It's a dead zone on the schedule, so we'll fill in what we can.....
Partnership, Redefined - Links Magazine is on the long list of golf sites that I should visit more often, but don't. But this worthy effort might cause me to reexamine my traffic patterns, the subject being the USGA's relationship with hosting clubs for its lesser events. And by lesser, we really mean all but one:
Hosting one of the USGA’s lower profile events at a loss can be a stepping stone to more prestigious—and profitable—championships. Consider that Chambers Bay, site of the
Can anyone identify the clubhouse above? 2015 U.S. Open, and Erin Hills, venue for this year’s U.S. Open, both conducted a dress rehearsal of sorts as U.S. Amateur sites.
The cost of running even one of the USGA’s 10 amateur championships has grown exponentially. The starting price can be as modest as roughly $150,000 for the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur, balloons to $750,000 for the Walker Cup, and gets close to $1 million for the U.S. Amateur when a larger footprint for worldwide media and television compounds is factored in. To raise the money, host facilities often are forced to get creative, ranging from throwing golf outings to finding local sponsors. It took approximately 50 well-heeled members at Country Club of Birmingham in Alabama—a century-old, 36-hole private facility that had slipped out of golf’s Top 100 lists—to bankroll the $300,000 budget for the 2013 U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship.
That first graph is a bit misleading, because those two public venues received their Amateurs and Opens as a package deal. Left unsaid is the extent to which the USGA use the lure of an Open, no doubt in case with no intention to deliver, to motivate clubs to take on the lesser events.
Some of the numbers are mind-boggling, though there's quite the self-inflicted aspect to the arms race:
But it cost a pretty penny. According to Mulvoy, the budget for the 2015 Mid-Am topped$650,000, which included $100,000 for a reunion of Mid-Amateur champions held prior to the competition, and hiring a full-time championship coordinator. The USGA’s financial contribution to the operating budget? A net total of $59,000, or less than 10 percent of the championship’s operating costs. Thanks to Mulvoy’s creativity in hosting a dinner and golf outing, and some deep-pocketed members, 230 of whom contributed—some as much as $5,000—the club broke even, but otherwise it would have cost them a bundle. John’s Island Club managed to donate $7,500 to the Indian River Golf Foundation, a 501 (c) (3) non-profit that teaches golf and life skills to youngsters in the Vero Beach community, far less than Mulvoy had budgeted due to escalating costs.
Frankly, a club’s burden would be more palatable if USGA coffers weren’t overflowing. In 2013, the association’s fortunes improved when it crowned Fox Sports the winner of its television contract to the tune of approximately $100 million annually, more than double the existing deal. As Mulvoy so elegantly puts it, “Why does a non-profit have over $300 million in the bank? Our members help fund educational programs and build museums and wings of hospitals.”
Now, assuming this is accuarate, they have upped their financial support of these events:
In the last few years, the USGA has improved its contribution to the operational budget, lessening some of a club’s financial burden. Bodenhamer estimates the 2017 budget for the USGA’s 10 amateur championships is $12 million this year, an increase of $2.5 million from three years ago. Gorrie agrees that the USGA has stepped up its financial commitment from 2013 to 2016, when Country Club of Birmingham hosted the Men’s State Team Championship, but terms the increase “baby steps, rather than a transformation of the way they do it financially.” Mulvoy recommends the USGA should form a true 50–50 partnership and split the cost of hosting its championships.
But as long as clubs are willing to do it, why change? It lets them retain their $300 million nest egg for more important things like their travel budget....
Shack, in his post on this item, tells of an arrangement from local SoCal circles:
This did not stop a well-known situation in southern California circles involving Riviera Country Club, host of the 2017 U.S. Amateur. Multiple prospective members applying to join the club where initiation is currently $250,000, revealed that they could move their way up the club's now-four year wait list with a donation to the U.S. Amateur's operating fund managed by the Los Angeles Sports and Entertainment Commission.
