Tiger And Mercedes

/

In yesterday's Target press conference, The Golf Channel's Brian Hewitt asked Tiger Woods:

Q.  Any decisions yet or even leanings towards Mercedes and in early January?  I know you don't have to commit until the week before.

TIGER WOODS:  I haven't really looked forward to that.  I'm just looking forward to actually playing this event and then going skiing and just getting away and actually having some time off and then basically evaluate. 

Uh, that's 18 days away. Haven't really looked forward to that? That's Tigerspeak for "I'm not playing." 

Target Practice

/

Tuesday's practice round at Sherwood was well attended by media eager to hear Tiger Woods address their questions in advance of the Target World Challenge.

I have to say it was the most boring Tiger press conference I've sat through, though there was one bizarre-bordering-on-awkward moment when Golf Magazine's Cameron Morfit asked a question and Tiger either didn't understand it, or just didn't like it.

Q.  You mentioned your skiing; are you a Black Diamond skier these days?  Black Diamond, the hardest?

TIGER WOODS:  It's not the hardest.

Q.  Double Black?
   
TIGER WOODS:  Mmhmm.  (Laughter).

Well it was more like (lots of long silence), mhm and (awkward laughter) at the strangeness of it all.

Naturally, I would not drive all the way out there with asking something, so here was my softball that actually seemed to stump him before he launched into his standard (and wonderful) diatribe on modern setup and design. Forgive my lousy phrasing...

Q.  Bobby Jones and Jack Nicklaus both when they did their design work, built dream courses or home clubs that hosted tournaments, do you see yourself taking on some sort of a project like that that's maybe your own concept for a course, and maybe it's a club just for your friends; and if so, what kind of course and place would it be?

TIGER WOODS:  Yes, and hopefully one day.  Obviously you have to get the right situation where you can do that, you can go ahead and design what you think is how golf should be played.  For me, I always believe in golf should have open front.  You should be able to utilize the ground and don't take away the short game.  I play golf courses on Tour and we all see it, miss the green, automatic lobwedge, hack it out of the rough.  That to me is not fun golf.  Fun golf is Pinehurst.  Fun golf is playing links golf.  Fun golf is learning to how to maneuver the ball on the ground and give yourself options.  One of the hardest up and downs is when you have options.  You have so many different ways to play and you see a lot of pros really mess up easy shots because they have so many different options.  I think that's taken away from the game of golf now, and ridiculous at how the modern golf courses are designed, that's how they are designed is they have taken that option away and that's too bad.

"The FedEx Cup, specifically how a player wins it, how a player not only survives but thrives on it."

/

Now it's Ric Clarson's turn to wow us with multiple platform references. From the PGA Tour Communciations Summit: 

RIC CLARSON:  We wanted to spend a little bit of time telling you about the FedEx Cup, specifically how a player wins it, how a player not only survives but thrives on it.

Now, there are several of you in the audience I'm sure who have seen this presentation before, and the only thing I'm going to tell you is you probably didn't know all the words to Margaritaville the first time you heard it, and we would like you to know how the FedEx Cup is going to work because that is our new platform.

What a metaphor! Uh the difference between Margaritaville and the FedEx Cup? One conjures up images of the good life, the other induces naps.

I do think it's important to hear about this as a platform, and each of the stakeholders that are in the audience this morning, when we go through this, think about it as it pertains to your constituency and how that connects.

I read this article in the Wall Street Journal about how profits launch from platforms. 

Oh yeah this is fun:

It said, "A couple years ago, in the days before YouTube™, a short video website spread like wildfire on the internet.  It showed the fourth richest man on the planet, Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft, doing a crazy jig on stage at a conference screaming 'developers, developers, developers.'  Truer words have never spoken  or repeated.  Without developers, Microsoft would not possess its desktop monopoly or billions of dollars in profits."

It goes on to say, "Those developers are the little platoons of software programmers and product inventors who turn operating systems like Microsoft Windows, internet browsers, game devices and much else, into something more than themselves, into platforms upon which a whole economic ecosystem rests."

