“Maybe Tom did this course before his eye operation.”
Just when the doctor cleared me to watch a CBS telecast the rest of the year (only two more!), he advised against listening to the fawning over Liberty National and suggested I not view anything featuring divot swarm-decorated catch basins, faux creeks or fairways lined by containment mounds.
So there I was during an accidental Golf Channel moment today catching David Feherty in full dry hump mode, declaring his admiration for the course. (Perhaps to make up for Nick Faldo, who apparently was less kind. Why couldn't I have been watching then?)
But after reviewing a few stories this evening, it's become clear that this week's visit to the Bob Cupp-Tom Kite masterwork has awakened the average PGA Tour player's inner sense of humor, usually buried under threats of a Sid Wilson driving range visit. 
Granted, we only a know who a few of the culprits are, but how can you not enjoy these gems?
Adam Schupak reporting Robert Allenby's post round remarks:
“I really don’t know how to answer that in the right way, because I could really could get myself into a lot of trouble.”
“They set it up very well,” he added, “That’s as good as I can go on the course.”
That's just an appetizer. It gets better.
John Hawkins suggests that the PGA Tour's deal with Liberty National "was built on something other than the best interests of the competitive standard" and features these beauties:
Even those who consider Liberty National unfit for a tour event, much less a tournament of this magnitude, are blown away by the aesthetics. "It's like this beautiful birthday cake you bring into the room and slice into pieces, everyone takes a bite and realizes there's [bleep] inside," is how one player put it, a quote that earned the award for creative criticism of the day among the two dozen or so tour pros and caddies I spoke with Wednesday.
"If it was a fish, I'd throw it back," picked up second place, and though neither player is likely to have made those statements on the record about any course, the tour's sensitivities are particularly high this week. So high that Camp Ponte Vedra has asked those in the field not to make any negative public statements about the design, a Bob Cupp-Tom Kite collaboration with small, very severe greens.
Steve Elling takes the temperature of players and comes away with these gems:
Said one prominent player: "I guess $250 million doesn't buy what it used to."
And this...
Even the kindest players have struggled mightily to say something positive. Said Zach Johnson, who ranks third in FedEx Cup points, when asked for a comment on the track: "I am not your guy."
Ah but the best involves Tiger, found by Ian O'Connor:
According to Sanjay Jha, a Motorola executive and one of three amateurs who played with Woods on Wednesday, Tiger took time out of their five-hour loop to joke, “Maybe Tom did this course before his eye operation.”
And after sharing some anecdotes about Tiger's respectful pro-am conversation, O'Connor writes:
Tiger shared some stories, shared some laughs. But when he surveyed the course, Woods looked about as happy as a Mets executive reviewing the disabled list.
Finally there was this...
So Tiger had a little fun at Kite’s expense. When Jha started relaying the line to a reporter, Lauer tried to cut him off. “I don’t think you should repeat it,” the Qualcomm guy told the Motorola guy.
Jha couldn’t help himself. By sharing an inside-the-ropes joke, he humanized the red-shirted automaton bent on world domination and inspired this singular question:
Can Tiger Woods conquer a course he can’t stand?
The answer will be in by the Sunday evening news.
Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 07:49 PM
View Printer Friendly Version
Email Article to Friend
Reader Comments (49)
I don't think that Geoff is unaware of golf's potential reparation impact on the environment. He knows of the many designs that have replaced played-out and poisoned land. He is all about the architecture and it does often mist his perspective, from my perspective. If this is your first visit to his site/emissions, welcome aboard. It is great to have someone with alternative views present an alternate viewpoint. Why just last month, Jeff Babineau was all over me on Travelgolf.com for daring to criticize their Walker Cup ranking system. WE never did agree, but that wasn't the point.
RonMon
About Liberty National: I watched a few minutes on GC last night. The rhapsody was waaaay over the top.
One more thing: I was really pulling for your son in the first round of match play at the Amateur. Maybe next year.
1. Tiger will now officially stop talking to pro am partners. Way to go there Motorola guy, hope you enjoyed the round.
2. Considering how little these guys actually say, those comments seem downright shocking. I can't imagine that this is helping them bring in new members. I'm assuming there's not a waiting list, but could be wrong.
3. 'peter kostis' - For me, the problem is mostly just Nantz. He thinks his voice is a woodwind instrument. The rest of the package is basically as mediocre and over-produced as every other network. Except for the Masters. If you don't know what's wrong with that broadcast, then you ain't paying attention. CBS is not allowed to take credit for having less commercials, which is the only positive the coverage has over any other tournament.
4. Putting a golf course on top of a dump doesn't mean the dump is gone. You just can't see it anymore (although it sounds like the players still can). Admittedly, I'm not informed enough to know what exactly happened there with this 'cleanup', but most hippies would probably argue that a golf course is only a marginal environmental improvement over an actual dump.
