When you come to think of it that is the secret of most of the great holes all over the world. They all have some kind of a twist. C.B. MACDONALD
Not the golf one, but the NBA one, which ESPN.com's Marc Stein analyzes quite nicely here.
Reading this, it's easy to imagine a similar debacle in golf if and when it becomes clear the USGA will never roll back the ball and someone tries to manufacture a true tournament ball that is foisted upon players.
I used to think that if I was told I had six months to live that I would spend it watching The Big Break or Dr. Phil or listening to Celine Dion albums, but now I'm inclined to think that the PGA Tour Communications Summit will do the trick.
I could only get through 5 more pages. But Tim Finchem and Ty Votaw's statements were eye opening, if you can navigate the hurdles. I was tempted to plug this into the Ali G tranzlata, but why ruin such authentic frontier gibberish?
Finchem:
And then the second thing was, and this was we thought the most crucial thing, and it kind of overlaps the focus on tournaments, was to improve our ability working with our partners to utilize the media overall to communicate everything about the sport, the competition, who the players are, what the sport does and the rest, to engage the fans more effectively through the media.
Ali Geoff tranzlata: Why spend all of that money on ad campaigns when you can get writers to spread the propaganda? Oh sorry...
If we're successful in moving the needle in this area, there are benefits for everybody in this room. There are clearly benefits for our membership and for our tournaments and for our ability to grow the strength of this platform and continue to move the needle in terms of the benefits for players, the benefits for charities and our tournaments and the impact on the game of golf.
Is this really a good time to be using the needle metaphor? Just a thought.
The bottom line is, at the end of the day, we're moving needles here.
Here's Votaw talking about similar summits in other sports:
One interesting finding that we discovered in looking at those other summits was the extent to which they did not include the members of the media in the actual implementation and conduct of their communications summits. They tended to include everybody but the media in gathering their communications stakeholders in order to improve their media outreach activities.
Yes, that's because those others sports didn't view the media as a group of stenographers who might just be dumb enough to write what you tell them.
Now, in the planning for this day, the phrase "sunlight is the best disinfectant" has come up many times in making sure if we do this and we do this right, we have to include all the stakeholders, including the media, get all the issues out on the table and get them out in the open and talk about them, and that's what we're going to do today.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant? That's one of those great metaphors that makes you stop and think, what the hell is he talking about? He is good!
To our partners in the golf equipment industry, we hope you take away the message that we want to work with you and identify and take advantage of quality media opportunities for players endorsing your products both within the golf industry as well as mass media markets.
Because moving your product is paramount to us.
Just look at how well that league driven product focus has worked for the NBA recently.
I know, I vowed never to complain about another list ever again. But Golf World's top 25 newsmakers of 2006 isn't as much a list as it is well, okay it's a list. And I think the warm fall went to the heads of the folks in Wilton.
Here are my gripes, because, you know, it really matters in the big scheme of life.
No. 24 Torrey Pines - actually, this was a great and surprising addition, setting up nicely what may become a huge story in 2007. (That is, the lousy state of affairs at the 2008 U.S. Open site, starting with questions about course conditions.)
No. 23 Drug testing - Fine, leave it out of the top 20 even though you, Golf World did a stellar job last fall looking into this and Tiger made a bold statement that humiliated the Commissioner and further undermined his credibility. Okay, this is probably where it belongs until you see...
No. 22 Super seniors - Jay Haas and Loren Roberts dominating the Champions Tour? Top 100 maybe. But top 25? This is the Rich Harvest Links of Golf World's list. They're allowed one I guess.
No. 21 Hoylake's surprise - This was a surprise only because of Ron Whitten's misfire review.
No. 20 Hootie's departure - Come on, the man deserves top 10 status. His turbulent tenure certainly warrants a higher spot than...
No. 18 John Daly - A divorce, a reality show and losing his card does not make this newsworthy. This is simply another year in the life our favorite country crooner!
