Letter From Saugerties, Jimmy Cannon Edition

After a number of recent posts, Frank Hannigan files this Cannonesque "Nobody Asked Me, But..." Letter from Saugerties:

Dear Geoff,

There are no words to express my gratitude for your posting of The Crazy Swing of a man in Egypt.  I wonder what happens when he finds himself in a bunker?

Peter Thomson ran for the Australian equivalent of our Congress. His politics? Let's just say he was not a man of the left. He came here in 1985 to play on the senior tour for only one reason: to beat Arnold Palmer like a drum. He told me not to pay much attention to his scores since "we are playing from the ladies tees."

He is also memorable for his speaking the ultimate truth about instruction which is that neither he nor anyone else could teach a newcomer anything useful other than how to grip the club properly and to aim. Peter once covered a US Open at Oak Hill in Rochester for an Australian newspaper. I asked him what he thought of the course. "It's too good for them" was his response.

Slow play by the women in the Solheim Cup, with 4-ball rounds approaching 6 hours, could be cured immediately by the simple device of sub-letting the role of the committee to officials not employed by the LPGA or the European women's tour. I would put USGA alumnus Tom Meeks in charge and tell him that if any given round takes 4 hours 45 minutes to transpire that he would not be paid.

Corey Pavin's average driving distance on the Tour today is 260 yards, or 8 yards longer than he was in 1999. You figure it's the mustache?

Comparisons of some other short drivers: Jim Furyk 278 now, 268 then. Paul Goydos is up 12 yards in a decade to 276, Billy Mayfair has become a brute at 284 but was only 269 a decade earlier.

In the early 1990s I was a consultant (unpaid) for a golf course project at Liberty State Park - the site of this week's Tour event. It required the blessing of then New Jersey Governor Christie Whitman, herself an enthusiastic golfer.

She wouldn't help us because the mayor of Jersey City said that golf was inherently elitist and that none of his city's precious land should be wasted on the rich. Never mind that the land in question was poisonously polluted. My idea was for a daily fee course supplemented by renting the course out once day a week for huge fees from Wall Street firms who would arrive by boat. What's happened is the creation of a $500,000 private club that is out of the reach of anybody who isn't loaded.

Liberty National is a design of the architectural pair of Tom Kite and Bob Cupp who survived the misfortune of designing a 2nd course at the Baltimore Country Club. It's adjacent to the wonderful Five Farms course created by AW Tillinghast. There were to be 36 holes as routed by Tillinghast. Because of the Great Depression the second course was put off for 50 years. The contrast between the two courses? Let's just say that the Kite-Cupp course concludes with a double green.

I twitched whenever I heard the name "Solheim" on television last week. Remember the great U groove wars of the 1980s when Ping sued both the USGA and the PGA Tour? There were endless meetings in attempt to resolve the matter without litigation. One took place in our USGA offices in New Jersey. Karsten sent one of his primary technicians. The man recorded the meeting secretly with a device hidden in his briefcase, hoping I or my colleague Frank Thomas would be caught saying something that might be useful to Ping in the suit to come.

Never mind how we found out. The tapes are stored in Mayer Brown, the USGA's Chicago law firm. Pity the
meeting did not take place in New York where such bugging is a crime. Anything goes in New Jersey.

Frank Hannigan
Saugerties, New York

Letter from Saugerties-USGA Annual Report

From former USGA Executive Director Frank Hannigan. Past letters of his can be viewed here.

Geoff,

I once sat in a meeting room full of corporate executives who advertise in Fortune magazine. The speakers were Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. After bragging that Gates personally taught him how to get online, Buffett fielded a question about his annual report. Buffett said he regarded his annual report as vital, that he spent much time on it, that it contained nothing he did not regard as true. All one had to do to know what was happening at Berkshire Hathaway was read its annual report.

The recently published annual report of the United States Golf Association is the converse of the Buffet attitude. It is a monument of obfuscation and self praise.

The governing body’s report contains two principle sections. There is a 3-and-a-half-page hunk of prose signed by current president James Vemon. Then comes the financial statement for 2008. Let’s consider the money part first.

There was revenue of $155,814,000. Expenses were $155,747,000. So the “profit” was a pittance of $67,000. In 1997 USGA revenue was only $136 million. Financially the USGA is like a hamster on a wheel. No matter how hard it runs it can’t catch up to itself.

