Loose Ends

Just another day in the nuclear winter that is New York in late April... a few minor items for you as I work on a longer post, and hopefully take a few swings later.

This Day n Swinging Skirts - Late yesterday, specifically post-nap but pre-dinner, I was wathing the ladies from beautiful Lake Merced Country Club when from the kitchen I heard this, "They don't really call it the Swinging Skirts, do they?"

Well, yes they do though it's not at all what you might assume....mind you, it's still quite silly, just not as patronizing or misogynist as initially  feared:

About five years ago, several deep-pocketed Taiwanese golfers formed an unofficial

Lydia, Natalie and Yani promote the event.

social group. They loved the game, played at the same club and began wearing matching clothes on their golf outings. The group started with 10 people and soon grew to 30 and then 60, including men and women.

“Because golf originated in Scotland, and back then they wore kilts, they wanted to honor this tradition,” said Carol Su, managing director/Taiwan for IMG Golf. “That’s how they started to wear kilts and call the group, ‘Swinging Skirts.’ They basically wanted to honor the origins of the game.”

OK, though those kilts were rather tighter-fitting and I'm not sure they actually wore them when playing golf gawf, but at least it's alliterative.

A couple of notes, including a 37 38 year age gap between the two leading scores:

Off the course, Lydia Ko trails Juli Inkster by three-and-a-half decades in age – even with her 18th birthday falling on Friday – but, on the course, Ko holds a one-shot advantage at the Swinging Skirts LPGA Classic. 

Ko took the 18-hole lead at Lake Merced Golf Course in San Francisco with an opening 5-under 67. Inkster, 54, used a back-nine surge to card a 68 and join a group of three at 4 under that includes Ha Na Jang and P.K. Pongkrphan.

In our biz that's called Burying the Lede, because forget the scores, our little Lydia is growing up.  She turns eighteen today and I didn't get her a thing...  Maybe she'd like some glasses?  OK, I'll get over it...

In honor of thew festive day, Beth Ann Nichols treats us to eighteen things we might not have known about the lass:

• This week marks Ko’s 50th start on the LPGA. She has yet to miss a cut. 

• In seven starts this season, the player known as “Lyds” has four top-3 showings, including a victory at the ISPS Handa Australian Women’s Open.

But is she sure about this one?

• When she retires, Ko fancies a career in photography. The first big purchase she made after turning pro was a Canon EOS 70D.

We had heard she was going to retire at thirty and become a therapist...Really, I can take my own pictures.

Rumors of Its Demise - You all know the Mark Twain line, but we seem to get another one of these "Golf is Dying" story every day that ends in a "Y"...this one started by this tweet:

Darren RovellVerified account‏@darrenrovell

Sales of golf clubs down a whopping 21% in 2014 vs a year before, says @TheSFIA

Really, 21%  Because that's circling the drain territory...

Mike Stachura, one of the Golf Digest equipment gurus, had this rather minor clarification:

Now while it may be true that the sporting goods business, particularly sporting goods

stores, saw a decline in golf sales last year, it isn't a complete picture of the golf business. A more accurate portrayal of the health of the golf business, which never will be confused with running shoe sales or basketball purchases, might be to focus on golf-specific retailers, which in most surveys are preferred three to one over sporting goods stores as the place where golfers are buying products.

In fact, a check of golf industry research firm Golf Datatech’s sales figures for 2014 paint a slightly different interpretation. Sales in 2014 of just the core hard goods in golf (woods, irons, wedges and putters) were down, but only by 3 percent (2.97, actually). In fact, the $1.413 billion in sales of those four categories marked the seventh highest annual sales figure since Golf Datatech began tracking the golf business in 1995.

Repeat after me, guys, it's a niche sport with relatively flat participation rates.  Crisis averted...

The Babe as Golfer -  At the time of the Crosby Clambake AT&T in February, Alex Myers posted an item on Babe Ruth as the original celebrity golfer.  Alex is milking this bit, but he provides your humble blogger with a mulligan as I had read this elsewhere but neglected to blog it:

Have you ever seen a golfer tuck a glove or something under their arm during practice and hit balls? Probably. In fact, there's a good chance you've tried it yourself on the range. Here's the King of Practice, Vijay Singh, doing it:

We're not sure if Ruth invented the drill, but he certainly played a large role in it spreading through the golf community. You see, Ruth played on the Yankees alongside a player named Sam Byrd. During that time Ruth taught Byrd the trick, using a handkerchief, in order to keep his left or front arm (for Ruth, it would have been his right arm since he played golf lefty) connected to his body throughout the swing. 

Byrd retired after a mediocre seven years in baseball, often serving as Ruth's pinch-runner, and then had a solid career on what would become the PGA Tour. He won six events and finished third at the 1941 Masters and runner-up to Byron Nelson at the 1945 PGA Championship.

During his time in baseball Byrd was known as "Babe Ruth's legs."  Here's a longer excerpt from a profile of iconoclastic instructor Jimmy Ballard of how the drill was passed on:

Byrd, Ballard says, was Babe Ruth's roommate on the road, "and it was Ruth who taught Sam the trick of holding a handkerchief beneath his left arm in order to keep his left arm 'connected' to his body throughout the swing." Byrd also became convinced that a good golfer, like a slugger, "braced" with his right leg on the backswing, moved the head slightly to the right as the body naturally "coiled," and obtained power by "firing" the right side of the body at the target. "One swing was on a level plane, the other on a tilted plane," says Ballard, relating Byrd's gospel. "Other than that, they were totally identical. When Grantland Rice, the great sports writer, suggested to Sam that they write a book comparing the two swings, Sam just laughed, explained all of this, and said to him, 'That will be a damn short book.' " 

It was Byrd, according to Ballard, who first told Ben Hogan about the handkerchief and a proper coil, ideas that clearly had a major impact on Hogan's thinking about the swing. Before Byrd, Hogan had suffered from a chronic duck hook, which nearly caused him to abandon the professional game and resign himself to being a club pro in Fort Worth, Texas. Instead, armed with Byrd's ideas about connection and his own dogged persistence, Hogan went on to become the finest shotmaker in the game and author (with Herbert Warren Wind) of maybe the best swing-instruction book ever: Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf. That book is the spiritual antecedent of Jimmy Ballard's bestselling How to Perfect Your Golf Swing, published in 1981 by Golf Digest and now just out of print.

