'Dis and 'Dat

The plan is to take today off from skiing to ensure fresh legs for the coming wave of storms...so, what would you like to talk about?

Sony Preview - Waialae Country Club has always puzzled me, presented as a Seth Raynor masterpiece but not evidencing any of the interesting design features typical to a Raynor design.  The land itself is pancake flat, though that's above Seth's pay grade.  Shack fills us in on what's happening there:

As we discussed on Golf Central today, Waialae arrives in sharp contrast to last week's

venue. But going forward, the Honolulu course will begin to look different this year and beyond. This is good news for those who have scratched their heads wondering how the course could be a Seth Raynor design. 

The PGA Tour's on-site advance man for the last eight years, John Lillivis, reports already seeing an improvement from the removal of 230 trees by architect Tom Doak. The removal has allowed for more sunlight and turf growth, leading the club to introduce tight mow around many of the greens according to Lillivas.

New hole locations have been restored on the 4th and 6th greens but probably won't be introduced this year to let the areas mature. Doak is reportedly planning many more changes to greens with Raynor's style in mind. The outcome will be fun to watch as its pretty clear Raynor's bold style was not incorporated at Waialae because of his lack of on-site time. Therefore, Doak will have to balance keeping the course fun, playable and enjoyable for members, while keeping it relevant in today's game. One that expects a challenge along with a certain bunker depth and style if a course wants to call itself a Raynor.

Doak is a good choice for that task.  Hopefully they can turn it into a venue that justifies carrying Raynor's name.

This Week in Endorsements - A couple of quasi-interesting developments there....this first no doubt the odder of the two:

Under Armour announced a new deal with Yale Athletics Monday, and while the terms were not officially disclosed, a person with knowledge of them said the Baltimore-based apparel company will pay $16.5 million to outfit the Bulldogs for the next 10 years. 

That’s more per year than Nike Inc. pays to outfit Rutgers or Illinois, according to the Portland Business Journal’s contract database, and dwarfs the $460,000 Nike pays Iowa State -- all major-conference programs whose basketball and football teams regularly appear on national TV, giving their sponsors’ logos valuable visibility across the U.S.

Yale?  Why would you do that?  Here's what passes for the business rationale:

So what’s in it for Under Armour? The Yale brand, said Under Armour Vice President of Sports Marketing Ryan Kuehl, who cited the powerful alumni network, its global footprint and its elite student body. 

"The number of young people around the world who aspire to attend Yale University is mind-boggling. That aspirational positioning made the deal worth it," Kuehl said.

The Yale brand?  But I see no reference to Halloween costumes in the description of contract terms.... And this seems like wishful thinking:

Under Armour may be particularly interested in Yale’s golfers, who are likely to keep playing long after they graduate. Yale’s golf course was recently rated the best university course in the country by GolfWeek magazine; Under Armour sponsors Masters champion Jordan Spieth and is building its golf business.

Yes, they have quite the interesting Macdonald golf course with what might be the most famous Biarritz greens, but does that make Yale golfers more likely to keep playing?  Interesting theory...

Best of all is the built-in segue to our next item, which Shack's header notes is an opening for the competition:

An Opening? Competition Can Only Hope Jordan Spieth Will Be Injesting Copious Amounts Of High Fructose Corn Syrup

Incurring the wrath of Michael Bloomberg, here's the actual story:

As if the sports marketing world needed another sign that the 22-year-old is "the real

thing," the golfer has signed a deal with Coca-Cola. Neither the company nor his agent, Jay Danzi, would confirm the financials of the partnership other than to suggest the multiyear deal will be one of the biggest the company has made with an athlete. 

Spieth will appear on everything from television commercials to digital and social media as well as point-of-sale and on packaging for Coca-Cola products as well as its water brand Dasani.

Coke posted this video for us:

I only posted that video for the opportunity to share some first-class Shack snark:

They also posted this video-- a 5 on Awkward Scale, with a 10 being "kidnapped by El Chapo"--where Spieth discusses his love of post-golf Coca-Cola drinking in Texas (take that,Dr. Pepper!).

I would have gone with the Iranian Navy, as he comes dangerously close to comparing Jordan to Sean Penn.  Stevie maybe, but not our Jordan....

All Things DeChambeau - Remember when our biggest complaint about our game was that the players were all produced from a cookie-cutter, and were indistinguishable from each other.  That hasn't been a problem for a while, and in this Era of Jordan, Jason, Rory, Rickie and Bubba, we have been blessed with an abundance of appealing personalities and styles of play.

But the biggest shock to our system may be paused on the horizon, in the figure of reigning NCAA and U.S. Amateur Champion Bryson DeChambeau.  Even the name feels like it's from a different era...

Tim Rosaforte is back on solid ground (really, there's a reason Suzann Pettersen chose him to whom to bear her soul) with an update on the interesting young man currently in golf-limbo:

As part of the internship—which will end April 11 if DeChambeau sticks to his current thinking about turning pro—he has made one exploratory trip to Augusta and has plans for four more visits before the Masters. We’ve been texting through the winter months, and Bryson described his two rounds at Augusta National in December as the greatest experience he’s ever had. “Bobby Jones’ spirit is alive and well there,” he said. 

The highly educated Jones, who earned a degree in mechanical engineering from Georgia Tech and another in English literature from Harvard, would have been intrigued by the artist and the scientist in the young man from Clovis, Calif. According to DeChambeau’s coach, Mike Schy, Jones won the Grand Slam using a set of same-length irons, a distinctive characteristic of Bryson’s David Edel-made clubs, which he expects to stay with as a pro.

