R&A Preparing To Punt On A Trump Turnberry Decision?

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Alistair Tait says R&A head honcho Martin Slumbers is meeting with media Monday and may be prepared to announce a 2020 Open Championship venue.

The name in the envelope is unlikely to be Trump Turnberry.

This is fun from Tait's report:

As reported previously in Golfweek, Trump acquired the mobile phone number of new R&A chief executive Martin Slumbers last year. Trump has made frequent calls to Slumbers to promote Turnberry’s 2020 credentials. The property tycoon is spending approximately $250 million to upgrade the course and hotel on Scotland's southwest coast.

Slumbers will sit down with golf writers Monday for a roundtable discussion on a number of issues. Trump, and his Turnberry course, likely will dominate the discussion.

Trump: We're Still In The Rota!

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I'm not sure what's more impressive: Donald Trump declaring that he's still in The Open Championship rota, or Alex Miceli getting The Donald on the phone in the midst of a presidential campaign.

Either way, Trump sees Turnberry still very much in the rota despite reports of the R&A cooling to the idea.

“I haven't been told that at an all, no,” Trump said Friday by phone about Turnberry being taken off the British Open rota, which first was reported by London’s Independent. “We're working together with the R&A on the design. We have redesigned it, and it's almost completed. It will be opened in July and, no, I haven't heard that at all.”

At all?

What's Going On With The World Amateur Golf Ranking?

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On the list of issues facing the sport how amateurs are ranked by the R&A's World Amateur Golf Ranking probably doesn't leap off the page as prime click bait.

Which is even more reason to check out Golf Bible's analysis of a lightly viewed press release announcing changes to how the rankings are tabulated. Namely, a two-year window is now considered to tabulate an amateur golfer's ranking, which can impact if the player is eligible for something like the Asia Pacific Amateur.

There has long been great discord within amateur golf ranks over the ranking, including at the moment when the current NCAA and U.S. Amateur champion, Bryson DeChambeau, is ranked third, yet lands a more logical first in the Scratch Players World Amateur Ranking.

I'm guessing this would be example A as to why it has less credibility than it should, as Golf Bible writes:

Prior to last week’s announcement Jon Rahm was due this week to drop a huge number of points that he won for finishing tied 5th at the 2015 Waste Management Phoenix Open. Now he will stay at No. 1 I guess. Oppositely the SPWAR has more smooth and gradual changes because it applies points ageing.

[Somehow Rahm was awarded more points (30.250) by the WAGR for this high pro finish than DeChambeau got for winning either the US Amateur (19.875) or the NCAA Division 1 Championship (22.000) which explains why he is No. 1 if you were wondering].

R&A Chief On Match-Fixing, Shorts, Olympics, Trump

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In his most extensive interview to date (unbylined BBC story), new R&A Chief Martin Slumbers acknowledged that the group is monitoring the potential for betting irregularity issues coming to golf, is open to considering shorts for practice rounds, is excited about golf's Olympic moment, and is continuing the organization’s effort to punt on the issue of an Open at Trump Turnberry.

Interestingly, just last week new European Tour head (and fellow fast play advocate of Slumbers) Keith Pelley, said there was no concern betting scandals like those in tennis could find their way to golf. (He's sounding a bit like Tim Finchem a decade ago suggesting there was no need for drug testing in golf.)

Slumbers doesn’t agree even though no evidence has surfaced suggesting anything has taken place like tennis has seen. Still, with bookmakers offering daily wagering on head-to-head play in groups, the opportunity is there for match-fixing.

"I think the events of the last few months will bring it more to the top of those agendas, yes," he said.

"If there was evidence starting to build of inappropriate betting, the game is run by some very responsible and sensible people who have the game at heart and I'm sure will do the right thing. We are certainly keeping this under careful attention.

R&A: We'll Consider The Shorts Matter, If You Insist

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Rex Hoggard got this priceless quote from the R&A on the possibility of shorts in The Open Championship.

Nice to see the folks in St. Andrews have a sense of humor mid-winter.

“While we already have our conditions of entry for the Open at Royal Troon, this is something the Championship Committee will consider in future. It would certainly be a pleasant dilemma to have if the weather here in mid-July is sufficiently warm for shorts to be desirable.”

Video: Flyover Of Proposed Royal Portrush Changes

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Nice work by Golf Central Daily to note Wild Atlantic Golf's post of the flyover video depicting the architect's vision for two new holes at Royal Portrush.

