Late-Week Lamentations

Mostly weather-related, if you're in the Northeast.

Rumors of Its Demise... - That would be a Samuel Clemens reference, the very same lad that ironically dismissed our game as a good walk spoiled...

But we now have two publicly-traded golf equipment companies, and 'tis the season for Q3 earnings releases.  This one seems, what's the word....EPIC:

In the third quarter of 2017, as compared to the same period in 2016, the Company's net sales increased $56 million (30%) to $244 million. This increase was led by increases in all operating segments, namely Golf Clubs (+ 21%), Golf Balls (+20%), and Gear,

Accessories and Other (+72%) as well as increases in each reporting region, namely the United States (+33%), Europe (+23%), Japan (+28%), Rest of Asia (+28%), and other countries (+23%). The increase in the Golf Clubs and Golf Balls segments reflects the continued success of the Company's EPIC line of products as well as the Chrome Soft golf ball franchise. The increase in Gear, Accessories and Other primarily reflects the successful acquisitions of the OGIO and TravisMathew brands which were completed in 2017.

As a result of this significant increase in sales, as well as a 110 basis point improvement in gross margins, the Company recognized a significant improvement in profitability during the third quarter of 2017. Due to the seasonality of the Company's business, the Company often reports a loss for the third quarter. However, in the third quarter of 2017, the Company reported an $11 million increase in operating income to $6 million as compared to an operating loss of ($5) million in the third quarter of 2016.

Cally has been on quite the run...  I always like to watch ball sales, as that's the best measure of day-to-day activity in the game, though with their hot Chrome Soft line they're no doubt taking market share from others.

Titleist reported decent results as well, and the soon-to-retire Wally Uihlein had these upbeat comments:

"We are encouraged to see that the global golf industry continues to structurally improve through the first nine months of 2017. While near term, US demand trends have been

impacted as the focus shifted to important life priorities in areas hit by the recent hurricanes, it is good to see many areas are recovering well as a sense of normalcy returns.

"We are confident that our proven strategy, dedicated associates and valued trade partners will enable us to leverage a stronger industry and extend our success over the long term."

I guess there was weakness in sales in Puerto Rico, but the picture is not one of an industry in its death throes....

What's It All About, Jaime? - The estimable Jaime Diaz attempts to discern the meaning in the announcement that San Francisco's Olympic Club has bolted the USGA for the loving embrace of the PGA of America, though he and I don't get off on a good foot:

If so, it seems that something is lost. Olympic Club used to be iconic, in the same league with Merion, Winged Foot, Oakmont, Oakland Hills and Pebble Beach for holding the

most significant U.S. Opens. The first two it held arguably contained a greater combination of drama and pathos than any U.S. Opens in history, with 43-year-old Ben Hogan in 1955 being beaten for his bid at a record fifth U.S. Open by Jack Fleck, and 36-year-old Arnold Palmer in 1966 giving up a seven-stroke lead on the final nine to tie with Billy Casper, and then going on to lose his third 18-hole Open playoff. 

But the truth is, Olympic has lost some of its lofty stature since then. The 1987 U.S. Open (Scott Simpson over Tom Watson) wasn’t as good, and the 1998 event (Lee Janzen over Payne Stewart) further eroded the mystique. By 2012 (Webb Simpson over Jim Furyk), Olympic started being considered more of a problematic layout for the best in the world rather than a supreme test of ball-striking.

Excuse me!  I'll not hear a disparaging word about that '87 Open, though perhaps my reaction is somewhat atypical...  though that first sentence is quite the hot mess.  Olympic was never in a league with The Foot, Merion or Oakmont, though the Open didn't go to Pebble until 1972 either.

But see if you react as I did to this:

Although its sandy soil, cool climate and ocean proximity gives Olympic an invigorating Scottish feel, the Lake Course is built mostly on the side of a hill that gives many of its fairways excessive slope. With the distance modern pros hit the ball, and the roll provided by agronomical advancements, keeping the ball out of the rough on tight doglegs that often have a reverse camber means pretty much eschewing the driver off the tee for 3-wood or less. The course also has trouble spots that even renovations haven’t completely cured. The 17th hole’s severe left-to-right slope in the tee-shot landing area is a flaw, and the short par-4 18th hole is a mediocre-at-best finishing hole, where tee shots all end up in the same bowl in the fairway and the severe green inviting trouble. 

By branding the U.S. Open as the “ultimate examination,” it is the USGA’s charge to reward skill and punish mistakes to a greater extend than any other championship, without going over the line into unfairness. With advances in technology, that tightrope is getting narrower, and a course that has become too short or too narrow can cause the setup to go over the line. So that when the USGA senses potential for image-damaging setup disaster, its negotiating committee might drive a harder than normal bargain. Perhaps it’s not an accident that the USGA’s reported demands underwhelmed the Olympic Club membership.

Let me see if I have this right...  The USGA concludes that the architectural nature of Olympic could result in a flawed championship, so it decides to only go there on the cheap? 