We don't need no stinckin' six degrees of separation here.... Ruth to Byrd to Hogan....we nailed it in two.

Rory, Delayed - But I had June completely blocked out...

EA Sports announced Thursday that its newest golf video game will be available July 14, the Tuesday of British Open week. 

Originally due out last month, the game was re-branded with McIlroy's name in March before being pushed back to June and now July. In a post on the game's official website, EA explained the new release date "allows us to deliver a fully-featured online offering including online tournaments."

I guess EA didn't get the memo from Sports Illustrated.... It's now officially the Jordan Spieth era.  Well, there was this:

Details about the game have been slow to emerge but EA did confirm Masters champion Jordan Spieth as the game's second playable character earlier this week. Confirmed courses thus far include TPC Sawgrass, Wolf Creek and Royal Troon.

Do we think they delayed the release to add Jordan after his Masters win?  I'll be really disappointed if video game Jordan doesn't yell at his golf ball...

Luke Kerr-Dineen fills in some gameplay details:

But Thursday proved a significant development. EA officially finalized its July 14th release date, and released a new trailer showing graphics and some actual gameplay features. There will be three different playing options, the hardest being the “tour” mode. In that setting, users won’t be able to zoom into the green, and they’ll use the analog stick to control the power of their shots.

I need a teenager to help me with the blog, and I might add this to their list of duties.... Here's the trailer video:

Van Cynical, The Full-Length Production

There's little going on, so how about we see if we can have some fun with Gary Van Sickle's call-and-response feature?

Van Cynical, Why is nobody talking about Rory McIlroy’s Masters performance?

The rumored love interest.

If he makes any putts, he wins by three. I love Jordan Spieth, by the way. — DanFromDC via Twitter 

Gee, DC, it might have something to do with Jordo breaking (temporarily) the all-time Masters scoring record and the fact that Rory was never seriously a contender. If Rory makes any putts—well, if took a you-know-what and died. If Jordo doesn’t gaffe two chip shots (including the double at 17 on Saturday), he wins by seven. There ain’t no what-if in golf.

Yeah, that's what's wrong with our sport, Rory doesn't get enough ink....we don't get enough workout videos, Nike commercials or updates on his social life.

These two blur together:

If this is how he looks when happy...

Van Cynical, Jim Furyk is a nice guy but he’s not Hall of Fame material with only one major. The minimum requirement should be at least three majors and even that is a bit weak. When is the HOF going to change from an old boys’ club into a legitimate Hall such as the LPGA? Who’s in charge of this fiasco? The PGA Tour? — SoCal Golf Guy via email 

It was the PGA Tour that turned the HOF from a legit Hall into an old boys’ club, Guy, when it decided the annual induction ceremony should be a TV show that it could package and sell. The tour took the HOF vote away from media members so it could control who gets in by using a new rubber-stamp panel of golf greats it can control. So our opinions on who should or shouldn’t be in the Hall are moot. An induction ceremony needs inductees and rest assured, at the current pace Furyk will get in. 

Vans, Jim Furyk, Hall-worthy? It’s already watered down. You can write the history of golf without mentioning him. He’s a lock for the Hall of Very Good, though. — Michael O’Connor via Twitter 

Savvy comment, Mannix. You can write golf history without mentioning a number of major champion winners. Don’t bother having Hall standards anymore. Everybody is going to get in nowadays. Everybody.

Ditto as to the second questioners framing... but that horse isn't just out of the paddock, it's well over the horizon.  

Van Cine-man, Movie report: The Squeeze sucks. It’s terrible. It’s worse than

Seven Days in Utopia and even worse than Golf In the Kingdom. It’s even worse than A Gentleman’s Game. I’m good with watching bad movies but this is crap. — Turtle Trader via Twitter 

You surely noticed my review was not a rave, Donatello. I gave it a B for its original and surprising ending, and detailed many of its failings. But you sound surprised that Golf In the Kingdom was a bad movie. If you read the book, how could it be anything but?

You know what the best golf movie ever was?  I tricked you, there isn't one...  OK, Caddyshack had some moments, but it's quite the mess.  Tin Cup is a poor man's Bull Durham, which seems appropriate because Rene Russo is a poor man's Susan Sarandon...

I also feel strongly that anyone claiming to have read (or watched) and enjoyed Golf in the Kingdom should immediately be strapped to a polygraph, publicly shunned or, in a perfect world, both.  Ponderous, pretentious and impenetrable are some adjectives that come to mind, but even collectively they don't do it justice...

Van Comical, I know it’s not your beat but the LPGA still isn’t quite there. I hate to say it but if I were Alison Lee, for instance, I’d probably use another last name. — Michael O’Connor via Twitter 

It’s a fact, Mannix, that a lot of Asian players on the LPGA have similar names. I keep a separate file on players named Lee and Kim and Park because of their sheer numbers. In China, they probably think the NBA has way too many players named Johnson, Williams, Smith and Jones. This is why someone invented marketing—see Birdie Kim, for instance. You’ve got to build your brand your own way.

I've been pondering whether to deal with this issue, with an emphasis on how to do so without seeming xenophobic.  The good news is that in confessing that I watch the LPGA I automatically receive a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card on the misogyny rap...

The names are no doubt a complicating factor, as the South Korean gals seem increasingly interchangeable... they can really play for sure, and they keep coming, but all with the same three surnames.  Perhaps uniform numbers and a scorecard?