So all of us in this room, we're actually part of an ecosystem, and we have developed a new schedule, a new season, something called the FedEx Cup competition, and if we all execute against it, this will be a platform for all of you in the room, players included, that is going to take us into a new era in golf.

This is YOUR platform. YOUR ecosystem. Embrace it. Sell it. Hump the living daylights out of it whether you think its worth it or not.

When you think about some of the progress that other sports have made and how they've done it, you realize quickly that the PGA TOUR and golf as an industry could not, cannot and will not hold still.  We must be able to compete with a new product.

But if the game is healthy... 

So a new schedule, a PGA TOUR season, 44 weeks, a new season, FedEx Cup season that gives us new meaning.  This will be a generational change.  This is not going to be turn on the switch and everybody gets it from the start.

But it's a new performance measurement.  We've had Player of the Year in the past, we've had Leading Money Winner in the past.  But this is a defined, onthefield performance measurement over a 37week period of time and a sevenweek Fall Series right behind it.

This gives us a onceinalifetime opportunity, and all of us in this room are involved.  This is why we are referring to the FedEx Cup as a new era in golf.  I hope today's communications summit is indicative of the determination we have to go into a new era.

Okay that's enough of that.

Media, I was talking to Craig Dolch last night and I know personally I'm thrilled to have a true season to market against.  It's easier, it's logical, there are better points during the year to garner attention for the sport, and just like those of you in the media who cover other sports with a defined season, we think this is a huge enhancement for you to cover the PGA TOUR and our new season in the FedEx Cup points race.  More quality story lines.

Oh yeah. Uh huh. Right!

We're delighted that you're here because this is an important day for you to absorb this information.

I gave a presentation to Golf 20/20 because the stakeholders who run golf clubs are important stakeholders.  They're influencers.  So we've reached out to just about everybody we could think of.
This has also given us the platform to sync our media internally.  We're getting a lot better at our messaging and how we do it through all the different media channels through a collective effort.

A platform to sync our media internally. Now that's a keeper!

Our communications phases, we started a tease campaign in July, we've just moved into a prelaunch and merges right into the launch campaign that will take us through the first three to six weeks of the season.  Then we get into the season itself, the playoffs and the Fall Series.

The tease to the pre-launch to the launch. Such seamless MBAspeak marketing.

Time to dim the lights and watch some PSAs...

We're just trying to get the FedEx Cup name out there and that tag line "A New Era in Golf."  Well, did it work?  When Golf World wrote an article after THE TOUR Championship entitled "The End of an Era," we were so pleased with that because we do plan on definitely going into this new era.

And I'm sure it just warms the heart of Golf World's headline writer that he helped brand the FedEx Cup.

This is going to take us into what we call our player desire spots.  We've used some historical footage, again, to appeal to the core and connect this past history to what will be new history. 

And...

Nothing is more believable than hearing it from the player himself, so we have a collection of player desire spots that we've done, and now we've started a little bit of seriousness and historical perspective.  Now we're going to use a little bit more humor to tell the passion of players.  (Video shown.)  

Player desire. Is that an oxy...eh forget it.

Oh This Communications Summit Is Warming Up Now

/

Wow, just powered through 20 more pages and the fun has begun! A trusted writer told me to keep plugging away because I would read PonteVedraSpeak like I've never read before! Oh was he right.

But that'll come tomorrow. It's a slow news week. Got to milk this treasure trove while I can.

So, does anyone know what Phil Mickelson's agent is talking about here? 

STEVE LOY:  I think we discount the fact that these players as golf demands don't have structure already.  I can guarantee you that as agencies we're always trying to create better processing. 

 Is that like, photographs?

