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.