"But every week it starts to get boring. It lacks imagination.”

Doug Ferguson looks at the results of the PGA Tour's increasingly difficult course setup approach that made it a lot easier for me to TiVo the Women's Open instead of Firestone.

But as Steve Stricker noted last week, “It seems like every week we’re getting one of these.”

“The golf courses are so much harder,” Woods said. “Stevie (Williams) and I were talking about this. Have we played a tournament yet where you had to go low? With our schedule of tournaments I’ve played in, that hasn’t been the case at all.”

Fast forward...

One indicator that has surprised everyone from players to rules officials is birdies per round. The PGA Tour leader in that category has averaged at least 4.4 birdies per round every year since 1999. Going into the PGA Championship, the leader is Jonathan Byrd at 3.85.

If the trend continues – and it doesn’t figure to get easier the next month – it would be the first time since 1990 that no one on the PGA Tour averaged more than four birdies per round.

Woods, who has never finished lower than fifth in that category, is currently at No. 39.

“It just gets to the point where every course is a long, long golf course with deep, deep rough,” Davis Love III said. “It gets a little stressful. You can’t get away with very much, and you have to be right on perfect. You miss a fairway, you’re hard-pressed to get it back on the green. They keep lengthening courses that are already long. It’s just tough.”

I think Davis should take this up with the Tour Policy Board!

Adam Scott was asked how many majors it feels as though he has played this year. He used his fingers to start ticking them off, and he wound up using both hands.

“Probably seven,” he said, and this was before he went out for his first practice round at Southern Hills.

He mentioned the three majors that already have taken place. There was the Wachovia Championship and The Players Championship in consecutive weeks. The International, which produced birdies and eagles galore, was replaced by the AT&T National at Congressional.

And don’t forget Firestone, which several players figured was suitable for a U.S. Open without any gimmicks from the USGA.

“You’ve got to play for par these days,” Scott said. “You used to have that one or two times a year, and that was a challenge. But every week it starts to get boring. It lacks imagination.”

But Adamn, it makes bad golfers feel good about their games to watch you struggle. It's all about ME!

PGA Tour rules official Slugger White says nothing was changed, and he was surprised to hear the average birdies for round was significantly down from last year.

“We don’t think about birdies and bogeys,” White said. “We’re trying to give them the fairest and the best test. Our general philosophy is difficult and fair every day. There’s not one ounce of difference in our philosophy this year at all.”

And...

“It’s gotten that way a little more as time goes on,” Mark Calcavecchia said. “It seems like years ago, it was just kind of easy. The rough was never this deep week in and week out. I think the pin placements have gotten tougher over the years. Obviously, we’re playing courses longer than we ever have. They’re trying to combat technology a little bit with course conditions and course setups.

“But that’s kind of a good thing,” he added, “to know you don’t have to go out and shoot really low.”

Oh sure, and boy don't the ratings support it as a sound vision for the future.

Woods also is a fan of the tougher conditions. He often says he doesn’t like tournaments won at 25 under par, where making a par means losing strokes to the field.

But is such a steady diet of pars good for the entertainment value of professional golf?

“I think it’s great,” Woods said. “You’ve got to be smart. The golf ball doesn’t go as crooked as it used to, so you’ve got to do something overall – making pins closer to the edges, the rough is certainly higher. You’ve got to do it, or guys will go low. If you give them a golf course that’s pretty easy, they’re going to tear it apart.”

Thanks Tiger. You're a big help.

“These Girls Rock You to Sleep"

Peter Dixon's Women's Open post-mortem:

The crowds were not huge – 42,000 in the first three days – and they were quiet and subdued. They had little to shout about. The championship turned into a battle of attrition and birdies and eagles were few and far between.

The biggest issue, however, was the pace of play. The LPGA in the United States promotes its tour with the slogan “These Girls Rock”. More appropriately, it could read: “These Girls Rock You to Sleep”.

