Late-Week Lamentations

Yesterday was as good as advertised, and our early start was rewarded.  The body is a bit beaten up, but I play hurt, so let's dive in....

Daytime - This week's Tournament of Champions features the return of World No. 1 Jason Day, who shared his thoughts with the media earlier in the week.  This header is quite the succinct summary:

Jason Day wants to play slower in 2017; Internet does not respond kindly

Well, that Internet can be a harsh mistress....  Here are his actual comments:

“I think there were a couple things that I didn't do as well the second half in the season. I wasn't as deliberate going into a golf shot. Gathering the information, I wasn't as

deliberate,” Day said as he looks to make his 2017 FedExCup debut at the SBS Tournament of Champions.

“Obviously, everyone wants to speed up the game. Obviously, that's a big subject in golf, to speed up the game. But in my opinion, I don't care so much about speeding up my game. I've got to get back to what makes me good.”

The link above has a fine selection of snark, and our Shack had this contribution:

Yes, the world watched you and thought, he's rushing!

Geoff even goes so far as to call Day "Unlikable".... I simply have to dissent here, as I think, in the immortal words of our soon to be former prez, that the Aussie is likable enough.

It's a strange subject, a player bragging about playing slowly, but I'll agree with this from Joel Beall:

Day's pace of play has come up in the past, especially at the WGC-Match Play. But, as we illustrated at last year's U.S. Open, Day is not the only player guilty of this crime (cough cough, Jordan Spieth, cough cough). Moreover, he's right; with the heightened stakes of competitive golf, the 29-year-old should be calculated in his technique.

Well, he should play in a manner conducive to optimizing his performance, obviously as long as that is within the rules.  But it is not in his portfolio to make or enforce the rules, for that we need to look elsewhere....

Geoff gets his hopes up in a follow-up post that Day's comments open the door to new commissioner Monahan addressing this issue.....  here were Monahan's comments from his Q&A earlier in the week:

“I think that pace of play is complicated. But if you look back at the data, the data would

suggest that three PGA TOUR professionals playing in a round on Thursday and Friday are going to take four hours and 45 minutes. They would suggest that a player has and will continue to take 38 seconds to hit a shot. There are factors outside of I want to hit my shot, how quickly can I hit it, that influence pace of play, whether it's conditioning of the golf course, the sequencing of tee times, the layout of the golf course, the weather. 

“What we're trying to do, like every other part of our business, is be as close to and intimate with the data so that in working with everybody, we're doing everything we can to address pace of play. But I would tell you that we feel like we've taken a lot of positive steps in the last couple of years 

“You always have to look at the fact that everybody that's living today is trying to do what they did yesterday faster. And so it's no different for our game, and I think that's something we've got to continue to take very seriously. There's no easy solution, though.”

That's three long graphs that translate roughly as, "Next question, please."  

And while that's grabbing the lion's share of the pixels, isn't this potentially the more significant story:

Day said his swing became longer last year, which meant more turn in his upper body and more swing. Not many others go at it as hard as Day with nearly every club in the bag, from a towering 5-iron, a 9-iron he gouges out of the rough or tee shots that rank him among the top power players in the game. 

But it might have come at a cost. 

"If you have a lot more turn, a lot more speed and then unwinding, it's a lot more balance through the ball, and that can obviously wreak havoc on your back, as well," he said. "I feel good. I'm not saying that I'm obviously clear and I'm out of the woods, but I'm definitely cautiously optimistic about how things are progressing."

 The biggest issue attached to this marquee player is whether he can stay healthy.... 

Tigertime - Tiger has clarified his plans for the early part of the year, and here's the skinny:

After going 16 months without teeing it up in a tournament, Tiger Woods plans to play four times during an early five-week stretch in 2017. What a difference a year makes. 

News of Woods’ early commitments to the Farmers Insurance Open and the Honda Classic broke on Wednesday. And on Thursday, the 14-time major champ kept filling up his schedule with the European Tour's Omega Dubai Desert Classic announcing a Woods appearance.

Sprinkle in Woods’ earlier commitment to play in the Genesis Open at Riviera and it all adds up to a busy span. Starting Jan. 26, Tiger will play at Torrey Pines and in Dubai the following week. After an off week, he’ll head back to California for the Genesis Open and then fly home to play in the Honda Classic. We take it his back is feeling pretty good.

The Euro Tour is happy to have him back as well:

The most interesting of these remains LA....  That retooled event now benefits his foundation and in a galaxy far, far away offered him his first taste of PGA Tour competition.  But, and it's a big one, he always hated the golf course....

One assumes with these commitments that he's feeling healthy....  But this seems wildly out of touch with reality:

Woods’ odds of winning a fifth Masters title have dropped from 60-1 to 20-1 at the Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook, where the number of tickets on him account for 8% of the total pool. The money wagered on Woods is an even bigger slice of the action so far, at 11% of Masters betting.

