Midweek Musings

We went long on the ball yesterday, leaving much to cover...  I currently have eighteen browser tabs open, so you might want to fire up a second pot of coffee.

Going Under - OK, make that nineteen....  A glowing feature on Jordan Spieth from the local press under this header:

How Jordan Spieth’s love affair with the Australian Open was sparked by his Victorian swing coach

Hey, we're all suckers for a love story....Perhaps a bit more:

“The tournament is not getting a top player on a holiday because we’re talking about a kid who loves golf history. 

“With those names, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Arnold Palmer, Greg Norman and others, on the trophy it’s definitely not just another event for Jordan. He doesn’t come here for second.” 

McCormick gave an insight into Spieth lapping up Australia away from the spotlight with restaurant visits on Sydney Harbour, tackling a rip at Bondi Beach and slipping away for some bucket list golf.

“I’ve got to say the funniest afternoon on the 2015 trip was Jordan and (caddie) Michael (Greller) bodysurfing at Bondi and being shocked at the extent of the rip when slightly outside the flags,” McCormick said with a chuckle.

He does love golf history, and that's one of the lovable things about him.  Though there was that time back in '15 when it was more important to play the Deere than chase said history.  Not that I'm bitter...

Of course, there are presumably other things the young man loves, and I'll leave it to the reader to interpret this:

Report: Jordan Spieth's Australian Open appearance fee is larger than the total purse

Cameron McCormick will be toting the luggage this week, as Michael Greller is welcoming a new addition to his family.

Golf is Dead, Japanese Edition - Shack had this item last week, which I almost missed:

Back in the 1980s, when golf was booming, Japanese clubs regularly required a deposit

of $400,000 or more for a membership, according to industry analysts at Rakuten, the Japanese Internet giant. 

The deposit was supposed to be returned after a decade. But when the Japanese economy went bust after 1989, many private golf courses were unable to honor their commitment. Since then, dozens of courses have been bought out; others have been redeveloped, and some have closed down entirely. 

"They're just abandoned," says Tomita Shoko, who covers the golf industry for the Tokyo Kezai, Japan's oldest business magazine.

The source of this item is NPR, and it serves as a proxy for why journalism is dying.... those practicing the craft suck at it.  Now, perhaps that strikes you as harsh, but bear with me.

Far down in the article the writer speaks of the perception of golf there as "Your Dad's sport".  But guess what Japan has precious few of...  Anyone?  Bueller.....  That would be, wait for it, Dads:

'This is death to the family': Japan's fertility crisis is creating economic and social woes never seen before

The daily constraints have made for a worrisome trend. Japan has entered a vicious cycle of low fertility and low spending that has led to trillions in lost GDP and a population decline of 1 million people, all within just the past five years. If left unabated, experts forecast severe economic downturn and a breakdown in the fabric of social life.

From the great Mark Steyn, this has always been to me the starkest factoid distilling the truly scary demographic death spiral under way in Japan:

By 2020, in the Land of the Rising Sun, adult diapers will outsell baby diapers

So golf clubs dying is troubling, but in the context of Japan itself dying off seems a mere anecdote.  Keep on rocking, NPR, how would we ever understand the world around us without you?

Your Weekly Tiger Scat - Golf Channel has expanded its broadcast times, so we can subject the Big Cat's swing to more analysis than the Zapruder film... The Tour Confidential Panel took this crack at his prognosis earlier in the week:

1. Brandel Chamblee told our Ryan Asselta that Tiger Woods's back injuries will prevent him from being competitive again. "If you do an Internet search of the greatest sports comebacks from injury, you'll get a litany of injuries" Chamblee said. "The one thing you will not get is a bad back followed by great athletic achievement." Do you agree?

Michael Bamberger: Chamblee's analysis was trenchant and reasoned and I do agree with it in every way except one: it doesn't allow for Woods's extraordinary will. He's diminished. He'll never chip as he once did. But like Johnny Miller winning at Pebble with the yips in his mid-40s, I think Woods will win again, sometime in the next 10 years. Maybe even a Masters. But I don't see him becoming anything like a week-in, week-out figure in the game, not as a player. Maybe in other ways, though.