Sickle cell, When is the PGA Tour going to allow a dress code similar to the LPGA—Lumpy in a spaghetti strap? — Michael Bailey via Twitter 

I stand opposed to making fun of middle-aged guys and their body shapes, Bailjumper. On behalf of the golf-writing media, we do miss Mr. Tim Herron being in contention and regaling us with tales in the pressroom. Lumpy, come back…

I got nothing here, but Lumpy in a spaghetti strap is comedy gold...

Van Cynical, If Hilton Head is so popular, why not move it from after the Masters on the schedule? — Brian Norman via Twitter 

One reason it’s so popular, Sharky, is that it is right after the Masters and only a relaxing two-and-a-half hour drive from Augusta. Another is that it’s a great vacation spot. You miss the Masters cut, you load your family in the car and drive to Hilton Head for two extra beach days. In addition, while the Phoenix Open gets all the attention as being the tour’s party spot for its loud behavior, the Heritage ranks right up there as one of the best parties on the tour—wine coolers, mixed drinks, marinas and shade trees. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it—just shake it, don’t stir it.

True that... the Tour schedule doesn't always make such good sense, but this event has found the perfect slot on the schedule.  It's a perfect, low-key event that aptly suits the week after the Masters and is, as the military is wont to say, Geographically Desirable.

Van Shanksalot, Does Kiradech Aphibarnrat have enough game to be a worldwide stud? — Andrew Polson via Twitter 

Enough game, AP? No. Enough name? Absolutely. Sheesh.

Vanna, I'd like to sell a vowel, consonant or,better yet, whole syllables of my name... I've taken to calling him Kiradech Alphabet.

Upon Further Review, Open Championship Edition

One of his readers brought this video of the proposed changes to Turnberry's Ailsa course to Shack's attention, and it's well worth seven minutes of your time under any of the following circumstances:

1. You have an interest in golf architecture;
2. You enjoy images of the rugged Scottish coastline;
3. You've never understood why I go on as I do about the glories of links golf; or
4. It's effin 35 degrees out and you've nothing better to do.

So dive in and enjoy, with my thoughts to follow:

I come away from a single viewing of this video more favorably disposed to the changes, which are far more extensive than I'd previously understood.  While my concerns about the new Par-3 ninth remain, I am heartened to see changes that address the two principle issues with the track, to wit:

1. In it's current configuration, the opening three holes and the final two holes are dreadfully sub-standard.  This is a not-infrequent issue on links, as the architect often needs to take the players through less interesting terrain around where the clubhouse is situated and out to the dunes and water, but in the case of the Ailsa the holes are especially uninspiring;
2. The golf course kicks into high gear at the fourth hole, which begins the magical stretch of golf holes along the water from whence it rightfully derives its reputation.  The problem with this stretch is that Holes 4-8 play in exactly the same left-to-right prevailing wind, less than ideal from a "test-of-golf" perspective.

Perhaps this routing graphic will help you visualize the issue:

I was glad to see them addressing to profound problems with Nos. 1, 17 and 18, but really perked up at the mention of the new tee location on No. 6, a stout Par-3.  If I understood correctly, the tee will be moved inland requiring the players to deal with more of a quartering wind, which is to the good...

Can you deal with a brief digression ton the challenges of links golf?  The sixth is indeed a stout one-shotter, 221 yards from the white tees with a massive bunker some 30-40-yards short of the green.  We last visited Turnberry in 2009, and played the course twice a full week apart.  On our first visit, with the wind hurting, I hit driver, quite the rookie mistake that left me dead in the aforesaid bunker...for some reason, Theresa insisted on memorializing it in this photo:

Trust me, you can't get there from here...

The next time, obviously with a completely different wind, six-iron put me over the green...

It seems that Shack likes the new tenth and eleventh holes, though he feels compelled to note that there's not much strategy involved.  Sometimes you can be completely correct but miss the larger point as well... the wind will create differing challenges each time you play them, and judging the wind and creating the appropriate shot shape will be sufficiently demanding.  And they're of course drop-dead gorgeous, which ain't chopped liver...

I'll also second Shack's amusement at the extent to which this all assumes that the Open will, in fact, return to the Ailsa...including a rendition of U-shaped grandstands around the 18th green much like what we saw at Hoylake last year.

One last note about this year's Open venue, reader Mark W. found time in his busy schedule to respond to my prompt in the recent post about the grandstands to be erected on the Old Course.  He provides a link to this rendering of the two-tiered grandstand behind the 18th green:

He also amusing notes that had you purchased a 1.5 million quid unit on a lower floor of Hamilton Hall, the red-brick building behind the green recently converted into rather pricey condos by Herb Koehler, you might be surprised to find that you no longer had a view of the proceedings...

Mark also notes that the aerial views in the video in this post shows the Road Hole grandstand "Mercifully" located on the far side of the stone wall.  Unfortunately, I believe that those aerials are from the 2010 Open, and so may not still be operative...here's what the R&A had to say on the subject:

The arena will be completed by a new L-shaped grandstand being constructed behind the 17thgreen and a stand sited by the 1st green.

The grandstand behind the famous Road Hole will have a capacity of more than 4,000 and offer spectators a panoramic view of the 17th, 18th, 1st and 2nd holes.

L-shaped and located behind the 17th green?  I do hope that Mark is correct, but I fear the worst...

Mid-Week Musings

Apologies for the delayed onset blogging today, but family matters required my attention.  And you might not have had this had a storm not rolled through this afternoon.

Your Afternoon Laugh - Has anyone heard of Tiffany Oshinsky?  I don't know whether she's a golf fan, but I'm pretty sure she's got a sense of humor, participating in this dramatic reading of everything Jordan Spieth said to his ball at The Masters...

It's a form of video the embedding of which I've not yet mastered, so you'll want to click through.  The joke of course is that her reading is far less dramatic than the urgency employed by the author in the play's original limited run.  Though even with that caveat, I found her "Fore Right" to be dramatically flat and, to be hyper-technical, I don't think his ball was the intended audience for that.

