Florida Prilosec Shortage Averted: Pro Tours Retain Tax-Exempt Status In Senate Bill

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Since this CNBC story hit last week reporting the potential Senate tax bill inclusion of a giant headache for golf's professional organizations, heartburn and acid reflux medicine has been flying off the shelves in greater Daytona Beach, Ponte Vedra Beach and West Palm Beach.

While we don't know if this shortage was tied to the possibility of losing 501(c)(6) status for the PGA Tour, LPGA Tour and PGA of America, things should return to normal after some Senator struck language sometime Friday. The bill was voted on Saturday morning without language that would have done untold damage to the business operations of the tours and potentially to the PGA of America.

My Golfweek story here on the language in the bill and what this might have meant. Not included are insights into the thousands of messages between tours and lobbyists in the frantic moments leading to the final legislation shaping.

Here is a final version of the bill, minus all of the pork written into the margins.

Shark Talks Weakness Of Today's Players Inside 150, Why The Masters Can Make Players Use Anything They'd Like

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We forget that when Greg Norman is not hawking golf carts and posting shirtless Instagram images, he can be a keen observer of the game.

In an interview with an unbylined Gant News writer filing for the CNN affiliate, Norman touches on Patrick Reed knowing so little about his clubs, LPGA players being more accurate with their drivers and many other topics.

But the two getting my attention involved what he sees as a big change in the prowess of today's players with a wedge approach (inside, gulp, 150 yards).

“If you look at today’s top players, their distance control inside 150 yards with a wedge is quite amazingly poor,” he said.

“These guys are 20ft short, 30ft left, 20ft long, their distance control is not consistent. It could just be the way they play — when it works, it works and when it doesn’t, it doesn’t.

“In our era, every time you’d put a pitching wedge in your hand, if you didn’t think you’d get the ball inside 10ft every time, or seven out of 10 times, you weren’t having any control over your golf game.”

I do see this in watching many of today's players compared to Norman's era and wonder what the exact cause is that makes Phil Mickelson and Zach Johnson such standouts in this distance.

On the topic of distance, Norman agrees with others that this is about sustainability and Augusta National could be the solution.

“I remember the eighth hole at Augusta was nearly impossible to reach in two and now these guys are hitting irons in there,” said Norman who finished second three times at The Masters, perhaps most notably in 1996 when he blew a six-shot lead and Nick Faldo took the green jacket.

“Augusta can’t lengthen itself anymore but the tech is going to allow these players to keep hitting it longer year after year.

“If they sent out an invitation to the players and said ‘you’re going to use a gutter percha ball and a hickory shafted golf club, go get them worked out, practice before you get there, the best player will still win that week.

“The best players have that ability to make that adjustment no matter what they’re using.”

Guardian: "Golf sponsors happy to pay but appearance fees can distort sport"

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Appearance fees seem like less of an issue than they used to be for the European Tour.

But as The Guardian's Ewan Murray notes in dissecting their current place in the game, still very much on the minds of some and having an impact on schedules or motivation to win the Race To Dubai.

Nonetheless, the situation raises questions. It seems fair to ask what standard of field would participate in Turkey were enticement not given to stellar names. If the answer is that the competition would become the domain of only lower-grade golfers, does that not undermine its Rolex status? There is also an ethical argument regarding why golfers, or any sportspeople of a certain financial level, should be paid simply to appear. In many ways, this surely contradicts the ethos of sport, albeit that such a point could be applied to money’s tight grasp of football, tennis and so many other enterprises.

PGA Tour LatinoAmerica Visits The (Legendary) Jockey Club...

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While there is no television, keep an eye out for some of the social media posts of players and officials from Buenos Aires.

The VISA Open de Argentina tees off Thursday at The Jockey Club's Red Course, one of the last but reportedly best-preserved Alister MacKenzie designs. (The original 16th, pictured to the right has been softened since MacKenzie's day.)

According to architect Mike DeVries, who has consulted on limited restoration efforts for the huge club:

Dr. Alister MacKenzie's design for 36 holes at the Jockey Club was the impetus for him to leave the United States at the beginning of the Depression in 1930.  His two courses, the championship Colorado (red) and Azul (blue), were constructed efficiently by Luther Koontz, his associate that came from the USA to build the two courses and others in South America. The land is flat and the soil is heavy, making drainage a main factor in any construction project in Buenos Aires.  MacKenzie devised a swale system that would help the property drain faster and utilize the dirt cut from such swales to build up his green platforms, making for difficult approaches and recoveries on the sloped putting surfaces. 