I think the Tour right now in the organization and the added resources you're providing are tremendous values.  Having this summit is a tremendous value.  But I think the better idea is that we find alternatives for conduct and for value that we can help promote and upgrade our Tour publicly.
Jagsheemash!
Frankly, I've got to tell you, TV does a better job than print in the fact that they utilize things that are going on in these players' lives, and it comes mostly from our Tour as a resource and their charities and their goodwill and their services, and I think if we start telling some of those lifestyle stories without having to demand their time to do it based on resources we have available to us, not just our stars but all of our Tour as we have the opportunity to tell it in a vignette during the time that player is on a high for that week, then we create better Tour, better products, and we don't have this drastic demand for how do we get more facetoface time with the people that are driving the Tour.

That's right, TV has fog filters and schmaltzy background music that print will never have.

I know that Mr. Finchem is always focused on trying to build more stars. 

 Mr. Finchem?

We all are.  If we all contribute to finding alternative plans to help drive that, we're going to have more access to the top players because they don't fill the tremendous demand that they are now.  I'm not taking their side on this; I'm just saying structure is good, but alternative plans are just as important in the balancing act.

Duly noted.

A Communications Summit Rebuttal

/

A golf writer offered this in response to feedback (here, here and here) from the PGA Tour's Communications Summit:

The idea that the players are more guarded because they've gotten burned? What rubbish. That is the agents speaking. Burned by whom, and in what way? Do they mean burned in that they're subjected to criticism occasionally? Virtually every print journalist I know carries a tape recorder, so they're not getting burned by being misquoted. Then there are the ubiquitous transcripts. Again, not misquoted. And what are we burning them on? We're only writing about a very small handful of players on a regular basis anyway. Who is that isn't getting a fair shake? That's complete nonsense. As is the idea that young players are more in tune with new media than old. I'm a fan of new media and realize that old media is endangered, but you've been around professional golfers -- they're not in tune with anything. I guarantee they haven't given a single thought to old media vs. new media. More nonsense is the statement that players think writers have become stale, and the content is not creative and innovative. Are you kidding me? If collectively they listened to themselves speak and be interviewed, how pray tell do you liven that up?

One more thing: How many players, other than Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, ever get 30 seconds, or 15 seconds, or 5 seconds of an interview on Sports Center? Seems to me they're better off getting 900 words in a newspaper or magazine than nothing on ESPN. Come on.

Letter From Saugerties, December 11, 2006

/

Frank Hannigan served the USGA for 28 years, including six as Executive Director. He weighs in with another letter (previous editions can be read here, here and here). This time he writes about the USGA's decision to sign on American Express as a corporate sponsor, and reveals that the decision may have been influenced by a significant and unprecedented financial loss in 2006. 

Here are some, if not all, of the details of the recently announced commercial arrangement between the United States Golf Association and American Express, the first overt commercial sponsorship deal ever made by the USGA.

What’s in it for the USGA is the ability to bombard a culled American Express mailing list of more than 1 million with junk mail appeals. The recipients will be implored to become USGA “members.”

There will also be an email effort -  spam.    

The USGA claims it now has 800,000 individual “members” who have nothing to say about the entity to which they allegedly belong. They pay $l5 in the first year, $25 thereafter, and there are a surprising number who, out of the goodness and naivety of their hearts, send in amounts greater than $25.  This results, says the USGA, in an annual net of $2 million, making it the only significant profit center other than the US Open.   The Open’s profit is enormous but unrevealed.     
                    
The new venture, says the governing body, has nothing to do with money.  It is rather an “outreach” program designed to make more golfers understand the Rules of Golf, learn how to properly repair divots and yearn to acquire USGA Handicaps.

It could happen that the project will result in a big jump in USGA “members.”  Additional profit would be regarded as an accidental by-product of the “outreach.”   Remember:  it is NOT about the money.

Personally, I have regarded the USGA as excessively wealthy for a long time.   

However, for 2006 the USGA reports will show an operations loss of $7 million, i.e., it spent $7 million more than it took in.

I find that amazing since the gross revenue for a US Open is more than $50 million, or about what a small major league baseball team like Kansas City takes in for a full season.   

