Thursday Thoughts

The sun'll come out....next week, at the earliest.

Pebble's Fourteenth - The dissemination of information can be a curious thing... For instance, since the 2000 U.S. Open the plans to rebuild the 17th green have been common knowledge, but word on their plans vis-à-vis the arguably more necessary 14th green were clouded in secrecy.

The 14th is a stern Par-5, proof that that term is not an oxymoron for today's best players, but the green has long been a major problem for course set-up, especially for the Open.  People tend to forget that for the Crosby AT&T they only need two pin positions, and the greens are not nearly as firm or fast.

My dear friend Glenn Emanuel has long defended this and the 17th green, and our conversations typically go like this:

Glenn: What's wrong with the hole being Hard?

Me: Hard is fine, it's unfair that's the issue....

What's Unfair About It?: Well, the green won't hold a wedge.

Glenn: yeah, so it's hard....What of it?

Me: It won't hold a well-struck wedge from the best players in the world...

Glenn: So, let them get up and down....

Two things have happened over time to make this green unplayable, first it has shrunk significantly and, second, green speeds have increased alarmingly.  As a result, the entire front half of the green has become a false front, rendering the "pinnable" locations to ....well, one.  Specifically, the back left.

Per John Strege:

"We’re in day three,” Harper said, “and after probably three years of discussions on when we’re going to do this and how we’re going to do this, and looking through 80, 90 years of history and photos, working with Arnold (Palmer) and making sure we do this the right way, we decided to pull the trigger. 

"Through a collection of all the photos, we landed on something we think is the right way. We’re increasing it to the original size and we’re going to keep the general shape to the green. The big cavernous bunker remains, but we’re lowering the top lip that if your ball came down there it would shoot it to the back of the green. We're leveling off the upper part of the green, increasing square footing by going back, and recreateing the pin location back right that no longer had been available to us. "

The green had shrunk from 4,000 square feet to only 3,200, not what we mean when we speak of minimalist architecture.  But as noted above, under U.S. Open conditions there was simply not enough room, as per this noted authority:

And getting the ball to stop on the upper left quadrant has been exceedingly difficult. “The way that little green, at least the left side of it, sits almost up on a pencil, there's maybe like 1,600, 1,700 square feet there,” USGA executive director Mike Davis said in 2010. “And if you miss it, I don’t care if you’re long, short, left, right, it’s no good. You’re going to have issues.” 

Davis has called Pebble’s 14th hole and the 12th hole at Oakmont Country Club, site of this year’s U.S. Open, “the two toughest par 5s that we use in the U.S. Open rota.”

I've long called Pebble the most over-rated golf course in the world.  Of course I do that in part to see peoples reactions, but also because I think the course has too many mediocre holes for it's lofty status.  But it's good to see them addressing the problems that have developed over time, though we won't really see the results of this until 1919....

Now, about that 16th green...

If We All Throw in a Few Bucks... - If anyone has an urge to get into the golf equipment business, here's your chance:

In announcing its otherwise positive first quarter earnings on Wednesday, Adidas revealed that it had decided "to enter into concrete negotiations with interested parties" toward a sale of parts of the company’s golf division. 

Sale talks of Adidas golf brands were formally announced in August, but TaylorMade adidas Golf CEO David Abeles explained that TaylorMade had not been sold in an internal company email in January, according to Internet reports. In April, he also maintained that TaylorMade had the unconditional support of Adidas. But in a change from previous statements, Adidas' potential sale now definitely will include TaylorMade, the perennial industry leader in metalwood sales. 

Adidas currently owns the TaylorMade, Adams, Ashworth and Adidas golf brands. In the announcement, the company said it would retain the Adidas Golf brand, which deals primarily in shoes and apparel. Hainer said the move was part of a shift in focus for Adidas. "The planned divestiture will allow us to reduce complexity and focus our efforts on those areas of our business that offer the highest return," he said.

OK, this is big in our little fishbowl.... No doubt there's an opportunity for schadenfreude, as TM has made a mess of the equipment business, as a cursory glance at the remainder bin at Dick's will confirm.

They were forced to but Adams to resolve a nasty intellectual property case, but then never seemed to know what to do with it.  And I'll go to my grave without understanding their acquisition of Ashworth, but now they want to make it someone else's problem.

Shack devotes some pixels to thinking through who the buyer will be, and this Bloomberg piece frames some of the issues:

Outgoing Chief Executive Officer Herbert Hainer is cleaning up Adidas’s operations as he sets the table for Kasper Rorsted, who takes the reins in October. Adidas got into golf when it bought French ski and skate company Salomon in 1997, but younger consumers are staying away from the game, and it isn’t popular in emerging markets like China and India. Sales plummeted 13 percent last year as the industry has been beset by discounting. 

‘‘The golf market is not growing at the moment but it’s also not falling further,” Hainer said during a call with reporters. The portion Adidas plans to keep is producing solid returns and the company is cutting labor and manufacturing costs, the CEO said.

