Luken Wins Villages Shoot Your Age, Prescription Cannister Cart Parade To Come

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From my friends at Brener-Zwikel PR:

LEONARD LUKEN SHOOTS 81 TO DEFEAT ARNOLD PALMER, GARY PLAYER AND 57 AMATEURS AND WIN THE INAUGURAL THE VILLAGES SHOOT YOUR AGE CHAMPIONSHIP

THE VILLAGES, Fla. – The 530th time was the most charming for 87-year-old Leonard Luken, an enchanting round of golf that must stand above any other in which he has shot his age. Luken carded an 81 – six strokes under his age -- to win The Villages Shoot Your Age Championship at the par-72, 6,251-yard Arnold Palmer Legends Country Club Saturday, besting a mostly amateur field of 60 players and headlined by PGA Tour legends Arnold Palmer and Gary Player.

“This is a great deal. It’s one of the greatest things that has ever happened to me,” said Luken, a Hilton Head, SC resident who actually played with Palmer’s father, Deacon, at Latrobe CC and Laurel Valley CC in Pennsylvania an estimated 35-40 years ago. “It was better than winning the fast-pitch softball World Series. I hit the ball pretty good. I missed three or four putts but I didn’t putt too badly. I hit a lot of greens that I don’t normally do.”

“I think it’s wonderful,” added Palmer. “The enthusiasm from (everyone) is wonderful. The (crowd) just came out like troopers. I’m looking forward to next year.”

After the round, Luken was serenaded in a Villages golf cart parade, where fans showered the winner with empty Flomax prescription drug cannisters (in lieu of ticker tape) while Arnold Palmer performed a flyover in his Lear jet.

Shot Hit Around the World?

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John Johnson in the LA Times:

In what will easily be the longest chip shot in golf history, a cosmonaut is scheduled to hit a gold-plated golf ball this summer from a makeshift tee outside the International Space Station.

If all goes as planned, the 17,000-mph drive will travel 2.1 billion miles before burning up in the atmosphere, giving a Canadian golf club manufacturer the kind of publicity that can't be found back on Earth.

But even before the space golfer tees off, the event has drawn hisses from galleries of critics who fear that an errant shot could punch a hole in the yet-to-be completed $53-billion, 206-ton space station.

Although the risk of serious damage is small, critics say, the stunt sends the wrong signal. Instead of a state-of-the-art scientific laboratory, the station will be seen as a haven of commercialized blarney on a cosmic scale.

And...

The out-of-this-world tee shot is the brainchild of Nataliya Hearn, an engineering professor at the University of Windsor in Canada who is also president and chief executive of Toronto-based Element 21 Golf Co.

Three-year-old Element 21 Golf is developing a line of clubs made of an alloy of scandium, the 21st element in the periodic table — hence the company's name. Element 21 Golf unveiled its clubs at a golf show in January, but they haven't yet reached retailers, a company official said.

Scandium is used in light bulb filaments and, when alloyed with aluminum, it is used to make bicycles, baseball bats and other sports gear. "It's very light and very strong," Hearn said.

The idea to use the space station as a giant floating tee box came a couple of years ago, when Hearn and her partners were trying to figure out ways to market their space-age clubs.

"Is this the right message to be sending to taxpayers in America, Russia, Europe and Japan — that it's OK to do a stunt like this?" said Keith Cowing of nasawatch.com, a feisty website that frequently challenges NASA policies.


The Villages Sets New Record...

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...for the most awful ads ever to appear repeatedly on a PGA Tour broadcast?

No, but while those dreadful spots that have been airing regularly and giving the Tour's VP of 18-34 year olds a headache, they were not the source of the record.

22263452.jpgNo, Erin Cox at SouthFlorida.com has the details. Warning, we're talking Guiness stuff here...

THE VILLAGES -- Leave it to Florida's retirees to shatter world records.

Official word came Friday that The Villages set the only Guinness World Record held by a retirement community. The September charity event nearly tripled the efforts of the previous group of retirees to orchestrate The World's Largest Golf Cart parade.

The 3,321 carts winding through the paths of The Villages in the fall is a meager showing for the 57,000 retirees who travel mainly by golf cart in the sprawling community. But parade mastermind Chuck Berkey, 77, thought nearly tripling the record of 1,138 was excessive on the first try.

"Someday, if somebody challenges us, we can bring out the big guns then," said the parade's mastermind, Chuck Berkey, 77. The 12-by-16-inch certificate arrived in Berkey's mailbox Friday afternoon.

"When I got that in the mail, I almost fell over," he said.

Berkey has been checking the box for the certificate every day. Guinness officials had said it would come months ago. But even without the paperwork, Villages residents considered themselves unbeatable.

"When it comes to retirement communities, we are the undisputed champions," said Doug Tharp, president of The Villages Homeowners' Association.

"That's where the pros sell product"

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The USA Today's Jerry Potter writes a press release about the resurgence of the vaunted Cobra brand.