On the first two days, rounds were taking more than six hours and there were players still on the course when play was suspended on the first day just after 9.30pm. On the Saturday, television coverage ended with the leaders yet to finish.

Too often players were not ready to play when it was their turn. In one instance, Natalie Gulbis waited for her playing partners to hit approach shots to the green before taking a club. Then, after checking her yardages with her caddie (60 yards), she had a couple of swishes with the club before deciding to change it.

The putting, too, is painful. The average men’s professional three-ball takes about 3min 30sec to clear the green. The women, many of whom seem over-reliant on their caddies to help them, are taking five minutes on average. And that is boring.

"Tiger will be intimately involved with the design."

Alan Bastable breaks the news at golf.com that Tiger is so tired of answering Rory and Sam questions that he is going to announce his first U.S. design project during his Tuesday PGA Championship press conference.

According to a source close to the situation who requested anonymity, the world's No. 1 player has signed a deal to design a course located just east of Asheville, N.C., for Cliffs Communities, a prominent golf real estate developer.

"It's pretty major," the source said. "Tiger will be intimately involved with the design."

The source says that like some player architects are not intimately involved. I can't imagine where he'd get an idea like that!

Cliffs Communities has five high-end, master-planned residential properties in North and South Carolina. Jamie Prince, a spokesperson for the company, declined comment, saying that no official announcement would be made before a press conference with Woods scheduled for Aug. 14. An invitation to that event that was sent out on Monday highlighted a new development called The Cliffs at High Carolina.

Uh, if you have a press conference with him August 14th, isn't that an official confirmation?

Is This Any Way To Treat The Road Hole?

(click image to enlarge)I know that ABC used their 2005 Open aerials for Sunday's Women's Open (because there was still that ribbon of rough down the right side of the hole). But the rest of the fairway contour was the same, including two former fairway bunkers surrounded by a sea of rough.

Now, let's forget the pros and just think of the everyday golfers who play this most of the time. The hole isn't tough enough without choking off the fairway? Is taking driver out of the best player's hands really so vital that everyday golfers have to suffer year round? I guess so.

(click image to enlarge) Note in the second image how the golfer wanting to layup just right of the green (our left) to secure a pitch into the length of the surface (and those feisty back hole locations), is now told no way.

Taking away options on the Old Course. It's not right! 

The MIDI!

Thanks to reader Tuco for the heads up on Damon Hack's New York Times story about an interesting new tempo device. There's also a video segment on the story narrated by Hack, who clearly missed his calling as an NPR reporter.

Grober has created an instrument that gives a player an immediate response to the golf swing. A smooth, rhythmic swing with Grober’s sensor emits a pleasing tone. A herky-jerky motion lets out a wail.

To create the sound of a golf swing, Grober used Musical Instrument Digital Interface technology that combined instruments like the piccolo, the oboe and the French horn. The music — an audio interpretation of the swing itself — is transmitted wirelessly to the golfer through a headset.

“This dimension that they can access while they’re hitting the golf club opens up a whole world of information that they hadn’t otherwise had,” he said. “Getting it in this format, in a real-time basis, helps people to change on time scales which are much shorter than traditionally. It used to be if you wanted to make a mechanical change in your golf swing, it could take months to do that. But if you can hear what’s going on, you can change the sound space almost instantly.”

Grober said by having players focus on tempo instead of swing mechanics, the mechanics often followed anyway. “Really quickly they understand it’s about tempo and they forget all these complicated thoughts about position,” he said. “When the motion becomes dynamic and smooth, there are some good physics behind that.”

Grober, whose product is scheduled for release in January, said he has worked with 200 golfers and teachers on his invention. While the technology is new, the idea of using physics to teach a golf swing has been around for decades.

Ben Doyle, who wrote the foreword to Homer Kelley’s popular instruction book, “The Golfing Machine,” said he could see benefits in a golfer being able to listen to the sound of the golf swing.

“You hear the thrust of centrifugal force,” said Doyle, the golf instructor at the Golf Club at Quail Lodge in Carmel, Calif. “If a student can hear that sound, it’s very important feedback.”