The limbo was caused by the senseless death penalty to the SMU golf program, preventing DeChambeau from defending his NCAA individual title.  In the interim, Bryson is making some new friends:

Other than Australia, DeChambeau filled his playing schedule at the end of 2015 with better-ball events in California like the Straight Down Fall Classic in San Luis Obispo and the Plantation Pro-Am in Indio, the latter providing him an opportunity to exchange ideas with Phil Mickelson. 

“We were just loving the time spent together, one golf geek to another, talking about fun stuff and trying to figure out a couple things on my end from the wedging aspect,” DeChambeau said of his conversation with Mickelson. “He was talking away, and I was listening. It was a lot of fun.”

Of course that trip Down Under ended with a second place finish in the Australian Masters, which certainly took this observer by surprise.  He'll be playing in all three Euro Tour stops in the desert, so that will give us a good sense of whether his game is ready for the heightened level of competition.

Click here to see his unusual balance training...

I don't have a clue as to whether he has the talent to succeed, but it will be fun to have him around.

Is That All You Got? - Golf Magazine updates its annual Most Beautiful Women in Golf, and color me disappointed.  I'll await expert commentary from Maggot, but I can't help but be underwhelmed.

There's the obligatory Holly Sonders sighting, but since she moved to Fox is she still considered to be "In golf"?

And who is Bailey Mosier?

She looks like she should be the spinster sister on Downton Abbey.  And Anna Cladakis?

And yet, no room for Paige Spirinac:

C'mon guys, I know she's not much of a player, but she reads comic books in red lingerie....that's gotta count for something.

A Trip to the Dark Side

The best read in golf today is Alan Shipnuck's long journey into the tortured mind of Kevin Na.  I know, but bear with me here, as it's the perfect storm, a game with a unique ability to torture it's practitioners taken up by an obsessive individual with many dark places into which he retreats.

Here's Alan's table-setter:

The nightmares were the first sign that golf was not going to be kind to Kevin Na.

Sometimes he missed a putt on the last green, or he hit a ball in the water on the 72nd hole, or maybe another player produced a heroic shot to beat him, but the result was always the same: Na would lose the tournament and then awaken in a panic, his heart jumping out of his chest. He would be haunted for a decade, even when he was playing his best golf. On the eve of the final round of the 2011 PGA Tour stop in Las Vegas, Na went to sleep tied for the lead. He was in his own bed, in his adopted hometown. His mom was staying with him for the week, cooking his favorite meals. And yet the nightmare returned. "I woke up that morning, and I was so pissed," recalls Na. "Why then?"

Surprisingly, since Na's career is noted for his squandered chances, that's the one time he got it done.  But in a moment of cosmic irony, the win qualified him for a trip to Kapalua, where some of the severe shots he faced cause him to start balking, unable to even take the club back, ultimately leading to that tortured weekend at Sawgrass that will always define his career.

Of course the other moment that defines him was his play on the ninth hole in the first round of the Texas Open:

The 9th hole of the Oaks course is a straightaway 474-yard par-4 with a relatively narrow fairway. Na's drive was a wild slice deep into the forest. He hit a provisional ball, yanking it far to the left. After an extensive search Na found his first ball, but it was in an unplayable lie. Since there was no decent spot within one club's length to take a drop, he made the walk of shame back to the tee. Standing there, stewing, was the man who for so long haunted his nightmares, Ogilvy, along with Adam Scott and his caddie, Steve Williams, as well as Angel Cabrera, the brooding two-time major champion who is among the most intimidating men in golf.

Shipnuck devotes another four full 'graphs to his blow-by-blow account of the hole, which resulted in a sixteen, better known as a duodecuple bogey.  Stevie shows up later in all his typical Stevieness:

Na sees a double standard in that when other players struggle and play slower, it is

excused as a bad day, but he is never shown the same courtesy. In September 2014, at the Deutsche Bank Championship, he and playing partners Adam Scott and Chris Kirk combined to make four bogeys and two doubles in the first five holes of their opening round. All of this bad golf took a long time, and they were out of position for much of the rest of the round. Na could sense that Steve Williams was stewing. The following day, as Na labored to a 74, he believed Williams was giving him the stink eye and says that at round's end, the caddie avoided shaking his hand. 

"In the scoring tent," Na says, "as I was about to leave, Stevie looks at me and goes, 'Do you ever watch a bad movie again and again?' I didn't really know what he was talking about, so I just said, 'Uh, no.' He goes, 'That's what you are, Kevin, a bad movie. I never want to see you play again.' And I looked at him, and I said, 'Stevie, you're out of line. If Adam has a problem with my play, he has every right to say whatever he wants. You're in no position to tell me what you just said to me.' He got real close to me and was saying basically that he could say whatever he wanted. It was getting pretty heated, but one of the Tour officials stepped in and said, 'Guys, not in here.' And that ended it." (Williams declined to comment.)

The famed Stevie stink eye...  And don't worry, Kevin's also got a Tiger story for us:

At last year's PGA Championship, Na approached Tiger Woods on the practice putting green and asked him to autograph a hat for Nam. Tiger knows Nam from junior golf and is well aware that he is a fixture in Korean tabloids for having romanced a well-known actress and a former Miss Korea, among others. 

"Is Nam still getting a lot of ass?" Na recalls Woods asking.

Na replied that the hat was for Nam's latest girlfriend. 

That was an acceptable answer for Woods: "If it will help him get laid, I'll do it." The two cracked up, leaving the hundreds of fans surrounding the green to wonder what was so funny.

