'Dis And 'Dat

Too much to discuss and far too little time for the task....

He's Baaack....Maybe - Old budy Tim Rosaforte filed this Golf World video in which he confirms speculates that World No. 104 will, in fact, play the Masters.  Give it a listen, but the gist of it is that Tiger has made great progress, is shooting lights out scores at The Medalist and that he has his "Edge" back, whatever that might mean.

He even goes so far as to opine that Tiger will make a recon mission to ANGC this week where he can practice in peace and quiet...  but the key word in that first graph is "Speculation", and Tim confirmed that he was riffing on Notah Begay's 50-50 odds.

Most of the speculation has centered around the issue of his deadline for committing, and the simple answer is that there is none. Unlike a Tour event, where that player must commit by 5:00 to Friday before, he's in (assuming he's met the RSVP obligations) until he notifies the Committee to the contrary, though there are no doubt issues of courtesy. Here are Geoff's comments on that subject:

As explained in discussing Rosaforte's report with Damon Hack on Morning Drive, Tiger

is not required to give the committee any indication of his intentions unless he is officially withdrawing. There is no entry deadline as there is with a PGA Tour event, merely an accepting of the invitation to play the Masters. And since the tournament does not have alternates, no one is waiting at the first tee to take his place. 

This sets up a spectacle scenario where every practice round shot will be scrutinized and every touching of his back will be noted. That’s all fine. But if he starts but doesn’t complete a round at the Masters due to acute release pattern misfiring, the Golf Gods will come down hard on that breach of etiquette.

 Bob Harig is very much on the same page:

Would he wait until the last minute to show up and play? 

That is unlikely. Courtesy suggests he will give tournament officials some indication so they can prepare tee times with or without him. And Woods is not likely to want to become the story early in the week, especially if he is not playing. It is only a guess, but the expectation is Woods will announce a decision at some point this week.

There's been lots of discussion that the Masters will be diminished without Tiger, which is nonsense on steroids.  But there's little doubt that the early part of Masters week will have an added buzz if he shows, and the first bladed chip will have the media on Defcon-5.

Two minor bits as we await definitive word.  First, as a public service to Tiger, I present this map of the Augusta National routing:

If, as Shack notes, the glutes don't fire and you need to walk off the course holding your back, your only viable opportunity is at the turn.  It's a long, uphill walk from anywhere else on the property...just sayin'.

Lastly, Luke Kerr-Dineen has helpfully updated his graph of Tiger's world ranking:

What's your point, Luke?

The ANA, A History - Just yesterday I was bemoaning the new moniker of the ladies' first major championship of the year, and now we have Bill Fields offering up the definitive history of the event, well definitive except for one significant omission.  We'll get to that in a sec, but he does answer many FAQ's:

"You drive in and you get goose bumps and the heart starts beating a little faster," saysPatty Sheehan, the 58-year-old Hall of Famer who won the tournament in 1996, "similar to what the guys get when they drive down Magnolia Lane."

"Jumping into Poppie's Pond is something all the golfers look forward to doing," says Michelle Wie, only 25 but a veteran of 10 events there, including a runner-up finish last year. "You grow up wanting to do it. It's just the history. You walk that bridge to the 18th green every day during the tournament and you see all the names, all the Hall of Famers, so many legends who are on it. All you want to do is be able to join that wall."

The parallels are quite amazing, given the random way golf calendars have evolved.  But it's the first major for both tours, it's the one (I'm ignoring the contrived Evian) played at the same venue each year, and they each have their notable customs.  Now have you ever wondered about the hygenic issues of that leap?  Me too...

It's much different from what greeted many former winners, including 1999 champ Dottie Pepper, who got a bacterial infection after her celebration.

 That's been dealt with, fortunately:

Poppie's Pond came to be in 2006 on the event's 35th anniversary, as a tribute to Wilcox -- his grandchildren call him Poppie. That area was separated from Champions Lake and turned into a de facto swimming pool with a concrete bottom and a sloping ramp to make it easier to exit the water.

"It's fresh well water that comes up there," Codding says of the jump zone, 6 feet deep in the middle. "It's the cleanest water in the valley."

There's lots more good stuff in there, as the event dates back to 1972 and has been a major since 1983.  Dinah's name was controversially removed in 2000,  and if you Google that you get a virtual earful, including links to websites you might want to delete from your browser history.  Facts are stubborn things, but you can't do a definitive history of this tournament and avoid the "L" word.  I'll give just this one link to that part of the history, and perhaps we've sufficiently evolved that the LPGA can embrace, or at the very least acknowledge it...

Dinah is a tremendously important part of the history of women's golf, and it's a damn shame that her name doesn't still grace the tournament.  To many, your humble blogger included, it will and should always be the Dinah...

The Blogger at Sixty - Memory loss is an increasing feature of my life, and in golf that can actually be helpful.  But in blogging it's more bug than feature...

In yesterday's post we discussed the success of left-handers at Augusta, specifically winning six of the last twelve titles.  Phil accounts for three of those and Bubba two, so I challenged the reader to name the remaining southpaw.  That's not particularly difficult, so I added the bonus question of naming the player he beat in a playoff.  I promised to place the answer at the end of the post, but you were aware of the fact that I often lie, correct?

It was 2003 and Mike Weir defeated Len Mattice in an ugly playoff, winning the Masters with a bogey on No.10.

