News and Notes

Tomorrow is travel day, so lets' clean up as much of the accumulated detritus as possible:

• White Smoke from Ponte Vedra? - By far the most significant development in the golf world in recent weeks was this:

Jay Monahan was promoted to deputy commissioner of the PGA Tour on Tuesday, the first indication of a possible successor to Tim Finchem. 

Finchem was the last person to hold that position until he was appointed PGA Tour commissioner in 1994.

Possible is putting it mildly as Monahan is now the presumptive heir and the job is his to lose. this backgrounder on Monahan at Local Knowledge, though I almost didn't make it past the first sentence:

Jay Monahan

 Ron Sirak posts

There are those who like to bash PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem, and for the life of me I don't get them.

Got a few hours to spare, Ron?  Nonetheless, it's worth reading as is this Jason Sobel piece. Finshem's contract runs through 2016, so this is no doubt being done to make the move seem inevitable when the time comes.  But that means I'm on the clock to come up with a replacement for my running Nurse Ratched gag.

• Future Shlock -  Shackelford posted Monday on Jerry Tarde's Editor's Letter from the April issue of Golf Digest, using the following snetence as his apocalyptic header:

We felt a realization that the game needs to change fundamentally or follow the baby-boomer generation into the grave."

OK, I understand it's a one-page Editor's Letter, but would it be churlish to request some data points on that premise.  We've plowed this field previously, but I'm half convinced that this sense of doom comes from a previously misguided notion that golf was a growth market.  It's a niche sport, but it's one heck of a good niche, demographically speaking.

Golf clearly has issues in that it's too everything....too expensive, too difficult, too time-consuming and for all I know too fattening as well.  And we all have vested interest in making the game more accessible, growing it if you will.

Tarde's piece discusses two initiatives, Foot Golf, i.e., playing soccer on a golf course, and the new Drive, Chip and Putt Championship to be played at Augusta National the Sunday before the Masters.  Can he not see that these things are not in any way similar?  The latter rewards kids for golf skills, things they do with golf clubs in their hands.  The former involves people kicking big round balls, skills not rewarded in our game.

Golf is hard, and I'm all for anything that exposes kids to it at a younger age or that accelerates the learning curve.  I could see setting up short courses for beginners with a larger cup, or anything that makes the initial exposure to it less painful.   But it would seem that for an initiative to help grow the game, it would need to involve playing the game, no?

• Bahto Bing -  Rather than appending as an update, I wanted to point you towards this Bradley Klein remembrance of Bahto.  Klein gives the best line to Ran Morissett:

Ran Morrissett, who knew Bahto well and runs golfclubatlas.com, summed it up perfectly. “Bahto did more after he was 65,” said Morrissett, “than most people do in getting to 65.”

But this was the best anecdote:

The high point of our three-day Bandon session came when the design team (where I played a secondary, volunteer role) brought out the PVC pipe to mark tees and greens. When it came to the par-3 12th hole, intended as the famed Redan hole (par-3 15th at North Berwick, Scotland), it seemed obvious to have Bahto plant the marker. He was a barrel-chested guy. Not so much gruff as entirely in the moment and not given to signs of sentimentality. Or so I thought. But when he stuck that marker in the ground at green center, I couldn’t help noticing a tear in his eye. It was a powerful moment for all of us. For George, it had to be something really special.

And if I let myself, I could have one in my eye as well.

• Tiger Down - You've all no doubt heard the news, but I felt for these guys who had just published their fantasy picks for Bay Hill, touting Tiger as their alpha dog.  I've been harping on The Striped One's physical problems going back to January, and this can't be good news for his chances at Augusta.  There's been talk of him adding an event to get in his "reps," as per this Sam Weinman post.  But Sam, Tiger doesn't do The Valero Texas Open or Shell Houston Open.  

Before leaving Tigerworld, this note from the attorney representing Gotta Have It Golf, the plaintiffs in the recent suit against Tiger's company:

"He is kind of a smug guy, and frankly, I thought his performance was very flat," attorney Eric Isicoff told John Pacenti of South Florida's Daily Business Review.

"The only reason that [Woods] was paraded into court was because they thought there would be this celebrity awestruck reaction," Isicoff told Pacenti. "I don't think he helped his case at all. I don't think there was any celebrity reaction." 