The firm of Mackenzie and Ebert's course changes, prompted by ex R&A Chief Executive/Architect Peter Dawson, calls for numerous bunker additions. The film covers the conversion of holes 17 and 18 on the existing course into a tent village for the 2019 Open Championship and shows us the two new holes being added. The narrator is Maureen Madill.

First aerial look at the course changes to Royal Portrush ahead of its staging The 2019 Open Championship.

Posted by North and West Coast Links Golf on Thursday, January 14, 2016

Dottie's Year-End Rules Of Golf Christmas Gift: Anchoring Ban

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There are so many nuggets in Dottie Pepper's year-end look at the Rules of Golf changes (or lack of change). The piece is accompanied by an autoplay interview of Bernhard Langer by Michael Collins talking the end of the anchoring era.

Pepper covers many areas but for now, let's just focus on her anchoring ban views as January 1, 2016 looms.

This is fun:

For decades, golf's ruling bodies approved of the anchored method with many of the thoughts being:

1. It will be pretty much confined to senior golf (quickly proven untrue on all professional tours and top-level amateur golf around the world).

2. No one will win a major championship with a long or anchored putter (see Adam Scott, Keegan Bradley, Ernie Els and others).

3. No one will ever teach the anchored method to youngsters. (USGA President Tom O'Toole Jr.'s young son was encouraged to learn this method by his professional, thus sending Mr. O'Toole, by his own admission, to his breaking point to take the side of the anchoring ban.

Charming.

She delves into some interesting points on the complexity of the ruling (7 pages!) and how there has yet to be a clear explanation as to why the Kuchar method is kosher. She also makes some key points regarding how this undermines the move to simpler rules.

Finally though, there is this regarding the image affect the ban has had on the governing bodies, a take I've heard from enough everyday golfers to believe this is the legacy of the anchoring ban in the eyes of most.

Furthermore, the reversal of the previous decision and the course of action with the "because we said so" air undermines the authority of the ruling bodies. I applaud the current USGA and R&A leadership and committees for being more active in protecting the integrity and future of the game, but not like this.

79 & 81: R&A Takes Two More (Honorary) Female Members

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They certainly won't be accused of discriminating against an older demographic!

Congrats to new Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews members Judy Bell and Marlene Stewart Streit. Bell was the lone former USGA president in modern times not admitted to the club because of its longtime (and former) stance against female members.

Two of its first female members from the 2014 class, honorary member Louise Suggs and regular member Patsy Hankins, have since passed away.

The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews
For Immediate Publication
THE ROYAL AND ANCIENT GOLF CLUB ANNOUNCES TWO NEW HONORARY MEMBERS

7 December 2015, St Andrews, Scotland: Two of North America’s most successful women amateur golfers have become Honorary Members of The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews.

Canadian Marlene Stewart Streit, the only player to win the British, Canadian, U.S. and Australian women’s amateur titles, and America’s Judy Bell, a former Curtis Cup captain and player and United States Golf Association president, accepted invitations to become Honorary Members.

They follow Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal, Dame Laura Davies, Renée Powell, Belle Robertson MBE, Lally Segard, Annika Sorenstam and Louise Suggs, who sadly passed away in August, in becoming Honorary Members. A further eight women have also become Members of the Club.

Stewart Streit said, “I am absolutely delighted to be invited to join such a historic and prestigious institution in golf. I would never have dreamt of this all those years ago when I started out playing golf but I have enjoyed every moment of it. I am extremely proud and grateful to receive this honour and it means a great deal not just to me but to Canadian golf as a whole.”

Bell said, “I’m honoured to follow in the footsteps of so many great players and people who have been so influential in the game. The Royal and Ancient Golf Club enjoys such a special place at the heart of golf and I am thrilled to be part of it. Golf has been very good to me over the years and this is a wonderful distinction to receive. ”

Gavin Caldwell, Captain of The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, said, “It is a privilege to welcome two women who have enjoyed such long and distinguished careers in golf to The Royal and Ancient Golf Club. Both Marlene and Judy have made substantial contributions to golf through their outstanding achievements as players and their tireless work in supporting the development of the sport. They are both wonderful examples to follow and tremendous ambassadors for golf.”

Stewart Streit’s remarkable career saw her win 11 Canadian Ladies Open Amateurs, nine Canadian Ladies Close Amateurs, four Canadian Ladies' Seniors and three U.S. Senior Women's Championships. After winning the Ladies’ British Amateur Championship at Royal Porthcawl in 1953, she went on to win the U.S. Women's Amateur in 1956 and the Australian Women's Amateur in 1963.

