpoint, and since there was American blood you can assume there will be tweaks next year.  Here's how Beth Ann Nichols summed things up:

The International Crown was fantastic right up until the point when the U.S. got knocked out.

That’s not opinion, it’s a fact for all involved – sponsors, fans, TV viewers. Sunday’s rainy forecast for Caves Valley got even gloomier when South Korea eliminated the home team in a sudden-death total score playoff. 

The four American players – who admittedly underperformed the first day – walked into the interview room in a mild state of shock. Paula Creamer was all set to walk out on the first tee to Lenny Kravitz’s “American Woman” on Sunday (player’s choice). Instead she’ll probably walk to the mall. 

The U.S. was one point away from being tied for the lead in Pool A, but an unlikely loss for Stacy Lewis and Creamer on the 18th to Thailand’s Pornanong Phatlum and Onnarin Sattayabanphot put the top-seeded Americans in a playoff with No. 2 seed South Korea.

Actually, both of the highly-favored teams underperformed, that's how the two top-seeded teams ended up in a "wild-card" playoff.  I had many interruptions, but the format seemed to provide for an intense day of team match-play, with many iterations and permutations being tossed around.  It was perhaps slightly more complicated than need-be, and I suspect we'll conclude that Saturday was the high-point of the event.

One of the losers had this to say after the fact: 

 “I think that everybody, every team should be playing on Sunday,” said Lewis. “I just think it’s too bunched up with the points.”

Stacey, dear child, you're still in the denial stage of your grief, entirely understandable.  With some time you'll come to understand that it's the win-or-go-home dynamic that creates the intensity and makes it must-see television.   In the meantime, I do hope you'll take pride in your participation medal.

It's really a shame for the event that the Americans are gone, as TV ratings will naturally plummet.  I know Sunday is individual match-play, but I have no idea how the match-ups are decided with five, four-person reams in the mix.  But team match-play is da' bomb, and I do hope this event survives.

And one last note on the event, which is a kudo to Commissioner Mike Whan for inviting Carol Mann, a women's golf legend and Baltimore native, to the event.

For Golfers Who Read - That great bastion of effete Eastern intellectualism, The New Yorker, has done us

a solid, opening up its archives of all published articles since 2007.  This matters because they publish some of the best long-form golf pieces anywhere, covering writers such as David Owen, John McPhee and even Larry David.

Both Shackelford and Luke Kerr-Dineen provide links to worthy pieces, with much overlap between the two lists.  Included is David Owen's The Ghost Course about Askernish, my great white whale to which I've linked previously and his more recent article on The Yips, which I discussed here.    

For the record I'd like to note that I disregarded 4,000 years of cultural heritage and paid full newstand price for the issue with David Owen piece on the Yips.  In his announcement, David Remnick, the Editor with whom I grew up in bucolic Hillsdale, NJ and whose butt I whipped on the tennis court, also announced that they'll be periodically releasing older articles from behind the paywall, so here' hoping that includes some of the Herbert Warren Wind works.

All Hail the Keiser - Peter Finch poses a simple question, if the golf industry is in the toilet hos can Mike Keiser keep building golf courses?  Turns out that the secret is in the dirt sand:

How can he keep building all these courses when news about the golf economy is generally so

dour? The difference is the sand, he says. 

“As you know, these are links golf courses built on sand and using fescue grass,” Keiser explains. “Most U.S. courses are built on dirt. People love the links courses. They always have. They’ve flooded over to Ireland and Scotland for decades, for that reason. The Wisconsin courses won’t be links because they’re not on the ocean, but they will be virtually treeless and links-like.”

Click through for updates in Cabot Links (pictures) and  Sand Valley, in the middle of Nowhere, WI.  Though I do need to let him add this:

For this 1,500-acre site, set about an hour and 45 minutes north of Madison, Wis., Keiser imagines multiple courses. "We're near the final 18-hole routing" on the first, also designed by Coore and Crenshaw, Keiser says. "It will be final after a mid-August trip with Bill and Ben and my son, Michael, and me. We'll also nail down a final clubhouse site, at which point we’ll begin grading the course. Next year we’ll put in the irrigation, do the fine grading in September 2015, and by 2016 we'll have some founder play." 

Founder play? Keiser rounded up 155 investors -- "friends who wanted to be part of a golf-course project" -- to help finance the development. It was a sort of Keiser Kickstarter. "They get all kinds of freebies," he explains, including a chance to play the course first. 

He’s already talking about starting a second course there. "My philosophy is 1 plus 1 equals 3," he says. "One course is a curiosity, two is a destination."

You got any golf bloggers in the Rolodex, Mike?  

 He's a Pro in His Chosen Field - Ever get annoyed at the favorable treatment of pros at resorts?  Then you might enjoy this bit of schadenfreude:

A Michigan man recently took that to an extreme when, according to police reports, he constructed an elaborate scheme in which he secured $16,146 in "goods, services and lodging" at the Nemacolin Woodlands Resort in outside of Pittsburgh.

His name wasn't Leviton by any chance (inside joke for Willow Ridge members)?

Ordeals by Asparagus -  Those who have had the honor of dining with me know that my aversion to vegetables rivals my contempt for John Daly.  How can this possibly relate to golf, I hear the reader asking, and I'll just link you to this David Owen piece about the village of Formby, up the road from Royal Birkdale.

It's the typical David effort, meandering through foxes, hippos and an autopsy.  We played Formby and S&A, tow of the courses he mentions, on our 2010 trip to the area.  And the Formby Ladies Club, which is entirely contained withing the circular routing of Formby Golf Club, was amusingly described as being 6,000 yards long and one yard wide.  Just read the whole short piece and enjoy the picaresque ride...

Spousal Abuse - As the bride adjusts to her non-conforming hip, she's been hitting it longer and throwing up some really good scores.  Yesterday we had an amusing scene, where her cousin mad an unplanned drive-by on the way home from Martha's Vinyard to Washington, DC.  But Theresa was on the golf course and, as she explained to me in a hurried phone call, it was round she "needed to finish."

Sure enough she parred No. 18 for an 88, her all-time low on our home track.  And No. 18 is her toughest hole on the golf course, so good on her, and I fully expect that she'll best that score shortly.  I just want to get out there that she is undoubtedly going to clean my clock on our Ireland trip... I've created a monster.

Blogus Interruptus - Blogging will likely be light between now and Tuesday morning.  This afternoon we'll be hosting our Scottish friends Elsie and John Coupland at The Ridge (yes, the famed Scottish Housewife will be in the building, alert the media) and tomorrow is the Metro. Golf Writers Ass'n. meeting at Baltusrol.  We'll be playing their Upper Course, which I've not played since the latest renovation, and I might have something to say about it.  Fingers crossed that we dodge the thunderstorms for both.