"Big Five" No More

SI's Alan Shipnuck comes out firing with several stellar zingers in his 2007 preview, starting with this reminder of yesteryear's desperation-for-stars media coverage:

5. Will any golf writer be able to use the term "Big Five" without breaking into hysterical laughter?

It's gonna be tough. Vijay Singh, Ernie Els and Retief Goosen combined to win one Tour event in '06. Singh is approaching the precipice of the mid-40s, when performance drops off dramatically. Goosen has never been the same players since his final round self-immolation at the 2005 U.S. Open. The guy to watch is Els.

His season-ending victory in South Africa was a huge boost to his fragile psyche. Afterward, Easy even had some fighting words for Tiger, as Els said his goal is to reach No. 1 in the World Ranking. I'm not convinced he believes he can do it, but it at least sounded good. A return to Oakmont, where he broke through with his first major championship at the '94 Open, should inspire Els to reassert himself as one of the game's elite players. It's about time.

I did catch Alex Micelli wondering how it is that Goosen remains in the world top 10 despite a pretty lousy year in 2006. But why would I want to start a world rankings debate? It's not that slow of a week. 

Helen Penick, RIP

I didn't see this anywhere else, but Kevin Robbins has news of Helen Penick's passing. She was one classy lady who played a major part in her husband's success.

Ogilvy on Kapalua

I was wondering if they had remedied the odd situation at Kapalua from last year where the greens were bricks and everything else was soft. In his Wednesday sit down with the assembled Hawaiian shirt clad scribblers, Geoff Ogilvy answered that question and talked about the course.

Q. This is your second tour of the golf course. Do you notice any difference from last year to this year, any subtle changes?

GEOFF OGILVY: The greens are softer this year. Last year, they were -- I'm the biggest advocate in the world for firm greens but the trouble with last year, the greens were firm and the fairways were soft. So you land them short and stop, and you land it long, it went over the back, wicked. This year, it's all the same, it just all soft, which is fine. I like it firm, but it's been raining a lot and it's the rainy side of the island and it's never going to be rock hard.
It's much more playable this year in that respect. The greens are fantastic compared to the ones that were here two years ago.

Q. Do you like this place? Do you like the way this is set up?

GEOFF OGILVY: I think this is a fantastic golf course on a very extreme piece of land. It's on the edge of a piece -- it's really close to being a piece of land that you maybe shouldn't have a golf course on. They did such a good job. Everyone hits fairways all day and you hit a lot of shots because the greens are big. I think it's a good golf course; I enjoy it. How could you not enjoy looking at the views? They are awesome. They were smart in the way they did it. It could have been a complete nightmare if it was narrow with long carries, but how they made it, they were smart about it.

Golf Made Easy

Thanks to reader Noonan for emailing this classic golf tip.

Rackham Will Not Be Developed

What is left of a Donald Ross design and one nifty clubhouse at Rackham appears to be safe as the developer has shelved its plans for the historic layout.

As The Woods Camp Requested...

File this Tim Rosaforte paragraph in the buried-lead file. He's writing about Tiger not appearing at Kapalua:

In truth, this could have been averted. Had the Target World Challenge been scheduled the week after Thanksgiving, as the Woods Camp requested, instead of two weeks from Christmas, it would have given Tiger almost a month of downtime before getting back to business at Kapalua. Instead, The Target was given Dec. 14-17, and Mercedes/Kapalua takes the hit.

Hmmmm...do we have a Commissioner-Tiger spat in the making here?

Elling On TGC's New Look

Wait, I meant GOLF CHANNEL, not TGC or even GC. My apologies to the brand.

Anyway, Steve Elling shares a few eye opening numbers in looking at The Golf...dammit, there I go again...in looking at GOLF CHANNEL's...wait, is the apostrophe s in caps too? Ah whatever. Here's what he wrote.

The undisputed heavyweight king of cable sports, ESPN is carried in 92 million homes while the Golf Channel logs in at 75 million. However, those numbers don't represent much other than unfulfilled potential if nobody is watching.

According to Nielsen Media Research, the average number of people who watched the Golf Channel at any moment in a 24-hour broadcast day during the 2006 fall season was a minuscule 44,000 people -- the approximate population of Titusville -- or 1.1 million fewer people below ESPN's average in the same time frame.

