Loose Ends

Sorry if you got bogged down in the previous rules post, but it's not often that they change.  But this post might be more to your liking...

Shriner's Hangover - I remain perplexed by the extent to which Commissioner Ratched seems content to tarnish his valuable brand, to wit the unwatchable Shriners Childrens Hospital event last weekend.  Let's kick-off with Shack's take:

Ed Graney says the event is stronger for shedding its ties to Justin Timberlake,

but judging by the ratings, the Web.com Tour-buzz and galleries, the Las Vegas stop may be the least cool, least showy, least captivating event on the PGA Tour each year. That's okay, but it just seems so strange for the PGA Tour to have a Vegas stop that feels so dated.

Doesn't that depend on the date?  If they somehow captured a Rat Pack Vegas vibe, that could work, especially among the Cialis-swilllig golf demographic.   And Geoff doesn't even touch on the dreadful golf course played, which isn't like him at all...

The aforementioned Ed Graney writes for the local paper and paints an upbeat assessment of the event:

You never forget the football player who broke his neck, the infant born with deformities, the child who was trapped in a burning car. 

Eight years can't erase the story of the 8-year-old boy who went for a bike ride and was hit by an 18-wheel semitruck with such force that part of his head became detached and his spinal cord exploded and his lungs collapsed and his ribs shattered and his kidney was lacerated and his liver was severely damaged. 

That's where Shriners Hospitals for Children get you.

Silly, correction, rhombus-shaped, tasseled red hats aside, let's stipulate that the event has a worthy beneficiary that makes a great contribution to the community.  Still, don't we need an event worthy of an audience to keep those contributions coming?  That was the intent in involving Justin Timberlake, an avid golfer and legitimate pop culture icon, in the event.  But that didn't work out per this:

The message got somewhat lost when pop/movie star Justin Timberlake acted as the tournament's official host from 2008 to 2012. Timberlake was a columnist's dream in that he was never on time for scheduled events and arrived with an overly pushy and deranged entourage (is there another kind?), and the fact when cameras were turned off, he disappeared quicker than Tiger Woods when it comes time to leave a tip. 

Timberlake's name and star power never drew the level of players tournament officials had hoped, and he reportedly never became as personally involved with the hospitals or their patients as those from the Shriners desired. 

It just wasn't a good fit. 

It's better now, more centralized to the overall mission, a tournament hosted by the corporation that provides all that incredible medical attention for free.

That'll be 15 yards for the late hit on Tiger.... But even if we acknowledge that Timberlake under-performed in terms of drawing attention, what is there to draw it now?  It's a glorified Web.com or LPGA event, not that there's anything wrong with that....

In fact, if Butch Harmon didn't happen to be based in Las Vegas, I'm guessing that you wouldn't even have had Fowler and Walker to create one marquee group.

One last note from the event, did you happen to catch the winner's driver? I didn't either...

Kaufman got that victory in large part because of his driving. He averaged 327.7 yards per tee shot, putting him fifth in the field in Driving Distance, and hit 62.29 percent of his fairways, tying him for seventh in Fairways in Regulation. Put those two together, and he led the field in Total Driving.

Kaufman games a Cleveland Classic 290 driver, which gets its name from its weight – 290 grams. The club boasts one of the most distinctive looks in all of golf, with a pear-shaped head and a sole design and color scheme that give it the look of an old persimmon driver. Its large, deep clubface makes it easy to generate solid contact, while the variable thickness of its face helps improve off-center strikes. It is also Cleveland's first adjustable driver, with 12 different settings.

I always thought that was a cool-looking club, but who goes to Cleveland these days for anything but wedges?  But I didn't realize that they were adjustable...

 I Saw It On TV - We'll piggyback on two items linked by Shack related to televised golf.  The second is the more provocative, as it seeks to explain announced layoffs in the Bristol, CT metropolitan area:

Many past and present employees place most of the blame for the layoffs on the

company’s huge NFL, MLB and NBA rights deals. The most frequent criticism heard last week dealt with the NFL contract, which is worth a whopping $1.9 billion per year — $800 million more than the NFL’s next biggest deal. Second-guessers believe ESPN had the leverage to cut a better deal and question whether another media company was within $500 million of ESPN’s offer. There aren’t many other networks that could afford to pay close to $2 billion per year for the NFL’s least competitive package. 

“It’s been a total mismanagement of rights fees, starting with the NFL renewal,” said one former employee. “We overpaid significantly when it did not need to be that way, and it set the template to overpay for MLB and the NBA.” 

ESPN doubled its annual payment for MLB to an average $700 million per year — a deal that gives ESPN just one playoff game per year. And next year, ESPN’s NBA deal takes effect. That’s the one that will see its average annual payout triple in cost to an average of $1.4 billion per year.

Now in our little world ESPN offloaded the last year of its Open Championship coverage to NBC, but those are some big numbers cited.  I don't have the expertise to know the extent to which they over-paid, but as the linked SBJ piece notes, it was a sellers' market given the new entrants desperately in need of content.  And it seems to me that these rights fee contracts are always a hope and a prayer, affordable only to the extent that viewership and advertising revenues continue to grow as in the recent past.  And part of that gamble rests on the decline of other television programming, whereby sports is one of few markets (OK, presidential debates with Trump is temporarily another) where people will actually watch live and sit through commercials.