But I don't agree with Jaime's conclusion, which I'll excerpt at length:

What’s the upshot? Well, the PGA continues to raise its profile by going to older courses in bigger markets. Meanwhile, the U.S. Open, hamstrung by the increased difficulty of setting up Golden Age classics to meet its playing standards, finds itself caught between two worlds. Super-tough Oakmont still works, as it did in 2016, but Merion in 2013 felt too small. Pebble Beach needs wind. Shinnecock Hills, considered by many of the cognoscenti America’s best championship course, will be under close scrutiny in June, especially because things didn’t go well in 2004. The USGA’s pragmatic compromise has been to be more amenable to modern and bigger, but less architecturally revered sites such as Torrey Pines, Chambers Bay and Erin Hills. All three might have left purists cold, but they were successful financially, and in the case of the first two, had great finishes with superstar winners. 

All this is not to overstate the change, which, again, is subtle. Torrey Pines in 2021 is the only non-Golden Age course the U.S. Open is going to in the near future, with the rest of the lineup reading Winged Foot in 2020, Brookline in 2022, the untested-but-apparently sublime L.A. North in 2023, Pinehurst No. 2 in 2024, Oakmont in 2025, Shinnecock in 2026 and Pebble Beach in 2019 and 2027. 

But the loss of The Olympic Club as a place to hold the men’s national championship (the club will host the U.S. Women’s Open in 2021) fuels the notion—expressed by no less than Jack Nicklaus, among others—that the U.S. Open is in danger of losing its identity. The setup conundrum is a real one.

There's a lot there for sure, and I certainly agree that the USGA has site issues, but their line-up for the next decade is an architectural who's who of golf courses...

In going to U.S. Open retreads I would argue that the PGA has only further obscured the identity of its marque championship....  And I'm reluctant to assign the significance that Jaime does to their selection of Harding Park, which to me was a one-off necessitated by it being an Olympic year before resolution of the timing of the PGA, requiring schedule flexibility.

To me the PGA is locked into has-been venues at an agronomically-challenging time of year, competing against a strong schedule of other sporting events.  yes, as Jaime notes, the Ryder Cup is an important arrow in their competitive quiver...  But if it gets you Olympic, not Oakmont or Pebble, how valuable is it in reality?

Rut Roh - A very interesting and perhaps troubling coda to the Henrik Stenson injury story:

Giles Morgan, one of the most important men in golf because of the amount of 

With Jamie Donaldson in 2013.

sponsorship money he directed into the game and the influence he held within it as a result, has left HSBC, he confirmed to Global Golf Post. Morgan, 46, had been head of global sponsorship strategy at HSBC, one of the world’s largest banking and financial services organisations, for 12 years. 

As such he was the man behind his company’s commitment to events such as the WGC-HSBC Champions, recently held in Shanghai, China; the HSBC Women’s Champions event held in Singapore last March; and the Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship, staged in the Middle East last January. HSBC was also one of the patrons of the Open Championship. 

“Since 2005, HSBC has become one of the biggest and most influential sponsors of golf worldwide at a professional level with over 50 international tournaments around the world and with major grassroots programs in the UK, China, Singapore and UAE,” Morgan said.

One has to assume that this is somehow linked to Henrik's plea to not blame HSBC for his unfortunate rib injury.....  

Other Clouds on the Horizon -  Hogan's Alley is in peril:

The PGA Tour has moved its Nov. 1 deadline and given Colonial a month. 

The club has until Dec. 1 to find the sponsors and raise the money to ensure that the 2018 PGA event in Fort Worth will go on as scheduled. Right now, the 2018 Dean & DeLuca Invitational is listed by the PGA Tour on its website for the week of May 21-27. 

Barring a total and unforeseen collapse, club officials remain confident the 2018 Colonial will go on as planned, and it will be able to fund the $11.5 million necessary to make the event happen.

This is the first inkling that even the 2018 edition could be sacrificed to the Gods of contraction, but one has to assume that calling out the Tour is, while true, not in their long-term interests:

According to multiple sources, the PGA is not doing much to help. That the PGA is sitting on its hands is only slightly ironic because it was the PGA that put Colonial in this situation. 

It was the PGA that lined up Colonial with D&D. Now the PGA is looking at the Fort Worth country club to fix this problem.

It's hard to imagine that the Tour would want to lose this linkage to it's past, but it's also obvious that at least one of the Texas stops has to go.  There three that are currently without sponsors, but the Byron Nelson is in the process of upping its game with its 2018 move to a shiny new venue.

Stay tuned.