If the USGA wants to have more money the answer is simple – spend less. Concerned, Vemon says they are now reviewing the expenditure of every nickel and dime. Expense reports are to be examined with a new fervor.

That’s not going to get it. Just like the federal government the USGA is eventually going to have to deal with entitlements. Examples:

Expenses for championships and broadcasting are line-itemed at $80 million. There is no breakdown of what was spent when or where although they maintain distinctions internally in finite detail. Most of that money has to be ascribed to “US Open” given it doesn’t cost much to run the Senior Amateur Championship. A person familiar with tournament expenses, anonymous because of ongoing dealings the USGA, says “US Open expenses are completely out of control.”

I wonder where they hide the cost of a private jet to ferry members of the Executive Committee to sites of USGA activities where they are not needed. Perhaps they have dumped the jet in emulation of Citi Group and other corporations – out of embarrassment. You can’t know because it’s a verboten subject.

Denied all detail as to championship expenses, I nevertheless conclude they could be cut by $5 million or more and nobody in the audience would know the difference.

The USGA gave away $3 million in grants via its own Foundation and another $3 million as a gift to The First Tee effort. Vernon points out in his text that the USGA has been the biggest giver to The First Tee. He omits mention of the PGA Tour whose creature is The First Tee. The omission tells us Far Hills does not love Ponte Veda. Probably vice versa too.

Since these gifts have accomplished nothing in terms of “growing the game” (golf is either flat or in decline) I say get rid of them. But if the USGA can afford to and wants to give away money, send it to where it can do some good – to Darfur, the Mississippi literacy program, or the Western Golf Association for caddie scholarships.

I shudder on reading that the combined expenses of its “communications” and “digital media” operations were more than $10 million. The USGA seems to think that if you just throw enough stuff online the result will be that everyone will love you. What difference can it make if the USGA is held in high or low esteem so long as the Rules Of Golf are accepted by golfers everywhere? Achieving uniformity in the rules, in accord with its partner the R&A, is the primary triumph in USGA history. And it happened before anyone owned a computer.

Vernon writes they spent $20 million to redo the Museum and Library. As a former curator of the USGA Museum (I got a D because I misplaced items), I remain a fan of the museum but not $20 millions worth. When the museum reopened in June, admission was charged for the first time. It now costs $7.50 if you want to see The Moon Club.

You will search in vain for museum attendance figures. That’s because even golfers can look at the moon itself – for free. Apparently attendance is limited to elderly people on busses who thought they signed up to catch a matinee at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Milburn. They are startled when the bus passes Milburn and keeps going west on I-78.

The Vernon message is replete with odd usages. He seems to think the USGA began about five years ago when contracts were signed with four corporate “partners” and that NBC is an ally. That alliance consists of NBC giving the USGA about $30 million as a rights fee along with the understanding NBC will never criticize the USGA on air.

The US Open is described as “the most rigorous examination in golf.” Translation: “We want high scores and we get them.”

He enthuses about a 14-point course philosophy. Amazing, but Jones, Hogan and Nicklaus each managed to win four US Opens absent 14-point philosophies.

He enthuses over the introduction of graduated rough. US Opens had graduated rough when Bob Jones was playing. They have introduced a third cut of rough. But, although they surely have numbers they don’t say what effect, if any, the third cut has on the competition.

Vernon cites using different yardages for the same hole among recent inspirations. Excuse me, but alternative tees were used in the 1967 Open at Baltusrol. In all, setting up a course is one third art, one third agronomy and one third guesswork. Fourteen points was what President Wilson tried to pull off after World War I.

It wouldn’t be a USGA annual report without claims of being newly “relevant,” which is what happened when the Open was played on Torrey Pines (where they gouged the City of San Diego.) Each of the four corporate partners were “relevant” to USGA priorities. The automobile sponsor contributed 13,000 “car nights” . When you were a kid, did you beg dad for two “car nights” this week?

The ailing economy sharply reduced the value of the USGA investments. So what? That happened to everyone. The amount of loss should be specified in the president’s message. Instead, you have to hunt for the numbers in the fine print of the financial statement. I doubt it would be there at all but for a legal requirement. Transparency is not a USGA virtue.

We learn that both junior championships this year will be played on courses owned by Donald Trump. Now that does exemplify a new and different USGA. I find it hard to picture historic USGA figures like Richard Tufts, Bill Campbell, Sandy Tatum and Joe Dey hanging around with Donald Trump.

