MacKenzie And Wikipedia

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If you read my Sharp Park story in Golf World--I know many of you have studied it and already cut it out for your scrapbooks--you'll know that Brent Plater, the primary environmentalist and San Francisco State lecturer lobbying for its closure "for the good of the game" is suggesting that Alister MacKenzie created a faulty design and furthermore, there is none of it left, so the course should go.

(I know, don't even begin to ask things like, how would he know the design is faulty if he was not alive back then and none of it is left today to study.)

Mr. Plater has repeated this claim many times by citing Daniel Wexler's book, even appearing to repeat his claims under the name Arnold Palmer below Curt Sampson's story posted at golf.com (the misspelling of "McKenzie" is the same mistake in his early writings on Sharp Park and to me. Now, we architectural junkies bicker over MacKenzie's spelling, but the a in Mac is never an issue, it's that dreaded upper or lower case k).

Thanks to Mr. Plater's redundant message of MacKenzie's mistaken work at Sharp Park, I'm guessing that this hilarious modification to MacKenzie's Wikipedia page was the work of those hoping to see the course closed. Obviously the reference is totally out of context with the rest of the biographical sketch and will be edited out probably by the end of the week, so I'm offering a screen-capture and a copy-pasted version of the text for you to see just what kind of mudslinging the proponents of saving Sharp Park are dealing with.

(click on image to enlarge)

Here's the text, unedited. Not exactly a graceful or appropriate or accurate transition.

MacKenzie worked in an era before large scale earth moving became a major factor in golf course construction, and his designs are notable for their sensitivity to the nature of the original site. He is admired for producing holes that offer an ideal balance of risk and reward, and for designing golf courses that challenge yet also accommodate players with a range of skills. The Sharp Park golf course in Pacifica has little resemblance to the initial design. Golf historian Daniel Wexler’s book “The Missing Links”: “Following the early 1930s deluge that washed several of (the course’s holes) out to sea, a massive berm was constructed (largely upon land once occupied by holes three and seven) to prevent history from repeating itself. The subsequent rerouting of the county road and reconfiguring of the lakeside holes has further muddled things so that today only a handful of holes run consistent with MacKenzie’s originals, and no appreciable trace of his strategy remains in play.”

"Put it this way: Will Tiger let his own two kids carry on in public like that?"

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Rick Reilly has had it with Tiger's on course antics:

The man is 33 years old, married, the father of two. He is paid nearly $100 million a year to be the representative for some monstrously huge companies, from Nike to Accenture. He is the world's most famous and beloved athlete.

And yet he spent most of his two days at Turnberry last week doing the Turn and Bury. He'd hit a bad shot, turn and bury his club into the ground in a fit. It was two days of Tiger Tantrums -- slamming his club, throwing his club and cursing his club. In front of a worldwide audience.

I would agree the club tossing is a bit much, but personally I love the swearing. Like this anecdote from Michael Bamberger's SI game story:

Tiger Woods likes to say "second sucks," and he acts as if he means it. When Steve Williams, Tiger's caddie, implored Woods to hit a provisional ball after a horrid way-right shot off the 10th tee last Friday, Tiger kept walking and muttered, "F--- it," before finally making a U-turn.

"I'm playing against Tom Watson, he's 59, he won his first major, I think, right around the time when I was born"

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Cink would have had to be an idiot not to realize that his caddie was the lone man on the course pulling for him to beat the eight-time major winner and Hall of Famer. Rest assured, Cink is no moron.

"I knew that the people were really pulling for Tom to win, because that was the story that everyone wanted to be written," Cink said Wednesday in his first lengthy interview since winning. "It was, honestly, as a sports fan, it was a tremendous story.

"Maybe the biggest sports story in the last couple of generations and I was the one standing in the way of it. I had to really put that aside, though."

The magnitude of what he faced finally struck him when regulation ended.

"That really never got to be difficult until the playoff," he said. "That's when the bizarre stuff really started to hit me a little bit. Like, what, Tom Watson? You kidding me?

"I'm playing against Tom Watson, he's 59, he won his first major, I think, right around the time when I was born, and he's been winning tournaments ever since. You know, it was very strange."

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"Nobody in the world’s going to want to take 70 million less."

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With a contract expiring after next year's event, the PGA Tour has to be encouraged by today's comments from Deutsche Bank CEO's Seth Waugh:

“You can think of the golf tournament as a silly little thing in terms of what’s going on in the world,” Waugh said Wednesday, citing studies that put the economic impact of the Deutsche Bank Championship at $40 million to $70 million annually, “but these are the bricks that can build the economy back up. Nobody in the world’s going to want to take 70 million less.”