This and That

We'll take a short break from our golf history curriculum and cover some items related to, you know, living humans...

Girls Like the Bad Boys - I'm sure you'e heard this news by now:

Dustin Johnson announced on Thursday that he will be “taking a leave of absence from professional golf, effective immediately.” 

“I will use this time to seek professional help for personal challenges I have faced,” Johnson said in the statement which was issued by his management company. 

“By committing the time and resources necessary to improve my mental health, physical well-being and emotional foundation, I am confident that I will be better equipped to fulfill my potential and become a consistent champion.”

Besides the obvious personal implications, this of course affects the Ryder Cup.  DJ, who is currently fifth on the points list, has notified the PGA of America that he will not play in the event.  They will simply go one slot lower on the points list, and that lucky individual is....Patrick Reed.  Doesn't quite get him into the Top Five, but there's still time.

The Interwebs are buzzing about this photo posted by Paulina Gretzky earlier in the week, that has suddenly been removed:

I do like the bib, but the issue is more what's in his right hand.

I Got There First - Marla Ridenour, writing in The Akron Beacon Journal, catches us up on players utilizing the increasingly available statistics to fine tune thier play and practice, and likens it to....wait for it, Moneyball.  C'mon Marla, don't you have a Google subscription?  I deserve at least a link, but I shan't be bitter:

More numbers became available to players on the PGA, Champions and Web.com tours after ShotLink was conceived in 1999. It replaced walking scorers with volunteers equipped with lasers — with about 350 needed at each event — to measure Bubba Watson’s booming drives and Tiger Woods’ tap-in birdies. The PGA Tour teamed with CDW in 2008 to sponsor a data program known as Shot
Link Intelligence. 

Now some players, including Jason Day, Zach Johnson and Brandt Snedeker, rely on a person in their inner circle to crunch those numbers as adeptly as Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane did in the baseball movie Moneyball.

Marla, you do know that Moneyball was a book long before it was a movie, right?  Just checking...  We were on this trend back in February, but there's some good detail on how individual players have utilized this data to their benefit.

A Worthy Recipient - John Strege tells us of an important award to a most worthy recipient:

Dave Anderson, a Golf Digest Contributing Editor and long-time New York Times columnist,

has been named the recipient of the PEN/ESPN Lifetime Achievement Award for Literary Sports Writing. 

“I put that right on the same level as the Pulitzer Prize,” Anderson said via telephone from his New Jersey home. Anderson, whose career has spanned more than 50 years, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1981.

I first met Anderson at the Metropolitan Golf Writers Association meeting at Knickerbocker Country Club, which I posted on here.  He's a wonderfully engaging man with no shortage of great stories about our game.

I next saw him at the MGWA Annual Dinner last month, when he introduced John Feinstein to receive his award for golf writing.  Which provides the opportunity to share the photo below, in which Unplayable Lies Employee No. 2 finally gets off her duff:

The bride pressing an Unplayable Lies business card on Pulitzer Prize winner Dave Anderson.

Congratulations are due for sure, but do we think he ever checked out the blog?  I'm guessing not.

Where Have I heard This Before - Golf Digest's Mike Stachurs tells us that reports of golf's demise have been overstated:

The bad-news cycle started last week with the announcement by Dick’s Sporting Goods that it was essentially firing its 478 PGA professionals. While no detailed explanation was provided, the company’s dismal first-quarter earnings report (a $34 million loss) cited declining golf sales as a major contributing factor. As DKS chairman and CEO Ed Stack said in May, “We really don't know where the bottom is in golf. ... The industry has a real issue.”

So when the leading off-course retailer of golf equipment, a publicly traded company, essentially projects a lack of faith in the golf business, it was only natural for the story to take on a globalized life of its own. ESPN, The Wall Street Journal,Forbes and the television networks all jumped on the opportunity to write golf’s death sentence.

We were on this a couple of days ago, and it really is thin gruel.  Here's a sample of data points that ESPN, the WSJ and Forbes chose to ignore:

Has 2014 been a down year for equipment sales and rounds played? Certainly. Is there an oversupply of golf courses (fueled by unsustainable real-estate projections) and golf-equipment inventory (driven by overzealous manufacturers who were primed by unrealistic sales forecasts from certain large-scale retailers)? Unquestionably. But that’s a relative and limited point of view. First, let's remember this: There were about 5 million golfers in 1960. While U.S. population has increased only some 75 percent since then, the number of golfers has more than quintupled to around 25 million.

Recent data from golf-retail research firm Golf Datatech show that the sale of hard goods (clubs, balls, bags, shoes and gloves) through the first six months of the year are higher than or equal to 12 of the previous 17 years. Is the trend line down from the somewhat freakish highs of 2006-'08? Yes. But there are unquestionable categories of enthusiasm this year. Iron sales, the largest purchase a golfer makes, have been up this year. The wedge market, thought to be dead after the USGA rolled back groove performance, has been consistently up this year. Even the footwear market has been an important, steady source of revenue. Callaway Golf just announced its second-quarter earnings and noted its sales for the first half of 2014 were up 9 percent, with growth in all categories, including woods (up 8 percent), irons (up 14 percent), putters (up 9 percent) and golf balls (up 7 percent).

As Stachura and anyone writing responsibly on this subject make plain, there's no shortage of challenges for the game.  But this concept that the game is in free-fall is just way overblown. If I've said it once I've said it a thousand times, it's a niche sport.  But it's not a bad niche at all...

