The Alamo - Part II

The bride and I threw the clubs in the boot yesterday and went to the range to hit a bucket of balls...There's still snow to melt before we get access to our course, but can someone remind me where I left the sweet spot on my 7-iron?

You Say Valero... - My interest in the early rounds of the Valero Texas Open is on a par with ISIS snuff videos, but I apparently missed a wild and wacky day in the winds.  I'm not sure this qualifies as effective masters prep, but of course many of these guys are hoping to punch one of those last tickets...

First up, a pop quiz for the class... does anyone remember Freddie Couples miraculous par at the island green at Sawgrass?  Here's a reminder...

That was three all the way... OK, we've got one that's way better than that, per Alex Myers:

Aaron Baddeley turned another potential Day 1 disaster into the craziest birdie he or

anyone has probably ever made in golf history. On the drivable par-4 17th (playing 336 yards to the pin today), Baddeley yanked his tee shot into the woods. But after taking an unplayable lie, he re-teed and miraculously holed his next shot. Again, from 336 yards. In other words, this is NOT a misprint:

Baddeley hit driver on both shots, but choked down on his second attempt with the hole playing downwind. The improbable result put him just one shot behind Charley Hoffman after the first round.

"I just thought I'd just hit it straight and so I hit it and started walking and then heard the crowd going nuts," Baddeley said. "I was like, wait, I just made birdie."

Got it?  Just a little choked-down 336-yard driver... So, anything else interesting happen yesterday?  Well, there was that Mickelson fairway bunker shot:

Kudos to the Golf Channel crew for the slo-mo and audio... Now thanks to Shack who caught the best part of the story, this tweet from Callaway's Creative Director Johnny Rodriguez:

OK, it's the ball that's supposed to fly away, but we do like funny... So anything else?Well, Alex Myers had no sooner posted this on how D.A. Points opened his round with this disaster...

D.A. Points found the left side of the fairway with his opening shot of the Valero Texas Open, but that was the extent of his good start at TPC San Antonio. Points flew the green with his approach, and then, well, let's just say he struggled with a couple of bunker shots before struggling with a short putt.

 That tidy play around the green demands a close-up, no?

Well, at least he got some exercise...but after a bogey on No.2 he selfishly makes Alex update the post for this on No. 3:

And since we love our rainbow coalition scorecards, here's D.A,'s:

When you're nine over after four holes, there's nothing good that can happen....you just have to soldier on and get out of twon Friday afternoon.

So, how bad was it?  Jim McCabe summed it up thusly:

You know it’s not a good day when personal records are set at an alarming rate – and no one’s smiling. But that about summed up Thursday’s opening round of the Valero Texas Open, which was a forgettable experience for a long line of players. 

When nearly 22 percent of the field (31 of 141) shoots 80 or higher, you have to figure it wasn’t an easy day, and that usually means that wind was involved. With winds steady at 30 mph early and gusts to 40, the morning wave bore the brunt of the misery at TPC San Antonio. One by one, players had to be second-guessing themselves for choosing this week to tune up for the Masters.

And those are guys with their names on their bags... Now for Willow Ridgers I'll note that Favid Berkey has his name on his bag as well, but I'm thinking that's probably for different reasons.

Deja Vu All Over Again -  First came news a couple of days ago that TaylorMade has a new CEO:

TaylorMade Golf Company Names David Abeles as CEO and President 

CARLSBAD, Calif. (March 26, 2015) — The adidas Group has appointed David Abeles as CEO of TaylorMade Golf Company with immediate effect. Abeles succeeds Ben Sharpe, who has decided to leave the company for personal reasons. Abeles will report directly into adidas Group CEO Herbert Hainer.

I would have thought you'd capitalize your parent company's name, but it's their own damn press release.  But didn't we just go through this?  Sure enough, Shack confirms:

Ben Sharpe is out after almost a year at the helm. He replaced CEO Mark King last April.

OK, he probably just wanted to spend more time with his family because business is going great guns...

A single news cycle later and we have Shack pouncing on this WSJ report (behind their paywall):

Adidas has also vowed to speed up how quickly it brings new products to market and

invest more in its core brands, particularly in the U.S. The company wants to open 55 new stores in the U.S. in the next 2½ years. It has 30 today. 

Adidas has suffered a number of setbacks lately. The company has a large presence in Russia where slowing economic growth and the plummeting value of the ruble have crimped the country’s contribution to Adidas’s results. Waning popularity of golf has hit sales at its TaylorMade-Adidas golf unit hard.

OK, as Shack duly notes, yes their golf equipment sales were down 28% recently, but that was because they had flooded the retailers' inventory with three driver releases in a year.   Plus this:

As part of the new five-year strategic business plan, named “Creating the New,” Adidas said it would respond to consumer trends immediately and push out new products in-season.

In a few years, Adidas aims to use purpose-built machines to create personalized products instantly in its stores. It also plans to quadruple e-commerce revenue to more than €2 billion by 2020. 

As for the U.S., Mark King, Adidas’s North American CEO, said the company wants to increase its market share to 15% by 2020.

Guys, we just saw this movie last week, and Mark King was the director...  It's less about Creating the New than about Creating the Markdown Allowance.

This Week In Golf Protests - Amazingly enough, not from Rio where I haven't heard much from the Occupy Golf folks, but this one at least ended amusingly:

Last week we brought you the odd story of two protesters living in a tree in New Orleans' Sharp Park in an effort to stop construction of a new $25 million golf course. Now the situation has gotten even stranger.

The lone man standing, er, sitting fell out of the tree on Tuesday, according to Nola.com. Witnesses say Jonathan "Lloyd" Boover flipped out of a hammock perched midway up the tree. He appeared to injure his nose, leg and foot, and was eventually taken away by an ambulance.

These things will keep happening until Congress repeals gravity... but this is the bit that amused your humble blogger:

Lloyd, the name he was known by among fellow protestors, had been living in the tree since March 13. That's 11 days of living in a tree. Hammock or not, that's impressive. 

A female, known only by her protest name of Heart, came down a week before after spending four days with Lloyd in the tree. Lloyd was thought to be running low on supplies. He waved to a crowd of supporters as he was carried away on a stretcher.

I knew about the porn name bit, but do I also need a protest name?  It's so hard to keep up with things today...

And since someone mentioned Rio, you might be interested to know that the Mayor has replicate a move known in gymnastics circles as a Full John Kerry: 

'Does this look like an environmental crime?' he exclaimed, arms akimbo, as he led reporters over the course's spongy grass. Earlier, Paes projected aerial photos from the 1980s apparently showing what's now the golf course dotted with concrete structures. 

Environmentalists contend that hardy subtropical vegetation had since retaken the area and that before the bulldozers descended it had become home to several endangered species, including species of butterflies and frogs. 

'He (Paes) thinks that all green's the same,' said Jean Carlos Novaes, a member of the Golfe Para Quem (Golf For Whom) group that has been protesting outside the site for months. 'But non-native grass is just not the same thing as the native ecosystem.' 

Novaes, who was among a small group of protesters on Wednesday, insisted it was unnecessary to build a new course in the first place, since Rio already has two other golf courses - despite golf's status in Brazil as an unpopular sport played almost exclusively by the moneyed elite. The owner of one of the courses has said he wrote to authorities to offer it up for the Olympics but never heard back.

Well he was against golf before he was for it... Boy, if only those poor butterflies had some mechanism to perambulate to a more hospitable climate... Now Shack reminds us that those two other golf course in Rio are about 5,200 yards long, but misses the opportunity to note that for about half the field that would be plenty...