"Talk about a lost opportunity."

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Alan Shipnuck notes in this week's Hot/Not golf.com column something missed by most in the announcement of ESPN as new Masters cable partner:
1. Golf Channel. First it misplaced its 'The.' Now the Masters has dumped USA for a new Thursday-Friday cable provider, but it snubbed the so-called home of golf in favor of ESPN. Talk about a lost opportunity.

"Woods even picked out the flavors himself"

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This man is hands-on! And it's definitely a slow news day since I see nearly every paper online picked up this vital story.

Tiger Woods will have his own brand of sports drink next year under an endorsement deal announced Tuesday with Gatorade that marks a couple of firsts for the world's No. 1 golfer — his first U.S. deal with a beverage company and his first licensing agreement.

Gatorade said it will introduce "Gatorade Tiger" in March, with more products to follow. Woods even picked out the flavors himself, with the drink available in a cherry blend, citrus blend and grape.
That's so good to know!
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, although Golfweek magazine reported last month it was for five years and could pay Woods as much as $100 million, moving him closer to the $1 billion mark in career endorsements.

"There have been some licensing elements to things we've done," said Mark Steinberg, his agent at IMG, who cited video games produced by EA Sports as an example. "But everything he does with Gatorade is going to be creating new products. It's something Tiger and I and our licensing business has been looking at for some time."
Fascinating! 
"Gatorade has been part of my game plan for years, whether I'm training or competing, so this is an ideal match," Woods said in a statement. "I'm eager to launch my first signature product in a few months and look forward to developing additional sports performance beverages with Gatorade in the coming years."

It's almost like he said that himself. Almost.

Woods, with 61 victories on the PGA Tour and 13 major championships, joins a stable of star athletes at Gatorade — Michael Jordan, Derek Jeter, Peyton Manning and Mia Hamm. None of those athletes has licensing deals, which also is a first for Gatorade, a division of PepsiCo.

"His iconic nature resonates everywhere he goes," said Jeff Urban, senior vice president of Gatorade. "Bridging that iconic nature with his will to win, those things make this a big deal for us."

Urban said it was too early to say how Gatorade would market Woods and his new product line, especially since the drink will not be available until the spring.

On pins and needles here.

The company released video of Woods going through sweat analysis testing with the Gatorade Sports Science Institute, which tested such things as his sweat rate and energy needs during exercise.

Woods has endorsed everything from sports equipment and apparel (Nike) to financial services (Accenture) to automobiles (Buick) to shaving products (Gillette). His first beverage deal comes after 11 years as a professional.

"We wanted to get away from a straight endorsement deal in the beverage category," Steinberg said. "We thought this would be the best fit for his first licensing deal. It's authentic to what Tiger does every day, as hard as he works out every day."

Okay I gotta cut this one off.

Woods Skips Christening, U.S. Media Skips The Story

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I missed this story last week while traveling but I'm not sure what excuse the golf press has for not reporting it. Here it is, first reported (in English) by Marcus Oscarsson in the Times:

The golfer Tiger Woods has missed the baptism in Sweden of his three-month-old daughter, Sam, according to Swedish media reports.

Woods is married to the Swedish model Elin Nordegren, whose family turned out in force for the christening ceremony in Stockholm yesterday. But one source close to the family said: "“Everybody was very surprised over the fact that Tiger did not show up.”

This Daily Express story explored things a bit more:

While the traditional christening was important to Elin and her family, insiders said Woods’s Buddhist beliefs meant the ceremony was less of a priority.

However, photos of Woods, 31, posing with his arms around Desperate Housewives star Teri Hatcher at the fund-raiser 6,000 miles away merely fuelled gossip. One columnist wrote: “Hey, hasn’t the guy heard of a daily planner?

“Couldn’t he and Elin, have picked a free day – no charity events, no golf, no shooting a dozen TV ads – then had their daughter baptised?”

Elin’s Swedish relatives were reportedly “very surprised” her husband was not there.

After flying into Stockholm on a private jet, Elin, 27, and baby Sam Alexis Woods were picked up by the model’s twin sister Josefin and the baby was christened in a specially decorated gymnasium. Meanwhile, last Saturday’s Tiger Woods Block Party in California raised £500,000 for a school learning programme.

A friend said Woods was “in great spirits”, adding: “He was the life and soul of the party. We had no idea his baby was being christened on the same weekend.”

Allan Maki in the Globe and Mail was the only writer to question Tiger's decision:

But hey, hasn’t the guy heard of a daily planner? Couldn’t he and his wife, Swedish model Elin Nordegren, have picked a free day – no charity events, no golf, no shooting a dozen new TV ads – then had their three-month-old daughter baptized?

Now, I could care less what Tiger does or does not do with his spare time. And frankly, I can't say I blame him for skipping a baptism in a gymnasium halfway around the globe.