Staff resignations, early retirements and plain old firings in the last two years are not mentioned. It could be argued that staff turnover doesn’t matter so long as the USGA runs splendid championships and nurtures the Rules of Golf. The workers on Henry Ford’s assembly lines were not wild about their jobs but kept on churning out Model Ts.

On the other hand, the USGA is an institution of human relations. It is not Google. The USGA is having people troubles both at home and away.

Only recently there were four exceptional US Open sites in the New York metropolitan area. Now there is one – Bethpage, where this year’s Open will occur. The Shinnecock Hills Open of 2004 was a debacle. It ended with the two parties spitting and hissing at each other. Baltusrol has switched to become a PGA Championship host. The members of Winged Foot last year voted overwhelmingly not to put up with another Open.

Those losses, Mr. Vernon, are relevant.

Frank Hannigan

Saugerties, New York

Letter From Saugerties--July 10, 2007

Former USGA Executive Director Frank Hannigan sends another of his thoughtful letters, this time he's reacting to the recent USGA staff firings spearheaded by Walter Driver and rubber-stamped by the Executive Committee. Hannigan tells us what they mean for the organization and the game.

Dear Geoff:

I can’t convince you, because of your youth, there was a time when the USGA was generally regarded as the most effective, efficient and logical body of sports in this country. When I was chief operating officer of the USGA and feeling sour about something we’d done I would turn my mind to the US Tennis Association and immediately perk up.

Alas, I agree with your low estimation of today’s USGA which is no better than the USTA, the NCAA, the AAU, the US Olympic Committee or, I suppose, Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Federation.

The barrage of media criticism of president Walter Driver is both unprecedented and deserved. It’s also simplistic. The USGA began to behave strangely more than 10 years ago. The greatest failure was to pull back from what would have been a stupendous conflict had the organization attempted to do the right thing about distance.

Knowing full well that they should have risked the farm with anti-distance legislation, they instead have announced a ban on U grooves starting in 2009, saying that the game has been totally changed by grooves so that there is no longer any correlation between accuracy on the Tour and success. This they say in a year when Fred Funk, Scotty Verplank, Paul Goydos and Zach Johnson are gobbling up tour titles, not to mention the Masters.  All bunters.

Internally, the USGA is grim.  President Driver has ousted two senior staff members.  The first was Tim Moraghan, a specialized agronomist who worked with the superintendents at championship courses. The second, not yet formally announced, is Marty Parkes, the USGA’s long time director of communications.  Parkes was #4 on what has become a perhaps too large staff of more than 300.

The firings, of course, are termed “resignations.” Both of those leaving accepted bonus packages including a provision they would not speak ill of the USGA or talk about their separations.  I find that a very sleazy way for a public entity to act. The USGA insists on its privacy, which it legally holds, but it has no problem avoiding federal taxes. It even accepts 501c3 status as a “charity” which means that volunteers like Driver can deduct their USGA expenses.

Moraghan, I would say, has been fired retroactively for whatever part he played in the course debacle of the 2004 US Open at Shinnecock Hills.  Driver was then chairman of the championship committee and had to endure humiliation.

Marty Parkes is gone, as I and others see it, because he could not prohibit negative print media and blog stories (like this) about Driver. There was the notorious Golf World magazine cover story headed “Can the USGA Survive Walter Driver?” But then Washington Post golf writer Len Shapiro labeled Driver “the most disliked USGA president ever.” Driver’s partners at Goldman Sachs do not know what Golf World is, but they are certainly cognizant of the Washington Post.

You would think Driver, having a major post in what is likely the world’s most successful financial concern, would know a bit about money. Instead, he has a strange idea  about the USGA being endangered financially.  He points out that the USGA “lost” $6 million in operations in 2006 and has budgeted a $5 million loss for 2007.  The 2006 “loss” was the first in the history of the USGA, which commenced in 1895.  It was also the first year of Driver’s two as president.

Meanwhile, the USGA investments have a street value close to $300 million. Even a financial ignoramus like myself could churn $15 million or more out of that without going near the principle. The “loss” he’s talking about does not take into account the growth in value of the investments.

He says the USGA, were it a business, would be in big time trouble.  Excuse me, but the USGA is NOT a business.  It is a non-profit service organization. The American Cancer Society would be in trouble as a “business.”

He points to the fragility of the USGA’s television income, which is hidden but likely pushing $25 million a year. The contract with NBC runs through 2014.  President Driver says who can possibly tell what will happen with TV money after 2014.   Nobody, can. But you know what?   If it’s so scary the USGA could easily get an extension of its NBC contract right now, especially after the success of the Open at Oakmont.

