Bonus Sunday Content

Since I won't be here to wrap your weekend tomorrow, how about I make it up to you with some quality time together now?

You Don't Know Dick - For those that remember the original incarnation of Driver v. Driver, this will show how far we've come:

Dick's Sporting Goods Inc (DKS.N), teamed up with liquidators, won a bankruptcy 

Squint as I might, I still can't make out a golf ball in that logo...

auction on Friday for the U.S. business of Golfsmith International Holdings Inc [GOFTWG.UL] with a bid of about $70 million, according to people familiar with the matter. 

Dick's plans to keep open at least 30 Golfsmith stores and wind down the rest with liquidators from Hilco Global and Tiger Capital Group, the people said. It plans to keep about 500 of the company's employees.

Golfsmith had 109 stores in the United States at the time of its bankruptcy filing last month, and has been closing stores since then.

I'm old enough to remember back in the day when Dick's laid off 500 PGA teaching pros and spoke of the game being in structural decline...  yanno, way back in 2014.  Of course, that was largely a result of TaylorMade deciding each and every one of us craved three new drivers in a year....  Many of those remain in Dick's remainder bins....

This smells like an attempt to head off another entrant into the market, especially given all the known unknowns:

According to the Reuters report, Dick’s has not decided whether the Golfsmith stores will be rebranded as Golf Galaxy. Nor was it clear what will happen to Golfsmith.com, the largest golf-specific internet retail site. 

The move could leave Dick’s with the largest collection of golf retail stores in the country. It currently operates 72 Golf Galaxy stores and adding the 30 Golfsmith stores would give it 102, compared to Worldwide Golf Shops 72 stores. Worldwide Golf Shops was the other leading bidder in this week’s Golfsmith auction.

And that doesn't include the Dick's stores, at least some of which have separate entrances to dedicated "pro shops".  But it leaves only the PGA Tour Superstores as competition....  and while those are far bigger and much better stocked, there aren't all that many of them.

Euros Unplugged -  Shack performs a public service in reminding us that the European Ryder Cup program is not quite the e pluribis unum effort we see from a distance.  First, he posts this congratulatory tweet from the putative 2018 Captain:

Well, that was nice of Thomas, to reach out to man with whom he shared so many wonderful memories... But as nice as Thomas is, it turns out that he can handle a shiv as well...  as Shack excerpts from a decade-old James Corrigan column with these juicy quotes from the Dane about Woosie's captaincy (excerpts but no link, Dab Shack!):

"So far his captaincy has been the most pathetic I have ever seen," said the 35-year-old, who is one of the European Tour's most respected players, and who is extremely popular throughout the Ryder Cup team room. "The man is barmy - to be captain and not communicate with a team or those in contention at all. I haven't spoken to him for six months, and then I find that I'm not in the team by watching it on television. How can that be right?"

"I haven't heard a word off him for half a year, and I've spoken to several players who are on the team, and have been for a long time, and they haven't either," he said. "What sort of captaincy is that? I have lost all respect for him. My relationship with him is completely dead and will remain so. This will be the first time I don't even watch the Ryder Cup on television, and you don't know how sad that is, given how much I care for that tournament. I desperately want the 12 players to be a success, but I want them to do it in spite of the captain."

They did, Thomas, with a razor thin 18.5-9.5 win.  But the takeaway is that they have all the petty jealousies and rivalries that we endure, but somehow they still make putts.  I can only assume that Woosie used pods, because I have it on good authority that that's the only way that guys can play well....

Strange Daze - I'm so old that I can remember when the PGA was an American tour....  I know, I still pine for those rotary telephones...  But with the Tour in Malaysia and headed to China comes word of one guy that's staying home:

William McGirt, No. 42 in the world golf rankings, won a whopping $3.6 million on the PGA Tour this past season.

Next week, he is eligible to play for the $8.5 million purse in the World Golf Championship (WGC) event at Shanghai. It is a no-cut event, so essentially he is guaranteed to win money. 

McGirt will be in Jackson instead.

 Wow, must be a Trump voter....  The misogynistic xenophobic rube....Well, keep an open mind and see what you think of his reasoning:

Get this: Even though he is not allowed, by PGA Tour rules, to play in the Sanderson

Farms Championship at Country Club of Jackson, McGirt wants to come and support the tournament. He plans to fly to Jackson Tuesday night for the pro-am pairings party, play in Wednesday’s pro-am and then fly back home to South Carolina. 

“It’s about two things,” McGirt said Tuesday night by phone. “One, I have no interest in flying halfway around the world to China to play in a golf tournament. Two, I want to support a tournament I love and a cause I believe in. So that’s what I am going to do.” 

First, he had to clear it with the PGA Tour, which he did. The tour’s rules strictly forbid a golfer skipping a WGC event to play in another tour event. But there’s nothing in the rules about playing in the pro-am. So McGirt will take what he can get.

