Tuesday Tidbits

Just a couple of quick items for y'all today....

Hello Friends - Treacly Jim Nantz is back this week, after Golf Channel has held the coverage through the undesirable weeks competing with the NFL playoffs.  OK, I feel bad taking a shot at Nantz who seems a genuinely nice guy, but the CBS team has devolved into a painful mess.

Golfweek's The Forecaddie informs that they're trying to up their game with through the following:

For all 23 broadcasts in 2018, CBS will have TrackMan on each of the 18 tees as the network did at last August’s PGA Championship. The Man Out Front’s request for

comment on this move went unanswered from CBS, but he hopes this means we will get more of the tracer technology that all of us want so desperately. The 3D radar tracking system will definitely give fans and announcers more real-time insight into ball speed, distance, curve and other goodies that geeks love, while adding a high-tech modern look for the rest who see golf broadcasting as outdated.

Another big addition comes in the form of solidifying the relationship with Amanda Balionis, who injected much-needed energy into many of CBS’ telecasts last year as the primary post-round interviewer. The former PGA Tour Productions face and current Callaway Golf host has signed on as a regular contributor, meaning Balionis will continue to employ a high-tech mobile screen to review highlights with players, query them about key stats and, in general, bring some much-needed insight into the normally stale post-round interview.

Oy, sorry to have gotten your hopes up.... In addition to those, is it conceivable that they might actually show us some live golf?  Nope, wouldn't be prudent....

Post-round interviews are notoriously awkward and uninteresting, but putting them in front of a video screen just adds a dimension of discomfort where they don't know where to look or to whom they're speaking...  Trackman itself is fine, and has the benefit of giving Sir Nick something quantitative about which to mumble incoherently.  

But see what you think of this tease:

So as The Forecaddie waits to get his wish on Tony Romo adding some new energy to the broadcast team, he was thrilled to hear of two moves for the 2018 schedule kicking off at this week’s Farmers Insurance Open.

That could work, although I'm unclear as to how it would work.

I've been pleasantly surprised by Romo in the football broadcast booth, and anything to shake up the CBS crew would be a positive.  Faldo would no doubt be threatened by the guy, which might push him towards coherence....  Yeah, baby steps.  I'm just not sure they'd know how to utilize him, but it would be fun watching them fight for air time.

The Modern Pro -  It's a seven-part series, but I only awoke for Part III:

Marketing the Modern Pro: How social media and self-promotion has changed the branding game

Any guesses who they chose as their poster boy?  Who else?

Fast forward 30 hours and a victorious Fowler, decked out in flashy Puma gear, is standing next to Woods, the tournament host, as he's presented the trophy after shooting a course-record 61 in the final round. Fowler will do a myriad of interviews and grin for photos with his girlfriend, Olympian pole-vaulter Allison Stokke. In the coming hours he'll commemorate the victory on his Snapchat and Instagram accounts — a million-plus followers strong on each — and dutifully tag Cobra's new F8 driver, which he used in competition for the first time in the Bahamas. 

Fowler is a marketer's dream: a handsome, stylish, media-savvy, well-spoken pro golfer with a buzzy, athletic main squeeze. As Fowler basks in victory, there are several other winners, too: his sponsors. Mercedes-Benz, Puma, Cobra, Red Bull, Wheels Up. Rickie has done it again.

And that is exactly how it's done.....well, ignoring Step 1, the posting of a course-record 61 in the final round of the Hero World Challenge.  Though I found this a bit mean-spirited:

Among the players who have won more than him on Tour: Ryan Moore (five titles), Jason Dufner (five), Ben Crane (five), Hunter Mahan (six) and Bill Haas (six). Cumulatively those players' social followings fall far short of Fowler's, which shows you how valuable a bright, ambitious athlete with an ever-charged phone can be.

And an orange shirt....

And this is interesting:

"Golfers have a tremendous opportunity, because they are individual contractors," Badenhausen said. "It's also an extremely global sport. So these guys have opportunities to cut deals where marketing will be used around the world. That's not something that exists in baseball or the NFL, so Nike can use a guy like Rory McIlroy throughout the world, which allows Rory to command a much bigger sum than he would if he was playing in a sport that's [popular only in] one country. And the demographics are great, because the clientele that watches golf has very high disposable income that spends money on equipment and apparel and cars and watches and does a lot of financial services. So that makes these guys terrific walking billboards when they're out on the course on Sundays."

Huh?  I've been reliably informed that golf is a dying game followed only by old white men that will soon be dead white men....

To their credit, they tie it all back to Arnie, though what is new eludes me.  I get that Arnie didn't have Snapchat and Twitter, but sponsors gravitated to Arnie in the very same way that they are to Rickie, Lexi and Jordan.  There's just a few more commas in the numbers involved....

One of the prior installments covered the modern golf pro's body, and included this graphic:

Hmmm...left-to-right, I'm going with Tim Herron, Sandy Lyle, Grayson Murray, John Daly and Dustin Johnson.  Your choices?

Early Daze - John Huggan has been around for a while, and offers some practical advice to the Yanks about a certain September event:

In the day and weeks that followed the U.S. team’s utterly predictable win over a clearly inferior International squad in last year’s Presidents Cup, it appeared to many in Europe that too much was being read into events at Liberty National. Maybe it was the inspirational presence of the Statue of Liberty. Maybe it was the conclusive manner of the American’s victory over a team that, whisper it, did not come close to playing to its limited capabilities. Maybe it was just the relief of winning. Whatever, the clearly talented but still mostly callow nephews of Uncle Sam were suddenly being touted as maybe the greatest golf team of all time, one the poor old Euros couldn’t possibly hope to defeat.

The Euros thrive on the underdog role, which they're sure to have in Paris in September.  And this:

All of which has provoked much sniggering in the Old World. While none of Europe’s best have commented publicly (they know better), it is a fact that the waves of hyperbole over the last few months have done nothing but increase the determination of the home players to see off those pesky colonials come September. 

Which is probably the last thing American captain Jim Furyk wants to hear. A seasoned campaigner who has suffered more than most in close-run Ryder Cup matches, the former U.S. Open champion will surely be hoping his charges can contain their enthusiasm for trumpeting their own talents over the next few months and, not to put too fine a point on it, shut up and play. 

Besides, the European team that will tee-up at Le Golf National is already shaping up to be considerably stronger than the relatively hapless bunch that played in Minnesota in 2016. The numbers do not lie. As of this morning, nine Europeans are ranked amongst the world’s top-20 golfers. Only eight hail from the United States.

To be fair, the commentary to which he's reacting has come from the golfing press, not the players.  And Exhibit One is Alan Shipnuck's item from a few months ago, predicting U.S. dominance in the coming era.  

This guy is no better, though his excuse will be that Alan started it:

It's gonna be a crazy week.

Get Off My Lawn - I'm a bit unclear on this, but I thought that with ESPN no longer airing golf, that what Curtis Strange thinks has lost all relevance.  Apparently I was misinformed:

And this important clarification:

In that case I see both their points.

Oakmont By The Numbers - A sad but interesting take:

Egads!  Shall we let Shack do the honors?

Ryan Farrow did an aerial overlay of the famed Oakmont Country Club from 1938 vs. 2017 and found that more bunkers have been added while there has been a huge drop in fairway acreage and width. 

The club's tree removal program undoubtedly impacts the turf shift to rough, but that's not the entire story. Something else has happened in that time. Oh, right, the top players are hitting it about 80 yards longer.

This club's membership has an unusually high threshold for pain, but not a good trend line for our game.

I'll leave you there.  Hope to see you tomorrow, since Thursday is a travel day.