Isicoff also suggested that an all-female jury might have worked against Woods, given the high-profile scandal that rocked his life in late 2009. "Most people have had some impression on the guy," Isicoff said.

Ya think an all-female jury might have been a problem?  

• Maggot-Approved Content - No, not that kind...at least not now.  Maggot kindly e-mails to make me aware of this Global Golf Post interview with Mike Kesier.  Alas it's another of those dreaded E-Mags, from which copy-and-pasting is not feasible with my technical capabilities.  Al Z. tells me it can be done with OCR technology, to which I responded "Not by this guy."

Keiser is his usual insightful self.  For instance, when asked Why Wisconsin (site of his newest project) he answers cryptically, "Because that's where the bid dunes are."  Please do read the whole thing and compare how Keiser thinks about the sport with the clowns promoting Foot Golf above.  

•  Really? - We've been milking the John Daly thing relentlessly I'll admit, but this eyewitness account just hit my radar:  

So what was it like to be in the middle of this? Not a problem for Padraig Harrington.

"He was perfectly fine to play with - very respectful, no issues at all in terms of golf," Harrington said.

Harrington and Daly walk to their balls together on Friday at Innisbrook.  

Really Paddy?  No issue with the 21 fines for failure to give maximum effort?  But surely when John was making his 12 on No. 16, that had to affect you?

"I didn't actually see most of the 16th. I was in the toilet when he was hitting it," Harrington said. "But he didn't walk in.

By that last bit I'm assuming he means the clubhouse, not the porta-potty Paddy was using.  

• The Late, Late Show - A couple of items related to the recent discussions of slow play.  First, Brandt Snedeker in a sneak peak from his Feherty appearance indicated that when paired with a tortoise he actually slows down to increase the chances of the slow player being fined.  

Now, that's all well and good, but currently slow players could be penalized  but not fined, and that was ostensibly changed because the fines weren't getting players' attention.  Snedeker is one of the quicker players and I understand his frustration, but this could be awkward in the clubhouse and I would think he's be hearing from the Ponte Vedra Thought Police on this.

Second is this Luke Kerr-Dineen post in which he clearly tormented the thousands of unpaid Golf Digest interns by making them do math.  Oh the cruelty, though maybe I should get me some of those unpaid interns.  Anyway, here's the gist of it:

We analyzed the scores of every one of Kevin Na's playing partners since the start of 2012 -- when Na's slow pace of play at that year's Players caused a stir -- and compared it to their average score for that round from the entire year. So, for example, if Player X played with Kevin Na in the third round of a 2013 tournament and shot 72, we compared that score to his third-round scoring average from that year.

How'd it turn out? From the start of 2012 through the 2014 Valspar Championship, Kevin Na has played with 220 PGA Tour golfers. On average, those 220 golfers shoot about 0.4 strokes higher when playing with Na. That's almost half a stroke, meaning that if someone plays with Na in all four rounds of a tournament, he'll be expected to shoot 1.6 strokes higher than if he played with someone else.

As statisticians are always eager to remind us, correlation is not causation.  Really the issue is more what happens to the quick players when they get a bad pairing, and I suspect some are more prone to being affected (see Sabbatini, Rory) than others.

• Reed Unplugged -  Patrick just can't seem to help himself from over-sharing, as per this Jeff Rude item:

And then there are his dreams. And we’re not just talking about the obvious one about slipping into a green jacket. 

“It’s still a golf course I’d love to play barefoot, because there’s not a single thing misplaced on that entire golf course,” said the 23-year-old Reed, who played Augusta National three times while in college, always in soft, cold conditions. “It’s amazing.”

Patrick, call me a traditionalist, but REM sleep should be reserved for winning a Masters or Kate Upton.  But Rude does remind us of this Johnny Miller passive-aggressive golf dream:

Come to the final hole of a U.S. Open with a three-shot lead and lag a birdie putt to 6 inches from the hole. Then take out a 3-wood and blast the ball over the crowd, over the clubhouse and out of bounds. 

Then, as everyone gasped and figured Miller had lost both his mind and the Open, he would drop 6 inches from the hole, tap in for double bogey and win by one.

• The Fleet -  I posted here yesterday on the arrival of our new cart fleet.  Here's a picture of the new fleet.
  
  

  

  Not to worry Wally, they have convertibles (what we call Wallymobiles).

That's all for now, golf fans.  There may or may not be any posting before our flight to Utah, but I'll see you on the other side.