Media Relations For Beginners?

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Now I know that credentialing bloggers to professional golf tournaments could result in a total nightmare for tournaments around the world, but this story about the denial of credentials for the Golf For Beginners bloggers over at travelgolf.com raises a few questions.

Here is a Tour whose press rooms serve as meditation chambers most days, turning away folks who, if you take the time to scroll their posts on the LPGA Tour, are friendly to the cause and doing it on a busy web site. 

And they want to cover your tour...a tour that struggles to get any coverage...a tour that considers itself cutting edge with their personal branding coaches and marketing-wiz for a Commissioner.

San Diego This and That

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Tod Leonard reports on the latest from Torrey Pines, where former city council member Michael Zucchet is leading an energized campaign against rate fees and a new clubhouse. Leonard also writes about the planned renovation of Carlton Oaks in Santee, where I will be consulting with architect Brian Curley on a project aimed at introducing fun, interesting affordable golf to an area in dire need of it!

The Trevails of The Donald

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23446714.jpgAccording to Bob Pool in the L.A. Times, Donald Trump wants to rename Ocean Trails Drive leading to his Trump National Los Angeles clubhouse. The city of Palos Verdes wants The Donald to rename the course Trump National Rancho Palos Verdes, or Trump National Palos Verdes, or Trump National Palos Verdes Peninsula.

Got that?

Trump hasn't directly participated in the negotiations. He sent Vincent Stellio, a Trump company vice president, to last month's council meeting. Explaining the name change, Stellio said Trump merely wanted to capitalize on his golf course brand while distancing himself from the stigma of the Ocean Trails course's 1999 collapse and its bankruptcy.

Stellio added that Trump has started marketing the property as being on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. To prove it, he handed council members $30 golf hats with that name affixed to them.

"Originally, when we first came out, 'Los Angeles' seemed like the right thing to do because, basically, we're an East Coast company," Stellio said. "But with me spending some time out here, we realized that a better market standpoint is the peninsula. Pebble Beach is on a peninsula too."

Nothing gets by these guys!

Though The Donald has said that his course is the only California classics actually on the Pacific Ocean, and the only on a peninsula.

"Pebble Beach really isn't on the ocean. It's on Carmel Bay," Trump told Golf Digest in 2002.

How about Trump National on the Pacific Ocean of Palos Verdes Peninsula? Too many prepositional phrases? Wait...

Still, "if we market it externally outside, we'll probably refer to it as 'Palos Verdes Peninsula Los Angeles.' Internally, we'll be marketing it as you see on that hat."
Trump National on the Pacific Ocean of Palos Verdes Peninsula Los Angeles. Now there's a name that works!
Stellio was on the line during Monday's interview with Trump, who seemed irritated by the street-name controversy.

"If they've pushed you around, Vinnie, I'm not interested in doing business with them," Trump said.

Meanwhile over in Scotland, The Donald has found a much more willing politician, and it may just jeopardize his project. From Scotland on Sunday:

Jack McConnell has been accused of breaking the ministerial code of conduct by backing a luxury golf resort planned for Scotland by billionaire Donald Trump.

Scotland on Sunday can reveal the First Minister's close association with Trump may have broken strict rules which require ministers to remain neutral about planning applications before they are decided.

trump.jpgAnd...

The tycoon wants to invest £300m in a links course, luxury hotel and housing on the estate. But opponents of the plan say it will ruin one of Scotland's most pristine stretches of coastline. Despite the mounting concern, McConnell has already met Trump twice in the US, and had numerous phone calls with him.

But on planning issues, the ministerial code of conduct clearly stipulates that ministers "must do nothing which might be seen as prejudicial to that process, particularly in advance of the decision being taken".

It adds: "Action that might be viewed as being prejudicial includes meeting the developer or objectors to discuss the proposal, but not meeting all parties with an interest in the decision."

"So Why Not Let The Club Do That For You"

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Colin Montgomerie, talking to The Scotsman's Mike Aitken about possibly moving to the Mickelson two-driver idea:
"Phil got one up on us all by carrying two drivers in his bag as he ran away with the Bell South Classic and the Masters," observed the Scot yesterday. "Drivers can now be made with a swing bias in them, to fade and draw the ball. Phil's done very well and he won't be the only person doing it from now on. Me? I've been in touch with Yonex already with a view to doing something similar.

