When you come to think of it that is the secret of most of the great holes all over the world. They all have some kind of a twist. C.B. MACDONALD
Jason Sobel talks to Stewart Cink about his newfound stardom as a Twitter user, and while he may be jokingly calling some of his posts "B.S." (okay, I didn't need to hear that some Georgia Tech guy was drafted in the sixth round), he's definitely posted more than his share of insights.
Q: Other than that, what have been some of the advantages of being able to interact with fans?
A: Well, I think the biggest advantage is that I can get my personality out there, because it's not always easy if you're not Tiger Woods or Anthony Kim or Phil Mickelson to get a personality to show through the camera lens and into living rooms. That's difficult, because in golf -- depending on the kind of person you are -- most of the time it's better to remain kind of even-keeled and not let your emotions come out. You just want to stay focused and you've got to bear down. It's so different from other sports.So the best thing for me is that now I've got 100,000-plus people who are getting a glimpse of Stewart Cink the person and not just what they see on television. I think it's been great for me to build a little bit of a fan base out there among the group that may not be into golf too much.
Jack McCallum, bought-out SI NBA beat legend, novelist and occasional golf scribe fresh off covering the Barkley-Haney show, joins this week's SI/AOL/Golf.com/ page-turner to kick around the state of golf. There's an interesting discussion about Rory McIlroy's decision to pass on a PGA Tour hall pass and comments about slow USGA sales in New York at the end, but McCallum's take on Anthony Kim didn't come as a total shock.
Jack McCallum: I hate to swing at the first pitch in such an august group of golf scribes, but since you asked ... Damn, I found Anthony Kim obnoxious. He came out to one of the Barkley-Hank Haney sessions I was covering for the SI story a few weeks back and acted like a 13-year-old. Then again, Charles acts like a 17-year-old, so it was kind of a draw.
Alex Miceli reports.
Reader Lee is right that Rich Beem's approach to retaining sponsors is something more folks on the PGA Tour will need to do in the coming years. Of course, not a big surprise since this is a guy who gave us the all-time greatest hole-in-one reaction, and it was just an Altima!
Doug Ferguson writes:
Two days after he finished the year at No. 140 on the money list, Beem pulled out his phone book and pored through a stack of business cards he had collected over his last decade on the PGA Tour and tried to strike a deal.
“As soon as I got done, I just got on the phone,” Beem said. “I called up people I knew, either CEOs of their business or high enough up and said, ‘Listen, you had talked about doing something with golf, would you like to get into it?’”
His agent helped him negotiate a modest renewal with Callaway Golf (bag, clubs, ball, glove and a logo on the shirt) and a modified deal with Mars, the parent company of Uncle Ben’s rice. Beem used to wear the logo on his cap, and now will do corporate outings.
Beem did the rest on his own.
On his cap is Guggenheim Properties, a private financial services firm with offices in Chicago and New York, courtesy of a longtime relationship with Jack Salerno. On the sleeve of his shirt is Nelson Financial Group – Beem is neighbors in Idaho with one of the executives. He also arranged deals with Oakley (clothing, sunglasses).
None of these would be considered blockbuster deals, but each have a personal touch, and provide enough for Beem to take care of travel expenses as he tries to get by on a schedule built on sponsor exemptions and his conditional status.
Thanks to reader Peter for Bill Elliott's anecdote-rich tribute to Seve Ballesteros.
The first of those Masters wins came the following spring. By now he was an acknowledged phenomenon. He played golf like we all did, spraying the ball hither and thither, but, unlike us, he then recovered brilliantly. We loved him for his vulnerability. He brought a passion to golf that it never had before and has not enjoyed since. He made this stuffy old game seem sexy and exciting, so that men yearned to be him and women simply wanted to be with him. He was the godfather of the modern European Tour, moving the interest from golf lovers to general sports fans and non-sports-fans alike, and encouraging serious money into the game.
Before that 1980 Masters began I watched from the clubhouse at Augusta as he finished a practice round, several thousand fans embroidering the scene. It took him ages to make his way through the punters to the clubhouse and when he finally made it he looked at me and gave a huge grin. He held out his hand and when I held out mine he dropped several scraps of paper into it and laughed. Each contained a girl's name and a phone number. 'These people are crazy, eh?' he said. His English was much better by then.
Ron Sirak authors Golf Digest's annual look at overpaid aggressively compensated golfers and as usual, the numbers are staggering. ($3.5 million in off course earnings for Rory Sabbatini? Rory Sabbatini!). I look at this list and say, wow, Leno is a bargain at $17 million a year.
Twenty-two players have made the list all six years of its existence, led again by Tiger Woods with $117,337,626 in on-course and off-course earnings, moving him within $115 million of becoming golf's first $1 billion player (see chart below). And even Woods is not immune from the economic turmoil. His contract with General Motors, which earned him nearly $50 million over nine years, was terminated by mutual consent at the end of 2008 with a year left to run.
But despite the economic situation, it appears companies will stay active with athletes and the games they play for one simple reason: It makes business sense. The PR difficulty of investing in athletes during tough times "certainly is a perception issue," says David Carter, University of Southern California sports-business professor and founder of Sport Business Group, a strategic-marketing firm based in Los Angeles.
