*Tiger's back
*Other news and notes
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He's back after a 11 week vacation
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Well it's time for him to play again and beat more folks as he will be at his own Target World Challenge this week as the defending champion. Now in looking over the last 11 weeks of golf it's probably been the slowest and most boring time ever. Yes, Mike Weir Justin Leonard and Chad Campbell returned to the winners circle and Phil Mickelson was a winner in China but for most of the last 11 weeks tournament golf hasn't been same without Woods.
It will be interesting to see how Woods plays despite the long layoff. One thing for certain, you know that he will be ready to play at Sherwood in a tournament that he has won three times already . In the field is Jim Furyk, Vijay Singh, Steve Stricker, Padraig Harrington, Luke Donald, Rory Sabbatini, K.J. Choi, Henrik Stenson, Niclas Fasth, Paul Casey, Lee Westwood, Mark Calcavecchia, Colin Montgomerie and Fred Couples.
Now everyone loves to read and talk about Woods, but let's face reality we really don't know that much about Woods and what he does and thinks about once he leaves the course. He is very good about giving us a good piece of himself in tournaments, is truthful and gives great comments to the press. Every now and then he has special events like the gathering of press and special VIP's that assembled last week in Port St. Lucie, Florida to introduce some new Nike drivers and a sophisticated club-fitting system. The best gathering he had was one in which a couple of hundred people with American Express cards paid to play Oakmont Golf Club about a month before the U.S. Open. Just playing the course was an adventure for these people but they got a lot more for there money at the luncheon when Tiger was the surprise guest speaker. Not only did they get to hear Woods but they got to watch him play a couple of holes and ask him questions. I met one of the people that was at that event and he said that he had never experience a more friendly and warm personality as Woods was that day.
Still once Woods leaves and becomes a "private" person, we really don't know what happens. A perfect example is what did Woods do over the last 11 weeks? Of course inquiring minds wants to know but Woods makes sure to guard his and family's private life. Now many (including probably this report) try to talk about Woods and give folks something special but in the long run there really isn't anything special that we could provide, we just don't have the access. I did read the kind of piece on Tiger Woods that everyone else would love to write with a a lot of behind the scene's look at his private life during this year and last. Jaime Diaz in the new issue of Golf Digest did a fabulous job as this piece touches on what makes Tiger tick. Of course everyone thinks that winning is what makes Woods tick, yes it does but there are other factors and Diaz explores these and gives us the best look yet that isn't watered down and is very truthful. Now another thing that we don't know about Tiger is after the Target when will he play again. Will he finally return to play in the Mercedes-Benz Championship in Hawaii, the last time he was in Maui was in 2005. We know that Woods will defend his championship at the Buick Invitational at Torrey Pines and then fly off to Dubai the next week for the Dubai Desert Classic. I personally think that we won't see Tiger until January and that he is just enjoying family life way too much these days with little Samantha.
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Other news and notes:
- Talking about the Target World Challenge, last month it was reported that teenage sensation Rory McIlroy decided not to play in the Target World Challenge. Now nobody thought a second about that decision because McIlroy wanted to play in the European Tour South African Open. But just afterwards, Target Tournament director said that McIlroy hadn't been issued an invite. In a column by Karl MacGinty in the Independent, he talked with McIlroy's agent Chubby Chandler who said that was true and added some fire saying that the invitation also meant that McIlroy would also have to commit to Tiger's AT&T National event in July, which McIlroy couldn't play because it clashed with the European Open. It's funny some of the deals that seem to go on in golf these days.
- There is no better of a player website than Ernieels.com. Each week that Els plays he previews the event and then gives a recap of his play. Now a lot of other player sites aren't as comprehensive and first person as this one and this week was more of the same. Els blew the Alfred Dunhill Championship, making an eight on the final hole to lose by one. Many players would simply get lost and not reappear for weeks let alone posting a story about a tragedy but that wasn't the case on ErnieEls.Com. Monday morning Els dissected the disaster and was very forth right in giving his assessment on the collapse and telling the reader how happy he is playing the week after in the South African Airways Open. Just wish more players would see this and also have sites like this.
- Has anyone ever heard of Joost Luiten? The 21-year-old from the Netherlands finished 6th on the Challenge Tour in 2007 which got him exempt on the European Tour in 2008. He wasn't very successful in his first two events missing the cut and just barely made it at the Alfred Dunhill Championship. But he got everything rolling in the third round shooting 64 and having the thrill of his life when he holed a 7 iron on the par 3 12th hole for a hole in one and with the shot won a new Audi TT Roadster Convertible. Now if that wasn't enough the next day on the same hole with the same club Luiten hits another beauty that finishes on the lip of the hole, just missing another hole in one on the hole. Luiten went on to shot 67 in the final round and ended up finishing fourth in the event, his second career top-five finish on the European Tour.
- There are a lot of stories of what could of happen if someone won a major championship. A perfect example of this has to be Jean Van de Velde who came oh so close to winning the 1999 British Open. Since then he has struggled with injuries, personal problems and his game. Yes he has won twice on the European Tour but on the other end of the spectrum, Van de Velde finished 107th on the money list and again lost his Tour card. So what is he doing? Trying to play on the Asian Tour. Yes, Van de Velde is in Malaysia this week trying to get one of the 40 spots available which would let him play on the Asian Tour. Many will wonder what a Frenchman with a family would want to play in Asia for, but since his family have relocated to Hong Kong and he feels that the future of golf is in the region, the answer to that question is easy. Still you have to wonder if Jean could of just won eight years ago in Carnoustie how much different his life would be now.
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*Head executive at the Golf Channel leaves
*Don't count the Trump out just yet
*Book Review - "Fifty Years in a Bunker, The creation of a World Top-100 Golf Links at the European Club"
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Head executive at the Golf Channel leaves on the eve of their big three live shows
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Of course this story is being buried by the Golf Channel who are saying that "there has been a separation" but the truth of the matter is that McGuire was fired. In sniffing around, asking sources inside the channel, the consensus is that McGuire was let go because he tried to make shows better and in the process ruffled too many feathers with other production personnel, sales personnel and the higher brass at Comcast, which owns the Golf Channel.
As this story on the "buzz" is being written, in the background on my television is the movie, "All the President's Men." Just like the part in which Jason Robards, who played Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee tells his staff, "God Dammit, will anyone go on the record on this story," the same is true on this report. Nobody wants to talk about this and be "on the record for this story." Of course this isn't on the level of Watergate, but there are a lot of worried folks over at the Golf Channel that are wondering what the future is going to be without McGuire.
As a background to all of this, McGuire was a respected network executive at Raycom, NBC Sports and for a decade at Turner Sports were he was responsible for the very polished NBA coverage. He was hired by the Golf Channel in the fall of last year to help upgrade the production values, after a pretty long search for someone. Even though the Golf Channel has produced golf telecasts for over a decade, their sordid little secret was that they didn't have the home-grown talent to bring their production level to that of network telecasts. Their main golf producer Keith Hirshland was a good producer, but not on same level as a Tommy Roy at NBC or Lance Barrow at CBS. Matter of fact talent wise, the Golf Channel hasn't churned out any producers or directors that have made it to a network level. As for their announcers, Scott Van Pelt to ESPN and Charles Davis at Fox are the only ones that have taken a better job outside of TGC. Unfortunately, two of their best talents, Peter Kessler and Vince Cellini unceremoniously left Golf Channel to the bewilderment of fans.
Last year in GolfObserver, I wrote about the problems that Golf Channel would experience doing the two Hawaiian events and the Bob Hope.. At the time of this write-up (December, 2006), Golf Channel had just hired McGuire and since the planning stages of the first Golf Channel telecasts had been finalized, McGuire had to try and tweak something that was already planned. Most of the planning was done by Tony Tortorici, Golf Channel's vice president of production and Dave Manougian, then president of the Golf Channel with some input from Hirshland. Now one of the first decisions that was made was to get Andy Young, who produced golf for years at ESPN to produce and for Steve Beim to direct. This didn't go over very well with Hirshland who threatened to quit and the Golf Channel unwisely changed their plans and decided to spilt producing roles with Hirshland as the main producer and Young as the second.
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McGuire gained the trust of most of the staff over at the Golf Channel and as Tim Rosaforte, who is an announcer over at Golf Channel wrote it was a shock to talent and production personnel when they found out he was leaving.
So how did McGuire get the heave-ho? In talking with some Golf Channel insiders I was very surprised at all of the battles McGuire really had to deal with. Usually when a man of McGuire's talent and reputation is hired, he has a free hand in making a lot of the decisions. In McGuire's case it didn't seem that way, he had to fight and justify a lot of the decisions that he wanted to make. An example of this was the clash over Kelly Tilghman, McGuire was a strong believer in her while folks like Hirshland would tell other production personnel how he didn't feel she was a strong choice. Some have told me that Hirshland thought there were better people for the job, something of a surprise that a main producer would be so liberal with his viewpoints to others. Another big problem that McGuire had was his strong-willed personality, he wanted his ideas and thoughts carried through and over at the Golf Channel there were times that many believed it wasn't the way Golf Channel did it in the past and didn't have to do it in the future. That seems to be a big problem with some of the live golf done, production people that have done it for years think they do it the best and that is a good enough job. They are slow in grasping new techniques, so no improvement is seen.
McGuire also made decisions that were the best for the reputation of the golf shows like extending telecasts but this wasn't a very popular decision with those at Comcast that wanted to see less money spent, not more. Many insiders told me that while McGuire wanted to spend more to make better productions, the old guard felt that the productions were good and also felt that more money didn't have to be spent.
McGuire was also a strong believer of having the Sprint Pre and Post Game reports do the shows on site, especially during the FedEx playoffs. But that only happened in places that paid a site fee from the sponsors. McGuire didn't like this while the powers-to-be at Golf Channel sales and Comcast were insistent on the "appearance fee" method of bringing that show to the site of a tournament instead of doing it out of the Orlando studio.
There were other little problems and battles for him to fight, one insider told me that McGuire tried to fix the problem with the Singapore Open last month, in which he tried to have sales switch the time to the morning and make for a faster edit of the show, but that was going to cut into lucrative info commercial time and McGuire lost that battle with the Singapore stupidly airing 24 hours later to the dismay of a lot of folks.
While we mention this we should talk about shows like the Singapore Open. The only reason that it aired was that someone did a time buy with the Golf Channel. Over the weekend the Nedbank Challenge was aired in Europe with an exciting finish as Trevor Immelman beat Justin Rose by a stroke but over in the United States we weren't able to watch it because the thought is that nobody wanted to pay Golf Channel a time-buy to show it. Instead of that event we got info commercials which has become a lucrative business for the Golf Channel. Next week and the week after the two most important events in Australia will be played with the Australian Open and the Australian PGA Championship but we won't be able to see them on the Golf Channel because again the thought is that nobody was willing to pay the Golf Channel a fee to show them, again their info commercial business making too much money instead of figuring out a way to televise these events.
But let's get back to McGuire, in the long run the main problem that led to his demise was the good old gang that ran Golf Channel before he arrived would go along with cost cutting measures from Comcast while McGuire was still trying to improve upon production at a higher cost.
So what does all of this mean for the future at the Golf Channel? For the casual fan, not much. But for those that will be looking for better production values and editorial decisions, that won't be in the cards. That's because it will be business as usual as the Golf Channel reverts to the before McGuire era, those same folks that ran the shows for Golf Channel for years will be running the shows again next month with smaller budgets than they had last year.
A big question is what the PGA Tour thinks of all this? As of today there wasn't any response, an email sent to Ty Votaw wasn't returned. Still I have to wonder if the Tour really likes what's going on. The question is if they think that the quality of the shows are high enough. One thing that they have to be happy with is the amount of time the Golf Channel spends and showcases their events. Nobody does a better job of making sure that everything is covered from start to finish. The PGA Tour will have no worries if a playoff turns into a marathon that goes into prime-time because the Golf Channel will always cover it. As for the ratings, again it all depends on who you talk with. If you talk with the Golf Channel they paint a rosy picture and after the FedEx Cup playoffs reported its highest rating to date. As for the PGA Tour, in reports from other news sources they say that they are happy with what they are getting rating wise. Still there is no two ways about it, the Golf Channel became a big beneficiary of all this increasing ad rates across the board, including info commercials. As one company that airs spots regularly on the Golf Channel told the "Buzz", "In the last year and a half we have seen info commercial rates double to the fact that we are barely making any money off of our spots."
Now the Golf Channel are saying that they are looking for a replacement for McGuire, but Golf Channel insiders are saying that they aren't looking for a production guru to help fix their live shows but more for a person that will create new programming for the channel to help make more money for Comcast. Programming like the Big Break, For Inventors Only, the 19th hole and The Approach are big money makers because they don't have to pay a rights fee and the cost of producing the shows is low. Still it's unfortunate when you see great programs like the "Wandering Golfer" on the Fine Living Channel instead of the Golf Channel. As one producer of programming told me, "It's too hard to deal with the folks at the Golf Channel, that is the reason why they don't have better programs." There is also some rumors going around that some people are trying to put together a package for another golf related channel, something that is sorely needed since Golf Channel hasn't seen fit to come out with a second golf network. With all the problems associated with putting this together and the fact that it would be very costly with companies like Comcast being against it in protecting their turf, I find such a venture impossible. But you never know, a lot of other projects have gotten off the ground despite long odds.
So it will be interesting to see what shakes out at the Golf Channel in the future months, but there is no two ways about it, when it comes to a decision between money and a better production, the answer in most cases is very easy. It's just too bad in the case of Don McGuire, that he had to waste of year of his life on on company that really didn't want to change.
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Don't count the Trump out just yet
Very interesting turn of events over in Scotland as Donald Trump's dream of building a resort in Scotland was rejected by the local Aderdeenshire Council. The decision was a shock, especially since the Trump had spent millions of dollars and many years trying to get approval. But as one Irish course architect told me, don't ever count the Donald out, the course will be built.
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So look for the same over in Scotland. It's funny, in the inner circle of golf nobody believes that Trump will just sit back and take the news and withdraw. Articles like this by Robert Philip on the same day as the council decision shows that nobody believes that this project will not happen.