Turnberry, You've Been Trumped - Alistair Tait brings news that the previously-discussed changes to Turberry's Ailsa course will go forward:

The biggest change comes at the most scenic part of the golf course. Turnberry’s iconic

lighthouse will provide the backdrop to a new par 3 to replace the current quirky par-4 9th. 

The hole currently plays at 452 yards from a tee perched on the edge of the Firth of Clyde. It’s a dramatic setting with nothing but water separating golfers from the distant, beguiling hills of the Isle of Arran. 

Next year, the hole will play as a 235-yard par-3, most of it over water, with the lighthouse providing the backdrop to the green. 

Many will applaud the change given the current ninth is unfair. A camelback fairway means good drives often end up in the rough.

Here's the thing, that ninth fairway is profoundly unfair, as the tee shot plays down the spine of the aforementioned camel, and unless you're accurate to the inch there's no way to hold the fairway.  But of course there were other solutions to be had, such as regrading the fairway, that would preserve one of the great tee boxes in golf:

Secondly, a long par-3 over water sounds great, but you don't find them in Scotland or Ireland because the wind is such a factor.  In fact, you find precious little water actually in play on a proper links, trust me, there's sufficient hazard without it...  I don't have a dog in this race, as with Trump's acquisition I assume I've played the Ailsa for the last time...

Most folks assume (including Tait's headline writer) that this is being done to ensure that the Open Championship returns to Turnberry.  Trump has coordinated his plans with Peter Dawson, who has publicly supported the notion that the Open will naturally return to Turnberry.  But Mr. Dawson will be riding into the sunset after this year's Open Championship and his successor, Martin Slumbers, has of course been the silent man during this interregnum.  I'm not saying that the R&A won't jump into bed with Trump, I'd just like the word of someone other than Trump himself...

Too Much Information - Shack posts the entire Fox press release detailing the additions to it's on air programming for coverage of the USGA events, and it's about the size of the cast for Ben Hur.  No really...

Here's just the high points:

Familiar FOX Sports Personalities Tim Brando, Charles Davis, Joel Klatt, Robert Lusetich and Curt Menefee Also Added 

Natalie Gulbis, Gil Hanse, Buddy Marucci, Scott McCarron, Morgan Pressel and Tom Weiskopf Headline Additions.

Shack remembers Charles Davis as being a grating presence on Golf Channel, otherwise that first list isn't, to this observer, quite as "Familiar" as Fox might hope...

Weiskopf is always interesting and Buddy Marucci is a lifetime amateur and Walker Cup captain, who lost to Tiger in the finals of his middle U.S. Amateur.  You'll have your own opinions as to the exact qualifications of Natalie Gulbis, but I'd suggest instead that you focus on Sam Weinman's far shorter post on those that won't be appearing on Fox's telecasts.  He starts with Johnny Miller and Jim Nantz, but then gets to the important stuff:

Tow truck-hating ESPN reporter Britt McHenry

and...

Flavor Flav

I don't get it, he looks like he'd fit right in with the Shark.  He's just a different ilk of Living Brand...

The Poultergeist On Twitter - These crazy kids with their Twitterstorms... our story starts with Derek Lawrenson, who mans the golf beat for the Daily Mail.  He uses Jordan Spieth to take three prominent European players (or, perhaps more accurately, two prominent players, namely Sergio and Henrik, plus Poulter) to task for skipping the Euro Tour's premiere event at Wentworth:

In the past all three have made no secret of the fact they don't care for Wentworth and all three have poor records in the event. Doesn't that make it an obvious event to cut from a busy schedule? You can see the argument. But, equally, as Spieth at the age of just 21 is effortlessly showing, sometimes it's simply about doing the right thing.

Yes, Poulter and Stenson, in particular, can put forward persuasive cases as to how they do their bit for European golf. 

Poulter is doing plenty behind the scenes to ensure the relaunched British Masters at Woburn in October will be a great success; Stenson plays more tournaments round the world than any other top player and the nasty bout of flu that ruined his chance at the Masters was a sure sign he needs to cut back. All the same, the feeling lingers this admirable pair have got this one wrong.

OK, now Derek gets at the heart of the matter in that first graph, which is that while nobody doesn't like Ernie Els, opinions are similarly unanimous about his desecration of what once was a Harry S. Colt classic.  

But our Poults has come out firing on Twitter, with this authoritative takedown:

Ian Poulter ✔ @IanJamesPoulterFollow


Simple terms. I've won 19.11 world ranking points from poss 832 over 13 years. & for tied 3rd at Open in 2012 I won 28.50 Points.
1:35 PM - 21 Apr 2015

Fair enough I suppose, but the problem with venting on Twitter is that there's more of them than you...and they can be quite clever.  For instance, I like this guy's response because it follows Poults' internal logic:

 

CompleteBalls‏@ReturnsAgain

@IanJamesPoulter And you have played in how many majors ? and won none will you give up on them to ? fool.

What he said!

Shot of the Week - At the Players Championship media day, Jacksonville Jaguars mascot Jaxson DeVille went pinseeking on the 17th hole:

The rumors that it was actually Jags placekicker and plus-handicap golfer Josh Scobee are just that...the actual mascot is a gent named Curtis Dvorak who plays off scratch himself.  And we all know that the chicks dig mascots that can spin the ball back...

Bad Choice of Words - All eyes turn to San Francisco, at least those focused on golf, for the next three weeks...

San Francisco will become the game’s epicenter, with three tournaments in rapid

succession. Thursday’s opening round of the Swinging Skirts LPGA Classic launches a 14-day stretch in which fans can watch world-class golf on a near-daily basis — all within a radius of a few square miles. 

“It’s almost like golf month in San Francisco,” USGA executive Bill McCarthy said. 