The Striped One - Lot's of chatter about our Tiger as he begins his two-week, make-or-break push to salvage the season.  Tiger continues to put a brave face on it, as per Doug Ferguson at AP:

"I would like to win these two events and not have to worry about anything," Woods said Wednesday. "That's the plan. That's the mindset. That's the focus. We'll see how it falls after these few weeks. I'm so far out of it right now that I need to play well to ... get myself into the playoffs and ultimately -- hopefully -- play all four weeks."

I was channel flipping last night and  came across the rebroadcast of last Year's Bridgestone on Golf Channel.  It was quite the shock seeing Tiger decked out in red with a large lead.  As Michael Bamberger wrote in his Sports Illustrated Open Championship game story, "It was only last year that Tiger won five times.  It only seems like ten years ago."  Ain't that the truth.

Dave Shedloski informs us that, despite impending doom, Tiger has maintained his finely-honed sense of humor.  See what you think of these comedy stylings:

On his backswing getting shorter: “We've been trying to shorten it up over the years. I think a perfect way to do it is just have back surgery. All those geniuses out there, there you go.”

On whether Jack Nicklaus’ record of 18 majors seems as obtainable as it did in 1997 (the year he won his first Masters): “I'll tell you what, it's a hell of a lot closer now than I was in '97. These 14 weren't easy. “

He'll be there all week, folks, unless, you know, he misses another cut.

And Luke Kerr-Dineen gives us the most substantive take-away from Tiger's recent Fox News exclusive interview:

In his one-on-one interview with Fox Sports, a portion of which was published online on

The Hairline: 1997 vs. 2014.  

Wednesday, Tiger Woods gave the world an extraordinary admission about something that has been weighing on people's minds for quite a while: his hair loss.  It's not something that Tiger hasn't noticed, but he seems in good spirits about it.

"I'm comfortable with it, but my hairline isn't," Tiger said, after being asked by host Colleen Dominiguez if he was comfortable aging. "I have a nice skylight [at home] and I'm at the point where if I don't wear a hat, I can feel the heat."

We're all getting older, I'm just lucky that the Simpson genes don't include male pattern baldness.

This post was begun before play at Firestone began.  Dave Shedloski had this on Tiger's 2-under 68:

"Yeah, I feel like I made some progress," Woods, 38, said of a round that included six birdies against two bogeys and one double bogey. "As I said, this is only my seventh round back, so it's just going to take a little time. I'm starting to get in the flow of things. If you look at my iron shots into the holes today, a majority of them were pin high. So I'm starting to get the feel back in my hands and get the ball, my trajectory under control. I'm starting to get the shots hitting the ball the correct numbers again."

He also is showing signs of scoring. After each of his three holes over par, including a three-putt from 10 feet at the first, Woods answered with a birdie. He got up and down for par on four of the six holes at which he missed the green, including all three on his inward nine.

There was some good news, no doubt, but let's see if he can maintain this level of play.  Everyone got all excited over his opening 69 at Hoylake, and that turned out to be the high-water mark.

Firestone's Firewall - Turns out it's a guy named Bob Dyer writing in the Beacon Journal:

Are the pros bored with Firestone? 

One longtime national golf writer certainly is, and he has made no effort to stifle his yawns.

Get a load of Alan Shipnuck in Sports Illustrated’s Golf+ magazine:

“Those World Golf Championships in Tucson and Akron are stuck in such uninspired venues. I’d move those ... to places that are more dynamic.” 

That was merely his latest salvo. In 2011, Shipnuck wrote of Fire­stone South, “If there’s a more boring tournament course out there, I haven’t seen it.”

The debate about the architectural merits of Firestone can be settled rather quickly, it has none.  Glad we got that out of the way...

Dyer cites favorable quotes from noted golf architecture critics Rory McIlroy and Sergio Garcia, and that's fine as far as it goes.  Though the cynic in me wonders if, just thinking out loud here, the limited field/huge purse/no cut dynamics might affect their outlook just a tad....

Shackelford is, of course, on the case, linking to this Jack Nicklaus quote.  

It's a boring course. You can fall asleep on it because you're always hitting the same kind of shots--woods (cont) 

And when Jack complains about boring golf architecture....well, you can fill in the rest.

Sly as a Fox -  The Peacock has had better success at filling out their announcing team than many of us anticipated.  While most had focused on the babelicious Holly Sonders, this is far more significant:

Fox Sports continued to build its golf broadcast team with the addition of Brad Faxon as a studio analyst and hole announcer and former USGA executive director David Fay as its rules analyst.

“Long-known for his smooth putting stroke, Brad's transition to broadcasting has been just as easy,” Fox Sports’ coordinating golf producer Mark Loomis said in a news release. “He still has great relationships with, and knowledge of, today's tour players, and that insight will prove invaluable to our telecasts. David has been synonymous with the USGA, its championships and history for decades, so adding him to our team was a no-brainer."

I thought Faxon was pretty good in his limited tome with NBC and Golf Channel.  I'm actually a bit surprised that they didn't lock him up.  Now we'll see if The Shark plays well with the other children.

Mongrel Hoard - Shack has an amusing item at The Loop that the bride needs to read.  Seems she considers your humble servant to be a bit of an hoarder:

Thinking maybe you had a hoarder streak after keeping a few too many old clubs laying around

the garage? Think again! 

Placed in the Orange County section of Craigslist and updated since, the seller lists just about every conceivable brand as available from the, uh, collection. There is a catch: the buyer must take it all. That's 20,000 clubs for $7,500, which, as the seller notes, amounts to 38 cents a club. The 50 bags mentioned are thrown in as part of the package based on the seller remarks.

Sweetie, it's only 38 cents per club!  Wouldn't be prudent to miss out...