DraftKings Rolls Out Golf Push On Significant Growth Signs

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The ramifications could be significant for golf on television and its appeal to a broader audience, therefore the DraftKings push this spring will undoubtedly be watched closely. How successful it all becomes could even influence television negotiations, fan interest and the overall health of professional golf. (You may recall Golf Channel's Rich Lerner asking new PGA Tour Commish Jay Monahan about this in January and receiving a surprisingly open-minded response.)

Dustin Gouker at League Sports Report notes the pre-Masters push DraftKings is making to go all in to grow their audience via enhanced app and site, uh, games. 

According to DraftKings, fantasy golf on its platform has “experienced a 23x growth and more than 15 million entries” since launch.

Gouker explained the difference in DraftKings and rival/future partner Fan Duel's approach to fantasy golf here.

The ad campaign is clever. Though how much of this is real, I don't know. But it's entertaining and of course, will lure many of us to make a donation to their cause!

 

Even NFL Commish Goodell Is Looking To Speed Up His Product (Take Note Golf)

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In an open letter to fans, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell made clear he's looking for ways to speed up the game experience with clocks and eliminating a silly post-touchdown commercial break.

Goodell writes, according to Deadspin:

Regarding game timing, we’re going to institute a play clock following the extra point when television does not take a break, and we’re considering instituting a play clock after a touchdown. We’re also going to standardize the starting of the clock after a runner goes out-of-bounds, and standardize halftime lengths in all games, so we return to the action as quickly as possible. Those are just a few of the elements we are working on to improve the pace of our game.

This has Goodell joining Major League Baseball and the NBA seeking ways to expedite their proceedings. The PGA Tour and once-hot-to-trot European Tour, meanwhile have not budged in their stance on pace of play.

New European Tour Commissioner Keith Pelley had shown signs of taking action, but has gone quiet.

New PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan has said he sees no need to expedite the pace of rounds.

Players, on the other hand, do not agree.

Check out the results from SI/Golf.com's player poll:

Is slow play a problem on the PGA Tour?

YES: 84%
NO: 16%

Loose lips: "It's not as big a deal as people make it out to be."
"Rookies are too slow because they overanalyze everything."
"One million percent YES."
"Sometimes."
"It's a small problem."
"Only a few guys cause a problem."

Regarding a shot clock, I'm not sure how it would work and I'm guessing most players don't either. But that didn't stop a surprising number from voting for one.

Should the PGA Tour institute a shot clock

NO: 58%
YES: 40%
No comment: 2%

Loose lips: "I'm not opposed."
"No, there are other ways without doing that."
"There have to be other solutions."
"I like the idea, but there has to be something better."
"How about we enforce the current rules instead?"
"No, we just need more common sense. It's silly when a guy takes forever from the middle of the fairway. There needs to be give and take."
"How about we enforce something sometime? And not on a 13-year-old kid at the Masters. What a joke!"
"There is no way that's going to happen."
"Yes, and we need to enforce penalties."
"No, but slow players need to penalized. They're hurting the field."

Society is changing, sport is changing and golf is holding its ground on the length of its already long proceedings. Mind-boggling. 

Day WD's From Match Play To Be With His Cancer-Stricken Mom

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After walking off at the seventh hole in his match against Pat Perez, Jason Day walked into the Austin Country Club clubhouse and requested to meet with media.

Through understandable tears for someone who lost his father to cancer, Day announced that he was withdrawing from the WGC Dell Match Play to be with his mother Dening Day. She is undergoing treament at Ohio State's James Cancer Hospital for lung cancer, with surgery scheduled Friday.

Here was Day making the announcement:

Here is a fun recent memory of Dening, who is no doubt going to fight hard.

Karen Crouse filed a superb story on Day and the role Dening played in raising him to be a champion golfer.

“With everything that went on, for me and my sisters to come out pretty normal on the other side, I think a lot of that has to do with our mom,” Day said.

Continue reading the main story

From his father, Day, 28, learned to play golf and fear failure. From his mother, he learned how to work as if failure were not an option.

On the eve of Australia Day in January, the tide of productivity had gone out in Day’s homeland, scattering workers to near and far vacation destinations. The national holiday fell on the last Tuesday of the month, and a sizable portion of the country’s work force opted to take a four-day weekend, leaving few hands on deck during Monday morning business hours at a shipping company in this port city.

Costco Case Analysis: "A bold ask in the world of golf ball patents, especially where Acushnet is concerned."