Immediately after it was rejected, according to the Scotsman there was public outcry over the rejection of the project, which will provide a lot of good paying jobs to the Aberdeen area. It will also bring in a strong tax base and help promote the Eastern part of Scotland. Right after the project was rejected, one of the council leaders, Anne Robertson vowed to keep the application alive. Still today in the Scotsman, Martin Ford the chairman of the Aberdeenshire Council who cast the deciding vote on killing the project said that he could see "no possibility" of the decision being overturned and had no regrets about his decision to vote against the project.
Now over at the Aberdeen Press and Journal, they had the same quotes from Ford but sounded more optimistic that the Trump legal team with get the decision overturned.
As some of my friends over in Scotland are saying, just because the Aberdeenshire Council has voted this down, it doesn't mean the project is dead. As one person said to me, "this is just a bit of a inconvenience for Trump." Another said that "Trump will appeal to the Scottish Government but the disadvantage in this is the time element, it could take a couple of years for a decision."
But in the long run don't make any bones about this, Donald Trump usually gets his way on things and since personally this is an important project for him, look for him to make sure that everyone of his resources are used to make sure the resort and courses open one day.
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Book Review - "Fifty Years in a Bunker, The creation of a World Top-100 Golf Links at the European Club"
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Now I am not very bias when it comes to the European Club, I visit it as many times as I can and of all the places in the world, I love going to this course the most. We have heard famous golfers say that if they had just one round to play before their demise, they would play at courses like Pebble, St. Andrews, Cypress Point or Augusta National. If I had my choice of a place for my final round, it would be at the European Club and would be with it's owner and builder Pat Ruddy.
There is no too ways about it, in golfing circles Ruddy is one of the most overlooked characters. Ruddy was a full time golf writer who like Tom Doak, loved to dabble into golf course architecture and made that his full time career. In this book he relates his love of the game and his dream of building a world class links course in Ireland.
In looking at folks that build courses, most of them are very wealthy or have land in which to put the course on. Ruddy had neither. All that he had was a dream and after he became comfortable with his golf writings he made the faithful decision along with his wife Bernardine, three daughters and two sons to make his dream a reality.
Now like most dreams, the first time doesn't work out perfectly and that was the case with Ruddy in the mid-70s when he tried to build a course in Northwest Ireland. That turned into a big failure when a river burst its banks and flooded his course. There was then a second venture in which he couldn't purchase a piece of property that eventually became part of a Nick Faldo project.
Even with these flops, Ruddy never gave up and found another perfect piece of property, this time about 40 miles south of Dublin in Brittas Bay. Ruddy purchased the land and then spent six years mortgaging everything and working the land in crafting the European Club.
Now some may wonder about reading a person's first account story of this, but just like everything that Ruddy does it's a first class project that is very entertaining. In a corporate world in which businesses build these resorts and big money make them happen, it's nice to see a story of how someone along with some teenage kids build a golf course that turn into one of the best links in all the world.
The stories are great on how he made this project a big success, plus how hard that he and his family had to work 24/7 in making the dream happen.
Now for those in the United States you can't go down to your local Barnes and Noble to pick up the book. Matter of fact you won't find the book on any site like Borders.Com or Amazon.Com. The book is not even sold in the United States, the only way to buy it is through The European Club website. The cost of it is about $40 dollars and Ruddy will send it off to you. Trust me when I say it's well worth a read, the photography is special and in looking through the book you will want to book a flight off to Ireland to play this magnificent links course.
E-mail us at: Golfersal@aol.com
*Greg Norman and his ex wife at it again
*Death of the silly season
*The Future of the Skins Game
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It's hard to believe, but the Greg and Laura saga continues.
Back in September, the marriage between Greg Norman and Laura Andrassy came to an end and as they left the courthouse things looked like they would be civil.
It appears that looks can be deceiving.
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Now common knowledge would tell us that if we were Andrassy, we would try to first figure out how to spend all of that money that she got and second, avoid any people from the media. Apparently that didn't happen.
Days after the settlement, Laura was giving her first interview to Peta Hellard and sure enough this report in the Australian Sunday Telegraph gets printed. In the story, Andrassy is quoted as saying she was devastated that Chris Evert, who she considered a friend, blatantly pursued Greg and was flaunting their love affair.
Now the story goes into detail about how Greg and Laura first met Evert and how she found out about Greg wanting a divorce and then finding out about the affair between Greg and Evert. The story also goes into detail about how Greg and Laura met, how they went through life and how devoted Laura was to Greg and the marriage. The story ends with Laura saying she is looking forward to building a new life and that the new man in her life is her dog, Bacchus.
Now when you read this, the first thing you wonder is what Greg thinks about all of this. The one thing that he made clear and paid a fortune to Laura in the settlement, was to make sure everything like this would be private.
Well it isn't private anymore and Greg isn't very happy, so much that , according to Jose Lambiet in the Palm Beach Post, Norman filed a lawsuit against his former wife last week alleging that she has already breached their two-month-old divorce settlement. He also wants to make sure that a good chunk of the settlement that he still owes her won't have to be paid.
Now the first thing that you may wonder is if Laura has a death wish. If someone was given millions upon millions of dollars in a settlement with the condition that she could not talk about the past to the media or write a book about it, common sense dictates that she would obey those wished and not talk anyone from the media.
But according to Laura she says that the confidentiality agreement is not specific and that she never talked about Greg, it was all about herself and Evert and she has no agreement on not talking about Evert.
In another report by Peta Hellard in a News.Com.Au report Andrassy's lawyer Jack Scarola said Norman was being unfair and had filed the suit as a smokescreen to detract attention from his "own wrongdoing" - not transferring certain assets due his ex-wife.
So I guess this whole saga isn't really over and the truth is somewhere in the middle. You have to wonder if Andrassy got so much money out of this deal that if she could still have Greg scrambling around on this by hashing up some dirt in the papers. Maybe it would be worth millions of dollars just for the satisfaction of slinging Greg Norman dirt through the press. So maybe if it costs her $50, $60 or even $100 million dollars of the $150 to $300 she got, so maybe her figuring on this is you can't take it with you and it is money well spent.
I have to think that in the coming weeks there will be more on this.
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Skins Game and the death of the Silly Season
For anyone that remembers that first Skins Game back in 1983 at Desert Highlands, it was a part of golf history that we all loved. What Don Ohlmeyer, the creator of the Skins did was a stroke of brilliance, getting the four best and most-loved players of the time and put them together for a friendly skins match.
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The Tour season ended at the end of October and other than playing over in Australia or in the mix-team event called the JC Penney Open, there weren't any events to play in so most of the players either went hunting, fishing or took the two months off and watched football on TV.
But all of this changed with the Skins Game because it paved the way for the "Silly Season." Back then everything was run by the PGA Tour and with ESPN still in its infancy and no cable TV to speak of, your choices were limited to the three networks. With Ohlmeyer's connections at NBC he was able to mastermind a five-hour time-buy for his Skins Game, probably the first-ever golf time-buy ever. Along with Barry Frank, who ran the television arm of IMG, they found a brand new development in Arizona called Desert Highlands that was willing to pay a fee to host the event. In return the development got a lot of publicity, which helped them sell out the place in record time. So between Ohlmeyer and Franks, they began a new chapter in the way to start an event and get it covered on a network.
The most important thing that the Skins Game did was create a "Buzz" in golf because they got the world's best players to become very interested in Skins. Between Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Gary Player, their careers were coming to an end on the PGA Tour and even with an average of 25 years experience in professional golf, they found the excitement of playing for so much money to be a real thrill. That first year Arnold Palmer made a 40-foot putt for birdie that netted him $100,000, which was about what he was making for an average year on the PGA Tour. In the second year of Skins, Jack Nicklaus won $240,000 on a hole to win that title and threw his putter in the air like he had just won a major championship. With Nicklaus and Palmer excited over the Skins it translated all across America and brought in big ratings. This was just the beginning, with all of the success of the Skins other people and organizations went out on a limb to add more tournaments in the November/December time frame and before you knew it the "Silly Season" became a big deal.
The height of it all had to be around 1995. As an example of this, let's look at what was happening. It was the case of topping the other guy and the folks at the Kapalua resort in Maui always seem to do a good job in getting the best players at their event. At the conclusion of the Tour Championship, played that year in Oklahoma, players were given a free charter ride on a DC-10 from Tulsa to Maui. The event was the Lincoln Mercury Kapalua Invitational and it paid out the same $180,000 first place check as most of the other events on the PGA Tour did. But this was a lot different, going to Maui expenses paid, hotel in Maui paid for, parties every night and a chance to earn a minimum of $8,000 for playing in a 50-man field.
Of course things didn't get any better than the Kapalua Invitational, but there were other events with the same theme, limited fields with a nice check, played at a nice place and with a low-key atmosphere.
In some other events that year, two players got an all-expense paid trip to China to play in the World Cup, which for years was a staple on the PGA Tour. Another event was when 20 players got invitations to play in Thousand Oaks in the Franklin Funds Shark Shootout. Again, a low-key, fun event in which the winning team got $150,000 each for three days of golf. Then there was the Diners Club Matches held in Palm Springs in which the players only had to play in a match play format, again for top prizes. The year ended with the Andersen Consulting World Match-Play championship where only four players were involved over the weekend but it was a ongoing event that had qualifying sites in two different places for players to qualify for the weekend event in Arizona. Lastly we can't forget the JC Penney Classic, which had been a staple of the post season for two decades. Again a team event in which one PGA Tour pro played with a LPGA Tour pro. Once again, a lot of fun, low pressure and a good amount of money.
So, what killed the "Silly Season?" In a way what killed it was its success, when players decided to take the first month off of the regular season because they needed to rest up after the "Silly Season." Could you blame some of these players? In 1993 Nick Price led the PGA Tour money list in events from January through October making $1.478 million dollars. In the silly season Fred Couples won $1.2 million. The following year Nick Price again wins the money title with $1.5 million, Ernie Els won $1.6 million in the "Silly Season." In 1995 Corey Pavin won $1.5 million in off season earnings. So you can see, there was a lot of money on the table.
PGA Tour purses started to skyrocket starting in 1998 and the "Silly Season" events were not able to keep up. Three of the biggest - the Kapalua Invitational, JC Penney and the Anderson Match Play - were incorporated into PGA Tour events with Kapalua getting the Mercedes-Benz Championship, the home of the JC Penny, Innisbrook getting the PODS Championship and the Anderson becoming the WGC-Accenture Match Play championship. The World Cup became part of the PGA Tour in 2000, so in a way the PGA Tour helped end it all. As for the Diners Club Matches that were owned by Jack Nicklaus Productions, it became to hard to continue when Nicklaus Productions was bought out by Gaylord Entertainment. So the only two that survived were the Skins Game and the Shark Shootout, which moved to Florida and is now sponsored by Merrill Lynch. Another survivor is the Wendy's 3 Tour Challenge which is taped delayed a month, but rumor has it that the event could possibly be coming to an end real soon.
One last event that we should also talk about that's been a great success is the PGA Grand Slam of Golf. That event has thrived for years but hit its first major roadblock this year when Tiger Woods took a pass. Even though it has a good sponsor in the country of Bermuda, you never know what the future lies if Woods doesn't play in it.
Speaking of Woods, he also owns a "Silly Season" event, the Target World Challenge and that has always been successful.
So what about the Skins game, what does the future look like?
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Now as for this year's Skins Game, on the whole the TV production was very solid, Terry Gannon is a very capable host and Judy Rankin is good as the on-course reporter. Andy North is no Nick Faldo but is tolerable in the role of analyst but good production doesn't cut it if the players aren't interesting. Of course this year's event was even more deadly as the players aren't the Fred Funk-type that strike up a fun chat. Yes ,Fred Couples did a lot of talking but you need others to pipe in and that never happened. I also found myself spinning through the TiVo on what seemed like an eternity of taped pieces from past Skins Games to pieces about Indian Wells to the dreaded sponsor interview. I still to this day will never understand why on the final hole, TV has to interview these sponsors. Is it an ego trip for them to get on TV to say what a wonderful week it was?
Still the future of the Skins Game looks bleak to the average person, but is very solid for the next two years. That is because they have a contract with the City of Indian Wells and LG for the next two years. It seems hard to believe that the city of Indian Wells would pay $1.5 million of taxpayers' money to sponsor this event, but they feel that the show will showcase their resort and help attract tourist in the future.
Sill the owners of the show have to devise some better plans to create interest in the next two years. They are already strapped with the fact that Stephen Ames will be back next year and the odds of getting any real marquee players under these conditions doesn't look promising. So what can they do to make the show any better?
Of course many will say to forget running all of these sponsor pieces on everything from hotels in Indian Wells, to Trackball pieces explaining the technology to pieces on what LG is doing for the community. It will also help not seeing 25 great Skins moments, they gave way too much time on their own history this year.
One important aspect that they have to look into is getting more fan participation. With the internet being so easy now, they need to get viewers to vote on who the best player is, have viewers ask the players what strategy they use during play, have viewers give us their choices of good moments. Also, let viewers give their thoughts on the best players in which they could win prizes from LG like Fred Couples won for making an eagle on the fourth hole on Saturday. With deadly shows like the Skins Game, viewer participation could spell the difference from these shows continuing in the future or being TV road-kills.
E-mail us at: Golfersal@aol.com
*European Tour fights back with there own season ending rich-feast, will Tiger take part?
*Ochoa ends the season in style
*So will the LPGA Tour be better off in 2008 than in 2007?
*Can GolfSmith survive?
*Book Review - ‘Golf Courses of the U.S. Open’
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European Tour fights back with there own end of season get rich feast
Monday's annoucement that in 2009 the European Tour will end it's season in Dubai, plus change the order of merit created very little "Buzz". In this day and age in which money talks and, well you know the rest, I was very surprised that not many people picked up on what the European Tour did with this new partnership and the Dubai World Championship.
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What will happen in 2009 is that there will be an end of the season event called The Dubai World Championship at Jumeirah Golf Estates. It will be the world's richest golf event with $10 million prize fund, with the winner of the event getting $1.6 million which at this moment would make it the richest prize in Golf. But adding to the drama, it will also culminate the order of merit which will be renamed "The Race to Dubai" and that will also have a $10 million dollar bonus pool with the winner receiving $2 million dollars.