I find it interesting that they're holding on to the Adidas golf division, the shoes and schmata side of things, meaning that they intend to compete with their buyer.  Here's Shack's take:

I was thinking of a poll on who the possible buyers might be, but it would seem more likely that it'll be a Chinese company like Wanda Group or private equity firm with a name like Majestic or Majestic Elm or Thoroughbred Capital, instead of something sexier, like Under Armour. Thoughts?

My guess is that Under Armour will not be the buyer, but without access to the offering materials that's just a guess.  They don't need the Ashworth brand, and hard goods are a reach for them as well.

I'm a bit surprised by the timing, but see what you think about this:

At the same time, the planned divestiture will allow us to reduce complexity and focus our efforts on those areas of our business that offer the highest return and where we can have the biggest impact in reaching our consumers and winning their loyalty for the adidas and Reebok brands.”

When you're moving resources from TaylorMade to...Reebok, that's quite the vote of confidence for the golf business.

The Olympics, The Yin and the Yang - Which do you want first?  OK, let's go with the modified, limited good news.... 

Luckily, many of the world's top players like Jordan Spieth, Jason Day and Rory McIlory 

remain committed to the Rio games. On Wednesday, McIlroy spoke of his desire for golf's permanent residence in the Olympics. 

"It's obviously being played in Rio this year and it's being played in Tokyo in 2020. I'm not sure if we're going to have another opportunity to win a gold medal after that depending on what happens,” McIlroy said Wednesday at Quail Hollow Club. "I'm not sure if golf is going to have another opportunity to win a gold medal after that."

So you're really excited, eh?  And the more he goes on, the more apparent it is that he's just trying to be a good soldier:

McIlroy later told reporters that, "If we don’t somehow change the narrative of getting people more excited about it...I’m worried." 

McIlroy admitted that Ireland captain Paul McGinley is more excited about the event than he is. But since he considers McGinley a close friend, McIlroy is going down to Brazil to give it his best. 

"It's a week," McIlroy said. "You know, go play four rounds really competitively and try and win a gold medal. And if you do, I don't know how that will stack up against the other things that I've done in my career now, but maybe I might look back in 20 years’ time and a gold medal might be one of my crowning achievements in the game, you never know. So it's an opportunity to do something that you've never done before."

Olympic Golf:  It's a Week....  Not a great rallying cry, is it?  And we have another defection, though no one will criticize this guy:

Marc Leishman has reluctantly withdrawn his candidacy for Olympic selection.

In a heartfelt statement, Australia’s No.3 ranked male golfer said his decision was based purely on the health of his wife Audrey, who’s still in recovery mode after a brush with death in 2015. 

“It is with deep regret that I have informed Golf Australia that I will be unable to represent my country in the upcoming 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Brazil,” Leishman said. 

“Many of you may know that last April my children and I almost lost my wife, Audrey, to toxic shock syndrome. 

“Since then Audrey has been prone to infection and is far removed from 100 per cent recovery of her immune system.

Extraordinary circumstances for sure, but that leaves the Aussie delegation as Jason Day and ...anyone know?  Bueller?  That's household name and ratings magnet Marcus Frazier, and you can all see where this is heading....

This Is My Shocked Face -  We're all dealing with the current state of the race for the Presidency in our own ways... For me, it's an accomplishment that I'm no longer curled up the corner in the fetal position.... 

We've been seeing some fairly strange endorsements of the presumptive Republican nominee, probably none more so than convicted rapist Mike Tyson.  Hey, that rapist demo has been long ignored...  This one, however, while having some currency, has a logic all its own:

Anyway, former Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz seems to think golf course and hotel development is a key asset for any presidential candidate, and said so in his endorsement of Trump, which Trump naturally put on his Twitter feed.

“The main reason I’m endorsing him: I’ve played his golf course [and] I’ve stayed in his hotel,” Holtz said. “He does nothing but go first class in everything, he wants this country to be first class as well.”

My hope had been that we hit the high-water mark of tackiness during the first Clinton administration, but I've hit a bad stretch on all things political.

But you know that "Golf reveals character" meme?  We shouldn't need golf to reveal the character of a man that thinks père Cruz assisted Oswald, but you'll enjoy this Oscar de la Hoya account of The Donald's adherence to the rules of our ancient game:

“I played at his golf course two years ago in Palos Verdes,” De La Hoya told reporters. “I was teeing on the first hole and next thing I know here comes a golf cart. It’s Donald Trump: ‘Oscar, can I play with you?’

“Of course, this is your golf course,” De La Hoya said he responded.

“First ball, [Trump] hits off to the water, gets another ball from his pocket. Hits it off to the left, out of bounds,” De La Hoya said.

Trump said, “Oh, I got another one, just warming up,” De La Hoya recounted.

“Another one to the water. Then the fourth ball he hits -- I know it went to the bushes. But Donald, what he does, he tees off first so he can take off right away. I pipe mine down the middle. So we go off to our ball, and who do we see? Donald Trump, right in the middle of the fairway,” De La Hoya said.

Wow....that so....what's the word?  Clintonian....  The irony, she burns.