Sunday, Leafy Sunday

I'm going to attempt to tee it up later this morning, though I've been informed by Employee No.2 that I'll be raking leaves before invoking the leaf rule on the golf course.  Those two activities seem incompatible for this 59-year old body, so we'll see how the day plays out.

But first some of those random musings you love so:

We Likee - We love our links golf and we also love our match play, so it's hard to identify any downside in this:

PAUL Lawrie, Scotland’s most recent Major Champion, and The European Tour have

announced a new match play tournament, set to be part of The Race to Dubai for the next three years.

The tournament, named the Saltire Energy Paul Lawrie Match Play, will be held at the Murcar Links Golf Club, on the outskirts of Lawrie’ hometown of Aberdeen, from July 30 to August 2, 2015.

It's a 64-player single-elimination event, though I've thus far elided the best part.  It will be on opposite the WGC-Bridgestone at dreary Firestone, meaning, you know, we can watch golf that weekend on an interesting golf course.  Of course it'll be a second rate field, as the big boys will be in the midst of their PGA-WGC-FedEx Bataan Death March, but did I mentione that it's match play on a genuine links?

Yoga, The New Anger Management - I'm riffing here, but while we're trashing their golf tournament, let's acknowledge that Bridgestone's commercials are among the best.  Yes, I'll live a rich full life if I never see Feherty driving to work again, but I particularly liked this one:

As for Mr. McEnroe's contribution, it seems the Yoga is not adequate to the task:

He never was particularly good at the listening thing.

Turkey Day Cometh - Golf in Turkey is, shall we say, an odd concept at best.  But the Euro Tour needs to find a warm weather port in the storm that is November, and this week Turkey is it.  

First up, the continuing refusal of professional golfers to learn the rules of the game they play.  I know, it's Groundhog Day in November:

Felipe Aguilar had a rules lesson Saturday at the Turkish Airlines Open that cost him four strokes. 

It seems the Chilean switched out one club for another between the beginning and the end of the second round, which was suspended Friday because of weather and resumed Saturday. 

Under Rule 4-4 (Maximum of Fourteen Clubs), Aguilar was not permitted to make the switch during a round.

I shouldn't complain, as it's a blogging evergreen.  But if this were your chosen profession, wouldn't you make sure you learned the basics.

And as long as we're metaphorically in Turkey,  you'll no doubt be happy to learn that, rumors to the contrary notwithstanding, Turkey's bid to host the 2022 Ryder Cup remains viable:

On Thursday morning, Akif Cagatay Kilic, Turkey’s minister for youth and sports, confirmed that his nation remained in the bidding. 

“I don't think that we will shy away from it, “ Kilic said. “And we are going to be in the race for this, and I think it will put a positive note on the future prospects of golf in Turkey, as well.”

Whew, that's certainly a relief.... Now, the best part:

Turkey has few golf courses, mostly in the southern Antalya area along the Mediterranean. The region is on the Asian side of the Bosphorus, the strait that separates Europe from Asia. The Antalya region, site of this week's Turkish Airlines Open, has played host to the European Tour for two years. 

According to Kilic, none of the courses in Turkey would meet the criteria required for the size of a Ryder Cup. 

“We, as far as I know at this point, we don't have it, but it's not a hard thing to build one,” Kilic said of a Ryder Cup venue. “There are some certain areas which this course could be built, theoretically. Of course, the exact space and place of where it has to be or shouldn't be is another question."

OK, so the implication is that Europe would consider hosting a Ryder Cup... in Asia?   And what could go wrong building a new course for a three-day event?  Just ask the folks in Rio....

But is it true that a venue capable of hosting a Euro Tour event isn't sufficient for a Ryder Cup?  That seems a tad odd, though perhaps Mr. Kilic is under the naive impression that they actually care about the course played, whereas history tells us that the relevant criteria is the number of zeros on the check. 

Go Bold? - Golf stats guru Mark Broadie is back, as interesting as ever:

That's a great mindset from one of the greatest putters ever, and the stats bear Faxon out.

I compared the best putters on Tour today -- that is, the leaders in Strokes Gained Putting -- with the Tour's average putters. The bottom line? The very best putters have 0.6 more one-putt greens (7.5 versus 6.9 per round) and just 0.15 fewer three-putt greens (0.40 versus 0.55 per round). The elite putters gain about four times as much from more one-putts than they do from fewer three-putts. (Granted, pros rarely three-putt.)

Of course, it's much more of a split decision for mere mortals:

I do have some three-putt caveats. From 30 feet and beyond, the best on Tour gain more from fewer three-putts than from more one-putts. But how about better (80-shooters) and average (90-shooters) everyday players? The 80-shooters gain more from frequent one-putting than from fewer three-putts from 13 feet and in. (From 14 feet and beyond, it reverses.) Overall, for weekend golfers, about half of the gain comes from more one-putts and about half from fewer three-putts.

So, be sure to get the ball to the hole, just, you know, carefully.  It's of course speed that causes 3-jacks, 

That Sound You Hear is Inventory Flushing - New TaylorMade/Addidas CEO Ben Sharpe shares his initiatives to save our great game and his employer, which sound remarkably similar to last year's unmentioned initiatives:

The whole industry has a responsibility to get people back into the sport, and certainly we will want to support a lot of those initiatives about how we can attract new golfers or retain golfers into the sport. The first thing we need to do is just start talking positively again. We’re talking about challenges in the golf industry and we’ve heard about those challenges over the last 12-18 months. Now, nobody wants to be around losers. Golf is a great sport. We have 20 million people playing it here in the United States. We have 50 million people playing it around the world. It is a healthy spot. Yes, can it get better. Yes it can. But what we want to do is make sure through our products and through our messaging, that we’re engaging people again so when they see us they want to go and pick up the game.

So you were just goofing on us with that Hack Golf nonsense?  But of course this was my fave:

That process has really started and it started before I took the seat in June. We were over-inventoried and it’s not just a Taylor Made issue, I think it’s a golf issue. So one of the things we haven’t done through the course of this year is launch another product and put inventory on top of inventory. And we’ve taken a responsibility start to make sure we flush this product through. And we’re going to continue to do that for the balance of this year so when the new products that we have showcased this week come to market they’re doing it with the inventory in a lot better place than it was in 2014.

 Now I'm tempted to walk into Dick's and ask to see that inventory they're flushing...  yanno, the stuff you sold them a mere few months ago as the most technologically sophisticated state-of-the art equipment?  And was that a different TaylorMade that just introduced two completely new full product lines?  It seems that old habits die hard...