If the order of merit or should we say the Race to Dubai gets close, like it was this year with four people having a chance to win, the Dubai World Championship will create a lot of drama and excitement, with the possibility of players in the final round facing shots that could determine the fate of millions of dollars.
But what hasn't been picked up is the real ramifications of all this. First of all the European Tour has really gotten beat up over the years playing second fiddle to the PGA Tour. With the advent of the FedEx Cup it played a deadly role in sticking another dagger into the heart of the European Tour, as the FedEx Cup created a drain on having Europeans best play in July, August and September. Now however, with this Dubai event and the new order of merit, it's giving many players from the PGA Tour a chance to have memberships on both tours and should help lure some PGA Tour players over to the European Tour to gain a chance to play in this very lucrative event.
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In the case of Tiger, he has played in the HSBC Champions, Dubai Desert Classic the last couple of years. Lets say if he decided to join the tour in 2009, puts those two on his schedule plus another one, he will play in his 11th event in the Dubai World Championship and have a shot at winning what will be a very important event, plus a boat load of money. Now don't think this is too far fetched, Woods likes Dubai, is not only building a golf course over there but will have a vacation home there. He likes playing around the world in events that makes sense and frankly, I think that all of this would make sense for him to have a European Tour membership.
The same with Phil Mickelson, just a couple of weeks ago he played in Singapore and China, so his stance on playing outside the United States has changed. In 2008 he has already played in one event, he likes to play in the Barclays Scottish Open so again he just has to add one more for a tenth and the 11th would come in Dubai.
Now on the surface this seems tame, yes I don't ever see the European Tour being more viable for players than the PGA Tour. But with the Schedule over in America being January through September, I can see many players deciding to possibly play a few more European Tour events and spending Thanksgiving week in Dubai and playing for a whole lot of cash. Stay tune, I think it will be very interesting.
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Ochoa ends the season in style
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Lorena Ochoa put an exclamation point on an outstanding year by claiming the $1 million first prize at the ADT Championship. And she put an exclamation point on the one-day shootout for that prize by hitting what she called the best shot of her career, a 6-iron from the rough to within three feet to make a birdie on 18 and win by two strokes over Natalie Gulbis.
Ochoa shot a four-under 68 to a 70 for Gulbis in the format in which the field is reduced to eight players who all start even in the battle for the top-loaded purse (second prize is $100,000, third is $20,000). Ochoa threatened to run away with it, shooting a five-under 31 on the front nine on a day when most of the players were struggling (four of the eight players shot 78 or worse). She had a five-stroke lead at that point, but it got interesting at 17 when Ochoa three-putted for a double bogey while Gulbis birdied to cut a four-stroke lead to one.
Gulbis hit her approach to 15 feet on the final hole and Ocher faced a terrible lie in the rough and a shot over water. Her 6-iron landed on the front of the green and rolled all the way back to within three feet of the flag.
Ochoa finished the season with eight wins, five runner-up finishes, and 21 top-10s in 25 starts. She’s the only player other than Nancy Lopez (twice) and Annika Sorenstam (four times) to score at least eight wins in a year since 1969. Ochoa now has a total of 14 wins in the last two years as she has firmly supplanted Sorenstam as No. 1. Ochoa had already set the single-season money record, and the seven-figure prize boosted her total to $4,364,994.
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What I find really amazing about Ochoa's year is the fact that the $4.3 million that she won in 2007 would of put her in 28th place on the all-time LPGA money list, just above Brandie Burton. Presently Ochoa is 4th on the all-time LPGA Tour money list with $10.4 million, behind Juli Inkster, Karrie Webb and Annika Sorenstam who is at $20.8 million.
In other money news, Ochoa not only became the first $4 million dollar earner on the LPGA Tour, she also is the only $3 million dollar earner on tour. Ochoa also won eight times in 2007, the last time a player earned more than eight wins in a year was Annika Sorenstam with 10 in 2005.
Statistically, Ochoa had a vice grip in nearly every category: She led the Tour in Rolex Player of the Year; Vare Trophy (scoring average); rounds under par; greens in regulation, top-10 finishes; birdies; and putts per round (co-leader with Catriona Matthew). She was the third-ranked player in eagles and driving distance (with Brittany Lincicome) statistics.
Now a lot of comparisons are going to be made with Tiger's season, he won just seven times and won a major just like Ochoa. But money wise Tiger won $10.8 million, about the same as Ochoa has won in her career. One thing that Ochoa is now very close to is getting into the Hall of Fame. She now has 22 points and with just five left to get the needed 27 could find herself in the Hall by 2013 right around her 32nd birthday making her the second youngest behind Se Ri Pak who just got in at 30.
Lastly we have to look at how popular the ADT Championship has gotten. This was the last item that former LPGA Commissioner Ty Votaw put together and it's turned into a real jewel. It's interesting all four days with it's playoff format in which 16 players are eliminated on Friday, followed by 8 more on Saturday and then a final round shootout. It's really surprising that a tournament on the PGA Tour hasn't stepped up and said, hey we would like to do this format because when it happens, and you know that it will, it will bring a lot of excitement and drama to that event.
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So will the LPGA Tour be better off in 2008 than in 2007?
After listening to LPGA commissioner Carolyn Bivens addressing the media about what to expect in 2008 we have to wonder that old political saying, were you better off in the last year with me in office or not?
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Bivens has been in office close to 2 and a half years now and frankly after a great rebound from having some problems in her first year with media and some sponsors, the answer is yes, but just barely. In looking at the schedule for 2008 it looks like some new tournaments have been added, as 32 events will be played while 30 were played in 2007. Now the biggest casualties for the upcoming year has to be no match play event in New York and the Tournament of Championships, played the past decade in Alabama won't be back. But on the bright side the sponsors of the match play, HSBC has shifted that event to Singapore the site of the Mitchell Tournament of Champions, Magnolia Grove will get a full field event in 2008. Now some other events added will be an event in South Florida in April, which Randall Mell of the Sun-Sentinel thinks will be at the Fairmont Turnberry Isle Resort in Palm Beach. Finally a full field event is being added at Kapalua, Maui, which was quietly named in July. Kapalua is the site of the Mercedes-Benz Championship played on the Plantation Course but the Bay Course will be used for this event. The Bay Course previously held the PGA Tour's second season Kapalua Invitational in the 80s and early 90s.
For the 32 official events and the two unofficial tournament prize money will be just over $58 million dollars, an increase over this year but more importantly there will be two more additional full field events on the schedule. Unfortunately two more foreign events have been added to the schedule with 8 events now played outside of American soil if you count the Women's World Cup of Golf.
So in reality Bivens' gets high marks for keeping the tour in the same shape that it was in when Ty Votaw left three years ago under better economic conditions. In looking at some of the things that she will be responsible for in 2008, the biggest is probably that she was behind the first universal drug testing program in golf that will go into effect next year. Now in reading her speech, the most important aspect that will come out of 2008 is how she does the prep work for new television contracts that will go through 2009. Quietly she has been very critical of these contracts and feels that some dramatic changes will be worked out under her direction. The way they are set up is most of them, including the packages with ESPN and Golf Channel are all time buys. That means the LPGA buys time on the network and pays the cost of having that network produce them. The LPGA then sells the commercial time to get back their investment but at the end of the day, they don't get the kind of rights fee that the PGA Tour commands which helps bring the purses up.
Bivens hasn't been happy with these contracts feeling that she will be able to get some sort of "fee" from these same networks and channels for the right to telecast these events and the LPGA won't have to do any time buys in future years. Now if you hear from the side of the TV networks, both Golf Channel and ESPN make a profit off the events and will probably want to make sure that continues, under Bivens vision that may not be possible for not only them, but the main networks like NBC and CBS that carry LPGA events on the weekend.
Realistically some in the inner circles of the networks feel that Bivens doesn't have much of a chance of accomplishing that and at the end of the day in 2010 will either have the same time buys that she has now or possibly have to do what the Champions Tour did in 2000 and go with a lesser network like Hallmark, Living Network or Oxygen which are geared towards women programming and could possibly carry LPGA events. But again this grab for cash on Bivens part could produce the same whiplash event that happened to the Champions Tour when they went to CNBC for more money but two years later had to abandon this plan because the ratings were so bad that it proved harmful for the Champions Tour.
Now Biven's didn't get off to the right start with NBC in describing to reporters how the LPGA was producing the ADT Championship. Again this event was a time buy in which the LPGA Tour paid NBC to produce the four days and between them and the Golf Channel televised the event. But that wasn't what she told reporters in the Wednesday press conference, she told them "We've worked with the Golf Channel, with NBC to get our production crew, accepted as the ones who would be producing and calling the shots." It didn't take long for NBC to take offense to this as the next day Jon Miller, executive vice president of NBC sports told Palm Beach Post writer Craig Dolch, "I believe the commissioner mis-spoke." As he explained the LPGA was producing some of the vignette pieces on the players but the real people calling the shots were NBC producers Tommy Roy and Tom Randolph. And as Miller ended he said that "no golf ever goes on air of our 29 golf telecasts without our executive producers doing the producing."
So as you can see, Bivens needs a bit more work on figuring out this TV game. She better get it right because a lot of what happens to the future of the LPGA will be the way these contracts are handled. In some ways getting a time buy and getting exposure on the networks, Golf Channel and ESPN will help the LPGA more than getting paid a fee from some network that won't give them much exposure and having the LPGA relive the nightmare that the Champions Tour went through.
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Can GolfSmith survive?
Golfsmith on Monday closed at $3.92 its lowest level in past 52 weeks.
Speculation on Wall Street centers on the Austin-based company’s survival in the ultra competitive retail environment for golf equipment and goods. Well capitalized competition in the form of PGA SuperStore (with two recently opened locations in the Phoenix area bringing their store count to 9) and with Golf Galaxy seeking shelter under the Dick’s Sporting Goods umbrella GolfSmith is facing rivals with deep pockets and the staying power to last the economic recession on the horizon not to mention the ever changing golf retailing landscape.
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As Trading Markets.Com said in this piece, the landscape is a Pandora box where golf shops have just as much space allocated to soft goods as to golf equipment. Specialized custom fitting is generally very low level in its application and non performance oriented which the public often sees through (read: accelerated sales) and pressure from the major manufacturers to allocate more floor space to fitting carts which emphasize interchangeable heads (has anyone thought about the need for many new sales when a shaft change might be all a player might need or worse, want, from a retailers perspective) put pressure on the retailer to offer more services which generally do not come cheaply. The large “Big Box” retail chains survive more on their non brick and mortar operations (and oddly for those with International traffic the weaker dollar) such as mail order and on-line services. Golfsmith has been and continues to be a solid player in that area no doubt extremely helpful in this time period. The universally accepted Ebay world of golf equipment sales have taken the easy money off the table and the pressure to perform in this area grows so creative and well thought out marketing in this area requires expertise and capital, yet another challenge.
Golfsmith’s troubles also stem from its IPO which was a result of its mezzanine financing being called rather than a natural outgrowth strong sales and earnings traditional reasons for going public. Add the added burden of regulatory and other shareholder requirements and overall operating costs become that much higher. Third Quarter earnings were better, thanks in part to some new stores, but with fourth quarter reporting due in late January/early February traditionally the industry’s weakest could spell some bad news if sales aren't brisk during the holiday season. Given the current stock price and the old Wall Street adage that the market looks ahead 6 months the stock price at these levels might be just telling a Golf Observer just how business is really going at the company.
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Book Review - "Golf Courses of the U.S. Open"
With Christmas on the way are you looking for a book that not only looks great on your coffee table, but is also a great read? Check out "Golf Courses of the U.S. Open", by David Barrett, a former senior editor at Golf Magazine and current contributor to GolfObserver.com.
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While Open stalwarts like Oakmont, Winged Foot, and Pebble Beach get the most ink, there are also some fascinating facts about some lesser-known layouts that have been consigned to the Open graveyard. For example, did you know that there’s a former U.S. Open course that you can walk on and play for $14? That would be Grover Cleveland Park, the original site of the Country Club of Buffalo, which moved to a new site in 1926 fourteen years after hosting the Open.
Then there’s the club that hosted the Open in 1909, became a Mafia hangout in the 1950s, and went into a decline and eventually closed for good after a highway was routed through it (Englewood Golf Club in New Jersey).
There are plenty of tournament anecdotes, including one about the Hinkle Tree incident in 1979 at Inverness, when USGA officials planted a tree overnight in an attempt to close a shortcut first used by Lon Hinkle in the opening round. While Hinkle and playing companion Chi Chi Rodriguez both took the short route in the first two rounds, the third member of the group, a little-known Australian, played the hole conventionally. That was Greg Norman, playing in his first U.S. Open. Then there was the Open at Medinah in 1975, undoubtedly the smelliest in the history of the championship after straw from a nearby horse track was brought in to make the muddy grounds walkable for spectators.
You’ll read about how legends Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, and Tiger Woods won their Opens, how club founder H.C. Fownes turned Oakmont into the most penal course in the land, and why Pebble Beach and Pinehurst had to wait upwards of 50 years to host their first Opens before becoming ideal championship sites.
The book is also a feast for the eyes, with stunning images by the top golf course photographers, and includes a comprehensive statistical section.
"Golf Courses of the U.S. Open" is published by Harry N. Abrams, Inc. and lists for $50.
E-mail us at: Golfersal@aol.com
*A team to root for at the World Cup
*Srixon and Cleveland - A match made on Wall Street
*Phil wins in China, takes 2½ months off and won't be back until???
*Sabbatini not very popular with Australian pros
*Book Review - ‘Golf Unplugged’ is like its author – very different
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A team to root for at the Omega World Cup
In two weeks the Omega World Cup will take place in China and if your looking for a team to really root for I have one. The Irish team of Michael Hoey and Gareth Maybin, will be one to root for after beating incredible odds just to tee it up in the World Cup.
