My Medinah Column

My Golfobserver.com column on Medinah is now posted, complete with photos and that lovely Beat the Bogey Man accompaniment.

PGA Clippings, Thursday Edition

SI.com's John Garrity gives us some sites and sounds with his first post on his blog. If this link to the individual post doesn't work (it did not work when I tried), go to the main blog page and scroll down to the bottom post.

Doug Ferguson offers a general preview and says not much has changed from 1999 where the talk centers around the length of the course, a Ryder Cup flap and a resurgent Tiger Woods.

Peter Kessler talks to Brad Klein about Medinah on GolfweekTV.com. Klein gives Rees Jones a B- for his rees-toration.

Golfonline/golf.com featured what seemed like a good idea--a video tour of Medinah in the Snoopy I blimp--but I got tired of hitting the play button after it would pause on its own.  The visuals aren't too stunning. Lots of trees and tents. There is no direct link, just go to their homepage and hit the video link.

Oh, and if you do check out the video, is it me, or do the tents err, chalets, look like they could be in play on 18 for a bomber who loses it right?

Rich Lerner shares a bit of this and that, and picks on Golf Channel cohort Dave Pelz, who, in defending his claims of Phil Mickelson being better than Tiger when his game is on, said he is "data man."

Dave Pelz says he looks at data in making the determination that when he’s on, Phil’s the best in the world. Has he seen the data that reads, Tiger 11 majors, Phil three?

Ed Sherman blogs about his Chicago Tribune Pelz story and about having Kelly Tilghman question his credentials in an apparent attempt to help Pelz squirm out of his remarks. Brian Hewitt admirably came to Sherman's defense and reminded Tilghman that Sherman is a veteran reporter. And he has the interview on tape. 

Lawrence Donegan reports that a possible greenkeeper strike has been averted at the Ryder Cup.

Donegan also writes about Sergio Garcia's return to the infamous 16th hole tree, a much more dignified treatment than the Golf Channel's lame "interview" with the tree. 

This unbylined AP story has the Tour's Bob Combs not exactly disputing Joe Steranka's complaint about the 2008 Ryder Cup date immediately following the FedEx Cup "playoffs." Combs says it's NBC's fault.

PGA Tour spokesman Bob Combs attributed the timing to NBC Sports, which televises the final three tournaments of the FedEx Cup and the Ryder Cup. He said the tour was able to negotiate a one-week gap between the Tour Championship and the Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup in five out of the six years, the exception being 2008.

"We agree there needs to be at least a week break," Combs said. "It really was an NBC television issue that could not be resolved. I believe everything is locked up from a television perspective."

Steranka was clearly annoyed, however, choosing his words carefully when he spoke of the goodwill between both organizations.

"That's not the spirit of the relationship," he said. "We don't agree on everything. But this is one thing they felt couldn't change, and we felt it needed to change."

PGA president Roger Warren said the '08 Ryder Cup was locked into Sept. 19-21 dates.

"We're concerned about the impact it might have on the players," he said.

Not to mention the psychological scars of having to play East Lake and Valhalla back to back. And isn't Bellerive in 08 too? Yikes.

Still, no one is sure how the FedEx Cup will unfold. PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem has said players likely will have to play the final four weeks to have any chance of winning the $10 million prize, although it's mathematically possible that Woods, Mickelson or another hot player could skip a week and still win the cup.

As much money as the players already make, some might even skip events to have their game ready for the Ryder Cup, which is on the same scale of a major championship.

Asked what he thought about the situation, U.S. captain Tom Lehman said "I want no part of this conversation."

Insomnia Issues?

Well, then just click on this link and read the annual state of the PGA press conference, where Roger Warren and Joe Steranka will do their best to knock you out.

Well, there was this from Steranka:

The result is that we think it is not only the only all professional event; it is the most professionally run event in all of golf, and we're very proud of that.

Uh, professionals would move tee times up with a bad weather forecast.

Nice job by the assembled inkslingers to ask if they were going to be sure to avoid a repeat of 2005's Sunday debacle. 