But considering that way too many questions asked of Tiger this year in press conferences were schmaltzy, lame and mindless softballs revolving around the birth of his daughter, resulting in countless "fatherhood will make him a more complete man" columns, shouldn't some of the scribblers who peddled that at least report this?

"Three weeks ago I did not know who Gary Player was. And I am sure that - with much greater reason - he had never heard of me either. But now we are tangled up in one of South Africa's messiest controversies."

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George Monbiot apparently started the Burma nightmare for Gary Player and probably doesn't make things any better with this Guardian guest column discussing his questions for Player's design group following Player's response.

He first explains how the controversy came about:

I came across him while researching the column I wrote about Burma a fortnight ago. In trying to discover which western companies have been operating there, I stumbled upon a list of the country's recent golf course developments. He was named as the designer of the Pun Hlaing course in Rangoon. His website boasted that he had turned "a 650-acre rice paddy into The Pride of Myanmar".

I asked his company who owned the land on which the course was constructed. How many people were evicted in order to build it? Was forced labour used? As his company is based in Florida, did this work break US sanctions? It refused to answer my questions. I suggested in my column that Nelson Mandela should remove his name from the charity golf tournament Player is due to host next month.

My call was taken up by Desmond Tutu and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu). The Nelson Mandela Children's Fund, which claims to own the event, asked Mr Player to stand down as the tournament's guest of honour. Player's company responded by claiming that it was in fact the joint owner of the event; he has refused to stand aside. The controversy is still raging. Cosatu has promised to turn up and protest if Player does not withdraw.

One result of the fuss is that the Gary Player Group was obliged to issue a statement about its involvement in Burma. It maintained that "the company's decision to design the course in Burma was actually humanitarian in that it took no profit from the endeavour, but rather encouraged the developer to put the money toward creating jobs, as well as the establishment of a caddy & agronomy program ... the company was paid expenses only". Converting 650 acres of rice paddy in a country suffering from malnutrition into a golf course likely to be used by the generals looks to me like an unusual object for charity, so I asked Player's company to provide some evidence for these claims.

Oh boy, here's where it reeeaaaaallllyyyy awkward.

The same statement maintained that "Gary Player has always been a great supporter of human rights" and has "a solid record of campaigning for democracy around the world". To test this claim, I ordered the book he wrote in 1966, when he was 30 years old and at the peak of his remarkable career. Grand Slam Golf is well-written and strangely compelling: it makes the game seem almost interesting, even to me. But chapter two contains the following statements: "I must say now, and clearly, that I am of the South Africa of Verwoerd and apartheid ... a nation which is the result of an African graft on European stock and which is the product of its instinct and ability to maintain civilised values and standards amongst the alien barbarians ... The African may well believe in witchcraft and primitive magic, practise ritual murder and polygamy; his wealth is in cattle. More money and he will have no sense of parental or individual responsibility, no understanding of reverence for life or the human soul which is the basis of Christian and other civilised societies. ... A good deal of nonsense is talked of, and indeed thought about 'segregation'. Segregation of one kind or another is practised everywhere in the world."

Journalists in South Africa pointed me to allegations that Gary Player was used as a kind of global ambassador by the apartheid government. In 1975 he collaborated with the Committee for Fairness in Sport, which was set up by the government to try to overcome the global sporting boycott. In 1981 he featured on the UN's blacklist of sports people breaking the boycott. So I asked Player's company questions about these incidents as well.

All this is a long time ago, and Gary Player's attitude towards the apartheid regime is very different today. But another human rights issue is still current. There is a real problem with golf, and it is not confined to the dress sense of the participants. All over the world the construction of golf courses is associated with dispossession and environmental destruction. You'll find a flavour of the controversies it stirs up in Aberdeenshire at the moment, where Donald Trump is promoting a project to create the "world's greatest golf course" on a site of special scientific interest.

From there it spirals into a rant about environmentally destructive practices in golf, not all of which are true. 

Cialis Jokes and Lame Bathtub Ads No More; IBM Out Too

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From Sports Business Journal:

After 10 years, IBM presses ‘escape’ on PGA Tour deal

Oh wouldn't you love to know the Cialis-inspired headlines that were considered?

The company has been the tour’s “official information technology partner” for 10 years and has wide-ranging rights. It is embedded deeply enough into the sport that it may still be involved with the tour or possibly provide products or services to its successor as the tour’s technology sponsor, sources said, but it won’t return as an official sponsor.

Darn, and I was hoping this meant no more lousy IBM laptops in press rooms.

IBM provides the ShotLink real-time scoring system and the TourCast application, which provides online graphical webcasts of tour stops on PGATour.com.

Other than pricing, sources said IBM was distressed that some competitors gained access to tour equity through affiliations with local events, like EDS’ title sponsorship of the Byron Nelson Championship.