The most notable wager on Woods at the SuperBook has been a $1,000 bet when his odds were 50-1.

I get that at 50-1, but at 20-1 I need to inquire as to whether it's possible to short him....

Shack has transcripts from the Golf Channel Media Day questions about Tiger, including these of note, first from Mark Rolfing:

When he's got that kind of feel and knows where his shots are going and can be within a yard of the right distance, that says a lot to me. 

Can he win? I think it'll be difficult, but I would say yes.

And Johnny had this about what he liked:

I was really impressed with his putting. I was impressed with his irons. I was impressed with his slower tempo. 

When you swing slower, it's much easier to deliver the face where you want to at impact. The one thing he had, he had that blazing first move coming down when he was younger, but it was much easier to control with an iron than it was with his driver.

Johnny's been all over Tiger's tempo since about 1998, not that he's been alone in that....Tiger also blogged about 1,500 words at his own website, including this interesting nugget:

I'm still testing clubs and trying to find the best ball-wood combo. What people don't realize is that Bridgestone made the Nike golf ball for a number of years. It's a great ball and making the switch wasn't that hard. I'm really excited to join the Bridgestone team. For now, I'll probably stick with some of my old Nike equipment, and use my Scotty Cameron putter. I'm also proud to be working with Monster and look forward to the things we'll do together.

Shack drooled over this bit:

I am also excited about the opening of The Oasis Short Course, our new 12-hole par-3 design at Diamante Cabo San Lucas. With this design, I'm trying to go back to my roots.

I grew up playing Heartwell, a par-3 course in Long Beach, California. That's how I got introduced to golf.

Golf now is almost impossible to play in less than five hours, so why don't we open things up? We can play faster and have more fun in an entertaining environment -- like a short course -- where everyone can participate, practice and learn the game, and kids can play without being overwhelmed by a big golf course.

 Of course, the reason we love Shack is that he had this historical perspective to add:

But more exciting than anything is his advocacy for short kids courses, something no great player in the history of the sport has ever done (Bobby Jones had mixed feelings about "kindergarten" courses).

Who knew?  Lots of other interesting stuff (including The Donald) at both of those links.

Tommytime - Via Shack, this new trailer for the film adaptation of Tommy's Honour:

I'm so conflicted....  I agree with Geoff that the trailer looks great and, yes, my juices are in motion....

I just suspect that inevitably the movie will be a disappointment, because the story is an incredibly broad landscape....  If your relationship to the game of golf is sufficiently intimate that you read my drivel, please read this wonderful book before enjoying the movie.  You'll learn so much about the origins and development of our game, and how it exposed the deep class distinctions in turn-of-the-century Great Britain.

You'll also learn what an extraordinary talent Young Tom was...  and to me the biggest takeaway was the extraordinary life of Old Tom.  On that former point, Geoff had this wonderful quote as the header on his site today:

Tommy was a dashing golfer, usually playing in the typical Glengarry bonnet of the Scotch, and which generally fell from his head as he swung, very like Harold Hilton's cap. His hands and wrists were exceedingly powerful and he had been known to break the shaft of his driver, under the grip as he waggled in address. But as a putter he knew no equal. He stroked his putt off his right leg with the ball so close to his right foot that it seemed that he must strike his toes. He half-topped his putts, which kept them rolling true to an astonishing extent. A.W. TILLINGHAST on Young Tom Morris

It's a bit hard for a modern audience to appreciate the nature of the greens that era of player experienced, the major takeaway from our journey to Askernish.

Misogynytime -  Martha Burke, call your office, because Marina Hyde gives a Master Class on how to react to the membership polices of The Honourable Company:

Given it is the only notable event Muirfield Golf Club now stages, I increasingly look 

Muirfield Captain Harry Fairweather

forward to its biannual row over whether to admit women members. Last played in May 2016, the contest returns this month and promises to put observers right inside the action of ye olden tymes as they enjoy breathtaking views uttered in front of a backdrop of breathtaking views. Think of it as a sort of Westworld for golf, shot on a cost of £80m to the local economy, which is what estimations reckon hosting the Open would be worth. I’m not saying the row is comically quaint but you wouldn’t rule out hearing that during its course, someone or other had furiously cast his periwig to the floor. 

A personal highlights reel from last time around would include interventions from Peter Alliss, who appeared to regard the Muirfield facilities as so superlative that they were worth entering into a high-stakes bargain for. “If someone wants to join,” he mused, “well, you’d better get married to someone who’s a member.” I don’t know about you, but I think if I were to enter into a marriage of state, I’d require in return something like dibs on the Habsburg empire, as opposed to the chance of a silent G&T in the 19th with a man who switches channel when Cialis adverts come on.

