Washington Politics

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Thanks to Jim A. for the heads up on this Leonard Shapiro story on the Washington event, and the contradicting views of those involved in the event's demise move to the fall.

"Booz Allen made it clear from Day One about certain date limitations after the U.S. Open," Finchem said. "That more or less dovetailed with our attitude that continuing to move the tournament back and forth [before and after the Open] was not consistent with being able to stage the kind of event and to have continuity of sponsorship. The main thing, the main point of Booz Allen, is they did not want to play anything after the Open. That was troublesome for us."

Booz Allen chairman Ralph Shrader disputed Finchem's version of events. He said the last formal communication he received from the tour on dates for the tournament came in February 2005. He said the tour at that point offered a four-year sponsorship cycle that would have included three dates before the Open and a fourth after the Open, with the possibility of staging all four before the Open.

"That was the last formal communication we had with the tour," Shrader said. "At that point they also said they would finalize the plans to renovate the course at Avenel and they'd get back to us. They got back to me two hours before they said [in a news conference in January] they had moved the event to the fall.

"We did not have the opportunity to say no. I won't allow it to be perceived that Booz Allen cost the Washington area the event. We worked too hard and spent too much money [about $30 million over three years] to make it a first-class event. I'm not going to accept any blame for what happened. It's all in the tour's court."

 

Finchem On Furrowed Bunkers

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I'm fascinated by the part about the it not being interesting for spectators if the guys are getting up and down a lot...

Q. We haven't had a chance to talk to you since what happened with the Memorial with the bunkers. What were your feelings? How do you think the test case worked out? Is there anything that you regret in regards to most specifically maybe not notifying the players beforehand?

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: I think if you just stand back and look it from a strictly competitive standpoint, it's hard to argue with our team, our officials, who feel strongly on this point, Nicklaus and his people, who feel strongly on this point, which is that bunkers are hazards, and you play the ball as it lies. (Indiscernible) competitively play the hazard. There was a growing sentiment, I guess, that this may be fueled by (indiscernible) over the last 12 years, but there's a growing sentiment that bunker play has become too routine.

I hear it on two levels: one is that it's not competitively challenging enough, and number two, it's not interesting enough to the spectator if guys are getting up and down a lot. The problem with that thinking a little bit is, however, that they'll always get up and down.

If you stand back and look at Memorial, 2005, players got up and down I think 47% of the time on greenside bunkers. This year they got up and down 42% of the time. It's not a huge falloff.

It seems to me it's a different issue in the fairway bunkers. How you want the fairway bunkers to play in my mind is a different issue than the greenside bunkers.

This is all I think healthy, positive for the game, to have this discussion, to have this focus on variety in setting up a golf course, including raking of the bunkers. I think it's fair game. I think a lot of players feel that way.

Now, having said that, I was not comfortable in hindsight about the way we went about it. I think if we're going along with a certain philosophy for a certain number of years, it's only reasonable to inform the players in advance if you're going to make some major shift in that philosophy, allow them to take the steps, whether mentally or physically, in terms of practice or getting their heads together in terms of how to play.

Now, if there was one isolated thing, it might be one thing. But we have a pattern of setups. I think you need to tell the players. If we were coming to Avenel this week and we put every tee back 50 yards, I think we should tell the players that was happening. I think that's not unreasonable. I don't think there's anything unhealthy about having our players involved in discussions to that point. Not that they make the call, our rules team makes the call in most instances.
I don't have any problem with the application, the process. I think we should be a little bit more careful. Bottom line is, I think it was a reasonable, healthy exercise that stimulates discussion and focus on different parts of setup philosophy that can contribute to challenges that are good for the competition and also interesting to the spectators.

Finchem On Washington

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BoozAllen05.gifBoy, after reading the recent stuff from Carolyn Bivens, Tim Finchem's press conferences are so boring!

Still, it was a combative teleconference with the Washington scribblers on demise of the Booze Allen and the reconstruction of TPC Avenel:

With respect to how we got to the scheduling decision, as I indicated at the end of our television negotiations, when we released our schedule earlier in the year, we felt like it was important to give as many weeks to possible consistent dates. We could have gone to a continuation of a situation where some years we play earlier in the summer in Washington, like we played last year, and other years we could play later in the summer. The feeling was that we would continue to have an inconsistent execution of our product, probably the fallout of that being a lack of continuity with the title sponsor, which has certainly been the case there since Kemper left. We just didn't want to go down that road. We wanted to try something we felt like had a better chance of continual year in, year out success.

I've always said, that if you can't have consistent product execution, it's just not worth it. 