The USGA, which reveals about its finances only what it is required to do legally, in this instance cites a growing number of annual grants or gifts.

During 2006 there were 201 grants totaling $4,842,855.   Of that total more than $2 million was given to the First Tee, the PGA Tour charity.  The USGA has been by far the largest donor to the First Tee.   (May any cynic be struck down who avers that the USGA’s generosity to the First Tee is a means of tamping down any Tour criticism about the size of US Open prize money which, at $5.5 million sounds like a lot but in reality is less than 15% of the gross compared to the 50% that goes to players in unionized team sports.)   

This grant program was initially pointed at increasing the number of golfers.  But when that didn’t work (golf has been essentially flat in terms of number of rounds played for  many years) the propaganda for the grants was shifted toward education – especially when it comes to exposing  children from low income backgrounds to the inestimable moral virtues of golf.

Despite the one-year operations loss, nobody in Far Hills is going to debtors prison since the USGA investments yielded a jump in value of about $25 million this year to offset the $7 million loss in operations.   The total book value of USGA investments is on the northern side of $250 million.

As for American Express, it became all warm and cuddly about the USGA after a divorce from the PGA Tour.  American Express had been a “title sponsor” of a tour event but got bent out of shape when offered what it regarded as unsuitable dates and locations for the future.

Now it will receive from the USGA:

1. The USGA’s own mailing list, piddling in Amex terms, but an effective way of getting more cards out there.

2.  A day or more when some customers might play the year’s US Open course.  Next year the USGA essentially owns Oakmont for spring outings for four days.   This is part of the basic arrangement whereby Oakmont receives a rental fee of an estimated  $7 million.

3.    The right to sell an unspecified number of US Open tickets to its cardholders even though the 2007 Open had earlier been described as sold out.  The lucky buyers will also have access to something called The  Trophy Club.  Its portals can be breached only by those who pay for the privilege.  They then have the right to purchase food and beverages at serious prices.  The USGA keeps about 30% of the cost of food and drink.

A man I know who wants tickets for business reasons jumped in quickly and was able to buy 3 such tickets (on his card, of course) good for Wednesday through Sunday.  The total price:  $1803.35 – which does include handling and mailing..

4.  As yet undetermined exclusive rights with respect to other USGA championships.   The USGA says it might offer those who buy tickets to the Women’s Open by way of American Express a Rules of Golf seminar on a roped off section of the course. The rank and file presumably would not be allowed to listen in.

5.  General good will because of its relationship with the USGA which has not bestowed its  blessings  on Visa or MasterCard. This is being triangulated in ads featuring Tiger Woods who gets a ton of money for endorsing American Express.

The USGA says this is not to be regarded as its one and only deal with commercial sponsors.    Example:  An airline could be induced to offer sharply reduced fares for USGA staff and committee travel.   This could be thought of as bridging the gap between those USGA volunteers who now have to pay for travel and the royalty at the summit of the USGA who have occasional access to a USGA-leased jet (speaking of ways to lose $7 million).

The USGA, in my view, has been totally re-defined starting in or about 1995 into an entity that ducks conflict but needs badly to be loved.   It is driven excessively by personality cults.  The primary winners during the last 10 years have been current President Walter Driver and his predecessor Fred Ridley.

Meanwhile, I muse about Howard Clark who served on the Executive Committee during the 1980s.    Clark was CEO of American Express and perhaps as much responsible as any person for making this a nation of little plastic cards.

Howard Clark, trust me, would not have bought into a USGA that thought it needed to do deals with his company. He would have understood that the selling of soul is part of such a process and it’s not worth the price.

And Yet Even More From The Communications Summit

/

Well I'm through page 11 of the 50 page PGA Tour Communications Summit and I now realize that in my last posting that I missed this absolutely priceless line from Barb Kaufman:

Finding number one, and this came from the media contingency.  The majority of the media felt that the Tour media outreach efforts are sufficient, which is like, okay, but in need of improvement.  The blocking and tackling is good, just getting in there and trenching, but quite frankly needed more creativity and a little more sizzle on the steak moving forward.