Update on 2006-08-17 02:01 by Geoff

I spoke too soon...there was news from this rivetting gathering. Serves me right for skimming after they start patting themselves on the back.

Q. Joe, are you concerned or are you taking a look at how the Ryder Cup will be affected in two years with the whole FedEx Cup scheme with regards to basically forcing players to play a lot at the end of the year and then a week off and then potential playing in a Ryder Cup? And also, have you spent time or energy on trying to quantify or measure the results of things like Play Golf America in regards to bringing money back to your membership?

JOE STERANKA: On the Ryder Cup question, yes, we've made it clear to the PGA TOUR we are not happy with the scheduling for 2008; that we were not able to achieve a one week gap between their big TOUR Championship and the Ryder Cup, which we don't think is good. We would like to have our players have one week off to kind of regroup. And, so, that is what it is. We'll deal with it. But we would prefer to have one week in between, and I think that's in place for the subsequent years, at least over the next six years of this current PGA TOUR agreement.

How players will react to the new PGA TOUR schedule remains to be seen, but we're going to watch it; if it has an impact on the Ryder Cup that we think we need to address further, we'll address it.  

Multi-platform Live Polling and Sweepstakes!

Get your cell phones ready, this week's PGA is going to be interactive. From the folks at TNT:

TNT and PGA.com join Txtstation to Launch Multi-platform Live Poll and Sweepstakes for the 88th PGA Championship

Golf fans Can Vote for a Chance to Win a PGA Golf Getaway via Wireless Text Message or at PGA.com

Turner Network Television (TNT) and PGA.com today announced that they have teamed up with Txtstation to launch a multi-platform viewer’s poll and sweepstakes in conjunction with the 2006 PGA Championship, live from Medinah (Illinois) Country Club. Each day viewers will be asked to interact using their cell phone or via PGA.com and submit their votes to poll questions, such as ‘the most dramatic PGA Championship moment’, or ‘the best PGA golfer in his prime.’ Votes can be submitted, utilizing Txtstation technology, either at PGA.com or via cell phone by sending a text message to short code number ‘88222’. The live poll and sweepstakes, beginning Thursday, August 17 and running through Sunday, August 20, is part of Turner’s multi-platform campaign in which coverage of the tournament will be simulcast across both television (TNT) and the internet (PGA.com).

“One of our goals is to lead the way in cutting edge interactive sports-related content,” said Lenny Daniels, senior vice president of sports production and new media, Turner Sports. “The PGA Championship Poll is a great example of how mobile marketing is impacting our culture. Adding the mobile component to PGA.com's poll enables them to creatively interact with the sports fans, as well as the broader viewing audience.”

Who's they?

This is fun...

“The Txtstation TV system continues to break new ground with interactive mobile marketing technology concepts, and we are very excited with the opportunity to combine real time entry points from both the PGA website, and mobile phones to drive television viewer response and ratings” said Matt Coleman, founder of Txtstation.

Oh yeah, ratings are just going skyrocket.

Real-time poll results will simultaneously be displayed during the TNT broadcast and on the PGA.com website. Each TXT message costs $.50. Most carriers are available; including Sprint Nextel, Verizon, T-Mobile, Cingular, Boost Mobile and Dobson.

Wow, this interactivity is a bargain. Oh but there are prizes.

Those submitting votes will be eligible to win a 3-day/2-night PGA Golf Getaway consisting of round trip airfare for two to Florida, two nights accommodations at the brand new Hilton Garden Hotel at the PGA Learning Center, a one hour golf lesson for two with Rick Martino, PGA Director of Instruction, training session for two on the Motion Analysis Technology by TaylorMade(“MAT-T”) system, two 18-hole rounds of golf for two at the PGA Golf Club and spending Cash. The winner will be announced by September 25.

This is fun...

About Txtstation

Txtstation is a leading mobile marketing company specializing in sports and entertainment. We allow broadcasters, event owners, sponsors and general media to communicate with viewers or fans directly through their mobile phones and other multimedia platforms.