Marty Parkes is after my USGA time, which ended in 1989. I have had no professional dealings with him, but we were cordial when I ran into him. As is my want, I would tease him by saying one expected more of a graduate of the London School of Economics than being a USGA publicist.  I read him as being an exceptional manager of projects and people but uncomfortable cozying up to golf media giants.

The USGA set-up is truly strange. It gives complete power and authority to its volunteer executive committee of 15. The president is labeled in the by-laws as chief executive officer but his powers are limited to presiding over meetings and appointing the members of the many sub committees. He can’t even hire, that power being given to the executive committee as a whole. (The by-laws say the committee can hire “clerks.”).

Parkes may also have been fired because when Driver and his colleagues slashed staff benefits in January, Parkes sent an email to Driver asking for or demanding an explanation.  This caused Driver to fly to New Jersey from Atlanta and address a surly staff.

This must be said for Driver.  He did not use the USGA’s leased jet when he flew to Newark for this meeting.  (He correctly notes that he inherited the jet program from his predecessor Fred Ridley-- which is not the same as saying he could cancel it in these financially perilous days.) You will search in vain in the USGA financial statement for a line item about the jet or for that matter the cost of entertaining members of the executive committee and their wives at championships, where they are not needed.  For the staff, which can truly run golf tournaments, these people are heavy maintenance.

Since Driver does not have the kind of power a corporate CEO has it follows he must have the approval and backing of the executive committee. What are they thinking?  I think they are thinking about getting re-appointed.

How about executive director David Fay, who followed me in that role? I have no idea where he is at. It’s easy for me to say 16 years after the fact, but if the executive committee ordered me to fire someone from what I regarded as MY staff, I would have reacted by saying you can fire anybody you want but that means I go too.

For all I know, David may have fought heroically to save Marty Parkes, and was central in a negotiating process (Marty wisely had got himself a lawyer) whereby Marty got out with an excellent deal.

The USGA is now a grim place.   Nobody thinks that Driver & Co. are finished firing.

I wonder how much it matters save for the exercise of egos.  The USGA is a service entity with a mix of components. It does not follow that terrible leadership causes these to fall apart.  Example:  two years ago my up-state club, 9 holes, was visited by a USGA agronomist. He too was after my time.  I purposely stayed away on the day of his visit but the club people sent me a copy of his written report. It wasn’t just good.  It was superb. The recommendations were followed and resulted in much better turfgrass.

I’m sure the same can be said of other USGA departments, e.g., handicapping and perhaps management of the Rules of Golf.  (The USGA, if known at all to casual golfers, is understood to be the US Open and Rules of Golf.  Many people think I worked 28 years for the “PGA”.)

There is no provision for impeachment. By tradition, Driver will be gone in six months.  I have been saying for years that the USGA is badly in need of an infusion of democratic procedure.  There needs to be a contested election. It doesn’t happen because the average golfer cares only his futile attempt to make a good swing. 

The decline of the USGA did not begin with Walter Driver.  I would label it as beginning in 1995 when one of Driver’s predecessors hired Kenny Rogers for $30,000 to sing at a USGA birthday party.

Kenny Rogers is as appropriate for the USGA as Jenna Jameson would be at a conclave of the College of Cardinals.

Frank Hannigan
Saugerties, New York 

 For some past letters from Hannigan, check here.

Letter From Saugerties, March 6, 2007

Former USGA Executive Director Frank Hannigan shares his thoughts on the ramifications and politics behind a possible U-groove rule change:

The recent USGA announcement proposing to get rid of U-shaped grooves contained every self-congratulatory cliché except “Mission Accomplished.”
 
Dick Rugge, USGA senior technical director, said “These proposals represent the comprehensive, deliberate and thoughtful nature of the USGA’s equipment research.”       

It’s Rugge’s own work.
 
Whatever happened to modesty?
 
The reality is that the USGA, unable or unwilling to do anything about the surge in distance that has polluted the game, is trying to pretend it is giving birth to an elephant. In fact, it’s not even a mouse.
 
Rugge correctly observes that "the skill of driving the ball accurately has become much less important in achieving success on the Tour than it used to be.”  From there comes his quantum leap in logic that by reverting to V grooves the rich, wild and famous will get so much less spin and loft from “the rough” that they might as well leave the Tour and look for jobs.
 