Shack also links to this Ron Sirak piece that is worth a read, though it's in a format from which I can't excerpt.  Ron covers the crowded golf calendar aspect well, including Golf Channel's 25 consecutive days of live golf (including the clever scheduling of events lie the NCAA's in the early part of the week).

He also covers some f the personnel changes, and riddle me this, Batman?  He says that Dottie Pepper will do 35 days of golf for ESPN next year (plus twenty tourneys for CBS), and I don't know where that comes from?  To the best of my knowledge, ESPN at this point has the first two days of the Masters and parent ABC is broadcasting the final round of the Ladies' PGA from Sahallee.  What other golf does ESPN have under contract?  Anyone know?  Bueller?

Hickory News - We've a new king of the hickories, per this:

Sandy Lyle’s title as World Hickory Open champion has been claimed by Englishman Andrew Marshall, but organisers believe the Scot, absent on this occasion due to upcoming Champions Tour commitments, will be back in the future to try and reclaim the crown.

After finishing as runner-up to Lyle 12 months ago, Marshall, who is attached to Dereham in Norfolk, went one better as he followed an opening 67 on the Buddon course at Carnoustie with a 76 on the Championship layout in the Angus town.

Was  that really a year ago?  It was way cool that Sandy played last year, and I do hope he can play in the future.  Next year's event is at Panmure, a links near Carnoustie best known as the place Hogan went to acclimate to links golf before winning his only time playing in the Open Championship.

Common Ground - I don't agree with him on much, but we can all agree on how dreadful that golf course was:

At a rally held at Trump’s Doral golf resort on Oct. 23, Trump said that fixing America’s problems would be an easier task than rehabilitating the golf course was. “In its own way, doing it for the United States might be easier than what we had to do here, as crazy as it sounds,” he said. 

The presidential candidate cited an anonymous supporter who told him, “If you could do the same for the United States as you did here, it would be unbelievable.”

Hey, Obama thought he was qualified to run the country because he, you know, ran his campaign.  No less ridiculous, though you might have noticed that it didn't turn out as promised.

Predictions Are Hard, Especially About the Future - Yet we all fall into the trap... John Huggan spoke with Hank Haney on the subject of our cluster at the top, and reminds us in his lede of the historical precedents:

A Fascinating aspect of golf throughout history has always been the various rivalries at the sharp end of the game. Oddly, those battles for supremacy have often enough come along not as mere head-to-heads but between groups of three. Over a century ago the “Great Triumvirate” of Harry Vardon, JH Taylor and James Braid ruled. The American trio of Sam Snead, Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson – all born in 1912 – dominated the 1940s and 50s. And, more recently, the so-called “Big Three” of Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Arnold Palmer amassed an amazing 34 Grand Slam titles.

Great Triumvirates, past and future...Here's the Hankster's take:

“I think Jordan will wind up with the best record of the three,” says the Chicago native. “He has that internal motivation that is second to none right now. He has had no issues with his body. And he is best in putting, the part of the game that is hardest to improve. When you get to your 30s, you don’t normally become a great putter. So I have to go with him. His only downside is that he isn’t all-of-a-sudden going to get long off the tee. He is running as fast as he can run in that department.”

Picking the best putter of the three isn't, you know, crazy, though that Day kid seems to roll his rock pretty well.   And I always have qualms about picking the shorter hitter over time, because they have less margin for error.

But I'll go way out on a limb and say that time will tell...

The Tour Confidentialistas pose the same question about the distaff game, but this is one firght the ref should stop immediately:

5. Lexi Thompson won on the LPGA Tour last week and Lydia Ko won this week and regained her No. 1 spot. Out of those two young stars, who do you think will have the best career?

Is that a serious question?  I don't even need to post the responses because it was predictably unanimous...  and if you think I'm being inconsistent here, it's because the short-hitter might well grow out of it.  Lexi is a monster talent, but like many before her, the ultimate limiting factor, her putting and short-game, have been long recognized.

  1. Tiger Woods said last week that, despite his injuries and struggles, he’s still chasing Jack Nicklaus’ record of 18 major titles. Do you think he has any chance, and can he even win four more times to break Sam Snead’s PGA Tour wins record?

Now that's  a far more interesting question, because as recently as the end of the 2013 season that would have been considered a mortal lock.  Obviously it's dependent on Tiger getting himself healthy and his game in form.  Now, given the amazing influx of young talent, you could stipulate to his health and form and he still might not win.  

A Final Story - In the above-linked Tour Confidential, the gang was asked for their favorite Payne Stewart memory in view of the 16th anniversary of his death.  Gary Van Sickle had this that tickled my funny bone:

VAN SICKLE: Before Payne's pressroom interview started at the '96 Memorial, some

other media told him that I was playing in the U.S. Open 36-hole qualifier on Monday after the tournament. Surprised and probably skeptical, he asked me how I was playing. I said, Well, I was building a $3 million house in Orlando and the construction was proving to be a big distraction to my game. It was an excuse he'd used more than once that year. The writers roared and Stewart shook his head with that chagrined look that he owned, knowing he'd fallen into a trap. I may have wounded him but he laughed it off like a good sport. And I just missed making the U.S. Open by a mere 17 strokes.

On that note I'll bed you adieu....