Remember, I simply copy and paste this stuff. I only wish I could make something like that up.

The event was then turned over to Tim Urstom, who moderated a Q&A.

Let me begin by just introducing the panel to you.  First of all, we've got Lance Barrow from CBS Sports (tepid applause), come on up; we've got James Cramer from the PGA TOUR (even more tepid applause); Doug Ferguson from the Associated Press (outright hissing); Brian Hewitt from The Golf Channel (violently loud booing); Clarke Jones from IMG (even louder booing); John Kaczkowski from the BMW Championship (cries for the Western Open's return); Sid Wilson from the PGA TOUR (standing ovation).  Come on up, guys.

Just wanted to make sure I hadn't lost you yet.

This exchange was interesting and had to earn Doug some dirty looks from the assembled suits:

DOUG FERGUSON:  I don't know if this answers your fruit question, but I think where you need to head is something that Fred Couples said a couple years ago.  I could repeat it but we'd be here all day and you probably wouldn't understand it anyway.  He was on the range at Sherwood about two years ago, and he was talking about whether the Giants were going to get to the playoffs, whether the Vikings are going to make a trade, whether the Mariners were going to make a trade, something with hockey, back to the Giants, back to the Vikings.  Then he hit a few more balls, looked up, and he said, "Do you think guys in our locker rooms are talking about us the way we're talking about them?  Probably not."  And I think that's where golf needs to get.  I don't think we're there.

People in this room may think it's a big deal, but when you look at the mainstream, I think it's still a good sport.  Debate is healthy.

Sometimes I think others might see it as controversy, as negative.  It's not always negative.  Debate sometimes is very healthy.  Sometimes things get taken too personally.  The bottom line is you want conversation, you want to be part of the conversation, and that I think is where you need to head.

I don't think that was the purpose of this summit, Doug.

No, this was a gathering to learn how we can promote the product better. Debate? Please. That's interesting. Interesting is dangerous. It causes people to think and could disrupt their consumption patterns. Get with it!

Huggan On Turner

/
John Huggan profiles Greg Turner's attempts to revitalize New Zealand golf and in particular, the development of young players.
Long frustrated by the virtual abandonment by New Zealand Golf - equivalent of the Scottish Golf Union - of his young compatriots the minute they turn professional - and, in turn, their consequent inability to make any sort of impact in any kind of numbers - the 43-year-old former European Tour player, who won 12 times around the world during an 18-year career highlighted by his role in the winning International side at the 1998 Presidents Cup, has devised an initiative named Wedge - Winning Edge - in an attempt to smooth what can be a traumatic transition from the amateur ranks.
And...
"Any high-performance programme is about producing world-class players," says Turner, whose elder brothers Brian and Glenn represented their country at hockey and cricket respectively. "Which is different from producing only world-class amateurs. My original expectation was that, once that subtle difference was made clear to New Zealand Golf, the irrefutable logic of it all would get them on board."

Well, naive is the word that comes to mind. "Things just don't happen that way in golf. Or, as it turned out after I talked with my advisory board, in many sports. By their very nature, sporting organisations are built on ancient foundations, and have layer upon layer of bureaucracy. They change course like a super-tanker."

All of which left Turner to battle on alone, having also gained little encouragement from the New Zealand PGA. "The PGA was no help either," he shrugs. "It exists to service the needs of club professionals, not to help young players make it in the game. Which is why the tours broke away from the PGAs in the first place. There are irreconcilable issues there.

"Having said that, the PGA should have got involved. At the end of the day, their members are best served by New Zealanders winning things like US Opens. More people are going to be buying sweaters and paying for lessons when success breeds interest in the game. But all of that does seem a leap too far in philosophy!"