A Place To Play - The Post's Mark Cannizzaro played Ferry Point with us in October, and files this report on its status:

On April 1 — no fooling — that precious and controversial piece of property in The

Bronx will come to life in the form of Trump Golf Links of Ferry Point, which will make its anticipated opening to the public after at least two decades of political tug of war. 

“There’s never been anything like this ever built in the history of golf,’’ Trump told The Post. “You have a world championship course that fronts the East River that has among the most magnificent views of the city. The skyline of New York is the backdrop for many of the holes.

Was there golf before Trump?  I can't seem to remember...

I gave you my thoughts on the course here, qualified praise.   I'm interested in how it grows in, but after Sunday's Willow Ridge Greens Committee meeting it's obvious that our Super is in no hurry to open the greens.  So, any of my WRCC readers up for an early road trip?

And in other Donald news, Martin Dempster recently reported that Turnberry will be fully Trumped:

TURNBERRY is getting the full “Trump treatment” as its billionaire owner bids to turn the Ayrshire resort into the jewel in his golfing crown. 

Details of what Donald Trump has in mind for the Open Championship venue have now been revealed as the tycoon touched down in Scotland and last night was the after dinner speaker at the Ayrshire Chamber of Commerce annual event. 

A raft of “exciting” changes are to be made, both to the Ailsa Course and the hotel. Trump is even going to turn the iconic lighthouse into a Halfway House that will also incorporate a luxurious two-bedroomed suite for guests.

There better be room service, because it's a long ways from the hotel....but wait, there's more:

As well as the hotel, it will look towards a new 18-hole pitch and putt course currently being created by Martin Ebert, the renowned golf architect who has also been commissioned to carry out the changes on the Ailsa Course. They will be centred on the picturesque stretch of holes close to the lighthouse, with Trump having revealed that he was planning “tweaks” to the tenth and 11th holes. However, the full details of his plans for a course that has hosted four Claret Jug jousts have still to be revealed.

The bigger problems with the course as an Open venue are the 17th and 18th...

Short Bits - Rory has won plaudits for hsi support of Irish golf, but Brian Keough channels the old Jewish joke and reminds us that business is business:

Call it PR or spin but while on Friday the Irish public was being told that Rory McIlroy was doing his bit for the Irish economy by paying corporate tax on royalties here, The Sunday Times reports today that the world No 1 is now a registered tax exile in Dubai when it comes to the lion's share of his fortune.

 What, you thought the kid was stupid?

China, still schizo:

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese authorities have closed 66 golf courses in a renewed

crackdown on courses built in contravention of rules designed to protect arable land and save water, China's top economic planning body said on Monday. 

The central government last year ordered the demolition of courses built by five mainly little-known developers, the first real sign of enforcement of a 2004 ban. 

The ban was imposed to protect China's shrinking land and water resources in a country home to a fifth of the world's population but which has just 7 percent of its water.

And corrupt... Hopefully that golf course pictured is one that's been shut down, yanno, just becasue of the architectural malpractice.

This video of an 84-year old contestant has been making the rounds:

I'm quite certain that each and every reader immediately identified the violation of Rule 16-1 e:

e. Standing Astride or on Line of Putt

The player must not make a stroke on the putting green from a stance astride, or with either foot touching, the line of putt or an extension of that line behind the ball. 

Exception: There is no penalty if the stance is inadvertently taken on or astride the line of putt (or an extension of that line behind the ball) or is taken to avoid standing on another player’s line of putt or prospective line of putt.

Of course it does bring back memories of why the rule was enacted in the first place:

I'm sorry, why are we making fun of Michelle Wie?

Something to wash that down?  Alex Myers posts photos of a gator having lunch:

That's a helpless turtle in his jaw, so it's good to see the gator (nicknamed Goliath at the Florida club) has enough fiber in his diet.

The lonely lives of legislators - You can't make this stuff up:

A ban on feminine-hygiene ads at city-run golf courses in Lincoln, Neb., has been overturned thanks to the work of a city councilwoman, according to the Lincoln Journal Star.

The report says Councilwoman Leirion Gaylor Baird stumbled on the ban when reading the agreement with the company, Bench Craft Co., that supplies Lincoln's golf courses with scorecards, course guides, benches, ball washers and display boards. In the agreement, Bench Craft can sell advertising, but Lincoln has a long list of banned substances.

On that list are things you'd expect like tobacco or alcohol, as well as nothing graphic and nothing political. But what jumped out to Baird was the prohibition of advertising feminine hygiene products or contraceptives. Baird then convinced the council to remove the ban.

Her logic is that girls shouldn't be embarrassed by feminine hygiene issues, though aren't contraceptives a different issue entirely?  I'm sure that Dad that takes his 14-year old girl out to play will be glad to have her educated about the morning-after pill, but I digress...  It's just amusing what people think is important...

The St. Andrews Links Trust has a fun story on their website per John Strege:

On Throwback Thursday, the blog at the St. Andrews Links website recalls how a trio of golfers from Sweden with a tee time on the Old Course at St. Andrews had their flight canceled as ash from a volcano that erupted in Iceland disrupted air traffic throughout Scotland and across Northern Europe in the spring of 2010. They were not deterred. 