The balls used on the Tour, sure enough, are predominantly urethane covered, softer than the rocks used by the rest of us, and therefore spin more. Our balls, with surlyn covers, will not be affected, so the USGA says it has discovered a win-win situation.
 
Back in 1986 the USGA, with Frank Thomas as its technical director, published a massive “Groove Study”.  It said that soft-covered balls, with balata then in use, spun some more out of short rough  when struck with U-grooved clubs, but not enough to make any difference. The key word was “insignificant.”

Rugge & Co.  say “posh” to the original groove story. The difference they say matters a hell of a lot.

Alas, they provide no specifics.  Like so:
 
1.  The average score on the PGA Tour is stuck on 71.2.  If  U-grooves matter so much the average score then must surely jump come 2009, assuming the PGA Tour accepts the proposal.  I hazard the prediction that unless the Tour modifies the way it sets up courses the average score will stay the same.
 
2.  The USGA posture seems to be that the wrong people have been winning.    One wonders who they might be.  Surely not Tiger Woods,  who shares with the USGA a deep love for business deals with American Express.
 
3.  What is “rough” and what strains of grass are we talking about?  Is it what the announcers at The Masters are required to call “the second cut.”  It surely can’t be the USGA’s own famous “primary rough” because the grooves don’t get to the ball out of 5 inches of grass.
 
4.  U-grooves became permissible under the Rules of Golf in 1984.  So how come the tilt toward power on the Tour did not cause brows to furrow until the late 1990s?

5.  The USGA has a vast archive of television tapes.  How about pulling up about 6 shots that show the perfidious results of U-grooves and offering them as a display?

Almost nobody disagrees with the USGA observation that distance matters too much now.  That’s because the USGA blew it to the extent that the average distance per measured drive on the Tour is 289 yards, nearly 30 yards up since the early 1990s.         
 
The Tour has scrambled to stabilize scoring by making courses much harder today.  But  the power hitters benefit disproportionately.  Imagine it’s 1990 and a big hitter is 180 yards from the hole while his fellow competitor, an average hitter, is 210 yards from the hole.  Fast forward to 2007.  The  big hitter is now 150 yards away and the average hitter 180 yards distant.   I contend the difference between the two in what they score on the hole has widened in favor of the big hitter.
 
If the USGA is serious about restoring the virtues of accuracy all it has to do is roll back the fail point in its vital Overall Distance Standard test. Banning U-grooves is merely a way of pretending to do something.  The proposals for change are likely to sail through because they don’t bother anybody.

The USGA can declare victory, or at least until the end of the 2009 season when it becomes understood nothing has happened.

Frank Hannigan
Saugerties, New York
March 6, 2007

To read other Hannigan letters, here was his previous piece on the grooves story, his commentary on the recent USGA-AmEx deal, his thoughts on the USGA's private jet package and his take on USGA President Walter Driver's views on distance.

Letter from Saugerties, February 10, 2006

Former USGA Executive Director Frank Hannigan shares his thoughts on the ramifications and politics behind a possible U-groove rule change.

Having been afraid to do anything to restrain distance, which matters enormously, the USGA is evidently bent on trying to salvage what’s left of its reputation by being  dramatic on a subject that matters very little –  grooves.

A golf equipment manufacturer leaked a copy of a USGA report to Golf Digest magazine.  Mike Stachura, one of the editors, analyzed the report and then interviewed Dick Rugge, the USGA Technical Director.

The report seems to put the club-makers on notice that the USGA will soon change the specifications for grooves on iron clubs. The report says that, contrary to a central tenet of the USGA for the last of 20 years, modern grooves have changed the game dramatically.  The right U grooves, according to the new USGA, make the game much easier for Tour players.

During the 1980s there were great conflicts as to whether U grooves provided significantly more spin that traditional forged V grooves. (Full disclosure: I was then the USGA’s Executive Director).  The answer was presented in two massive volumes titled “USGA Groove Study”.  It said that grooves don’t matter at all on clean hits, which is what Tour players get on par-3 tees and in most of their fairway shots.  U grooves, the study said, sometimes put more spin on a ball played out of light rough but the difference is never more than a couple of feet when it comes to stopping the ball.   Moreover, there are a great many variables including the strains of grasses.

