Other Stuff

I spent some time across the street today and I remain convinced that we'll play some golf in 2015....I'm just hoping it will be in the second quarter...

The Ladies - The ladies are set to take the stage tomorrow morning in Rancho Mirage in their first major of the year, the awkwardly re-branded ANA Inspiration...can we just agree to call it the Dinah around here?

Before we talk a little golf, the ladies don't do the Whan-Bam Thank You Ma'am thing, they've entered into a long-term consensual relationship:

The LPGA announced on Tuesday that Commissioner Mike Whan has agreed to a long-

term extension. 

Since Whan became Commissioner in 2010, the LPGA has seen significant growth. The Tour has grown from 23 events in 2010 to 33 events in 2015 and purses have increased 50 percent from roughly $40 million in 2010 to more than $60 million this year. Television coverage of the Tour has doubled, going from 200 hours per year that was mostly tape-delayed to 400 hours of coverage this year with more than 90 percent of it live.

He's pretty much hit all the right notes in his short tenure, and good to see him rewarded for the success.  And best of all, he's never reminded anyone of Carolyn Bivens...

And how close a call was it for the Commish to keep this important event intact.  Here's some background from Obi-Whan:

But LPGA Commissioner Mike Whan said things might not have been at a point of no return back in November when All Nippon Airways decided to become the event's new sponsor. 

"I probably have told the players a hundred times we're not going to lose this event. But players know how this process goes," Whan said. "There wasn't a name on top of the event, and that is difficult. Somebody's got to pay the bills. We were prepared to continue playing if we didn't have a title sponsor, but that's a formula that couldn't last forever." 

So with or without ANA coming to the LPGA this year, a major championship would have been played in the desert this week. But without ANA or some other sponsor, the 2016 event would have been a huge question mark for the tour.

And there was this rather curious photo with a long caption:

Water sprays into the air as, from left, LPGA Commissioner Mike Whan, ANA Inspiration tournament director Gabe Codding, defending champion Lexi Thompson, Seiji Kondo of Imabari Towel, and All Nippon Airways executive vice president of marketing and sales Takashi Shiki take part in a kagami-biraki ceremony to celebrate a new beginning for the ANA Inspiration golf tournament on Tuesday, March 31, 2015 during a press conference in Rancho Mirage, Calif. In the traditional Japanese ceremony, wooden mallets are used to break open the lid of a sake barrel. This is All Nippon Airways' first year as the tournament's title sponsor; under previous sponsorship, the tournament was known as the Kraft Nabisco Championship.

Television coverage starts at 10:30 EDT on Golf Channel, and I was very surprised in checking the pairings that they're playing twosomes.  It's good television no doubt,but I was somewhat concerend to see Lydia paired with Lexi Thompson... Lexi is about as long as the girls get, and to be charitable Lydia is not.  We'll see how much she gives up off of each tee, but she'll be hitting first from every fairway...

And Lydia, please remember that all putts break towards Indio.

In Harms Way - Kenny Harms is a longtime looper on Tour, having totted for Hubert Green and Hale Irwin in his past life, and currently works for Kevin Na.  He's one of the lead plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the Tour and golf.com gave him some pixels in which to vent.  This is the bit that most folks are picking up on:

I’m grateful that no one got hurt in that storm, but I’m still pissed. It doesn’t feel good to be treated like second-class citizen. I don’t even know if you could call it second class; it is more like fifth class when you leave caddies out in a storm to die. That’s sad. Does the Tour not value human life? PGA National is a very big place. There’s no reason in the world why the caddies didn't have a safe place to go to. I guess we’re just outside dogs. We’re not allowed in the clubhouse. We’re not allowed to sit and eat with our players. We’re not even allowed in the locker room unless we’re carrying the bags in on Monday or out on Sunday. This isn't 1915. It’s 2015, and the Tour needs to step it up.

He's of course referring to the now famous incident at the Honda when the caddies were forced to wait out a lightning storm in a metal enclosure.  One doesn't need to be Tesla reincarnate to think that's a bad idea and from a distance the Tour does seem to go out of its way to treat them poorly.  Kind of ironic considering the public perceptions of the top caddies, who are respected and compensated quite handsomely.

But this to me was the most interesting bit:

At last year’s Tour Championship in September, myself and a few other board members from the Association of Professional Tour Caddies sat down with the Tour’s Chief of Operations Andy Pazder and made an offer: The bib is ours -- it’s on our bodies, and that’s our real estate, but we are willing to allow you to keep the bib and advertise for your sponsors if you put aside $10,000 per year for each caddie’s healthcare and $10,000 per year for each caddie’s retirement. For 200 caddies, that would have been $4 million per year. We gave them the deal of a lifetime and they didn't take it. Now the courts will decide what the bib is worth, and we just want what’s fair, not a dollar more, and not a dollar less. [Editor’s note: PGA Tour spokesman Ty Votaw declined to comment on these negotiations, citing the Tour’s policy of not commenting on ongoing litigation.]