Errrr...perhaps you shouldn't go there, Tiger?   

Allenby, The Presser

I'm still completely disillusioned over the best story of 2015, as the police confirming that our hero was not at La Femme Nu on that Friday night undermines the entire narrative.... what's a lonely blogger to cling to in this crazy, mixed-up world?

Doug Ferguson provides some of the highlights from the Tuesday presser, most importantly his strategy for the coming week:

''I've got so many great memories here that I wasn't going to let one bad one interrupt it,''

he said Sunday night after checking into the Kahala Hotel at Waialae Country Club. ''I also thought for my own well-being that maybe I could come here and face it and put some closure on what happened last year.'' 

He had dinner at the hotel with friends and already has his dining plans laid out for the week. 

''Room service and (hotel) restaurant,'' he said.

Fair enough, but I assume he's still take that drink to the men's room with him, just to be safe.  I started with this piece because of its succinct summary of the man's career:

Through it all, his reputation didn't help. 

He is renowned for a fierce temper on the golf course. Allenby once claimed Anthony Kim was out all night before the final day of the Presidents Cup - after Kim had beaten him badly in singles. He mixed it up with Geoff Ogilvy over who was to blame for a team loss in the Presidents Cup at Royal Melbourne two years later. And he has gone through more than a dozen caddies.

How do you mix it up with Geoff Ogilvy?   Is there a nicer or more easy-going guy than that?

John Strege had this from Allenby's comments:

“There’s been a lot of thoughts about it over the last year. A lot of good things, a lot negative things about this. There has been more negative than anything. That really was the whole piece to the puzzle of coming here is to dilute all the negative stuff. Hawaii is such a beautiful place. I didn’t want people to think I wasn’t going to come back here because of what happened. I enjoy being here. The weather is perfect. The golf course is always perfect. People here are always so awesome and so friendly. Sony is a great sponsor. Why not support a great tournament?

I think that was the bit that caused Shack to refer to him as the Rosa Parks of the PGA Tour...yanno, it's a "We shall overcome" moment.  And of course it's completely self-absorbed, as the last thing the locals and Sony want is for us all to be rehashing this incident.  

This seems to be about all that we know for sure:

A month after the incident, police arrested a Hawaii man for using Allenby's credit cards. Owen Harbison was sentenced in August to five years.

Assuming the police are correct, then we're left with Allenby being over-served at the Amuse Wine Bar and collapsing as the most logical scenario... but how about this for irony?

Whatever happened that night - Allenby says he still doesn't remember anything during a 2 1/2-hour window - it might have gone unnoticed except that Allenby posted a photo his private Facebook page of a bloody scrape on his head and a swollen eye.

And lest you feel sorry for the man, he comes out with this:

“I lost a lot of confidence in my myself from last year with what happened here. I didn’t want to be out in public but I had to be because I had to do my job. The media definitely humiliated me and it was a very hard thing to overcome. 

“My life itself probably hasn’t changed but maybe my reputation has changed. It’s been tarnished though false reporting.”

OK, maybe the Golf Channel report is fair to criticize, but for the rest he can just look in the mirror. 

Tuesday Tastings

I'm not sure that I've got enough time to do this justice, so let's skip the preliminaries...

Forward Press, Buried Lede Edition - It takes Shack more time than expected to get to the issue du jour, about which he has this to say:

Allenby Returns To The Scene Of The Crime!

Something tells me we won’t be seeing much dwelling on Robert Allenby’s Taken 4 international news spectacle from last year. After all, a tourism-based economy doesn’t want to hear stories of kidnapping, bloodied faces and homeless encampments when there is the Sony Open at Waialae Country Club.

Hey, who cares about an island economy when I have readers to amuse....  But back on his own blog, Shack had this from Doug Ferguson:

A Hawaii man was arrested a month later for using Allenby's credit cards to buy gift cards, jewelry and clothing. Owen Harbison was sentenced in August to five years. 

Allenby stood by his story, saying the media blamed him when he was the victim. He says he suspects someone slipped a drug in his drink because he had total memory loss during a 2½-hour window from leaving the Amuse Wine Bar and being woken in the park. 

Golf Channel cited unidentified sources in a strip club that Allenby was at Club Femme Nu and ran up a tab of $3,400. Honolulu Police Det. John McCarthy said the report was not true, and the police investigation showed Allenby was never in the strip club. 

Allenby made only six cuts on the PGA Tour the rest of the year.

As much as I enjoy that last bit, it's the third 'graph that's completely new to me.  I'm sad to admit that at this point II don't know who to believe.... if the police have actually concluded that Allenby was never in Club Femme Nu, then I really don't know what happened and why he, pace Shack, tried to sell the screenplay for Taken 4, This Time It's Personal.

But our Robert has been moving forward with his life:

In Australia last month during charity work for children's cancer Allenby said he had sought psychological help. "It's been traumatic and it's been very tough, but no one ever really actually came out with the truth. That's been tough to take as well," Allenby said.

Well, you could have...or, in the alternative, something at least remotely believable.  But he does have some good advice for us all....or at least for cantankerous Tour pros that are prone to getting tanked after missing cuts:

"I'm very cautious, there's no question about it. Most important thing is you never leave a glass of wine or any drink unattached anywhere. And that's probably the best advice I could give anyone in the world because it's not a pleasant experience – especially the outcome of what could happen."

I'll take that under advisement...