Txtstation creates one to one ‘real time’ dialog with consumers at specific times and places such as events, concerts and live or pre recorded broadcast. Since 2000, we have been at the forefront of mobile interactivity designing ‘live’ integrated programs that harness the excitement of live events while delivering high consumer response and encouraging brand loyalty.

Remember the good old days when you would get a few synergy mentions? Poor synergy...it's time has passed.

PGA Clippings, Wednesday Edition

Golf World's map and accompanying Brett Avery text package has been turned into a cool interactive map. Well, unless you are Roger Packard and Roger Rulewich featured in your ASGCA jackets and remembered for redesigns since bulldozed.

For those of you in those church fundraising pools, Reuters has the latest WD's. (Grady, Elkington, Van Pelt, Hensby out, Byrd, Estes, Andrade and Warren in.)

Mark Garrod reports on Padraig Harrington donating his winnings to breast cancer research in honor of Heather Clarke.

Lindsey Willhite looks at the rough harvest at Medinah and contrasts it with the USGA's tiered rough at Winged Foot.

Reid Hanley talks to Billy Mayfair about his amazing recovery from cancer surgery.

And Rex Hoggard profiles Kerry Haigh and the usual comparisons to the USGA appear.

From the outset, Haigh's and the PGA of America's plans for preparing championship courses were ideological carbon copies.

"Our aim is for the golf course and the players to be the championship," Haigh says.

Unlike the U.S. Golf Association, whose fixation on producing a winning score around even par has led to several well-publicized miscues, Haigh and the PGA focus almost entirely on creating a "fair" test, regardless of the champion's score.

Fairway Bunkers Where You Want To Be

In his press conference today, Geoff Ogilvy was asked to compare Hoylake and Medinah, and made this point:

Hoylake was, keep it out of the bunkers; anything you could do to keep it out of the bunkers. The rough was actually not a bad spot to be. It was almost better than the fairways in a lot of situations because you had an angle, but you just had to keep it out of fairways bunkers. So that was the whole goal there. Here it's probably keep it out of the rough. Fairway bunkers are probably a good spot to be in a lot of situations.

It is interesting how many times at Medinah that fairway bunkers are placed where the player might have the best angle of attack or view of the green.

But readers of Robert Hunter's The Links will recall his remark that at St. Andrews, many of the best holes have bunkers exactly where you would like to drive to and approach from.

So, why is that praised at St. Andrews and not at Medinah?

The elimination of width, the high rough and overhanging trees play a significant role.

Also, the bunkers at Medinah are large, while the St. Andrews bunkers are mostly pot bunkers.

Therefore, the player can flirt with the pots, striking a shot in the general vicinity, with fairway all around. At Medinah, the bunkers are too large and surrounded by rough, eliminating the temptation to flirt with the sand to open up the ideal angle.

St. Andrews's pits encourage options and aggressive play, Medinah's fairway bunkers emphasize obedience and caution.  

Some people prefer the latter, especially in response to equipment advances. I happen to like the more democratic St. Andrews approach. 

Phil's Pre-PGA Press Conference

Defending PGA Champion Phil Mickelson had some fun with certain questions from the assembled scribblers.

Q. Obviously you use the week before majors to prepare. How disappointing was it last week to miss the cut, and has that affected your preparation for this week?

PHIL MICKELSON: Well, it's a different strategy going in. You know, I guess here's a great example of how Tiger and I prepare differently. He goes into the PGA Championship thinking that winning the British and winning the Buick Open is the best way, and I go in thinking that missing the cut is the best (laughter), and it gives me a week off to focus on my game. See, he didn't have that weekend off (laughter).

He actually took this question seriously, which provides an interesting contrast to Tiger's comments about hitting a lot of 3-woods and 2-irons:

Q. What's your plan as far as what you're going to hit off the tee this week?

PHIL MICKELSON: That's still undecided exactly, because I may go with two drivers again like I did at Augusta, I may go with one.

Really, the difference is the temperature. If it's warm enough where I can hit 3 wood on some of the other par 4s where I just want to get the ball in the fairway, then I will most likely just use one driver, and it would be the longer driver to take advantage of some of the par 5s and the long par 4s.