That opener is simply brilliant in an understated kind of way, though the last bit leaves me perplexed.  Is she recommending the man that pays rapt attention to the Cialis advert?

I'll provide one more little tasting, but do give it a read:

If anything, I think “miracles in modern day play” understates it – but we go on. “The risks for the club are that a major change will fundamentally change our way of doing things,” ran another argument, “and once that process develops it will be impossible to stop.” I love that line, mainly because I’m fascinated by where they imagine the unstoppable process would be headed. Pretty sure it ends in extrajudicial murder on the greens. One minute you’re letting in women members, the next there’s a Prius in the car park, and before you know it you’re being led to Madame Guillotine on the 18th by a man who says Zimbabwe instead of Rhodesia. It’s the thin end of the wedge, isn’t it?

As I've noted frequently, the admittance of a few well-connected women to such a club accomplishes nothing in the cosmic scheme of things, but if you choose this battle, then wage it using the full arsenal of weapons, of which shame is perhaps the most effective.  Or, you can be shrill and entitled like Martha Burke, who only makes it clear that whatever is done, don't admit THAT woman....

Hogantime -  The recreated Ben Hogan equipment company has hit the wall:

Sources tell MyGolfSpy that personnel reductions were discussed at a recent Board of Directors meeting, but nothing to this extent.

Other sources also tell MyGolfSpy that Hogan owes money to several media outlets and vendors, and has so for a while, which is always an indication of a struggling operation. Other sources report that Perry Ellis, the owner of the Hogan brand who licensed the name to the Ben Hogan Company, has had concerns over the current status of the golf equipment company.

It seemed a longshot at the time, though their Fort Worth irons looked awfully good.  But the huge marketing budget of PXG had to have hurt their prospects terribly....

But this struck my funny bone:

Yeah, I hope someone shares with him the actual definition of "voluntarily"....

Mediatime - In yesterday's post on Jay Monahan and the Tour's schedule I neglected to post one item of interest to me.  Before I get to that, a couple of new items, first this:

Erik Matuszewski of Forbes reports the final golf viewing numbers for 2016, with

NBC/Golf Channel seeing substantional viewer increases thanks in part to adding The Open Championship and golf's Olympic return.

From the press release come these details:

While many major sports networks saw viewership declines in 2016 – ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, NFL Network and MLB Network among them -- Golf Channel viewership rose 8% over a year ago while NBC Sports Network saw a 14% audience increase.

Given the context of significantly decreasing sports viewership numbers, this is significant.

Now, I'm not your best guide to evaluate this news, as I can barely spell Twitter, but here it is:

You can follow golfers Tiger Woods, Jason Day and Rory McIlroy on their Twitter accounts. Now you can watch them play there, too. 

The PGA Tour has agreed to make Twitter Inc. the exclusive outlet for more than 70 hours of competition across 31 tournaments throughout the remainder of this season.

Twitter will begin free live streaming at the CareerBuilder Challenge on Jan. 19. The coverage will typically include the first 60 to 90 minutes from the early Thursday and Friday morning hours. It will include pre-round analysis, interviews and live coverage from the first two holes of each day’s marquee groups.

The first two holes?  That sounds comically lame, but what do I know?  Shack tells us this is about propping up PGA Tour Live, something I care little about but you can dive in here.

My interest is in these comments from earlier in the week when Jay Monahan was asked about a potential PGA Tour network:

“That’s not a core goal,” he said. “Could it happen?” He remained silent for several seconds, leaving the question unanswered. 

At the very least, Monahan said it would make sense for the Tour to gain partial ownership of a network as part of its next broadcast rights agreements, rather than simply selling those rights for cash. “That would be a great result,” he said. Golf Channel is owned by NBCUniversal.

Color me skeptical that it is, in fact, a great result.... at least as compared to independent parties writing you large checks.

We've seen the Tour (and the USGA) salivate over other network contracts, and it never seems to work out well, at least for the golf fan.  In this case, there's only one network that would make that deal, and it's of course The Golf Channel.  But if you beleive as I do that there's a realignment (or worse) coming in sports rights fees, I'd rather be the payee...

The Tour has an opt-out approaching for its network contracts with CBS and NBC, but I don't see that as significant leverage.  There's nowhere to take the contracts, especially since Fox now realizes the error of their ways as they continue to cut checks to The Shark.  The place they have maximum leverage is with GC, but that contract isn't up until 2020 or '21 (operating from memory here).

But the leverage is of a MAD nature...  It's not much of a golf channel if you don't have the PGA Tour, but who else will broadcast the Tour's Thursday and Friday play?  ESPN might, but without the weekend they won't pay much or help you promote the broadcasts the way the folks in Orlando are motivated to.

If it's me, I just use the leverage to cash the largest checks possible and let them deal with whether its profitable.  One thing I learned long ago in my consulting career is that every business looks better from the outside.