Most of Harmet's young guys aren't playing a full line of Cobra products. Some are adding Titleist clubs, but Harmet plans to get them as many Cobra clubs as he can.

"The real important thing is the driver," he said. "That's where the pros sell product."

Bottom Up Culture

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I don't believe I've ever linked to a non-golf story, so as David Gray sings, please forgive me. But Patrick Goldstein in today's L.A. Times uses the Oscars to analyze our societal and cultural shift as it pertains to media consumption.

I coudn't help thinking of the Big Break and golf. (That's how I'm saying this is golf related, but really, it's just an interesting read from always entertaining columnist.)

We are now a nation of niches. There are still blockbuster movies, hit TV shows and top-selling CDs, but fewer events that capture the communal pop culture spirit. The action is elsewhere, with the country watching cable shows or reading blogs that play to a specific audience.

And...

There is another, even more radical shift in today's pop culture that is helping to undermine the Oscars and other tradition-bound award shows. For years, the Oscars have mattered because the awards served as a barometer of cultural heft. Just the name alone — the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — has the air of high-minded authority.

Millions of moviegoers who would've been wary of seeing a challenging film like 1969's "Midnight Cowboy" or 1999's "American Beauty" caved in and plunked their money down, soothed by the academy's best picture badge of distinction.

But this elite, top-down culture is being supplanted by a raucous, participatory bottom-up culture in which amateur entertainment has more appeal than critically endorsed skill and expertise.

The most obvious example is "American Idol," which has tested its ratings clout against the Grammys and the Winter Olympics, easily trouncing its competition.

In top-down culture, subtlety and sophistication rule. But like so much of today's bottom-up culture, "American Idol" is far more about aspiration than art. It is a musical kissing cousin of MTV's "The Real World," allowing us to wallow in its subjects' depressingly banal dreams and show biz ambitions.

It's telling that "Idol" devotes much of its airtime to interviews in which contestants rhapsodize about their yearnings for stardom, excitedly recalling their first visit to Hollywood Boulevard or their first trip down a paparazzi-strewn red carpet.

Even though the show, for me, is little more than a tedious night at a karaoke bar, its contestants offering second-rate renditions of familiar pop fluff, it has captured the imagination of its young, largely female audience. They don't need any gray-bearded critics to tell them what they like — they prefer creating their own stars.

Last summer, during the height of Tom Cruise's sofa-jumping meltdown, I asked a friend's 11-year-old daughter her opinion of Cruise. She said, forget about him. "Do you know ["American Idol" contestant] Bo Bice? He's much cooler."

The era of the suffering artist is over, replaced by the insufferably self-confident wannabe. After a thoroughly forgettable rendition of Donna Summer's "Last Dance" the other night, singer Brenna Gethers was asked by Paula Abdul how she thought she did. "I think I did wonderful," she said, full of assurance. "I think the audience loved it, and I think America loved it."

The lone dissenting voice on the show is that of Simon Cowell, who with his British accent and disdain for his fellow judges' slack standards, is a perfect symbol of the top-down culture. Scornful of mediocrity, he's a voice of sanity on the show, often wearily lecturing contestants about their show biz delusions. Still, he seems to be fighting a losing battle, cast as a highbrow scold whose deflating opinions are regularly played for comic relief.

Our bottom-up culture puts little premium on subtle craft, not to mention expert opinion, whether it's Olympic judges or academy members. Young people want to be a member of a group, encouraged by their peers.

Bunker Bits

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gw-logo.gifLots of fun stuff in this week's Golf World "Bunker."

John Strege catches up with Mac O'Grady, with wacky Mac offering offers his thoughts on the Champions Tour, caddying and his forthcoming novel, which ought to see a printing press about the time his swing book and tape series hits the market. Wait, it can't be a book and tape series anymore. Book and DVD. 

Stu Schneider opens with his usual first rate one-liner and follows with analysis of Nick Faldo's "open bar" bit, which I passed on in favor of UCLA-West Virginia. Sounds like I didn't miss much.

Page one of the Bunker wonders whether the 2007 schedule is really set in stone. Bob Combs says yes, a few cranky tournament directors and Westchester CC do not agree.

The Game of a Lifetime

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Thanks to readers Paul and John for the heads up on Katherine Rosman of the Wall Street Journal and her story about getting her stepdad on Augusta National, titled "The Game of a Lifetime." It's a free read today on WSJ.com, not sure about tomorrow though, so hit the link now.

Like almost anybody who has picked up a golf club, my stepfather has always had a fantasy: To play at the Augusta National Golf Club. The legendary Georgia course is home to the Masters Tournament, and admission is strictly limited to its closely guarded roster of members and their invited guests. Neither I nor my stepfather knew a soul there.

So when I said I wanted to surprise him with a round of golf there, everyone I talked to said it would be impossible. Why would an absolute stranger invite a 70-year-old suburban Detroit real-estate developer to Georgia to tee off at one of the world's most secretive and exclusive clubs?