'Tis the Season

Just a few short items to counter the tryptophan coursing through your bloodstream...

An Honor to be Nominated - Golf.com uses a slideshow to award their prestigious 2015 Turkeys....It's mostly familiar items to readers of this blog, as the runaway winner is, of course, this guy:

The four turkeys were well-earned, and he garnered another four for caddie Mick Middlemo firing him mid-round.  Rory is the only other player with two awards, one for the kickabout and the second for 3-iron into the watery grave at Doral.

And this guy also earned a citation for his behavior at Whistling Straits:

I know he tin cupped it, but the fact is that he shouldn't even be in the field.  How about we split the difference and give him the Lifetime Achievement Award.  

They're all the usual suspects, Tiger's glutes, DJ's 3-jack and the like, but the one I had forgotten was the Keegan Bradley- MAJ cage fight in a meaningless consolation match.  Wasn't that a time?

News You Can Use - It being Friday Noir, the Golf Digest folks share eleven gift giving mistakes of non-golfers.  I certainly get why you don't need one of these:

Really, only two digits?  Doesn't that eliminate most of the available market?

Or these :

Apparently they're designed to help locate lost golf balls.  

But if you wear glasses, as your humble blogger does, this looks positively brilliant:

And the UV protection is unsurpassed...

Crisis Update - As you've no doubt heard, golf is in crisis mode, dealing with a freefall in rounds played....  Not so much, but that's the party line.  So it might be a sign that the narrative is changing, when Pravda runs a thumb-sucker that shows golf clubs adapting and, dare we say it, succeeding?

Of course they can't pass up the overwrought, woe is me, table-setter:

With the winter golf season beginning in Florida — the nation’s leader in golf courses

with more than 1,000 — the extremes of failure and success point to a nationwide upheaval in the sport. It was booming when players like Tiger Woods reigned, but has since been roiled by changing tastes and economics, an aging population of players, and the vagaries of the millennial generation’s evolving pastimes. 

There are about four million fewer players in the United States than there were a decade ago, according to the National Golf Foundation. Almost 650 18-hole golf courses have closed since 2006, the group says. In 2013 alone, 158 golf courses closed and just 14 opened, the eighth consecutive year that closures outpaced openings. Between 130 and 160 courses are closing every 12 months, a trend that the foundation predicts will continue “for the next few years.”

As I always remind the Reader, those 4 million golfers played about 1.5 rounds per capita, so it's not near the loss that the doom-and-gloomers want you to take away. So here's a place that's flourishing, despite a name alarmingly similar to Seinfeld's Del Boca Vista:

The Boca West Country Club’s heavy investment in its facilities, Ms. Tanzer said, “is a perfect example of adapting” to the changing economics of golf. “They’re spending a fortune on making the place family-friendly,” she said. “It’s a home run.” 

At Boca West, where it costs new members $70,000 to sign up, Jay DiPietro, the club’s 78-year-old president and general manager, suggested that the troubles besetting some of his competitors could be blamed on poor management and on their focus on “the business of selling houses.” But he operates on a different principle, he said. 

“We’re in the people-pleasing business,” he said. “These people paid a lot to be here.”

For the umpteenth time, we're a niche sport that's not growing, but isn't dying either.  Golf got way over-built, especially in Florida, and a contraction was very much needed.

The New Outlaws -  Gary McCormack takes a look at the USGA's revised handicapping rules, and includes a few howlers for us to chortle over:

A falsely low handicap rating can carry negative consequences, however. In tournament play, even if it is just your club championship or member-guest, that too-low GHIN rating will prove to be a burden when you aren’t getting the strokes your actual game deserves, and if you play money games based on your published handicap, that too-low number may cost you – literally.