“Their journey included a drive from Sweden to Denmark and ferry ride from Denmark to Germany,” the blog post said. “They then drove through Europe to Calais [France] where they boarded a second ferry to Dover [England] and finally a ten hour drive from Dover to St Andrews.” 

It was a 42-hour trip that encompassed eight countries (Sweden, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, England and Scotland) for a four-hour round of golf.

Neither rain nor sleet nor volcanic ash shall keep them from their appointed rounds...

We'll close with this poignant video of Glen Garden post-closing:

Golf courses come and go, but you'll recall that Byron Nelson and Ben Hogan met there in the caddy yard, and played each other in the finals of the club's caddie championship.  

Weekend Wrap

Another day, another dusting of snow.... what was I just saying about clinical depression?

Dyn-O-Mite - In our sport, sometimes home game can be difficult to win, so I'm guessing this one was pretty sweet:

Walker, who lives outside San Antonio, made his case emphatically on Sunday, winning the Valero Texas Open by four shots to become the first to win multiple times on the PGA Tour this season. Spieth, who resides in the Dallas area, finished second, two weeks after winning the Valspar Championship.

And it wasn't really that close, as Spieth made a late charge to secure second place... but to quote the SEC, it's those forward-looking statements that require additional scrutiny:

McIlroy is a green jacket shy of the career grand slam, and we hear about inevitability

(“If Rory doesn't win at Augusta in a few weeks’ time, he’ll win next year. And if he doesn't win next year, then he'll win it the year after,” Darren Clarke said last week). But don’t summon a tailor just yet. 

Walker, who has two victories and a playoff loss in 2015, now has five PGA Tour victories in less than 18 months, the impetus for a rapid ascension that has landed him in the top 10 in the World Ranking. 

Spieth, 21, came into the Texas Open ranked sixth in the world and is aiming higher. “I'd like to at some point be the number one ranked player in the world,” he said earlier in the week. “I'd like to win at least one major championship, try to get one before we look forward from there. But ultimately I'd like to be one of the best players to ever play the game.”

Walker's game should travel well, and he very quietly had three top-tens in majors last year.  Spieth remains hard to handicap, as he seems to be a bit error-prone at crunch-time.  Of course he's still quite young, but from the quote above we can all agree that he doesn't suffer from a failure to set high goals.

Kerrvacious -  Who doesn't like a comeback story?

CARLSBAD, Calif. (AP) Cristie Kerr closed with a 7-under 65 on Sunday and won the Kia Classic for her first LPGA Tour title in nearly two years. 

Kerr made four straight birdies on the back nine at Aviara to pull away from Mirim Lee and 17-year-old Lydia Ko. It was her 17th career win, and her first since May 2013 at the Kingsmill Championship.

Kerr started working with a new swing coach recently, and her ball-striking was near perfect in closing out the event yesterday.   And she was hitting it long....

My Lydia faded to solo third, so clearly she's peaked.  The curious part is how poorly she played the finishing three holes both days, almost as if she actually has warm blood coursing through her veins...

The Kia sets the stage for the first major of the week, the iconic Dinah Shore Kraft Nabisco ANA Inspiration.  It's a fact of life and I don't have an easy solution, but when you don't even know what to call an event, especially an iconic event with all sorts of history, it ain't good for promoting a tour.  They were running promos for it on the broadcast, and I'm sure most folks just thought it was a run-of-the-mill, forgettable women's event...

Of course the event used to carry a reputation that the LPGA would like to minimize at this point, not that there's anything wrong with that, but I wonder if they regret not keeping Dinah's name in the title.  The Kraft name grew on us over time, a function of their longevity and ubiquitous reputation, but ANA Inspiration is barely a step up from Pure Silk...

In any evet, I'll be curious to see how Lydia plays next week.  There's a ton of pressure on her to live up to her ranking, but this is very much a big girl golf course.  She's still giving up some yardage to the top ladies off the tee, so she'll need to be very much on her game to play well.

Masters Stuff - Everyone knows the latest Masters' meme, that the course favors southpaws (who have won six of the last twelve).  Paul McGinley throws out an interesting theory:

"That's not a co-incidence," the American (Aaron Oberholser) said. "In 2003 the ProV1x came out - the

three-piece hard ball. 

"My theory is that right handers have a harder time drawing the ball because when you draw the ball as a right hander around Augusta on certain shots — 13, where you really have to draw it hard comes to mind — the ball wants to dive out of the air. There is not enough spin on a draw to be able to hold your line and keep it in the air. 

"Now with a fade, naturally the ball spins more and a lefty, especially a big hitting lefty like Bubba (Watson) he can spin that ball a lot more. The ball stays in the air and the ball curves a lot more easily for him. And you can control a fade a lot more than you can control a draw, especially with this new golf ball and the new technology over the last 12 years.

Phil would also comfortably fit into that class of long-hitting lefties...But class, who can name the lefty that won the sixth of those titles?  And to really test your retention of grey matter, whom did that lefty beat in a playoff?  Answers at the bottom of the post...

As McGinley notes, there are a number of crucial drives that demand a right-to-left ball flight, although No. 13 is extreme in the severity of the dogleg.  But it kind of works because it's sufficiently short that the guys can pull 3-wood and still easily reach it.  Most of the tee shots we're considering (think Nos. 8, 10 11 and 17, for example) require ten-yard draws, and guys like Patrick Reed don't exhibit any difficulty with that.

