Paige On International Rumblings, Vol. 2

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Woody Paige speculates on why Wednesday's press conference between the PGA Tour and Jack Vickers was cancelled, though he comes to no conclusions and the whole thing sounds strange.

I have no inside information or sources but I believe the PGA Tour could be offering The International a World Golf Championship event in the future, tournament dates more conducive to Colorado or, most likely, assistance in gaining a title sponsor, maybe an automobile company, maybe Buick - the car Tiger Woods drives. (Woods won the Buick Invitational and the Buick Open last year.)

Are there tournament dates conducive to Colorado? June's too early, July has too many international events, August has too many thunderstorms and the Broncos--God's gift to sport--start in September.  

More Blogging Fun From The Hope

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Golfweek's Jeff Babineau at the Hope:

"Because I stayed busy at my office desk on Wednesday, I didn't get to catch complete first-round coverage of the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic.

However, I did have my TV on in the background, with the volume turned off. Judging simply by the amount of airtime Golf Channel gave certain players, and not having seen a scoreboard, I'm guessing George Lopez has to be leading – by at least three shots ...
Brett Avery has some fun inside-the-ropes stuff too over at PGATour.com. He's even occasionally funny. Can't imagine how that humor stuff gets past the Ponte Vedra red pen brigade.

George Lopez's caddy is also blogging and led with this:

Imagine being at dinner with PGA TOUR pros like: Bubba Watson, Todd Hamilton, D.J. Trahan, Eric Axley, Charley Hoffman, Cliff Kresge, etc. You notice that the normally cool, calm and collected pros are all, to a man, staring almost google-eyed at something. And then I remember, sitting with us in this private dining area are: George Lopez, Cheech Marin, Samuel L. Jackson, Andy Garcia, Anthony Anderson, etc.

Uh, sorry, but who is Anthony Anderson? 

 

International Passed; Still Sponsorless

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Anthony Cotton in the Denver Post offers confirmation that the International passed on a FedEx Cup playoff date (fools!) and that event organizers now they are going to have a weak field. All of this was reported after a Tim Finchem-Jack Vickers conference call was cancelled "indefinitely" according to the Tour's Ty Votaw. The story also notes that the event is without a sponsor again this year.

Other than that, everything is going great in Denver.  

Taylor Hicks, Celebrity?

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Fun entries from Brett Avery's Hope Classic blog...

3:29 p.m.
Idol Security
Celebrities have been all over Bermuda Dunes, wading into the galleries to give autographs and pose for photos. Can someone please explain why the only burly security guard on the property -- identifiable by the eight-inch-high letters on the back of his windbreaker -- is shadowing American Idol winner Taylor Hicks? Please.

3:18 p.m.
Rockin' Out
Note to self: Spend time tomorrow with amateur team 31 (Taylor Hicks, Scott Hamilton, Alice Cooper). May be the only time in golf-writing career to put groupies and stilettos in a sentence.

I don't know what's more frightening, Taylor Hicks qualifying as a celebrity, or that all-star pairing with Scott Hamilton and Alice Cooper.

Wow...kind of makes you long for the star power of Vic Damone. 

More Knockdown Shots

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Steve Elling talked to Scott Hoch about the historic Ford-Bush-Clinton pairing from 12 (!) years ago, and also followed that up with his typically entertaining knockdown shots. My favorites, which bookended some un-Elling like gushing over The Golf Channel GOLF CHANNEL's coverage:
News item: The Golf Channel's new crystal-ball statistical device, the Win Zone computer, predicts with eight holes remaining that Howell is 72 percent certain to win. Tilghman quickly adds that once you reach that threshold, "You have a 97 percent chance" of winning.

Knockdown shot: Huh, what, eh? We are quantitative illiterates here at Knockdown Shots, but when Goydos is listed as having a 1 percent chance with eight holes left and ultimately wins the trophy, somebody's computer needs to be rebooted. Or booted, period.
And...
News item: Again stumbling under a national spotlight, Michelle Wie beats two players in the field and misses the cut for the fourth year in a row at her hometown Sony Open.

Knockdown shot: Badly as she played, did you see that awful "pageboy" lid she was wearing? Did she sign an endorsement deal with the Union Pacific Railroad?

Paige On International Rumblings

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The Denver Post's Woody Paige says that Jack Vickers isn't happy with his new date and other demands of the PGA Tour, but offers no actual specifics, nor any quotes from those associated with the event.

In fact, as he works his way through this apparent tragedy, Paige buries this note late in the column.