Medinah is such a long golf course that the extra length has come in handy.

Back to comedy hour. 

Q. If our research is correct, you and Tiger played together a grand total of one time in the majors, and that was at The Masters in '01, so Thursday and Friday will be kind of a rarity.

PHIL MICKELSON: It's amazing how those random computer pairings spit that stuff out, huh?

And as with Tiger's press conference, the longer it went, the worse the questions got.

Q. There are ten left handers on Tour this year. Do you have any thoughts on the factors that have led to more success for lefties than ever before?

PHIL MICKELSON: Yeah, that's a good question. I could try to make a joke of it, but I just don't have one (laughter). I think it's great. I think that it's nice that we have more on Tour because now we're getting more equipment opportunities on Tour, which is ultimately leading to more left handed equipment or better left handed equipment immediately to the consumer, as well. I think if we can keep that up and have equipment be accessible to everyone left handed, I think we might continue to see an increase. But it takes time, like anything.

And the finale...

Q. Not to harp on the pairings, but what's the difference for you playing with a guy like Freddie like at The Masters versus a guy like Tiger?

PHIL MICKELSON: Amount of conversation.

Tiger's Pre-PGA Press Conference

Tiger Woods managed to go the whole press conference without one "it's right in front of you" compliment of Medinah, and he also got through it without screaming "why!??!?!!" at the top of his lungs after some really wonderful questions. First, the golf course and course management stuff.

TIGER WOODS: Yeah, the golf course is absolutely fantastic. Obviously they've lengthened some of the holes and the greens have been redone, but the golf course is such a wonderful layout, wonderful shape to it. It's one of the neat golf courses we get to play. It's old and traditional and it's just very straightforward. I mean, you've got to hit the ball well and obviously control your irons into these greens in order to have a chance.

Q. A lot has been made about your driving accuracy. Do you think too much has been made about it? And secondly, playing a course like this, do you need, do you think, to hit driver a lot, or can you hit the 5 wood stinger and 3 woods and get away with it.

TIGER WOODS: I'm not going to hit that many drivers because it won't really allow me to. Most of the holes are doglegged. Obviously I'd have to take driver up over the top of these tall trees, and it doesn't make any sense. Yeah, I'm going to use it a few times, definitely.

But overall, just like it was back in '99, I hit just a bunch of 2 irons and a bunch of 3 woods here. Just because that's the way the golf course allowed you to play. You play to a lot of the corners and obviously fire from there. If you try to take on a lot of the corners or shape the ball around the corner, yeah, you can, but it's not always the easiest thing to do.

And with this next question, the affair sprialed rapidly. Where was Julius Mason to pull the plug!?!

Q. My doctor doesn't think that golf is a very physical game, but you have a lot of ups and downs here at Medinah. How would you rate it compared to other courses as far as a walk for four days?

TIGER WOODS: Not that tough. I mean, I think I'm in decent shape. Walking 18 holes shouldn't be that hard. Twenty more years before I can ride in a cart (laughter).

Some of the other questions Tiger faced...

Q. How old were you, and was there a specific shot or a specific tournament when you knew that you were good enough to play on the PGA TOUR?

Q. Best we can tell, the only other time you play with Phil in a major is '01 at The Masters. Can you think of another? Then I have a quick follow up.

Q. Do you find it more enjoyable to play with Phil in a major or at a Ryder Cup?

Q. You kind of made reference to it earlier, 20 years until you've got to ride in a cart. I am kind of curious where you see yourself at 50. Are you still trying to add to your major totals, or are you a soccer dad or what do you see?

Q. Is it okay to ask on the spectator side I know you are a great player, great champion. I've seen this like four times in a row, but no matter what, you are a great player. I remember there was a long time ago at The Masters, you won The Masters, and I think the channel 2 commentator introduced you, and when your father passed away everybody felt sorry. My question is going to be in the near future about a charity in the memory of your parents who have passed on?