But that was the concerning aspect of Rory's play on the Florida swing, his inability to move it right-to-left.  Well, that and the misses from within five feet...and the distance control on his wedges...yada, yada, yada.

Meanwhile, the field is at 99 and counting:

The Masters field is now at 99 players, and if the winner in Houston is not already in the field, the Masters will have at least 100 players for the first time since 1966

Much ado about nothing, even if they all showed... but they won't:

pending the status of players such as Tiger Woods, Kevin Stadler, Graeme McDowell, Brooks Koepka and Steve Stricker. 

Woods has not played since withdrawing from the Farmers Insurance Open on Feb. 5 with back stiffness and subsequently said he'd be taking time off to work on his game. 

Stadler has a wrist injury and hasn't played since the first tournament of 2015 in Hawaii, while Koepka (ribs) and McDowell (ankle) withdrew from the past two tournaments, respectively, with injuries. Stricker has not played since the Hero World Challenge in December and had back surgery shortly thereafter.

Koepka's injury is a shame, coming so soon after his breakout win and since his game seems to scream ANGC.

I've got some loose ends, but I'll have to check in later....

The Warning Signs of Clinical Depression

For some reason I've been receiving an inordinate amount of spam recently related to clinical depression..... Coincidence?  Perhaps not, as we desperately await the arrival of spring and the opening of our golf course, while outside it snows.  

It doesn't snow in Utah, but it won't let up here in New York.... not that I'm bitter or anything.  So before I hurt someone, let's see if we can amuse ourselves...

Are They All Playing Fly Away Technology? - Yesterday we saw Phil's 8-iron catch the lip of a fairway bunker....literally.  Alex Myers informs that on the same day Troy Merritt had quite a different equipment malfunction:

OK, what the heck is going on at the Valero Texas Open? The first day featured the craziest birdie ever by Aaron Baddeley as well as 31 players failing to break 80 at TPC San Antonio in windy conditions. It also provided two of the strangest equipment malfunctions you'll ever see.

First, Troy Merritt, whose 2-iron's face caved in somehow on the 11th hole:

Troy, it's 2015...nobody carries a 2-iron any more... and he won't be carrying this one again.  He plays Wilson, and that's not a great advertisement for the soft Wilson balls... 

In other news of slack manufacturing tolerances, Luke Kerr-Dineen posts a video of Stephen Gundrum's rough day at the range.   I can't get the video to play there, but you can see it here on Instagram, and I'll post a screenshot below:

That UFO to the left of his left elbow would be the head of his driver.  Looked like a TaylorMade driver in the video, so we've covered Cally, TM and Wilson just in the last twenty-four hours...

America's Sweetheart, The Sequel - We won't see her next Sunday at Augusta National, but we will see more of her, which is all that matters:

The inaugural U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball field just received a delightful boost. Young Lucy Li, the ice cream-wielding tween who wowed us at Pinehurst No. 2 last summer, medaled at Pasatiempo Golf Club March 26 with teammate Kathleen Scavo, a 17-year-old senior at Justin-Siena High School in Napa, Calif. 

Li, you might recall, beat Scavo by seven strokes at Half Moon Bay to become the youngest to ever qualify for the 2014 U.S. Women’s Open. This time around, however, they will form a formidable team May 9-13 at Pacific Dunes in Bandon, Ore. Li, now 12, is wise beyond her years but only in the seventh grade. Scavo received a scholarship to play at Oregon next fall.

I do hope this is included in Fox's package with the USGA, as Pacific Dunes will be a great venue...

Tiger, Flush - Josh Sens informs that any plans to hold a rent party for Eldrick can be put on hold, as he'll be cashing some big checks:

The practice range isn't the only place where Tiger Woods has a lot of work to do.

Golf.com has learned that Woods has been tapped to redesign a golf course in Beijing, China, a layout that will become the flagship in a constellation of a dozen private clubs that will provide members access to all courses in the cluster. 

The project will mark Woods’ first foray into Asia as a course designer and two sources closely involved in the golf industry in Asia tell Golf.com it’s a lucrative one -- part of a two-course deal that will pay him a staggering $16.5 million.

Wow, that is staggering and quite curious... hold on for a sec as to why I find it curious, but as Josh and Shack note, golf in China is it's own tangled web.  Back to Josh:

The Beijing project will bring Woods to a country with a deeply conflicted relationship to golf. Though scorned publicly by government officials, the game is wildly popular among the wealthy. 

Since 2004, when the Chinese government announced a moratorium on course construction, more than 400 new layouts have been built. However, the current regime in China has soured on golf and a number have been closed in the past year. Other courses -- including a design by celebrated architect Tom Doak on Hainan Island -- appear to face uncertain futures. 

In June, the Chinese government is expected to announce new golf course regulations, with more rigid limitations on development on agricultural land and in national forests, as well as in coastal areas. How well those regulations will be enforced is another matter. But in China, as most places elsewhere, plow-over renovations should remain easier to push through the approval process than new construction.

So Tiger as a felon?  Could be interesting...

The curious part to me is that this seems a rather large long-term investment in the reputation of Tiger at a most curious time.... I have my quibbles with Jack's design work, but if you commissioned a Nicklaus design in the mid-1980's you would be pretty secure in the knowledge that Jack would remain a major figure in our game, and wouldn't do anything to tarnish his reputation.

