Over the Green

LG Skins Game
I know you, as I, were waiting in breathless anticipation for the annoucement naming the players for the reincarnation of the Skins Game this year on Nov. 29-30 in Indian Wells, Calif. Playing for the $1 million purse will be the 2006 and 2007 winner and number 27 in the world Stephen Ames. His competitors will be world’s number 15 K.J. Choi and everyman-favorite and world number 53 Rocco Mediate.

Rounding out the foursome is presumtive Hall of Famer Phil Mickelson, world number two who I guess didn’t have anything else going for Thanksgiving and is making his first appearance in five years.

I’m sorry but this is a yawner even for high test Lefty fans. Great golfers, great guys, but…

On the other hand this might have been a fitting place for Michelle Wie to tee it up. I wonder if her parents were asked?

LPGA Stubs More Than Its Toe
The LPGA Tour’s policy requiring English proficiency is correct from a business standpoint, no question. And even from a personal standpoint I’ve not heard of one player, Korean or any other nationality, not support it at least for now.

The problem is one of perception and communication with the players, the press and the fans. This was done poorly in my opinion and left the door open for the ladies to get hammered by those outside the game who have their own sometimes distorted agendas.

After all the LPGA wants to be on the front page of the NY Times but not for this.

Dixon Golf this past January launched a new ball with a distinctive marketing approach…it’s ‘green.’ That is, it can be recycled…More

Captain Dan Rooney, an F-16 pilot with the Oklahoma Air National Guard, started Patriot Golf Day last year for the Folds of Honor Foundation which provides scholarships to families of our military personnel disabled or killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. The 2007 event raised $1.1 million from one dollar contributions by each player at the 3,200 participating courses. Goal for the 2008 event is to double that amount.

To their credit, TaylorMade-adidas Golf is stepping up to aid this fine effort. The Carlsbad, Calif. company has donated a specially designed r7 model driver to each golf course taking part in Patriot Golf Day, which this year will cover four days, Aug. 29 through Sept. 1. The driver has the Patriot Golf Day Logo on the toe, a laser-etched F-16 jet on the sole, a deep “intimidation” black crown and a specially-designed Patriot Golf Day head cover in red, white and blue. A silent auction is being held prior to Aug. 29 for the drivers that come complete with a commemorative display box.

According to Mark King, TMaG’s president, “When we learned of Dan Rooney’s fundraising mission with Patriot Golf Day, it wasn’t a question of whether or not we would, but how much could we do to help. We hope the money raised from the auction of the TaylorMade limited edition drivers will positively impact families of servicemen and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice to protect our freedom.”

To find a course taking part go to PatriotGolfDay.com. The website also accepts donations and has PGD merchandise for sale.

Tiger Woods may be on the sidelines for the balance of the year but his first golf course design project is moving ahead with a press unveiling of the master plan for the United Arab Emirates project named Tiger Woods Dubai.

Billed as the ultimate high-end destination, the golf course part of the project is described in handouts as, “The Tiger Woods Dubai will encompass the first Tiger Woods designed 13 million sq feet golf course Al Ruwaya, which will offer only 200 memberships with residents of the community being given top priority. In addition, Al Ruwaya will also include a professionally-staffed golf academy, a 139,000 sq. feet clubhouse with premium amenities and a high-end destination spa.”

Now you may not know how big 13 million square feet is, I sure didn’t, but a quick calculation comes out to about 300 acres or if it’s significant an acre and a half for each prospective member.

Of course there will be suitable high end homes lining the fairways. “Luxury residences at The Tiger Woods Dubai will include 22 palaces, 75 mansions, and 100 signature villas. All residences will be situated on large land areas: palaces (100,000 sq. ft), mansions (50,000 sq. ft), large villas (30,000 sq. ft) and will include cutting-edge home technology and exquisite landscaped gardens. While master guidelines have been carefully chosen to ensure that the entire community enjoys amenities of the highest standards of quality and consistency.”

Only 22 palaces? Maybe this isn’t as high end as I thought.

I’m not even sure why but I took a look at the list of PGA Tour event sponsors and was struck by the fact 12 or 13 (depending on how you categorize them) are financial institutions of some kind.

With all the trouble this segment of the economy is experiencing will it be long before the several million dollars to sponsor a Tour event becomes a casualty of these problems?

The golf business malaise can be tied to the economic slowdown certainly and from a TV viewership/fan perspective having Tiger Woods at home for six months hurts both tournaments and sponsors. But golf was already in trouble before the current situation. Its been talked about for years. Programs such as the PGA’s Play Golf America, the USGA Growth of the Game grants and the industry group Golf 20/20 have all worked on solving the basic problem.

Oh, yes the problem. Golf is not growing, neither in the number of participants nor the number of rounds. Therefore to get bigger and make more money companies who own golf courses, resorts, real estate developments, manufacture clubs and balls, etc. must take sales away from competitors. They cannot grow due to increases in participation because there isn’t any. Kind of a sobering thought and up until now all you were worried about was curing your snap slice.

According to industry pundits and for once pundits appear to be correct, it comes down to 3-2s. Golf is takes too much time, too much money and is way too difficult.

None of these lend themselves to easy or quick solutions and besides solving the time and money parts leaves us with the fact golf is difficult and I sure don’t know a way around that one.