I'm going take a guess here and say that question came from an uh, overseas writer. Or a drunk one.

Q. You look at some of the guys who have played you tough in majors, Rich Beem, Bob May, even Chris DiMarco would sort of fit into this category of guys who maybe they wouldn't be the first guys you would think of. This might be a tough question for you to answer, but do you think it's easier in a way for those guys who have lower expectations to play up to their abilities against you, as opposed to guys who are ranked second, third, fourth in the world?

Q. What do you think is your impact on golf in the last decade?

Q. What are you bowel movements like?

Oh, okay, I slipped that last one in. 
 

Ogilvy's Pre-PGA Press Conference

A few highlights from Geoff Ogilvy's sit down with the press:

I think it would be unfortunate if course setups kept getting longer and longer and longer. I think there would be better ways, I think, to combat how far had we hit it. The longer you make a golf course, the more you encourage guys to hit driver and hit it a long way.

Hoylake was a pretty stellar example of that. You've got guys scared to hit driver on fairways that were really quite wide and the rough was not a big deal. You've got the best golfer in history not wanting to hit driver. I think a lesson needs to be learned from Hoylake, and there's definitely ways to test the best golfers in the world in how far we hit it and discourage hitting it a long way, as opposed to a long golf course you encourage people to hit driver and hit it as long as they can. Hopefully lessons are learned from places like Hoylake and St. Andrews and they start looking at other ways, as opposed to tacking on another 30 yards to every par 4 and every par 5 on a golf course.

There's a par 3 out here over water that's a 2 iron. I mean, yesterday, 13, Tim Clark hit a wood and I hit a 2 iron, and I hit a 2 iron quite a long way, and that's to a front pin. That's a par 3. It's not fun to have a tee on a golf course that the members can't play. I mean, I'm sure there's 30 members at Medinah who can play that tee, but they probably don't want to because they'll probably just be dropping balls in the water all the time. It would be nice if 244 is the limit to a par 3 length, anyway.

And...

Hoylake was, keep it out of the bunkers; anything you could do to keep it out of the bunkers. The rough was actually not a bad spot to be. It was almost better than the fairways in a lot of situations because you had an angle, but you just had to keep it out of fairways bunkers. So that was the whole goal there.

Here it's probably keep it out of the rough. Fairway bunkers are probably a good spot to be in a lot of situations. There's a lot of overhanging trees, a lot of holes where you can be on the fairways like you can hit the left hand side of 16 and be on the fairway and have no shot. You want to just work out what sides of what fairways to be on and go from there because there's a lot of spots off the tee that you get up there and they're not very good, and there's a lot of spots that appear bad that are actually pretty good spots. That's what I look for, just to make the second shot as easy as possible, and that generally makes the rest of the hole play easier. Sometimes that's a long drive; sometimes that's a short one.

Poulter: "It sets up quite well to my eye"

The Chicago Sun-Times' Len Ziehm took criticism by Brad Klein (read here) and yours truly (someone actually listened to the Golfdom podcast!), and called on one of the game's heavyweights to defend Medinah.

''That's crap,'' Ian Poulter said. ''It's a great golf course. It has a lot of definition. It sets up quite well to my eye.''

Ah yes, the man who dresses in ways only Marty Hackel could love, wheels out the most self-important of architectural evaluations: it sets up quite well to my eye.

And if it didn't set up well to his eye, would that make it less of a course?

Seriously, it's time to talk about this definition nonsense, which was also touted by Rees Jones.

ANYONE can design a course with definition that "fits the eye" of PGA Tour players. That is not a huge compliment.

The trick is to create something that seems to fit their eye, but actually has becomes a little less defined the more one gets to know the course.

You know, like the Old Course, Augusta (well, before Fazio and Hootie did their thing), Riviera, Royal Melbourne, etc...

Creating definition is nothing more than a dumbing down process that eliminates uncertainty. However, elite tests of golf present more grey and less certainty, which is why they often have a way of separating the merely great from the elite.