Do we have a similar level of comfort with Tiger?

Speaking of Which... - Alan Bastable gives us nine reasons why The Masters needs Tiger to play, and I must confess that "Do it for Les Moonves" leaves me cold as a rallying cry:

2. RATINGS WILL TANK WITHOUT HIM

There are three constants in life: Death, taxes and woeful TV ratings when Tiger skips a major. Look no further than the Tiger-less 2014 Masters, which produced the lowest Masters weekend ratings for CBS since 1957. (Doug Ford over Sam Snead, y’all!) Total viewership last year: a depressing 11 million. That’s 4 million fewer viewers than tuned in for the premiere of Season 5 of Downtown Abbey.Downtown Abbey!

The graphic is probably the most compelling part of the piece... there isn't a golf fan that doesn't want Tiger to play, as it adds a compelling story line to the proceedings.  But I'd guess that the truly interested party will be ESPN, as that first chip would be Must See TV.  

This is Alan's coda:

9. HE’S NOT GETTING ANY YOUNGER

Tiger turns the big 4-0 in nine months. Forty may be the new 30 in some walks, but not in professional golf—at least not when it comes to winning majors. Since 1960, just 9 percent—or 20 of 220—of majors have been won by the 40-and-over set. And no player over 46 has ever won a grand slam title. Clock’s ticking, Tiger. Don’t let another Masters pass you by.

All true but it elides maybe the most important point... If he still dreams of getting to nineteen, the Masters isn't just another major because it's far and away the easiest to win (if you have a tee time).  The other three are just brutal, but this one you only need to best about seventy guys, so have far greater margin for error.  

But does he still hunger for it or, as he's been known to say, is he good.

The Alamo - Part II

The bride and I threw the clubs in the boot yesterday and went to the range to hit a bucket of balls...There's still snow to melt before we get access to our course, but can someone remind me where I left the sweet spot on my 7-iron?

You Say Valero... - My interest in the early rounds of the Valero Texas Open is on a par with ISIS snuff videos, but I apparently missed a wild and wacky day in the winds.  I'm not sure this qualifies as effective masters prep, but of course many of these guys are hoping to punch one of those last tickets...

First up, a pop quiz for the class... does anyone remember Freddie Couples miraculous par at the island green at Sawgrass?  Here's a reminder...

That was three all the way... OK, we've got one that's way better than that, per Alex Myers:

Aaron Baddeley turned another potential Day 1 disaster into the craziest birdie he or

anyone has probably ever made in golf history. On the drivable par-4 17th (playing 336 yards to the pin today), Baddeley yanked his tee shot into the woods. But after taking an unplayable lie, he re-teed and miraculously holed his next shot. Again, from 336 yards. In other words, this is NOT a misprint:

Baddeley hit driver on both shots, but choked down on his second attempt with the hole playing downwind. The improbable result put him just one shot behind Charley Hoffman after the first round.

"I just thought I'd just hit it straight and so I hit it and started walking and then heard the crowd going nuts," Baddeley said. "I was like, wait, I just made birdie."

Got it?  Just a little choked-down 336-yard driver... So, anything else interesting happen yesterday?  Well, there was that Mickelson fairway bunker shot:

Kudos to the Golf Channel crew for the slo-mo and audio... Now thanks to Shack who caught the best part of the story, this tweet from Callaway's Creative Director Johnny Rodriguez:

OK, it's the ball that's supposed to fly away, but we do like funny... So anything else?Well, Alex Myers had no sooner posted this on how D.A. Points opened his round with this disaster...

D.A. Points found the left side of the fairway with his opening shot of the Valero Texas Open, but that was the extent of his good start at TPC San Antonio. Points flew the green with his approach, and then, well, let's just say he struggled with a couple of bunker shots before struggling with a short putt.

 That tidy play around the green demands a close-up, no?

Well, at least he got some exercise...but after a bogey on No.2 he selfishly makes Alex update the post for this on No. 3:

And since we love our rainbow coalition scorecards, here's D.A,'s:

When you're nine over after four holes, there's nothing good that can happen....you just have to soldier on and get out of twon Friday afternoon.

So, how bad was it?  Jim McCabe summed it up thusly:

You know it’s not a good day when personal records are set at an alarming rate – and no one’s smiling. But that about summed up Thursday’s opening round of the Valero Texas Open, which was a forgettable experience for a long line of players. 

When nearly 22 percent of the field (31 of 141) shoots 80 or higher, you have to figure it wasn’t an easy day, and that usually means that wind was involved. With winds steady at 30 mph early and gusts to 40, the morning wave bore the brunt of the misery at TPC San Antonio. One by one, players had to be second-guessing themselves for choosing this week to tune up for the Masters.

And those are guys with their names on their bags... Now for Willow Ridgers I'll note that Favid Berkey has his name on his bag as well, but I'm thinking that's probably for different reasons.

Deja Vu All Over Again -  First came news a couple of days ago that TaylorMade has a new CEO:

TaylorMade Golf Company Names David Abeles as CEO and President 

CARLSBAD, Calif. (March 26, 2015) — The adidas Group has appointed David Abeles as CEO of TaylorMade Golf Company with immediate effect. Abeles succeeds Ben Sharpe, who has decided to leave the company for personal reasons. Abeles will report directly into adidas Group CEO Herbert Hainer.