In 1951 and 1956, Stewart Streit, who was born in Cereal, Alberta, was named Canada's top athlete of the year. She went on to establish the Marlene Streit Awards Fund to support promising young golfers. In 2004, she became Canada’s first member of the World Golf Hall of Fame and is also a Member of the Order of Canada, the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame and the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame.

Bell, who was born in Wichita, Kansas, took up golf at the age of ten and in 1952 reached the semi-final of the U.S. Junior Girls’ Championship in California where she was defeated by Mickey Wright. Bell went on to play in two American Curtis Cup teams in 1960 and 1962 and captained the team in 1986 and 1988. She set the then lowest score, a 67, in the U.S. Women’s Open in 1964, and, in a successful amateur career, won the Broadmoor Invitational title three times, the Florida East Coast Championships three times, the Palm Beach Invitational, the 1958 South Atlantic Championship, and the 1963 Trans-Mississippi title.

In 1996, Bell became the first woman to be named president of the USGA. She joined the USGA’s junior championship committee in 1961 and went on to act as a Rules official at the U.S. Open and the U.S. Women’s Open. Bell served on the USGA’s women’s committee for 16 years and became the first female member of the USGA executive committee. She was nominated to the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2001.

Reactions To R&A, European Tour Slow Play Agenda

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That's John Huggan's take on news of the R&A making pace of play a focus. As much as distance leaps are to blame, Huggan notes the absurdity of green speed not getting more attention. Then again, Saturday play at The Open was lost to green speed, so that's a tricky subject too.

Huggan writes for GolfDigest.com:

Unbelievably, only once during the two-day conference in the Home of Golf was there any mention of excessive green speeds as an aspect of the game that adds, according to a Danish Golf Union study, “ten minutes to every round for every foot over nine on the Stimpmeter.” And never was the absurd distances leading players hit the modern ball -- and in turn the ever longer walks from greens to distant back tees -- cited as an obviously detrimental factor in pace of play.

Lorne Rubenstein has written and read about slow play for a long time, so he welcomed news of the R&A's focus, but also wondered how much we want to rush through a round.

Slow play has not exactly been something that the golfing authorities worldwide have been quick to tackle, really tackle, or solve. This isn’t because they’ve not studied the problem enough. The subject comes up frequently, and has for many years. The USGA held a pace of play symposium a year ago, when the results of 17 research projects were presented.

But give the R&A marks for getting various people and organizations together to discuss the matter, and, in the process, enjoy some fine claret. As the PGA master pro Denis Pugh tweeted from the conference, “Most enjoyable evening at R&A. Food, wine, and company first class.” Pugh is an advocate of faster play, and his experience informs him that golfers are more successful when, as Gene Sarazen once wrote, they “miss ‘em quick.”

If so many golfers, and not only those in St. Andrews this week, believe slow play is a scourge, well, why don’t they play faster? Are they as bothered by slow play as much as we suppose? Or, is this a case of leading the witness, as in posing multiple-choice responses to a question: “What is hurting golf most? (a) cost (b) slow play, (c) difficulty, and so on.

I think the bigger picture story here, as discussed today on Morning Drive, is the R&A's willingness to let people in the trenches tell their story and to suggest it's time to get more aggressive with slow-pokes.

But as I wrote in Golf World, this is also setting up a battle between Team Europe (R&A/European Tour) and Team USA (PGA Tour/USGA), where Europe is signaling a willingness to crack down and even embarrass some slow pokes. Of course, that is a notion offensive to PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem, who has discouraged the administration of rules in place to deal with slow play. Reason #459 he needs to retire.

Here is Slumbers talking about the conference on Morning Drive with Gary Williams. It's one of the first chances to hear from the R&A's new head man. He comes off very well.

R&A Chief Slumbers: Publish The Names Of Slow-Pokes!

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Knowing how hard the tours work to protect the names of slow play offenders, it was refreshing to see new R&A Chief Martin Slumbers suggest outing the slowest during the R&A's two day "Time for Golf" summit. Granted, the idea is not very original, but to hear it coming from one of the leaders of the five families makes the suggestion most eye-opening.

From the last graph of Martin Dempster's Scotsman account from St. Andrews:

While delegates heard that the European Tour posts a list at every tournament of players who have either been timed or fined, it is not normal practice for that to be made public. “I think there is a fear to publish,” said Slumbers in reference to slow play culprits across the game. “But I think it would be better for dialogue to publish some names and numbers in both the club and professional game.”

