Ogilvy At Warwick Hills

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Geoff Ogilvy talking to da medja at Warwick Hills:
Q. You guys are professional, you play all over the world in all kind of conditions, but how difficult is it to go from a golf course like Hoylake which is brown

GEOFF OGILVY: Total opposite to here?

Q. Total opposite to here.

GEOFF OGILVY: How much of a difference is that? It's harder to go from here to there than it is to go from there to here, because we play that once a year; we play this type of setup pretty much every week, you know, rough like this, just off the green.

I guess you just learn to adapt. I guess if all you'd ever done in your whole life was played a golf course around here and you went to this for one week, it would be completely bizarre. You grow up in Australia, Australians have to travel somewhere to play because Australia is on its own. It's a small country. You get to a point you have to go somewhere. So we are all used to traveling to different countries and playing different golf courses. That's the nature of doing that is you I think by the time you get good enough to be a professional golfer, you tend to play a lot of different types of golf and you learn to adapt week in, week out. The British Open, that's why a lot of players don't play the week before and will go over to Ireland and all that because it takes a while to get used to it again. But coming back from there to here, we play this type of setup so much that it's quite easy to get back into this.
Nice chance for any number of questions about Hoylake, PGA Tour setups, architecture, etc... uh no.
Q. You were talking about the field a little bit and how that makes it a bigger deal, a lot of the players say they don't pay attention to who else is here, but a field like this with Tiger and Vijay and Furyk and yourself does that make it a bigger deal? Do you get more fired up or is it a bigger deal to win?

North Speaks!

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Looks like Gary Van Sickle's caddie stint inspired Andy North to speak his mind, as evidenced by this Rob Schultz piece in the The Capital Times looking at Milwaukee's PGA Tour stop:

Madison's Andy North, who has played an important role over the years to help the tournament succeed, hopes he can continue to help draw good-sized galleries and satisfy its sponsors. He is here playing on a sponsor's exemption this week, and tournament officials had him busy playing in and emceeing Tuesday's celebrity pro-am shootout and emceeing a pro-am draft dinner Tuesday night.

North believes the U.S. Bank Championship might be wise to consider other options other than the usual PGA Tour setup. One option he'd like to explore is teaming senior golfers with regular-tour golfers. That would take advantage of the interest top seniors like Loren Roberts and Fred Funk have for the Milwaukee tournament.

"Let's have 64 teams of one senior tour player and one regular tour player," North said.

If the setup remains the same, North said the U.S. Bank Championship should offer an invitation to Michelle Wie, the 16-year-old phenom from Hawaii who has already played in several men's events but has yet to make a cut in any of them. The U.S. Bank's Brown Deer Golf Course might be the perfect setup for Wie because, at 6,759 yards, it's the shortest regular stop on the PGA Tour.

"She would be the ideal person to get here to play," said North, who plans to discuss inviting Wie with tournament director, Dan Croak. "It will be two weeks before the women's British so that could be a possibility.

"We'll see what happens," added North. "Our commissioner (Tim Finchem) doesn't always do us the biggest favor."

26!

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Gary D'Amato reports on Corey Pavin's front nine 26 at Milwaukee:

"I've never done anything like that before," Pavin said. "It was pretty exciting for me. It was quite a front nine and rumor has it it's a scoring record on the Tour, which is nice. It was just kind of a magical nine."

Pavin birdied the first six holes, missed a 40-foot birdie putt on the par-3 seventh and then birdied Nos. 8 and 9.

"I kind of messed up (No.) 7, didn't I?" he said.

His 26 broke the Tour's nine-hole record of 27, shared by four players, including Andy North of Madison. Robert Gamez recorded the most recent 27 in the third round of the 2004 Bob Hope Chrysler Classic.

Pavin had a legitimate chance to become the fourth player in PGA Tour history to shoot a 59, but missed a 7-foot birdie putt on the par-3 14th and failed to get up and down for birdie from 40 yards on the par-5 15th.

Here's Pavin's scorecard, with that lone par on the front nine.

And how long before this prompts a post on Bomb and Gouge or you know where about how all is well because the Tour's shortest hitter just shot 61?  

Beyond Belief

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gw20060714_cover.jpgI've read about some pretty silly things coming out of the golf executive suites in recent years, but nothing shocked me more than this from Geoff Russell's "Mid-Year Report" in the Golf World British Open preview.

Under Most Disappointing (off-course), Russell lists a series of PGA Tour miscues, but this is beyond belief:

"most extraordinary, the refusal to allow Bob Tway to miss the BellSouth Classic pro-am to attend the funeral of Bradley Johnson, 17, who lost the 2005 U.S. Junior Amateur final to Tway's son, Kevin."

