2006 In Review

This blog-thing continues to be one grand experiment, but any success it thanks in large part you all for spreading the word and sharing your thoughts via the comments section.

This marked the first full year on Squarespace and included few technical glitches thanks to their excellent service, but surely plenty of typos on my end. Thanks so much to all of you who emailed in a heads up on stories, mistakes or questionable posts (thankfully there were few of those). 

The most hit and emailed post of the year?  Why that would be this site's January exclusive on the USGA's private jet travel.

2006 also included some exclusive site content.

Former USGA Executive Director Frank Hannigan weighed in with a commentary on the recent USGA-AmEx deal and revealed that the USGA lost $7 million this year. He also shared his thoughts on the USGA's private jet package, his views on a Golf World story claiming that Gary McCord had turned down the chance to announce at the Masters and his take on USGA President Walter Driver's revealing take on the distance issue.

The year also included a series of instant message interviews with some of the game's top writers, including the inaugural chat with Stu Schneider of Golf World, the second with John Huggan, an architecture discussion with Golfweek's Brad Klein, a post-Open Championship talk with SI's Michael Bamberger and a post Ohio Golf Association Champions tournament chat with SI's Gary Van Sickle.

Speaking of instant messages, my NSA sources also shared a series of IM's between PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem and LPGA Tour Commissioner Carolyn Bivens. My sources say we'll continue to receive these periodically as long as the two keep their jobs, which...eh I'm not going there.

You can relive those rivetting exchanges here, here and here.

We also were treated to a series of text messages sent from Walter Driver's Blackberry to USGA course setup man Mike Davis during U.S. Open media day at Winged Foot. Hopefully we'll get a few more of those in Driver's final year as exhalted ruler.

And finally, what would this site be without your input, and just some of the highlights from user comments can be read in the various Week in Review posts that can be found archived here.

So on that note I would love to hear what you would like to see (or not see) from the site in 2007. The look, content, features, etc.  Naturally, my hope is to continue highlightling the best and worst from the golf world, and maybe even do a little more golf architecture project blogging should we be so fortunate in 2007 to break ground on some exciting projects.

So please, comment away...and Happy New Year,
Geoff