So far as Turner's philosophy goes, a closer look at Wedge reveals a four-pronged high-performance system designed to bring the best out of every young player placed in its path.

"First, we offer logistical help. There is so much that needs to be explained to new professionals. They need to know where they should be playing, how the circuits work and how things work within the circuits. How do you enter events? How do you get to tour school? What's the most logical path to take? It's basic but important.

"We offer financial help, which doesn't mean we hand over a pile of cash. There is any number of corporations or individuals who would buy a piece of a young player, if you gave them a credible model to do just that. So the young lads need to offer, say, three-year contracts with 15 $10,000 shares, and have a monitoring board that has mentors like Grant Fox and Brett Stephen on it. They will sign off on expenses."

Suddenly, that is an attractive proposition for a golf-minded investor. "Then there is the mentoring itself. Our players will have access to the likes of Coutts and Oliver, men who have achieved at the very highest level. The kids can pick their brains on what it takes to succeed. Basically, they will be rubbing shoulders with winners.

"And the fourth part of the equation is the GTNZ series of tournaments, which will hopefully be the strongest possible domestic competitive arena. When our guys do make it out on tour, they will be a couple of steps further along the way because of those events at home."

And Yet More From The Communications Summit

/

After Finchem and Votaw put the assembled to sleep, their market research speaker took the podium. This is Barb Kaufman of Kaufman and Associates talking about her findings on the media-fan-player relationship.

Second point, on the fan component, fans need more technicolor, and a lot of the media I spoke with were not only representing golf but also cover other sports, and felt fairly strongly that fans really love the technicolor presentation of athletes. 

And you think they only talk like this in Hollywood?  What does that mean, need more technicolor?

Speaking of that, isn't Technicolor a registered trademark?  

They want to know more than their performance.  They want a little more depth, a little more context.  If they get that, it'll expand and create greater loyalty and longevity and loyalty to your sport.  NASCAR and the NFL were cited as benchmarks in that regard.

We're benchmarking!

A top line of the agent feedback, and I'm sure this is really going to shock you because it was the flipside of the coin, the agent and manager perceptions are that overall traditional golf media has become lazy and stale.  The sameole, sameole content has bred some degree of ambivalence by the players, and they just don't want to engage any longer because they don't feel the content is very innovative and creative.

Well, we could do more New York Post type stuff. That would be innovative and creative for golf! Bet the agents would love that.

The golf print media is becoming a dinosaur according to agents, and I want to specify that this means not the written word, but to Tim's point, print media in the traditional sense.  A lot of the younger players are very in tune to new media and would much rather give their time to those media outlets.  One particular agent said players would rather have 30 seconds on SportsCenter than a 900 word article written about them.

Wouldn't we all.

Players are becoming significantly more guarded with the media in the past by virtue of being burned.  Now, having said that, the majority of agents said it's a small percentage of the media who, quote, burn, shall we say, and that violators should bear the brunt of the burning and not all media because not all media are guilty of this travesty.

Travesty?

Many of the print media believe overall Tour coverage will decline and is declining if the playing field is not level between the electronic, print and quite frankly other emerging media.  They felt fairly strongly that preference and rights deals provide access to some media outlets and not others, which makes it more difficult to do my job.

From the agents' perspective, younger players are viewed as presenting great opportunities for unique and colorful content because they get it.  They've grown up in this entertainment world of sport and they know exactly what it takes to compete and keep their star rising.

They know branding!

It was at this point I had to take another break. Small doses, baby!

More From The Communications Summit

/

I used to think that if I was told I had six months to live that I would spend it watching The Big Break or Dr. Phil or listening to Celine Dion albums, but now I'm inclined to think that the PGA Tour Communications Summit will do the trick.

I could only get through 5 more pages. But Tim Finchem and Ty Votaw's statements were eye opening, if you can navigate the hurdles. I was tempted to plug this into the Ali G tranzlata, but why ruin such authentic frontier gibberish?