Getting In the Mood For Southern Hills

If you are not attending, this ought to brighten your mood. Hope that air conditioning works in the media center!

My Golf World story looking at the vastly improved golf course has been posted. I'll elaborate more tomorrow with photos and thoughts. I know you can't wait.

SI's pithy anonymous pro has all sorts of interesting things to say about Tiger, drug testing, Tulsa and his pick, Jim Furyk.

John Huggan talked to former Tulsa resident and current Tiger coach Hank Haney about Southern Hills: 

"Southern Hills is in just about the best shape a golf course can be in," agrees Haney, who graduated from the University of Tulsa and knows the course well. "The greens and fairways are perfect and the rough isn't too deep. Players will be able to at least advance the ball when they miss a fairway.

"The course has been lengthened too, but it is still a place where good play will produce a good score. I liken it to the British Open in that the winning score hasn't been predetermined. It won't suit any particular type of player either. There are only two par-5s and one of them is 655-yards long, so the long-hitters won't have a big advantage. A lot of guys will have a chance to win.

"Which is as it should be. The course will play much better than it did in 2001, with the PGA setting it up rather than the USGA. The PGA knows how to set up a golf course."

John Strege profiles Anthony Kim, who went to Oklahoma and apparently grew up with The Great Santini:

Say this for Kim, at least: He isn’t afraid of imposing figures. History is his witness. He won a battle of wills with any boy’s most daunting opponent—a ruthlessly demanding father, who in Kim’s case often reduced him to tears, once by pretending to discard a trophy he had won with an over-par score. Dethroning Tiger might seem the easier challenge.

Kim quit speaking to his father for the better part of two years. Given his reputation for running his mouth, this showed extraordinary discipline, the kind Paul Kim used to demand of his son. The irony would not have amused Paul; the pain cut too deep. It still does. “I was so sad,” he says now. “I was wrong.”

Their estrangement ended in December, the day Anthony earned his PGA Tour card. Moments after the Tour Qualifying Tournament ended (he tied for 13th), he made the short drive from PGA West to his parents’ home in La Quinta, Calif. The family’s group hug lasted 10 minutes.

Jeff Billington and Michael Overall of the Tulsa World says the PGA will bring $60 million to the local coffers. 

Finally, the Golf World guys make their picks and I like Bomb's pick of Tim Clark and Rosaforte's selection of Stewart Cink.

Women's Open Championship Final Round Clippings

From Mike Aitken's Scotsman game story:

Coping as diligently with the rain which cascaded on the turf in the final round as she did with Saturday's gale, Ochoa was wrapped up in a black rainsuit against the elements. Although she'd wobbled under pressure at the majors in the past - two years ago in the US Women's Open at Cherry Hills she found water twice and took 8 on the last - Ochoa never looked like folding in St Andrews, even if there was a minor alarm on the Road Hole when she played sideways out of a bunker.

Disarmingly courteous - she began each press conference by saying 'Hello, everybody' - there was plenty of support for Ochoa among her peers and the media as well the galleries who lined the ancient fairways. Chatting away to her English caddie, smiling when she hit good shots and often, excitedly, breaking into darting runs from greens to tees (compared to the ditherers on the LPGA, the Mexican fairly bolts round the links), Ochoa won many friends with her generous personality.

At Golf Digest, Ron Sirak wraps up an entertaining few weeks (don't you agree Wally?) of diary-like blog entries with this from St. Andrews:

Remarkably, there was no logo-dated merchandise on sale to commemorate the first women's professional tournament at the Old Course. You'd think there would be something that said: "2007 Ricoh Women's British Open, Old Course St. Andrews." Local merchants are also disappointed at the turnout. It certainly is nowhere near the 45,000 a day that show up to watch the men in the Open Championship. In fact, the crowds are down slightly from the 17,000 a day last year at Royal Lytham & St. Annes.

Golf.com features some final day photos, as does GolfChannel.com. 