No. 14 The New TV Deal - Again, this one probably should rank a little higher considering what a huge story it was and will continue to be thanks to the FedEx Cup. This little bit from Stu Schneider's write up caught my eye:
TGC's hiring of Nick Faldo made positive headlines, but the "Why The Golf Channel?" questions still surround the contract, as do other rumors, including the existence of an "out clause" that the tour could exercise at some point.
Well, that would certainly make the 15-year commitment look less ridiculous.
And finally, the ultimate you have to be kidding me...
No. 11 Camillo Villegas
No. 10 Bomb and Gouge crowd
Guys and gals, did we make this list up in February? Villegas didn't win a tournament, Holmes disappeared after CBS crowned him the second coming of Christ and Bubba had a nice year. But Top 10?
Hey, at least the final 9 were spot on.
A new exhibit filled with rare golf artifacts to pay tribute to the landmark course at the 114-year-old Chicago Golf Club, just outside Wheaton, opened recently in the Center for History in a former firehouse at 315 W. Front St.And...
Titled "Fairways, Greens & Clubs," the $500,000 exhibit also highlights the Chicago area's influence on the evolution of golf in the Midwest, particularly from the 1890s through the 1940s. With red leather chairs, a faux fireplace and 30 custom-made wood display cabinets, the exhibit has the luxurious feel of a golf clubhouse.
There are trophies and memorabilia on loan from the Onwentsia Club in Lake Forest, the North Shore Country Club in Glenview, the Flossmoor Country Club in Flossmoor and the Olympia Fields Country Club in Olympia Fields.
The exhibit also celebrates the father of American golf architecture, Charles Blair Macdonald, who founded Chicago Golf and laid out its course.
Macdonald, whose expertise as a player is demonstrated through two of the trophies he won, lived in unincorporated Wheaton from the club's founding until 1905. His mansion, which overlooks the club, is known as Ballyshear and still stands.
...at the opening of We-Ko-Pa in Arizona.
The EDS Byron Nelson Championship, after its namesake's death, will be getting a redesigned TPC Four Seasons at Las Colinas to attract the PGA Tour's top players.
The renovations, which will cost $4 million to $6 million, will begin immediately after the April 26-29 tournament.
Tournament officials had been seeking major changes, highlighted by a redesign of the TPC, to maintain the Nelson's status as a top tour stop.
"We want an update that will generate a 'wow' on several holes," director of golf Paul Earnest said.
D.A. Weibring Golf Resources Group, John Fought Design and Gil Hanse Golf Course Design are the three finalists for the renovations, said Angela Enright, director of public relations for the Four Seasons Resort and Club.
Whichever one is chosen, the architect will oversee a project that includes new greens and several redesigned holes.
Earnest said they will look for two or three spots where 30 to 40 yards can be added to keep up with the players and new technology.
Tim Finchem, from the first page of the transcript of the "PGA TOUR INAUGURAL COMMUNICATIONS SUMMIT..."
If we could just think for a second about what we're all about, we're all about creating benefits to players directly and indirectly. Directly is cash and prize money and retirement plans, and indirectly is creating a marketing platform from which these independent contractors who are our members can take advantage of, can utilize that platform in conjunction with the agents and business consultants that are represented here today and others in their lives to build their future. That's part one of what we do.
Part two of what we do is we try to create a platform that will throw off the opportunity for charitable organizations around the country to utilize our collective efforts to impact individuals' lives through charitable work nationally and in the markets where we play.
And then thirdly, we are dedicated to growing the game and protecting the game. So those are the three things we try to do with our effort. Now, over the last six years, going back to 2000, we have been focusing on the long term of the sport and looking at ways that we could elevate this platform, elevate the business model, and create more impact.
I stopped reading after that. But I think it's safe to say that platform is making a comback!
In his story on the TPC Sawgrass Players Stadium Course redo, Stan Awtrey shares this quote from the PGA Tour's David Pillsbury, which I must say doesn't sound like the course is returning to its original style of de-emphasizing rough:
"The feedback has been extremely positive," Pillsbury said. "The rough is very punitive. It will grow another inch and a half or two inches by the time we get to The Players."