The story also includes some other highlights of the session, with a Spieth slow play story from the 2015 Open and Stephen Gallacher wishing the European Tour would use time par stations ala the LET.

Reading Dempster's early account of the R&A's two day "Time for Golf" summit, the two greatest culprits to longer rounds did not seem to have be on the radars of those chosen to speak. Nor even discussed in any depth given my trust in Dempster's reporting skills and awareness of the issues facing the sport.

Then again, talking excessive green speeds or lengthening of courses to offset huge distance gains in St Andrews when the R&A is host, could get the speaker relegated to a lifetime sentence of Castle Course golf.

Anyway, it seems most of the attention was focused on those terrible architects who build too many bunkers, not greens Stimping at 12 or courses with long walks to new back tees. From Dempster's Scotsman report:

One of the game’s up-and-coming course designers, South African Paul Jansen entitled his talk as “Hollywood golf” due to so many new layouts being “excessive, all about appearance and lacking in content”. He highlighted how pace of play was affected by club golfers often “ping ponging from one bunker to another” and insisted: “Less is more.” Picking up on that, his fellow course architect, Martin Ebert, revealed that he’d been commissioned to take out 40 bunkers at Royal Lytham at the same time as four new ones were being added at the Open Championship venue. “The course is proving too difficult for the members and also the maintenance cost with revetting is enormous,” he said. “We think this will help the everyday players, but also maintain the challenge for the best players.”

New Euro Tour Chief Vows To Crack Down On Slow Play

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In contrast to Commissioner-Slow-Play-Penalties-Give-Me-The-Willies, new European Tour chief Keith Pelley has sought to differentiate himself by voicing his disdain for slow play. You may recall that Tim Finchem has openly suggested that actual enforcement of the rules (and leading to penalties) bugs him and he's also questioned the desire to play faster, citing in epic out-of-touch fashion how you don't want to play fast around Cypress, Augusta and Pine Valley. But Pelley? He's declaring a "personal war."

The Golf Paper's Adam Ellis reports.

Ironically, his announcement in Dubai yesterday came just 48 hours after an incident in the final hour of the BMW Masters in Shanghai, where Spain’s Sergio Garcia was involved in a 15-minute discussion with a referee over where he should drop his ball after hitting it into the lake beside the 18th green at Lake Malaren.

“Slow play drives me mad,” said Pelley.

“I have had the chance to talk to a number of players at all levels – the elite, the medium and low-ranked players – and one of the things that keeps coming up, and which we are going to address, is slow play.
“We are going to be the leaders in dealing with slow play.

“I cannot tell you what that means from a concrete perspective right now, but I have had significant dialogue with Martin Slumbers from The R&A, and they are in violent agreement that it is something we need to deal with.

Violent agreement! I guess that means you haven't brought up how the ball going too far leads to deadly backups.

There is a conference call next week with The R&A. We will participate in it and do this in cooperation.

“I can tell you that when we sit here next year we will have a completely different philosophy on slow play. Slow play is a critical part of our game and we will address it.”

Good luck with that, especially judging by the quotes of Martin Slumbers, new R&A head man, talking about the release of the R&A's report discussed in St. Andrews this week. From a report by Phil Goodlad & John Barnes, Slumbers talking:

"Maybe we need some marshals out on the course to help find balls," he added. "Maybe we need to play over shorter formats, nine-hole golf; playing off tees that are further forward, not cutting the rough as thick and deep as possible.

Not cutting the rough as thick and deep as possible? I don't even know where to begin with that, but I suspect explaining to him that rough is a product of offsetting modern distances might be lost on the R&A's head man?

"But the key thing is getting people aware and recognising that playing reasonably quickly and getting a move on isn't just good for their game but fair to everybody out on the course."

Enforce those time pars!

Video: Okay, We'll Let You Go Ivor Robson

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Easily the most famous first tee announcer the game has ever known is hanging up his mic and can drink the tallest glasses of water he likes, as Ivor Robson worked his final event Sunday in Dubai.

The European Tour did a swell job saying goodbye to the distinctive voice. But is there any greater compliment than the spot-on impersonations by players who aren't exactly supposed to be taking notes at the time Robson was usually clearing his throat, saying "I'll let you go" and then announcing their names

These all kind of speak for themselves...

 

And this August ESPN.com feature from Michael Collins was excellent too, particularly Adam Scott's impersonation.