"There are certain courses, like St Andrews, where straight is good and you don't need two drivers there. But when there's a lot of doglegs, for instance at Wentworth, on the 17th I would have to hook the ball, and on the 18th I would have to hit a fade, so why not let the club do that for you and not have to put two particular different swings on it?"

The Gimmick Turned Sound Business Decision

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Lawrence Donegan on Michelle Wie's European Masters exemption:
"Michelle has demonstrated her outstanding golfing skills to a global audience as both an amateur and now as a professional, and we look forward to welcoming her," said George O'Grady, the chief executive of the European tour - a remarkable volte-face by a man who had previously been sceptical about offering women invitations to play in men's events.

Eight months ago O'Grady dismissed the practice as a "gimmick". But in golf nothing speaks as loudly as sponsorship money. The European Masters is sponsored by Omega and Wie this year signed a sponsorship deal with the watchmakers.

The Canadian Open Blues

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Lorne Rubenstein devotes a Golfobserver.com column to the dire situation with the Canadian Open and it's date on the 2007 PGA Tour schedule, easily the worst possible date you could give an event:
The date's hopeless, but both PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem and the Royal Canadian Golf Association's executive director Stephen Ross still said they were "bullish" on the new date when it was announced on January 13th. Another word that begins with "bull" comes to mind.
And...
 The RCGA didn't have any say in the new dates from 2007 forward, and tried to spin its new summer date as wonderful and all that when it was announced.

But really, what sort of field will gather come 2007 when the tournament will be held the week after the British Open, the week before the World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational in Akron, Ohio, and two weeks before the PGA Championship? The Canadian Open could be held in Newfoundland, in the far east of Canada, the RCGA could again charter flights from the British Open, and most top players still won't play the next week.

Let's see: Which of those four tournaments do you think Tiger Woods and his colleagues at the top of the tour will pass on? As for Weir and his fellow Canadian Stephen Ames, they'll have quite a month. The Canadian Open is the fifth major for both Weir and Ames. There's no way they wouldn't play in it.

"The Canadian Open is the perfect week to take off," Zokol said. "The PGA Tour gave the tournament the dates because it doesn't have a sponsor. It's the RCGA's fault for not keeping pace. The PGA Tour moved the tournament to the back of the bus."

Hawkins On FedEx Cup Debate

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Golf World's John Hawkins says the Tour is going to present a model for the FedEx Cup, and I know you have all been waiting anxiously to see what they've come up with. He writes:

Although points will replace dollars as the official measure of a player’s position in the standings, the difference could prove to be quite minimal, as one might surmise by the basics of the proposal:

    • All “regular” tour events will award a total of 25,000 points. The World Golf Championships will award 26,250, with the four majors and the Players Championship worth 27,500.

    • The winner of each tournament will receive 18 percent of the total points—the same percentage as a standard purse breakdown—meaning Brett Wetterich’s triumph at the EDS Byron Nelson Championship would have earned him 4,500 points. All players who make the cut will receive points.
On the point of money list and points synergy, MacDuff's season long take (the most recent results posted below) indicate that equal points throughout the schedule would actually create some interesting differences in the money/points lists, and reward those who play more often.

The current standings based on Money (M) and FedEx Cup Points (F) as compiled by reader MacDuff.

M   F
1    1    Phil Mickelson     
2    4    Jim Furyk     
3    8    Stuart Appleby
4    6    Geoff Ogilvy     
5    21    Tiger Woods     
6    5    Chad Campbell     
7    10    Rory Sabbatini     
8    9    David Toms     
9    14    Retief Goosen     
10    35    Stephen Ames     
11    3    Vijay Singh     
12    12    Luke Donald     
13    19    Jose Maria Olazabal
14    38    Trevor Immelman     
15    17    Arron Oberholser     
16    54    Brett Wetterich       
17    30    Adam Scott     
18    2    Lucas Glover     
19    27    Rod Pampling     
20    18    Tim Clark     
21    15    Scott Verplank     
22    46    Camilo Villegas       
23    42    Zach Johnson     
24    72    Aaron Baddeley     
25    59    J.B. Holmes    

Hawkins also writes about how the playoff series will work and ends with this:

   • The size of the field for the season-ending Tour Championship has not been determined. There has been talk of reducing the playoff fields from 144 to 132, then to 120, then perhaps to 60 for the Tour Championship. The issue is likely to become a key topic of conversation at the PAC meeting.