DeVries explained more about the course in this GolfClubAtlas.com thread.

And GCA proprietor Ran Morrissett reviewed the Red Course in 2007 here and here, with many photos of the bizarre but fun mounding employed by MacKenzie and Koontz and also used at Augusta National.

A few social posts have already appeared, started with this from

And this one from George Bryan is especially fun in showing off the crazy contours as only a Bryan Brother can:

If you're looking for something old school, this film from the 1970 World Cup there features some sweet (legendary) swings, including Roberto De Vicenzo, Vicente "Chino" Fernández, Tony Jacklin and Lee Trevino.

Colonial Facing December 1 Deadline Over Its Future?

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Updating the situation in Forth Worth, the Star-Telegram's Mac Engel suggests the PGA Tour is not doing enough to help the historic Colonial National Invitational find a new sponsor as Dean & DeLuca looks to get out.

Originally facing a Nov. 1 deadline to resolve the sponsorship situation, Engel says the club has until December 1st.

According to multiple sources, the PGA is not doing much to help. That the PGA is sitting on its hands is only slightly ironic because it was the PGA that put Colonial in this situation.

It was the PGA that lined up Colonial with D&D. Now the PGA is looking at the Fort Worth country club to fix this problem.

Which is a plausible scenario after 2018.

The PGA is not talking about this, which leads fans, club members and media to draw their own conclusions.

It's not implausible to think the PGA Tour will let the event die given the need to consolidate in 2019 when the PGA Championship moves to May. However, this is one thing when the consolidation might impact relatively new tournaments. But saying goodbye to an event dating to 1946 will be a tougher sales job.

Sports Industry Execs: NBA The Hottest Property For Sponsors, PGA Tour Not So Much

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Given that they have one vote, no one would expect a post-Tiger PGA Tour to get many votes. But to get fewer than NASCAR? 

Darren Rovell tweeted the poll results from a September Turnkey Sports Poll of 2000 sports industry executives:

HatCam The Next Golf Television Innovation?

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Fun stuff here from Golfweek.com's Martin Kaufmann on the recent PGA Tour trial of HatCam, a technology similar to one Golf Channel tried earlier this year.

While the current version looks way too big for today's players to safely feel comfortable wearing on the brim of their caps, a smaller one is in development and, at the very least, could be pretty cool on a caddie's cap.

HatCam weighs just 65 grams, and Greg Roberts of ActionStreamer said a smaller version “about the size of a money clip” is in the final stages of development. HatCam has a self-contained battery, is controlled remotely and has MEMS gyroscopes that minimize the bouncing effect in point-of-view transmissions.

Golf Channel tested a similar idea in January, attaching a tiny camera to the hat of Mark Zyons, Billy Andrade’s caddie. It was a worthy experiment, but the constant movement was disorienting. The HatCam seems much more promising, based on video it captured at the Web.com Tour Championship. Scott Gutterman, VP of digital operations for the PGA Tour, said HatCam could be used more in the future in pro-ams and practice rounds, though no decisions have been made.

A demo from the Web.com Tour Championship:

Korean Press Greets Commissioner With Some Tough Questions

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With the inaugural CJ Cup at Nine Bridges over and another nine playings on the docket, Commissioner Jay Monahan and tour EVP of Global Business Affairs Ty Votaw traveled to Korea. They kindly sat down with the assembled media before Sunday's final round and took some interesting questions.

Q: It’s great that we have got another event in Asia. From the next season, 2018-2019 season, you are going to make some big changes with possibly the playoffs coming soon  and the PGA Championship moving. It looks to me as though you are going to free up more dates in the fall, in the post-labor day area. Are you planning more tournaments in Asia? Japan or China?

Jay Monahan: I would answer that by confirming that we have what you just mentioned, which is we have the commitment to move the Players to March and PGA Championship to May. You were right in that it does freeze some time in the fall. The next step we are going to take in order affect change is to essentially complete other parts of our schedule the tournaments that exist in that pre-labor day window in the U.S.

But we are a global game. If you follow the logic trail of being here, you look at the fact that you’ve got 3.5 million participants and 36 million rounds of golf played, we love what we are seeing in terms of emergency screening technology, the fact that we’ve got such a rich number of players.

Wait what? Uh, I'm chalking "emergency screening technology" up to a translation gaffe. Go on...