Questioning Finchem

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Ed Sherman on his Chicago Tribune golf blog:

...to hear people talk, rotating the tournament to other Midwest cities also was part of the price. No way. The Evans Scholars would make just as much money if the tournament stayed at Cog Hill.

We spent the entire week in the press room trying to figure out why PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem made this decision. There has to be something we're missing, perhaps some grand marketing scheme that is way over our feeble brains.

I don't think so. There can't be a reasonable explanation why the PGA Tour would leave the nation's third largest market to go to much smaller towns in the Midwest.

Even worse, do you realize in 2008 the Tour won't be in cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Washington D.C.? When I asked Jim Furyk about that situation last week, he tried to be diplomatic, but you could see he was troubled by the Tour's lack of presence in the major markets.

Perhaps, the Tour wants to go small-time.  That has to be it, because its thinking certainly is small time.

They Understand The FedEx Cup In Chicago (Well, not really)

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In a Q&A with Mike Spellman dubbed, "Let's wait, see about BMW Championship," Western Golf Association's Don Johnson demonstrates little idea of the FedEx Cup is going to work, and little enthusiasm for the scheduling change. Welcome to the club Don!

Q. When you first heard the idea of this playoff system, what were your thoughts?

A. I was confused.

Q. How long did it take to get unconfused?

A. Well, I’m not sure that I am. The point system and everything … I think anybody in the golf business who’s forthright about it is going to tell you we have to wait and see how this thing is going to work. The PGA Tour thinks it’s going to be wonderful, and I hope they’re right.

Q. It’s kind of a roll of the dice, isn’t it?

A. Yeah. And they may have to tweak it a little bit after the first year when they see how it actually works in fact as opposed to in theory. It’s certainly going to be a great thing for us being the final tournament before the Tour Championship.

Q. Why is the move from the Fourth of July to Labor Day a good thing?

A. The jury is still out on that, to be honest about it. I don’t know what happens to the interest in golf in Chicago after Labor Day. I’m hoping this event will be so spectacular that they’ll turn out, but we have to wait and see. It’s a work in progress.

Q. Your main worry about the September date?

A. You’ve got your Labor Day drop-off in golf, and then you’ve got Big Ten football, Notre Dame football; you’ve got baseball heading toward the playoffs … but we won’t have Taste of Chicago. There will be some competition we don’t have now. We’ll have to wait and see.

Q. Do the smaller crowds this year give you cause for concern next year?

A. Yes. The answer to that is yes. I worry that this week with the field we’ve had and the weather, that we have less people here than we had last year. (On Saturday) we had 7,000 less. That’s a lot. I don’t get it.


Latest On B.C.

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Thanks to readers John and David for this Kevin Stevens story on the B.C. Open's plight, which will be determined by the PGA Tour's Slugger Wayne White, in consultation with the Tour Policy Board.

"Nothing has been finalized or will be finalized until Henry and (other tour staff members) have an opportunity to talk to the PGA Tour Policy Board," White said.

Discussions with the Policy Board are to take place today in the form of a conference call. The board includes player directors Joe Durant, Davis Love III, Scott McCarron and Joe Ogilvie, a quartet that has played in a collective 13 B.C. Opens -- none more recently than 2002, when Ogilvie was first-round co-leader.

Nice little zinger Kevin! 

Hartford Attendance

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Jeff Jacobs in the Harford Courant:

This used to be the annual state fair, and it can be again.

There were an estimated 305,000 for four days as late as 2002. In 1994, there were 322,000, and the following year 300,000. It always was more than 200,000.

In 2004, it had dropped to a four-day total of 150,000. Last year, it was 80,000.

Tournament officials don't release attendance figures until the end of the event these days, but before the numbers come out, here's the unofficial first-round count for Thursday.

Dismal.

The attendance was much better on Saturday, definite sparks of glory, a harbinger of good things, but still not like in past years. We've seen 80,000, 90,000, 100,000 for a single weekend round. They couldn't have all been freebies. Those are mind-boggling numbers matched only by the tournament in Phoenix, which, incidentally, is the only place where Henry previously has played in the final group on a Sunday.

Finchem On Washington

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BoozAllen05.gifBoy, after reading the recent stuff from Carolyn Bivens, Tim Finchem's press conferences are so boring!

Still, it was a combative teleconference with the Washington scribblers on demise of the Booze Allen and the reconstruction of TPC Avenel:

With respect to how we got to the scheduling decision, as I indicated at the end of our television negotiations, when we released our schedule earlier in the year, we felt like it was important to give as many weeks to possible consistent dates. We could have gone to a continuation of a situation where some years we play earlier in the summer in Washington, like we played last year, and other years we could play later in the summer. The feeling was that we would continue to have an inconsistent execution of our product, probably the fallout of that being a lack of continuity with the title sponsor, which has certainly been the case there since Kemper left. We just didn't want to go down that road. We wanted to try something we felt like had a better chance of continual year in, year out success.