In return for a six figure donation of as much as $100,000 to LASEC's U.S. Amateur fund, a prospective member could move from a four year wait to a matter of months. A five-figure check would shorten wait times too, according to both prospective (and current) Riviera members who paid the additional surcharge to join the club.
If they leap-frogged me on that list I'd be plenty pissed.... Amusingly, he dis the jornalism thing and asked the USGA to comment on the arrangement, and here was their response:
In short, the business arrangement between the USGA and a club that agrees to be the site of a championship is unrelated to club membership, provided the club complies with USGA non-discrimination requirements. Riviera has assured us that they are compliant with those policies and procedures.
Nothing to see here.... Kindly exit through the gift shop....
To Links Magazine and other golf journalists, more of this type of reporting.... Please!
Open and Closed - A few items on that little tourney to be held next week...
First up, did you know that Sports Illustrated has a True Crimes feature? Josh Sens contributes a piece on Steve Trattner, the man responsible for Erin Hills:
At 55, slightly built and balding, eyes peering out from behind round wire-framed glasses, Steve Trattner cuts the profile of a guy you'd ring for help with your computer—which is precisely the type of work he did before setting off on his improbable path to incarceration.
In the mid-90s, married, with a home in the Milwaukee suburbs and two children on the way, Trattner, a middling golfer who nonetheless fantasized about carving out a life in the game, abandoned a steady job as a software programmer and embarked on a quixotic quest to build a golf course. He possessed nowhere near the wealth for such a project, much less the land to accommodate it. But he had in mind a site, in the small town of Erin. He also had the gumption to cold-call would-be investors until he found his man in a mercurial entrepreneur with no previous interest or experience in the business side of the sport.
In August 2006, Erin Hills opened to the public. GOLF Magazine named it the Best New Course of the Year. But on June 15, when the national championship gets underway, Trattner will watch on TV in the prison where he has resided for the past 11 years, having served less than one third of his sentence.
I love that investor profile, requiring a complete absence of knowledge of golf economics.... Good call, no?
This bit is mostly irrelevant, yet curious:
An unknown in golf circles who, in turn, knew little about the sport, Lang had made a fortune on calendars and greeting cards, and he bolstered that wealth in real estate development, building painstakingly faithful Colonial-style homes in a bedroom community of Milwaukee.
Greeting cards? Passing strange how much greeting card wealth has been recycled into the golf world, no?
Read the whole thing, though not in the expectation of a happy ending.....
Coleman McDowell asks this relevant question:
The big cheese: Is Wisconsin the new public-golf capital of America?
Perhaps, though I'd quibble with the tense of the verb:
Okay, it doesn’t have Pebble Beach. Or any beach at all, really. So what does Wisconsinhave? Major-championship chops, enough sand dunes to give Shivas Irons the shivers and, most importantly, a sweet spot smack in the middle of the country.
The American golf meccas we celebrate most tend to be coastal, but for a golfer in the Carolinas, getting to Bandon Dunes is a bear. Play most of your loops at Chambers Bay? Really, when will you get to Harbour Town? For golfers in pursuit of opposite-coast adventures, these cross-country routes are a trek.
It's in driving distance from at least three major population centers, making it a manageable proposition. But not just yet, as we need to let that other greeting card magnate make further progress north of Erin Hills:
SAND VALLEYNekoosa, WisconsinYear established: 2017Architects: Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw
Backstory: After masterminding successful remote ventures at Bandon Dunes and Cabot Links, it’s likely that building a destination course in the middle of rural Wisconsin wasn't so daunting to Mike Keiser. Billed as bringing "the joy of heathland golf to America’s heartland,” Sand Valley takes cues from famed no-frills U.K. designs like Sunningdale and Walton Heath. The Coore-Crenshaw course will be joined next year by a second 18, Mammoth Dunes, conjured up by Gamble Sands and Bandon Dunes design whiz David McLay Kidd.