DVR Alert -  Shack uses the prime real estate in his Forward Press feature to talk with Sean McDonough about this:

This week the 53-year-old tackles one of the toughest tasks in broadcasting: a golf

tournament consisting of relative unknowns. 

Actually, they’re completely, all, 100% totally unknowns. No offense lads. 

Not that McDonough is complaining about his first ever trip to the Dominican Republic for ESPN’s coverage of the second annual Latin America Amateur Championship.

But there's one awfully good reason to consider tuning in, and that would be this:

Here's Pete reading some of his own writings on Teeth of the Dog, focusing on the difficulty construction process:

And here's some spectacular drone footage:

Thing is, except for a 1994 Shell's Wonderful World of Golf match (Floyd v. Couples), it's never been on the tube previously.  

The Blind Leading the... I though that Rickie channeling his inner Michelle Wie was a curious choice, but how about this source for a much needed chipping lesson?

It was a difficult 2015 for Michelle Wie, who didn't earn a single top 10 all season as she wasbeset by illness and injury. Instead of a long-awaited breakout, expected possibly more than ever following her 2014 U.S. Women's Open triumph, Wie regressed in 2015. 

What's one to do to try to rebound in 2016? Well, ensure better health as much as possible, for one. Also, maybe get some pointers from a fellow Stanford product. 

The latter is exactly what Wie did, and the former Cardinal instructing her? Tiger Woods:

Here's her Instagram post:

Love the sepia tone.... But Tiger's not THAT old.

Give the Man a Break - Sometimes we can just let folks suffer in private, no?  With no video available, was this really newsworthy?

The dreaded yips that plagued Ernie Els on a couple of occasions last year apparently have carried over into the new year. Els’ par putt from 18 inches missed the hole entirely on his last hole in the first round of the BMW South African Open, the Irish Times reported.

Well, they never go away, and of course he can no longer "cheat like the rest of the guys".

 Abraham Zapruder could not be reached for comment.

Luke's Plan B - We had James Corrigan's item yesterday on Luke Donald, in which Luke displayed renewed enthusiasm for the game and his prospects.

As always, it's good to have a fallback plan, and here's Luke's:

I'd say the odds are comparable to him hitting enough fairways to be competitive.

Thank God He Didn't Do the Full Henrik - The shot of the week, courtesy of David Howell:

I know, he could have left the manzierre on...  In a GMTA moment, Alex Myers had the same thought as your humble correspondent, saving me all that time working the Wabac machine:

It never gets old, does it?

Weekend Wrap

I'm sure you had trouble finding time for golf this weekend, as the Wild Card weekend was quite compelling....unless, of course, you have the misfortune to be a Bengals fan.  Do they do IQ testing at the scouting combines?  Evidence would suggest not...

Kapalua Nail-biter - It was close....at least for most of Thursday morning....http://www.tampabay.com/sports/golf/spieth-wins-tournament-of-champions-at-30-under/2260770Doug Ferguson with the game story:

KAPALUA, Hawaii — Jordan Spieth brought his old form to the new year and had no

trouble winning the Tournament of Champions on Sunday.

Staked to a five-shot lead, Spieth made two straight birdies around the turn at Kapalua to restore his margin, and he spent the rest of the afternoon soaking up the views of surf and sun on Maui. 

Spieth made an 8-foot birdie putt to reach his target, even though he didn't need it. He closed with 6-under 67 for an eight-shot victory over Patrick Reed at 30-under 262. He joins Ernie Els as the only players in PGA Tour history to finish a 72-hole event at 30 under or lower.

Now, none of the press seems to have covered the important issue, isn't that the same shirt he wore on Sunday at Chambers Bay?  Didn't think the sponsors went for that... Of course folks can't help themselves with the Tiger comparisons:

Spieth won his seventh title in his 77th start as a pro. Woods won his seventh PGA Tour event in his 38th start, and he had 18 wins in his first 77 tournaments. 

"Nowhere near," Spieth said on how his record stacks up with Woods. "I don't think there's any reason to compare. It's awfully early. We're excited about where we're at to start our career. What Tiger has done, I can't imagine ever being done."

John Strege also bristles at the inevitable comparisons:

Woods, at the same stage, was on the cusp of a dominant decade that seemingly rendered 

his eclipsing Nicklaus’ record of 18 majors a formality. A tough act to follow. 

A more appropriate question: Wouldn’t it be better simply to enjoy Spieth for what he is, fresh air in an often fetid sporting world (to wit, the Bengals-Steelers game Saturday night) and a reason to look forward to watching how the story unfolds in a sport too frequently capable of curing insomnia?

They're very different players, but the comparisons are not without interest.  Tiger was physically dominant and, coming off that historic amateur career, took about an hour and a half to learn to win in the professional game.  Jordan went through some public growing pains, but is an obvious quick-learner.... But without the ability to physically intimidate the opposition.

To me Jordan is the hare in this comparison, and one has to assume that he can't keep up with Tiger's early career accomplishments.  But slow-and-steady can work well in our game, so it will be fun to watch.

The Tour Confidential panel took a shot at this issue, and Josh Sens caught my eye with his historical analogies:

2. GOLF.com's Cameron Morfit hypothesized that players are pressing too hard when paired with Spieth, in the same way that players did when paired with Tiger Woods. Have you seen much evidence of that? 

SENS: I don't disagree, but Spieth dominates in such an affable way, and without overwhelming power, so any effect he has comes off far more subtly. In Tiger's heyday, guys playing with him largely had the doomed look of Paris going up against Achilles. Glaze-eyed, stricken. Defeat seemed certain. With Spieth, the trouncing doesn't look inevitable. And then, suddenly, it does.