Actually, more stunning was this chart buried at the end of his piece...

Network     Sport     Avg. viewers
ESPN    Multiple    1,153,000
ESPN2    Multiple    324,000
NFL Network    Pro football    119,000
Speed Channel    Auto racing    117,000
Versus    Pro hockey    75,000
ESPN Classic    Sports history    66,000
ESPN News    Sports news    62,000
Golf Channel    Golf coverage    44,000

That's right, more people are watching ESPN News and ESPN Classic and bloody hockey on the network formerly known as Outdoor Life.

This also was a surprise....

Industry observers anticipated sweeping personnel changes when the contract was announced, but the staffing has mostly been handled in-house. McGuire estimated that the company only added a half-dozen employees to its overall payroll, bringing the total to around 385, but some of the names were crucial additions. Leading the way was the addition of six-time major champion Nick Faldo, who after two well received years at ESPN/ABC, will serve as lead analyst.

Only six new staffers? 

Whoa. 

Every Tour Event With Or Without Tiger Begins Here

I guess the art department didn't get the news about Tiger's extended vacation...

 

"Piling up FedExCup points early might pay off..."

In his notes column, Doug Ferguson reveals that for a change, the PGA Tour has tweaked a WGC event qualification that potentially rewards someone without a ticket to ride on the World Ranking Top 50 bus.

Piling up FedExCup points early might pay off for some players trying to get into the World Golf Championship at Doral. The PGA Tour added another criteria for the CA Championship, taking the top 10 in FedEx Cup standings the Monday before (March 12) and the Monday of (March 19) the tournament.

Previously, this WGC event took the top 50 in the world ranking and top money leaders from each tour. That criteria hasn't changed.

Lorne On Ben and Bill

Lorne Rubenstein does a nice job detailing how Kapalua architects Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw have evolved into the best architects in golf.

ALL CAPS ALERT!

From the homepage of pgatour.com:

The PGA TOUR enters an exciting new era this week at the Mercedes-Benz Championship as the season-long FedExCup points competition gets underway with Thursday's opening round. Adam Scott will hit the first tee shot at 3:30 p.m. ET, which can be seen live on GOLF CHANNEL.

The Golf Channel THE GOLF CHANNEL TGC Tgc GOLF CHANNEL.

What a difference. Those branding people are good.

Sir Ian Woosnam?

The best evidence yet of the British empire's demise...

"This makes every game, every event, every weekend more important.''

This caught my eye in Rex Hoggard's preview of 2007:

Flash forward eight months to the much-talked-about FedEx Cup finale at the Tour Championship. Best-case scenario is a Tiger Woods vs. Phil Mickelson vs. "Little-known Cinderella story" showdown for the inaugural FedEx Cup title in Atlanta at the Tour Championship. Problem is, the new condensed-season shop will make it virtually impossible for a potential "Cinderella" story to elbow his way into the FedEx mix.

Consider Michael Allen finished 153rd on last year's money list and played for an average purse of $4.6 million, compared to Ben Curtis (No. 30 in '06 earnings) who played to an average of $5.6 million or Scott Verplank (No. 40) $5.7 million.

As one player recently lamented of the bottom half of the Tour community, "They've got a ticket to get on the bus, but there's no seat for them." start. "This makes every game, every event, every weekend more important.''

Okay, not to beat dead donkey here, but how will a playoff with 144 players really change someone's approach to the season?  

"This will be a generational change"

Randell Mell, with this from Ric Clarson of the PGA Tour...

``This will be a generational change,'' Clarson said. ``This is not going to be: Turn on the switch and everybody gets it from the start. This makes every game, every event, every weekend more important.''

"It's not the playoffs, it's a showcase."

Olin Browne, talking to Craig Dolch in the Palm Beach Post:

"One thing that bugs me is they call it the playoffs," Browne said. "It's not the playoffs, it's a showcase. In the playoffs, everybody starts from scratch, the winners advance and the losers go home. Under our system, the San Diego Chargers would be given something like a 14-0 lead in their first playoff game, and that's obviously not right."

 I guess this pretty much sums up why the idea of not starting from scratch come "playoff" time is so silly.