Medinah is too black and white to be considered with the elite designs of the world. That doesn't mean the membership is bad, the conditioning is poor or Chicago is a bad town, or that Tiger Woods will not be rewarded for hitting great shots.

It just means that the No. 3 course could be more interesting. 

Pelz: Phil "has more imagination and a few more shots around the green"

Ed Sherman offers some quotes that should make Thursday's Tiger-Phil pairing that much chillier:

"When Phil's at his best, I'm thinking nobody can beat him," Pelz said.

Does Pelz's bold pronouncement include a certain player who has won 50 PGA Tour titles and 11 majors?

"You bet it does," Pelz said. "If Phil's long swing is good, his short game, I believe, is the best in the world. He doesn't have a serious weakness inside 150 yards.

"I'm not saying Tiger's short game is bad. He has a great short game. But I think Phil putts more consistently than Tiger does. He has more imagination and a few more shots around the green."

Pelz adds one caveat.

"The question is, how often is Phil on his best game?" he said.

PGA Clippings, Tuesday Edition

You can read a general preview story touting, "Glory's Last Shot," which the PGA of America slogan committee picked over "Golf's Fourth Major" and "It's A Major, Unlike The Players."

Golf World's Tim Rosaforte says the PGA is better than ever, citing the media's embrace of it as one of his key points. It clearly is the best major that won't budge on tee times just to give a 60 Minutes re-run a strong lead-in.

Ron Whitten looks at the various incarnations of Medinah's 17th, none of which were lousy enough to keep the course out of Golf Digest' s Top 25 in America.

Whitten also writes about the club's early history and the shady fellows who founded it, with help from Medinah club history author Tim Cronin. And best of all, Whitten gets out of having to review the course in detail.

Mark Garrod considers what it'll take for Tom Lehman to play on the Ryder Cup team (a win this week).

Chris Starkjohann has withdrawn for personal reasonsm, messing up pool picks across the land. Actually, it's to play in the Champions Tour event in Seattle(!?). Harrison Frazer Frazar gets his spot, reducing the field by one club pro.

SI's Alan Shipnuck returns to his online roots and answers reader hate mail about his Ryder Cup picks, Tiger and his Hoylake coverage.

Doug Ferguson examines Medinah's record length and asks players if it's really playing that long.

Arron Oberholser, who has average length off the tee, played the back nine and it was about all he could handle.

"It felt like 4,000 yards," Oberholser said.

He was close - the back nine measures only 3,822 yards.

"I wonder if they're trying to do that?" he continued, alluding to the PGA Championship having the longest major championship course three times since 1999. "If they are trying, they have accomplished it quite magnificently."

And this from Furyk...

"It's kind of like moving to a new neighborhood where everybody wants to build a bigger house than the last guy who built one," Jim Furyk said. "Eight thousand? It will happen someday. I'll be long gone and retired. I have a feeling they will probably tone things back probably quicker than we'll get to 8,000 yards. But I would never rule it out."

Golf World's John Hawkins profiles Geoff Ogilvy, but doesn't let Ogilvy do enough talking.

And finally, Golfonline is offering the chance to mail in questions to Ogilvy. I think you can do better than the first three samplers they provided, which hopefully won't be asked:

-Do you feel indebted to Phil Mickelson?

-Have you paid for a meal since June?
-How do you keep your pants so clean?

"We weren't out to make it just dog-long"

Stan Awtrey looks at the latest renovation at Atlanta Athletic Club's Highlands Course, which is hoping to give Medinah a run for most pre-major redos. The Highlands hosts the PGA in 2011, and I know you just can't wait to see it again.

"We wanted to make the course more spectacular," director of golf Rick Anderson said. "We wanted to make the holes more challenging, with some strategy to them. We weren't out to make it just dog-long."

With Highlands in need of major irrigation work, the Athletic Club opted for a major facelift. There's different grass, more bunkers and more water. And, of course, it's longer.

"We wanted to see how many things we could fix at one time," said Anderson, who was only half-kidding.

Superintendent Ken Mangum, the director of golf courses and grounds, was in charge of the project, which began in March. He had an operating budget of more than $4 million.