Q. Big picture question. How did the tournament in DC, one of the biggest markets in the nation, nation's capital, wind up on the outside looking in as far as the good dates go, and some tournaments in smaller markets, like the 84 Lumber in Greensboro, not nearly as well supported by the public as this one, how did they end up with the good dates and this tournament was on the out?

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: First of all, it's kind of hard to answer that question in the way you phrase it because you're assuming certain things about a "good date." We have dates on our schedule from the first week in January right through now the fall series to November. What's a good date for one market is not a good date for another market. What's a good date for a particular sponsor is not a good date for another sponsor in the same market. There are a lot of variables in terms of what goes into a date.

I think that the reaction to the date change in Washington has really been focused on one thing, and that is being in the FedEx Cup season, early summer, is preferable to anything else. I certainly wouldn't argue the point that being in the FedEx Cup season is an advantage. But I think the reaction perhaps has been a little bit overdone in terms of the negativity of the fall, as I said earlier.

The bottom line is that we were not comfortable, and frankly neither was Booz Allen, in continuing a date structure that has historically led to an event that would not be the kind of event on a number of levels that we'd like to see over the long term in the nation's capital. We wanted an opportunity to do something better. We thought consistent dates was part of that, but there are other factors.

This is a little weird....

TODD BUDNICK: Thank you very much for your time today, Commissioner.

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: Thank you, Todd.

Ladies and Gentlemen, if you need additional information, we're available to you. I know a couple of you have called in the last couple of weeks. I've deferred those conversations until I had an opportunity to make comments generally today. In the aftermath of this week's tournament, I'd be happy to make myself available or other people on our team. We'll have more to say about Avenel here very shortly after the public hearing.

In the meantime, I would encourage you to cover this week's tournament. We have a lot of great players there, good golf course, we're looking forward to a good competition. Thank you.

I would encourage you to cover this week's tournament? What else would they cover? 

Kostis: Leave The Courses Alone

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Peter Kostis is mad as hell and can't take the bastardization of courses via extreme setups anymore. Seriously! Here's a great rant from Kostis on Winged Foot's ridiculous lack of width.

Let these classic golf courses stand, as designed, and let these players play. Sure, grow some rough—just not the same amount for every hole. Sure, narrow the fairways—just not all of them the same way regardless of the hole's design.

"We don't want it to be a lay-down course"

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Gary Baines looks at the technology debate and talks to the tournament director at The International, who has some interesting things to say.

Winged Foot, a course dating back to 1923, proved anything but obsolete. It played plenty long (7,264 yards for a par-70 layout), but it was obvious that wasn't the main reason that the Open produced its highest score relative to par (5 over) since 1974.

Instead, the key to protecting par was narrowing the fairways and growing the rough so that the long bombers on tour have to think twice before ripping a driver as hard as possible on every hole over 300 yards. Winged Foot did that with many fairways 25-28 yards wide and rough as deep as 51/2 inches.
Oh yes, you can see where this is going.

 

Larry Thiel, executive director for the International tournament in Castle Rock, was at Winged Foot during U.S. Open week and liked what he saw in the way of a course set-up for the Open.

"I thought the set-up was fair," Thiel said. "You don't have to have 7,800-yard golf courses. The rough is supposed to be penal, and I don't think it was overly penal. If you can't drive the ball straight into a 30-35-yard-wide opening, you ought to do something to your game, downsizing your club until you can."

Of course that was the U.S. Open, a once a year event designed to be a unique test. The International, with its Stableford scoring meant to elicit heroic play, would never look to Winged Foot for inspiration, would it?

They don't want to see the players always swing as hard as they can from tees on par-4s and par-5s because the reward is so great and there isn't a big downside.

That's why even at Castle Pines the fairways have been narrowed over the years. That's undoubtedly part of the reason the winning scores at the International have come down in the last couple of years. After cumulative winning totals of at least 44 points in every year but one from 1997 through 2003, the winning numbers have been 31 and 32 the last two summers. Other things that have factored in are additional water hazards and the lengthening of the par-5 eighth hole.

As Thiel said several years ago, "We don't want it to be a lay-down course."

No, because God know, the ratings aren't low enough yet. We've got to get them into the NHL's league before we can rest  assured.

On many courses on the PGA Tour, players "can stand on the tee and whale on it," Thiel said this week. "We're guilty of it too. The players aren't penalized for errant shots. What you think is a monstrous hole is far from a monstrous hole for these guys."

Thiel estimates the fairways at Castle Pines are mostly 30-50 yards wide, which is generous but not as wide as they used to be.

"We've gradually worked them in," Thiel said.

Oh good! 

"We're always thinking about what makes the course more competitive and fair. We're trying to neutralize guys just stepping back and going at it as hard as they can without any fear."

