"The handling of this case has raised a number of matters of principle."

As shocking as it may seem, turns out that the sudden approval of The Donald's Scottish golf course may not have been entirely on the up and up.

Eddie Barnes reports for Scotland on Sunday:

In a highly unusual move, the national director of the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) has written to Finance Secretary John Swinney, reminding ministers of the need to be "politically impartial" and "transparent" when handling planning applications. Dr Veronica Burbridge warns Swinney that her members have been in contact to "express concerns" about the way the case has been handled.

The move follows a week of turmoil after ministers decided they, not the local council, would decide whether plans by American tycoon Donald Trump to build a huge golfing complex in Aberdeenshire should go ahead.

It emerged that a day before the decision, First Minister Alex Salmond, who is also the local MSP for the area, met two of Trump's representatives to discuss the case.

It then emerged that the pair had also met the Scottish Government's chief planner on the day the decision was made.

The matter led to a bitter political row which continues to rage, with opposition parties accusing Salmond of "sleaze", while the SNP accused them of risking an investment of up to £1bn.

In the RPTI letter, Burbridge states: "The handling of this case has raised a number of matters of principle. Members of the institute have expressed concerns that the manner in which this case is handled should not appear to damage the integrity of the planning system."

It adds: "They stress the need to ensure that procedures are transparent, respected and clearly understood by all those involved. Members of the institute are concerned that the approach to scrutiny of this case should be politically impartial and according to planning law and planning policy."

Opposition parties seized on the letter last night, claiming it supported their own concerns.

Scottish Lib Dem leader Nicol Stephen said: "This is an exceptional move which underlines the seriousness of the institute's concerns. This matter has grave implications for the conduct of Government.

"Ministers are ultimately responsible for the actions of Government and there is a fundamental lack of transparency and openness in the SNP Government's approach to this issue."

Swinney is expected to make a statement to Parliament this week answering questions about the Government's handling.

No one was available for comment from the Scottish Government.

Callaway v. Titleist Spin, Round 1

AP's story on Callaway prevailing over Acushnet features quotes from the company flacks:

"We have now established in court that our golf ball patents are valid, and that Titleist Pro V1 golf balls infringe those patents," she said. "We will immediately start the process of requesting an appropriate remedy, including injunctive relief and damages."

And from Fairhaven...

"The jury's mixed decision has created ambiguity that will have to be resolved post-trial," said Joseph Nauman, an Acushnet executive vice president.

Tiger Tops Rory By 19, Setting Up Monty-Sabbatini Dewsweepers Pairing

Since it was 29 degrees in Malibu Canyon this morning and 31 when I pulled into Sherwood, you can imagine how many people will be rushing out to see Rory Sabbatini attempting to repeat his trio of triple bogies while Monty sees if he can run faster than Rory and perhaps even catch the hole cutter during Saturday's round at Sherwood.

Oh, by the way, Tiger fired 62 and said the greens were soft.

Q.  How would you characterize the course setup today, and what do you think of the job the field staff does in general?

TIGER WOODS:  Well, the field staff set it up probably a little bit more difficult today pin wise, but the greens were soft.  I mean, that's the thing that allows us to be aggressive.  I fire at pins that I normally don't fire at here.  One, we had no wind, and we had greens that were backing balls up.  We had to watch out for spinning the ball back too much with 9 irons and wedges.  They did all they can do to hide the pins and make it a little more difficult, but when you've got receptive greens then the guys are going to shoot good scores.

I walked on all 18 of them while touring the course with John Mutch of the PGA Tour field staff and while the greens may not have been brick hard, to call them soft is an exaggeration. Several were frozen until nearly 10 a.m.

Admittedly, Sherwood's greens and today's locations did allow for shots to be funneled to the hole, but soft?

If those are soft and guys are spinning it back, then maybe U-grooves do have to go. I'd hate to think what Tiger considres to be a firm green.
 

Callaway Prevails In Pro V1 Patent Suit

From the wire...

Callaway sued Acushnet last year in a Delaware federal court for patent infringement relating to Callaway's three-layer golf balls. Acushnet acknowledged that its Titleist Pro V1 balls had infringed the Callaway patent, but claimed that those patents were not valid.

Clever!

A jury found that four of Callaway's contested patents were valid, while one was invalid, Bloomberg News reported today. An additional trial is expected to be held to assess damages.

"I believe, if you are going to be fair, you need to be consistent in setting up a course"

Newly engaged and already feisty, the Shark lashed out at the different condtions during round two in South Africa.

The 52-year-old Australian carded a 70 to finish in a six-man group on 145 that also included Britain's Darren Clarke.

But Norman was critical of the way the course was set up for the second round.

"It's been two totally different courses, the course was more difficult yesterday," he told reporters.