Can we add that $4 million to the class action suit that the world's golf courses should file against the USGA and R&A to recover expenses?

New championship tees were built on 11 holes. Among the most dramatic is at No. 15, a par 3 which played 227 yards when Toms made a hole-in-one there five years ago. The hole can now be pulled back to play 260 yards.

That's a big yes.

Many fairway bunkers were moved, and others were constructed, to catch up with the pros' ability to fly the ball 300 yards. At No. 6, for example, fairway bunkers have been extended all the way down the right side to the green.

Bet that looks pretty.

Water is more evident, too. A pond was added to the left of the green at No. 6; it draws short shots to it like a magnet. A new back tee at No. 8 requires a 290-yard drive to fly the pond, for those brave enough to take the risk option.

You can now see the water from the 18th tee, which wasn't possible until the alterations pulled the pond 10 yards farther to the right and 10-to-12 yards closer to the tee box.

"I know when I can see the water, it bothers me more," Mangum said.

The 18th, already one of the most famous finishing holes in golf, can now play 528 yards. It will probably play as a par 4 in 2011.

Only 528?

Anderson and Mangum stressed that the changes were needed and would have been made regardless of whether the PGA was returning in 2011. They said the Riverside course, which was redone with zoysia fairways in 2003, had grown to be a favorite with members, and it was drawing more play than Highlands.

Can't imagine why.

"It was more 'Back to the Future'"

The Hartford Courant's Bruce Berlet talks to Rees Jones about his rees-design of Medinah.

"There were substantial changes, and Tiger and Phil [Mickelson] noticed them when they played practice rounds since it's only seven years since the last major was there," Jones said. "They said they liked them because they can visualize shots better and probably execute them a little more efficiently with the blindness taken out and the bunkers in play in the right spots on the fairway and closer to the greens."

Did they now? 

Jones first viewed the course in 1999, and the project was approved in 2001 and renovations made in '02. He likened the overhaul to what he did at The Country Club in Brookline, Mass., for the 1988 U.S. Open. He might do more to Medinah before the 2012 Ryder Cup.

"The club is very proud of its heritage and was just trying to keep up with the times," Jones said. "They had a combination of different architects and wanted to consolidate the design style. We took out everything that had been built in the last 20 years and rebuilt the greens as they looked 50 years ago.

"It was already a pretty long course, so we didn't want to stretch it too much. It was more `back to the future,' and now it looks older and more classic."

Oh yeah, those bunkers just scream Wadsworth...errr...MacKenzie. 

"Will Golf's Integrity Stand Test?"

Damon Hack in the New York Times looks at the possibility of steroids or beta blockers in golf and offers some interesting perspectives.

“Up until this point in time, I would have said it is a fairly laughable question,” Joey Sindelar, a seven-time PGA Tour winner, said in a recent interview. “The guys in my era weren’t workout guys. It didn’t used to be such a brute strength thing. But we’re getting some serious 6-1 baseball-player-type guys. There’s probably going to be a time when you’re going to look at guys and say, ‘Well, sooner or later somebody is going to cross that line.’ ”

And why love him, Joe Ogilvie:

“We market the long ball,” said Joe Ogilvie, a PGA Tour professional and member of its policy board. “We market the guys who hit it 300 yards. If that’s your message, and people see that beginning at the high school level, I think as a tour it is very naïve to think that somebody down the line won’t cheat.

“As it gets more popular and the zeroes continue to grow to the left of the decimal point, I don’t think there is any doubt that there will be cheaters,” Ogilvie added. “Golf is all about length, and the U.S.G.A., the P.G.A. of America and, to a certain extent, the PGA Tour are perpetuating it by blindly lengthening every golf course. It doesn’t seem like they have a whole lot of rhyme or reason.”

Now Joe, we know there's plenty of rhyme and reason: because it's so much easier than altering the ball! And the side effects are wonderful too. Possible drug usage, adding misery to the game, inflating costs. It's all good!

