Feherty Advocates Ball Change

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Ron Green Jr. in the Charlotte Observer talks to David Feherty, who talks about Tiger, how technology is not hurting the game, and what he'd do if he were Commissioner for a day:

Q. If you had Tim Finchem's job and could change one thing, what would it be? I would change the size of the ball. I'd make it .02 bigger. With one fell swoop you would cure a bunch of problems. The ball wouldn't go as far. It would spin. It would be harder to hit straight. It would be harder to hit far. It would be very slightly harder to get in the hole.

On the upside you'd bring a lot of old courses back into relevance.

It also sits up nicely around the greens. The amateur player has more fun playing with it. I grew up with the 1.62 (ball) and I remember changing to the 1.68 and thinking, wow, this is so much more fun playing with this ball.

For the high handicapper, those shots around the greens are difficult. When the ball is a little bigger, it makes such a difference. There's more of it to get underneath.

We've done it once before. I don't see a reason not to do it again.

I've added Feherty to the list of those who advocate something be done to de-emphasize distance in the game today. He's in good company!

Take That Carolyn!

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img9387393.jpgI wonder if Carolyn Bivens called Tim Finchem to congratulate him on this news of coterminous brand pollination, courtesy of PGATour.com:

NEW YORK -- PGA TOUR star Vijay Singh will appear on NBC’s “The Apprentice.” on Monday, April 24, from 9-10 p.m. ET/PT.

Singh, winner of three major championships and 28 titles on the PGA TOUR, joins Donald Trump and Season 5 candidates at the new Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J. Don't miss Singh's grand entrance by helicopter with Trump.

Donald Trump’s children, Ivanka and Donald Jr., watch as the candidates engage in an all-out street war while creating a souvenir program for Ellis Island. The teams race against the clock to take pictures, write copy, create and finally, sell their souvenir programs.

Gold Rush tries to break Synergy’s four-week winning streak and struggles amongst themselves while half of Synergy’s team misses the boat and gets left behind. The winning contestants travel to the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J. to play golf with PGA TOUR player Vijay Singh and Trump.
 Who’s on each team:

• "Gold Rush" -- Charmaine, Lee, Tarek, Michael

• "Synergy" -- Allie, Andrea, Roxanne, Sean, Tammy

The team with the most revenue from the one-day sales event wins and hits the links with one of the world’s best golfers, Vijay Singh. The losing team heads to the boardroom where another candidate is fired.

Network Shakeups

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Stu Schneider reports in Golf World's Bunker on Mark Loomis' departure at ABC, and the battle between CBS and NBC to get the British Open. Try not to laugh at Dick Ebersol's claim that he and Johnny Miller were talking to Peter Dawson about golf in the Olympics!

Page 2 features Schneider's TV Rewind on the Masters. I thought about waiting to read it when it comes in the mail, but since I'm still waiting on the Golf World Masters Preview, I went with the online read. 

Hannigan On NBC

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Frank Hannigan's latest Golfobserver column looks at the work of Tommy Roy and NBC. A few highlights...

It's a primary reason why, for me, NBC is the toughest listen in golf. I'm not sure producer Tommy Roy knows better. He allows Miller to get away with murder, with an open mike at all times, allowed to say whatever he feels like saying, at any time.

Roy is a very good producer in the sense that his images of golf are terrific and it is, after all, television. Producers matter in golf more than in other sports because they have so many choices. You don't just follow the bouncing ball.

Roy told the writer John Feinstein that if he hadn't gone into TV sports production he would likely have become a tour player. Except that he had never won anything.

Indeed. And if I hadn't drifted into the management of golf I would likely have become Marcel Proust.

And...

TV producers have to suck up to people, but putting PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem on camera at the top of shows, as if it's The Masters and we should be thankful we are allowed to watch, is over the top. I can only imagine what NBC will have to do for the USGA when the US Open rolls around, especially since the USGA has a new president, one Driver, who excels in self-celebration.

Gushing Johnny

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Thanks to reader Noonan for this item from Phil Mushnick's NY Post column:

 It can't get much sillier than this:

Johnny Miller, forthright NBC golf analyst since 1990, until two weeks ago never pointed to a car sponsor and gushed how great its cars are. Until two weeks ago he was never moved to blatantly shill for any sponsors' products.

But two weeks ago, as the Doral Ford Championship was being played on NBC, Miller began to appear in Ford commercials. And then, during NBC's coverage of the Ford Doral, Miller, on at least two occasions, saw fit to interrupt that coverage to tell us what fabulous cars Ford makes.

For that, Miller was scolded in newspapers and golf magazines. The sarcastic question was even raised whether Miller, during NBC's coverage the next weekend of the Honda Classic, would see fit to give his automotive take on Hondas.

And then, during the Honda, Miller, with a straight face - and for the second time in two weeks after having never acted similarly in 15 years with NBC - volunteered his automotive take on Honda, even stating that Honda makes better trucks than Ford and Chevy.