Lydia Ko, Stacy Lewis and their LPGA cohorts begin the action this week at Lake Merced. Then the Match Play Championship — featuring Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth and the rest of the world’s top 64 players — begins a five-day run April 29 at Harding Park. 

Finally, as punctuation, the inaugural U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship takes place May 2-6 at the Olympic Club.

Lake Merced is the least known of the three, though Harding Park is likely the weakest...  I'll defer to Ron Kroichik because he actually lives there, but you'd think they'd steer clear of the "E" word.

Tuesday Tidbits

We're going to span the globe today...so buckle in and enjoy the ride:

Looking Forward - We're in the trough of the golf schedule, somewhat mitigated by the one-off Match Play next week.... but we have much to anticipate, as per yesterday's St. Andrews video.  Staying with the Auld Grey Toon, we have a couple of minor notes, first regarding spectators:

It may be the Old Course, but a part of it will have a new look this summer. 

This is a 2014 photo, probably during the Dunhill Cup.

The Open Championship at St. Andrews will boast the event’s largest grandstand arena in the tournament’s history. The grandstand, which will seat nearly 10,000 people, will be constructed near the 1st, 17th and 18th holes for the 144th British Open, which is July 16-19. 

The grandstand expansion was spurred by the popularity of the horseshoe seating at Royal Liverpool last year.

Those who have denied themselves the pleasure of visiting St. Andrews will not understand the complexity of accommodating spectators on a golf course that starts and ends within town.   As much as we love our Open Championships on the Old Course, it undoubtedly accommodates fewer spectators than at any other venue in the rota.  Though this has me concerned:

The 18th green will feature a two-tiered grandstand, and an L-shaped grandstand will be erected around the 17th green (the Road Hole). The course will have more than 21,000 grandstand seats total for the tournament.

I'll await comment from Mark W., but an L-shaped grandstand would have to be placed on the inside (golfers' left) and long, because even Peter Dawson wouldn't dare take the road out of the Road Hole.  But that has to look hideous, no?

And one of the nice things about the five-year cycle of St. Andrews Opens is that past champions can plan for the appropriate send-off:

Must be one of the caddies in the middle...

ST. ANDREWS, Scotland – Like Tom Watson, Nick Faldo will end his Open Championship run at the Old Course at St. Andrews in July. 

Five-time winner Watson will exit 40 years after winning his first Open in his 1975 debut. Faldo, meanwhile, will bow out of the game’s oldest major championship 25 years after winning his second Open at the home of golf. The Englishman also won the 1987 and 1992 Opens at Muirfield. 

It will be Faldo’s 37th start in the Open since first appearing in 1976, and Watson’s 38th appearance. Faldo, who last made the cut in 2005 and finished T-11, turns 58 on the Saturday of the Championship. Watson, who has made three of five cuts since losing a playoff to Stewart Cink in 2009, is 65 and in his last year of eligibility.

Watson of course won Opens everywhere but St. Andrews, most famously losing to Seve there in 1984 (giving rise to perhaps the greatest fist pump in golf history).  Faldo won impressively on the Old Course, dusting Greg Norman in a highly-anticipated Saturday pairing, though we now understand that Greg won the "Tournament of Life."

Suitable Swilican Bridge photo ops should be anticipated...

Lastly, the U.S. Open will be similarly linksy, as these aerial photos of Chambers Bay attest:

I'm actually of mixed minds on this... I love links golf more than life itself, it's just the greatest version of our great game to be found.  On the other hand, links are scarce in these parts since we don't have the necessary combination of turf and weather, so it seems odd to play our national championship on a links.  Just sayin'...

Golf In The Dark Ages - As you'll recall, one of the USGA's rationales for moving its broadcasts from NBC to Fox was to inject a breath of fresh air into the broadcasts, though of course it was never explain what deficiencies had been identified with the incumbent.

Richard Deitsch at Sports Illustrated hosted a written round-table discussion of sports broadcasting that elicited this rant from John Buccigross:

Golf telecasts are woefully behind the times and in need of a major overhaul. Shot tracer needs to be utilized on nearly every swing and way too much putting is showed. Also, every major should have 18-hole, four-round coverage. I can watch every Patrick Kane shift, every Marshawn Lynch carry or every Mike Trout at-bat in every game they play if I choose. I should be able to watch all of Tiger Woods shots at a major on my big, beautiful TV. If I have to shell out $29.99 to watch it I will pay it. Golf is concerned about growing the game yet they restrict access to their best golf courses and restrict access to its best players on television.

I can't watch Tiger Woods or Rory McIlroy play all 72 holes of a major live here in 2015?

I do think we need to interject some realism here, as a golf tournament unfolds over 300 acres of turf, creating all sorts of logistical issues in coverage.  I'd further add that majors are further complicated by the fact that a U.S. Open, for instance, returns to Oakmont (again, for instance) once every thirteen years or so, rendering the creation of permanent infrastructure a financial challenge.

But as the man says, we're going to get expanded coverage at least of the U.S. Open, we'll see how much we avail ourselves of it...So, what will Fox do that's different?  Mark Loomis didn't give much away in this interview:

Q: How do you do that (show different angles)

TV towers behind the 18th green at Chambers Bay

?

A: A lot of times golf is covered from the green back to the tee, because that’s where your biggest cameras are. One of the things we've put some energy into is figuring out if we can give you a little better look at what the golfer is seeing. Kind of look from the tee toward the green.

I think we are trying to take advantage of some of the new technology … (such as) drones. Audio has always been a staple for Fox and how can we make the sounds of the golf course better.

You always kind of lose the audio on the green. … How can we get on the green and hear a little bit more about what’s going on?

The main focus is, how can we tell the story about what’s going on on the golf course better? Not just come up with cool tricks. 

Q: But there will be cool tricks, right?

A: There is kind of an old saying: “There’s nothing new in television. It’s just people doing the same thing in a different way.” I think the answer to that is that we’ll take some of the technology that people have used over the years, like the tracer.

