Hard to believe that another year has come and gone, boy time really flies when you get older.
Many wonder how good 2009 is going to be after the shaky ending to 2008 with the economy being the way it was and the John Daly saga. Still I feel that 2009 can be a very good year on a numerous of fronts, so let's take a look into my crystal ball and I will tell you what to look forward too.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Photo: © Scott Halleran/Getty Images Golf and the Media in 2009.

For the last decade golf has been well reported in newspapers and magazines. But with newspapers taking a beating and magazines just trying to stay alive, coverage by reporters will be spotty at many events. Of course the Masters and the U.S. Open will do OK but the British Open with it's high cost of attending the event will suffer. The PGA Championship, just because of the time of year, will also suffer along with the Players Championship, World Golf Championships and FedEx Cup. The other tours will also have problems getting anything but local coverage and this will not create the excitement that has been generated the last decade of so when a Los Angeles Times or a Boston Globe covers a tournament in Florida.

One form of coverage that will grow in '09 is blogs. Some of them are very good but most of them are very incomplete and poorly done. A Golfblog is nothing more than an individual that writes about golf. There are some good ones like Waggleroom.Com, Jay Flemma.Com, Geoff Shackelford.Com and The Golf Watch but the main problem is control of these blogs. Since most of them aren't owned by a company or have advertisers to answer to a good many of them are free to be very critical and sometimes have a fair amount of unfair reporting. Since these blogs are written in their homes instead of being at an event most of these blogs are based on what others have written, transcripts that are easily accessible on the web and frankly are unfair because they are reporting news that they aren't on the scene to report. Also bloggers sometimes don't credit were they get their information from and a lot of illegally "borrowed" images and some case video are on their sites. So with the addition of more blogging that is fueled by viewer reactions and done off the web and TV, look for a wild west style of reporting that will gear itself more toward the negative and tabloid style of reporting. Hopefully more of these blogs will come under control of other publication companies that buy them or advertisers that will demand more traditional ways of reporting the news.

As for the more traditional websites like Golf.com, Golf Digest.com, PGA Tour. com and GolfWeek.com, the first three Golf, PGA Tour and Golf Digest continue to grow. Golf.com has a big advantage with it's partnership with Sports Illustrated and continues to grow having a lot of web based reporting, especially from top-notch S.I. writers like Gary Van Sickle plus a lot of fresh writing during the majors. Golf Digest.Com has always been a step behind on the Internet but this fall they made a very smart decision to hire John Marvel to run their site. Marvel was very instrumental in the running of Golfweb and ESPN and already has left his mark on a the site that is drastically better in just the last couple of months. As for PGA Tour.Com, they also have seen a big growth of writing, taking advantage of having some of the best writers in golf that have lost jobs doing columns. They have also beefed up their stat coverage as they are mastering how to bring out shotlink stats. Still PGA Tour.Com is best know for real time scoring and shouldn't be taken as a unbiased site but a propaganda tool for the tour itself. Last is GolfWeek which got off to a great start with it's GolfweekTV but with the loss of two of their main editors since September its been lost and not as effective as in the past. Network TV has also had a rocky road with very poor ratings and the cost of televising an event being much higher. Ratings were so poor for NBC they were stuck with millions of dollars of giveback ads, which is advertising running a second time on another program free of charge because they didn't achieve the promised rating. The only good thing about '09, ratings were so poor in '08 I can't see them going any lower and with Tiger Woods back it will help the networks.

Lastly we have to look at the Golf Channel, which has been the shining star in golf of late. Over the last couple of years they have been the best and in a lot of circles the only place to advertise despite the fact that production values have been questionable. But with it's owners Comcast sensing that it's a potential money tree in the future, they have brought out one of their big guns who started Comcast SportsNet, Tom Stathakes. Since transferring to the channel in June he has shaken things up with new management and better people producing telecasts first with it's studio shows. He is now working on the live on site coverage and has brought in Jack Graham to run all of the live telecasts. Graham produced golf for years at ABC Sports and has been a leading producer for ESPN. He comes to Golf Channel to oversee the production and announcer's and should see improvements in production values in their telecasts starting at the Mercedes, Sony Hawaii and Bob Hope in the coming weeks. They have also been aggressive in hiring people to change their website and are positioning themselves as the leader in communicating golf news on both TV and through the web.

So as you can see, despite the economic outlook, 2009 could be a great year for golf and if the economy gets better and Tiger Woods makes a great comeback it could be a great year.