Now that's funny! 144 to 132, then 120, then 60 for the Tour Championship. Oh what a thrilling playoff run it will be! Tune in tomorrow to find out if Hunter Mahan will hold off a charge from Frank Lickliter to see who gets into the Tournament Formerly Known As The Westchester Classic.

If the tour reduced the number of playoff qualifiers to 80, then eliminated 20 guys each week so that only 20 remained for the Tour Championship, we’d have the type of cut-throat, nerve-melting format that is needed. The proposed system is a giant compromise to the tour’s middle class, dangerously hyper and far too bloated to have the same stimulating effect as NASCAR’s year-end series, in which only 10 cars compete.

Great...oops, there's more.

Of course, no sports league rewards mediocrity better than the PGA Tour. It answers to a bulky constituency, diluting its product for the sake of short-sighted individual gain, failing to realize that the boat would move much faster with a lot fewer oars in the water.     

Sigh.

MacDuff's Post Byron Nelson FedEx Cup Points Standings

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MacDuff reports Brett Wetterich moved from 102nd last week to 54th with his win; Trevor Immelman was 102nd two weeks ago, 55th last week (and now 38th) in a mythical 2006 FedEx Cup points race. And for those Omar Uresti fans, he's 180th with 2137.5 points.

Do note that MacDuff has awarded the same points from week to week, with nothing special for majors or WGC's, while the tour is contemplating added extra points for winners of those majors and wannabe majors and other elite field events.
          
1    Mickelson    17509.37        11
2    Glover    15854.16        11
3    Singh    15221.87        12
4    Furyk    15212.5        10
5    C.Campbell    14637.5        12
6    Gf. Ogilvy    13762.5        9
7    Pettersson    13258.33        13
8    Appleby    12662.5        10
9    Toms    12409.37        8
10    Sabbatini    12366.66        10
11    Van Pelt    12015        13
12    Donald    12014.37        8
13    Weir    12009.37        9
14    Goosen    11775        8
15    Verplank    11612.5        9
16    Mayfair    11279.16        10
17    Oberholser    11075        10
18    T.Clark    10897.5        10
19    Olazabal    10875        7
20    Parnevik    10767.5        12
21    T.Woods    10659.37        6
22    Pernice    10650        8
23    Bohn    10288.33        10
24    Els    10037.5        9
25    Warren    10012.5        10
26    Gay    9787.5        10
27    Pampling    9772.5        9
28    Cink    9708.83        9
29    Lehman    9700        9
30    A.Scott    9625        7
31    D.Wilson    9512.5        10
32    Hoffman    9425        9
33    Funk    9262.5        9
34    Vn Taylor    9225        8
35    Ames    9162.5        7
36    Love III    9112.5        9
37    Choi    9087.5        8
38    Immelman    9000        7
39    Watney    8912.5        10
40    Purdy    8825        9
41    Jerry Kelly    8625        7
42    Z.Johnson    8475        8
43    Chopra    8267        10
T44    JJ Henry    8225        7
T44    Senden    8225        7
46    Villegas    8225        8
47    Howell III    8137.5        12
48    J.Ogilvie    8120        8
49    Franco    8087.5        8
50    B. Quigley    8037.5        7
51    G. Owen    7975        8
52    Harrington    7962.5        7
53    Garcia    7900        7
54    Wetterich    7850        6
55    Bertsch    7775        9
56    Rollins    7675        7
57    Estes    7537.5        7
58    Imada    7517.5        9
59    JB Holmes    7420.83        7
60    Branshaw    7325        8
61    Palmer    7316.66        8
62    Micheel    7275        8
63    Leonard    7258.33        8
64    J.Smith    7200        7
65    Herron    7170        7
66    Rose    7129.16        9
67    Sluman    7112.5        11
68    Waldorf    6987.5        8
69    Lowery    6975        9
70    Crane    6945        7
71    Jobe    6892.5        7
72    Baddeley    6850        7
73    Couples    6825        7
74    Olin Browne    6787.5        11
75    Beem    6768.75        8
76    RS Johnson    6767.5        7
77    Barlow    6712.5        8
78    Hart    6692.5        7
79    Langer    6541.66        8
80    Baird    6517.5        7
81    Fischer    6425        9
82    M.Wilson    6390        6
83    Calc    6342.5        10
84    D. Howell    6262.5        5
85    Pat Perez    6262.5        7
86    Bjornstad    6217.5        7
87    Allenby    6187.5        6
88    Poulter    6175        7
89    N.Green    6137.5        8
90    F.Jacobson    6075        6
91    Bryant    6050        6
92    B. Haas    6025        7
93    Br.Davis    5992.5        8
94    JL Lewis    5987.5        9
95    Bub Watson    5962.5        6
96    Sutherland    5900        8
97    S. Maruyama    5800        7
98    Flesch    5755        9
99    Gove    5737.5        6
100    DiMarco    5696.87        6
101    Slocum    5687.5        8
102    Atwal    5625        5
103    Gore    5525        6
104    J.Byrd    5500        4
105    Durant    5400        9
106    Curtis    5375        7
107    Gronberg    5312.5        5
108    Barron    5306.25        6
109    Leaney    5287.5        6
110    Stricker    5212.5        4
111    Westwood    5187.5        5
112    Sindelar    5187.5        7
113    Goggin    5125.25        5
114    Cabrera    5100        5
115    Matteson    5037.5        7
116    Lonard    4975        7
117    Maggert    4937.5        7
118    D.Clarke    4900        4
119    Triplett    4800        5
120    Kenny Perry    4762.5        5
121    Azinger    4762.5        7
122    Ws Short Jr    4612.5        9
123    Pavin    4587.5        5
T124    Geiberger    4575        7
T124    Sean O'Hair    4575        7
126    Mahan    4525        8
127    Dickerson    4450        8
128    Faxon    4362.5        7
129    Armour III    4275        5
130    Lickliter II    4250        5
131    Andrade    4207.5        7
132    Frazar    4187.5        6
133    Austin    4162.5        9
134    S.Jones    4030        7
135    Veazey    4025        5
136    Cook    4000        4
137    Ridings    3887.5        6
138    Kent Jones    3612.5        5
139    McCarron    3587.5        6
140    Kaye    3575        5

