Manned By Some 1,200 Volunteers...

/

Sam Weinman writes about the USGA merchandising tent at Winged Foot.

Measuring 36,000 square feet, Lopuszynski's tent this June will sell more than 400,000 items, of which there are more than 1,000 varieties. It will be manned by some 1,200 volunteers. And while only open for 11 days, the tent's interior will feature all the fixtures — from carpeting to lighting to signage — of a high-end retailer.

I'm hoping we get an Open to L.A. again so I can volunteer to work in the merchandise tent. What fun!
 

"That's where the pros sell product"

/

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."

MacDuff's Post-Doral Fed Ex Cup Points

/

Thanks to MacDuff for an update on what a Fed Ex Cup race would look like under his points system treating every week the same. It's early, but even with two wins, Tiger is still only 13th in 3 appearances (4 but his WD isn't counting) while Phil Mickelson and his 0 wins is 2nd.

No one before Tiger has played less than 5 times and only one two other players in the Top 20 have played less than 5 times.

1    Sabbatini    10891.66        7
2    Mickelson    8934.37        6
3    C.Campbell    8850        7
4    Toms    8634.37        5
5    Glover    8529.16        6
6    Singh    8371.87        6
7    Furyk    7133.33        5
8    Petersson    6983.33        6
9    Lehman    6962.5        5
10    Appleby    6858.33        5
11    Oberholser    6737.5        5
12    Verplank    6712.5        5
13    T.Woods    6471.87        3
14    Gf. Ogilvy    6400        4
15    Palmer    6166.66        6
16    Parnevik    5930        6
17    T.Clark    5892.5        6
18    Weir    5834.37        4
19    Chopra    5724.5        6
20    Barlow    5713.5        6
21    Rollins    5662.5        5
22    Donald    5609.37        4
23    Van Pelt    5490        6
24    Love III    5437.5        4
25    JB Holmes    5433.33        4
26    Jerry Kelly    5325        4
27    Mayfair    5316.66        6
28    N.Green    5137.5        4
29    Villegas    5037.5        4
30    Cink    5021.33        5
31    J.Ogilvie    5020        5
32    Pernice    5000        4
33    DiMarco    4984.37        4
34    Leonard    4895.83        5
35    D.Wilson    4762.5        5
36    Bertsch    4725        5
37    Z.Johnson    4687.5        4
38    Senden    4625        4
39    Matteson    4575        5
40    Calc    4450        5
41    Olazabal    4412.5        3
42    Olin Browne    4387.5        5
43    A.Scott    4375        3
44    Jobe    4355        4
45    Franco    4350        4
46    Rose    4341.66        4
47    Atwal    4312.5        4
48    Bub Watson    4250        4
49    Watney    4137.5        4
50    Warren    4083.33        4
51    Kenny Perry    3962.5        4
52    Gay    3950        5
53    Vn Taylor    3825        4
54    Branshaw    3812.5        3
55    Imada    3787.5        5
56    Estes    3775        3
57    M.Wilson    3765        3
58    J.Byrd    3750        3
59    Bohn    3683.33        4
60    Choi    3675        3
61    Garcia    3662.5        3
T62    Couples    3650        4
T62    Immelman    3650        4
64    Slocum    3550        5
65    Sluman    3550        6
66    Triplett    3537.5        2
67    Bjornstad    3530        4
68    Funk    3525        5
69    F.Jacobson    3512.5        3
70    Crane    3482.5        3
71    J.Smith    3462.5        3
72    Gore    3350        3
73    Pampling    3292.5        4
T74    Bryant    3287.5        3
T74    Els    3287.5        3
76    Purdy    3262.5        4
77    Beem    3256.25        4
78    Frazar    3187.5        4
79    D. Howell    3175        2
80    Waldorf    3137.5        3

It's still early but it looks like MacDuff's balanced points distribution (with benefits for top 10 finishers, as explained here), rewards not only solid play, but players playing a lot. Similar to how it works over at NASCAR, the model for this swell idea.

Howell and Elk On WGC's

/

Andrew Both in the Telegraph:

European Tour Order of Merit leader David Howell has joined the growing chorus of condemnation over the Americanisation of the World Golf Championships."There should be at least one event every year somewhere other than America.

And...

"Obviously, the market is huge here but it is a world game and any opportunity to get the best players to other parts of the world is a great way to grow golf. I'm sure lots of corporate sponsors in America would be happy to see a tournament in China, but we're not having one for some reason."

Howell's comments, strong though they were, paled beside the amazing outburst by Steve Elkington, the Houston-based Australian who beat Colin Montgomerie in a play-off at the 1995 US PGA Championship, but who missed the cut here.