Josh Sens: And if you do an internet search on guys who came back from the yips and waning confidence, the list of success is even shorter. The mental side of the game, the loss of the so-called "edge," is as much of a hurdle for Tiger as the injuries. Yes. His competitive drive and confidence were incomparable in his prime. But that swaggering Tiger is no more, and I don't see him coming back.

None of us know enough for our opinions to mean anything, so do you want to know mine?  

I'll not linger long here, but there is one thought that I had....  Even if he is healthy and can regain most of what he once was, it's entirely that that won't be sufficient for him to win....But as Mike notes, there's a long history in our game of guys catching lightning in a bottle in the late stages of their careers, and that to me is really the upside here.

 Alex Myers has some fun revisiting stats from Peak Tiger, and the do take one's breath away:

13: The number of years -- that's right, YEARS -- Tiger has spent at No. 1 in the Official

World Golf Ranking. To be exact, Tiger has spent 683 weeks in the top spot, which is more than double Greg Norman (331 weeks), who is second on the list.

Yowser! And this, which might be Tiger's most amazing feat:

6: Consecutive USGA titles won by Woods from 1991-1996. Woods claimed three straight U.S. Juniors and three straight U.S. Amateurs.

If not most amazing, then least likely to be replicated.... 

On a sillier note, these folks have a summary of the seven worst scandals in golf, and Tiger can claim two of them.  Even though I linked, feel free to skip that one....  though John Daly did say that it's an honor just to be nominated....

If you have money to waste, get your bet down before a strong performance eat The Hero moves the odds:

Jordan Spieth is the overall favorite to win a major in 2018 at 3-2, according to odds posted this week. Rory McIlroy is close in at 5-2. 

Spieth won the British Open in 2017, while McIlroy disappointed himself and his fans in failing to win at all this year. 

Tiger Woods, meanwhile, continues to find favor with oddsmakers and bettors. He sits at 20-1 to win a major in 2018.

Egads, I don't like him at 100-1.

Enough is Enough -  Remember back when Steph Curry played in that Web.com event?  I feel about celebrity sponsor's exemptions the way that Bill Clinton said he felt about abortion (his lips were moving so he was lying), that they should be safe, legal and.....RARE.

The Web.com tour has another celebrity joining its ranks — this time from the world of 

Where he belongs, in a Pro-am.

country music. 

The Nashville Golf Open Benefitting the Snedeker Foundation announced Mondaythat Jake Owen will compete in the 2018 event, which is held at Nashville Golf & Athletic Club the week of May 21-27. 

Owen will maintain his amateur status in the event and will compete on an unrestricted sponsor exemption. 

Owen was a serious junior golfer before a wakeboarding accident forced him to put his focus elsewhere, but still plays to a 3-handicap. Without the childhood injury, he told GOLF.com, "I probably would have just continued to golf, that's why I'm still playing it. I love it so much. It's something that I really enjoy, but I'm happy the way life worked out.

The argument is that this will increase interest in the event, yanno the rising tide argument.  I just don't buy that there will be tangible benefits, and they're taking a spot in the field from a player that desperately needs it.

Media Meltdown -  I don't remember whether I covered the fact that Time, Inc. has been attempting to peddle Golf Magazine, along with the Golf.com website.  As you can imagine, that's a marginal title within the declining media landscape, but with the added benefit of upscale demographics.

Time itself has been on the block, as the concept of waiting for a weekly news magazine to arrive in one's mailbox is straight out of the 1950's sepia-toned hues and all.  Amusingly, the industry has been rocked by the revelation that someone actually thinks Time, Inc. has value:

But as the Time Inc. folk dined on a standard-issue banquet meal of crab cakes, steak, mashed potatoes and string beans, there was one topic that came up in just about every

conversation: the previous evening’s reports that a pair of billionaire free-market warriors, Charles and David Koch, were backing Meredith Corporation in its third attempt to buy Time Inc. 