Finchem:

And then the second thing was, and this was we thought the most crucial thing, and it kind of overlaps the focus on tournaments, was to improve our ability working with our partners to utilize the media overall to communicate everything about the sport, the competition, who the players are, what the sport does and the rest, to engage the fans more effectively through the media. 

Ali Geoff tranzlata: Why spend all of that money on ad campaigns when you can get writers to spread the propaganda? Oh sorry...

If we're successful in moving the needle in this area, there are benefits for everybody in this room.  There are clearly benefits for our membership and for our tournaments and for our ability to grow the strength of this platform and continue to move the needle in terms of the benefits for players, the benefits for charities and our tournaments and the impact on the game of golf.

Is this really a good time to be using the needle metaphor? Just a thought.

The bottom line is, at the end of the day, we're moving needles here.

Here's Votaw talking about similar summits in other sports:

One interesting finding that we discovered in looking at those other summits was the extent to which they did not include the members of the media in the actual implementation and conduct of their communications summits.  They tended to include everybody but the media in gathering their communications stakeholders in order to improve their media outreach activities.

Yes, that's because those others sports didn't view the media as a group of stenographers who might just be dumb enough to write what you tell them.

Now, in the planning for this day, the phrase "sunlight is the best disinfectant" has come up many times in making sure if we do this and we do this right, we have to include all the stakeholders, including the media, get all the issues out on the table and get them out in the open and talk about them, and that's what we're going to do today.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant? That's one of those great metaphors that makes you stop and think, what the hell is he talking about? He is good!

To our partners in the golf equipment industry, we hope you take away the message that we want to work with you and identify and take advantage of quality media opportunities for players endorsing your products both within the golf industry as well as mass media markets.

Because moving your product is paramount to us.

Just look at how well that league driven product focus has worked for the NBA recently.

Golf World's 2006 Newsmakers

/

I know, I vowed never to complain about another list ever again. But Golf World's top 25 newsmakers of 2006 isn't as much a list as it is well, okay it's a list. And I think the warm fall went to the heads of the folks in Wilton.

Here are my gripes, because, you know, it really matters in the big scheme of life.

No. 24 Torrey Pines - actually, this was a great and surprising addition, setting up nicely what may become a huge story in 2007. (That is, the lousy state of affairs at the 2008 U.S. Open site, starting with questions about course conditions.)

No. 23 Drug testing - Fine, leave it out of the top 20 even though you, Golf World did a stellar job last fall looking into this and Tiger made a bold statement that humiliated the Commissioner and further undermined his credibility. Okay, this is probably where it belongs until you see...

No. 22 Super seniors - Jay Haas and Loren Roberts dominating the Champions Tour?  Top 100 maybe. But top 25? This is the Rich Harvest Links of Golf World's list. They're allowed one I guess.

No. 21 Hoylake's surprise - This was a surprise only because of Ron Whitten's misfire review.

No. 20 Hootie's departure - Come on, the man deserves top 10 status. His turbulent tenure certainly warrants a higher spot than...

No. 18 John Daly -  A divorce, a reality show and losing his card does not make this newsworthy. This is simply another year in the life our favorite country crooner!

newsmakers_fedex.jpgNo. 14 The New TV Deal - Again, this one probably should rank a little higher considering what a huge story it was and will continue to be thanks to the FedEx Cup. This little bit from Stu Schneider's write up caught my eye:

TGC's hiring of Nick Faldo made positive headlines, but the "Why The Golf Channel?" questions still surround the contract, as do other rumors, including the existence of an "out clause" that the tour could exercise at some point.

Well, that would certainly make the 15-year commitment look less ridiculous.

And finally, the ultimate you have to be kidding me...

No. 11 Camillo Villegas

No. 10 Bomb and Gouge crowd

Guys and gals, did we make this list up in February? Villegas didn't win a tournament, Holmes disappeared after CBS crowned him the second coming of Christ and Bubba had a nice year. But Top 10?

Hey, at least the final 9 were spot on.