That's just sarcasm for the sake of sarcasm, but the overwhelming feeling I got while watching the telecast is that it's just the entirely wrong kind of course for the location. It's just all to much...the faux water features and stone walls and perfect grass and weird trees and humps and bumps and warehouses and softball fields and giant nets. No wonder the Statue of Liberty only shows her ass to this course.
Everybody made a mistake, the PGA Tour for bringing it here and Liberty National for exposing it's course as pure folly. Something closer to Hoylake would have been more appropriate. What can brown do for you? And the course has Bob Cupp written all over it, and his giant ego will certainly allow Tom Kite to take all the blows. If the design had been praised I can assure you he would have been front and center basking in the glory.
Stupid, stupid course. The next time I'm in Manhattan it's probably going to bother me just knowing it's across the river.
and kudos to peter kostis for posting (if that really is peter kostis, of course).
As for the tv, there's way too much talking, way too much promo of CBS shows and very little golf coverage.
As for the CBS hatred, I don't particularly mind CBS. I'm not going to not watch a tournament I would otherwise watch just because its on a different network. Fehrety is a hoot. Sometimes he gets out of hand, but its a sporting event, they can have fun. I would much rather watch CBS than NBC with Johnny Miller. I hate Johnny Miller so very much. Nantz is fine. Yeah, he's a bit blow-dried, but he at least played competitively in college, so he does know something about competitive golf.
My biggest problem with golf on TV isn't the personalities. Its the production. ENOUGH with the windswept views of the course and the 15 minute sap story of the caddy with no legs who came from the plains of mid-America with the love of Jesus. Let's watch them hit shots. Let's have Peter or whomever analyze why they snap hooked into the trees and then watch them hit out of said trees. I really don't care that their mother sold her kidney to buy the first set of clubs for the guy. My complaint with the announcers is when they are directed to pick up on the sold kidney meme and beat it into us 1000000 times. Did you know that Y.E. Yang didn't pick up the game until he was 19 and hurt himself weight lifting? I certainly do now, since I heard that story before every shot he hit.
Thank god for TiVo so I can skip that crap. Maybe they can air the mini story stuff on Lifetime.
Congrats for joining the fray. As they say on televised golf coverage, "Folks, you don't know how difficult this is." So you are to be applauded.
Regarding the course, isn't there some golf-design equivalent of serving a wine before it's aged properly? Aren't so many of the great courses great because they've aged with the terrain, and been modified through the years to account for weather and the accumulated wisdom and judgements of the golfers who play it?
As for the course, you say it was "a great improvement over what was there?" For whom exactly? For the Wall Streeters who can toss $500K at it? How many of those guys have TARP money on their hands? How many of those guys got fat on sub-prime? How many of them got bonuses from bailed out banks? Or were counterparties to AIG's bad bets and, so, got the money indirectly?
Here's another thing that makes me scratch my head. Bayonne Golf Club is six miles away and caters (I think) to the same demographic. I assume the initiation is six figures and (again) i assume it cost the builder at least $50 million, since LN was reortedly $250M. So, within six miles, they cleaned up two waterfronts and golf gets played not by the common people who live in these demographically challenged areas, but by the fat cats.
Sorry, the fact that both these exist in such proximity to one another is a failure for golf's mission to grow itself and a considerable failure of urban planning and land use. What, Bayonne and Jersey City city offiicials didn't know each was building a playground for the super rich? One of them couldn't figure, hey, let's build a public place where we can charge $125 per round and have a First-Tee Academy? It can be a case study for future urban planning classes.
dsl, your line about Nantz is great. I can no longer distinguish his on-air "commentary" from his Rolex/Titleist/Furniture pitches. It's all the same pablum.
As we say in match play, Peter, "you're away."
As for the course, is it me or does every green complex seem to have a swale that eats up balls slightly off line? kinda of boring. And the comments that it looks like Florida is dead on, its a former dump, near the great Meadowlands, a little more of each would have been the perfect "look". Fancy cart paths, Lakes? with bubbling water, And a thousand trees? I don't get it. Glad the dump is cleaned up.
Since you're in the neighborhood, have you seen the nearby Bayonne Gc? If so could you compare and contrast LN as a PGAT venue with that course?
www.bayonnegolfclub.com
The way it looks to me on tv, the course is not terribly pretty (what is, in that part of New Jersey?), and it does not seem to know what it is. Is it Shadow Creek East? Is it a Royal County Down wannabe? Is it the K Club? But from what I've seen, it is not "terrible" in the grand scheme of thousands of of U.S. golf courses. If I was a golf-starved associate in a Wall Street law firm living in Manhattan and without the time or the means to join a C.B. Macdonald-designed club in the Hamptons, I shold think that I'd be pretty damn happy to take 45 minute to go play at Liberty National. (Although the membership tariff at LN is quite inconceivable too.)