Enter Alan - Shipnuck, of course, with his weekly mailbag feature.  Let's get right to it, as we love a good conspiracy theory:

"What's your favorite golf conspiracy theory? #AskAlan" - Steve (@_Smisner) 

That Tiger Woods's errant drive on the third and final playoff hole of the 2000 PGA Championship was thrown back into play by a fan. Recall that Woods yanked his drive well left; it disappeared from the view of TV cameras for a second or two and then magically reappeared, bounding into a more playable spot. On the telecast Ken Venturi and Jim Nantz had a discussion about the unusual bounce ("It didn't react naturally, did it?"; "No, it didn't at all.") but there was never a second angle to show what was missed. Woods went on to birdie the hole, vanquish Bob May and win his third major of 2000, setting up his greatest achievement, the Tiger Slam. The weird bounce has been lost to the dust bin of history, save for a few of us who still puzzle over what did or did not happen.

Hmmm...you're suggesting that the ball mysteriously bounced back into play from the vicinity of a grassy knoll?  I like it....

I might have been tempted to go with this Gary Player incident from the 1974 Open Championship....

But these two answers are quite misguided:

"How many majors does Justin Rose finish with? #AskAlan" - Andrew (@a_h_davies) 

He already has two: the 2013 U.S. Open and 2016 Olympic gold medal. Rose has finished as runner-up at two of the last three Masters, which is interesting given that putting is the weakest part of his game. But Augusta National is the quintessential second-shot golf course and Rose's spectacular iron play makes him a perennial threat. His all-around game is so good he's a threat at all four of the majors; he has top-4 finishes at the PGA and British Open. But Rose turns 38 next year, so he's entering the now-or-never stage. I'll give him one more major championship victory, which will guarantee him a spot in the Hall of Fame. 

"Do you think the Olympics could be used as venue to test new types of uniform equipment? #askalan" - @wordofmouth_tv 

Sure, let's turn the biggest sporting event in the world into a Silly Season event! The Rio Games was a huge step forward for the game. Golf in Tokyo is going to be bonkers. (Did you peep the teeming crowds at the recent LPGA event in Japan?!) I like your idea of taking a reduced-flight ball from the theoretical and putting it in play, but that's what the Shark Shootout is for! Don't mess with the Olympics.

Alan's woody for the Olympics is to me inexplicable....  Rose beat about twenty legitimate world-class players, rendering it more of a curiosity than anything.

"Outside of the major championships or an AK comeback, what's the biggest golf story that could land an SI cover story? #AskAlan" - Dan (@djdonof) 

Given those parameters, it's a very short list. Dustin Johnson has never been on the cover and he's a photogenic figure who moves the needle. Were he to sweep the West Coast swing I could see him landing a cover in late-March, whetting the appetite for the Masters. (It's also a quiet time of the year in the sports world.) Otherwise, there's not too many other featurey angles that have the widespread appeal for a national audience. If Rory McIlroy goes on another big run and we could get the right access, that would be a helluva story to write. Here's hoping.

An AK comeback?  Man, we're into the silly season of columns, aren't we?  But doesn't excluding majors kind of render the question irrelevant, leaving only the Ryder Cup as an obvious answer.

Not his best week of work for sure, or his questioners either....

The Prime of Mark Broadie - Haven't featured Mark in a bit, but he has the top feature today at golf.com:

How do PGA Tour players dominate? Analyzing trends from 2017's best players

Spoiler alert:  Ball-striking and putting.....  I know, it's a gift.

LESSON NO. 1: BALLSTRIKING IS THE BIGGEST WEAPON 

In 2017, this illustrious group gained an average of 8.88 strokes on the field per tournament. Driving and approach shots (all shots starting outside 100 yards from the hole) accounted for 67 percent of their gain on the field.

To me the number that jumps out is DJ gaining 5 shots on the field every week with just his driver.... Hard to compete against.

The ShotLink data that Broadie uses is an extremely recent phenomenon, and is maddeningly unavailable for the majors.  My interest would be in whether there's a way to estimate how these numbers might have changed over time....  Because my sense is that modern equipment has narrowed the advantage enjoyed by the best ball-strikers in the game.... Distance is of course a factor, but so is the reduction in spin.

A Doomed Mailbag - This initially sounded promising to me, see what you think:

Welcome to Yo, Gear Guy!, a new GOLF.com series in which our resident dimplehead (a.k.a., GOLF's deputy editor of equipment, Mike Chwasky) fields your hard-hitting questions about clubs, fittings, gadgets, bounce, lofts, CG, MOI, and a lots of other scary acronyms. Got a question for Gear Guy? Hit us up on Twitter or Facebook.

Then I read the initial installment, and this is basically the answer to every question:

The best way to know for sure is to go and get fitted by a qualified professional.

Other phrases with repeated usage include "It depends", There are a number of critical elements" and the ever-useful "there are some variables involved".  We'll see where they take this, but I'd guess it'll die a quick death.

The Handmaid's Tale - They told us that if we voted for Trump that minorities would be in peril...  And sure enough, here'e video of an Asian man being thrown into some kind of sand pit:

It's a pretty funny pratfall, unless you're looking for deeper meaning.

It does seem a difficult bunker to get in and out of, and I'm note sure how a woman would fare.  So perhaps it's a good thing that Kasumigaseki Country Club doesn't have any as members....  Send your nasty e-mails to Peter Dawson or even Alan Shipnuck.