Gained access to tour equity. That's a keeper.

Hey, but at least now we all know what business EDS is in.

IBM has been a Masters sponsor for more than 20 years, and with its official PGA Tour status winding down, it is looking at more tournament affiliations. However, the tour is asking its tournaments not to do any exclusive deals with IBM in deference to any future sponsorship it may cut with a technology partner. An e-mail this month from PGA Tour CMO Tom Wade to tournament directors, obtained by SportsBusiness Journal, stated, “A continued relationship with IBM beyond 2007 is uncertain.” It went on to say the tour is in discussions with “a few different technology partners” who would “invest significantly with many of our tournaments.” Wade asks event directors to contact the tour before granting IBM official or exclusive rights.

Fun times.

Meanwhile, Cialis will not renew its official marketing partnership with the tour. Eli Lilly signed the four-year deal late in 2003 as it prepared to go to market with the erectile dysfunction drug.

But their ad looked so good on the scoreboards. And think of all the fathers who will be deprived of the privilege of explaining Cialis to their sons and daughters.

Agent Quits To Spend Less Time With Wie Family

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Greg Nared makes it number two to bid farwell.

 

"Nice event, good fun, but no integrity," was the widely held view.

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John Huggan says Ernie Els' resounding win combined with the lack of IMG star power actually may do wonders for the World Match Play and certainly felt more worldly than the PGA Tour's WGC events:
Over the 43 years of its existence and through as many as half a dozen disparate title sponsors from Piccadilly to Colgate to Suntory to Toyota to Cisco to HSBC -- with another on the way -- the World Match Play Championship at Wentworth has been accused of many things, most of them relating to the tournament founder, the late Mark McCormack, packing the field with his own IMG clients.

In truth, Mr. Ten Percent was an easy target, as was his Cleveland-based company's acronym. "IM Greedy" was a popular alternative, as was "International Money Grabbers," with neither barb, of course, by extension doing anything for the World Match Play's standing in the game. "Nice event, good fun, but no integrity," was the widely held view.

But that was then. With a quantifiable and public qualifying system in place nowadays, this long-standing autumnal event has grown in both stature and credibility. Take this year. Of the four semifinalists, only one, Hunter Mahan, pays a percentage of his earnings to IMG, a point worth making in an event offering golf's biggest first prize, a cool £1 million. And even better, eliminating any hint of blatant bias seems to have brought with it a greater diversity, too. Not only were the final four all from different countries, each hailed from a different continent: Ernie Els from Africa, Angel Cabrera from South America, Mahan from North America and Henrik Stenson from Europe.

Such a cosmopolitan lineup has to be commended in a so-called "world" event, even if, with only 16 starters, there remains an air of exhibitionism about the proceedings. And let's not get into the fact that with the arrival of the WGC-Accenture World Match Play Championship that features the planet's best 64 players, the global claim of this event's title is, if one is honest, more than a little dubious.

The Northern Trust Open It Is

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Golfweek's Scott Hamilton confirms with added details what was revealed here earlier this week: the L.A. Open is now the Northern Trust Open.

The headline writers might like it, but it's still the L.A. Open for me.

"During one day of play, every player fixed at least one ball mark within 10 feet of the fourth hole -- but only three players actually struck the green within 10 feet of the hole."

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PT-AG644A_Golf2_20071012135814.jpgThe Wall Street Journal's Timothy Carroll looks at the latest divot tools that aim to improve conditions, and offers this fun little anecdote:

But is the design of the tool really the only reason so many greens are full of ball marks? Let's talk about the laziness of the "toolee." Etiquette calls for golfers to fix their ball marks, but every time I play, it's obvious that people fail to do so. Mr. Carroll says he's noticed that some people at high-end clubs believe that for their six-figure initiation fees, someone else should repair the marks for them.

Ball marks, one of the few things that golfers are allowed to fix on the green, can be controversial for other reasons, too. A senior USGA rules official recently told me a story from the Masters a few years ago. During one day of play, every player fixed at least one ball mark within 10 feet of the fourth hole -- but only three players actually struck the green within 10 feet of the hole. Were they all fixing old ball marks, or were they trying to correct other blemishes that they're not supposed to be messing with, like scuff marks from a shoe or indentations left by a player leaning on his putter? "Who knows?" he says.

 

One Amazing Lede

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First he was burying the Faldo-Monty lede, but I think John Hopkins may have produced the single worst lede I've read in a major newspaper.

Tell me there was a copy editor strike that had something to do with this:

The West course, damp underfoot, cloudy overhead, was no place for faint hearts or short-hitters in the last eight of the HSBC World Match Play Championship and the men who compete today for a place in tomorrow’s final are big-hitters, really big-hitters, who come from four continents. Truly the use of the word World in the title of this event is not over-egging it.