Well, we don't actually know yet to whom the bibs belong, but it's an interesting case, especially since I would presume the sponsor's contracts have to be fair game.  The Tour might ultimately find itself in a tough position, as I'd think there would be pressure to keep all of these contracts private.

Say it Ain't So - They seemed so perfect together...she's drop dead gorgeous and he's the Duf.  But there's nothing left to hold onto in this crazy, mixed up world after this:

One of golf's most high-profile couples is separating.

After three years of marriage, Jason Dufner and his wife, Amanda, are getting a divorce. 

According to documents obtained by the Golf Channel, Amanda filed for divorce on March 16 due to an "irretrievable breakdown of the marriage" and a "complete incompatibility of temperament that the parties can no longer live together." The documents said the two had been separated since February 17.

And the answer to your obvious next question appears to be yes:

Amanda will reportedly receive a gross sum of $2.5 million, and Jason will keep their two houses in Auburn, Alabama.

He might have gone to Jared's, but he also seems to have consulted an attorney.  We'll all miss Amanda, though I'm guessing Maggot more than most:

'Tis the Season - Shack did his usual April Fools Day bit, with four separate posts that he obviously

put much thought into.  He puts so much effort into them that I feel churlish at being critical, but they mostly didn't sing to me as the have in the past.  The Chris Berman to Fox to torment us during U.S. Open week felt pro forma, though the batting cages on the practice green at Augusta for you-know-who's skulls was at least topical, and came with pictures...

But I did like this item on Glen Gardens being repurposed into a millenial-only facility, because some of his language was simply pitch perfect.  Just a reminder, Glen Gardens is the recently-shuttered Fort Worth golf course from whence Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson sprang, and is being converted into of all things a whiskey distillery.  See if you like this:

Plans call for a shortening of the golf course to 9-holes by a craft architect, with artisanally made signage in millennial-friendly lower case fonts and occasionally misspelled typography throughout the revamped layout.

 That's the ticket...

“Millennials love a party, so the idea of combining craft golf with craft whiskey and artisanal tech should be a winner in the eyes of DFW millennials,” said Colin Fey, a leading expert on central Texas millennialism. “It’s estimated that millennials in Dallas/Fort Worth will be spending $300 million annually in recreational activity by 2019 when many have paid off their student loan debts, so glengarden should be well positioned to take advantage.” 

Asked if the Hogan and Nelson mystique will appeal to millennials, Fey said no. 

“Millennials don’t know who those people are and neither do I. But if you tell me a story about them hanging out with movie stars back in speakeasies and they have a life narrative that screams of authenticity or the party lifestyle, then it might be different.”

Well authenticity is in the eyes of the beholder, but who doesn't enjoy a good joke at the youngsters' expense, though he's way too optimistic about when those student loans will be paid off.

Tunnel Vision -  It's important to let you know from the start that this story was posted yesterday, March 31, 2015, a date not ever associated with pranks...because had it been posted today it would be in the segment above.  

Was there a tunnel, or at least plans to construct one, that would have run beneath part of 

the North Course of the venerable Los Angeles Country Club, connecting the Playboy Mansion to Warren Beatty’s house on Sunset Blvd.?

Well, a story at Playboy.com indicated there was and even produced blueprints it says were found in the basement of the Playboy Mansion on South Mapleton Drive in Los Angeles.

I know, the golf connection is a stretch, but it's still quite amusing... and there was also this:

“So, according this blueprint, tunnels were built to the homes of ‘Mr. J. Nicholson,’ ‘Mr. W. Beatty,’ ‘Mr. K. Douglas’ and ‘Mr. J. Caan,” the story says. “We’ll go ahead and assume they’re talking about Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Kirk Douglas and James Caan - all of whom lived near the Playboy Mansion during the late 1970s and early 1980s. There are no dates on the architectural schematics, but the dates on the Polaroids were from 1977.

“We asked if we could see the tunnels. A staff member said, off the record, ‘I heard they were closed up sometime in 1989.’”

I suggest we table this until the 2023 U.S. Open to be held at L.A. Country Club.

Dead Letters -  Kind of amazing for this to come out now, but a profile of Rory in the New York Times Magazine makes us aware of this now interesting tidbit:

One particularly interesting anecdote in Siebert’s intriguing piece, "Rory McIlroy has the Best Swing in Golf," tells of a letter written by McIlroy in 1999 that suggested he had already started the chase for Woods. The excerpt from Siebert’s story reads: 

No one can recall the note’s precise wording, but its general thrust, as Brian McIlroy, Rory’s uncle and godfather, paraphrased in an email, put Woods on notice: “I’m coming to get you. This is the beginning. Watch this space.” 

The quote, according to Siebert, was later confirmed – rather, McIlroy agreed that it “went something like that.”

That's very cute given the circumstances, but I'm guessing that many such letters were penned to Tiger, and some reporter should ask Rory if he's received any.

Different Flight -  He's a good player, on a roll and I wouldn't blame you if you picked him next week.  But he's out of his depth here: