Amateurs On Sunday

/
Andrew Baker moans in the Telegraph about amateurs at the Dunhill Cup.
The cut is never kind, and at the Dunhill Links Championship it is crueller than at many more ordinary tournament. For here, the final day at St Andrews is reserved not just for the most proficient professionals, but also the most accomplished amateurs.

So, farewell then to Darren Clarke, Colin Montgomerie, and David Howell. But goodbye also to the Michael Douglas, Hugh Grant and rowing knights Pinsent and Redgrave.
This rower dude Pinsent penned a nice, albeit metaphorically challenged Times op-ed piece on St. Andrews and the Dunhill Cup.

"They kill off imagination. There is only one shot."

/
John Huggan profiles Jose Maria Olazabal, who goes off an enjoyable rant about the state of course setup in America:
Now competing basically full-time in the US, the Dunhill represents for Ollie a rare opportunity to escape the seemingly-endless tedium of life on the PGA Tour. Never a fan of American culture, the proud Basque, one of golf's most accomplished shot-makers inside 150 yards from the hole, is increasingly frustrated by the on-course sameness that he endures almost every week.

"What I don't like is that there is less artistry in the game now," he sighs. "And the set-up of the courses contributes to that. When you have rough that is five inches high, not even a magician can create shots.

"I do believe players still have the skill. They can shape the shots, hit them high or low. But we don't find ourselves in situations where creativity is encouraged. As technology has advanced, players have hit more and more fairways, so the courses have adjusted. One seems to have led to the other, in an attempt to keep scores up.

"Now we have rough right up to the edge of the green. There is no imagination in that. All the long grass hurts people like me. I don't mind rough off the tee so much; there should be a penalty for being in the wrong place. But around the greens, it is silly. You can hit a shot to 15 feet from the hole and be just off the green, and another guy can hit to 45 feet, but on the green. He has the better chance. That is not right.

"They kill off imagination. There is only one shot. You don't have to think. Miss the green? Give me the 60-degree wedge, and I'll flop it up there. All the touch and finesse is gone.

"The great sadness is that you can make courses just as difficult - and so much more interesting - without any rough. And there is no need to have courses that are 7,500 yards long. I look at guys like Justin Leonard and Corey Pavin and wonder how they can compete most weeks. I'm not sure we are on the right path. Courses are getting longer and longer, and we see fewer and fewer where length is not the biggest factor in success. Which doesn't make it fair for everyone."

"We've had a coalescence of three different things come together"

/

In another of golf's worst kept secrets, the tours are taking the WGC World Cup to China. Announcing the move were George O'Grady, Jon Linen, Tim Finchem and various dignitaries from new host site Mission Hills.

Wow, it looks like the World Cup has been sav...eh, maybe not...

Q. So it will not be the World Cup after two years, or it could be?

GEORGE O'GRADY: It could be; it's unlikely.
Q. So Jon, your reaction to that, are you already investigating other possibilities beyond the two year period?

JON LINEN: We would work with the Federation and cross that bridge when we get there. Right now we know we're going to be where we're going to be for the next two years.

We know we're going to be where we're going to be for the next two years. Whoa, I think that calls for a little mop-up from the $7 million man.

TIM FINCHEM: If I could just comment on this, I think what's happened is we've had a coalescence of three different things come together. One is the opportunity to have a World Golf Championship event supported in China for more than a decade; the second is that we feel strongly that at this particular point in time the priority is to bring top flight PGA TOUR level golf to China and to Asia; the third thing is we want to perpetuate the World Cup.

So we've addressed all of these things in a way that we've unfolded here today, which is we're going to take advantage of the commitment that China and Mission Hills has provided, we're going to perpetuate the World Cup for the next two years at Mission Hills. We intend to have World Championship golf for the ten years beyond that, but how that unfolds after the next two years is yet to be determined for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is as George mentioned, the world calendar is reasonably set through 2008. There are issues with the tournament structures and dates after that, in addition to these format issues.

So we will address those as we get to them over the next year, year and a half, but in the meantime we're going to focus our energies on making the World Cup as good as we can make it at Mission Hills for the next two years.

Ah, much better. Those multiple "perpetuate" references are so much tighter than "We know we're going to be where we're going to be for the next two years." That's why he gets the big bucks!

Q. Is there a fear that the World Golf Championship events will be devalued by the fact that most or all will be in America for the next ten years, foreseeable future, and then the next one will be in China for 12 years; will it become stale after so many years?

GEORGE O'GRADY: From a European Tour point of view? I think everybody can have a view on it. I think it's been well chronicled that when all the World Golf Championships or the stroke play events, the Accenture, have been played in America. Not all of us were totally best pleased. But if we have to look at the force of the world economy where it goes, I mean, if we are sitting here, if I'm allowed to say so, a tremendous European victory in the Ryder Cup Matches just finished, and various people have said, why. Now, reading the papers for the last two days, better people than myself can work that out in a playing sense.

Say what?

Q. With that said, George, when is the next window of opportunity for one of these things to be in Europe?

TIM FINCHEM: After 2010 probably.

Nice rescue by the Commissioner. 

O'Grady: Euro Tour Developing Courses To Ensure Mundane Ryder Cup Venues Through End Of Century

/

Bloomberg news reports that:

"European Tour will buy or build golf courses to stage the Ryder Cup from 2018 to increase income from its most profitable event, chief executive George O'Grady has said."
The Tour has guaranteed that the matches, played alternately in the US and Europe every two years, will take place on mainland Europe from 2018 through 2030.

Here's your money quote...literally:

"In future, we'll either build courses ourselves or own them," the 57-year-old Englishman said. "We get cash from the Ryder Cup but we don't get a capital asset gain. In 2018 we'll own at least part of the venue."

Take that Tim Finchem!

Owning and operating the courses would allow the Tour to build and profit from onsite hotels, spas and other leisure facilities.

It could also develop and sell or rent private housing, while retaining income from club membership fees, conferences, exhibitions, retail and catering.

The owner of the K Club, which hosts this year's event, Michael Smurfit, said there's "no question or doubt" that the Ryder Cup has boosted the value of those assets.

The Tour doesn't own any of the K Club, the 2010 host the Celtic Manor Resort in Wales, or Scotland's Gleneagles, which will stage the 2014 contest.

Profit at this year's event may not reach the €14.8m it made four years ago because of extra security and other costs, Mr O'Grady said.

Tissue, anyone?

Revenue may rise to as much as €74m from €52m at the 2002 edition at the Belfry, Mr O'Grady said, declining to give his organisation's annual revenue.

The Tour retains 60pc of the profit, with the remainder split between the UK and European Professional Golfers' Associations.

The 2018 venue may be chosen by the last day of the 2010 edition, O'Grady said, giving the Tour enough time to build a new course if necessary.

"By then we reckon courses will need to be built in a certain way to take the number of spectators that will want to come," he said.

As opposed to now?

The Ryder Cup Divide

/

Bruce Selcraig writes about the religious and political divide between European Tour players and U.S. players. You won't don't want to skip this compelling read, which appeared in the Irish Times.

But there’s still one significant cultural divide that is so sensitive an issue most players simply avoid addressing it when they’re on the other’s turf. Simply put, many Euros and other international players are put off by the overwhelming number of American PGA Tour players who identify themselves as George Bush-loving Republicans who support the US occupation of Iraq.

“Every movie you see, every book you read is like, `America, we’re the best country in the world,’” German Alex Cejka told me in May at the Byron Nelson tournament in Fort Worth, Texas. “When I hear this [from players] I could throw up. Sure it’s a great country...but you cannot say we have the most powerful president in the world, the biggest country in the world...It’s sad that they are influenced by so much bullshit.”

The affable and well-read Australian, Geoff Ogilvy, who won the US Open and has lived in Arizona with his Texas wife for four years, says: “A lot of their conservative views [on tour] are way off the map...I think George Bush is a bit dangerous. I think the world is scared while he’s in office, [but] there’s less tolerance of diversity [in opinions] over here [and] people have more blind faith in their government.”

Various Euros have hinted that they have similar views, but say privately they’ll be crucified in American lockerrooms and newspapers if they publicly oppose Bush, his fundamentalist Christian agenda or the Iraq war.

“That’s the new way of American censorship,” said Parnevik, as he baked on the driving range in Fort Worth. “People get hurt very badly if they speak out.”

And...

Not coincidentally, the American pro golf world, which has been heavily influenced by corporate America and Republican politics for at least 30 years, now has such a strong element of Christian fundamentalists that the entire Ryder Cup leadership – Tom Lehman, Corey Pavin and Loren Roberts – are all self-professed born-again Christians. Roberts was even converted and baptized at a tournament.

In the book, “The Way of an Eagle,” Lehman says: “God has definitely used golf in a great way over the last several years. I think of myself as a Christian who plays golf, not as a golfer who is a Christian. So whatever kind of job I do, there is a way for God to use that as a tool. In society at large, especially the way golf is growing, there is a huge platform for golfers.”

There are now official chaplains and weekly Bible study groups, or “fellowships,” on each of the four American pro tours, and various players either display the Christian fish symbol on their golf bag or wear a popular cloth bracelet that says “W.W.J.D” – What Would Jesus Do. “It’s not seen as so strange anymore for a player to be open about his faith,” former tour pro Bobby Clampett told Golf World. “They’re no longer called `The God Squad’ or `Jesus Freaks’ like we were 20 years ago. Now it’s cool.”

Well, until Bobby shows up.       

David Feherty, the former Euro Ryder Cup member from Northern Ireland who is now a popular TV golf commentator in America, believes the very public display of fire-and-brimstone Christianity is still unsettling to most Europeans. “I think a lot of Europeans find that conservative Christian thing as frightening as conservative Muslims,” he says. “If you find any European pros who are in that Bible thumping category, it’s usually because they’ve been to the United States.”

 

"It just goes to show..."

/
Lawrence Donegan on the day one massacre at Wentworth:
As the old golf saying doesn't go, to lose one favourite in the first round at Wentworth is careless but to lose three-quarters of them is likely to evoke the hoariest of sporting clichés.

"It just goes to show that anyone can beat anyone on any given day," chimed the likes of Colin Montgomerie, Shaun Micheel and Paul Casey here yesterday after defying the seedings to progress to the last eight of the World Match Play.
Meanwhile, Martin Johnson writes about Monty in a column you won't want to miss.
There is no one quite like him for fitting PG Wodehouse's description of golfers who get distracted by the sound of butterflies in an adjacent meadow, and reincarnation theorists would be fairly confident in the belief that he must have lived out a previous existence as a bat. So quite how Monty does so well around Wentworth — three PGA titles and one World Matchplay — is a bit of a mystery.

With the roadways winding through the trees resembling the M25 at times, there are more distractions here than on almost any other course you could mention. Little wonder Monty had a mild attack of road rage yesterday, although, this being a large and exclusive residential estate, one of the drivers he was waving his arms at could have been delivering Ernie Els' groceries.

To Play The Scottish Open?

/

John Huggan wonders if it's a good idea to play the Scottish Open on mushy Loch Lomond before turning to links golf at the Open Championship.

Famously, Tiger Woods has never felt inclined to make his way to the bonnie banks, preferring instead to warm up for the game's oldest and most important event on the links of Ireland with various friends and assorted millionaire bookmakers. And many have followed suit, or are going to. Take Michael Campbell.
"For about the past five to six years, I have been playing the Scottish Open the week before the British Open, but not this year," said the 2005 US Open champion only the other day. "Unfortunately, Loch Lomond is not the ideal course to hone your game in readiness for a British Open.

"It is just common sense to warm up by either practising on a British Open host venue or on a similar links-type course. Phil Mickelson has already been over to Hoylake getting used to the course and that's what I will be doing."
And... 

...it is the softness and invariable wetness of the beautiful Tom Weiskopf-designed layout that is keeping them away. Four days of hit-and-stick golf is hardly the best preparation for the fast-running links that is Hoylake. Think chalk and cheese.

Add in the fact that top-level golf is these days hardly ever played by the seaside and the case for absenting oneself from the undoubted charms of Loch Lomond is a tough one to answer. Like it or not, the game's best players are increasingly a one-dimensional bunch. It isn't that they are not capable of playing the wide variety of shots called for on a humpy-bumpy links; they are. It is more that, on circuits and courses that more and more offer the exact same challenges and shot-values week after tedious week, they are simply not called upon to do so. With neglect comes less competence.

"his putting can resemble a form of electric shock treatment"

/

Thanks to reader Chris for noticing this unusually fun writing from Mark Reason in the Daily Telegraph. Reason was covering the bizarre events at the French Open and filed this story on July 2.

Michael Campbell was leading the French Open by three strokes standing on the 17th tee. Half an hour later he had hit three drives, lost one ball, had another kicked by a lady in a pink hat, had a third mistakenly picked up by his partner's caddie, received more rulings than handed down by an entire session of the House of Lords, and finished the hole by putting out twice. It was beyond strange.

The sequence started when Campbell slashed his opening drive wildly to the right. Initially he thought he had found it in bounds, but it turned out to be neither his ball nor in bounds. So back to the tee he went and carved the ball away for a second time. Thinking that this, too, was out of bounds, he then pulled a provisional drive into the rough on the left.

In fact Campbell's second ball had careened into the tents and hit a lady on the knee. Her first touch was not the best, so she chased after the ball, flicked it with her right foot, brought it under control with her left and then ran upfield with her blouse mercifully not pulled over her head. By the time the ball had finished rolling it was back in bounds.
And this made me cringe...the dreaded "didn't fit their eye" which, I understand usually does some have truth to it, but still...
Many of the top players claim that Golf National, one of the top courses on the circuit, doesn't "fit their eye". It must certainly come as a shock to be playing a course that doesn't allow them to wallop their driver 100 yards west into Frau Schmidt's cucumber frame and then claim a free drop under that week's local rule. But the colossal prize money - 666,660 euros to the winner - has attracted one of the best fields of the season and even the last-place prize money would be more than Barry Jaeckel would have earned for winning the French Open in 1972.
"Barry who?" you may well ask, but the 50-something-year-old Jaeckel turned out to be a cove. He once walked off the course in the middle of a tournament for no apparent reason. He says: "I just short circuited, I felt very crowded." The son of Richard Jaeckel, an accidental character actor who made countless films from the Sands of Iwo Jima with John Wayne to The Dirty Dozen, Barry opted for a life in golf because there were too many "strange" people in films. Jaeckel's final drive of the French Open was a vicious duck hook that was heading for a wasteland of gorse and water. He stormed off the tee quite oblivious to the fact that one of his playing partners was anxious to hit a provisional. His partner waved the ball at Jaeckel's back, then smiled, shrugged and started walking himself. Strange.
And saving the best for last...
Bobby Clampett was another welcome diversion from the tour's usual diet of white-trousered Swede. Some may remember that Clampett, something of a "phenom" in his youth, once led the Open by seven shots after five holes of the third round. He then exploded, perhaps afraid of his own theory that "with great players there is almost something wrong with them."

But here Clampett was in France, his youthful curls going much the same way as Art Garfunkel's, his ball striking still a joy to watch. Unfortunately his putting can resemble a form of electric shock treatment. Clampett is sponsored by Yes Golf - "no other putter in the world is as accurate".

The problem is that the static from Clampett's hair combined with his self-confessed excitement at this amazing product rendered his putter as useful as a lightning rod.

Huggie and Monty

/

...Sounds like a wonderful BBC movie, but not yet. In the mean time, Huggan has the pen, Monty, well, himself:

There was one big difference between the other challengers and Monty, of course. While they managed to maintain the highest standard of etiquette during what turned out to be a traumatic afternoon for all concerned, the same cannot be said for our tartan hero.

Adding to his already lengthy list of crass and boorish behaviour over the years, Monty managed, in less than half an hour, to alienate the gallery around the 17th tee, make unwarranted physical contact with a New York state trooper and offend the United States Golf Association. This made three mean feats and no mean feat, if you know what I mean.

Huggan on Euro Scheduling, Wentworth's Redesign

/

John Huggan's Sunday in The Scotsman ;) column looks at the European Tour's scheduling dilemma, the Fed Ex Cup, and Ernie Els' redesign work at Wentworth. Naturally, he's skeptical.

The biggest thing on O'Grady's mind is easy to identify. Next year, America's PGA Tour will embark on a radical new schedule climaxing with something called the Fed-Ex Cup, a 'play-off' series modelled on the mystifyingly-successful NASCAR, in which cars drive round and round in endless circles to no obvious purpose.
Regarding the European Tour...
With more and more of Europe's leading players spending more and more time in the US, the traditional European Tour schedule will have to adjust. For instance, the British Masters, which was held at the Belfry three weeks ago, will move to September to avoid a clash with the Players Championship, which will switch from March to May.
"It will become readily apparent when we refine our 2007 dates where we're trying to focus ourselves. We spent a lot of effort with various players to find the right period to put tournaments in. We are examining where we are with the PGA Tour, because they bring a welter of marketing muscle and money to any situation."

Allow me to decode. Without actually saying so - the man is a diplomat - O'Grady is alluding to the fact that the PGA Tour in the shape of commissioner Tim Finchem is a classic bully, who couldn't care less about the effect of his actions on anyone other than his members. For the good of the game is not a phrase that the former Washington lobbyist is too familiar with.
On the upside, many doubts remain about the long-term success of the Fed-Ex series thingy. The suspicion here is that, as with so many things in golf, it will come down to the level of interest that one Tiger Woods can muster. If the world No.1 decides that he has better things to do, like winning the major championships that history will actually remember, the whole thing will quickly fold.

Which would not be good news for Finchem. If recently- released viewing figures are anything to go by, America's ever-shortening attention span is causing many of Uncle Sam's nieces and nephews to reach for their remotes when a golfer appears on their TV screens - Tiger or no Tiger. Should the Fed-Ex series fail to deliver - sorry, couldn't resist that - it is hard to imagine where the PGA Tour would go next. China, probably. Still, all of that is for the future.

As for Wentworth...

Even at the new, turbo-charged Wentworth, misgivings remain. Take Ernie Els's new fairway bunkers - one left, one right - on the opening hole. While O'Grady enthused about how their presence would provoke players into thinking on the tee, it was hard not to shake one's head inwardly.

Rather than encouraging thought and choice, the traps dictate only how the hole has to be played. As things stand, the drive is now merely a test of execution - can you hit it between the bunkers?

Had Els placed one or more bunker up the left side, which offers the more favourable angle into the distant green, and merely left the right side as it was, the players would have been offered a genuine option. Driving close to the bunker would bring reward in the shape of an easier approach; playing safe down the right would take the sand out of play, but leave a more difficult second shot.

That's called strategy, folks.

Come to think of it, a bunker stuck right in the middle of the fairway would have been better. That really would have made the players ponder.