Because The Guardian has been slow to post stuff, I just caught this from Lawrence Donegan, assessing Michelle Wie's game:

After a level-par first round the 17-year-old American spoke of rediscovering the form that once made her the second-most famous golfer in the world. What a difference a day, and a North Sea breeze, makes. A five at the par-four 1st, supposedly a gentle introduction to the Old Course, was bad enough for Wie but worse followed as she racked up four more bogeys and a triple-bogey over the next 14 holes to end with an 80 and missing the cut.

It was the fourth time in 13 competitive rounds this season that Wie has failed to break 80. In all she is more than 90-over par in six tournaments. No doubt her entourage will point out that she is recovering from a wrist injury but, equally, critics of those guiding the teenager's career will argue there is little to be gained in allowing her to play at the highest level when it is quite obvious she cannot compete.

And Golf For Women's lively blog included this note from Dave Allen who managed to scarf down the media tent food while jotting down Judy Rankin's thoughts on Ochoa.

Monty Weeps As Hecklers Move On To Rory Sabbatini

From Doug Ferguson's story, after Tiger slaughtered Sabbatini for the second time this year:

Sabbatini took five to reach the green and made double bogey, and as he walked toward the 10th tee, a spectator said: "Hey, Rory, still think Tiger is beatable?"

Sabbatini turned and glared. He barked at a police officer and demanded — with an obscenity thrown in — that the fan be taken "out of here."

Ahhh, he can dish it and he may continue to!

Asked if he would temper his comments in the future, Sabbatini looked indignant.

"Why?" he said. "I hope I inspire him and play well enough that I can give him a good challenge."

Meanwhile, check out this exchange after the round:

 Q. The guy on the 9th hole, I guess you pointed him out and they led him off, was that just -- he didn't seem to be that -- he didn't curse or anything.
RORY SABBATINI: Well, you know, the situation is we're out here to do our job. Let us do our job. You know, even on 18 there, the guys being very insulting towards Kenny Perry's first putt. Have a little bit of decorum and a little bit of class out there. That's the way it's supposed to be. But I guess a few too many beers were talking.

Q. What do you think of Tiger's game now?
RORY SABBATINI: Today he played significantly better than he did in the final round at Wachovia. He struck the ball better. He made all the shots he needed to. You know, he was definitely playing a lot better golf today than five, six weeks ago, whatever that was.

Q. Did you wear the belt with the skull for inspiration for yourself?
RORY SABBATINI: No, just like the belt.

Q. It's pretty cool.
RORY SABBATINI: Thanks.

Could we ask our questions in the form of a question instead of gushing praise for skull cap belt buckles? 

Tiger Goes Entire Press Conference Without Celebrating Firestone's It's-All-Right-In-Front-Of-You Architectural Brilliance

Though I do understand he dropped his favorite design compliment in a rare post-victory gabfest with his most beloved on-course annoyance, Peter Kostis. Actually, his post round Q&A with the assembled inkslingers featured several entertaining exchanges.

Meanwhile, what is missing from AP's Doug Ferguson's game story here:

Woods earned $1.35 million for his 58th career victory. Since the start of the 2005 season, Woods has not gone more than five starts on the PGA Tour without winning.

And, and, and? The points Doug? Sheesh. The playoffs? Hello?

Sergio and Shark Win Award Before Course Opens!

How I love Dubai, they're doling out development awards and the thing isn't even built yet!

Jumeirah Golf Estates, the exclusive villa project in the heart of New Dubai has netted the prestigious CNBC Arabian Property Awards 2007, in the Best Golf Development category. The award will be given away at a gala dinner at the Madinat Jumeirah in Dubai on Tuesday, October 23, 2007.  

Entries for the award were judged by a highly-distinguished panel of professionals, chaired by Eric Pickles, British Shadow Secretary of State. Jumeirah Golf Estates is owned and maintained by Istithmar PJSC, the real estate investment unit of Dubai World. David Spencer, chief executive of Jumeirah Golf Estates, said of the forthcoming award: “It’s always fantastic to be recognised by the best in the industry.  At Jumeirah Golf Estates we’re aiming to create the best golf development in the region and one of the best in the world.  Today’s announcement shows that we’re on the right track.