Why you should play it: Think Bandon magnificence without the gale-force winds and buckets of rain. Besides, when was the last time Keiser—or Coore and Crenshaw, for that matter—led any golfer astray? This is the It course of 2017.
And there could be two more 18's after that....
It's Good to be the King Alternate, at least this year.... Doug Ferguson with the details:
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Alternates from U.S. Open sectional qualifiers were never more important as they were this year.
The USGA held back six spots from the 10 sectional qualifiers to make sure it could accommodate anyone who got into the top 60 in the world ranking after this week. It was a safe move because the U.S. Open field is capped at 156 players.
But there won't be a lot of movement this year.
You can read the reasoning, but this is his bottom line:
So at least four spots will be going to alternates, and that doesn't even include Phil Mickelson, who plans to withdraw because of his daughter's high school graduation.
It's difficult to miss U.S. Open qualifying by one spot, but the playoffs to determine first alternates were critical this year.
Among the first alternates was Davis Love IV, who goes primarily by Dru and is the son of the two-time Ryder Cup captain. He played in the Georgia sectional, which awarded the fewest spots (2) of any U.S. qualifier and could be high on the alternate list.
And Michael Putnam as well.... I know, it doesn't rock your world, but it's a dead zone in the news cycle, so pretend to be interested.
The mystery is which alternate gets chosen first.
The USGA does not disclose the priority list, though it keeps in touch with players to allow them time to get to Wisconsin. The U.S. Open starts June 15 at Erin Hills. The priority is based on a formula that includes how many spots each section was allocated, and the strength of field determined by the world ranking (pro and amateur).
I hear whispers of Russian hacking, which I assume Former Director Comey will address today.
In terms of Phil's spot, this seems unlikely to affect the outcome:
Phil Mickelson's decision to skip the U.S. Open at Erin Hills surprised many, and has caused plenty of stir among golf fan's who desperately want to watch Lefty chase the career Grand Slam. One fan even created an online petition begging Mickelson'sdaughter's school to change its commencement date.
Derek Deminsky, a PGA professional from Tuscon, Ariz., is imploring Pacific Ridge School to move its commencement up at least one day. The school's graduation is scheduled for 10 a.m. June 15th, the day the Open begins, which would be noon local time at Erin Hills.
Deminsky writes "On behalf of golf fans everywhere, I am requesting to see if there is ANY WAY possible to reschedule your graduation ceremony to Wed June 14th (or before) to allow Phil Mickelson to play in this year's U.S. Open and continue his quest for the career Grand Slam. For Phil not to play to see Amanda speak is absolutely beautiful and shows the kind of caring father and family man he is, but if there is ANY WAY POSSIBLE to move it to the day before, I and MILLIONS of golf fans everywhere would GREATLY appreciate it!"
Those of us familiar with how the world works assume that Phil has already offered to write the school a sizable check to move graduation, which has been either been declined or is under negotiation. But I'm sure the petition will tip in the desired direction....
Clubicide - Our journey starts with Daniel Summerhays, who I've been reliably informed has a cute nam efor his putter with a funny back-story:
Daniel Summerhays is still in search of his first PGA Tour win, but we've learned there's a lot to like about the 33-year-old in the past few weeks. For one, the 5-foot-8 BYU product can dunk! Well, when he gets an assist from the wall. And secondly, his putter is nicknamed "Sweet Love." That's not a joke, and the story behind it is even funnier."You know, I think you ask any of the people I played junior golf with in Salt Lake and that's the one thing they'll always tell you. That kid makes everything.
"But, no, there were definitely some times when -- funny story, just a naive kind of sophomore in college at BYU, and I went off one day with the putter. I was making everything. And not just short, I was making 20, 25-footers. And I leaned over to Coach Brockbank and I said, 'Coach, the putter is making sweet love to me. And so they named my putter Sweet Love. And even I'll get texts from some of my college teammates, 'let Sweet Love loose today,' or something like that."