Thanks to reader Greg for this very serious John Coomber piece on the role antidepressants have played in the lives of Brett Ogle, Stuart Appleby and Steven Bowditch. It ends on this light note.
Five-time British Open champion Peter Thomson, who is at Royal Sydney this week, said he never knew depression or stress related illness to be a factor during his playing days, though he suspected some who sought refuge in alcohol may have been suffering.
Thomson recalled that American golfer Tommy Bolt, famous for his temper tantrums on the course, once tried taking sedatives to control his rage.
"In 1956 (the year Thomson won his third successive British Open) Tommy started taking a drug like a kind of valium to calm him down," he said.
"When I came back to America for the 1957 season I asked him if he was still taking the tablets and whether they were doing him any good.
"'Yeah,' he said. 'I'm still three-putting but now I don't give a shit.'"
I'm sure the PGA Tour's Ric Clarson means well, but everytime he talks about the FedEx Cup, he gives you new reasons to not like it.
From Steve Elling in the Orlando Sentinel, writing about the 5-year exemption that goes with winning the FedEx Cup:
Forget the $10 million bonus.Okay, you're saying, he's drinking the Kool-Aid, no news flash there. Then Elling drops this:
That's not chicken feed, but it's not all the winner of the forthcoming FedEx Cup will earn. The PGA Tour has added a potentially more valuable carrot -- a five-year playing exemption to the FedEx winner, matching the reward accorded winners of golf's vaunted major championships.
Sounds like heresy, huh? Then listen to this.
"Todd Hamilton, Ben Curtis and Shaun Micheel, they all had a significant one-week accomplishment," tour official Ric Clarson said of three recent, and mostly obscure, major winners. "That's on the resume for the rest of their life, but we are talking about a 37-week accomplishment. I'd say this trumps that.
"We are not saying the FedEx Cup is better than winning a major, but it's a totally different measurement."
As if the exemption isn't enough to stir conversation, Clarson said that based on computer models run by the tour, it is possible that a player could win the FedEx Cup race without winning any of the four so-called playoff events in August and September.
Which again is a reminder that these "playoffs" will be the most confusing in the history of sports, as viewers wait anxiously after the rounds for the points standings to be spit out of the computer. A true playoff would simply eliminate people each week in the build up to the Tour Championship.
Elling concludes:
Not to pick on the guy, but in theory, a player like David Duval could get hot for four weeks, win the FedEx bonus and then fall off the face of the earth, just like he did after winning the 2001 British Open. Yet his exemption would cement a spot for him on tour.
Oh, you can pick on him.
Thanks to reader Smitty for these photos of the historic clubhouse at Rackham, the Donald Ross designed Detroit public golf course that may be developed.
I don't know what it looks like on the inside, but the exterior architecture is pretty extraordinary.
(click on image to enlarge) 
There is a Christy Strawser story in today's Daily Tribune on the efforts to save Rackham.
Golf Digest unveils its latest Best New Courses awards, and a couple of things stand out.
After a decade of using a $50 green fee to separate affordable from upscale public courses, we believe an increase to $75 reflects the economic landscape of the times.
Sheesh, couldn't even raise it to $60?
No major embarrassments like last year's award of a Best New Remodel to a former Best New Course Award winner, though the panel gives longtime Top 100 course Stanwich the Best New Remodel. And since Tom Fazio did the work, the course is setting itself up nicely for another Best New Remodel award in ten years.
Here's the best new private list, the best new upscale public list, the best new affordable list, and the best new Canadian courses.
From the wires:
Seve Ballesteros is heading back to professional golf and will compete in the Masters and British Open next year.
The five-time major winner said yesterday that he also wants to join the Champions Tour in the United States when he turns 50 in April.
"My plan is to continue withdrawing for another four or five years," Ballesteros said.
Wait, I meant to copy and paste the version where he says he will continue playing for another four or five years.
The art department would like your thoughts...personally, I think it captures the essence of the brands quite nicely.
Geoff Shackelford is a Senior Writer for Golfweek magazine, a weekly contributor to Golf Channel's Morning
Copyright © 2022, Geoff Shackelford. All rights reserved.