Jumeirah Golf Estates brings together the world’s leading golfing and course design superstars to create Dubai’s premier residential golfing community.  Greg Norman, Vijay Singh, Sergio Garcia and the father of modern golf course design, Pete Dye, are working on creating one of the world’s most distinctive golf developments. The 4 courses; Fire, Earth, Water, & Wind; pay tribute to the power of nature, each employing the distinctive characteristics of its own surroundings to deliver a unique challenge.  They will be surrounded by the most desirable residential communities in Dubai, with luxury homes with beautiful space both inside and out.

Take that Tiger! 

Women's Open Championship Round 3 Clippings

John Huggan files the Scotsman game story on Lorena Ochoa's six stroke lead:

Round in level par 73 - more than five shots better than the average score on a day when only three competitors broke par and 26 shot in the 80s - the Mexican played the world's most famous links in just the sort of canny way that would surely have pleased the great names of the past.

And this is fun about amateur Sally Watson...

"I had, like, 41 putts out there today," she whined, in the sort of mid-Atlantic accent teenagers unfortunately tend to pick up after only a few months stateside. "The greens were, like, so slow after the rain and I had, like, so many tricky putts. In the end I like found it hard to, like, trust myself. It was just so, like, windy out there."

There are no prizes for guessing which word this very self-assured young lady most needs to eliminate from her vocabulary. Unless she wants to be 'like Lorena,' of course.

Ron Sirak on the GolfDigest.com blog says that it's pretty amazing Women's British Open play could not find enough daylight in the first week of August to finish the opening rounds. He also notes that Michelle Wie has lost another caddy. She has now officially run twice as many loopers as Spinal Tap went through drummers.

Huggan Scoop: Crenshaw Regrets Brookline 17th Green Antics!

...and next week, John Huggan learns from Roberto De Vicenzo that regrets signing an incorrect card at the 1968 Masters!

Sheesh, now I know why Ben has avoided the Senior Open Championship!

Seriously, once we cleared up the earth shattering revelations from three Ryder Cup's ago, Huggan got Crenshaw to say some interesting things about the state of the game, technology, the PGA Tour and Augusta.

"What mystifies Bill and myself is seeing courses being built that hardly anyone can play properly," he observes. "We want our courses to be enjoyable for as many people as possible. We would not know how to set up a course for a high-end tournament. That would just mystify me. If you do that, how can you reach anyone else?

"In America the set-ups are becoming unbelievable. They are trying to stay ahead of technology, and sometimes that doesn't produce enjoyable golf. The danger is that the PGA Tour can become stylised a little bit. They are just so difficult week to week.

"The road we are on is a dangerous one. It's one thing to build five different tee boxes, but somewhere along the line you lose the feel of the hole, and what makes it interesting. You compromise the hole. If you don't go straight back and start changing angles, things get a bit off.

"We are trying - and failing - to come up with interesting ways to combat how far the ball goes. You put obstacles out there at certain distances, and players just fly them. I don't know what you do. We try to make doable holes. I like players to shoot really good scores. That's fine with me."

How Crenshaw would definitely not go about tackling the technology issue is by the mindless growing of long grass, which is how the green jackets at Augusta National have chosen to 'protect' their course.

"I heard this a long time ago, although I'm not sure who said it first: 'Interest supersedes length.' If a course is not interesting and you don't bring people back, what is the point? I look at the way Augusta was set up this year, and everyone was forced to play more defensive golf, no question about it. There's now a limit to what the top players will try there.

"To an extent, I can understand what is being done. I'm not saying all of it should be thrown away. There is no question the course needed to be lengthened. But I've never really agreed with the growing of the rough. That is so entirely different from the way it used to play.