I would have thought you'd capitalize your parent company's name, but it's their own damn press release.  But didn't we just go through this?  Sure enough, Shack confirms:

Ben Sharpe is out after almost a year at the helm. He replaced CEO Mark King last April.

OK, he probably just wanted to spend more time with his family because business is going great guns...

A single news cycle later and we have Shack pouncing on this WSJ report (behind their paywall):

Adidas has also vowed to speed up how quickly it brings new products to market and

invest more in its core brands, particularly in the U.S. The company wants to open 55 new stores in the U.S. in the next 2½ years. It has 30 today. 

Adidas has suffered a number of setbacks lately. The company has a large presence in Russia where slowing economic growth and the plummeting value of the ruble have crimped the country’s contribution to Adidas’s results. Waning popularity of golf has hit sales at its TaylorMade-Adidas golf unit hard.

OK, as Shack duly notes, yes their golf equipment sales were down 28% recently, but that was because they had flooded the retailers' inventory with three driver releases in a year.   Plus this:

As part of the new five-year strategic business plan, named “Creating the New,” Adidas said it would respond to consumer trends immediately and push out new products in-season.

In a few years, Adidas aims to use purpose-built machines to create personalized products instantly in its stores. It also plans to quadruple e-commerce revenue to more than €2 billion by 2020. 

As for the U.S., Mark King, Adidas’s North American CEO, said the company wants to increase its market share to 15% by 2020.

Guys, we just saw this movie last week, and Mark King was the director...  It's less about Creating the New than about Creating the Markdown Allowance.

This Week In Golf Protests - Amazingly enough, not from Rio where I haven't heard much from the Occupy Golf folks, but this one at least ended amusingly:

Last week we brought you the odd story of two protesters living in a tree in New Orleans' Sharp Park in an effort to stop construction of a new $25 million golf course. Now the situation has gotten even stranger.

The lone man standing, er, sitting fell out of the tree on Tuesday, according to Nola.com. Witnesses say Jonathan "Lloyd" Boover flipped out of a hammock perched midway up the tree. He appeared to injure his nose, leg and foot, and was eventually taken away by an ambulance.

These things will keep happening until Congress repeals gravity... but this is the bit that amused your humble blogger:

Lloyd, the name he was known by among fellow protestors, had been living in the tree since March 13. That's 11 days of living in a tree. Hammock or not, that's impressive. 

A female, known only by her protest name of Heart, came down a week before after spending four days with Lloyd in the tree. Lloyd was thought to be running low on supplies. He waved to a crowd of supporters as he was carried away on a stretcher.

I knew about the porn name bit, but do I also need a protest name?  It's so hard to keep up with things today...

And since someone mentioned Rio, you might be interested to know that the Mayor has replicate a move known in gymnastics circles as a Full John Kerry: 

'Does this look like an environmental crime?' he exclaimed, arms akimbo, as he led reporters over the course's spongy grass. Earlier, Paes projected aerial photos from the 1980s apparently showing what's now the golf course dotted with concrete structures. 

Environmentalists contend that hardy subtropical vegetation had since retaken the area and that before the bulldozers descended it had become home to several endangered species, including species of butterflies and frogs. 

'He (Paes) thinks that all green's the same,' said Jean Carlos Novaes, a member of the Golfe Para Quem (Golf For Whom) group that has been protesting outside the site for months. 'But non-native grass is just not the same thing as the native ecosystem.' 

Novaes, who was among a small group of protesters on Wednesday, insisted it was unnecessary to build a new course in the first place, since Rio already has two other golf courses - despite golf's status in Brazil as an unpopular sport played almost exclusively by the moneyed elite. The owner of one of the courses has said he wrote to authorities to offer it up for the Olympics but never heard back.

Well he was against golf before he was for it... Boy, if only those poor butterflies had some mechanism to perambulate to a more hospitable climate... Now Shack reminds us that those two other golf course in Rio are about 5,200 yards long, but misses the opportunity to note that for about half the field that would be plenty...

Killing Time

Until Augusta, that is...

State of The Shark - Tom Cuneff at CNBC brings up to date on our favorite dorsal fin:

Wearing a navy Ralph Lauren suit and crisp white shirt, Greg Norman is traveling

through the crowded streets of Manhattan in the back of a black chauffeured Lincoln Navigator. He's headed to his Gulfstream G550 at New Jersey's Teterboro Airport after a New York City media tour with "TODAY," "Fox & Friends" and The Wall Street Journal.

Ah yes, a classic of the genre....nobody will take you seriously unless the interview is conducted "wheels up."   But I digress...here's the biggest takeaway from the piece:

The newest division at Great White Shark Enterprises he's most excited about is the Great White Shark Opportunity Fund, an asset-based debt-lending fund that provides alternative and flexible capital to small- and mid-cap companies. Norman won't reveal what companies they've invested in so far but said they have $75 million in capital.

"It's a good place to be in right now, because a lot of small, entrepreneurial businesses can't get capital to grow their business," he said in his familiar Australian accent. "Many years ago my partner, David Chessler, and I invested in a couple small business and just saw the returns we were generating, in the high 20s and even above. We started off very small, but now we're growing at a comfortable pace, and we have institutions interested because we have a performance track record that's very positive. We don't want to be a $20 billion fund. We just want to be like the space we're in."