"They made a few adjustments to the tees and they did 100 percent irrigation last night so the greens, which they also did not cut, were softer and there was not as much release on the fairways.

"I believe, if you are going to be fair, you need to be consistent in setting up a course," added Norman.

Ah, the dreaded fair word.

Tournament director Mike Stewart defended the changes.

"Yesterday was very windy and the course was incredibly difficult as you could tell from the scores," Stewart told Reuters. "Some holes were exceptionally demanding.

"We felt we had to do something based on the weather forecast for today, which had wind speeds 5-mph stronger all day with gusts of up to 30-mph."

Stewart said the changes were made in order to make the course play as it did on Thursday.

"When we brought tees forward it was to make it play like it did on the first day," he said. "Despite the stronger wind players would be able to use the same club off the tee.

"We also had to slow down the greens because the ball was moving around in the afternoon yesterday. The possibility of an even stronger wind today put us in a very difficult position.

"If balls were moving around we may have had to stop play and we would look very silly if we brought the players in glorious sunshine."

Conditions were so difficult on Friday there were only 17 sub-par rounds, leader Kingston calling it a day for grinding out regulation figures.

"I was so solid on the back nine, I only missed two or three greens, but the wind was gusting so hard it was pushing you in all directions," said the South African.

"With the ball oscillating on the greens and the wind pushing you from behind it was so tough making a decent putt. It took a lot of energy just to stand still."

Greg And Chrissie Wrap Pre-Nup Negotiations, Confirm Engagement

Guess the lawyers didn't want to work during Christmas.

"My God. If you need a rah-rah speech to play the Ryder Cup, you've got some serious issues."

You gotta love Fred Couples.

Talking about his desire to be a Ryder Cup captain, quoted by Thomas Bonk in the LA Times:

"I can promise you there are 12 guys who don't want to do 75% of the stuff. My goal would be to slough some of the stuff off."

Couples said his first move would be to appoint Michael Jordan and Robin Williams as assistant captains.

"I would have Michael Jordan tell stories every single night and I would have Robin Williams tell jokes for 30 minutes. That's what I want," he said. "I don't want a rah-rah speech. My God. If you need a rah-rah speech to play the Ryder Cup, you've got some serious issues.

"If we lose, we lose because we lose, but I can promise you we'd have a good time."

Furyk raised an eyebrow when he heard Couples' choices as assistants. But he had no problem with the potential candidacy of Couples, who has played on five Ryder Cup teams and four Presidents Cup teams.

"Anyone with that kind of passion, I think Freddie would do a good job," he said.

"What you're trying to prevent is the kids look up to athletes, and you don't want to have kids going down the wrong path at an early age and knowing that they can get away with it."

Sherwood was abuzz today...with talk of the Mitchell Report. This meant all of us got to listen to Art Spander do a live radio interview (actually, Art talked loud enough that he really didn't need to phone this one in).

When Tiger Woods came in the cart barn after his opening 69, he was asked by Doug Ferguson about the possibility of such a report in golf had the new drug testing program not been started, and Tiger said what I've been ranting and raving about forever and which no one in a position of power has said, which is odd considering their devotion to family values.

Q. If the TOUR doesn't have this testing now, do you think there eventually could have been a Mitchell report for golf?

TIGER WOODS: I think it could happen. What you're trying to prevent is the kids look up to athletes, and you don't want to have kids going down the wrong path at an early age and knowing that they can get away with it.

"More people have now entered the GolfDigest U.S. Open contest than took steroids in major league baseball last year."

Bob Carney reports that the USGA/Golf Digest/NBC US Open Contest passes 3000 entries and the essay clips he shares make for fun reading.

Is it too late to bag the celebrities and just have four amateurs? I know, I know. But I had to try.

Promise I won't bring it up again...this week.

"Make room for the kids."

Michael Bamberger reveals that the same Tom Watson who suggested to Hootie Johnson (remember him? such warm fuzzy memories) that the Masters say sayonara to the old geezers, now finds himself on the receiving end of a new R&A policy.

Past champions used to be automatically exempt through age 65. This week, an R&A spokesman confirmed a change; past champions will now be exempt through the age of 60. In the short term, the change really only affects one person: Tom Watson himself.

Now this has me a bit confused...

He turned 58 in September, and he'll play in '08 at Royal Birkdale, where he won the '83 Open. He'll play in '09 at Turnberry, where he won the '77 Open. And he'll play his final open in 2010, at the Old Course, on a links he loves even if it never loved him back. He'll be 60 then and one of the most respected players in the history of the Open championship. He'll be done.

I guess this means the policy is being grandfathered in?

As usual Watson handles it with class and perspective:

"I'm fine with the decision," Watson said Wednesday night. "I think it's a good thing, good for golf. Make room for the kids."