"To get players to try shots they maybe shouldn't try was what used to set Augusta apart. Now it's different. A lot of the places I used to aim for off the tee are now in the rough. Those spots used to open up angles to the pins. But now the course is more prescribed. All the shots are decided for us.

"That's not what [Bobby] Jones and [Alister] Mackenzie intended. They wanted it to be reminiscent of St Andrews. To open up those angles, you had choices to make. And to have choices, you need width. There's no choice when the fairway is narrow. I can't believe some of the set-ups on the PGA Tour. Everything is so narrow."

Still, one thing too much rough and longer holes cannot affect is the famed Crenshaw putting stroke. Into his 50s, he has retained the silky touch that carried him to those two Masters titles - most of it anyway. Only last month he was runner-up at the US Senior Open.

"I don't putt quite as well as I used to. I have days where I feel just a little tentative. At my age I sometimes lack the authority you need to putt well. I hit a lot of nice putts that have about a foot less speed on them. That often makes the difference between making and missing."
 

Has He Always Used A Ping Grip?

You know how much attention I pay to what's in everyone's bag, so am I the last person on the planet to know that Tiger uses a Ping putter grip? Or is this something new?

From golf.com's third round photos taken at Firestone:

 

Women's Open Championship Round 2 Clippings

Mike Aitken reports on Scotland's Catriona Matthew moving into contention and offers this:

Twice a winner in St Andrews of the St Rule Trophy in 1993 and 1994, Matthew found the memories of those experiences flooding back. "Although it's been a while, it surprised me how quickly I remembered things about where to go and where to miss it," she said.

And on the pace of play...

Pace of play was brisker yesterday and not before time. Six players had to come back to the links at 6.30am to finish their opening rounds. Although no golfer was fined for slow play on Thursday when some took six and a half hours, the Ladies Golf Union, the organisation which runs the event, expressed concern the slowcoaches were damaging the image of the game with their dilatory approach.

With a preponderance of double greens, blind shots and breezy conditions, the Old Course is regarded as the slowest venue on the men's championship rota. Even so, Susan Simpson, the tournament director, conceded: "Six and a half hours for a game of golf is not OK, whether it's women or men, amateur or professional.

That's just not something we would wish to have. For us, anything over five hours is unacceptable."

John Huggan shares a few incredible slow play anecdotes on the Golf For Women blog. On the same site, Dave Allen reports on Michelle Wie's second round 80.

Huggan also wonders why the entry fee is less than a round of golf over the Old Course.

Tiger Spared Of Future Fake Impromptu AmEx-USGA Outings

Yes, I know dark days ahead here. How to cope with the news that there will be no more Tiger Woods led American Express ads like the Caddyshack spot, just those embarrassing spots where he calls OnStar to unlock one of those ugly Buicks.

But mercifully for Tiger, no more of those outings where he has to interrupt his major championship preparation to plug AmEx and the USGA.

But much better was the spin by Amex suit Rich Lehrfeld buried in this AP piece (presumably by Doug Ferguson), who was explaining the decision to sign with the PGA of America while dumping Woods.

"He brought a lot of value to Amex. He's an incredible athlete with an incredible work ethic, and that runs well with what our brand is all about," Lehrfeld said.

And here I thought the brand was about justifying how us suckers pay an annual fee all to get a discount at Kinko's?  

"Sometimes strategies change. We wanted to move our dollars to build a broader base of consumer experiences."

Ah, right. That clears it up.

"It was a good 10-year run," Mark Steinberg, his agent at IMG, said Friday while following Woods at Firestone. He said Woods and American Express mutually agreed not to negotiate another contract.

"I know that sounds like a cop-out," Steinberg said. "But this was one of those deals that had run its course. If they wanted to be more consumer-driver, that might require more of Tiger's time. And it still might not hit the right demographics for them. We talked about doing something smaller, but why downsize?"

That's right baby, Tiger doesn't take pay cuts. And he can't get cardholders Ryder Cup tickets either. Sounds like a win-win!