Erin Hills and Future USGA Championships

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Gary D'Amato, writing about the wave of pro golf coming to Wisconsin, notes this about Erin Hills:
And because USGA officials are excited about Erin Hills' potential, don't be surprised if that course lands the U.S. Amateur in the next five to seven years and the U.S. Open before 2020. Both would be firsts for Wisconsin.

"The Golf Channel, by any other name, couldn't be any less of a golf channel."

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Phil Mushnick is a big fan of Golf Channel's coverage...
What initially struck many golf fans as good, sensible news - The Golf Channel landing live coverage of PGA Tour events - has thus far proven to be a terrible joke.

TGC's latest co-produced train wreck - this one with NBC - began Wednesday, 64 of the world's best in match play for the World Golf Championship. Unless one tuned in to see scenery (mostly cactus), commercials, interviews, promos and insanely unnecessary cuts to TGC's studio, coverage was infuriating.

At one point, TGC abandoned live golf for a chat with Geoff Ogilvy, who'd just won his match. Among the questions TGC's Rich Lerner asked was what Ogilvy thought of Tiger Woods' seven-PGA-events win streak. "It's impressive," Ogilvy replied. Live and learn.
Then it was off to commercials, then to the studio, where we were shown clips of Woods from last year's WGC - and encouraged to watch the WGC on TGC. (We'd love to, if you only let us!)

California State Am Leaving Pebble Beach

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While scanning Ron Kroichick's chat with Johnny Miller in search of blatant self-references, I was surprised by this note following the piece:

State amateur moving: The California amateur championship, held at Pebble Beach every year but one since the seaside links opened in 1919 -- the course was built, in part, for the tournament -- is hitting the road.

This year's 96th edition of the state amateur will be played at Monterey Peninsula Country Club. The event will then alternate between Northern California and Southern California sites in future years.

Not surprisingly, money was a driving factor behind the departure from Pebble. The Pebble Beach Company gave the California Golf Association a discount on green fees, but the price was still significant; after all, a standard round at Pebble now costs $450 (and will rise to $475 on April 1).

The move to nearby Monterey Peninsula -- where the club will not charge the CGA for green fees -- represents a huge savings for tournament officials. They also liked the idea of holding the entire tournament at one venue, as opposed to recent years in which Poppy Hills hosted two stroke-play rounds.

Plus, match play at Pebble often led to the odd sight of tournament competitors weaving through public play. Regular folks -- well, regular folks who can afford to pay $450 to play golf -- would stop and let state amateur contestants "play through."

"There was a lot of hand wringing and a lot of anguish about this decision," said Bob Thomas, spokesman for the Southern California Golf Association. "We know how special Pebble is."

 

Shapiro On Washington's Prospects...

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...and it doesn't sound too promising, at least for a PGA Tour event returning anytime soon.

Ralph Shrader, chairman of Booz Allen, which sponsored Washington's tour event the last three years, said in a telephone interview that no one from the tour has approached him about sponsoring the 2007 event. The date opened up two weeks ago when the International in Castle Rock, Colo., opted out of this year's schedule because a title sponsor could not be found.

"Given the tour's decision to pull the Presidents Cup out of Washington, I don't even know if we're even on their radar screen," Shrader said. "They haven't talked to me at all, and no one has offered encouragement that they're even anxious to talk to us."
And this may be even more surprising from a fellow at Congressional, one of the only viable sites in the area... 

"I think their first step is to talk to a potential sponsor, and if any of those stepped up to the plate, that's the city where the tournament would go," Brundred said. "But we haven't heard word one from anyone, and I guess that's a little surprising."

Nissan Open Ratings

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From the good folks at Brenner-Zwikel: 

CBS SPORTS’ FINAL-ROUND COVERAGE OF PGA TOUR’S “NISSAN OPEN” RATES WITH 31% INCREASE

CBS Sports’ final-round coverage of the PGA TOUR’s NISSAN OPEN with Phil Mickelson losing in a three-hole playoff to Charles Howell III on Sunday, Feb. 18 (3:19-7:27 PM, ET) scored an preliminary national household rating/share of 3.4/7 , up +31% from last year’s 2.6/5 (ABC).