"They're not really world events any more. It's just a fancy name for a $10 million event," Elkington said in a blistering attack on the US Tour, who decide when and where WGC events will be played.

"They're killing world golf everywhere else. Next year we're going to be playing the Match Play in Tucson, Arizona. I mean, who's ever been to Tucson?"

Getting Ready For Oscar Night

/

I don't know about you, but I can only think brand consistency when I see these spellbinding images from LPGA Oscar night preparations.

Yes, that's right, LPGA.com has the exclusive details on the gift-bag trade out on LPGAers being invited to post-Oscar parties. I bet Elton immediately recognized Stephanie Louden!

Thanks to reader John for the link. 

FlogWatch, Tiger At Doral

/

FlogGolf2.jpgTiger Woods en route to victory at Doral:

                               Total      Rank

BIRDIES                        25        1
DRIVING ACCURACY    46.4     T59
DRIVING DISTANCE     304.3     9
PUTTS PER ROUND     28.8      T56
PUTTS PER GIR          1.690     T33
GREENS IN REG           80.6      T1 

There You Go...

/

Somehow I don't envision Hogan or Nicklaus getting the kind of questions Tiger faced after winning at Doral again.

JOE CHEMYCZ: The front nine, statistically the computer said zero fairways but nine greens hit and still 3 under par.

TIGER WOODS: Yeah, I didn't hit a fairway, but hit like I guess

Q. You hit two fairways. ShotLink was wrong.

TIGER WOODS: Okay, cool. (Laughter) 3 under, there you go.

Q. How aware were you of the situation when you were playing 17, did you know you were two ahead?

TIGER WOODS: I knew that there was a board there, and after I knocked it over, I looked over at the board and saw that DT had made par, so I had a two shot lead, yes.

Q. Why were you missing left early? Because you had missed right, your misses had been right all week.

TIGER WOODS: Correct.

 

Oops!

/

A blow for the distance measuring device in competitive play. This went out to college coaches last week: 

Subject: Division I Golf Committee Range Finders

Coach as you are probably aware, the Division I Men’s Golf Committee subsequent to the GCAA National Convention decided to reverse its position regarding the use of range finders as a local rule for the 2006 Division I regionals and finals.  In a memo received by this office on 2/28 from Mike Hermann, Chair the subject of range finders was addressed.  It is our understanding that this memo was sent by the NCAA to all participating Division I head coaches.  This ruling has no affect on individual tournaments during the 2006 spring regular season adopting the local rule regarding range finding devices.

It is our understanding, per the memo, that this issue will be revisited during the NCAA golf committee’s annual summer meetings.  For coaches who host tournaments that choose to adopt the local rule, I encourage use to provide feedback to Donnie Wagner at the NCAA. We have received positive feedback from some coaches whose events have adopted the local rule.  If you would copy our office on any feedback, positive or negative, we will create a clearinghouse for this information.

Apparently in a straw vote at the coaches convention, there were only a couple of hands raised in support of the devices for NCAA Championship play.

There were a couple hundred coaches in attendance. 

More Setup Flexibility...

/

In his latest Golfonline column reviewing the West Coast Swing, Peter Kostis makes this comment:

Speaking of course setups, the PGA Tour needs to give more leeway to the field staff at each tournament to respond to competitive realities and alter the way a course plays. Right now the 54-hole lead is critical! At Pebble Beach, Luke Donald was six shots behind co-leaders Aaron Oberholser and Mike Weir after 54 holes. But the way Pebble was set up that Sunday, with super-difficult pin positions and tees pushed back, there was no way someone was going to shoot a 64 or 65 to make a late charge. That wouldn’t be the case if the PGA Tour field staff had more flexibility. That’s why I love the setup on Sunday at the Masters. If you are playing well, the course can be had and even a six-shot lead isn’t safe.

So what does this mean about the PGA Tour field staff needing more flexibility?

Just typing out loud here, but it sure sounds like Kostis has talked to some of the field staff and that the directive for the Sunday anti-birdie setups is coming from above (that narrows it down to about 400 overpaid VP's!).

Why would those running an entertainment vehicle like the PGA Tour think that a full security lockdown of the hole would make final rounds more fun to watch?

Do they just not get it?

Or is there something else at play here with scoring averages and the technology debate?

Hawkins Blog

/

John Hawkins' new Golf Digest blog is evolving nicely. After several fine but pre-packaged feeling posts from La Costa, his latest dispatch from Doral is the best yet. It's just the kind of on-site, insider look that could make blogging from events a huge hit for the online golf sites.

In it, he looks at the mysterious drenching of Doral before the first round.

Bottom Up Culture

/

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.