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Mike Stachura and Mike Johnson try to consider what Costco aims to achieve in filing a lawsuit against Acushnet over patents, especially since they note the effort is to invalidate the works of a company known to vigorously defend their patents.

Reading the reporting by Stachura and Johnson, it's hard not to wonder if the case was started in part as a publicity plot, especially with a new version of the ball likely coming soon. However, the risks and costs in such a legal battle would suggest such a move merely to sell some golf balls could backfire for Costco.

Acushnet was asked for comment in an analysts call an declined.

"You know based on past experience that we never comment on the competition, and as you would expect, we don't comment on any outstanding litigation," he answered to one analyst's specific question about the impact of the Kirkland Signature ball. "We do respect the fact that you're going to ask questions of a competitive nature and of a litigious nature and hopefully catch us at a weak moment, but we'll take a pass on both of those."

This analysis from a legal expert suggests Costco made a bold and shrewd move in the approach to its filing.

“It’s a problem for the alleged infringer if the patent holder doesn’t sue them, so this does two things,” said Rochelle C. Dreyfuss, the Pauline Newman Professor of Law at New York University School of Law. “It accelerates the lawsuit, which sometimes the alleged infringer wants, and it also gives the alleged infringer a choice of court.”

Johnson and Stachura draw this conclusion that I'd agree with, except for the buzz and store traffic likely increased by the Costco ball craze.

For all the media hype and the cult-like status afforded the Kirkland Signature ball, fact is its contribution to Costco’s bottom line is likely no more than an accounting rounding error due to its inability to produce more than limited quantities of the ball.

SI Players Poll: 66% Favor Players Move To March, PGA To May

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As always the SI/Golf.com players poll features a nice mix of fun and provocative questions, and while there several to chew on, the drumbeat of talk about a PGA Championship move to May is building.

The players are on board...until the check out the mid-May forecast for Rochester.

Should the Players Championship be moved to March and the PGA to May?

YES: 66%

NO: 22%

Don't know: 12%

Loose lips: "That would be a much better fit."
"We have to, if we want to avoid competing with the NFL."

Spieth Gives An Astute Take On The Vagaries Of Match Play

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While much has been (rightfully) made of Jordan Spieth's desire to put the Masters behind him in hopes of putting the 2016 condolences to an end, I found his comments on match play to be of note.

Some background: on top of finding a lively spot in Austin with a strong sponsor, the WGC Dell Match Play is benefitting from a round robin format that has quieted most of the "vagaries" or "flukiness" of match play talk. 

Still, some understandably miss the knock-out element while others simply will never think match play is a proper format. For both camps, Spieth's comments are worth reading and considering. Because instead of focusing on the potential of running into a buzzsaw, he sees those days as survival opportunities.

This tournament is difficult to win because you can't shoot 6-under seven times in a row. Nobody does it. So your days where you maybe shoot 1, 2-under, your off days need to be 1 or 2-under, for one thing. And when that happens you hope you meet an opponent who is around the same.

In order to win a match play event, which I've done going back to U.S. Juniors, you've got to squeak out one or two wins where that wasn't very pretty. And that's kind of how it works in this event. Guys aren't running away from it. And you don't get lucky with the guy across from you not playing his best. You meet a guy when he's playing great and you're playing great and you have to win that match. And then if you're off, if they're a little off, you have to find something in you that allows win it.

And he is very much a play the course and opponent type, as he laments here in thinking of his loss last year here to Louis Oosthuizen:

You're only playing against one other guy. Play off of him. Take chances where you need to, but back off where you need to.

And I maybe got a little bit too aggressive mentally against Louis. And he's a very difficult player to play match play, such a beautiful swing, a great driver of the golf ball, makes you think you have to do more than you really need to do.

Also Spieth suggested he would love to see a major decided at match play as the PGA once was. This Sky Sports story has the quotes.

And one last reminder, there's an Odyssey and pride involved in the ShackHouse WGC Dell Match Play bracketology. You have until 10:00 am ET Wednesday to enter!

ShackHouse 30: Leishman, Nachman, Brown & Shackelford

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It's not a law firm, I promise!

Only a jam-packed ShackHouse this week as Arnold Palmer Invitational winner Marc Leishman joins us to discuss the story behind his new (excellent-fitting) cardigan, his Masters preparation and his background with the Victorian Institute of Sport's Golf Program where he met longtime instructor Denis McDade.

