"The network improved somewhat, but its progress was a little disappointing."

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Credit Gary Van Sickle for revisiting his 2007 predictions, though his Golf Channel critique was more interesting (to me anyway):

The network improved somewhat, but its progress was a little disappointing. Critiquing the on-air personnel choices would be subjective, so I won't do it, but the Golf Channel proved no better than the other networks when it repeatedly signed off for the day even though play wasn't finished. Its post-round coverage at majors was spotty. It delivered one good hour, but unfortunately was on the air for three. Quality, not quantity, should be a goal in '08. The lack of audience was such a sore spot that the network only released the numbers that included the viewers who watched the nightly replays, too. Score a point.
Well there's good news. WinZone (remember that!) says there's a 95% chance this will be a winner:
A Doppler radar system made by the Denmark-based software developer Interactive Sports Games will begin to be used to convey club movement, ball trajectory, and other statistics to viewers, according to the company. The Golf Channel's first use of the TrackMan system will be at the Mercedes-Benz Championship in Hawaii on January 3, according to reports.

 

Breaking: Golf Digest Hot List Arrives Just In Time To Spoil Holiday For Manufacturers

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2008hotlistwoods_eqindex.jpgI know many of you wondered why GolfDigest.com bloggers Bubala and Goy took two months off from suggesting that St. Andrews and Augusta National are not worth preserving, and here's why: the now-annual Hot List has arrived to the misery of most people in the equipment industry who were trying to enjoy the week between Christmas and New Year's and who must now explain to their bosses why they didn't win a gold medal.

There's a video showing you the top secret location where the testing takes place and where Golf Digest staffers racked up a massive bar bill to get them 14-days of tech talk.

Don't miss the survey that let's you figure out what junk you should buy this year so that it can take a place of honor in your garage sale by March 2009.

Here's where the judges tell you why you should spend $500 to replace last year's noisy, offensive looking driver.

Don't forget to stock up on Gold Medal winning woods, since that's what you'll use when the new driver doesn't work. And for when you can't hit those, there are always the winning hybrids.

The ball report will make you feel better about agonizing over a $45 dozen-ball purchase even though they essentially all working off of the same patent...if you believe those dreadful juries.

Might as well pick up some irons too since we haven't heard a thing about U-grooves in a while. Which reminds me, I need to change my wedges out every two weeks like Vijay and Padraig, so maybe I'll see what the judges are recommending.

And finally, do check out all of the new blades things they say are putters but really look like rejected set pieces from Spaceballs.

All Things Torrey Update

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Tod Leonard begins the countdown to the U.S. Open with a look at various aspects of preparations, including this news for anyone thinking of playing the North or South Courses prior to the event:

For golfers who enjoy the North Course, some advice: Play it soon, because after the Buick it won't appear as its normal self for at least seven months.

City Golf Manager Mark Woodward said work on the Open driving range will begin in the days immediately following the Buick Invitational's conclusion on Jan. 27. About 30,000 square feet of sod for the range tee area will be laid in front of the 10th tee and ninth green. Shorter versions of those holes will be available.

On March 1, nine holes of the North will be shut down as corporate villages are constructed. Woodward said the North Course will close completely May 1.

The South Course will be open to the public until May 21. From then on, the maintenance crew will be “dialing in” the conditioning for the Open.

“I've joked in the past that we were going to peak at the last minute,” Woodward said. “But the way things look now, I think we're going to peak in the spring and have really good conditions for the last four or five months.”

"The starter put them with another couple who just started playing golf five months ago."

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Doug Ferguson with a fun note on Henrik Stenson booking a U.S. Open tune-up round at Torrey Pines recently:
When he arrived in California for the Target World Challenge, he made a detour to San Diego and booked a twosome on the golf course. The starter put them with another couple who just started playing golf five months ago.

Turns out the woman's name was Pamela Anderson - no, not that one - and Stenson's remembers her boyfriend's name only as Jesse.

"Let's just say it was an interesting round," Stenson said. "She told me, 'The next time you're south of L.A., give me a call.' And I told her, 'Which Pamela Anderson am I going to look up?"'

It was an awakening of sorts for Stenson, who won last year in Dubai and the Accenture Match Play Championship. Outside of a round in Spain last year, he said it had been 10 years since he paid a greens fee. The good news is he received the San Diego County residents rate.

And he bought a bucket of balls for the range, the first time in a while he hit balls with a black stripe around them.

"They were limited-flight balls," he said. "It was cool in the morning, and the ball was going nowhere. But it took a couple of swings to realize this is not down to me. Some of it was the balls."

"For revealing he is a Rolling Stones fan..."

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John Hopkins in The Times offers his year end awards. (The Hoppy's...hmmm...sounds familiar.) Loved this eye-roller:

George O'Grady, executive director of the European Tour, who last November announced the most significant response to the world dominance of golf by the PGA Tour in the US. This is the $10m Dubai World Championship, the biggest purse in golf. Starting in Dubai in December 2009 it will be the culmination of what is currently known as the Order of Merit but from 2009 will be renamed the Race to Dubai. For revealing he is a Rolling Stones fan, Tim Finchem, Commissioner of the PGA Tour in the US, is a close runner-up to O'Grady.