Meredith, the Des Moines-based publisher of magazines like Better Homes & Gardens, Parents, Family Circle, Midwest Living, and Rachael Ray Every Day, has developed an Ahab-like passion for acquiring Time Inc., which is attractive because it owns analogous monthly titles like Real Simple, Southern Living,Cooking Light, and Food & Wine. Meredith made a play for the company’s lifestyle portfolio back in 2013, but the deal collapsed, and Time Inc. was instead spun off from Time Warner into an independent public company that has struggled gravely in the face of deadly print-advertising declines—down 18 percent in the most recent quarterly results announced last week—and tepid digital revenue growth (up 2 percent).

Be still my foolish heart....  These folks would rather the business die than have to deal with the evil Koch Brothers, making it a match made in heaven.  And the linked Vanity Fair piece is just a classic of the genre, filled with overwrought accusations and outright inaccuracies.

Shall we have some fun?

If you’re a reporter or editor at Time Inc., particularly at the company’s legacy news brands, you wouldn’t be crazy if you were feeling at least a pang of anxiety at the prospect of being tied up with the Kochs, whose generous bankrolling of deeply conservative causes and candidates, and think tanks opposing climate change, have fueled their characterization as villainous boogeymen who threaten the liberal world order. Journalists who cover the Wichita-based Koch Industries, a sprawling if mostly colorless consortium with chemicals and petroleum at its core, have accused them of combative media tactics, including New Yorker writer Jane Mayer’s description of a “boiler room” operation, reportedly involving several close Koch associates, to discredit her.

OMG, they oppose climate change!  The inhumanity of it all.... The Ministry of Truth has not approved that opinion...  But I especially like the appeal to authority in the form of Jane Mayer without, you know, mentioning this.

One other quick excerpt before we move on:

The Kochs, it’s worth noting, already have something of a relationship with Time. They have thrice appeared on the magazine’s Time 100 list, in 2011, 2014, and 2015. David Koch, known as the bon vivant of the two—with a $17 million Park Avenue pad in Manhattan, where he has donated astronomical sums to institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lincoln Center and New York–Presbyterian Hospital—once did lunch with former Time editor Rick Stengel, and he is a regular at the annual Time 100 gala. Several attendees shared with me their recollections of David having a grand old time at the soirée, comfortably rubbing elbows in a room filled with the types of celebrity, business, and philanthropic elites who tend to be on the opposite side of the Kochs’ ruthlessly capitalist ideology. “He was kind of swaying in the way you’d expect a gangly conservative billionaire to dance,” said a person who had their eye on him at one of the galas. “He obviously has some personality and some life in him. There are other extremely conservative people who come to that event and don’t feel comfortable there. He was.”

Can you sense the disappointment at that last bit?  OMG, he danced....he has a personality.  Forget the fact that if an outsider is at your party perhaps it's your obligation to try to make him feel comfortable....  

But by far the best bit is the reference to his "ruthless capitalist ideology".  Yanno, that capitalism that has taken mankind out of the clutches of grinding poverty.  And, for those not keeping a scorecard at home, the Kochs are more libertarian than conservative.  A libertarian is someone that wants to claim political power for the purposes of leaving you alone....  Good fun.

'Tis the Season - For Golf.com to revisit the turkeys of the year, a fun stroll down memory lane.  We'll start with an award that's highly insufficient, as only a lifetime achievement award seems appropriate:

The Elk Award for Lamentable Tweets 

Winner: Grayson Murray 

Playing golf is hard enough without keeping your foot crammed in your mouth. But Murray seems content to multi-task. After a self-imposed (Tour-imposed?)exile from social media (brought about, in part, by a regrettable war of words with European tour players and an icky tweet he sent to a female high school student), the 24-year-old Tour pro returned to Twitter this fall, just in time to make an enemy of himself again with an offending message about the Champions tour. "Does anyone really care is the real question... These guys were relevant 10 plus years ago." Murray apologized two days later. But how many mulligans does one man get?

Though the naming of the award is an appreciated homage.

This is kind of a twofer:

The Dustin Johnson Award for Bizarre Off-Course Injuries

Winner: Henrik Stenson 

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No. Wait. It’s Stenson, draped in a cape and dangling from cables as part of a goofy publicity stunt in advance of the WGC-HSBC Champions. Hilarious. But like mom used to say: It’s only fun until someone hurts a rib and pulls out of a tournament.

Good times.....  Enjoy your Thanksgiving.  Not sure what the blogging schedule will be, so reader beware.