And some folks felt his comments about Honda were evidence of Miller's integrity as opposed to having painted himself into a ridiculous corner, a corner far, far away from the golf commentary he'd been entrusted to provide.

Perhaps this newfound interest in affiliations will force an assessment of the relationship that other announcers have with corporations, and how that may influence their commentary? 

Letter from Saugerties, March 13, 2006

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Frank Hannigan, who last wrote to this site about the USGA Executive Committee's use of private jet travel, spotted the recent Gary McCord-CBS-Masters post and offered his second exclusive "letter."

Dear Geoff,
I notice you ran the weird Golf World story about Gary McCord and the Masters with a straight face.  The story said McCord is no longer persona non grata at Augusta, that CBS can assign him as a Masters announcer whenever it feels like doing so.

BUT (and it says so on page 13) “McCord turns down Augusta National’s offer to return to CBS’ Masters telecast.”

The likelihood of the following is infinitely higher than Gary McCord’s return to Augusta:  Osama bin Laden turns himself in, the president says “no hard feelings” and Osama is seated next to Laura Bush at next year’s state of the union message.

Golf World (owned by the Newhouses, who know less about golf than Osama) also whispers it has long heard that there is a clause in McCord’s contract whereby he will not permit the network to assign him to do the Masters.

For l5 years I had a contract with ABC to lurk around that network’s golf telecasts. If I insisted to my agent, he would have inserted a clause which the network would have accepted as the harmless earmark of a nut, that under no circumstances could ABC assign me to be the host of the Oscars telecast.

Yes, it is true contractually that CBS has the right to put McCord back on the telecast. That would be the last Masters ever to air on CBS. Augusta would not turn it over to NBC because the last thing it needs is a Johnny Miller Masters.

But the Disney Corporation, owner of ABC and ESPN, which recently pulled out of Tour golf effective 2007, would get back into golf in a New York minute given the chance to do the Masters.

McCord’s work was disliked intensely by Hord Hardin and Jack Stephens, the two predecessors of current Augusta National chairman Hootie Johnson.  McCord was seen as trying to sell himself, not the golf, during the Masters. He was warned to cool it.

After the warning McCord, assigned to the 17th hole, then managed to work into his commentary the phrases “bikini wax” (which I personally thought amusing) and “body bags” (which I found miles beyond tasteless.)

Then CBS producer Frank Chirkinian didn’t even have to be told.  There would be no more McCord at the Masters.

So why is the story of CBS new independence being planted in Golf World? I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s because the president of CBS Sports, Sean McManus, has also been made president of CBS News. It doesn’t look right for the president of a network news operation to be shoved around and pocketed by the management of a golf tournament.

Meanwhile, the content of the Masters telecasts is determined as it has been – by the club, not the network.  When Golf World’s girlfriend Martha Burk (whatever happened to her?) failed utterly three years ago, the decision to not so much as mention Ms. Burke’s threatened protest--which had been THE golf story of that year--was that of Augusta National, not CBS.

When McCord did his “bikini wax” and “body bag” shtick my friend Peter Alliss, the great British golf announcer, first sided with McCord. Peter said that if you do live television long enough some things are bound to come out of your mouth you wish hadn’t.

I told Peter that the folks at Augusta were guided by their understanding that McCord’s little witticisms were logged in by him in advance on a laptop.

Peter said “Oh, you mean he wrote down his jokes in advance?  Oh well, that’s cheating.”

Golfweek On New Schedule

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Jeff Rude and Rex Hoggard pen an exhaustive look at the likely new PGA Tour schedule, and all of Tim Finchem's brilliant "marketing platform" concepts borrowed from the NFL and NASCAR.

I came away sensing that:

  • Not that much is changing, which is good with the successful early portion of the season, not particularly exciting for the lackluster mid-portion of the schedule, but potentially good with the "Fall Chase" concept
  • As reader Blue Blazer points out, it's hard to imagine the top players playing every week from the PGA until the Ryder Cup/Presidents Cup. So how that will work, or why we'll get excited about what amounts to a series of events where the rich get richer, remains to be seen.
  • Coming off the success of the AmEx at Harding Park, thereported move to Tampa in March looks like a huge setback compared to what we just witnessed or could see if the event went to exotic courses and cities around the world. Isn't the Florida swing long enough already?
  • There appear to be no plans to offer a couple of new formats or something to rejuvenate lackluster events. Maybe it's just me thinking of the dreary courses played in certain cities, but moving the Valero Open to May or the Match Play to Tucson (where there aren't too many interesting designs) may be exciting for the sponsors, but why should fans be excited? 

  • The rich get richer. Rude and Hoggard note that Tour school graduates and Nationwide Tour alum from the previous year will be lucky to get in 25 events this year because of medical exemptions, and that number only figures to go do. But since Jason Gore was the best story on the PGA Tour this year (sorry Tiger), and Sean O'Hair wasn't far behind, this is a concern. Unheralded success stories are one of the most compelling things about pro golf, and by discouraging new blood in favor of the marketing-safe star system, the Tour could be doing long term hard to the uh, product. (See Champions Tour.)
Thoughts?