The PGA Tour did propose that one of the late-season "playoff" tournaments this year be held at Castle Pines, but the timing (the first weekend of football season in Colorado and potentially cooler weather), the cost ($7 million) and the prospect of miserable ratings and few corporate partners turned him off.

Whoa Nellie. He got offered one of the playoff events, with likely a great field, and passed?

Sorry, if that's true, and it's definitely an if when read some of the other stuff in Paige's column, there won't be much sympathy here for The International's plight.

A Solution To The Groove Problem

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After watching tee shots to Waialae's ridiculously narrow par-5 18th fairway (and not seeing too many drives finishing in it) I was thinking that maybe it was time for the club to simply abandon the 22 yards of width it already has, and just go with an all rough landing area.

After all, look at the scoring through three rounds (PGATour.com did not add the fourth for some reason):

Stroke Avg:      4.353
Hole Rank:     18th
Avg. Drive:     309.5
Longest Drive:     381 yards (Holmes)

So the 22 yards did not discourage birdies and eagles, nor did it prevent players from hitting long tee shots. And last I heard, preventing long drives and correspondoning low scores was the goal of such a narrow fairway.

But then I got to thinking about Peter Dawson's comments on grooves, rough and scoring, and by golly, I think we have a solution to all of this madness.

Dawson said, "We now see balls spinning more from 2in or 3in rough than they do when hit from the fairway. That cannot go on."

He's right, we can't allow this to keep happening.

So stop narrowing fairways if the grooves are allowing players to spin the ball more than they would from the fairway.

WIDENING fairways will solve this U-grooves from the rough problem!

A return to sane widths will set a wonderful example for the game and allow players to strategically pick the sides of fairways again. True precision via intelligent placement of shots will again be rewarded when all of those balls previous controlled from 2-3 inch rough will be coming from fairway lies!

Newsflash From The City!

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Golf Channel sent out a "newsflash" on this important note:

GOLF CHANNEL to Highlight Fujikawa’s Return to High School on Tuesday’s Golf Central

The GOLF CHANNEL will follow Tadd Fujikawa as he returns to classes on Tuesday at Moanalua High School in Honolulu, two days removed from finishing in a tie for 20th at the Sony Open in Hawaii and becoming the youngest golfer in 50 years to make a cut on the PGA TOUR.  The segment will air on Golf Central on Tuesday at 7 p.m. ET.

The GOLF CHANNEL’s Mark Rolfing will be on-hand to document the 16-year-old sophomore’s return to high school and the reception from his fellow classmates. On Wednesday's Golf Central, Fujikawa's first bowel movement will be discussed in an up close and personal sit-down interview with Rolfing.

Just wanted to see if you were still reading with that last sentence. 

The Standing O...

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Now, I love Tadd Fujikawa and it was great to see the fans so energized by his Sony Open performance.

However, did you catch the moment when he arrives at 18 and The Golf Channel's GOLF CHANNEL's Kelly Tilghman and Nick Faldo join the standing ovation and GC (just a bit too quickly) cuts to the shot of them standing and clapping for Fujikawa?

Did anyone else get a Broadcast News flashback?  

It's hard to imagine Faldo doing that without some instruction.

And needless to say, no major network would allow its announcers to be such homers.

So, was the GC "standing o" staged?  

Mercedes Ratings Put Medicus, LaLanne Infomercials To Shame

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Unfortunately, according to a reader who gets Street and Smith's Sports Business Daily report, Golf Channel's four-round live coverage of the Mercedes Benz Championship averaged 370,728 households, down 44% from the event's four round average on ESPN last year.

The final round averaged a 505,129 households, down 49% from ESPN's 997,310 households in 2006.

Ty Votaw, The PGA Tour's Executive Vice President of Whatever Bob Combs Used To Be In Charge Of, issued this statement...

"Conclusions after only one event--and the first event--in this relationship are not terribly productive. We're pleased with what we achieved in that first event because they were consistent with our projections. 

So even if the numbers were lousy, our VP of Number Crunching got it right, so it's all good! 

We're on track with respect to where the Golf Channel is in distribution.

And that means? 

Production quality, energy levels of the commentators and the way they could personalize the players to a much greater degree were huge positives...

 Yeah those energy levels will pay the bills...

...if you compare what we've been able to achieve in this first week with the numbers in comparison to previous Golf Channel programming numbers, we're doing precisely what the Golf Channel has paid us to do: cause people to find the PGA Tour on the Golf Channel."

They are paying us to up their numbers.

Of course, the Tour's sponsors are also paying handsomely for certain numbers.