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Now both of these players knew the risks, they had to bank roll a trip to the Caribbean and compete with 19 other teams for five spots. The first challenge was to get themselves to Aruba, they had been playing in a European Challenge Tour event in Kazakhstan which is a nation just below Russia on the Caspian Sea about 7,500 miles and ten time zones away from Aruba. The two made the trip and even though they were tired and exhausted from the journey the two jelled together, finishing second to a team from Puerto Rico, but good enough to make the final field in China.
So it's off to China but there could of been one obstacle in their way. If they had made it to the final qualifying tournament in Spain next week, it wasn't suppose to finish until Tuesday. They would of had to make it to Paris that night for a flight to Hong Kong, which wouldn't of made it until 6pm on Wednesday night. So any problems that arose would of spelled disqualification since they wouldn't of been able to tee it up on Thursday morning.
So with that out of the way they can leisurely make it to China, get accustomed to the area, the course and play. For both competitors, who together have only made around $80,000 on the Challenge Tour in 2007, they will be looking for there biggest prize of the year as last place pays $20,000 each and if they could possibly win, first place gives each player $800,000.
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Srixon and Cleveland - A match made on Wall Street
According to sources and this GolfWeek business report, Cleveland Golf has been bought by Japan’s SRI Sports Limited, Srixon Golf. Now many industry and Wall Street analysts are surprise by both the terms of the acquirer and the price of $132 million dollars.
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The betting line was TaylorMade-Adidas, or either a management led buyout by Cleveland President Greg Hopkins would be the buyers. Also rumored was Puma, which seemed a stretch given no prior golf equipment involvement and rumors that it had passed earlier this year on Spanish company Makser. Srixon, known in the US more for its balls and less about its line of clubs, seems an unusual buyer for any number of reasons but singularly focusing on the core product, Srixon equipment which is considered by many to be high quality has never been given much of a marketing push in the US.
Moreover, did the buyer pay too much?
Street thinking was in the 60-80 million dollar range so when Quicksilver (owner of Cleveland) announced on October 30th the deal, its stock shot up 65 cents the next day or 5%, arguably the best thing to happen to the Huntington Beach, California based company since they acquired Cleveland along with ski equipment maker Rossignol in 2005. Kudos to JP Morgan the seller’s banker in the deal for fetching 1.5x sales with arguably no profitability.
Ok, so now what does Srixon do? Keep the Cleveland line of equipment with the ever shrinking market share of its wedge line in the public view primarily in the US and Europe while not expanding Srixon’s XXO line from Japan? Take the wedge line and Hi-Bore Driver’s to Asia?
Moreover, what to do about tour star presence. Vijay Singh comes with Cleveland or does he? That’s probably the largest question. Most likely in an attempt to draw bidders and given the state of flux Cleveland was in prior to the sale the world’s number 4 player was seen playing an array of lesser known brands essentially telegraphing his desire to hear from anyone large enough to command his attention. With Jim Furyk and Karrie Webb as Srixon’s current poster players, Vijay certainly complements the group and the brand but which one will SRI management want to ultimately flog?
Again the industry thinking is that it all stays the same for now with Cleveland equipment, Srixon balls, respective outer and headwear trumpeting the brands. Moreover, employees have been heard to say, better a golf company than a consumer outerwear parent. That might be so but at that hefty price in a market that is showing zero growth and given the grey clouds of the overall economy in the US one wonders about this business arrangement and how long (even given Japanese long term horizon thinking) this scenario will play out.
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Phil finally wins abroad, taking next 2½ months off
It's about time that Phil Mickelson wins an official event outside of American soil. Now Mickelson hasn't been much of a candidate to accomplish that feat because he never seemed willing to play overseas, plus after his debacle in the Barclay's Scottish Open in which he had a nice lead and showed shades of Winged Foot, then lost a playoff to Gregory Havret, then the 320th ranked golfer in the world, we wondered if Phil could win overseas.
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Mickelson didn't have his "A" game on Sunday, yes he was the winner but he did it with a 76 in the final round and some help when young Ross Fisher imploded on the final hole. As for Mickelson, who at one point had a three shot lead with just seven holes left he himself imploded, making bogey at 12, double at 13, bogey at 15, birdie at 16. Going into the final hole he was one back of Fisher, and Mickelson hit a poor tee shot in the rough. Thinking that he had to make birdie, he went for the par 5 in two and found the water which pretty much gave the event to Fisher. Just off the green in two, Fisher needed to just get it on and two putt for par. But Fisher chipped his third shot poorly and it rolled through the green and into the water. He went on to make a double bogey setting up a playoff that Mickelson won with birdie on the second overtime hole.
For Mickelson it was an ugly victory as he had six penalty shots in the final round. Still he was able to overcome that and still win but as he said in the victory speech afterwards, "It was one of the more unusual back nines that I have ever been a part of." But Phil may of said a few things that in hindsight he shouldn't of said. The first was the comment that "It is nice to win a tournament that Tiger has tried to win the last couple of years unsuccessfully." Whoops. Wonder if Tiger is thinking how many events that he won that Phil tried to win.
But the next comment is something that will give us a lot to write about for at least the next 2½ months. Mickelson in an interview with Richard Boxall of Sky Sports said that he was looking forward to getting home and enjoying the next 2½ months off. So this being November 11th, that means that Phil doesn't plan on playing again until around January 23rd or so. Since the Mercedes-Benz Championship is between January 3rd and 6th that just about rules that out. Frankly many thought that Mickelson wouldn't be playing at Kapalua since it's an event that he hasn't been to since 2001. He doesn't like the high winds and the course doesn't suit his game, so bypassing this event, even though it's a winners only and a big deal on the PGA Tour was expected.
But we have to wonder, and this is pure speculation on the "Buzz's" part if when Mickelson says 2½ months off that means he won't be back until the 22nd or 23rd which would mean his first event will be the Buick Invitational followed by the FBR Open. If that is the case it would mean that he would also be bypassing the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic, an event he has won twice in and finished in the top-ten four times in the last six years.
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Now the answer for Mickelson bypassing the Hope is easy, the last two years it's been played at the Classic Club which is great for the tournament since they own the course and don't have to pay a site fee, but players haven't been very happy with it, especially last year. The final round was played in 30 MPH winds and since the course is not protected and is in the windiest parts of the Palm Springs area it played havoc on their games. On the Sunday the scoring average was 74.76, making it the hardest round ever played at the Hope in it's 48 year history. Six players shot in the 80s and Phil Mickelson shot 78. After his round Mickelson told Larry Bohannan of the Desert Sun, "Are they going to play this course again next year?" When told yes Mickelson wasn't very happy.
Now with the course being played in windy conditions which Mickelson really doesn't like, another strike against the Hope is the schedule. After the Hope is the Buick Invitational, FBR Open, AT&T National, the Nissan Open and the WGC Accenture Match Play. Mickelson likes playing in all of these events, matter of fact he played in the Nissan Open for the first time since 2001 and enjoyed it so much that I wouldn't be surprise to see Mickelson play it again. So the question will be, will Mickelson play in six straight? The "buzz" doesn't think so and feels that he will not play in the Hope. This will be another blow to a tournament that has steadily decreased over the years, last year Mickelson was the only top-30 ranked player in the field.
Yes, George Lopez was a great host last year but the move to The Classic Club hasn't made many professionals happy and since you can't do anything about it's location in the middle of a wind tunnel, look for more marque names to bypass this event.
As for Mickelson, he will have the next 2½ months off and you know whenever he comes back will be ready to go.
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Sabbatini not very popular with Australian pros
If there ever was a list of disliked players on the PGA Tour, the "Buzz" would venture to say that Rory Sabbatini would probably be in the top-ten. Just his general attitude is hard for some to stomach and many players, including Tiger Woods just smile and come up with some clever politically correct answer on why Sabbatini says some of the things that he thinks.
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Now frankly some of his comments directed toward Tiger Woods during the year may of, shall we say, "ticked off" the great man and when Tiger gets "ticked off" your not going to get a tongue lashing but he is going to beat you big time with his game. On one occasion that was never truer than at this year's WGC-Bridgestone Invitational. Sabbatini had a one shot lead over Woods going into the final round, the two played together and Tiger put on one brilliant performance in front of Sabbatini shooting 65 to Rory's 74 and winning the tournament by eight shots. Still it seems that everywhere Sabbatini goes, trouble is on his right shoulder, even at times when its not his own making. One of these is what is happening in Australia, were several players aren't very happy that Sabbatini is getting a 'reported" $200,000 appearance fee to play in the Australian PGA Championship.
One of those players not happy is Stuart Appleby, who has withdrawn from the tournament even though he has won it three times in the last seven years. But this week Appleby changed his mind and is back in the event. In a interview with the Australian Daily Telegraph, Appleby isn't happy at some of the details of the Sabbatini deal. "To me the question is: How much is Rory getting paid and how much is he worth?," Appleby told The Daily Telegraph. "Thats what I want to ask the Australian PGA."
As for other players, Robert Allenby told the Australian Daily Telegraph that he shouldn't be implicated in a boycott over Sabbatini and even though he isn't playing in the Australian PGA it's not his fight and puts the blame on Australian Paul Gow for the boycott.
Still many feel that all of the irate Australians shouldn't be getting upset over this because according to Max Garske, CEO of the PGA of Australia, the sponsors have said that Sabbatini is only getting travel expenses and accommodations on this trip.
No matter what, for Sabbatini this is just another day at the office.
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Book Review - ‘Golf Unplugged’ is like its author – very different
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Did you know that chewing gum is likely to help your golf game? Ever wonder what it’s like to hit a recovery shot from a hot dog stand, how to pick up a golf ball with a wedge, or what the 10 commandments of golf are?
Doubtful on all counts, but if those thoughts or any other weird queries have ever dashed across you brain (probably after the 10th round was completed at the 19th hole) we have the book for you.
‘Golf Unplugged’ by Jim Apfelbaum is a treasure trove of information that other golf historians may have unearthed, but nobody else thought to put together in one volume.
But that is what makes Apfelbaum, author of seven other books (one on banking for God’s sake), so unique. Time and time again he has demonstrated the ability to go where no other golf writer has ever gone before, broadening our horizons to the point where we are very likely to have a headache.
Down a couple of aspirins and quit complaining. This kind of knowledge is worth some discomfort.
It was Apfelbaum who penned the popular ‘Golf On $30 A Day (or less)’ a must read guide for those of us who are not financially equipped to fly or play at the First Class level.
Host of the longest-running sports talk show on KVET radio in Austin, Texas and one of the preeminent golf travel writers in the world, Apfelbaum often operates in his own universe where others may visit, but thus far nobody else has been able to take up permanent residence.
His writing, like his swing, is smooth; his thinking, like his putting, often bizarre, but they combine in a way that forces you to keep turning the pages.
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While others might choose to do their research off the internet or at least at the local library, Apfelbaum has spent a goodly amount of his life talking (and more importantly, listening) to other people in the game. Folks as lofty as the late Harvey Penick, or as common as the leather-faced superintendent at a local municipal course who has more stories than liver spots on his hands.
It was Apfelbaum, who while sitting at a table during a Golf Writers of America dinner in Myrtle Beach, suggested that a soon-to-be constructed John Daly course in the area be named ‘Swizzle Stick’, a combination of Crooked Stick in Indiana where Daly first burst on the scene, winning the PGA championship and his well-earned reputation for downing a libation or 20.
‘Golf Unplugged’ is truly a fascinating read for anyone who really loves the history of the game. It’s not about who won the U.S. Open in 1943 or the British Open in 1908. This is about things you don’t know; the funny antic dotes, the yarns that players or those close to the game have spun. This is the kind of knowledge that makes you scratch your head and chuckle. It is a behind-the-scenes look at golf through the ages and it is as fascinating as it is well-written and researched.
Apfelbaum has traveled the golfing world for many years putting aside these trinkets and now, finally, he has assembled them into one, very readable and enjoyable work.
If you love golf pick up a copy. ‘Golf Unplugged’ is available through Tatra Press. You can contact them at tatrapress@hotmail. com.
- T.F. Geary
E-mail us at: Golfersal@aol.com
*So what is really up on the Natalie Gulbis story?
*Turnberry up for sale
*New course in Northern Virginia would be a gem for the AT&T National
*Mickelson has the Olympics on his mind
*Sorenstam to get into the ADT, defender Granada probably won't
*Harrington never lets the Jug out of his sight
Click here to post your thoughts and to tell us your "Golf Buzz"
So what is really up on the Natalie Gulbis story?
In Monday's "Buzz" we told you about an article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, that said changes were coming in the 2008 Natalie Gulbis calendar. Now the story was done by Jeffrey Kelley, who is a credible writer and the Richmond Times-Dispatch isn't like shall we say the New York Post which has it's page six that glorifies any kind of celebrity news.
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Who knows what bells and whistles went off over in the Natalie Gulbis camp over this report but all of a sudden two stories from two more very credible journalists came out, painting a different picture by trying to spin things differently but at the end of the day, the truth is still that there will be no swimsuit pictures in the 2008 calendar.
The first story I saw was by Brian Hewitt over at the Golf Channel. I have known Hewitt for a decade and know for a fact that he is a person that always gets things right. If I would need to hire a top-notch reporter for a very important piece, Hewitt would be on top of my list. In his article he says that according to a Gulbis spokesman telling the Golf Channel, quotes were "incorrect". First off did he mean the quotes in the article or the quotes by Hogg were wrong? No matter, knowing Hewitt and the fact that he is very careful in tracking down the story and getting it right I have to think that he is right and either the Richmond Times-Dispatch is wrong or Hogg is wrong.
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While I was trying to understand more about the way this report was done a third story on all of this by Craig Dolch at the Palm Beach Post help shed some light on things. He paints a totally different side to all of this as he quotes Natalie Gulbis as saying that a PR person for the Circle S Studios overstepped her boundaries when she said Gulbis was trying to downplay her sexy image. With that it made things a lot easier to understand.
Geez, as my father use to tell me "the truth is somewhere in the middle on all of this". Who knows what is right or what is wrong on this, who misquoted who or if the Golf Channel could be spinning this for one of their stars but there is no two ways about it, the Gulbis camp doesn't want us to think that they are changing anything or downplaying her sexy image.
