Friday Frisson

Don't blame me, it's really slow this time of year...  In fact, we're not far away from ski blogging...

Have We Got A Deal For You - Today is IPO day for Acushnet Holdings, parent company of many of the most valuable brands in our little fish bowl, most notably Titleist and Foot Joy.  The company will trade under the ticker symbol GOLF, and the fact that that symbol was available might tell us all we need to know.

If I were the company, I'd be a bit miffed with my investment bankers, as this miss was the capital markets equivalent of Spieth's miss on the twelfth at Augusta:

Acushnet Holdings, which manufactures and markets golf equipment under several brands (e.g. Titleist), raised $329 million by offering 19.3 million shares at $17, below the range of $21 to $24. Acushnet Holdings plans to list on the NYSE under the symbol GOLF. J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Nomura Securities, UBS Investment Bank, Credit Suisse, Daiwa Securities, Deutsche Bank, Jefferies and Wells Fargo Securities acted as lead managers on the deal.

That's a Hank Haney.  OK, I promise, no more metaphors.... But that's more than $100 million short of the midpoint of their price range, so no small matter.

Should you buy?  Here's Motley Fool's take:

Meanwhile, Acushnet Holdings' fairly static top line and the high level of indebtedness would worry me if I were an investor. I'm also not really a fan of equity cash-outs, as the driving motivation of this activity is to put money in the hands of existing shareholders, not raise funds for the business.

That's my guess as well, especially as their retail channels consolidate.  But then again, there was this later in the item:

Besides, the company is not the only game in town for golf supplies. Ever-powerful Nike(NYSE:NKE), as it does with practically every other sport, offers a line of equipment and apparel dedicated to the links. Like Acushnet Holdings, Nike sells clubs, gear, and even balls. Its products have that sleek Nike edge that is probably more attractive to younger players; Acushnet Holdings' brands are generally more traditional.

Yeah, but you know who proved immune to the charms of those sleek, edgy clubs?   Pretty much anyone that wasn't paid to play them....  shouldn't an analyst opining on this IPO be aware that Nike is exiting the club and ball business?

We have this similar opinion as well (h/t Shack for those two links):

Declining revenue and tough market for golf manufactures make us pass on investing in

Actually, these trend lines aren't all bad.

this upcoming IPO. 

The fact that company insiders are selling 100% of the shares and that Fila Korea will have majoring voting power are additional detractors. 

Its current valuation also looks like quite a significant mark-up from Fila Korea's 2011 purchase price. 

While we do hear the deal is oversubscribed, we suggest investors play golf but avoid the GOLF IPO.

Fair enough, but I'd advise you all to avoid investment advisers that play golf.  Takes way too much time....

Dying On The Vine - Alex Myers has sad news for us:

Twitter is killing Vine. It's a sentence that wouldn't have made any sense about a decade ago, but on Thursday, it was an announcement that saddened many on social media. On the bright side, since the plug wasn't immediately pulled on the video sharing app, for now, you can continue to see those looping clips that have brought smiles to us for all these years (three years to be exact). So sit back and enjoy this compilation of some of the best golf Vines ever (again, it's only been three years) created while there's still time.

OK, perhaps not for us, but I presume it's sad news for somebody.  Alex is obviously a glass-half-full kinda guy, so he takes us down memory lane Vine-wise.  You can choose your own favorites, but for me this is an underappreciated classic of the awkward, unrequited handshake genre:

I like it even more because I've no idea who the dude with the beard is....

I almost missed that golf.com did the same, and their compilation is way better....But how does one choose between this:

Or this:

There's an adage that says every golf shot makes somebody happy...  and both of those did the trick for this guy.

Can't We All Just Get Along? - Since they went to team match play, I've become a fan of college golf.  Alas, my favorite story of the day reveals an unintended downside....to wit, that Tour players are turning into what the great Iowahawk calls screaming campus garbage babies.  So consider this your trigger warning...

Sean Zak starts the ball rolling with this item:

The Worst Golfer on the PGA Tour Last Season Still Made Nearly Half a Million Dollars

You get where this is going, but stay with me....Sean explains:

When you analyze Bowditch's struggles from a strokes gained perspective, his season 

So a guy walks into a bar, and the bartender asks, Why the long face?

looks even worse. The PGA Tour maintained strokes gained averages for 185 players from 2016. Bowditch finished dead last, and it wasn't even close. His strokes gained average was 64% worse than anyone else's. 

Bowditch was 3.209 strokes worse than the field average in the 55 rounds he recorded last year. Robert Allenby finished 184th in strokes gained, albeit in 14 fewer rounds, but lost just 1.95 strokes per round. So the second-worst golfer, strokes gained-wise, was still a stroke better per round than Bowditch was. Just one player in the ShotLink era (David Gossett in ’04—sorry, David!) finished a season with a worse average. Those 3.209 strokes lost per round looks like this.

When you're a stroke per round worse than Robert Allenby, well. mark this date on your calendar, because words fail me.  But this I think is the point that Zak wanted to make:

Alas, there was some good news among all the gloominess. Bowditch still managed to earn $458,891 last season, good for 158th on the money list -- a far cry from his 185th-best form.

Bowditch’s Tour wins in 2014 and '15 earned him spots in the no-cut WGCs that ensure a paycheck. Those three starts alone helped him rake in a cumulative $158,500, slightly more than 34% of his season earnings.

It should also be noted that Sean included some self-deprecating tweets from Bowditch, indicating that he hadn't lost his typically-Aussie sense of humor.

But the Aussie took offense:

A little thin-skinned there my friend.  I'll also add that if you hadn't over-reacted, I might not have seen the original item and would have had no reason to blog it.  And this reaction might be more preventive, given his level of play and chipping yips:

The PGA Tour is not and should not be a safe space....

Food For Thought - Mark Broadie is well on his way to becoming the Bill James of golf, and he offers this interesting query:

Put another way, if you were paired with a pro in an alternate-shot event and your team was faced with a 30-footer, would it be wiser to (a) hit the first putt yourself, leaving the tester to the pro, or (b) take on the nervy short putt after the pro cozied up his lag?

Whatya think, class?  Anyone?  Bueller?

I actually got it right, but you can't hold yourself to those standards....after all, I'm a renown golf blogger:

To analyze this and similar questions, I've collected a large data set on amateur golfers

like us. Did you choose option (a)? I would have, too. But the fact is, a weekend golfer would be better off having the pro hit the lag rather than the money putt from close range. Why? Not unexpectedly, pros sink more putts from 30 feet than recreational golfers do (about three times as many), and pros leave most of their misses within tap-in distance.

 Mark's got a lag putting drill for you, involving thirty-footers.  My problem is that given my putting to date on Fairview's greens, I need a drill to help me lag those 5-footers....