(Please note: when a ball stops 2 feet quicker it does not follow that the ball is 2 feet closer to the hole.  Most shots stop short of the hole anyway so that if a U grooved iron caused a ball to stop quicker the end result could be a 12 foot putt instead of a 10 foot putt.)

Meanwhile, the scoring numbers on the Tour don’t change. The raw average score in 2006 was 71.2, right where it’s been for more than a decade.  Greens hit in regulation numbers also remain the same.  The average is 11.7 per round, same as it was back before the distance explosion starting in 1995.  

The PGA Tour has kept these numbers static by making the courses much harder to play.  Courses are longer, have more rough, fairways are narrower and holes are cut today in parts of greens unthinkable 10 or 15 years ago as suitable locations for holes. Grooves?  Don’t matter.

Harder courses have been forced on the Tour by the USGA’s failure to control distance. Tiger Woods is 30 yards longer than Jack Nicklaus because the USGA blew it first on modern drivers with excessive spring like effect (the whole Tour got 10 yards longer overnight) and then with vastly improved balls.    

I found Dick Rugge’s answers to Stachura’s questions surprisingly hard edged.  I thought of Rugge as a nice man who is trying to hold on to a wickedly difficult job that is much more political in nature than scientific.  Dealing with the USGA Executive Committee, some of whom have a fair understanding of golf and others who have no clue, is no bed of roses.

But in response to Stachura’s probing as to how the USGA could now adopt a position diametrically opposed to what had been its policy Rugge made some smart aleck comment about how lots of people used to think the earth was flat too.   He went on to say that he has 3 people with Ph.Ds doing research, a kind of expertise unavailable to the USGA in the past.

This leads me to Frank Thomas, Rugge’s predecessor as USGA Technical Director and the overseer of its historic groove studies.  Thomas was not exactly working with guys he dragged in off the street.  His assistant had come to the USGA from West Point where he was a professor of ballistics.

Rugge’s resume includes a stint at Taylor Made where he was the enabler of bubble shafts. Remember those?  The marketing was effective.

Poor Frank Thomas had to put up with a scientific ignoramus, myself, demanding to know how we could allow bubbles in shafts that would change the game. Thomas laughed, saying that bubbles in shafts had nothing to do with performance and would soon go away, like so many hyped equipment products.

When I had a long chat with Rugge I tried to push a button by asking why I should take him seriously as the USGA’s wizard on golf equipment given his history of espousing bubbles in shafts. His face reddened.  

Rugge also told Mike Stachura something he had also told me – that he was tremendously influenced by Arnold Palmer who said to him that the USGA gave the game away by allowing U grooves.    

Arnold Palmer on golf equipment?  Whatever happened to all those Arnold Palmer equipment companies? But the Palmer magic endures.  If, perchance, Arnold announced that the world is flat, both Rugge and USGA President Walter Driver would be very careful where they stepped.

Frank Thomas now has a gig with Golf Digest where he is buried in the back of the book (Full disclosure: I used to write for the magazine). Not long ago I laughed aloud when I read some stuff of his in answer to ostensible reader questions about groove performance.  

He knows what the USGA is up to, considers it nonsense, and was trying to make the point softly. I suspect that when Frank left the USGA in a state of great animosity he signed a piece of paper saying that if he directly speaks ill of the USGA in public he endangers some of his tin parachute money.  These things happen.

As I’ve said, Dick Rugge is a pleasant man with political skills. If he were to run for public office, say for a place on a town council, with Frank Thomas as his opponent, Dick would come in with an overwhelming majority. On the other hand, I would rather have Frank look under the hood of my stalled car.

For the world of golf to get a feeling for what grooves do and don’t do, I offer a simple solution. The USGA should release Frank Thomas from whatever hold it has on him.   There should be a public debate on The Golf Channel, one hour, no commercials, with only Rugge and Thomas on stage.

We need a moderator. Tim Russert probably doesn’t play golf.  Tom Friedman, the esteemed columnist of the New York Times, a golf whacko who as a kid caddied for Chi Chi Rodriguez in a US Open, would be excellent.  But Tom might consider this too trivial. 

I know.  We get The Hon. Dan Quayle, former vice president of these United States.   He may not be Jack Kennedy, but he can break 80.

Frank Hannigan
Saugerties, New York
February 12, 2006

To read other Hannigan letters, here is his commentary on the recent USGA-AmEx deal where he revealed that the USGA lost $7 million this year. He also shared his thoughts on the USGA's private jet package, and provided this take on USGA President Walter Driver's revealing views on distance.