What I find even funnier over all of this is that at the end of the day, no matter what Susan Hogg, Natalie Gulbis or her spokesman say, the one certainty that all three reports have given us is there will be no Natalie Gulbis swimsuit pictures in the 2008 calendar and it will be interesting to see if this approach will be as popular as the previous calendars and if the "Buzz" on this calendar will be like the "Buzz" on the previous ones.
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A "For Sale" sign goes up at Turnberry
Hard to believe that in 20 months the 2009 British Open will be held at Turnberry, but a 'for sale' sign has been hoisted over the Scottish golf resort.
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According to Dominic Walsh in the London Times, Starwood Hotel & Resorts, which runs the 219-room resort under its luxury Westin brand, confirmed that Turnberry has been put up for sale, saying it had appointed Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels to handle the process.
The price tag for the 800-acre resort that includes two courses and one of the most photographed hotels in the world is £100 million pounds ($146 million dollars). For Starwood it would be a nice return on their investment which was £32 million pounds (at that time about $51 million dollars)
No word let from the R&A on what they think of this, the R&A which is the organizers behind the British Open have spent a lot of time along with the Turnberry Hotel in getting roads and other things in place to be able to hold the British Open.
Still it seems odd the timing of this sale but for the new owners they will have a lot of added "buzz" on the property with the British Open coming up.
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Hey Tiger, check this place out before committing to RTJ
Hey Tiger, know that you're looking for a championship course to hold your AT&T National in 2010 and '11 while Congressional gets it's face lift and holds the U.S. Open. The rumors going around that the front runner for those years will be the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club, which held four Presidents Cup in the last 15 years. But before you make a decision, there is one place you should check out.
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On Tuesday I was lucky enough to play the Creighton Farms Golf Club, which is about 15 miles north of RTJ just outside of Leesburg, Virginia. Now the course doesn't officially open until next April but let me tell you the Jack Nicklaus design course is a real gem and would make a nice temporary home for your event.
I didn't find a single thing wrong with the course, matter of fact it's better than RTJ . I didn't play the special back tees that can stretch the course to 7,600 yards but the course that I played showed some real teeth. The back side is very stunning in beauty, winding through some of the prettiest rolling terrain you will ever see that will make it look great on television. It also has all of the features you look for in a course like a premium on strategy and placing the ball in the right place. With the community in it's infancy, there is enough room for parking and on most of the holes, it would be a great course for people to watch the play.
As a course I found it very enjoyable to play and I know that all of your fellow pros would agree that it's a great venue for your event.
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The Olympics are on Phil Mickelson's mind
Don't you love the way Phil Mickelson thinks some times? For the last couple of years, just getting Phil to fly off for the British Open was a big deal. Other than that event you could count on your one hand the number of foreign events he had been to. But now with his big trip to Singapore and China, Phil has a more international scope of things on his mind, that being the Olympics.
While in Singapore and China, he has spoken out to the media on this subject and hopes that one day in the future golf will be included in the Olympic's. The sentiment is great, in a dream world having golf as an Olympic sport would be wonderful. But realistically the chances of it happening is slim or none.
First of all the earliest it could happen is in 2016 but lets look at some bare facts of life, the Olympics are held in either July or Augusta and in some cases September. I don't think that the Olympic committee is going to schedule the games around the British Open, PGA Championship or the FedEx Cup so that is the first stumbling block. But most of all, look at the World Cup which in a way is the Olympics of golf. It's going to be played in a couple of weeks in China, Boo Weekley and Heath Slocum was our best choices to represent our country. If by chance the Olympics do make golf a sport and the games are scheduled for after the FedEx Cup, who knows who will want to play in them. Since only two top-20 ranked players participated in the Fall Series, you have to wonder if the big excuse of our tour stars would be too much fatigue and a tough season to play in the Olympics. Now of course if Phil Mickelson was playing this year in the World Cup I would say that he would have the right to hope for the Olympics, but since Mickelson has only played once (in 2002 in Mexico) the "Buzz" think's it best for Phil to be a little more quiet in his thoughts on this subject.
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Sorenstam to get into the ADT, defender Granada probably won't
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One player that needs a miracle to make it into the ADT is defending champion Julieta Granada. Right now she is 123,407 points or dollars away from the 13th spot so the only sure way for her to qualify is a win at the T of C. Now she mathematically could get in if she finishes second, but she would have to see what some other players do because if other players do well they could knock her out of the running.
Now the chances of Hetherington making it are very slim because of her not playing but Sophie Gustafson is also on the bubble. That is because she also isn't playing and she is in the 12th spot and just has to see what others do before she gets a spot.
One last bit of ADT gossip, the event is going to give the chance for the 8 Sunday finalist to play a part in their destiny. According to Jeff Shain of the Miami Herald, the event is going to have a Saturday evening "draw party." Each players name will be selected and as each one is drawn they will get to select which of the four pairings they get to play in. Of course it will be interesting as the first player drawn will probably want to go last but as the third, fourth and fifth players names are drawn, they will get to choose who they play with, a neat idea for an event that has a neat format.
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Harrington never lets the Jug out of his sight
Now there is good news and bad news for the R&A about the Claret Jug.
The good news is that nobody has cared more about the Claret Jug than Padraig Harrington does. Many are wondering if he has ever let it out of his sight since he won the British Open back in July. We heard that after winning the championship he took it with him into the bathroom so that he could gaze at it while taking his shower. Harrington told the media that he would peer out of the shower just to look at it and assure himself of the victory. That night he didn't get to bed until 4am and was up two hours later, again staring at the jug that was at the foot of the bed. He was so excited that he woke his poor wife Caroline out of a sound sleep just to get assurances that he had won the Jug.
On his return home to Dublin it seems that the trophy went with him everywhere. One night he went into a local cafe in Dublin for a bite to eat and didn't want to leave the Jug in the car so he brought it into the cafe and sat it on the table next to the pizza that he ordered making for a grand site in the cafe. The following night Harrington dragged the Jug with him to a pool hall for a session of darts and pool with his four brothers.
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The week after with the gold dagger that he got for winning in Morocco, both went to Spain for the Volvo Masters. Now the Jug is in China for the HSBC Champions.
Now in the beginning we said that there was good news and bad for the R&A. The bad is we wonder when the time comes for Harrington to give it back will he be able to? And how about all of this travel time the Jug is logging, could some dastardly fate come upon the Jug? Many don't know this but in 1928 when Walter Hagen finally lost the PGA Championship and officials asked Haig to give back the Wanamaker Trophy, Hagen said that the trophy was lost and he didn't know were it went. A new one had to be made and a couple of years later it was found in a Warehouse in Detroit. Seemed that Hagen forgot it in a Cab and the driver gave it to someone that boxed it up were it was lost of a number of years. I kind of doubt that Harrington would do something like that to the Jug, it's been an old friend for him and faithful traveling companion.
E-mail us at: Golfersal@aol.com
*Natalie Gulbis calendar gets rebranded
*So what golf is left in 2007?
*The Shark takes over MacGregor
*Another disappointment for Fujikawa
*News from Singapore
*Euro news from Spain
*Winners and losers in Florida and California
*Couch producer wondering why Golf Channel does some of the things that they do.
Click here to post your thoughts and to tell us your "Golf Buzz"
So will anyone care for a Natalie Gulbis Calendar, without the swimsuit shots?
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We just have to start the buzz with what could be the saddest news for those that have enjoyed the Natalie Gulbis calendar's the last four years, change is coming.
According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, in the 2008 calendar there will be no more provocative shots of Gulbis in swimsuits, low cut dresses or tights as she will be totally re-branded. The 2008 calendar and day planner will be more about her golf and as Susan Hogg, president of Circle S, the company that is doing the re branding is saying that the look will be more in showing were her career has got to and for her to be of a role model for girls and women in general. These are code words that mean the calendar will be, shall we say, very tame.
Be interesting to see what sells the best, the sex symbol that Gulbis has portrayed the last four years or the new role model image.
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So is golf history for 2007, that's a loaded question
Well the PGA Tour, Champions Tour and the Nationwide Tour is officially over for the year. Now on the European Tour, the 2007 season is over but on Thursday the 2008 season begins in China. Thanks for the downtime.
Still there is a lot of golf in the next month of so. The most important events are the next two LPGA events, with the ADT Championship next week bringing the best players on the LPGA together for one last shootout. When the event went to it's new format of eliminations each day last year it brought a lot of interest and buzz to golf, it's going to be one of the favorites again this year and probably be the golfing highlight of November.
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Many are wondering what happened to the silly season, it's pretty much lost all of it's luster with the rescheduling on the PGA Tour. But the main reason for the lost was the lack of interest by the marquee names, without them there is really no silly season. On the PGA Tour there are really only four events left, with only one being of major interest, the Target World Challenge. Played December 13th through the 16th it's going to be the only time that Tiger Woods tees off between the Presidents Cup and 2008. As for the others, nobody cares anymore about the Skins Game. It will be celebrating it's 25th anniversary and in many folks minds it's looking like a wrinkled old lady. This year it will be played on another nondescript course in which the sponsors get a big site fee for the privelage and will have another nondescript field. Matter of fact the field is so bad that if you look on the events website, you have to spend a good amount of time poking around to find the field. Maybe it's because they are so embarrassed at how poor it is they don't want people to know. Well, we will tell you that the powerhouse foursome of Fred Couples, Stephen Amaes, Zach Johnson and Brett Wetterich will play for our entertainment on Thanksgiving weekend. Just wonder what the original creators of the show must be thinking, if they are like the average golf fan they won't be watching the show either.
To wet your appetite on how stellar the field is, all four players have won a total of 2 mjors and 22 PGA Tour events. Oh if you take Fred Couples out of the equation the total goes down to 1 major and seven PGA Tour wins for the other three.
For the star of the matches, Fred Couples, it will be his first competition since the Masters seven months ago. As for the others, they will produce about as much banter and excitement as watching a trio of tortoises racing.
Looking at some other events, between December 7th and 9th the Merrill Lynch Shootout will have some nice parings for a 24 man team event that does create some fun to watch.
Lastly we have the Omega World Cup, being played during Thanksgiving weekend. The premise of the event is neat, get the two best players to represent their country in a 72 hole event. This event has a 50+ year history and has had some stellar players. The best have experienced this event but now the best stay home. No more Tiger Woods or Phil Mickelson or Ernie Els. Spain won't have it's best player Sergio Garcia in the field, he decided to take a pass. Ireland won't have Padraig Harrington representing it and even poor Argentina which in the past has created a lot of excitement with Angel Cabrera won't have the U.S. Open champ playing for his country.
So who does the United States have? It was a struggle to get a team together, so many players turned it down. After finally getting Arron Oberholser to agree on playing, with him getting Sean O'Hair as a partner, all of that was changed a couple of weeks ago when Oberholser had surgery on his left hand and had to turn it down. So it was back to the drawing board and they finally found someone that would except the invite, Boo Weekley.
Better know as the Gomer Pyle of the PGA Tour it will be interesting to see how Weekley will react over in China. A country pumpkin from Milton, Florida, he choose his neighbor Heath Slocum to play with him and it should be quite an adventure.
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To think that a year ago Weekley didn't even have a passport and now he is off to represent the United States in China. Based on some of his adventures this summer playing in the Barclay's Scottish Open and the British Open I can only image some of the things that will be said and written.
Flashback to Weekley's Scottish trip in July, at the Scottish Open he was paired with Paul Lawrie. Frankly it's been eight years since his British Open win at Carnoustie, but when Weekley and Lawrie starting talking about playing in the British Open the following week, Weekley said in his syrupy drawl, 'How'd you get in? You qualify?' OK, thanks for putting down the British Open champion but Boo didn't know that Lawrie was a past champion. Then there was a reporter that asked Weekley his thoughts on Jean Van de Velde's debacle at Carnoustie and Weekley had a puzzled look on his face and said, "Who?" Hazel Irvine from the BBC interviewed Boo and got some very interesting comments, here are some of his comments: Hazel to Boo, what about the importance of the Open Championship? Boo to Hazel, "Never seen it, if it ain't hunting or fishing, I ain't interested." Hazel to Boo, on eating in Scotland? Boo answer, "It's different eating here than it is at the house. Ain't got no sweet tea and ain't got no fried chicken." One thing that Boo did like was the Arbroath Smokies that were in the tented village. Oh and Boo, what about driving over in Scotland? "I ain't driving. I ain't driving nowhere." That was code for he couldn't get used to the steering wheel on the right side of the car so he let someone else do the driving. Last but not least, we have this gem when someone asked him his thoughts on St. Andrews, the home of golf: "I didn't know it was the home of golf. I thought the home of golf was where I was from."
So we can only image some of the things that are going to pop up when Boo does China, I can see him now asking people were that big wall is and if it runs through the golf course.
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Greg Norman takes over MacGregor
So what has Greg Norman been up to since his divorce settlement which cost him a reported $300 million dollars? He has been busy trying to point MacGregor golf back towards the promise land and bring it back to dominance as it was in the 40s and 50s. Norman was named the chairman of the equipment and apparel side of MacGregor Golf. With the move MacGregor’s CEO Barry Schneider was thrown out after Norman, Sankaty Advisors and Gordon Getty Family Trust did a recapitalization of MacGregor. One of the oldest golf companies in the world, MacGregor Golf has been in business for 109 years. During it’s history 59 majors have been won by players like Jack Nicklaus, Ben Hogan and Bryon Nelson who played with their clubs. Norman told GolfWeek magazine, “We have to get back to the basics of what the company is all about,” Norman expects to be active in that process as chairman, which makes sense considering he says his investment in the company “will be the biggest business deal he has ever made.” Gosh, to think that we thought that his divorce was the biggest business deal of his life.
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Another disappointment for Fujikawa
For Tadd Fujikawa the Children’s Miracle Network Classic turned into another big disappointment as he shot 71-72 to miss the cut by two shots. For Fujikawa this runs his streak to seven missed cuts around the world (3 on PGA Tour, 2 on Nationwide Tour, one each on European Tour and Canadian Tour).