“Maybe I’m naïve, because I have a hard time believing that anyone would cheat, I really do,” said Tom Lehman, the 1996 British Open champion and the 2006 United States Ryder Cup captain. “The culture of golf is such that you play by the rules.

“If you read in the paper that Tom Lehman just won the U.S. Open and he just took a drug test and he’s been using the clear for the last two years, the guys out here would vilify me,” he added, referring to the steroid tetrahydragestrinone. “It’d be over. For that reason alone, almost, it would keep guys clean.”

But there is no drug test, so you don't have to worry about being villified...

Commissioner, care to dance?

“We are monitoring the situation very carefully and we are making sure that players understand that steroids and other illegal substances are in violation of the rules of golf,” Finchem said. “It’s no different taking a steroid to prepare for a golf tournament than it is kicking your ball in the rough.”

Oh, good one! Though I like David Fay's baseball metaphors much better. Of course, they don't work too well on this subject.

“We don’t think it’s prudent to test just because somebody someplace thinks all sports should test,” Finchem said. “Having said that, if some pattern emerged or, candidly, let’s say that didn’t happen, but it just got to the point that no sport was considered clean, then we would have to take aggressive action.

“If we did test, we would not fool around. We would test aggressively and effectively. We would convince people that we are what people think we are in 2006. If we did it, there would be no hesitation on the part of the players. I would predict 100 percent participation.”

Hack offers this:

While there is no evidence suggesting steroid use on the PGA Tour, two players — Jay Delsing and Joe Durant — said they have heard of competitors taking beta blockers, which are often prescribed for heart ailments but can also be used to combat anxiety.

The extent of beta blocker use — and its effectiveness — has been debated for years on the PGA Tour. In 2000, Craig Parry of Australia said that three players, whom he did not identify, had won major championships during the 1990’s while using beta blockers.

His comment prompted Nick Price, a three-time major champion who took beta blockers during the 1980’s because of a family history of high blood pressure, to say that the drugs hurt his golf game by making him sluggish. (Price has said he won his three major titles after he stopped taking beta blockers.)

Durant, also a member of the PGA Tour policy board, said the anecdotes he had heard about beta blockers are similar. “I have heard of guys taking them and saying that they didn’t help them at all,” he said.

Delsing added: “As an athlete, you want your senses. It would be like, ‘I’m calm, but I don’t know where I am.’ ”

These folks really need to read up on the latest anti-depressants!

Dr. Linn Goldberg, a professor of medicine at the Oregon Health and Science University and a spokesman for the Endocrine Society, said beta blockers could affect people differently, but that they are often used to combat a person’s adrenaline flow.

“You can see that happen with someone putting, or shooting archery, or a doctor using it if before giving a talk,” Goldberg said in a telephone interview. “It does steady your nerves because it combats adrenaline when you get nervous or your palms get sweaty and you have a crowd of people around. It mellows you out.”

When Finchem was asked if he was concerned about players using beta blockers on the PGA Tour, he said the Tour’s research found that beta blockers did not help golfers. He said the Tour had anecdotal evidence from three or four players.

“At least two of those players were on prescription, Nick Price being one,” Finchem said. “They had such a negative impact that they saw a dilapidation that made it very difficult to play the game.

“We have never had much of an indication by players that there is use, and in the isolated incidents we’ve seen, it has been as much as a negative as anything.”

Haven't we worn out this Nick Price anecdote enough? How about a study? You know, after the ball study wraps up sometime this decade?

When Woods was asked for his opinion on testing, he answered the question with his own set of questions. “I think we should study it a little bit more before we get into something like that,” he said. “Where does it start? Who does it? Who is in control of it? What are the substances that you are looking for?”

Sindelar, too, said he recognized the complexity, but he also acknowledged the time for testing may be near.

“It’s at the Olympics, it’s everywhere,” Sindelar said of steroid use. “That’s what goes through my mind. If you said you needed a name, I couldn’t say, yes, it’s that guy. But if it’s everywhere, what that says to me is, why do we think golf is insulated?”

Because it is Joey. Isn't that good enough, because we say so?