As you look out into the future, the reason that we are putting so much resource into key international markets is so that we are prepared when an opportunity presents itself to expand to be in the right position. But to say something is imminent would be a miscalculation and a mistake at this point.

We'll put them down for no further Asian expansion at this time.

Q: Are you surprised to see only a few foreign press covering the event, given that this event is quite significant? Why do you think that there aren’t many global press covering this event here?
Ty Votaw: There is no question that we are very excited about the opportunity to be here, first time being an official event. The media landscape in all countries is changing and as you know, the golf media in the US is also changing with decreased budgets and decreased stabilities to cover even some domestic events in the US. We now have opportunities with other platforms and other areas.
Opportunities!
I know that our own platforms are here covering extensively for the US and for other countries around the world. I will say that, much like the reactions of our players, when they go home and talk to other players about their experience here, I think you will see over the next 10 years when we are coming to South Korea and to Jeju for this event that a broader swath of media coverage will follow.
Actually, probably not.
Q: The Korean fans are grateful that Sang-moon Bae and Seung-yul Noh were given exemptions, given their situation with the national service, and that PGA has shown a lot of respect for the Korean golf. However, given that is a Tier 1 tournament with a decent sum of prize money, don’t you think that we are missing a lot of the top-class players? For example, Hideki Matsuyama and Ernie Els pulling out and not many players from the top 20?
Ty Votaw:As I mentioned earlier, I think that the experiences of the players who are here this week, when they take those stories and those experiences back with them to the PGA tour it’s going to be very positive story that they are going to be telling. As any PGA tour event on our schedule, our players choose their schedules according to what fits their specific need and their specific goals and desires. Certainly, we have added a third event in Asia this year and there has been a significant support of all three events by the top players but, perhaps not all three events by the top players.
Uh, no way.
I think what you are going to see is, the ability for players to evaluate what their experience was this week and last week in CIMB and in HSBC, and they will set their schedules accordingly. I think we are very pleased with the feel that we have this week, as commissioner mentioned earlier, our ability to have our Fedex Cup champion, our rookie of the year, former number ones Jason Day and Adam Scott plus all the other great players who are on the field this week. It’s a great start to a long term commitment by CJ and I think we will continue to do everything we can to make sure that our players support these important sponsorships.
All fair points, but it's hard to read this and wonder about the impact on up to four sponsor-less U.S. stops and many other domestic events get poor fields because players may now skip those for $9.2 million purses in Asia.
Q: I think there are a few things that can be improved in the future. The tournament is over at 3pm and it seems to feel a bit loose and it’s difficult for the gallery. Would it be possible to increase the field?
Monahan: This is just the first of our ten-plus years here. One of the things we knew going into this week was that we're going to do our very best to execute a world-class THE CJ CUP @ NINE BRIDGES, but when we left at Sunday night there’ll be a number of things we could learn from over the course of the week, and our constant pursuit to improve and get better and do the best we can in South Korea.
That’s exactly what will happen. We’ll look at every facet of the tournament. We'll make significant improvements in any facet of this event. We're not done yet. This tournament will be finalized in the next several hours but I would say that at this point on Sunday, what has happened on the grounds here, the response that we received, the things we learned from the fans here, we’re really pleased with where we are.
First on tap, ordering extra satellite time!

Change Of Policy? Grayson Murray Tantrum Shared On PGA Tour Social

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Unlike other sports leagues the PGA Tour has resisted sharing absurd athlete behavior for obvious reasons: theirs is a business built on players behaving like gentleman.

So whether this is a change in policy or just a share because it involves the troublesome Grayson Murray or was simply the posting of a bored overnight shift stuck trying to find the CIMB Classic, is yet to be determined.

But the post was a nice tie-in to the baseball playoffs...not so nice for the green where Grayson dug in his shoe soles:

If the @yankees, @astrosbaseball, @cubs or @dodgers need another arm in the bullpen...

A post shared by PGA TOUR (@pgatour) on




Blood Testing (Finally) Comes To The PGA Tour

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Rex Hoggard explains for GolfChannel.com how the PGA Tour's new blood testing will impact the players and perceptions of the sport.

 

Hoggard says most players he spoke to felt the time had arrived for this more complete program, an amazing shift compared to a decade ago when Tim Finchem was resisting testing and players generally declared golfers clean and therefore not needing testing of any kind.