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Fujikawa, who was thrown in the spotlight at the Sony Open in Hawaii when he finished T20th and went into the final round with a shot of winning, has been in contention with fellow Hawaiian Michelle Wie. The big difference, when Wie turned pro at 16 she got $10 million dollars in endorsement deals, Fujikawa has been a pro for four months now and still doesn’t have an endorsement deal and is playing playing around with different clubs and wearing different companies apparel each week.
But Fujikawa is going to get something that Wie has lost. Fujikawa got an invite to play in the Casio World Open, which is being played in three weeks. Wie has played in the last two Casio’s but tournament sponsors decided not invite her this year because of her injury. Still for Fujikawa it will be his second Japan Golf Tour event, he played in the Chunichi Crowns in April as an amateur and missed the cut by two shots.
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News from Singapore.
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Who could be the hottest player in golf right now?
A lot of folks may not of noticed but in the last three weeks Angel Cabrera has finished 2nd in the HSBC World Match Play Championship in England, won Grand Slam of Golf in Bermuda, won the Argentina Torneo de Maestros and now the Barclays Singapore Open.
For Cabrera, who lost to Ernie Els in the finals of the World Match Play Championship 6&4, it was his first Top-15 finish since his U.S. Open victory. Cabrera is off to China for this week’s HSBC Champions before flying back to Argentina for a short break and then playing in two events just after Thanksgiving in his home country.
In other news from Singapore, Ernie Els was under a lot of criticism from honoring his contract with the Singapore folks. He went, got sick with food poisoning but still played shooting 72-76 and missed the cut. Els in his blog talks about the disappointment of playing bad but again being a class act as he is didn't take any shots at people who were critical of him playing in Singapore instead of Spain.
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Euro news from Spain
Over in Europe, Justin Rose won the Volvo Masters and with the victory also won the order of merit.
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Winning the order of merit is not what it use to be. In the days when Peter Oosterhuis won it four straight years and Seve Ballesteros won it six times it was about the best golfer in Europe. In 2007, 52 events counted towards winning the order of merit while only 28 of those events were played in Europe. Of the 52 events, 7 of them were big prize events that were either majors or World Golf Championships, events that not all European Tour members can play in.
Rose isn't alone in winning the order of merit with a small number of wins. Padraig Harrington won the order of merit in 2006 with just one victory, the same for Colin Montgomerie in 2005. Ernie Els won the order of merit twice the last in 2004 came with just two wins, both of them off of European soil.
But here is a stat that shows how unimportant the European Order of Merit really is. Justin Rose may of won the title this year with €2,944,945 but the true euro winner on the European Tour in 2007 was Tiger Woods with €4,507,473. Since he played in just nine European Tour “official” events, he was two below the 11 he needed for his earnings to be included in the order of merit, thus depriving Woods of another title. But wait there is more to the story, giving less credence to the European Tour order of merit list, going back to 1999, Tiger has been the leading euro earner every year except in 2003 and 2004 when Ernie Els made more euros than Tiger. So you see, the European Tour order of merit isn't what it use to be.
Just a suggestion for the powers to be on the European Tour, maybe they should adopt a policy like the one the Japan Golf Tour has in which they have two money lists. The first one is all tour events including the World Golf championship events and the second one is solely Japan Golf Tour events. It would be more honest and fairer if the European Tour would adopt a similar forumula, dropping the three American majors and the three World Golf Championship. In looking at that scenario, the most drastic change would be that Tiger Woods drops from first to 48th and the top three would be the same, just a different order:
Padraig Harrington €2,080,223
Ernie Els €1,969,604
Justin Rose €1,873,455
Tiger Woods€628,632 which would be 48th on the list
Now if the European Tour wants to take it even a step further and have a classic European money list in which you include just events on the European soil plus the three middle east events (Abu Dhabi, Qatar & Dubai) and Russian event that would reward the true European Tour players, plus have a feel of the way the European Tour was in the 70s, 80s and earlier 90s, it would have a top-three that would look like this
Padraig Harrington €1,962,159
Justin Rose €1,703,101
Ernie Els €1,680,951
Tiger Woods€191,093 which would be 109th on the list
No matter what, these two lists are better along the lines of a true European Tour order of merit list than what they do now.
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Stephen Ames may of won the tournament but he wasn't the big winner in Florida or California
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Not a bad way for Stephen Ames to end a year that was a bit frustrating and trying at times. That is because the final round wasn't a walk in the park for Ames, he had to play hard after Clark birdied six of eight holes starting at the ninth to charge from out of the pack, Ames produced birdies on 13, 14, and 15 to regain the lead and went on to close out the victory by saving par from a bunker on 18. Ames finished with a 68 for a 17-under 271 total to hold off Clark’s 66.
It was the third career victory for the 43-year-old Ames, who contended in the U.S. Open and PGA Championship this year before fading in the final round. He moved up from 73rd to 31st on the final money list. He also will move up from 49th to 30th on the Official World Ranking, which secures a Masters invitation.
For Ames it was a very lucrative week making $828,000 but for some that didn't make as much it was also a very lucrative week. In the race for the top 125, the big winners were Kevin Stadler who shot a final round 71 and his $73,600 earned was enough to get him from 127th on the money list to 124. Also a big winner was Mathias Gronberg, who shot a final round 71 and he earned $21,160 for finishing T37th which kept him in the top 125 finishing 125th. The big Loser this week had to be Ted Purdy, who missed the cut by a shot and he dropped from 125th to 127th. J.B. Holmes also moved into the top 125 and Ben Curtis fell out of it, but both are exempt for 2008 in any case because they won tournaments last year.
Now the overall big loser wasn't even at Disney this week, Brett Quigley had knee surgery after the Deutsche Bank Championship. At that time he was 109th on the money list with $717,411 and felt that his top-125 standings would be fine but that wasn’t the case as he dropped to 130th on the money list this week.
Over on the Nationwide Tour the hard luck story had to be Skip Kendall. He entered the Nationwide Tour Championship 22nd on the money list and looking in good shape for making his tour card in 2008. He shot rounds of 68-67-69-69 and finished T21st but unfortunely his check for $7,411 wasn’t enough as he fell $1,094 short of Jimmy Walker in earning his tour card. For Walker, he started the week 21st on the money list and his saving grace was finishing his final round birdie, par par. Now for Kendall the true culprit in him not getting a card had to be Tom Scherrer, who played his last six holes in 3 under par which help him finish T3rd and win $44,950. If he would of played that stretch in just two under, Kendall would of gotten his card and Scherrer wouldn’t of jumped into the top-25.
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The "Couch Producer" is on the "Couch" wondering why Golf Channel does some of the things that they do.
Last week I was very surprised and happy in learning that the Golf Channel was going to air the Barclays Singapore Open. With Ian Baker-Finch as one of the hosts and a great field I was looking forward to watching it. Finding the time that it was on was a bit hard since Golf Channel didn't do a good job on advertising it, matter of fact it wasn't even on my Dish Network program guide. I finally found the time and it was on at 3am each morning, which didn't bother me. You see we are in a broadband and TiVo era, we can find all the stories from around the world pretty quickly and we aren't burden anymore with when a show is on TV because we can watch it anytime we want with these DVR machines.
So when I went to bed on Wednesday night I was looking forward to the morning and watching the two hour show while doing some work. Only problem, even though the show was listed on the Golf Channel's website, it never got recorded on my DVR machine. I was a bit disappointed and when I went to bed on Thursday night I made sure that I would have the 2nd round recorded.
I was in for a big surprise on Friday morning. Yes the show was on my machine and after going through a ten minute opening was shocked to see that the 1st round was on the machine. After wondering how dumb was I in not programming it right the truth of the situation came through, Golf Channel was bringing these shows a day late. Now of course a couple of paragraphs ago I said how great Tivo's were that we can watch these show at any time, I didn't mean a day late. So all I can say to the folks at Golf Channel is come on guys, what are you thinking of. In trying to get a hold of the PR person to ask him why, I never got a response. Now to be fair, he was off on a little mini vacation so hopefully he will get back to me one day on this but my question is still why a day late?
With no word from the Golf Channel, we are left to guessing why this happened. Of course in some emails from some folks at the Asian Tour they said it was a two hour time buy. This is something that TV networks do that is a win-win for everyone. A perfect example of this is the LPGA Tour, most of the shows on Golf Channel and ESPN are time buys in which the LPGA buys time, sells it themselves and has the shows shown. That was what happened here, the two hours were bought but why did the Golf Channel put it on a day late is still a mystery? The only answer that I could come up with was that the Golf Channel needed to be in a two hour window and the shows were five hours long. So the shows would have to get condense in a two hour window, they had to edit them down. Instead of showing it a couple of hours later like at 9 or 10am, they decided to show the shows a day late. Of course the outcry is probably very low but still I have to wonder if the Golf Channel feels this was the best way to do this. I wonder at times if the folks that make the decisions care about some of these shows or is it a business in just getting these on in between the infocommercials and other programs that they have.
Now of course it's easy for me to write this before I hear their side of the story but the fact is that it happened and whatever excuse they come up with isn't going to be a good one. Now of course I don't want people to think that I just pick on the poor Golf Channel all the time, I really love the Golf Channel and the job that they do. I love Golf Central and the Sprint pre-game and post game shows. I watch other programming and feel that on the whole they do a really fine job, but every now and then things like this makes me shake my head. But I have to look back at the way ESPN was in it's first decade, they also did dumb things like this and learned and got better. The same with Golf Channel, they are learning and getting better but unfortunely in this case they pulled a really dumb thing.
One other thing that I don't like that hopefully is going to get taken care of, right now the Australian Open and the Australian PGA are not being shown here. Those events have a lot of history in golf and have a great field, unfortunely the Australian Tour is not doing a good job in making sure that these prize events are covered in the states. In trying to get some answers from the Golf Channel last week on if they will possibly cover these events, I got an answer back that "their programming decisions are almost all planned far in advance, multi year and part of a larger plan based on rights, scheduling availability and strategic planning." But the answer on if we will be able to see them is no unless something happens in the next couple of weeks. It takes a while to get any information from Australia and Asia, I have asked why nobody in Australia cares about making sure that these events will get covered in the United States, hopefully in further issues I will have more answers.
E-mail us at: Golfersal@aol.com
*Long year for Michelle Wie
*Twins to play together on PGA Tour this week
*New on another budding youngster struggling
*Looking forward to the Mercedes and 2008
*John Cook wins and how have the Champions Tour rookies done this year
*Mike Weir wins in Phoenix
*Couch producer looks at how Kelly Tilghman and Nick Faldo will be back in Golf Channels anchor chair in 2008
Click here to post your thoughts and to tell us your "Golf Buzz"
2008 could be a long year for Michelle and parents
Michelle Wie’s 2007 LPGA season is over and in the record books, in her 8 LPGA events she only made three cuts and two of those events had no cuts. She played in 19 rounds and had a scoring average of 76.68 including 8 rounds of 79 or worst and no rounds of 70 or under.
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No two ways about it she isn't even close to her great form of last year when she was runner-up once, had three thirds and was in contention in three major’s going into the final nine holes.
Wie’s early season drama’s of the wrist injury have been well documented and some are even surprised that with all of the problems she still played in the Evian Ladies Masters, Weetabix Women’s British Open and Samsung. The latter event caused some controversy as many asked why with her poor record she was playing in the limited field Samsung when three players in the top-ten of the Women’s Rolex rankings didn’t get an invite (Annika Sorenstam, Karrie Webb and Juli Inkster).
Now in looking forward to 2008, it will be very interesting to see what happens with Wie. Not only has her agent Greg Nared resigned on the anniversary of her first manager resigning after last year's Samsung, but she has gone through five different caddies and finished the season with her dad B.J. on the bag. It even looks like her teacher David Leadbetter could be thinking of a change or at least protecting himself from getting fired as he told Lorne Rubenstein in this article on the Toronto Globe and Mail “Now with Greg Nared leaving, you feel like this is the Titanic.”
So 2008 could be very interesting and making things even tougher, Wie will again be a non-exempt player on the LPGA just like she was in 2007, but will sponsors be as generous in giving her exemptions? She has always been a big crowd pleasure but in the same way John Daly is also, at at times that has been a source of embarrassment for some events.
In the last couple of years tournaments like the McDonald’s LPGA and the Samsung have changed their rules in order to get Wie into their field but those rules could possibly not help her in 2008. I also don't she tournaments making the same mistake that Samsung did in giving her an invitation four months ahead of the tournament.
But in 2008 Wie may have to sit out the very first LPGA major as Terry Wilcox, director of the Kraft Nabisco Championship told Larry Bohannan in The Desert Sun that he had every intention of inviting Wie for next April’s event until he found out from the LPGA that his 15 exemptions have to go to either amateurs or LPGA members, two categories that Wie isn’t. He may not be alone, the McDonald's which loves having Wie play will have to pull a big stretch to get her into their field and for the U.S. and British Women's Open, Wie may be forced to qualify.
Now some insiders are even wondering if maybe some kind of a deal can be made and that LPGA commissioner Carolyn Bivens would make some sort of deal with Wie to give her some kind of LPGA membership. In some respects that could be a win-win for everyone but there would be a lot of LPGA membership that wouldn't be very happy with Bivens on this.
Still everyone's wish is that Wie would be in more control with her life and not have her parent's dictate what happens. If Wie would of only been more honest and possibly not played in the Samsung, like Annika Sorenstam did, or not played in the Evian Masters and the Women's British that would of gotten her more support from not only media like myself but her peers who don't feel that she is doing things in the best interest of golf.
As for Wie's immediate future she is off going to school at Stanford. Her parents are there living with Michelle and you have to wonder if she is getting a chance to enjoy some of the freedoms that going off to college provides? But with the way things are, everyone is not giving Wie the type of respect that you would think that she should command. Even Stanford University is ganging up on Wie as they are requiring her to pay the student rate of $25 for every round she plays on the Stanford Golf Course and are charging her parents a cart fee every time they tag along.
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Twins to play together on the PGA Tour
In looking through the field of this week's Ginn Sur Mer Classic, found a curious item. Was Derek and Daryl Fathauer, who are in the field related?
I found out that not only are they brothers but they are identical twins as tournament officials gave the 21 year-old brothers, who are seniors at the University of Louisville sponsor exemptions.