One of the things we've talked about is whenever you see a green on your TV it looks flat, whether it is or isn't. So, how can we do different things to make the greens come to life so you see them the same way you would if you were standing on them?

Read more here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2015/04/19/3748817_fox-sports-new-to-golf-but-experienced.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

There's nothing objectionable in there, but there's also not much that's new...I would argue that, ProTracer aside, the most notable improvements in recent golf telecasts relate to the audio...Also, NBC had some way cool graphics of the Pinehurst greens, so that Fox contract might have been about the Benjamins...

But this just leaves me cold:

Cleatus Interruptus.

Q: Is Cleatus (Fox’s CGI robot used to promote its NFL coverage) going to be at Chambers Bay?

That’s funny; I asked the same question. I think Cleatus will not be there at the beginning but I think if we find a good way to use him down the road it’s not out of the question.

Read more here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2015/04/19/3748817_fox-sports-new-to-golf-but-experienced.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

No crashing robots?  I thought the USGA would have written that into the contract.... Next thing you know they'll tell us that Chris Berman isn't available...

Golf In The PRC - We've devoted a number of posts to this awkward relationships, though the issue du jour is water... Oh you thought we were talking about China?  As it happens we'll get there, but first let's start with a Peoples Republic closer to home, as John Strege informs that golf courses are taking the heat for California's drought:

It is easy to see why. A story in the Daily Beast about Bermuda Dunes in the Coachella Valley east of Los Angeles carried this headline: “Town with 11 golf courses is sucking California dry.”

Hmmm...I wonder if the author of that Daily Beast column mentioned that the valley is served by an aquifer?  I needn't have worried...Admittedly, the Coachella Valley's consumption does now exceed the capabilities of its aquifer, but his point that folks should be living there is off base.  

It also fails to mention this:

A point that tends to be missing from any discussions of golf courses and water usage in

a drought that has entered its fourth year is “the importance of golf to the economy,” Connerly said. 

“It’s a $13 billion industry and employs 128,000 people [in California]. Golf courses uses less than one percent of potable water. So be careful what you ask for. If you want to take away that one percent, are you prepared to put 128,000 people out of work and send a $13 billion hit to state’s economy?”

But if you want to understand how droughts are really created, then I recommend this Daily Beast article by Joel Kotkin, that doesn't even mention golf.  There's so much good background here that I can't do it justice, so if the subject is of interest you should read the whole thing.  I did like this 'graph though, because it gives a peak at how misguided the priorities are:

But ultimately the responsibility for California’s future lies with our political leadership, who need to develop the kind of typically bold approaches past generations have embraced. One step would be building new storage capacity, which Governor Jerry Brown, after opposing it for years, has begun to admit is necessary. Desalinization, widely used in the even more arid Middle East, notably Israel, has been blocked by environmental interests but could tap a virtually unlimited supply of the wet stuff, and lies close to the state’s most densely populated areas. Essentially the state could build enough desalinization facilities, and the energy plants to run them, for less money than Brown wants to spend on his high-speed choo-choo to nowhere. This piece of infrastructure is so irrelevant to the state’s needs that even many progressives, such as Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum, consider it a “ridiculous” waste of money.

The choo-choo to nowhere is so true....they call themselves Progressives, but have you ever noticed that their solutions are so 19th century?  I've told you about this previously, but it bears repeating:

And there needs to be, at least for the short term, an end to dumping water into San Francisco Bay for the purpose of restoring a long-gone salmon run, or to the Delta, in order to save a bait-fish, the Delta smelt, which may already be close to extinct. This dumping of water has continued even as the state has faced a potentially crippling water shortage; nothing is too good for our fish, or to salve the hyper-heated consciousness of the environmental illuminati.

Yup, they're still dumping precious water into the Pacific Ocean... because environmentalism.  Now you'd logically think that before denying scarce water to Central Valley farmers that they'd have a handle on the status of the Delta Smelt... you'd be wrong, of course, but that's how they roll in California.

Here's Kotkin's conclusion:

What we are witnessing the breakdown of a once-expansive, open society into one dominated by a small group of plutocrats, largely in Silicon Valley, with an “amen” crew among the low-information donors of Hollywood, the public unions, the green lobby, and wealthy real estate developers favored by Brown’s pro-density policies. This coalition backs Brown and helps maintain the state’s essentially one-party system. No one is more adamant about reducing people’s carbon footprint than the jet set of Silicon Valley or the state’s planning elite, even if they choose not to live in a manner that they instruct all others.

One of my favorite bloggers has a line he falls back on frequently, to the effect that he'll believe it's a crisis when the people telling him it's a crisis start acting like it's a crisis.   True that...

As for that other PRC, they continue their schizophrenic approach to the game, as per recent pieces in the N.Y. Times and on CNN (the latter by Dan Washburn who literally wrote the book on golf in China).  From the former:

HONG KONG — President Xi Jinping’s crackdown on vice and corruption in China has 

gone after drugs, gambling, prostitution, ill-gotten wealth and overflowing banquet tables. Now it has turned to a less obvious target: golf. 

In a flurry of recent reports, state-run news outlets have depicted the sport as yet another temptation that has led Communist Party officials astray. A top official at the Commerce Ministry is under investigation on suspicion of allowing an unidentified company to pay his golf expenses. The government has shut down dozens of courses across the country built in violation of a ban intended to protect China’s limited supplies of water and arable land.

It's hard to root against a crackdown on corruption, but washburn clearly articulates the whiplash effect:

Mr. Washburn, the author, said golf would continue to be buffeted by the contradictions of a country that has embraced market forces even as it continues to describe itself as socialist. 

“There are alternate realities in China,” he said. “One day you’ll read headlines about a war on golf, and the next you’ll hear about China’s future Olympic golf stars.”

The obvious problem is that you can't prudently invest in a new facility without buying the necessary protection, but in the midst of a crackdown your official might not stay bought (or out of jail). 