Go for the heel, Paris!  You mean like the way Jason Day pressed at Whistling Straits?  

See, I beg to differ, as I think one of the big differences is the level of competition.  When Tiger burst on the scene he was battling players 10-15 years older, and physically dominating those confrontations.

Jordan is awfully good, but look at the names behind him in the World Rankings.  Who was the Rory when Tiger broke in, Monty?  Davis Love?  Man, it's gonna be a fun year, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if Spieth doesn't win a major this year...

The Other Donald -  Our  house curmudgeon spent some time with Luke Donald, and Spieth would be wise to consider this a cautionary tale.  First the depths of the depression:

This was May last year. The previous month had seen him fall out of the all-important

world top 50 for the first time in more than a decade. For all but the first few years of his career, the Englishman had been a member of the elite, but now he was on the outside looking in.

Without a win on a major golf tour since he ruled the rankings in 2012, and having been overlooked for the 2014 Ryder Cup team by Paul McGinley, it was a foreboding sight; particularly as he was struggling to rediscover his golf swing after an ill-fated switch of coaches.

“My confidence had taken a big knock and I asked myself if I wanted to continue doing this,” Donald said.

That "rule the rankings" way overstates the case, but he was ranked No. 1 for a brief moment in time.  The entire piece is well worth your time, especially the discussion of Luke turning to a sports psychologist.

Here's his rousing conclusion:

It was not too long ago that Donald was Spieth, bringing his rivals to their knees with that wand he waved on the greens. “Yeah, it’s a good feeling, thinking that you’re going to hole everything you look at. And you don’t think it’s ever going to end,” Donald said. “But for a good year there, as I focused on getting my swing back to what it was before I started working with Chuck Cook, my short game was not very good at all. 

“I need to be one of the best in the world with my short game if I’m going to be successful out here with the way I play golf. But it’s improving and coming back. I’ll get there.”

Conventional wisdom is that Luke screwed up his short game in an attempt to get longer....like all CV, that's probably only about half-true.  While I think this has some aplicability for current World No. 1, there are also some very significant differences.

Donald suffered from what I cleverly dubbed "Luke Donald Disease" (I stay up nights thinking of this stuff for your amusement), the most obvious symptom of which is hitting the ball short and crooked.  That's an ectremely precarious way to play our game, and one can see the difficulty over time and the stress it puts on one's short game.

Jordan, on the other hand, fits into that large category of long enough.... and also straight enough.  And from his public comments he seems to be using some gym work to add just a little length, but not changing anything in his actual swing.  Good call, at least until that game proves insufficient to the task...

PXG, The Morning After - Obviously we'll draw no major conclusions from Zach Johnson's T21, but those Confidentialistas had some amusing takes on the newcomer:

5. Parsons Xtreme Golf, or PXG, raised eyebrows when it signed eight new players for 2016, including Billy Horschel and Zach Johnson. Johnson had won 12 times including two majors ― most recently the 2015 British Open ― with Titleist. Were you surprised to see so many top pros jump ship from established brands to join an untested upstart?

VAN SICKLE: Pros are pretty confident that as long as they've got their shafts, they can hit just about anything that's on the end of them. Sometimes that works, sometimes that doesn't. In golf, money talks. Check back in two years to see who's playing PXG. It could be a bust or it could be the next Callaway or TaylorMade.

I've seen no discussion of shafts, which I agree is the more important component.  But obviously Parsons will never be Cally or TM at his current price points.  The real question is whether folks will gravitate towards him and pay those prices if they perceive improved performance.  But given the combined R&D budgets of the industry, can these clubs really be any better?

MORFIT: Horschel's switch might be the most surprising, since he was such a rah-rah Ping guy, but there's been a lot of movement from Ping to PXG, not just him. There's also been a lot of misinformation about how much PXG is paying guys to come over. PXG's Bob Parsons told me, "In every case, they've come to us, and they're making less than their prior spouse wanted to pay them.”

That's hard to believe for quite a few reasons...first and foremost, they're professional golfers.  They don't have breakfast for less....

Secondly, the poaching is from Titleist and Ping, who are widely reputed to be the tightest with a dollar in the industry.  The former is noted for letting it's top talent walk, see Woods, Tiger and McIlroy, Rory, and the latter pays only for results.  

Saturday Stuff

Sorry about that unscheduled absence yesterday....I can explain with one gif:

Since that's the last snow we're expecting, you'll understand that I had to grab what freshies I could.

Meet The New Boss - I'm shocked, shocked I tell you"

KAPALUA, Hawaii (AP) -- A new year, and everything is falling Jordan Spieth's way.

Spieth chipped in for eagle, make a pair of tough par saves late and ended his round Friday with a 15-foot birdie putt into the grain that stopped on the lip and then dropped into the cup for a 9-under 64. It gave him a four-shot lead in the Hyundai Tournament of Champions.

Two rounds into 2016, it already feels a lot like last year.

Yawn.   First and foremost, it's just good to have golf back after that endless off-season....yeah, both days.  One's thoughts wander to the concept of peaking too early, then we realize that his peak might still be ahead of us.

But let's not dawdle on that leaderboard, we've important stuff to get to.  First, let's get to the fashion beat with this:

You there boy! Tuck your shirt in and.... what the hell are you wearing on your feet?! 

You can just see the Club Captain's blood vessels broiling and his grizzly frown gaining several more lines of sheer disbelief and anger. Rickie Fowler's been at it again, wearing stuff that you're unlikely to see in your weekend stableford. 