Just your club championship?  Ummm...for amateur golfers, that's their Masters...oh, and club championships aren't typically played with handicaps.  And this:

Reaction from overseas golfers has ranged from bemused scoffing at American backwardness to amazement that golfers in the USA (and Mexico, which also falls under USGA jurisdiction) would even think of posting solo scores – the R&A does not allow the practice. Word from Canada, which uses the USGA system for determining handicaps, is that they will ignore the new rule.

We'll need some time to unpack this nonsense... first and foremost, the R&A has no jurisdiction over handicaps.  They are the purview of the national golf associations, and in the UK handicaps are administered by the Counsel of National Golf Unions.  More substantively, the primary difference in handicapping systems between the U.S. and U.K. is that over there they only post tournament scores. 

When I explained that to one of our assistant pros last year, her reaction was that they therefore have more accurate handicaps.  But that's not necessarily the case, as while the individual scores might be more reflective, their system suffers from a small sample size.  Handicaps will often be based upon a mere tow or thee scores, which would cause your favoritre statistician to turn up his nose.

McCormack does raise the interesting issue of how Handicap Committees will police this issue, though it's interesting only in the abstract.  Because it's been my experience that handicaps are only policed by playing partners, if at all...  but I did like this concluding sentence:

So now many of us will become outlaws; honest, and dishonest, all in the same action – and all because the USGA has decided to reverse a practice which had been in effect for decades.

As Taylor Swift so astutely noted, sandbagger's gonna sandbag....

Nothing Mini About This -  Old friend and Askernish founder John Garrity files this amusing dispatch from, oxymoron alert, the world's most prestigious mini-golf tournament.  Here's a little flavor for the event:

This was a few weeks ago, on a sunny, breezy morning in North Myrtle Beach, a golf-

and-sandcastle destination on South Carolina’s Grand Strand. Katrek and I were there to cover the $12,000 U.S. ProMiniGolf Association Master’s, but the radio man -- a scratch golfer who has played in the U.S. Mid-Am -- was competing as well. “It’s not a joke,” he said of the 65-member USPMGA. “I’m a pretty good putter, and they just kick my ass. I don’t know how Kevin Na would do out here, but I don’t think he’d win.”

Fair enough.  Now the USGA used to consider mini-golf pros to be pros in golf as well, but I don't actually remember whether that has ever changed.  But I did enjoy the emotions:

A few words about temperament. Unlike their PGA Tour counterparts, who back off a shot if a squirrel should so much as sneeze in a treetop, the Myrtle Beachers seemed laid back. They maintained their equanimity with camera crews breathing down their necks, spectators hopping over blue-dyed streams and caged cockatoos shrieking during their backswings. It wasn’t until the final rounds, on Day 3, that the pressures of competition began to show. One pro snapped his putter over his knee. Another took an angry swing at some gravel and then spent the lunch hour alone in his car. “It can get intense,” Detwiler said, watching a tearful Prokopova huddle with her Czech entourage after a T-6 finish.

The best emoter was Matt McCaslin, brother of defending champ Danny McCaslin. Leaving an ace attempt inches short near the end of his 10th round, McCaslin dropped his putter and began banging his forehead on the trunk of a palm tree, wailing, “Why? Why? Why? Just get it there, Matt, you f------ weasel!” Pressing his hands to his ears, he looked skyward and shouted. “Argggghhh!!!”

And this also caught my eye:

The winner of $4,000 and the green windbreaker, I’m obliged to report, was Matt Male, the aforementioned practitioner of anchored putting. Male, who handles client correspondence for J.P Morgan Chase & Co., shot 72-under par for 12 rounds, 29.92 strokes per round -- the first sub-30 average in tournament history. Male, who employs the long putter because of a dodgy back, looked relieved to have survived a final-round charge by McCaslin, who finished a stroke behind. “Yesterday was what won it for me,” the champion said. “I was able to be ‘clean’ -- no threes, no bogeys. I answered the bell every time.”

Hmmmm...like me, you're probably curious as to whether mini-golf is on board with the forthcoming anchoring ban.

Enjoy the weekend.