USGA Exempts Wie To Women's Open

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Their reasoning on Wie makes sense:

Wie, the 2003 U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links champion, has two third-place finishes in her first two LPGA tournaments in 2006. She finished third at the Fields Open and tied for third at the Kraft Nabisco Championship. In those two events, she has won $181,449, which would place her within the top 35 on the LPGA Tour money list if she were a full-time member of the Tour. In 2005, she made the cut in all four major events, with a second-place finish at the McDonald’s LPGA Championship and a tie for third at the Weetabix Women’s British Open. Were she a professional, she would have earned $697,144 to finish 12th on the 2005 LPGA money list. 

Hopkins Reviews Wentworth West Renovation

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John Hopkins in the Times reviews the redesigned West Course at Wentworth, which has been getting universally wretched reviews from devotees who have seen it.

It has regained some of its testing qualities and although there are a couple of places where Els’s enthusiasm might have overruled his sense of what Colt was trying to do, he has, overall, updated the 80-year-old masterpiece with reverence. Take the 6th and 8th holes, for example.
He proceeds to describe many strange sounding features, which I just didn't have the heart to copy and paste. Young children might be reading.

 

One had not realised quite how much Els knows or cares about the ground beneath his feet and the trees and shrubs that line the fairways. Spend time with him on a golf course and you understand not only that he has an appreciation of colour and beauty but that he has a devilish eye for where to position bunkers. This is not to mention details he has at his fingertips, such as the width of a fairway, the roll of a bunker, the borrow of a green.

One appears to be starstruck too. 

NCAA Regional Madness

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Golfweek's Ron Balicki tries to explain some of the absurdities in the NCAA golf committee's tournament selection setup, namely sending Top 5 teams Florida and UCLA out of their regions (and to each others regions).

Ryan Herrington is even less forgiving in his latest Golf Digest college golf blog post.

The regionals kick off Thursday, with 54 holes played at three sites: Sand Ridge, Lake Nona and Tucson National.