OK, presumably in Mormon country the putter was the only one doing so, but Alex Myers clearly has lower standards than I for funny.
But Golf Digest uses the item to drive some clicks to an older piece, and this seems way more promising:
RELATED: How tour pros punish bad golf clubs
Do tell:
Justin Rose could only laugh. Several years earlier he'd done the same thing at Doral, onthe same hole. "But I flung it so far that it nearly reached the other side. It was sort of half-submerged in the bank," Rose recalls. "So we come to the [par-5] 10th hole, and I've got a perfect 3-wood distance to the green. I send Fulchy [caddie Mark Fulcher] 50 yards across the fairway, and he wades in and gets it back. I hit the middle of the green. Obviously, it had learned its lesson." While playing with friends at Whisper Rock in Scottsdale, two-time U.S. Open champion Andy North was testing a new driver. But after a series of poor tee shots, including a snap-hook at 18, North marched off the front of the teeing ground, laid his driver on the stone facing, picked up a large rock, and pulverized the clubhead.
He had calmed down by the time he sat down for lunch, but his friends helped him relive the moment. "I ordered a chef salad," North recalls. "When the waiter took the top off the plate, there were shards of the driver head sprinkled over the top of the salad."
Fun stuff, no?
And there was this legend of the game that ultimately got control of his temper, but the early years remain relevant:
As Jones said, "Some emotions cannot be endured with a golf club in your hands." He routinely threw clubs, including a famous display at Brae Burn Country Club in 1917 when, after shanking a shot, he began throwing clubs and balls in all directions as the crowd gasped. Sports writer Grantland Rice once said the young Jones had "the face of an angel and the temper of a timberwolf."
Jones' most famous outburst occurred at the Old Course at St. Andrews during the 1921 Open Championship, when he stomped off the par-3 11th hole and tore up his scorecard upon failing after four tries to extricate his ball from the Hill bunker. That year he was guilty of another lapse when he threw a club at the U.S. Open that struck a female spectator in the leg. USGA president Howard F. Whitney reportedly delivered a severe rebuke to the 19-year-old Jones.
A couple more for you?
Long before Elin Woods underclubbed going for an SUV with a 9-iron, there was Rocky Thompson. After a Monday qualifier for the New Orleans Open, Thompson climbed atop the hood of his Cadillac, still wearing his metal spikes, and proceeded to remodel it with a 7-iron. "We're all sitting there on the trunks of our cars waiting for the results," says Gary McCord, who witnessed the carnage. "Next thing you know you hear this God-awful sound, and there's Rocky flailing away. It was great entertainment."
David Feherty admits to running over his clubs with his car after triple-bogeying the final hole to lose the 1981 Irish National PGA Championship. "I drove over them lengthwise so that I got all of them from grip to clubhead," he says. "Unfortunately, I left my watch in there."
There's even a special section devoted to putters, clearly deserving of enhanced techniques.
Probably the most surprising thing is the appearance (and euthanistic enthusiasm) of certain of the more level-headed members of our community. This game gets to us all.....
I know I don't need to tell you to read the entire thing... You're all over it.
I'll just tell you my favorite such story... I'm in Myrtle Beach with three buddies a million years ago, One of the guys, we'll call him Jim Randle, was have a God-awful day. He had long since deserted his driver, and after dribbling a 5-wood into the water, he prepares to whirly-bird it into the same. He's halfway through his hammer-toss pivot when you see the light bulb go on above his head, asking "Do I really want to lose this golf club?"
In the moment he answers No, makes an additional half rotation and tosses it aggressively towards a grove of trees. Good course correction, you'll agree, except he tossed it so deep and the trees were so prickly, that none of us, Jim included, could venture far enough in to effect the retrieval. Ultimately his worst swing of the bad day, and not even the satisfaction of a splash.
A heads up that I have an early morning match tomorrow, so I'll see you when I see you.
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