The Fathauers live in Jensen Beach, Fla, about 10 miles from Tesoro Club in Port St. Lucie, Fla, home of the Ginn Sur Mer Classic and will become the first pair of identical twin brothers to play in the same PGA Tour event in more than 26 years since Curtis and Allen Strange played the 1981 Texas Open. For both bothers they will be playing in their first PGA Tour event. This won’t be the first time that the brothers have played together in a big time event, both qualified the U.S. Amateur at San Francisco back in August. For Derek he did make it to the Quarter-finals losing to Michael Thompson 5 & 4 while bother Daryl lost in a playoff to get into match play.
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News on one budding youngsters that is struggling.
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16-year-old Tadd Fujikawa will play next week in the Nationwide Tour Miccosukee Championship. But things haven’t been much fun for Fujikawa after making the cut in the Sony Open in Hawaii back in January and winning the Hawaii Pearl Open. Fujikawa turned pro in July and has come up empty handed. In his first event the Reno Tahoe Open he missed the cut then missed the cut in a Canadian Tour event and then on the Nationwide Tour at the Albertsons Boise Open. Fujikawa got an exemption into the European Tour’s Omega Open in Switzerland and missed the cut, two weeks ago he shot 74-80 in Las Vegas and missed the cut there. So Things haven’t been very stellar over the summer for Hawaii’s two marquee youngsters.
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Looking forward to Mercedes and 2008
As we look forward to the 2008 season and the opening Mercedes-Benz Championship, have to wonder how deep that field will be. Of the 32 players that have invites already, 13 are in the top-30 of the World rankings but three of those Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Padraig Harrington are questionable of playing. So leaving those players out of the mix, the other marquee top-30 players that won’t be at the Mercedes-Benz will be Ernie Els, Sergio Garcia, Justin Rose, Geoff Ogilvy, Luke Donald, Retief Goosen, Paul Casey, Stewart Cink and David Toms.
With the field degraded the last couple of years, the Mercedes may consider changing their requirements and take PGA Tour winners from the last three years. If they would do that they could of still had a good field with Garcia, Ogilvy, Donald, Goosen, Cink and Toms added to the field.
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Cook wins right at of the box
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For John Cook, his win at the Champions Tour AT&T Championship offers him a chance for a new life. Things haven't gone very well for him in the last couple of years. A game that just wasn't competitive on the PGA Tour anymore, a TV career that never got off the ground and some undisclosed personal battles were all in his rear-view mirror for a bit as he made a 7-footer on the final hole for a par and a two shot victory over Mark O'Meara.
In a way it was a bit of deja vu as Cook won a U.S. Amateur title in 1978 and was on the verge of winning a second straight until a young Mark O'Meara beat him 8&7 in the finals, so in some respect it was a bit of revenge as O'Meara was the runner-up, two shots back.
For Cook he wins in only his second start on the Champions Tour and at 50 years, 19 days old is the 8th youngest winner on the Champions Tour. Now for the tournament that he won, the AT&T Championship, first time winners are becoming the norm. Cook is the fifth straight first time winner of this event and in the tournaments 23 year history it has now happened 13 times.
As for the future, Cook was off to California for the wedding of his oldest daughter Kristin.
The victory at the end of the year has brought some bright news for the rookies on the Champions Tour in 2007. Before September it was a dismal year as no rookies had found their way to the winner circle but now in the last four events three rookies (Mark Wiebe, Bernhard Langer & John Cook) have been winners. Let's look at how the Champions Tour rookies have done this year: Wins by Cook, Bernhard Langer and Mark Wiebe, who surprised everyone by being the 12th player in Champions Tour history to win his first try. Another mark that he got with his SAS Championship win was he tied Bobby Wadkins as the youngest winner ever by winning 10 days after his 50th birthday.
As for the one that was expected to be the next "Jesse James" on the Champions Tour, Mark O'Meara has played well being runner-up four times but still hasn't notched that first win. In 16 starts he has finished in the top-ten, 7 times Still it's only a matter of time before he comes through with a lot of victories.
Nick Price, 1994 PGA Tour player of the year hasn’t had a stellar start as in 15 events he has only finished in the top-ten, three times with the best finish coming at the Senior PGA Championship, 3rd. It seems like the Champions Tour is second fiddle to Price as he has other things that are more important to him than playing the way he did in the early 90s.
Nick Faldo, winner of six major champions has chosen TV over playing, in one start after his 50th birthday he finished T14th at the British Senior Open and it doesn’t look like he is going to play that much in the foreseeable future, especially with his captain duties for the Ryder Cup next year going along with his TV duties.
Donnie Hammond, winner of two PGA Tour events was a kind of person that many thought could sneak in a win like Mark Wiebe did but in 16 starts, Hammond has only been in the top-ten once, T9th at the British Senior Open.
Jeff Sluman, winner of the 1988 PGA Championship and distinguished 25 year career on the PGA Tour it is thought that he could do well, especially with the fact that he was an active player on the PGA Tour. But in five starts before he best finish has been a T12nd last week in the Administaff Small Business Classic.
Wayne Grady may of won the 1991 PGA Championship but he hasn’t been very active in years and it shows. Since turning 50 in July Grady has played in 10 events and only broken into the top-25 once, a T22nd at the Boeing Classic.
Lastly, Phil Blackmar played in his first event at Houston two weeks ago and finished T70th. At the AT&T Championship he was T12th and showed that he could be a future Champions Tour winner very soon.
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You had to think that Weir would win soon
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Has for Mike Weir, after his brilliant Presidents Cup performance you had to think that it was only a matter of time before he would win again. As for the win it comes 87 starts since his 2004 Nissan Open victory and is his eighth career victory
After the U.S. Open, Weir was having a very poor year, positioned 94th on the money list and with a best finish of T19th at the EDS Byron Nelson. Things got better with a T8th at the AT&T National and the British Open but after he missed the cut at the PGA Championship it looked like he wasn't going to make the Presidents Cup team. But Gary Player gave him a wild card spot and he responded by winning 3½ points but more importantly beating Tiger Woods on the final day on the final hole. With this the thought was that maybe this would be the jumping board to better things. It has been with his T10th finish in Las Vegas and this win.
Now Weir has a reputation of winning from behind and he did it again this week for the seventh time in 8 wins. Weir never had the lead until the final round this week and he now has done that in six of his wins. With rounds of 69-65-65 he went into the final round one back of the leader Carl Pettersson. But in very windy conditions in which only 12 players broke par, his 68 was tied with four others for the low round of the day.
In looking at Mike Weir’s keys to victory, he was T2nd in greens hit only missing 15 all week. For the year, Weir was 151st in that stat going into the Fry's and this week along with last week at the Frys.Com Open when he also hit 57 greens were his best performance from tee to green all year. Matter of fact hitting greens has been his Achilles heal, since his last win in the Nissan Open in 2004, he has only hit 57 or more greens twice in 72 hole events.
Another key for Weir was 11 of 15 in scrambling for the week, 2nd best. He was able to get it up and down on the last three holes. Weir made 32 one-putts for the week including one-putts on the last five holes including putts of 4”10’ inches on 14 for birdie, 4 inches on 15 for birdies, 1”4’ for par at 16, 5” for par at 17 and 6”3’ on 18 for par.
Weir's stats (with rank in parentheses):
Fairways hit: 39 of 56 ..... (T19th) Driving average: 303.9 ..... (17th) Greens hit: 57 of 72 ....... (T2nd) Putts: 114 (28.50 a rd) .... (T10th) Putting breakdown: 0-putt greens: 1 1-putt greens: 32 2-putt greens: 35 3-putt greens: 4 Play on par 3s: -1 Play on par 4s: -9 Play on par 5s: -4 Eagles: 0 Birdies: 22 ................ (T2nd) Scrambling: 11 of 15 (73.33%)... (2nd)
Scrambling measures how many times a player gets up and down for par or better on the holes where he missed the green in regulation.
Some money talk with two events left on the schedule
With just two events left on the PGA Tour schedule the race to get into the top-125 is going to hit new heights. Last year it took just $660,898 to be the 125th player on tour, the most ever but in 2007 it’s going to take even higher a number to retain your card. Kevin Stadler is #125th with $737,276 in earnings so it looks like it’s going to take at least $760,000 to make sure that a player gets into the top-125.
It’s hard to believe that 10 years ago in 1997 if you made $760,000 you were 30th on the money list and 15 years ago in 1992 that same $760,000 placed you 10th on the money list. 21 years ago that $760,000 would have won the money race has the winner, Greg Norman won it with just $653,296 in earnings, Even more starting figure is that the player that finishes 125th on the money list will make more money than Sam Snead made in his career which was $713,155.
Talking about this Fall series, it’s been a great success in terms of winners. Of the five events, four of them Steve Flesch, Chad Campbell, Justin Leonard and Mike Weir have been marquee names that have won before. George McNeill is the only non-winner of the bunch. But in terms of those trying to save their playing privileges for 2008 it’s been a lifesaver for a lot of people. Just look at how every Fall Series event has had that one great finish which propelled a player into the top-125:
This week at the Fry’s Electronics Open, Mark Hensby began the week 151st and with his 2nd place finish is now 99th.
Last week going into the Frys.Com Open D.J. Trahan was 126th on the money list and his 2nd place finish it shot him up to 81st.
Going into the Valero Texas Open Jesper Parnevik was 138th on the money list and with his runner-up finish he shot up to 94th and secured his card.
At the Viking Classic Johnson Wagner was the runner-up and shot from 123rd on the money list to 83rd and at the Turning Stone Championship Michael Allen started the week 154th on the money list and after his runner-up finish he was 89th securing his card for 2008.
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The "Couch Producer" is on the "Couch" wondering about why the rotating annoucers on Golf Channel's Fall Series shows.
I don't know if any of you have felt like me or better yet even cares. It started last week in watching the Frys.Com Open from Las Vegas, the annoucers were Rich Lerner and Peter Oosterhuis. Now they did a nice job over the week but I started wondering why each week on the Fall Series the Golf Channel were using different anchors every week.
Of course the Golf Channel has a lot of golf this time of year, not only on the PGA Tour but having to cover other tours. Still I would of thought that they would treat their number one product, a PGA Tour event with white gloves, making sure that their best people were on each of those shows. That isn't to say that the folks that hosted the shows did a poor job, they didn't. The question is why weren't we watching who they named their number one team at the beginning of the year, Kelly Tilghman and Nick Faldo? Now to be fair, Faldo had finished a long season with both Golf Channel and CBS so I wasn't expecting him at all, but I would of thought that the Fall Series was important enought to the Golf Channel that they would of had a more consistent team for the seven weeks.
Instead it's been revolving chairs for their anchors as Kelly and Frank Nobilo did Turning Stone then Brian Hammonds and Curt Byrum did Viking. At Texas, Hammonds was in the booth with Frank Nobilo followed by Rich Lerner and Peter Oosterhuis last week in Las Vegas and Lerner and Nobilo this week. Of course being a person use to the consistency of the networks making sure to get their main anchors on most shows I was curious at what Golf Channel was up.
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Now I still feel that Tilghman isn't the best answer and my first thought was that maybe Golf Channel agrees with my asummption and they are using these weeks to find a right chemistry for 2008. So it was on the phone with my favorite person at Golf Channel, Dan Higgins who is the Managing Director of Public Relations for the Golf Channel. I asked him the magical question, hey why different anchors each week and he told me that since they have so much golf they couldn't have the same team do the whole thing so that was the reason for different anchors.
I still didn't buy it and wondered if Golf Channel had set their team for 2008 and he told me that Tilghman and Faldo were going to be back not only next week at the Children's Miracle Network Classic (Disney) but for the Mercedes, Sony Open at Hawaii and Bob Hope Chrysler. This is a bit of a surprise but Higgins assured me that Golf Channel management feels that Tilghman is the best and that they have gotten a lot of good public responds on her teamed up with Faldo.
I still feel that either Rich Lerner or even Brian Hammonds, who has proven to be very good and solid as an live anchor would be better suited but the umpires have made their decision and we have to live with it. I will say that I notice over the year that Tilghman has gotten a bit better and no longer tries to set up Faldo with funny banter. Another surprising outcome of this was I didn't think that Faldo would be back. After a year of doing both the Golf Channel and CBS the thought was that Faldo would realize too much was on his plate doing both and with his Ryder Cup duties maybe cut Golf Channel but as Higgins told me, that isn't the case with Faldo.
Higgins also answered the question on who the producer was going to be in 2008. Again Golf Channel does things a bit differently as they have two producers at these PGA Tour events with their main producer Keith Hirshland, who has been at the channel since it opened also being backed up by Andy Young, who was a producer of golf at ESPN for many years. Higgins said that the Golf Channel feel having the two of them together give them a better production and that Hirshland was still the main guy in making the decisions.
Going into their second year of these important events, hopefully they can learn from some of the mistakes that I brought up in this write-up from last January. But again I can only stress one important aspect of this, Golf Channel is still not up to Network quality even though they say they are and what the PGA Tour expects from them. As we have seen in the way TBS also had problems handling the earlier Baseball playoffs, it's a lot harder to produce a consistent product that matches what the networks do regulary. When Fox took over Baseball in the 90s, they raided the network talent pool getting the best Baseball production people. But TBS tried to do the playoffs with home grown talent, the same way that Golf Channel did this year with poor results as both products have been inconsistent compared to network quality shows. Still the happy news is that there is no way but improving for the Golf Channel upon what they did last January and we can only hope that they will learn from past mistakes and give us a better production.
E-mail us at: Golfersal@aol.com
*Look at Ernie Els win at Wentworth
*Ochoa wins at Samsung again
*Lady Luck shines on George McNeill
*The future for the Frys.com Open looks great
*Couch producer looks at Augusta National choosing ESPN to telecast Thursday and Friday Masters shows
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Ernie does it again at Wentworth
I would have to think that if Ernie Els had his way, every tournament would be the HSBC World Match Play Championship and that every venue would be Wentworth. Els has played in 12 of these now and won 7 times, taking home over $7 million in prize money.