This was interesting:

“Why can’t we do hair samples, because then you can actually trace further back?” asked Casey, who is also an amateur cyclist. “There are certain drugs that are flushed out of the system within a day or two days, hair actually holds that drug in the follicle longer.”

Golf’s return to the Olympics last year will ensure the game remains vigilant when it comes to testing and officials haven’t ruled out new tests as the science and doping evolves. But for now, the circuit is content with the new testing methods.
“There is a lot of alternative testing methods, including hair, but the efficiency of these tests is really not at a level that would warrant use in a sport anti-doping program at this time,” Levinson said. “Urine is the most effective method of detecting most of the substances we are looking for.”

Reminders Galore That Wraparound Schedule Needs A Wrap

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As I wrote for Golfweek's Presidents Cup coverage, Team USA's on-course performance was especially remarkable given the noticeable fatigue of the recent PGA Tour playoff participants. Less remarkable was the team and leadership no-show effort for the World Golf Hall Of Fame ceremony, and I'm chalking part of that mistake to this being the culminating week of a season filled with multiple obligations and the pressures of 21st Century PGA Tour golf. (Just look how rail-thin Jordan Spieth looks in the photo below after going all-in on the playoffs and Presidents Cup.)

Meanwhile the feeder tour that has been designated as the only way to the PGA Tour played its final and arguably most important event against the Presidents Cup. Even more amazingly, the Web.com Tour Finals finished the week prior to the start of the next season.

Asking Web.com players to compete for their livelihood over two months, then turn around and play for their new status before the PGA Tour's eligibility re-shuffle in November is not a rational way to develop new stars.

Congratulations to Jonathan Byrd (Nicklaus Parker's game story here) and the many players who completed the playoffs Monday in Florida, but there were 13 who already had status locked up WD'd from the Monday weather-delayed finish to get to Napa for this week's PGA Tour season opener.

While the PGA Tour brass and some players will continue to defend Tim Finchem's "wraparound" vision for the PGA and Web.com Tours as the proper proving grounds, the emphasis has lost sight of what makes most sense for all parties.

Besides developing talent, the Web.com Tour is also a tour that should help serious golf fans get familiar with emerging players. Playing against the PGA Tour Playoffs and Presidents Cup certainly won't help on that front. When the PGA Tour had a week off during the playoffs, so did the Web.com Tour. Oy. Vey.

The many compelling card-chasing stories we would have learned via the old Fall Finish race or Q-School are getting lost. (This year there was a traditional heartbreaker of a finish for Matt Harmon that was covered because he missed short putts coming in, snapped his putter and missed out on a chance at his card).

The wraparound was created to save the fall events at the expense of the PGA Tour's very attractive natural January beginning. I just can't see how, given some of the signs of fatigue, the wraparound's impact on players from both circuits is offering a logical ebb and flow for anyone. Nor is it working for anyone but the fall events that get to say they are offering FedExCup points.

How's This For A Tour Championship Plus One Scenario?

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If the 2017 Tour Championship had been in 2019 when it could potentially change, here's how I would love to have seen it play out.

Remember, the schedule that year will likely finish on Labor Day Monday, meaning the Tour Championship could start on Thursday and end on Sunday.

Instead of everyone trying to figure out who is winning the FedExCup and overshadowing a golf tournament Coca Cola pays handsomely to sponsor, what if Sunday was mostly about the Tour Championship and the need to make it to championship Monday.

In the case of the 2017 Tour Championship, Xander Schauffele's win would have been a huge way to sneak in to the Monday finish. And what happens Monday?

Why six players at 18 holes of very simple stroke play for $10 million.

If the Tour Championship this year had cut to six--other numbers seem awkward--we'd have the guys broken into two threesomes or three twosomes playing Labor Day Monday for the big prize.

Here were the top six after play Sunday at East Lake courtesy of GolfChannel.com and I must say, kind of a perfect scenario of season long stars and playoff upstarts:


And here are the almost-finalists who had nice seasons and playoffs, but I think everyone would agree, were not deserving of making it to Monday's madness either because of playoff struggles or just not enough regular season success.

For those who don't recall the many times I've floated these scenarios where we send the algorithms home and just let the lads play golf, spare me the arguments that season long success must matter to the very end.

At some point we have to cut the cord and just make this a very simple shootout for the big money.

The entertainment will ensue and even better, sponsors will love it, television will have something to talk about that is actually more interesting than a mysterious mathematical formula, and the average fan will be able to follow along. Best of all, the sun will still rise in the east and set in the west.