Monday Memes

We'll span the globe, bringing you all the golf news that fits.... You'll laugh, you'll cry and, if I'm on my game, you might even spit out your coffee....

Tree, Forest - Shack has an HSBC-inspired rant that deserves to lede.....  I don't know what's wrong with that guy, but he didn't find the HSBC to be must-see TV:

The World Golf Championship concept brings an international together four times a year, including the PGA Tour's lone match play event, so it's hard to criticize a concept forcing the best players in the world to show up.

HSBC pours a lot of money in golf, generates discussion about the industry of golf with its business forum, and wants to see the game expanded beyond its current borders, so it seems unfair to blame a company going above and beyond the normal sponsors. 

And top players did show up in Shanghai at the end of a year when they've been asked to play even more weeks than normal, so there is no way they can be criticized. 

Yet in trying to watch the WGC-HSBC Champions, won in resounding fashion by Hideki Matsuyama for his third PGA Tour win, there may be no finer example of the oversaturated product that is elite professional golf. A limited field, no-cut rankings and cash extravaganza watched by few people in person or on television is the product of...too much "product."

And in a splendid "Be careful what you wish for" moment, he goes on to compare it to the.....wait for it.....NFL.  Which inside the walls of Fortress Ponte Vedra Beach, you know is exactly that to which they aspire.  The irony, she burns!

But this is the nut 'graph to me:

Consider this week's 72-hole, no-cut WGC-HSBC. To say it was lifeless would be an insult to life. The competing Sanderson Farms PGA Tour stop in Mississippi offered a more compelling event because the players, who genuinely need these dollars and points to retain their tour status before the next re-shuffle, appeared more engaged. The event exuded a certain small-town charm lacking in Shanghai.

I've been singing this tune for quite a while, and I'm happy to have Geoff join me.  Golf is most entertaining when it matters to the guys hacking it around out there.  Before the insane wraparound season, this time of year was called The Fall Finish, and was dedicated to events for guys struggling for playing privileges, kind of halfway between the big tour and the web.com.  To this viewer, that was not only more logical, it was actually compelling, guys playing for their careers.

Of course, no one with a life is going to be watching....  You're on against the NFL and baseball playoffs, but no one is watching these higher-octane events anyway.  It was Q-School spread out over a few weeks, but it had a logic to it and the guys were deadly serious.

Now, if you can't have golf that matters, the next best thing is golf that's entertaining....  Guys sleep-walking through stroke-play money-grabs is soporific, even if they're named McIlroy, Johnson and Stenson.

But then he got an idea.... An awful idea.  The Shack got a wonderful awful idea!

And it's not as if alternatives are unavailable. 

This week's collegiate East Lake Cup, while obviously a made-for-TV event highlighting top Division I teams, at least promises to entertain thanks to the team match play format. 

What if the WGC-HSBC did something similar, offering two or three days of stroke play to determine an individual winner and to make some seedings. But instead of binding players as a team by their country, allowing them to play for a corporate alliance?

Might we stand a better chance of watching and being entertained by seeing Team Nike featuring Rory McIlroy, Paul Casey and Jhonattan Vegas, taking on Team Srixon with Hideki Matsuyama, Russell Knox and J.B. Holmes. 

Team Callaway's Henrik Stenson, Patrick Reed and Thomas Pieters could take on Team Taylor Made's Dustin Johnson, Sergio Garcia and Daniel Berger in another early tournament match? And why relegate it to manufacturers? If the RBC-endorsees are going to get appearance fees elsewhere on the schedule, let them field a team based on having enough players high enough in the world ranking.

Be still my foolish heart!  And please don't forget the badasses of Team PXG.....To sleep, perchance to dream...

A New Value Brand - Have you ever read an S-1?  That's the SEC form used for IPO's and the experienced reader goes straight to the Risk Factors.  That's where the issuer  inoculates itself by describing every possible thing that could go wrong, so the purchaser assumes the risk.

I mention this because I'm wondering if the Accushnet S-1 covered this new competitor:

The fact that you can buy golf balls at Costco is not news, since you can buy pretty much

anything at Costco: food, pants, TVs, car parts. For years, golf equipment, including balls, have been among the hundreds of offerings at the warehouse chain. 

What's different is that there are now golf balls sold by Costco . . . and made by Costco. Technically, it's the store's in-house brand, Kirkland, that has a new line of four-piece urethane golf balls that go for $15 a dozen

The balls, USGA conforming and made by a third-party vendor in Korea, boast what Kirkland is calling its "signature speed-boosting outer core," which helps "maximize impact energy transfer." That could be marketing jargon, but customer reviews on Costco's website and elsewhere have been largely favorable as well, particularly when factoring in the price.