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As for Els, he has played in 31 matches and won 26 times. Cabrera was his seventh finals victim which includes Colin Montgomerie in 1994, Steve Elkington in 1995, Vijay Singh in 1996, Sergio Garcia in 2002, Thomas Bjorn in 2003 and Lee Westwood in 2004. Els got to the finals in 1997 but lost to Vijay Singh who won on the 36th hole for a 1 up victory.
With this win for Els, it keeps his streak alive of winning at least one professional event a year since 1991. This victory also puts him in some exclusive company joining Sam Snead and Tiger Woods as the only players to win the same event seven times. Snead won the Greater Greensboro Open eight times while Woods has won the PGA Grand Slam of Golf seven.
As for the win, in Els recap on ErnieEls.Com, he talks about playing pretty solidly all week but an important key was a new Odyssey putter that he started using this week. The proof of his good putting was in Sunday's 6 & 4 win against Cabrera. In the 32 holes he had 16 one-putts and chipped in on a hole. For the day Els was 11 under par with 13 birdies and his only two bogeys came on par 5 holes, a bit weird.
For the week, Els made a lot of birdies, in his first match against Colin Montgomerie he made 9 birdies in 31 holes and was four under par. In his quarter-final match with Andres Romero, in 31 holes Els made 10 birdies and was five under par. In his 34 hole semi-final match with Henrik Stenson, Els made eight birdies and a eagle as he was 8 under par. So for 128 holes Els made an eagle and 40 birdies as he was 28 under par. Now after the match Els treated himself by riding up to Luton airfield and taking his private jet to Paris were he watched the Rugby World Cup and saw his South African team beat Argentina 27 to 13. So for Els and South Africa it was double wins over Cabrera and Argentina.
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Future of the World Match Play Championship
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Right now the organizers feel that the system is perfect, 16 play for a big purse, World ranking points are given and part of the money is included in the European order of merit. But is it fair that last place this week gives out $120,000, a little less than the $136,000 that second place got at the Open de Madrid. Talking about money, is it fair that on the order of merit all of the majors and World Golf Championships are counted, so for Ernie Els he leads the order of merit race with $3 and a half million won. In the 18 events that he has played in 2007, only five events would be considered "pure" European Tour events, those that are soley European and not an event shared by other tours.
So this begs to ask the question, is the European Tour order of merit important? Of the top-ten, only Andres Romero (7th) and Soren Hansen (8th) are the only ones that play full-time on the European Tour and don't win there euro's in majors and WGC events to be at the top of the list.
One last thing, Els probably won't win the European Tour order of merit because he isn't playing anymore on the European Tour. As for the Volvo Masters it's being played the same week as the Barclays Singapore Open and already committed for that event is Els, Angel Cabrera and Lee Westwood who as 1st, 6th and 14th on the order of merit, a title they will not win this year.
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Ochoa a winner again
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Lorena Ochoa was at it again, winning the Samsung World Championship for a second year in a row. Larry Bohannan and The Desert Sun had a nice report recapping the victory and how she did it.
Going into the final round, Ochoa was tied with Suzann Petterson and a lot was on the line going into the final round. The reason, last Sunday Pettersen beat Ochoa at the Longs Drugs Challenge in a head to head tussle. So when the two played together in the final round at the Samsung tied for the lead, you know that a lot of heads would have been spinning if the fourth ranked Pettersen would of beaten Ochoa again.
But that never happened, Ochoa made sure of that. Ochoa got off to a fast start on Sunday making birdie on 1 and 3. But the key to the day in Ochoa's battle with Pettersson came at the eight hole. After making birdie at 7 to get within one of the lead, Pettersson put her tee shot within inches on the par 3 hole. Ochoa responded perfectly with a great tee shot within three feet of the hole and made birdie to keep pace with Pettersson. On the next hole Pettersson made bogey and when she missed an eight footer at 13 for par, it was all Ochoa. Ochoa shot 66 which is her lowest final round score in 2007. As for the year, Ochoa claimed her seventh victory of the year and has won 13 times in the last two years in 42 starts. With the victory she also won her second consecutive Rolex Player of the Year award and now has won $3.3 million for the year. Ochoa has recorded five runner-up finishes and 19 top-10 finishes, including 16 top-five finishes, in 22 starts this year. Her $9,387,643 in career earnings ranks fifth all-time on the LPGA Official Career Earnings list.
Ochoa shot rounds of 68-67-69-66 to finish at 18-under 270. It marks the third time this season Ochoa has won a tournament with all rounds in the 60s. Other events include the Safeway International and the Sybase Classic Presented by ShopRite. Ochoa has posted a total of 40 rounds in the 60s this year, in 22 starts.
Ochoa's stats (with rank in parentheses):
Fairways hit: 46 of 56 ..... (T11th) Driving average: 268.9 ..... (2nd) Greens hit: 59 of 72 ....... (2nd) Putts: 115 (28.75 a rd) .... (T3rd) Putting breakdown: Play on par 3s: -2 Play on par 4s: -6 Play on par 5s: -10 Eagles: 0 Birdies: 23 ................ (2nd)
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Lady Luck shines on George McNeill in Las Vegas
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Las Vegas is know by some as the city of dreams, a place were out of the blue Lady Luck can introduce herself and make one very happy. But just as fast, Las Vegas can also be the city of nightmares, just ask Kent Jones who made a triple bogey on his 70th hole which meant a T10th finish instead of a T3rd finish. With the paycheck Jones jumped from 152nd to only 141st.
Last week the PGA Tour made its annual stop in the city of lights, with 144 players looking to have Miss Lady Luck pay them a visit. Over the years this event has gotten the reputation of having the most unlikely winner take home the prize and this year just added to the list with George McNeill winning.
Just look at some of the players that had Lady Luck pay them a visit at just the right time. Last year Troy Matteson was 143rd on the money list and looking hard at getting into the top-125. He did one better with a win that gave him a two year exemption. Also look at 2005, Wes Short, Jr. was not looking very good at retaining his PGA Tour card. He was 176th on the money list and was an alternate. Lady luck paid a visit when Arron Oberholser withdrew on Tuesday giving Short the place and then he took advantage of it with solid rounds to get into a playoff, then beat Jim Furyk for the title. Yes, luck was on Short's side.
A couple of other examples of luck was in 2001, when Billy Andrade was struggling to keep his tour card entering this event 159th on the list, but left hitting the big jackpot with a win. 2004 was also a Cinderella story as Andre Stolz entered the tournament 217th on the money list and he won it winning a two year exemption on tour.
| George McNeill became the eight player to win in the year after being medalist at the Q-school. Here is the list: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Year won at Q-school | Player | Event won | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 2006 | George McNeill | 2007 Frys.com Open | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2005 | J.B. Holmes | 2006 FBR Open | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 1998 | Mike Weir | 1999 Air Canada Championship | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 1994 | Woody Austin | 1995 Buick Open | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 1992 | Brett Ogle | 1993 AT&T Pebble Beach | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 1978 | John Fought | 1979 Buick & Busch | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 1975 | Jerry Pate | 1976 U.S. Open & Canadian | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 1973 | Ben Crenshaw | 1973 Texas Open - won week after | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
McNeill did it with four fabulous rounds of golf as he was the only player to post four rounds in the 60s. Over the course of 72 holes, McNeill had only five bogeys with just one over the last 31 holes of golf. This week was the first time that he had ever sniffed the lead at a PGA Tour event and handled the pressure like an old pro not making a single bogey until a three putt on the 72nd hole.
For McNeill the keys to his victory was hitting lots of greens, he only missed 11 of them and he was able to scramble and make par of 8 of those misses.
McNeill's stats (with rank in parentheses):
Fairways hit: 36 of 56 ..... (T43rd) Driving average: 309.6 ..... (T32nd) Greens hit: 61 of 72 ....... (2nd) Putts: 118 (29.50 a rd) .... (T36th) Putting breakdown: 0-putt greens: 1 1-putt greens: 26 2-putt greens: 43 3-putt greens: 2 Play on par 3s: -3 Play on par 4s: -6 Play on par 5s: -14 Eagles: 2 Birdies: 24 ................ (T2nd) Scrambling: 8 of 11 (72.73%)... (3rd)
Scrambling measures how many times a player gets up and down for par or better on the holes where he missed the green in regulation.
End of a era for the Frys.com Open
This year celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Frys.Com Open, When the tournament first started in 1983 the idea was to be the next Bob Hope Classic in Las Vegas. The concept was to have a field with star-studded celebraties along with famous folks from Las Vegas and those high rollers from marquee casino’s play with the top pro’s on the PGA Tour.
At the time it’s purse of just over a million dollars with first place taking home $135,000 making it the richest and largest prize on the PGA Tour. For 21 years it was a 90 hole event, the first two years it was played on four courses with three of them either on or just off the strip. The first two years it was played in September and then moved to March, followed by dates in earlier May, late April.
In it’s first seven years, it’s champions list was the who’s who of golf, players like Fuzzy Zoeller, Curtis Strange, Greg Norman and Paul Azinger won it. The highlight of the event was in 1996 when a young Tiger Woods playing in just his his fifth event as a professional beat Davis Love III in a playoff and started the Tiger era. But this was probably the start of the decline of the event. Tiger not only didn’t defend his title but hasn’t been seen at this event since.
The change actually began in 1990 when the event moved to October and lost a lot of it’s luster. People even in Las Vegas didn’t care about it and starting in 2000 it was one of those tournaments that was on death row just a sponsor going awry away from being extinct. In 2004 a sponsor wasn’t found and the Las Vegas Founders had to put up the cash. With limited funds and ABC sports not wanting to cover all five rounds the event was reduced to four rounds.
But things got better, first Michelin took over sponsorship for two years and then Frys Electronics took over last year giving the financial backing that it needed to stay alive. Along with the Shriners Hospitals for children there is a five-year commitment to keep this event alive and in Las Vegas.
With all of this a new era begins after this year’s event. Next year the pro-am portion will be reduced to just a Wednesday affair which means that the tournament will no longer be played on two courses but just one and not have amateurs play on Thursday and Friday. Next year’s event will be in October but there is a possibility of moving it to the spring in 2009. So just like the way Lady Luck has shined on the winners of this event, Lady Luck has shined down and saved this event for the next few years at least.
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The "Couch Producer" is on the "Couch" biting at the chance to watch the Masters next April on ESPN
You got to like the powers to be at Augusta National. With USA Network out of the golf business they weren't really able to promote the Thursday and Friday rounds at the Masters. Yes both USA and NBC are owned by General Electric, with NBC taking on the promotion during there PGA Tour events but the writing was on the wall, USA had gotten away from golf and this wasn't helping the Masters.
In 1982 when the Masters chose USA to show the Thursday and Friday shows, cable was in it's infancy and ESPN was just getting it's feet on the ground. At the time USA had the most reach of any non-network channel and was a great fit the Masters.
One of the things that the folks at Augusta National pride themselve on being is bringing the Masters to the masses. Money has never entered into the equation it's always been how can we get the best coverage in showcasing our championship to the most amount of people. In the 70s when Clifford Roberts was still running Augusta National, he would get visits from Roone Arledge, at the time head of ABC Sports. Back then ABC was the biggest network of sports coverage, they had most of the jewels in sports and at the time were really big, covering 15 PGA Tour events and three of the four majors. Arledge really wanted to cover all four of the major championships and went as far as giving Roberts a blank check, telling him that he could fill it out for any amount just to get the rights. But Roberts didn't want Arledge and ABC Sports, he was happy in his relationship with CBS and both sides got everything that they wanted out of the deal.
ESPN is now the leader in sports telecasts. But they are still on cable and for the time being the Masters will always go for a network and I don't see any change happening with CBS for years to come. But just like CBS being able to offer a lot in spreading the Masters to the masses, ESPN can do the same. One of the important aspects of the new deal is ESPN showcasing the event not only on air, but in promotion on all their channels. ESPN will also highlight the Masters on Sports Center and it's other shows, giving the Masters a new reach that they never had with USA. Also ESPN is the cable choice of a new generation of sports watchers and Augusta will have a chance to showcase the Masters on a younger audience.
More importantly ESPN has a world wide reach, not only in it's Spanish language channel but with it's new media approach on the internet and other avenues. In a way the PGA Tour should of figured out a way to embrace ESPN instead of going with the Golf Channel. Yes ESPN didn't want all that the tour wanted to offer, but a split of telecasts with Golf Channel would of helped the PGA Tour. Augusta National saw this trap as they could of also gone with the Golf Channel or TNT but these outlets don't offer the same as ESPN.
Now ESPN isn't going to be an easy mix for Augusta National. ESPN is all about jocks becoming sports journalist and becoming the center of attention instead of letting the news be the center of the attention. ESPN is also about the 30 second catch phrases and attracting those with short attention spans. There in your face style is not the way Augusta National likes to present it's telecast in which the course, it's patrons and it's tradition is all that matters.
Still ESPN won't be in control of the telecast, that will be done by CBS and Lance Barrow. So it will be interesting to see the give and take on this, but rest assure with Mike Tirico at the helm things are in good hands. But the interesting question will be if Tirico will be joined with some of the other ESPN golf personal, Terry Gannon, Andy North or Judy Rankin. Right now it's only Tirico but with Rankin, Augusta National can test the water on having a woman be a part of the show. Rankin is very well received by viewers and would add a lot to the telecast, not only with her knowledge but paving some new ground in helping Augusta break some of the stereotypes that they have with not having a woman member.
Still for the time being the test will be if ESPN and Augusta National can have the same great relationship that the Masters has with CBS and for 25 years with USA Network.
Also on the television front, Augusta National has broken ranks on the length of the contract a bit and renewed with it's longtime British partner BBC. Making there deal different is that it's not for one year which has been a Masters tradition from the beggining but a three year deal. Again, signing with BBC was all about reach and exposure which the Beeb has given, but Sky Sports has made on production and gave a some good reason for Augusta to change. But at the end of the day BBC made some concessions on putting up graphics steering viewers to Masters.Org which was the major stumbling block. On top of that, Augusta National will still be able to have Peter Alliss do the telecasts as he was signed to a contract that lasts the same length as the Masters one.
So for the time being it looks like everything is back in alignment for Augusta National and all their media partners.
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