Color me a tad skeptical, as true asset-based lending is very labor intensive... but I'd guess this is more of a venture captial operation, and a small number of home runs can carry a portfolio.  In any event, guess what the laggard is in his porfolio?

One division that's still lagging is wine. Norman has been a connoisseur and collector since 1976, when he won a bottle of the award-winning Australian red Penfolds Grange. Twenty years later he partnered with California-Australian conglomerate Beringer Blass (now Treasury Wine Estates). The company, Greg Norman Estates, makes 13 different varietals and shipped 160,000 cases last year to Australia and the U.S.—down about 90,000 cases from 2006—with the majority made in his native country. (A Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand will debut in April.)

Lots of branding MBA-speak to be found, so if that's your thing, by all means dive in.  On a somewhat related note, Shack had some fun with the Big East  BBall ratings on Fox Sports 1:

We've chronicled the issues the conference has had on Fox Sports 1 since it began on the network in the 2013-14 season to the point where it could influence other leagues from coming on-board. 

Last Saturday’s Big East Championship on Fox Sports 1 drew just a 0.3 overnight rating. That’s down 40% from last year’s 0.5 which also had the Pac-12 Championship as a lead-in. And when you compare it to the last Big East Championship on ESPN, it’s a huge 86% drop from the 2.3 in 2013.

 Now to be fair, I couldn't tell you which schools are still in the conference, or even confirm that the conference still exists.  Nor, and this might be the key, could I guess at where it is on my own cable system, never having had the least inclination to search it out.  Of course I'll find it by mid-June as will you, but we're dead enders...

Lastly, we had some good fun with the picture of the bronze bust of His Sharkness posted on

Instagram.  Current wife Kirsten felt compelled to defend her man against the Twitterverse by posting this:

Can I pls clarify that the bust is a gift from me, his wife and rest assured, he is definitely NOT a narcissist ! Tough crowd out there.

If you say so.... let's see if I have this straight?  You think the perfect gift for hubby's 60th birthday would be to cast the body he keeps showing off on Instagram in bronze, but we have your assurance that he's not the slightest bet narcissistic....Git it!.

I'm saddened to acknowledge that I too am rapidly approaching my sixtieth birthday and Employee No. 2 has made no efforts to have a bronze bust of your humble blogger cast.  I give so much and ask so little...

And while I can't find it again, perhaps Kirsten was referring to the commenter who recommended the following label:

Warning: Cracks Under Pressure

Ouch!  That's gonna leave a mark...

BPTNWAM - In his weekly Van Cynical Mailbag feature, Gary shares with us his current listing of the best player to never have won a major....It's a bit of a yawn and, SPOILER ALERT, it's Henrik.  But of far greater interest to me he was asked later in the piece for a bottom ten of major winners and had this:

The contenders would include guys who didn’t do much else, such as Orville Moody, Shaun Micheel, Ben Curtis, Lou Graham, Ed Furgol and Mungo Park.

First and foremost, in my biz you don't pass up any opportunity to use the name Mungo Park, which might be the best name in golf history.  Though there's a woman on the Ladies' Euro Tour named Lotta Wahlin that might garner some votes...

My favorite baseball name of all-time has always been former Yankee pitcher Urban Shocker...

Scoring Rage - The current issue of Golf Digest (the Masters preview with the tartan-clad Rory on the cover) had lots of good material within its covers, including this David Fay piece on players' comportment in the scorers' tent, including the good:

Some players behave like princes, regardless of their score. Good examples: Ben Crenshaw and Nick Price. (By the way, it should come as no surprise that Jack Nicklaus was a model citizen: always pleasant, never saccharine, no matter his score.)

The Bad:

On the other hand, Ben's college teammate, Tom Kite, would fall into what I coined The 67-76 Club. All smiles and compliments after a 67, but a steady stream of criticism—usually about the course setup, sometimes about the guy he was playing with—after a 76.

The Amusing:

I worked at the Metropolitan (New York) Golf Association in the mid-1970s. At the time, one of the area's leading professionals was Babe Lichardus. When Babe was paired with someone he thought played too slowly, he'd show his disdain by recording the slowpoke's hole-by-hole scores using Roman numerals. "I know the numbers up to 10, and I know I don't have to add 'em up—that's his job," Babe would say, pointing to the scoring official.

Actually that's one of the interesting nuggets, to wit players are only responsible for their 18 individual hole scores, there's no math required...

And the unresolved:

It was all sorted out, but that 1985 Senior Open was also the scene of my favorite incident. Tommy Bolt and Jack Fleck were paired together in the final round. Jack had a 70; Tommy, a 77. The two sat down in the tent, and, wordlessly, exchanged scorecards, checked them and signed them. But before they left my company, Bolt looked at me and said, as if Fleck were not seated right next to him: "Mr. USGA official, I don't give a damn if next year I'm leading this tournament by 10 shots going into the final round—if I'm paired with this no-good, miserable son of a bitch, I'm withdrawing." At which point, Fleck gave Bolt a hard shove and said, "Do you want to finish what we started in Australia?" 