CBS Sports’ final-round coverage peaked with a preliminary national rating/share of 5.4/10 between 7:00-7:27 PM, ET.

Sunday’s 3.4/7 is the highest rating for the final round of the Nissan Open since 2004’s 3.9/9 (ABC)..

(Nielsen releases the national rating and share for Saturday’s third-round coverage on Friday, Feb. 23)

"It's not exactly the fight over Ted Williams' head, but it's as close as it gets in golf."

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jones2.jpgCatching up on my reading here and finally got around to Jim Moriarty's Golf World piece on the Jones brother spat. Some fun new anecdotes about these two hotheads wonderfully talented salesman architects:

The worst-kept secret in golf is that Bobby, 67, doesn't like Rees, and Rees, 65, doesn't like Bobby. The brothers even had separate receiving lines following their father's memorial service in Florida after he passed away in 2000 at 93. Their noogie fight over the legacy of their famous father took a particularly ugly turn and became a matter of public record when Rees filed suit against his brother in December 2005.

The lawsuit, which is currently in mediation, alleges that Bobby owes Rees $98,869 to fulfill a liability remaining from the estate of their mother, Ione, who died in 1987, and that Bobby also owes Rees one-half of all royalties (guaranteed at a minimum of $75,000) from an agreement Bobby made licensing the name Robert Trent Jones to Gear For Sports for a clothing line. In a countersuit Bobby seeks to have the court enjoin Rees from using the nickname "Open Doctor," which Bobby maintains rightly belonged to their father--who infamously turned Oakland Hills CC into Ben Hogan's "monster"--and, thus, to him since he claims ownership of all post-mortem rights pertaining to the identity of the senior Jones. It's not exactly the fight over Ted Williams' head, but it's as close as it gets in golf.

This is touching...

Five years ago, on Rees' 60th birthday, Bobby boxed an olive branch, enclosed one of his poems written for the occasion and sent it to his brother. It came back unopened. Rees refused to be interviewed for this story but made one comment during a brief telephone conversation. "There's no connection between the two of us right now," he said. "He [Bobby] has his business, and I've got mine." On the other hand, when Bobby was asked if the estrangement from his brother is complete, he replied, "No."

"What are we doing here?"

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That's the question AP's Doug Ferguson asks while sitting in the press tent at The Gallery, home to the WGC Match Play.

What might help is taking this tournament to golf courses that could add some sizzle, and not just from the desert sun. The Gallery Golf Club is a nice piece of property, a blend of lush green and desert brown. But it still begs an important question.

What are we doing here?

No doubt the tournament will help sell homes on Dove Mountain. But it won't do the fans much good. The course goes out some 3 miles before making a U-turn, with only about four holes in the middle where fans can hop around and watch more than one match. The only way to get from No. 5 to No. 11 is to follow the routing, or dodge rattlesnakes traversing the desert.
At this point I will spare you my now annual rant that this event would be great at PGA West's Stadium Course because, well, the Golfobserver.com column I wrote about it has disappeared into cyberspace.
 

GolfDigest.com's Ron Whitten reviews The Gallery and, well, reminds us that the PGA Tour still has a long way to go when it comes to mixing architecture with commerce.

But people persist, because there's this theory that some courses make better match-play courses than stroke-play ones. If a course is fraught with obstacles and perils, or better yet, has lots of high-risk/high-reward gambling situations, so the theory goes, it's a terrific venue for match play but a humiliating place on which to keep score. That's a good, logical theory, but one that gets trampled upon by PGA Tour officials when they choose, and then set up, a course for their match-play event.