Then, shifting toward the WGC Dell Match Play in Austin, we hit up multiple locals starting with Criquet's co-founders Billy Nachman and Hobson Brown. Besides making great clothes merging 70s aesthetics with modern sensibilities, they are also helping lead the fight to save Lions Municipal. Almost as important, they surprised us with a special 20% off for ShackHouse listeners using code SHACKHOUSE at their website.

To continue the great Ringer tradition of a podcast host calling his dad for a guest hit, we also talked Austin golf, UCLA basketball and the 2017 NCAA tournament with Lynn Shackelford, one of only four athletes to have started on three NCAA championship-winning basketball teams. This is the 50th anniversary of their first title, documented by Mike Lopestri at NCAA.com.

As always, you can subscribe on iTunes and or just refresh your device subscription page.

Here is The Ringer's show page.

Same deal with Soundcloud for the show, and Episode 30 is here to listen to right now!

Now, with this week's match play here is the ShackHouse league where the winner of our WGC Dell Match Play bracketology will get the joy of (A) inevitably beating House and I, and (B) taking home a new Odyssey putter with Microhinge Technology as discussed in the show.

As always, ShackHouse is brought to you by Callaway, who debuted episodes of Callaway Live with Jim Furyk, Mike Tirico, Adam Hadwin and this week, Michelle Wie who will be supported by the golf architecture-loving, Hawaiian-born, Isla Vista-reared, California reggae masters Iration.

We're also sponsored by Callaway’s new Steelhead irons, so visit CallawayGolf.com to try the Iron Selector tool.

Don't forget to join the Callaway Community to get a sneak peak on shows and the chance to submit questions to guests, though that's the least of the reasons to join!

WGC Match Play Is Back, Join The ShackHouse Bracket League!

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Austin Country Club and the WGC Dell Match Play's move to Texas proved to be one of the biggest hits of a busy 2016 schedule. A perfect mix of lively risk-reward holes, energetic crowds, a TV-friendly course and some stellar matches made for a memorable week won by Jason Day.
Once again 64 of the world's best--minus Henrik Stenson (5), Adam Scott (8), Rickie Fowler (9), Justin Rose (13) and Adam Hadwin (51/getting married)--are here, replaced by Jason Dufner (65), K.T. Kim (66), Joost Luiten (67), Pat Perez (68) and Si Woo Kim (69).

The random draw was held Monday night at the Hotel Van Zandt and aired live on Golf Channel.

Here are the brackets in list form and there are some intriguing matches to be played Wednesday, Thursday and Friday before we cut to sixteen players.  
Ryan Lavner broke down the brackets for GolfChannel.com.

Golfweek's Brentley Romine targets ten players to watch, many I'm in full agreement on.
The ShackHouse league will be giving an Odyssey putter with the new MicroHinge Technology to our winner, though the real joy will be in beating House and myself. FYI I have Jordan Spieth winning it all after beating Dustin Johnson, while I have Marc Leishman in the final match after having beaten Tyrrell Hatton.

Here is our league, sign up asap!

Spicer On Trump's Golf: "He is ‘entitled to a bit of privacy'"

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President Donald Trump's criticism of former president Barack Obama's Sunday golf rounds has been well-documented. So as the (now) sitting president hangs out at Trump International with regularity, his passion for the game has become of great interest to those who documented Obama's golf habit.

Press secretary Sean Spicer says the president is entitled to his privacy and therefore should not be accountable for his affinity to tee it up on the record, reports Politico's Kelsey Sutton.

“It’s the same reason he can have lunch or dinner with somebody,” Spicer told Yahoo White House correspondent Hunter Walker when asked why Trump had not provided more information about the details of the meetings conducted on the golf course. “The president is entitled to a bit of privacy at this point, which we’ve always agreed to. We bring the protective pool, but the president is entitled to a bit of privacy as well.”

Spicer's comments:

Tiger's Tanned, Rested And A Resounding Maybe On Playing Masters

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Maybe it's shaving the goatee or just his overall upbeat glow for someone who has been off the grid, but while appearing on Good Morning America and promoting his 1997 Masters book Tiger Woods looked well. The positive appearance only adds to the mystery surrounding his latest absence due to back spasms.

Yes, he looks older without his hat and signature form-fitting golf shirts. But it's hard not to watch all of this and wonder what genuinely plagues him that he's still not able to go to his office: the golf course. But for his fans Woods offered a glimmer of hope. Steve DiMeglio reports after getting an exclusive sitdown for USA Today.