Bolt shoved back, almost pushing Jack off his chair and said, "Damn right I do!" Before any real blows were exchanged, I became the peacekeeper. Sort of. "Fellas," I said, "the next group is coming up onto the green, so please take it outside." Somewhat surprisingly, they nodded their heads, stopped the shoving and yelling, and departed.

And to this day we don't know what they started in Australia...

 Masters Musings - It's still a bit off, but we've got a few items...First, newly-minted Ryder Cup captain Daren Clarke advises Rors to keep a hangar free:

While the rest of the world inevitably focuses on McIlroy's prospects of becoming only

the sixth golfer to complete a career Grand Slam, Clarke insists the challenge is not as daunting for the Holywood star as many might think. 

Why? Because Clarke believes McIlroy can be absolutely secure in the knowledge that he'll definitely don the Green Jacket one day. 

Speaking in London on his first official engagement as captain, Clarke said: "If Rory doesn't win at Augusta in a few weeks' time, he'll win next year. And if he doesn't win next year, then he'll win it the year after. His game is perfect for that golf course. He's going to win there. It's only a question of when, he's that good.

Sure, absolutely nothing controversial there, though we would have said exactly the same thing about Greg Norman in the 1980's... nothing in golf is actually inevitable.

The other issue is that Rory has some actual weaknesses in his game that impact his performance at Augusta....I'd feel better about Rory there when I see a lot of rain and no wind in a weather forecast.

The oddsmakers have put Tiger at 20-1, really curious since we don't even know if he'll tee it up.  The latest comes from wingman Notah Begay:

But someone who has a pretty educated guess? His buddy Notah Begay III. Tiger's former college teammate, and current Golf Channel commentator, told 120Sportsit's 50-50 as to whether Tiger will tee it up on Masters Thursday. 

"It's literally a 50-50 chance right now from what I can tell. But I think that's far better odds than what it was, say, three weeks ago. Three weeks ago I would've said it was 1-10 odds of him playing at Augusta." 

"I think things are really settling. We've had some good discussions over the last week."

Discussions?   What about, praytell...

David Westin files this nice profile of Gentle Ben prepping for his final Masters Appearance, including brother Charlie reminding us that Ben coulda/shoulda/woulda won more than his two Green Jackets:

“Two or three more times, at least,” Charlie Crenshaw said.

He was in the final pairing of the closing rounds in 1977, 1987, 1988 and 1989. In 1987, he finished one shot out of the playoff involving eventual champion Larry Mize, Greg Norman and Seve Ballesteros. In 1989, he fell one short of joining the playoff with winner Nick Faldo and Scott Hoch. 

“There is a lot of great things to remember and a lot of heartache,” said Scotty Sayers, who has known Crenshaw since 1962 and been his manager since late 1984. “There’s no question he could have won in 1987 and 1989.”

Well, that's a brother talking.... It seems like he was in contention five times and won twice, to quote Adam Sandler, that's not too shabby...

Lastly, there's trouble brewing in paradise, as Doug Ferguson explains, there's a chance the Master's field could break the century mark.  

Depending on two tournaments on opposite ends of the world — and depending on Woods — the Masters could have more than 100 players for the first time since there were 103 players in 1966.

The other three majors have 156 players. The other three majors are not the Masters.

From its inception in 1934, Augusta National was meant to be exclusive in so many ways, including its invitation-only tournament each spring that has grown up to be must-see TV around the world. The club believes a limited field enhances the experience of the players.

Well no doubt it does enhance the experience of the players who make it down Magnolia Lane, because it makes it that much easier to win.  But tell me more about how it enhances the players experience:

“It is borderline to be able to present the kind of competition that we want to,” Masters chairman Billy Payne said in 2011 when there were 99 players. “It is more than we normally have. We say every year in response to that question that we look and we study the qualifications, which we do. But we are really going to look at it this year, because there is a maximum number of competitors for which we can give the experience that we want them to have and do it in a way that’s manageable.

“The 100 pushes that limit quite significantly.”

Well that certainly cleared things up for me...  So, I'm still not sure of the problem, but Ferguson has a solution:

It would be a mistake for the club to stop awarding invitations to PGA Tour winners. In an era of $7 million purses, there should be no greater motivation than winning. A trip to the Masters is usually the first thing a PGA Tour winner mentions (see Matt Every).

Also, the Masters should continue to rely on the world ranking to provide opportunity to players from every corner of the world. That category is loaded with international players, and there’s a reason for that. PGA Tour members have plenty of other avenues to get to the Masters.

The world ranking, however, allows for one change that is overdue.

Perhaps it’s time to get rid of the first cutoff for the top 50 at the end of a calendar year, and simply have one deadline at the end of the Florida swing. That still allows two weeks for players to plan a trip to Augusta. And the tournament is more likely to have the top players in form.

Doug's proposal is not in and of itself objectionable, but he's way too focused on the bark of the trees... There is a problem with the field deserving attention, but it's the lack of depth of world-class players, those capable of winning the event.  We love ANGC's support of the amateur game and we love seeing our old heroes in the field, but those guys don't win the thing...

As Doug notes, each of the other majors has a field of 156 players.  The two Opens have qualifying and the PGA accommodates twenty club pros, but to win those vents you need to beat 125-130 of the best players on the planet.  Yet the hardest part of winning a Masters might be qualifying, because once you're on the grounds you only need to best 70-75 players, and that's a far easier task.