A prime example is The Gallery, on cactus-dotted slopes of Dove Mountain, a first-class private club with 36 holes that allows non-member play for those who stay overnight in one of its pricey but plush golf cottages. (See the club's website for details.) The Gallery's North Course, opened in 1998, was co-designed by former PGA Tour player John Fought and his then-design partner Tom Lehman and is known primarily for its deep-dish fairway bunkers and its 725-yard par-5 ninth. You would think the PGA Tour would eagerly award a match-play event to a course designed by two Tour players, particularly one with returning nines, 125 bunkers and ponds guarding two greens. But instead, The Accenture will be played on the South Course, five years younger and designed solely by Fought, without Lehman's influence.

Okay, here's the setup part.

But when I played the course last December, alternate fairways on the uphill par-5 10th and 362-yard 12th were both being grown to rough. They'll be taken out of play, converted to bleacher and/or skybox space. So much for match-play options.

What's more, the Tour will play The South in excess of the 7,351 yards listed as the maximum on the scorecard. Fought recently added four new back tees, so the course can now be stretched to 7,550 yards. Yes, it sits at an elevation of 3,000 feet, so it won't play that full distance, but why cater to ball-bashers in a match-play event? Why not set up the course to play around 6,900 yards and give underdogs like Corey Pavin a chance?

Sigh.

"Will you be designing environmentally-friendly golf courses in the future?"

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1.jpgSeems like a dumb question, right? Unfortunately that one was teed up for Tiger Woods and he uncharacteristicaly heel pulled it into the left rough.

But first, other highlights from his sitdown with the laptoppers in Tucson:

Q. I know you're concentrating on this week, but in the buildup to coming over here, I've read a lot in the media about the dialogue or lack of dialogue between you and the commissioner, about the schedule for this year. Can you tell us anything about that?

TIGER WOODS: I've talked to him quite a bit (smiling), so I don't know where that comes from.

Q. Well, there's been talk about given the new sort of format this year that -- is there a situation where you could maybe fall short of the minimum requirements of playing this year and maybe miss out on some of the climax to the FedExCup?

TIGER WOODS: I've just got to play 15 events, right? That's what I did last year.

Gee, what a ringing endorsement for the FedEx Cup and the PGA Tour!

Q. I don't know if you're reading the same stuff as me, but basically they were saying that there is a kind of atmosphere between you and the commissioner.

TIGER WOODS: We talk about once a week, so I don't know where that comes from. He's got my cell phone and we talk. It's funny, we just missed each other skiing. I have no idea where that's coming from.

How sweet, just missed each other on the slopes. Let's hope they don't run into each other.

Which reminds me, this slug for the Lakers Radmanovic slipped in Park City, separated his shoulder and already they're calls for a contract reading to see if he violated a clause by skiing (oh wait, he was in Park City for the great sidewalk shopping, forgive me).

As much as they are paying him, does Nike really let Tiger ski? Guess so. Anyway...

 Q. As a budding golf course architect, when you come to a new venue, come to a new community that has such a historic golfing tradition, do you approach it a little bit differently than when you were just playing, or have you always taken the mindset that, could I come here and design a golf course in place like that?

TIGER WOODS: It's interesting, since I started to get into that part of my life, every golf course I play, I look at the golf course differently now. Why would they construct that? Why would they build this? What were they thinking here? Trying to understand it instead of just plotting my way around the golf course. I do look at golf courses now, and it is kind of fun.

And...

 Q. In your design career and with a new baby on the way, where do you stand in terms of the environmental aspects of golf, and where will you be designing environmentally-friendly golf courses in the future?

TIGER WOODS: That's the whole idea. That's the challenge of it. As an architect, that's what your responsibility is to do, to also provide a wonderful playing environment. That's a task that I think is going to be -- that's been at the forefront for all architects for decades.

Uh, Tiger, they mean are you going to build a wetlands at Al Jambajuicia to mitigate the puddle that you are bulldozing over. Your architecture buddy,
Geoff