"Fairways are much tighter…and this is further evidenced by the fact that Fred Funk -- who is the benchmark for fairways -- is down in accuracy about 6 percent"

Bob Harig catches up with Hank Haney, who makes a long overdue point about Tiger's driving and the accuracy decline of other top players.

And the easy place to look was at Woods' driving accuracy, which had dropped from over 70 percent in 2000 to under 60 percent this year -- with varying degrees of difficulty in hitting fairways during that time.

"Wouldn't it be more relevant to compare Tiger to the other players?'' said Haney, who pointed out that most players have lost accuracy over the past five years.

Among the reasons Haney cites are the fact that players are hitting the ball farther, fairways are tighter, they are using more drivers off the tee in an attempt to overpower courses and they are using drivers with longer shafts (45 inches now, compared to 43).

"Simple geometry says that even a driver that averages one yard farther will miss more fairways,'' he said. "And Tiger is much longer" -- 293.3 yards in 2002 versus 302.4 yards in 2007 -- "than he was.

"Fairways are much tighter … and this is further evidenced by the fact that Fred Funk -- who is the benchmark for fairways -- is down in accuracy about 6 percent, despite the fact that he has lost distance since 2002.''

Remember, those in favor of grooves regulation suggest these guys thump away at the ball because they have grooves, yet have never mentioned that the decrease in accuracy could also be influenced by narrowing fairway widths.

The Donald Wins! The Donald Wins!

Andrew Hough reports on the stunning turnaround in Scotland where the chairman was also ousted for having voted down The Donald's links course and housing development.

Aberdeenshire Council also dumped the committee chairman, councillor Martin Ford, who had used his casting vote to break a 7-7 impasse that threatened to scupper the plans on environmental grounds.

The Scottish government said last week it was intervening because the project to build two championship golf courses, around 1,000 homes, a luxury hotel and 36 villas on a pristine stretch of northeast coastline, was too "important" to be dealt with by the local council.

Trump said he was very pleased by the decision.

"It's unprecedented what happened," he told Reuters by telephone from his office in New York. "The people of Aberdeenshire so loved the project that the council voted for it, unanimously."

And...

He said Ford was removed as chairman of the council's infrastructure and services committee at the emergency meeting after a vote of no confidence was supported 26-10, with 29 councillors abstaining.

A Scottish government spokesman said the move would not affect the review as ministers would make the final decision.

Neil Hobday, director of the Trump project, said the group felt vindicated by the council's action.

"For us it is a validation or affirmation and it (the decision) did not surprise us as we have support of the people of this region and I think the politicians who are representing them listened," he said.

Ford could not be reached for comment. But at the time of the decision he defended his vote against Trump, saying the risk to the local environment was "too high a price to pay".

"Interesting is fun, after all."

John Huggan profiled Mike Clayton's role in aiding Trever Herden in setting up The Australian for the Australian Open.

"Geoff Ogilvy uses the word ‘fun’ to describe what he looks for in championship golf,” says Clayton. "I’m not so sure about that, but it should certainly be interesting. Interesting is fun, after all.

"This is a difficult enough golf course, with the wind and the water and the way it is routed. So all we really tried to do was avoid the mistake of embarrassing the players or orchestrating a winning score by distorting the dimensions of the golf course. For me, that’s what goes on at the US Open; the dimensions of the course get distorted. And that is our role, to avoid that happening.

"So we don’t want fun in the sense that players are making birdies all day. I want guys challenged to make good decisions and hit good shots. I hate to see them hitting a shot a foot off the fairway and having to chip out sideways. All that does is eliminate decision-making."

"The Sharp Park Golf Course and Club House are historically significant facilities."

The Pacifica City Council has petitioned San Francisco to not even think of touching MacKenzie's Sharp Park. Included is their resolution, printed in the Pacifica paper.

"America no longer can say it produces the vast majority of the best players in the world - arguably it does not even produce the majority"

Mike Clayton previewed the Australian Open and weighs in on the proposed tour merger with Japan and Asia:

The long-term future of golf in Australia should be tied to golf in Japan and Asia and there has been movement on that front in recent months.

Only the combined strength of these small tours - given the measure of a big tour is America or Europe - will see them create something significant, something to rival Europe and something that is worth a sponsor investing a considerable amount of money.

The problem with rolling three tours into one is that the players are always going to look at the game the way players always have and that is 'how does this affect me?'

Big decisions must be made with the long-term benefit of the game in mind and clearly the long-term benefit of the professional game is to create a tour to rival the best in the world.

America no longer can say it produces the vast majority of the best players in the world - arguably it does not even produce the majority - and that balance will only continue to tip in favour of the 'foreigners' as the rest of the world uncovers talented players with games that are capable of winning big tournaments including the biggest events in America.