Fifteen bucks a dozen and you get their signature speed-boosting outer core?  How do they feel coming off an XE1 wedge?

My Kind of Outing - Though I'll guess that they have slow-play issues:

In name, at least, it was a competition: the Fore Twenty Golf Tournament. But in practice it was more like a corporate outing, with a vibe about as corporate as a caddie shack. Its

field of 128 was composed of a motley cast of characters who'd spent more time in head shops than they had in pro shops. They ranged from greenhouse growers to dispensary owners, from hemp papermakers to herbal tea producers, to say nothing of a host of recreational users from the booming cannabis industry. Their purpose was a hybrid cross of work and pleasure. Even those who'd shown up buzzed had brought their business cards.

 There's the expected allotment of pot humor, though none on a par with my slow-play jibe above.  But this got my biggest smile:

"The idea is to get together, have fun, and build relationships," said tournament founder Matt Enos, as he stood outside the clubhouse, fielding updates on the action over his phone. "We want to keep it respectful to both cannabis and golf."

Cue Aretha Franklin....

The TC's Get The DT's - The Tour Confidential panel takes on the issues of the day, first as relates to the USGA and a certain presidential candidate:

Alan Shipnuck: I've felt all along that nothing would/could happen until after Election Day. Three to six months ago it looked like Trump might actually win this thing, and if you're the USGA (and PGA of America) you can't cut ties with the leader of the free world. But if and when Trump loses the election, the governing bodies will be free to move their tournaments, if that's what their timid leadership desires.

I suppose it's beyond the pale to suggest that golf just ignore politics?  Because this will only go in one direction.... Equally relevant but ignored is that the ladies actually want to support the man because he's supported their tour.  I know, war on women and all....

Mark Godich: Agree with Alan. This should have happened months ago. The same can be said for the PGA of America and its decision not to move the 2017 PGA Championship out of North Carolina. It's a bad look for the game.

First, I have no problem with the North Carolina law, both because the  states are supposed to be legislative laboratories, but also because keeping adult men out of women's rest and locker rooms seems like a sensible precaution.  

But you know what is also a bad look for the game?  Imitating Colin Kaepernik....

But the follow up question is of more interest, because the guys don't as easily fall into the SJW mold.  Asked about Trump and golf, post-election, they had these thoughts:

SHIPNUCK: It can only hurt. His political base - working class, rural, clustered in the middle of the country - was never going to pay $400+ to lose a dozen balls at Trump Doral or Trump L.A, or kick down half a mill to join one of his new-money private clubs along the Eastern seaboard. But many people of means have found the spectacle of his campaign to be distasteful and I suspect they will vote with their pocketbooks and play golf elsewhere.

BAMBERGER: Trump is crazy like a fox. After Election Day, he'll find a way to turn this brutal campaign into a positive for his golf businesses, including the possibility that some of them will become housing developments. Ultimately, Trump Golf is going to the next generation. Ivanka, anyway, is coming out ahead in this election.

I'm more with Alan in this, as losing is never good for a brand.... especially this brand, which is based on, you know, winning.

Udder Stuff - A few odds and ends, including a seasonal question to that TC panel about the scariest hole they've ever played.... you have the usual answers, but also this from Travelin' Joe:

PASSOV: I live in mortal fear, for good reason, of the Road Hole, the 17th at St. Andrews. I can't stand the idea of having to hit over or adjacent to an active luxury hotel with my tee shot, and then the prospect of hitting onto the road, into the Road Bunker, or into heavy rough next to a stone wall with a full Jigger Inn crowd hovering is almost paralyzing. I have suffered agonies here, including one occasion where my ultra-safe fairway wood tee shot elicited the comment, "Chickens***!" -- from my own caddie. The opening tee shot at Scotland's Prestwick, with seemingly nothing but broken ground to the left and an oncoming train to the right, is nearly as daunting.

OK, I've watched the players from the jigger, and the biggest cheer was for a guy that kicked his ball out of the rough..... But I just love the image of a caddie calling his player out, a mere 20 minutes before he goes into pocket.

VAN SICKLE: I'd say all 18 at Ko'olau in Hawaii, the highest-rated course on the planet when I last played there in the '90s. Its SLOPE was in the 160s and you could lose a ball down a ravine if you just thinned a greenside bunker shot. The record lost-ball count then, the pro told me, was 88 by one unlucky golfer. A beautiful setting but I haven’t been back. If it's still open, I'm not going back, either.

A slope in the 160's?  hard to see why the game isn't growing....

Apparently Lydia isn't the only one interviewing new caddies:

And this showed up in my Twitter feed over the weekend:

I was unfamiliar with the name, and was shocked to discover that he's an American.  Shocked, because I have an uncanny ability to identify British dentistry from 100 paces.....