First, what a stupid rule!  McGirt is a fave of Employee No.2, having mostly to do with his waist size, but he's now also my hero...  skipping a money-grab for a Pro-Am Pairings Party?  I don't have the vocabulary to describe the epic awesomeness of that what-for to Commissioner Ratched...

Of course I assume that these words will result in a fine....

“Last year, Joe Sanderson (Sanderson Farms CEO) stepped up and guaranteed to sponsor the tournament for 10 more years,” McGirt said. “That’s huge. We, as players, need to support that. We need to support what that tournament does for that children’s hospital there. That’s why I am coming there, to support all that.”

Heresy!   Though it wasn't McGirt's idea to create the reality show Sponsor v. Sponsor, was it?  At a time when your attention is on football and the World Series, our Commish provides two sanctioned events for you to ignore...  As the man says, is this a great time to be a golf fan or what?

Independence Daze - I'm old enough to remember the glory days of Hack Golf , Foot Golf and Cocaine Golf, those initiatives that were going to save our dying game...  OK, I might have made up that last one, but it's not any more ridiculous than the others....

Josh Sens files this interesting video report on the efforts of Independence Golf Club to use innovative methods, read non-golf activities, to draw paying customers to their facility.  Some readers have misunderstood my snarky take on grow-the-game initiatives, as it's the top-down, high on glue fumes attitudes that have drawn my ire....  For instance, you know who has used non-golf offerings to fill their facilities?  Only every country club in the country....

I love hearing about individual operators experimenting to appeal to a wide range of users, that's the power of markets.  Now this club has some advantages that others don't, an unusually large property to keep non-golf activities from bothering their core customers, as well as a particularly good location.  

But when the PGA of America or TaylorMade tells us that the future is bleak unless we embrace Foot Golf or 15" cups, that just speaks to me of a lack of confidence in our game....  and if you've no confidence in our game, perhaps you should find another line of work?

Golf Goes To The Movies - What's the best golf movie of all time?  Ha, I tricked you, there isn't one....

Oh, Caddyshack and Tin Cup have moments, but the former is at times painful (Ted Baxter?) and the latter is a poor-man's Bull Durham....  But the same Josh Sens has this piece on the 18 greatest golf scenes of all time (Gee, 18 is such an odd number, where'd he come up with that?) that's fun for a cold Sunday morning.

My fave won't surprise you, as I'm old enough to remember this guy:

Best footwork in the game....

Answering The Important Questions - Sam Weinman with the provocative header:

This is why you make dumb decisions at the end of a round (it's not all your fault!)

So you're saying there's a chance?  Here's the premise:

A recent study by the French Institute of Health and Research sought to explore how cognitive thinking is impacted when our brain has been sufficiently taxed. Put simply, it wanted to explain why we do stupid things when we’re tired. The method used was by studying the impulse control of two sets of volunteers -- those put through a series of difficult memory tasks over the course of six hours, and those who took it relatively easy over the same period. Ultimately, researchers found the less-taxed group exhibited greater control at day’s end. 

What the study underscored is that an overworked brain is no different than your leg muscles in the final miles of a marathon. The simplest task becomes arduous. According to a summary of the French study in Psychology Today, “Hard memory work requires a glut of energy and leaves less available for making good decisions. And when that happens, the cerebral gears start slipping and impulsiveness kicks in.” 

While this may in part explain the type of brain cramp a mid-handicapper like me is prone to at inopportune moments, the better case study is a world-class golfer at the end of a particularly stressful week.

OK, the word that jumps out at me from the first 'graph is....FRENCH!  We're now taking advice from a people who find it exerting to light a Gauloises?  But I digress.... And they found the perfect picture to accompany the piece:

Of course, it was also at the end of a round that he told us how to fix the U.S. Ryder Cup team....

Only Five? - Mr. Tiger Regrets...... no he's fine for lunch, but he wanted to hang at Stanford with his buddies, and can't think of a single other thing he might do differently....  Well, perhaps giving her his cell number, but that's not important now...

John Strege calls BS on that, with five reasons why, including this most obvious one:

4. The ’97 Masters. The foundation on which Woods’ legacy was built generally began with his 12-stroke victory in the Masters in 1997. Had he stayed at Stanford, he’d have qualified for that Masters by virtue of his U.S. Amateur victory, but the likelihood of his winning at Augusta would have been remote, given the demands of college and its inherent limits on preparation time.

But I don't think I ever heard about this:

2. A mugging. Woods was mugged on campus as a Stanford freshman. “According to Stanford Police Chief Marvin Herrington, Woods, 18, was returning from an outing at about 11:10 p.m. when he was grabbed from behind, and a knife held to his throat,” a Stanford news release said. “The suspect stole a neck chain and watch, and then knocked Woods down, striking him with the handle of the knife.” 

What the release did not note was that the mugger said, “Tiger, give me your wallet.” Woods’ father Earl, who frequently expressed concern for Tiger’s safety given his growing celebrity, called it a random act of violence, though he hedged. “It happens every day,” he said. “The only thing significant about it is that he knew the victim’s name.”

OK, that's gonna freak you out....