'Dis and 'Dat

I've much to answer for with my post-Masters letdown...even Jordan Spieth sucked it up and got back to work after one desultory round.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being Spieth - It's quite amazing how people have taken to our young Jordan in this cynical age, which I can only attribute to his obvious decency.  I myself experienced a number of people expressing outsized joy at his Friday 62, way out of proportion for a second round score at a third tier Tour event.  In some cases this was partially a way of reminding me of my typically bad prediction of distraction-induced letdown (I promised you Mendoza-line predictive abilities, and it's Mission Accomplished), but more so genuine joy at his success.

This is the point in the schedule where we all over-interpret that which we saw at Augusta, and draw all sorts of grandiose conclusions.  First, Brian Keough with the Irish-centric opinion that this will be good for Rory:

Jordan Spieth’s record-setting win at the Masters could turn out to be the best thing that

ever happened to Rory McIlroy. 

The emergence of a new star with a real feeling for the nuances of Augusta National can only bode well for the world No 1, whose closing 66 simply underlined that fact the he’s a stunningly talented athlete with the game to bring Augusta to its knees.

Four successive sub-par round (the last of them seven shots better than playing parter Tiger Woods) show that McIlroy is slowly coming to grips with what it takes to conquer the Cathedral of Pines. After all, his total of 12 under 276 would have won 75% of the 79 Masters Tournaments held so far. 

Only Tiger Woods (1997) and Spieth with 18 under, Jack Nicklaus (1965) and Ray Floyd (1976) with 17 under, Woods (2001) and Mickelson (2010) with 16 under, Ben Hogan, Ben Crenshaw (1995) and Charl Schwartzel (in 2011, 14 under) and Seve Ballesteros and Fred Couples have ever shot lower than McIlroy's around Augusta National.

Brian performs an invaluable service in his coverage of Irish golf, but he misses I think a critical factor, which is that Rory might go some years without finding the same kind of soft conditions that so favor his game.  He played those last 45 holes in the manner we expected to see given those conditions, the issue is why it took him 27 holes to awaken from his slumber.

Everyone is ready to declare the future to be about Jordan vs. Rory, but it would be naive to assume that there's only the two that can compete at that level.  We know Rory will be challenged for supremacy, it seems a logical assumption that Jordan will be one of those challengers, but golf has no shortage of young talent these days and the plotlines have not yet been written...

That's a long preamble to this Jump-the-Shark piece from Oliver Brown in the Telegraph (admittedly not helped by the headline writer declaring Jordan the new Tiger):

To transcend is to climb beyond ordinary limitations. Is that not the purpose of sport itself? The Olympic creed of ‘faster, higher, stronger’ is a summons to step beyond prescribed parameters.

How curious, then, that transcendence should be a quality ascribed to so few athletes: Muhammad Ali, Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods. For what we impute by the label ‘transcendent’ is not merely an extraordinary skill but a capacity to rise above the sporting realm – whether in triggering a paradigm shift in perceptions of race, as Robinson managed, or in planting oneself indelibly in pop culture, as Jordan did.

 Hope you wore your hip-waders, cause the BS is deep in here....further in the piece Brown has this:

Spieth, ultimately, could have far greater influence than McIlroy in appealing to the American mass market. Wholesome, deferential, good looking, God fearing, he looks like the identikit product of the middle-class heartland but plays the game as if touched by the heavens.

Touched by the heavens?  Please tell me this is an intentional parody, because he's won all of three times on Tour.  Jordan seems to be a really nice, incredibly well-grounded young man, which makes this kind of lazy hagiography all the worse...Jordan knows how hard our game is and respects his competitors, so maybe those writing about the game should show an equal measure of humility...

The Shark - The Gift That Keeps On Giving -  No word on how the bronze bust turned out when assembled, and shockingly my 60th birthday passed without Employee No. 2 taking the hint and casting your humble blogger in bronze.  But I digress...

So His Sharkness descended from the Mount and granted Hamish McLachlan (and is that a great name, or what?) an interview, and it's simply comedy gold.  I'll cite a couple of the best bits, but if you like a good Shark defenestration then go straight to Peter FitzSimmons' takedown here (if it had been a fight, the ref woulda stopped it in the first round).  So, a couple of excerpts:

GN: I’m comfortable with it. Sometimes when you walk into a room though, all you

want is a little bit of peace and quiet, and it’s not there. And when you feel like that, you have to really check yourself, and change your mood. We are all human beings and sometimes the burden on us feels a little bit heavy, but at the end of the day I also realise — and this is something I've only noticed in the last six or seven years — that I am the living brand. So it doesn't matter where you are, or how you are feeling, if somebody walks by you have to say “Hi, how are you doing?”

Show some respect folks, he's the living brand.  And how about this rather amusing rationalization of his epic 1996 Masters collapse:

GN: Simple, I won the tournament of life at Augusta. I never won the green jacket, but I did win the tournament of life. Two really tough situations happened to me on that golf course, one with Larry Mize in ’87, and one with Nick Faldo in ’96. Two totally different situations, and as a result, two different emotional reactions within myself. I could have tried to bury both of them, and pretend that they never really bothered me. But whenever I’ve been asked about them, I've talked about them, I've never run away from them. To this day people talk to me about how well I held myself, which is why I say I won the tournament of life.

I do so hate to be critical of the LB, but shouldn't we add 1986 to that list as well?  Norman was always a gracious loser and, while that's that's admirable, it's perhaps because he had more experience at it than most...

And while we're skewering the pompous Shark, there's other news on the Fox/USGA match made in heaven.  Here's how Fox explains their strategy:

“The live events drive the viewership,” Wanger said, “so we’re going to have about 40 hours of coverage on Fox Sports 1 of just the U.S. Open. You’re talking about eight hours on Thursday and Friday, and all sorts of preview shows, so it’s really important to establish a good base for people to come and check out the channel. 

“And particularly golf, which is a unique audience. It’s a little bit older, more upscale, so it’s an opportunity for those folks to be able to see the network.”