Lawrence Donegan gets 2008's two-time major winner Padraig Harrington to admit that he and Sergio Garcia will likely not be featured in a future Golf Digest "Buddies" issue. Thanks to reader Lee for this:
"We have zero in common, bar the fact that we both play golf. He is the antithesis of me, and I am the antithesis of him," said Harrington, who was yesterday named the European Tour's player of the year in recognition of his two major victories in 2008, at the Open Championship at Birkdale and the PGA Championship in Detroit. The Irishman edged out García on the final green of the PGA and had also defeated the Spaniard in a play-off to win last year's Open at Carnoustie — an occasion remembered as much for the frostiness of their interaction as it was for the excellence of their golf.
At the time many observers believed their evident lack of personal warmth was a by-product of what was a fiercely contested tournament but Harrington conceded their antipathy was more deep-rooted.
"We play the game in exactly the opposite way. He is destined to find the long game easy and the short game hard, and I am the opposite," he said. "We're also competitors who for the last few years have been vying over who is the No1 golfer in Europe. I think in the hearts and minds of a lot of people García would have been No1, while I have been ranked No1. As you can imagine, no quarter is given. It is not as if we have ever had a row or a run-in. I have had plenty of run-ins with people and we would be friends but [with Garcia] it is just, well, we are just so much the opposite of each other."
With Seve on our minds and undergoing yet another operation, I can't thank reader Scott enough for this great story from Steven Levitt's Freakonomics blog.
...you are not Billy Mayfair paying $50,000 bill for a wedding cake.
Kathy Shayna Schocket reports all of the embarassing comforting details. Thanks to reader Tom for spotting this.
While the 300 guests were scrambling Saturday to snap pictures of the newlyweds, they also couldn't get enough of "Homer Simpson" and his $50,000 date.
Guests were awed by Mayfair and Proctor's elaborately produced dramatic tango performance in sparkling custom outfits, the InterContinental Montelucia Resort & Spa's five-course meal with a tableside choice of gourmet entrees and that other pair in attendance, wedding cakes.
One was a white, ornately British, 10-tier cake with white royal icing decor. It took two months to "bake." The culinary creation was elegantly decorated with imported crystal globes custom made to match the chandeliers hanging in the Montelucia ballroom.
The other, was a 100-pound chocolate delight of more than 40 layers in the likeness of Homer Simpson, one of Mayfair's favorite characters. Not even Homer, or wedding planner Karen Doan of Karen Doan Events is saying how much the second cake, or the entire wedding cost.
Tami, like many brides, wanted her cake to reflect the joy of their union. And for Mayfair, the fancy affair was symbolic of sorts also to celebrate his surviving testicular cancer after his surgery at Scottsdale Healthcare Shea in 2006.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Let's hope when tournament sponsors pondering their next exemption decision look at John Daly's name and take a pass in favor of J.P. Hayes. That's assuming they have seen Gary D’Amato's story on the journeyman's incredible show of integrity at Q-school second stage. (Thanks to readers Gene and Lee for the heads up.)
After the second round, as Hayes relaxed in his hotel room, it suddenly occurred to him that the wrong ball he had played in the first round might not have been on the USGA's approved list.
"It was a Titleist prototype, and somehow it had gotten into my bag," he said. "It had been four weeks since Titleist gave me some prototype balls and I tested them. I have no idea how or why it was still in there."
He could have said nothing and kept playing. But he couldn't have lived with himself knowing he had possibly broken the rules.
"I called an official in Houston that night and said, 'I think I may have a problem,' " Hayes said. "He said they'd call Titleist the next day. I pretty much knew at that point I was going to be disqualified."
Hayes refused to blame his caddie.
"He kind of wanted to take some of the blame, but he knows I'm anal about my equipment," he said. "I go through my bag every night. I want to know what's in there. It's almost therapeutic for me."
This time, Hayes missed one non-conforming ball. The prototype should have been easy to spot because while it bore the Titleist brand name, there was no label on the "seam" to identify the model.
Hayes said if he'd teed up the ball on a par-4 or par-5, he would have immediately known he had the wrong ball because he uses the label as an alignment aide with his driver. It's a habit he picked up several years ago, when it was rumored Titleist balls flew a few more yards when struck on the label.
"But it was a par-3 and I don't use the label to line up on par-3s," he said. "It was my mistake. I had no choice but to take my medicine."
I didn't pay much attention to the story about Ian Poulter getting his driver stolen at the HSBC until he pulled out of the European Tour event in Singapore citing the theft and the inability of Cobra to get him a replacement.
"I am really gutted," he told reporters on Wednesday. "I have been thinking about it for four hours and I have decided to withdraw because my new driver will not arrive on time.
And the real fault lies with...the OWGR!
"It is disappointing because I did not come all this way not to play. But with so many world ranking points at stake, if I played badly (by using a different driver) I may have lost ground."
He couldn't get it around for 18 holes without either a fill in or his version of a 3-wood?
John Hopkins writes about the importance of the driver and defends Poulter...sort of.
In short, the driver is built to the player's specification. It is like a tailor-made suit. Understand that and you understand Poulter a little better. Whether he should have withdrawn is another matter. Other golfers might have made do with another driver or simply gone without. Poulter is different. Always has been, always will be.
Geoff Shackelford is a Senior Writer for Golfweek magazine, a weekly contributor to Golf Channel's Morning
Copyright © 2022, Geoff Shackelford. All rights reserved.