Of course being "not terrible" is not much of a selling point for a course to host a PGA Tour event. And so a course that holds itself out, or is held out by others, in that environment has sort of invited criticism.
The Tour/Sponsor/Equipment Complex has brought this upon itself. They have only themselves to blame for a sport that can no longer utilize grand and historic venues for championship play. One might ask, "How about the USGA; aren't they to blame too?" Maybe, yes. But does anybody suppose that if the USGA had been left to its own devices, under the influence and pressure of the opinions of everybody on Geoff Shackelford's "The List," that they'd not have done something mor proactive?
You guys are on Saturday and Sunday, that's two more telecasts in my version of the English language. I actually have a calendar to mark the days.
I've grown tired of CBS telecasts because they are dull, the announcing (once fun and spontaneous) has become predictable, and most of and totally out of your control, filled with relentless promotional breaks.
As for the course, as much as I want to be happy that they cleaned up a toxic waste dump and put a golf course there, I just don't see how it's even remotely worth it at that price tag, with that kind of wretched design, and for a very limited number of people (even more limited than the owners would like).
I've seen enough Bob Cupp courses to know that it's design work like his which has absolutely killed the game we love and put us in a position where no bank will lend money to build a 7400 yard mess of ideas that is no fun to play, worse to look at and expensive to maintain. So that's why celebrating the Liberty National's of the world is just not in the cards for me, no matter how toxic it once was. This is not in any way a representation of what golf should be or where it should go.
Here are the "rules" on this site (and I love them...)
1. Thou shall play golf on a hard, firm, brown surface
2. Thou shall play with a rolled back golf ball
3. The commissioner of the (insert the name of any golf organization here) is an idiot
4. Thou shall play fast
5. Anything that does not conform to the above rules shall have snarky comments made about it
Wow, that's both barrels. Next, you'll kick his dog, too.
Keith, you're right. We're going to be there anyway. But, we're also the people the advertisers want. The casual golfer isn't going to buy the R9 and Pro V1s. And, once I start TiVo'ing, I'm going to blow through the commercials, too. If there wasn't so much filler, I would be watching live and probably watching the commercials. Once advertisers can figure out a way to quantify that effect, ad rates will change accordingly.
And, if that is actually Peter Kostis, thanks for your thoughts. And, I would like to congratulate you and your son for making match play at the Am, especially surviving the 27 for 4 playoff. Bravo.
CBS telecasts. . . As a PGA Life Member I must admit the constant "instant swing analysis" from the announcers (except for Peter Kostis) are tiresome.
Do these "retired players" not know that most of us have HD-DVR's and we can easily see their knee jerk cliche comments are both inaccurate and best kept to themselves. . . Baker-Finch and Clampett should just report the facts and skip their silly attempts at 30 second lessons. . . Venturi was great at saying what he believed players were thinking or trying to do - useful stuff. . . The ratings numbers indicate the viewers want to - as do I - see every shot Tiger plays. (He also deserves every bit of attention we give him.) But, there does seem to be a tendency for CBS (and the Golf Channel) to identify a few other players beforehand and show all/most of their shots regardless of their position in the event.
Thus we get to see Phil spray the ball all over the course on his way to another mediocre finish only because he gets it up and down from several garbage cans - Or Els - Or Goosen - Or a few other household names. . .
Interesting nugget from the Peter Kostis person that the Tour wants the promo segrets that I hate. Another example of how far up their asses the Tour has their heads. I would much rather read Cink's or Poulter's Twitter feed for the promo stuff. These off the cuff (and maybe sometimes too far) observations from the players in a non-structured format is way more entertaining than the pablum. And, frankly, I'm more likely to watch when those guys are playing because they might write a comment later that is interesting and relates to what I was watching. "Can't even tell you how hard that shot on 12 was..."
You're now entering a discussion of civics, economics and finance, land planning and use and, finally, morality.
Let's start with civics and land use. "Whether or not X people get to play is irrelevant to clean-up," you write. That's a poor calculus for a government (with finite resources) to permit the building of anything. Most governments could sell all their beach front (on Long Island or SoCal, for instance) to private developers. But they don't. They maintain public access, public beaches, municipal and state parks because they realize there is a greater good than profit. If the unindicted city fathers of bayonne and jersey city only entertained private development proposals, then theirs was a failure of imagination. What about private-public partnerships? What about looking back to the era when state and federal governments created public parks where thousands could recreate regardless of personal wealth? I play Depression Era/New Deal state park courses all the time.
As for the TARP money, this is an issue of economics and morality. If you flush out/clawback all the ill-gotten gains from Wall Street -- and the losses that taxpayers have now covered -- i would submit that 200 members at $500K is unsustainable. This course was built on a pre-Sept. 2008 Wall Street economic model that was, basically, a house of cards. Surely, you've heard. The moral-philosophical issue is where the money came from?