Because the game is just so easy for those flat belly Tour boys! And then Thiel offers this from William Flynn:

"He believed a good shot should be rewarded and a bad shot penalized," Thiel said. "It's a pretty simple formula."

You know...eh forget it. 

Daly On The U.S. Open

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Thanks to reader Kevin for this story on the press conference to plug the 84 Lumber Classic (note Michelle Wie wearing one of those 84 red jackets). John Daly was asked about the U.S. Open:

Daly was asked if he, like Mickelson, would have used a driver on that fatal 18th hole.

"I probably would have hit an iron, believe it or not," said Daly, he of the prodigious driver. "A 2-iron and then an 8-iron would have been enough. I really didn't watch it."
And...
Daly and Gore agree the game doesn't need more tournaments played on Winged Foot or similar courses that produce only scores in black numbers. Ogilvy's winning score in the U.S. Open was 5-over par.

"I'm not a big fan of plus-5 winning a championship," Daly said. "It's not good for kids to watch guys hacking out of the rough because they start to think these guys aren't that good. I like it when 3-4-5 under wins it."

Crop Circles

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Doug Ferguson writes about the success of the USGA's new white drop area circles that were all over Winged Foot. And he also slips in a few gems at the end of his AP column.

NBC Sports paid the rights fee to broadcast the U.S. Open, which presumably gave chairman Dick Ebersol the right to walk down the middle of the fairway behind the final group in the third round...

And...

STAT OF THE WEEK: Geoff Ogilvy was never under par at any point in the U.S. Open.

 

An Important Victory For Golf

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golfobserver copy.jpgJohn Huggan says Geoff Ogilvy's win was an important victory for golf because the Australian has "the potential to be just the sort of wise, high-profile spokesman the professional game needs if it is to rescue itself from the technological black hole into which it is currently headed."

So many great quotes to pull here, so just read it. Some you've read before in other Huggan stories, but to see them all together really makes a powerful statement about Ogilvy's fresh take on things.

And after you read it, contrast it with this nonsense. 

Will The Real Open Doctor Please Come Forward?

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In John Garrity's "Rough Justice" story (SI subscription required) that recaps the setup, he talks to "Open Doctor" Rees Jones, who apparently never found time to explain to Garrity that he is not the doctor of Winged Foot! 

"The pros miss their shots right or left, not short or long," golf architect Rees Jones told me during the third round, "and this is one of the hardest courses in the world to recover from the sides." Jones, who stretched the A.W. Tillinghast-designed West course by 300 yards in preparation for this year's Open, laughed when I asked if he wanted credit for some of the hard-to-reach hole locations. "This may be one of the few courses where hole locations don't matter," he responded. "You could put the hole in the middle of the green, and the players still couldn't get close."
That must be news to Tom Fazio! Or wait, Tom Marzolf, the real visionary behind the doctoring. 
The golfers must have understood that, because there wasn't a lot of grousing at Winged Foot. "There's been some conversation about greens being a bit bumpy," USGA president Walter Driver acknowledged during a Wednesday-morning press conference.

A bit!

"These are poa annua greens, and given the weather and the softness, that's not to be unexpected." Television closeups showed fast-moving putts bouncing and slow-moving putts zigging when you expected them to zag. Woods called the greens "slow and bumpy." Darren Clarke, when asked if they were the worst major-championship greens he had ever encountered, said, "Yes, comfortably."

And...

That was music to the ears of Davis, Jones and Greytok. The USGA man, the course doctor and the greenkeeper spent most of Sunday watching their greens bake in 90° heat, but the poa putting surfaces -- though brown and crusty in spots -- held up. It was the golfers who wilted.

"Winged Foot was Winged Foot," Davis summed up, accepting handshakes and backslaps in the clubhouse. "I can think of a few minor things we might have done differently, but the course was wonderful. For me it was fun to sit back and watch it happen."

U.S. Open Ratings "Tank"

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The headline on this Media Life Magazine story: "Without Tiger, U.S.Open ratings tank."

Toni Fitzgerald writes:

Woods exited the tournament on Friday after shooting 12 over par for two days and missing the cut by three strokes. Thus Saturday’s Tiger-less third-round coverage of the U.S. Open on NBC averaged a 3.2 household rating, according to Nielsen overnights.

That was the lowest Saturday average since Nielsen began measuring the tournament in 1982. It was down 27 percent from the previous year, when Saturday averaged a 4.4.

Sunday’s final round averaged a 5.1, down 12 percent from a 5.8 the previous year, when Woods finished second. It was the lowest-rated final round in three years and second-lowest-rated since 1994.

NBC’s two-day average of 4.2, if it holds when final ratings are released later today, would be the worst two-day average since 1988 and tie for second-worst ever.