“I do have a chance,” to play, Woods told USA TODAY Sports in an exclusive interview. “I’m trying everything I possibly can to get to that point. I’m working, I’m working on my game. I just need to get to a point where I feel like I’m good enough, and I’m healthy enough to do it."

In the good news/bad news department, Woods is attending the Champions Dinner but essentially has left open the possibility for no decision on his playing status until the last minute.

Yes, we've seen this movie before and no one wanted to see it a second time.

DiMeglio filed a separate piece on the 1997 Masters book written with Lorne Rubenstein. Reading about this kind of detail sounds great:

Woods, who hopes to play in next month's Masters, explains how he used a persimmon driver to hone his swing the week before the 1997 Masters and made use of Golf Channel’s video library to study Augusta National’s treacherous greens. He tees up his thoughts about the changes made to the course to combat technological advances in the game.

In NYC, Alex Myers talked to the fans who waited a long time in line to get the book signed at Barnes and Noble.

The GMA segment featured a putting contest that made for good TV:

 

 

Costco Sues Acushnet: "This should get real interesting, real fast."

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Nice work by David Dawsey at Golf-Patents.com to spot and analyze Kirkland golf ball-seller Costco's suit against Titleist-maker Acushnet.

Many thanks to all who sent various stories in, including the full pdf of the suit here.

Dawsey writes:

Costco is seeking a declaratory judgment that it is not infringing any valid patent rights owned by Acushnet by its sale of its Kirkland Signature golf balls and that it has not engaged in false advertising regarding the golf balls. Why did they take such a provocative step? The complaint states “[t]he need for such relief exists because Acushnet has wrongfully accused Costco of patent infringement and false advertising.”

The paragraphs noted by Dawsey are worth checking out, but this seems to be the key point:

7. In response to the popularity of the KS golf ball, Acushnet sent Costco a threatening letter, wrongfully accusing Costco of infringing 11 Acushnet patents based on its sale of the KS golf ball and engaging in false advertising based on its Kirkland Signature guarantee that all Kirkland Signature products “meet or exceed the quality standards of leading national brands.”

WSJ's Brian Costa reported the story for Journal readers with this measured take, while MyGolfSpy.com, which fueled interest in the ball with its review, reveled in the news, noting that the timing may be no coincidence:

The legal wrangling comes at a time when sources are telling us that Costco is ready to begin shipping K-Sig balls to its retail stores. Coupled with the lawsuit, the clear suggestion is that, letters be damned, Costco is going to sell its golf balls and make Acushnet fight publicly to stop it.

It remains to be seen if the new ball is the same as the old one, with the USGA conforming list suggesting that a new version of the ball has been approved.

API: Marc Leishman Enters The Masters Discussion

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Granted, The Masters pales in comparison to having a healthy family after Marc Leishman's wife nearly died two years ago. But given his previous play there in 2013 and newfound security thanks to a healthy family, Leishman will be Australia's strongest hope not named Day or Scott.

Jason Sobel at ESPN.com with the backstory on Arnold Palmer Invitational winner Leishman.

Two years ago this month, Leishman was at Augusta National, preparing for the upcoming Masters Tournament, when his wife, Audrey, started experiencing flu-like symptoms.

She went to an urgent care clinic. When her fever and vomiting progressed to shortness of breath and decreased blood pressure, she was rushed to a hospital. They hooked her up to a ventilator and other machines. The doctors struggled to pinpoint the problem.

Her conditioned worsened. She could barely stay awake, a side effect of the medications. Eventually, doctors determined she was suffering from toxic shock syndrome, a manifestation of multiple bacterial infections. She had fluid in her lungs. Her organs completely shut down.

Doctors induced Audrey into a coma. She was given a 5 percent chance to live.

Marc sat with her. He cared for their boys. He cried a lot; he stopped eating; he lost 10 pounds. He certainly didn't play any golf. He felt helpless.

Ryan Lavner for GolfChannel.com:

The traumatic experience gave Leishman a much-needed dose of perspective on a tour full of charmed existences.

“It makes golf less important,” he said. “It’s not life and death. We have been in that situation and it’s not fun.”

Leishman’s hard-earned victory was a fitting end to an emotional week that was always going to be about more than birdies and bogeys.

The winner's cardigan proved a great touch:

The final round highlights from PGA Tour Entertainment.