As for your contention that "capitalism" is when you buy something for X and sell it for Y and you can't, you lose your investment. This is quaint folklore to be practiced by little people. The people who are members at LN are practicinig a far more evolved capitalism, wherein if they sell something for Y, they keep the profit. If they cannot, they share the losses with taxpayers.
Again, you are to be commended for entering the fray. Should our paths cross, I'll look forward to continuing our discussion of civics, finance and morality. Maybe we can venture into the areas of swing plane, grip and alignment where I'm admittedly weak.
Of course, if the design is controversial because it's lame rather than bold, that's a different story.
And Peter Kostis, I hope that some cultural changes can happen to allow more actual golf shots to be shown on TV. It will be great if you could continue to comment on this site, which I think does the best job of golf journalism around.
Liberty National may not be a classical golf course but I think its great private money came in, cleaned it up, long term a golf course is better then what was there before.
Peter-I enjoyed the fantastic plastic Konica segments, I can actually learn something, heck that's why I watch pro golf-to learn. How accurate is the "he's got a 7 iron from 215" ?
You are absolutely right that it's private money and they can do as they please. But as styled notes, the chances are better than good that this project, at the figures suggested, will fail and then it becomes the taxpayer's problem. Which is why I have struggle with celebrations of excess and unfeasible design. I certainly understand the dilemma you guys face, as it would be rude to come on the air and blast the place. The Tour should never have put you in the position of having to walk the place, much less comment on it. However, it sounds like Faldo's description yesterday did a nice job of conveying what he thinks without all-out rudeness. Guess that's why he gets the big bucks!
Jim,
I think there's a caveat to what you are saying. A majority of the people here probably would like to see the players deal with a controversial design if it's making them think, making them uncomfortable because it's asking them to take risks, but ultimately rewarding good decision-making. Liberty National is not controversial for those reasons. It's narrow and goofy. All risk, no reward golf just doesn't work.
Here are the "rules" on this site (and I love them...)
1. Thou shall play golf on a hard, firm, brown surface
2. Thou shall play with a rolled back golf ball
3. The commissioner of the (insert the name of any golf organization here) is an idiot
4. Thou shall play fast
5. Anything that does not conform to the above rules shall have snarky comments made about it
08.28.2009 | Carl Spackler's Ghost"
#'s 1,2, 4 and 5 seem about right to me
I like watching the pros figure out how they're going to get up and down from the numerous chipping areas, which are in play all the time because the greens are so small. Certainly Liberty National has a number of warts, but at least it's different. And I'll take something different, populist rhetoric aside, over another TPC or country club any day. The Tour may have gotten the course wrong, but the decision to do something outside the box was not wrong and they should be applauded and encouraged to do it again.
(By the way, the Sebonack course that most here, myself included, applaud has the same populist warts that Liberty has without the environmental benefit. I find it difficult to believe that the same salty comments about fat cats would be mentioned had the Tour been there this week.)
That said, I am looking forward to next week's tournament, ironically at a TPC, because with Hanse's redesign, it got a lot right and is different.
Do these "retired players" not know that most of us have HD-DVR's and we can easily see their knee jerk cliche comments are both inaccurate and best kept to themselves. . ."
Wisconsin Reader
Dear Wisconsin
I am sorry, but the former TOUR players have forgotten more about playing tournament golf than you will ever know!!! I give you credit, I am sure that they have no idea about buying a size run of ladies apparel, but PLEASE, leave the golf shot/swing analysis to those that have been there, and KNOW what the players are thinking/dealing with.
As for the course, IMHO if you're going to play a quasi-major at a $500K initiation private club, it had better be a pretty special track. If you want the feel-good-story PR, why not play it at one of the non-Black Bethpage courses?
Thanks for the kind words
1) Liberty National is too quirky and new to host an important PGA tournament.
2) I respect the players' opinions, which appear to be horrendously (and almost universally) low.
3) American TV is busy and noisy, but golf is a serene and quiet game.That's why most of us hate US golf coverage and admire the BBC coverage.
4) I'm not a financial analyst, but why must the networks pay the Tour so much? Pay less, and show fewer commercials. In this economy I don't think it's a seller's market.
5) The average viewer and the average blog-reading fanatic alike find the excess of Liberty National offensive. A public approach (like Bethpage) or a quasi-public approach would have been cheered. Wasn't it public land?
As for the criticisms of tournament golf on television, I daresay Geoff's distaste and expression of approbation are hardly limited to your employer -- just like Mikey from the cereal commercial, he hates everyone. . . with good reason. Network golf is, without a dvr, practically unwatchable. I simply thank the good Lord for that invention or I would be without watching golf on television.
All that said, however, speaking as a fairly long-term denizen here, I would love for you to spend some time putting in your 10 cents worth. . .