I've always said, that if you can't have consistent product execution, it's just not worth it. 

Q. Big picture question. How did the tournament in DC, one of the biggest markets in the nation, nation's capital, wind up on the outside looking in as far as the good dates go, and some tournaments in smaller markets, like the 84 Lumber in Greensboro, not nearly as well supported by the public as this one, how did they end up with the good dates and this tournament was on the out?

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: First of all, it's kind of hard to answer that question in the way you phrase it because you're assuming certain things about a "good date." We have dates on our schedule from the first week in January right through now the fall series to November. What's a good date for one market is not a good date for another market. What's a good date for a particular sponsor is not a good date for another sponsor in the same market. There are a lot of variables in terms of what goes into a date.

I think that the reaction to the date change in Washington has really been focused on one thing, and that is being in the FedEx Cup season, early summer, is preferable to anything else. I certainly wouldn't argue the point that being in the FedEx Cup season is an advantage. But I think the reaction perhaps has been a little bit overdone in terms of the negativity of the fall, as I said earlier.

The bottom line is that we were not comfortable, and frankly neither was Booz Allen, in continuing a date structure that has historically led to an event that would not be the kind of event on a number of levels that we'd like to see over the long term in the nation's capital. We wanted an opportunity to do something better. We thought consistent dates was part of that, but there are other factors.

This is a little weird....

TODD BUDNICK: Thank you very much for your time today, Commissioner.

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: Thank you, Todd.

Ladies and Gentlemen, if you need additional information, we're available to you. I know a couple of you have called in the last couple of weeks. I've deferred those conversations until I had an opportunity to make comments generally today. In the aftermath of this week's tournament, I'd be happy to make myself available or other people on our team. We'll have more to say about Avenel here very shortly after the public hearing.

In the meantime, I would encourage you to cover this week's tournament. We have a lot of great players there, good golf course, we're looking forward to a good competition. Thank you.

I would encourage you to cover this week's tournament? What else would they cover? 

"We don't want it to be a lay-down course"

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Gary Baines looks at the technology debate and talks to the tournament director at The International, who has some interesting things to say.

Winged Foot, a course dating back to 1923, proved anything but obsolete. It played plenty long (7,264 yards for a par-70 layout), but it was obvious that wasn't the main reason that the Open produced its highest score relative to par (5 over) since 1974.

Instead, the key to protecting par was narrowing the fairways and growing the rough so that the long bombers on tour have to think twice before ripping a driver as hard as possible on every hole over 300 yards. Winged Foot did that with many fairways 25-28 yards wide and rough as deep as 51/2 inches.
Oh yes, you can see where this is going.

 

Larry Thiel, executive director for the International tournament in Castle Rock, was at Winged Foot during U.S. Open week and liked what he saw in the way of a course set-up for the Open.

"I thought the set-up was fair," Thiel said. "You don't have to have 7,800-yard golf courses. The rough is supposed to be penal, and I don't think it was overly penal. If you can't drive the ball straight into a 30-35-yard-wide opening, you ought to do something to your game, downsizing your club until you can."

Of course that was the U.S. Open, a once a year event designed to be a unique test. The International, with its Stableford scoring meant to elicit heroic play, would never look to Winged Foot for inspiration, would it?

They don't want to see the players always swing as hard as they can from tees on par-4s and par-5s because the reward is so great and there isn't a big downside.

That's why even at Castle Pines the fairways have been narrowed over the years. That's undoubtedly part of the reason the winning scores at the International have come down in the last couple of years. After cumulative winning totals of at least 44 points in every year but one from 1997 through 2003, the winning numbers have been 31 and 32 the last two summers. Other things that have factored in are additional water hazards and the lengthening of the par-5 eighth hole.

As Thiel said several years ago, "We don't want it to be a lay-down course."

No, because God know, the ratings aren't low enough yet. We've got to get them into the NHL's league before we can rest  assured.

On many courses on the PGA Tour, players "can stand on the tee and whale on it," Thiel said this week. "We're guilty of it too. The players aren't penalized for errant shots. What you think is a monstrous hole is far from a monstrous hole for these guys."

Thiel estimates the fairways at Castle Pines are mostly 30-50 yards wide, which is generous but not as wide as they used to be.

"We've gradually worked them in," Thiel said.

Oh good! 

"We're always thinking about what makes the course more competitive and fair. We're trying to neutralize guys just stepping back and going at it as hard as they can without any fear."

Because the game is just so easy for those flat belly Tour boys! And then Thiel offers this from William Flynn:

"He believed a good shot should be rewarded and a bad shot penalized," Thiel said. "It's a pretty simple formula."

You know...eh forget it.