Here are his ankles and feet at yesterday's Hyundai Tournament Of Champions in Hawaii. The high-tops are evident but what you have to look closer to see is he's also wearing a pair of tracky bottoms that form a sort of ghetto fabulous modern plus four.

Ghetto fabulous?  You could go a lot of years without seeing those two words used in that order.  Anyway, no sidebar pic will do, you need this in all its splendor:

Yanno, given the over-rated thing we went through last year, copying Michelle Wie seems a......wait for it, misstep.

Here's PUMA's Grant Knudson explaining the inexplicable:

“Each season we work closely with Rickie throughout the apparel and footwear development and design process to ensure we’re pushing the limits when it comes to both performance and style. 

"During a recent meeting, Rickie expressed interest in wearing a high-top cleated shoe that could be worn with more progressive apparel (joggers style pants). Our design team took inspiration from a prior Puma high-top lifestyle shoe and combined it with the Titan Tour Ignite outsole. 

"The result is a stylish, cleated performance high-top that includes a lace + Velcro closure. The apparel team then matched this with a version of our Six Pocket Pant that has been custom tailored to a jogger silhouette.”

Just one quick question, Grant, have you ever told him he's out of his cotton-picking mind?

And to continue this meme of golfers being weird, there's always Padraig Harrington to provide a struggling blogger with copy.   Here's the background:

Padraig Harrington looked like a tired Irishman after shooting a 3-under 70 on his first trip around the 7,452-yard Plantation Course in the first round of the Hyundai Tournament of Champions. 

Harrington, 44, the second-oldest player in the field, after Davis Love III, 51, clearly was suffering from taking nine weeks off from competitive golf to have an operation on a meniscus tear in his left knee.

Of course Padraig didn't want to miss this event, after not qualifying since 2009.  But it's a notoriously difficult course to walk, in fact it's the only example on tour where they use vehicles to transport the players and caddies from the tee to the green of a Par-3.   But here's where our Padraig goes off the deep end:

Besides the proper rehab, Harrington also utilized a cryo bath that reached unnatural temperature levels and helped him recover from the surgery faster. 

But as with many things Harrington does, the bath was unique. 

“I do six minutes at -140 degrees because I'm used to it,” Harrington said of the air bath where he did approximately 20 sessions in a 12-day period. “So, that's a pretty long time. Most guys are at three minutes. But it, basically, when you're working out, it boosts your testosterone. That's what it does. And it helps your recovery from injuries.”

No word on the extent of the shrinkage at those extreme temps.  And back to Rickie for this one that we'll file under TMI:

One of the things I used to like about our game was that its players didn't look like NBA players.  

Prayer, Answered - I had hoped, but didn't think that the Almighty was that benevolent:

KAPALUA, Hawaii – In a surprise move, Robert Allenby will return to Honolulu to open his 2016 schedule at the Sony Open next week. 

Allenby, who claimed that he was mugged after having missed the cut in the 2015 Sony Open,told police that he had been kidnapped and awoke in a nearby park with his wallet and money missing.

 Be still my foolish heart...think we might have some fun next week?

This Week on Planet Trump - We have some catching up to do, as our hero is everywhere.  First, he gets into a fight with Samuel L. Jackson:

On Tuesday, Trump denied Samuel L. Jackson's claims that he cheats at golf and that he sent the actor a surprise bill for being a member at one of his courses. And he did it in classic Trump fashion:

Now Jackson appears to be something short of a rocket scientist, since the bill that he posted on social media had his home address.  But here's the Donald's elegant response:

I guess we know what's not in his wallet.... But Jackson wasn't finished, coming back with an oh-so-witty "Your Momma":

"A bill from the guy that doesn't know me & never golfed with me! I'm gonna Block his ass too!" he exclaimed in the post. (It has since been taken down, perhaps because the bill included his apparent home address.)

Of course others have come foreard to confirm that Trump has, in fact, played golf with SLJ and that shrimp and hot dogs were involved...  seemingly a telling detail.  Trump later criticizes the athleticism of Jackson's swing, so when you say that you don't know him?  Oh, why do I bother?

But then came this story:

Later this month Parliament will debate a petition calling for him to be banned over his remarks about Muslims, while a rival petition claims he should be allowed into the country. 

More than 500,000 people signed an online petition calling for the contender for the Republican presidential nomination to be blocked following his call for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States last month. Almost 40,000 people have backed one saying he should not be barred. 

Under British law any petition that gains 100,000 signatures must be considered for Parliamentary debate and the House of Commons has now said both petitions will be heard on January 18.

I'm sure that none of these MP's will beclown themselves.... But Trump stays decidedly on the high road:

"The Trump Organization has plans to invest more than £200m into the development of the iconic Trump Turnberry resort, located in South Ayrshire, Scotland.

"Our work there has been widely supported by the local community and created hundreds of jobs for the region. Over the coming years, we intend to further develop Trump Turnberry and invest millions more at the site, creating sustained economic growth for South Ayrshire and Scotland. 

"Additionally, we have plans to invest £500m towards further development at the 1,400 acre Trump International Golf Links, Aberdeen, which has been consistently rated the best modern golf course in Great Britain and Ireland by the prestigious Golfweek magazine and many others in the global golf community.

Nice little island you have there... it would sure be a shame if anything were to happen to it.