A little bit older?  When do you think Fox last ran a Cialis commercial?  I'm thinking never... as Awful Announcing's Matt Yoder explicates:

Seeing Fox Sports 1 publicly yearning to attract golf’s older, upscale audience and have them visit the network is a long cry from the days of #The1ForFun. The arranged marriage between the conservative golf audience and Fox Sports is one that will bear watching in June considering the golf world’s yearly reaction to Chris Berman.

And of potentially greater concern, Fox remains in a standoff with AT&T over carriage rights, per Shack:

“AT&T U-verse has determined it will forgo carriage of dozens of live sporting events on FOX Sports 1. Unfortunately, U-Verse subscribers have already missed several events, and will miss many more including FOX Sports 1’s coverage of eight USGA championships, including rounds 1 and 2 of the US Open. U-verse subscribers are encouraged to contact AT&T to request all FOX Sports 1 programming.” 

As of February 2015, approximately 84.8 million households in the U.S. receive Fox Sports 1, while 94.3 million pay television households have ESPN, where the U.S. Open weekday coverage aired for 28 years.

But that's worth it for the Living Brand, no?  I mean as long as we still get the crashing robots...

A Linksapalooza -  We'll be treated to a larger than usual dosage of the good stuff this summer, with televised links golf from everywhere, including an improbable U.S. Open.  In unrelated items loosely tied to this thread, first a short video to put you in the mood for our July visit to the Auld Grey Toon:

I always advise folks that it's well worth a visit to St. Andrews regardless of whether or not you're able to get on the Old Course.  

And the kudos continue to mount for World No. 1 and his support of The Irish Open:

RORY McIlroy’s powers of persuasion have resulted in US Open champion Martin

The Mountains of Mourne and Slieve Donard frame the beautiful ninth hole.

Kaymer, former world number one Luke Donald and American Ryder Cup star Patrick Reed in confirming their participation in the Dubai Duty Free Irish Open. 

McIlroy’s foundation is hosting the event at Royal County Down from 28-31 May and the world number one has been a major influence in attracting a top-class field, who will compete for a prize fund of €2.5 million (£1.8 million), an increase of 25 per cent from last year. 

Reed let the cat out of the bag on the final day of the Masters at Augusta National, also revealing he would compete in the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth the week before.

But the addition of Kaymer and Donald means the tournament will feature five players who have been world number one – McIlroy, Donald, Kaymer, Ernie Els and Lee Westwood – and eight major champions in McIlroy, Els, Kaymer, Darren Clarke, Padraig Harrington, Graeme McDowell, Paul Lawrie and Jose Maria Olazabal.

It's a spectacular venue and they'll be glad they make the effort... unless, of course, they get Irish weather.   

And in this week's airline schedule update comes this exciting news:

Beginning July 1, United Airlines will offer twice-a-week nonstop flights between Denver International Airport and Southwest Oregon Regional Airport in North Bend through Oct. 18. The flights will run on Sunday and Wednesday.

Scratching your head, are you?  North Bend, not to be confused with the better-known Bend located in the central portion of the state, is a coastal town a mere 30-45 minutes north of Bandon Dunes.  Finally you can get there from here...

This Week in Golf Rules Infractions -  I'm not especially inclined towards the premise that golf's rules are too complicated, at least not when you consider that it's the only sport played in the great expanse of nature wherein any circumstance can occur.  But admittedly the powers that be do provoke some head-scratching at times, such as this:

Italy's Edoardo Molinari was disqualified from the European Tour's Shenzhen International on Friday after failing to include a strange penalty on his round of 75 Thursday; his caddie hopped a golf cart between the ninth and 10th tees, but Molinari didn't see it.

Now understand, if Molinari had declared a shot to be in an...errr....what do they call such a thing? ...help me here...oh yes, an Unplayable Lie, he and his caddie could ride the cart back to the tee... Truly stupid, and even worse is to DQ a player that had no knowledge of the infraction.

Of course none of this comes from the Rules of Golf, which are blissfully simple...

This Week in Golf Litigation - Titleist dominates the golf ball market, and I'm guessing from this that they like it that way...

Acushnet, the parent company of golf ball behemoth Titleist, is saying more than a dozen different balls from an array of small startup companies are infringing on its patents for dimple patterns.

So it’s suing them.

Hmmm...taking on the minnows seems like an odd stratgey:

Many offer low-priced versions of multilayer, urethane-cover golf balls. That’s the kind of construction typically played by tour players and a segment that now accounts for more than 40 percent of the U.S. golf ball market, according to figures from golf research firm Golf Datatech.

Filed April 6 in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts in Boston, the lawsuit names 17 different balls from ten different companies. Among the companies listed are Rife (V-Motion), I Need the Ball (The Ball), Vice Golf (Pro) and Kick X (Tour-Z). According to the lawsuit, the dimple patterns on these balls are all the same: 318 dimples arranged in what the lawsuit terms “a triangluar dipyramid shape.”

Do I have this right, seventeen balls from ten companies all using the same dimple pattern?  That's gotta be some form of collusion or wild coincidence, no?  Not so much it turns out, as all of these balls are manufactured in the same Taiwanese factory:

In a recent email, Foremost’s Gavin Lee told Golf Digest the company has “several hundred” balls in its current catalog. “We work with the R&D [department] with each of our customers,” he wrote, indicating that Foremost is the second-largest manufacturer of golf balls in the world behind Acushnet. “Every creation is a custom design.”

While no Titleist ball on the USGA’s conforming list utilizes a 318-dimple pattern, the patents in question cover a broad area of ball and dimple design that include patterns that range from 250 to 370 dimples.

Out of curiosity, I wonder how similar the dimple patterns are on the Callaway, TaylorMade and Bridgestone balls... It's somewhat curious as a business strategy, since it's hard to imagine that Acushnet can even feel the volume lost to such competitors.