"I wonder if they will still have the crab legs"

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Thanks to reader Rick for Eli Saslow's Washington Post story on Uniontown Country Club caving to the economic crisis by allowing non-members to dine at the club.

Amid some protest from what he called "the hard-core, conservative members," Hughes fired the old chef early this spring and hired Michael DiMarco, a local chef known for his many tattoos and for serving gigantic portions at budget rates. He remade the menu to his liking, adding onion rings with ranch dressing for $3.95, topping his signature salads with french fries and eliminating all steaks smaller than 16 ounces. A few dozen locals started arriving at the club for meals each week, occasionally rankling members by parking their pickup trucks in preferred spots and exiting through the lobby with to-go containers.

Oh yes, you want to read this one.

"For it to resurface now would be laughable if it didn't involve a good man's reputation being called into question due to insufficient reasoning."

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Since Donegan's story Sunday and over 35,000 views of the video, a few writers have spoken out in Kenny Perry's defense.  Steve Elling and Scott Michaux both say it's time to move on, that cheating was clearly not Perry's intent.  John Hawkins also is fired up about Perry's reputation coming into focus.

The Perry situation didn't receive an ounce of attention when it happened at the FBR Open back in early February. For it to resurface now would be laughable if it didn't involve a good man's reputation being called into question due to insufficient reasoning.

Perhaps, but suppose a bigger issue is at stake here: the wink-wink, look-the-other-way blurring of certain rules that has become all too common in professional golf. (You know, the same sport where the guys don't need to be drug tested because they police themselves.)

After seeing the Perry video several players said something to the effect of, "that goes on all the time on the tour." (And we've all watched guys fix ball marks in their line without blinking, much less pointing out to their playing partner as a courtesy that they were performing major surgery on their line).

I point these out in the context of the Perry episode because I vividly recall as a young, impressionable lad, studying how tour players walked, dressed and behaved. For a few weeks after taking in tour golf at Riviera or Sherwood, I'd typically play better after absorbing the tempo, gentle grip and overall relaxed-but-focused demeanor exuded by such elite players.

Particularly fascinating was a player's care around the greens or when making a recovery shot from the rough or trees.  Both situations provided unique opportunities to get close and hear the conversation with the caddy and to observe their actions.

Consistently I was always fascinated by the manner in which they treated their ball. It was as if a meteor had landed off the fairway and they didn't want to get too close until they had to bat the thing back into play. I remember watching many players gently approach the ball--maybe stare at the lie or delicately lift away a leaf--but always treat a live ball as something to be careful around. Practice swings--if they even took one--were often a bit away from the ball and the player was typically cautious not to be seen as testing the surface in anyway by pressing their clubhead down behind the ball. Furthermore, when that final moment arrived many would just barely lay the club behind their ball.

And again, I'd take this image of gentle club placement for a few weeks and that absorption of studied, careful and gentle demeanor would lead to better golf. Then I'd eventually revert back to old bad habits.

So it's with that image in my mind that I watch Kenny Perry pull his club and walk up to his ball, jabbing away like he's armed with a poker, trying to jumpstart some stubborn logs. And as you can see in this longer version of the playoff posted, the mashing does not occur at the address position, as many defenders have noted. It happens in the moment that he initially arrives, long before the honor has been established or the shot is actually addressed.

 

I hope the takeaway from this is not to demonize Perry. The event is long gone and we'll never know just how close that clump of grass was to the ball.

However, let's hope this encourages tour players to take the rules and club grounding a bit more seriously. In other words, to take the rules of golf more seriously.

"Early adopters say they will cut an average of 10 percent of their typical water use, amounting to millions of gallons of water each year."

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I'd love to hear what our maintenance gurus out there lurking think of today's New York Times story by Larry Dorman looking at the potential impact of sensors in reducing water usage.

This is a green addiction with the potential to spread, with more than 20 states affected by some form of drought and water restrictions a daily reality in cities across the nation.

At least three companies are competing in the market for subterranean wireless sensors, which monitor moisture, temperature and salinity in the soil and feed the data to a software network accessed remotely on a laptop, a handheld device or a desktop computer. The system could be used far beyond the golf course — on other athletic fields, in agriculture, in both home and commercial landscaping, and in parks.

The leader in the clubhouse so far is a system called UgMo, a network of wireless sensors that mine subsurface data and link to a software package developed by Advanced Sensor Technology of King of Prussia, Pa., the original manufacturers of the RZ system. The company announced its updated system in February and made it available in early April, installing it at golf meccas like Merion, Desert Mountain outside Scottsdale, Ariz.; and Card Sound Golf Club on Key Largo, Fla.

Early adopters say they will cut an average of 10 percent of their typical water use, amounting to millions of gallons of water each year. At that rate, the system would pay for itself within the first year, depending on the volume of water a course uses.

"There's rumors floating around here this week that it may not even come into play."

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From Greg Norman's chat with the working press Wednesday prior to the Senior PGA:

Q. When you were younger in your 20s and 30s you were obviously a great ball-striker, but always considered one of the best drivers of the golf ball. That was in the year of the persimmon heads. Has it changed a lot now? Do you think there's more guys who hit 70 percent plus in fairways hit because of equipment or back in the day that was a heck of a lot harder figure to reach?

GREG NORMAN: I think it's easier to hit the golf ball straighter now days. And the ball goes longer. No question. Is that -- that is technology. No question about it.

I think a great barometer, just to get off your question a little bit is, a great barometer is when the V grooves come into play next year. And I hope it does. There's rumors floating around here this week that it may not even come into play. But if the V grooves do come back into play, that will be a great barometer to see how good these players are with their touch and their feel and their imagination. And understanding that that ball, it looks like it's going to leap 40 yards extra off the club face, how do you play that?

That's going to be great to watch on television. Because that's, to me, is the art of understanding the game of golf. And understanding the spin of the golf ball. Not just a pure given fact if you hit it in the rough and I did it a couple times today on these firm greens, I'm in the rough, I know it's going to spin, I'm just going to open that club face up a little bit more and the ball comes down like an old dog lying by a fireplace. It just drops on the green.

Now that's not going to happen next year. So those are the type of things that actually help the better players distance themself from the average players. And I think that's why in my generation you saw such great shot makers out there, Trevino and like I said, Seve in a lot of ways, he hit phenomenal shots.