Let's Make A Buddy-Pic - Readers know ad nauseum of my dislike of the golf schedule and, in particular, of my concerns as to how it might affect the West Coast swing.  But an interesting dynamic is playing out as relates to the most visible of those WCS events, the AT&T Crosby Clambake:

Now, finally, the AT&T (set for Feb. 11-14) is regaining prestige after years of

struggling to attract premier players. Five years ago, only three of the top 20 in the world ranking entered the tournament. Next month, seven of the top 10 could be there. 

Justin Rose (ranked No. 7) is the latest to commit, joining Jordan Spieth (No. 1), Jason Day (No. 2), Bubba Watson(No. 4) and Dustin Johnson (No. 8). Tournament officials also are optimistic about Jim Furyk (No. 9) and Patrick Reed(No. 10).

That's great news, but I thought they hated the event... How'd it come about?

Celebrity impact: Watson will play for the first time since 2007 because one of his good friends, actor/producer Mark Wahlberg, is playing. That prompted Watson to request a pairing with Wahlberg. Done. 

Similarly, soon after American League MVP Josh Donaldson signed up, fellow Alabaman Jason Dufner, the 2013 PGA Championship winner, hopped aboard. Steve Stricker, a 12-time tour winner, will make his first appearance in 10 years — because he wants to play with country singer Toby Keith, a friend.

“It’s kind of turned into a buddy tournament,” John said.

They're also trying to draw better amateur players, but there's still the infamous Crosby weather and that pace of play...

During Thursday's telecast from Maui the subject of this event came up and one of the commentators, I believe it was Mark Rolfing, called it one of the most important events of the year, because the players get to "Spend six hours inside the ropes with the people that support our game."

Six hours?  Said without a trace of irony...

Those Wacky Dutch - LA is set to become ground zero in Mini-golf, and we may have to deputize Maggot to be our on-course reporter, assuming of course that he's out of the hospital (that's a way-inside joke for those on Maggot's e-mail list).  

From something called Dezeen:

Architects and designers have created quirky obstacles based on features ofLos Angeles for a temporary mini-golf range at the city's Materials & Applications gallery (+ slideshow).

Contributors were asked to submit "a single architectural obstacle" that would relate to a feature of the local environment, such as drought, traffic or neighbourhood characteristics.

Fair enough, but to which local feature of LA does this pay homage?

Answer: All of the above....

And in a related article, the decidedly non-Dutch-sounding Jason Page used Dutch Design week to unveil  his vision for golf apparel:

Dutch Design Week 2015: golf outfits have received a graphic makeover from Design Academy Eindhoven graduate Jason Page, whose collection of alternative attire is designed to make the sport more accessible. 

The designer, who grew up playing golf, wanted to create garments that would make the sport more appealing to a wide range of people.

Well, a wide range of blind people for sure....

Club Stuff

It's a difficult environment for golf clubs of all kinds these days, and we have a few unconnected stories we'll throw together in one post.

Desert Dreams - John Strege picked up on an interesting conflict brewing in the Palm Springs area.  Shall we let him set the table:

There is trouble in paradise, California’s Coachella Valley, otherwise known as the Palm

Little boxes made of ticky tacky...

Springs area, home to 123 golf courses, many of them in gated communities. 

The economy and changing priorities are creating battle lines between homeowners, including many who don’t play golf, and the golf courses around which their communities were constructed. 

Rancho Mirage Country Club recently was closed by its new owners, who want to use the land for housing, to the dismay of many, particularly those who bought homes on the course with the expectation that there would always be a course.

Rancho Mirage is not to be confused with Mission Hills, longstanding host of the the ladies first major that I still call the Dinah Shore, which happens to be located in the community of Rancho Mirage.

OK, so the area is overbuilt with golf courses and the owners of house on that particular golf course are quite unfortunate but, you know, buyer beware.  But the real subject is the Golf Club at Morningside, also in Rancho Mirage, where lawyers have been retained and lawsuits commenced:

And on Monday, the Desert Sun reported that 29 residents of the the Club at Morningside in Rancho Mirage have sued the homeowners association for proposing a $250 monthly fee — this on top of their $1,050 monthly HOA dues — to support the club to which they might or might not belong.

Here's more detail from that Desert Sun piece:

Next, in March, the board announced a proposal to charge every homeowner $250 per month — on top of the $1,050 they already paid in HOA dues — for support of the club. According to Randy Zien, president of the board, 94 percent of the membership cast votes on the proposal and 63 percent of them voted in favor. The HOA’s governing documents were amended and homeowners began paying the fee. 

Later, plaintiffs learned the club had offered its members a $250 credit each month, offsetting the fee. In their complaint, they argue the fee is a burden only on homeowners who aren’t members of the club. 

“Now, no homeowner can be sure about their financial future,” said Ted Schneider, who has lived in Morningside for 11 years. “You build your economic plan on a certain set of assumptions, and one of those assumptions is, I’m going to be treated fairly.”

It's quite the interesting conundrum, since the basic premise is that the golf course substantially enhances property values.  Here's the case for the HOA's actions from an industry insider:

“You bought the home on the golf course assuming that the course would be there always. But the reality is, you have no control over the course in most cases. The course is not attached to your home, and it could disappear tomorrow,” said Mark Dodge, president of Associa Desert Resort Management, a company that manages 165 desert homeowners’ associations. 

“If (the HOA) sees impending doom with the club, you could argue that they have an obligation to see that that doesn’t happen. That’s a philosophical discussion, as far as whether the HOA should be responsible or not,” Dodge said.

And as we saw above, perhaps it won't be there forever.  We've also not made the case that the club's demise is imminent, but it seems to this spectator that the plaintiff's have a strong moral claim of unfair treatment.