So in addition to attempting to add participants through the programs listed above and other efforts like The First Tee, the decision was made to foster international golf growth. How, you ask? By hooking up with the Olympics, i.e. getting golf blessed as one of the Olympic sports which means national Olympic committees mostly funded with government money would spend some of that money to get more citizens playing the game. More players, more rounds, more growth…it’s simple.

Never mind golf, a game of high reputation and ethics, is panting to join an organization which has time and again shown it does not live to the same standards. The Olympic acceptance effort is being done by the International Golf Federation (offices at the USGA building in Far Hills, NJ) which nominally has the purpose of conducting two international competitions for the Espirito Santo Trophy and the Eisenhower Trophy, but which added on the quest for the Olympic sanctioning. In addition to the USGA, involved are Augusta National Golf Club, the R&A and of course the PGA Tour who’s vice president TY Votaw is taking over as executive director of the IGF Olympic committee.

So now you have the background to see why drug testing is a fact of life on all the world’s tours. Each must conform to the Olympic standard before possibly being considered an Olympic sport joining beach volleyball and tennis. One other little item, The International Olympic Committee has told the IGF they won’t consider golf unless the top players participate, so will the major tournaments be sacrificed in order to have the dates available? Or will it be the Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup? Or will the crowded season be extended? There’s been no word from Tiger Woods whether he will play. Lastly has anyone given any thought as to the format of Olympic golf? Match play might be fun but will the representative from Afghanistan really have a chance against Tiger or Lefty? Medal play could work but in a field of 156 players how many PGA players will be left out so golfers from all the other countries can play?

Makes my head swim to think of the combinations and permutations of the Olympic solution to golf’s participation problem. But then it will all be over in a year since the IOC makes its decision whether they will let golf into the 2016 Olympics in October 2009. There are two spots open and golf is competing with baseball, softball, squash, karate, roller skating and seven-person rugby for acceptance.

Stay tuned I have the feeling this will only get more interesting.

Generally I am dubious of so-called ‘golf training aids.’ To me they are either too complicated, useless or both and some seemed to have been designed by Torquemada or the Marquis de Sade. With that all in mind I took the David Leadbetter SwingSetter Pro out to the range. More…

Frank Thomas has done it again, speared another bit of what I would call ‘fuzzy thinking’ by the USGA…and I’m being charitable, in his comments about the latest rule regarding grooves on medium and short irons. Golf’s favorite iconoclast makes several good points in his Q&A this week on the bifurcation of the Rules of Golf and the potential consequences.

For those of you who believe golf’s ruling body does no wrong and has the best interests of everyday golfers in the forefront of their thinking a quick read of Thomas’ opinion may change your mind. Personally I stopped sending in my USGA Associate dues about ten years ago as I came to see the domination of our sport by folks who basically play only at private clubs was not proper when 80 percent or so of golfers play at public facilities. (Full Disclosure: I’ve been a member of a private club most of my life).

Beginning with the Ping Golf lawsuit against the organization the USGA record is one of being more concerned with the avoidance of legal problems, i.e. being sued by club makers, than nurturing new players in spite of the ‘Growth of the Game’ programs given so much publicity. And by the way in case it slipped from your memory the Ping suit was also over grooves.

Here is a link to Thomas’ comments.

Most golfers know who Barney Adams is, the inventor of the Tight Lies club who started Adams Golf to provide players easy to hit hybrids.

I picked up Adams’ new book “The Wow Factor” thinking it was about that, golf and golf clubs etc. but found it to be something else. It’s a business biography about the lessons learned in four decades before making a product the market was ready to accept, in fact accepted greedily. The sub title is revealing, “How I turned one great idea and my unbridled enthusiasm into a golf revolution.” More…

Well, it took 3 pages for the notification to club makers and nine more pages to explain how the measuring will be done…a document called “DETERMINATION OF GROOVE CONFORMANCE (Impact Area Markings (App II, 5c) Measurement Procedure) August, 2008,” but we now have a new set of regulations from the USGA (and R&A) controlling the size and configuration of iron grooves.

Beginning with a five-iron down to wedges touring pros will be expected to play with conforming clubs beginning in 2010. USGA competitions will fall under the rule in 2014 and the rest of us must comply in 2024.

This all is caused by the fixation the USGA and some others seems to have with how far the less than top 1% of players are hitting the ball and how driver-wedge seems to be the modern way to play par 4s or at least those on Tour. There at lot of discussion about ‘grand old course becoming obsolete,’ how being the rough is not much of a problem anymore, the lengthening courses, etc.

Please note though these arguments all apply to really skilled players, toursters and top ams, not us. So we have the situation again where for the sake of some idea about the traditions of golf non-elite golfers will be stuck with a rule which truly only applies to the elite golfers’ game.

However, it may not turn into the mess we have with drivers and ball regs. Note the last three words in this quote from Jay Rains, USGA vice president and chairman of the USGA Equipment Standards Committee, “Ultimately, we came to the conclusion that the path forward was to get the top-level professional tours under the new groove regulations as soon as possible and to phase in the next level of amateur competition four years later, in 2014. This means that clubs you own today will still be conforming for top-level amateur competition for another 5 1/2 years and, for other competitions, conforming until at least 2024, if not indefinitely.”