The HOA and its Board are obviously comprised of people differently situated, some club members and others not.  To me the single critical fact is the credit that club members have allegedly received on their club bills.

To the extent that the HOA, through its board and/or membership, deem it to be in their interest to support the club, that burden should be borne equally.  While the club is under separate ownership and management, clearly they have conspired to obtain support for the club from non-members, ensuring an endless supply of awkward encounters at the local grocery store.

But we can expect an increasing number of such stories in the future.

The Border Fence - Bad For Golf - A once-popular Brownsville TX municipal golf course has closed and everybody is sad about it.  Here's the gist of it:

Yet the demise of Lucio’s business is seen by observers as a poignant reminder of the

enduring effect the fence has had on border communities, especially as leading Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump has rekindled the contentious debate with his proposal to continue building a wall along the 2,000-mile border with Mexico. 

“I think it’s really unfortunate that the community’s recreational spaces were sacrificed for a symbolic effort to look tough on immigration,” said Denise Gilman, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law and a member of the UT Working Group on Human Rights and the Border Wall. “It takes its toll on people’s psyche.” 

Laid on the ruins of Fort Brown, the 6,000-yard, 165-acre course debuted in the 1950s as a reasonably priced alternative to the Brownsville country club. It quickly became the training ground for generations of Brownsville golfers, including Lucio, and home to the Pan American Golf Association, which promoted the sport in the impoverished and predominantly Hispanic community.

It is a sad story, both because of the loss of this golf course as well as for the practice of journalism in this day and age.  Like me, you might be confused as to why the fence caused the demise of this golf course, but placement is everything and the author considers it more important to allow Ms. Gilman to vent her spleen unrebutted than to provide important factual information.

Scrolling way further down than most will, we finally get to this seemingly important nugget:

Business was robust right up to 2005, Lucio said, prompting him to extend his contract with Texas Southmost College, which owns the land, for an another 25 years. A year later, however, the government let slip details of the Secure Fence Act of 2006, revealing plans for hundreds of miles of fencing and wall across the Southwest border. 

Building along the banks of the Rio Grande was deemed impractical; instead, the fence would be built just north of the river on a levee. Because of the meandering nature of the Rio Grande, some land on the U.S. side was stranded on the southern flank of the fence, caught between it and the river. 

“Right away, even before the fence went up, it affected our business,” Lucio recalled. “We started having people not renewing their membership.”

I can see where that could be a problem....the golf course is not in Mexico, but is on the Mexican side of the fence.  I certainly feel sorry for the owner, but the routing of a fence is an engineering issue.  But if only it was more than a symbolic gesture to look tough on immigration...

But now we go really deep into the piece to find there might be another reason for all those cancelled memberships:

Further complicating matters, drug cartels across the river engaged in a brutal war, committing shocking acts of violence even as sections of the fence were put in the ground between 2008 and 2009, hastening the decline of his business. 

“It scared people,” said Gilbert Fasci, a longtime club manager. “People would hear the news up north, and it clung to their minds.”

Yes, shocking acts of violence will often be a further complication.... But Ms. Gilman is safely ensconced in Austin, which last I looked is not a border town experiencing shocking acts of violence.  But nowhere to be found in the article is a hint of how the locals feel about the fence.... well, except for this from another geographically removed "expert":

“The reality is the border fence is there. It’s not going away,” said Antonio Zavaleta, an instructor in the sociology and anthropology department at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in Brownsville. “People who live here don’t even think about it any more.”

I beg to differ, the author found one that does.... Heck, I could even be open to the proposition that the routing of the fence constitutes a "taking" as that legal term is understood, requiring compensation.   It's a truly unfortunate set of circumstances, but I find it quite aggravating that there's no sense that the fence serves a larger purpose.

Easement Exigencies - Our last item concerns the dreaded IRS going after golf clubs over this:

Known as the conservation-easement tax break, the rule lets people claim a charitable deduction for giving away the right to develop land they still own and can use. The measure has encouraged protection of millions of acres of pristine land. It has also spawned litigation requiring judges to wade into dueling testimony from ecologists and appraisers.

The source article here is the Wall Street Journal, but it's not in any ways a better practice of journalism than the prior item from the San Antonio Express-News.  This one should come with a Surgeon General's warning label concerning the abuse of metaphors, and never answers the most basic of questions.  Among the metaphorical excesses are these:

The IRS won vindication last month when the U.S. Tax Court ruled it was unimpressed by the courses’ natural splendor. In short, there were too many sand traps and not enough Venus flytraps.

The ruling marked a green-jacket moment for the IRS

The IRS’s first major attempt to challenge a golf course break—a $30.6 million Alabama deduction—ended in an embarrassing bogey in tax court.

That 10-foot putt for a tax break, in other words, doesn’t look so easy anymore.

More troubling, the author cites some cases (though I'm struggling to understand how the terra cotta facade of the Ritz Carlton is relevant), but provides no incite as to how the easement is drafted and how it works in practice.

I;m assuming from the large dollar values of the deductions that this is a one-time deduction at the time the property is set aside from development, though the author doesn't see fit to help me here.  Similarly I assume that often what's at dispute are the valuation metrics, i.e., what that portion of the property would be worth.

I'd also be curious as to whether the IRS provides any advance rulings to developers, or if it's a complete crapshoot.  In any event, while the author provides some numbers, I'm guessing that this is actually a rather small issue in our little world, since most golf clubs are not taxpaying entities.  Some resort and daily fee courses could obviously qualify for this easement, but since no one is building new course the caseloads should be slimming.