He revealed that about three tours and a previous century ago, never too early for some!

Now, how does Finchem get an award when he's the mastermind of this excellent award:

Most overrated event of the year

Any world golf championship event.

“We’re seeing free agency for sports journalists.”

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The New York Times's Richard Perez-Pena has Rick Reilly at $3 million a year from ESPN, up from $2 million in last week's WSJ story. Essentially he writes the same piece with a few other interesting items:

The competition for writers has even produced bidding wars, especially for big-name columnists like Rick Reilly (from Sports Illustrated to ESPN), Howard Bryant (from The Post to ESPN) and Selena Roberts (from The New York Times to Sports Illustrated) — but also for less widely known reporters. People who were briefed on the deals said that Mr. Reilly’s contract, easily the biggest of the recent signings, was worth more than $3 million a year.

“It’s the exact same model as what happened to athletes,” said Leigh Steinberg, a top sports agent. “We’re seeing free agency for sports journalists.”
And this surprised me...not that that's saying much since I didn't even know what a carbon footprint was until last weekend:
ESPN.com is one of the most popular sports sites on the Web, with 20 million visitors in November, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, behind only Yahoo Sports, with more than 22 million. The Web site holds the vast bulk of what the writers produce, much of which is never seen on printed pages or heard on the air, including news, features, analysis, commentary and articles to accompany segments produced for television.

 

Scots Vying With Irish...

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...for the site of Donald Trump's next self-proclaimed masterpiece and perhaps the coveted Isle of Stupidity crown. Because as Eddie Barnes reports, the Scots may be falling for this Leveraging 101 nonsense where The Donald is still going to visit Northern Ireland to consider his alternatives should one of these corruption probes or common sense overtake the Scottish government.

Meanwhile, Geoff Runcie, chief executive of Aberdeen & Grampian Chamber of Commerce, has warned that Scotland has "played out an amateur production on the world's stage".

He said: "Our big name star – Donald Trump – has auditioned and made known his ambitions for the show but has come to the stage only to find himself playing alongside the amateur dramatics team. The words of our bard Robert Burns 'to see ourselves as others see us' have clearly not registered with many and we still put petty and party politics before serious economic opportunity."
Oh they're amateurs alright. 

"The game's cowardly administrators have let us down. They have dropped the ball."

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John Huggan offers his Christmas wish list, with wishful thinking for the governing bodies, Rory Sabbatini, George O'Grady, Monty and many others...
To the Royal & Ancient Golf Club and the United States Golf Association: A backbone

Over the past 15 years or so, golf at the very highest level has sadly become a less interesting spectacle. The world's leading players are, almost without exception, hitting the same shots time after tedious time. Gone are the likes of Lee Trevino and Seve Ballesteros, men who could conjure up subtle fades and draws rather than simply aim straight at distant flags.

Then there are the courses the biggest events are played on most weeks. Stretched almost beyond imagination, covered in more and more unimaginative rough and with pin positions cut ever closer to the edge of putting surfaces, the tracks played by the leading professionals encourage a crash-bang-wallop style of play that has all but lost almost every semblance of subtlety.

The root cause, of course, is the golf ball. It goes too far and it flies too straight, facts the R&A and the USGA are well aware of, but are loath to do anything about in case those big-bad manufacturers like Titleist and Callaway and their big-bad lawyers take them to court. The game's cowardly administrators have let us down. They have dropped the ball.

"My carbon footprint is substantially higher than the average person..."

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Tony Jimenez's profile of Justin Rose includes several comments from the Englishman about aspiring to the number 1 spot in the world (but unlike Jason Day's recent remarks, they're far less audacious).

And as you're reading some of his observations of Tiger, well... 

 "When you first play him, that's definitely the case," said the Florida-based Englishman. "There is an aura, a presence about him, but that's something you have to get over quickly if you want to take him on.

"Ultimately you've got to give him the respect he deserves, I think that's all he really wants from his playing partners. He is genuinely one of the guys, if you have a laugh with him, he'll have a laugh back."

Rose has just finalised a deal with sponsor Tradition, a leading broker dealer, that will mean the globe-trotting golfer becomes one of the world's first carbon-neutral sportsmen.

The company plans to trade carbon credits based on his carbon footprint in 2008.

"My carbon footprint is substantially higher than the average person so it is even more prevalent for someone in my situation to give something back to the environment," said Rose.
Wow, we went from talking Tiger to calculating carbon footprints. Well, give him credit for taking on a noble cause.
 

Uh, have you calculated your carbon footprint today? Or were you like me and didn't know what the heck that was?

"Called for comment, the USGA's media office referred questions to Carter Rich, the organization's manager of equipment standards. Rich declined to comment, saying such questions should be handled by the media office, which did not return subsequent messages."

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sidebar_product_photo.jpgDavid Hanners in the Pioneer Press writes about Minnesota golfers Brian Trachsel and David Healy suing the USGA over their non-conforming invention.

In 2005, the two designed and patented the Windage, an inexpensive, simple device to help golfers determine which way the wind is blowing, important to know when lining up a shot.

The design is simplicity itself. It is a golf-ball-sized bulb that, when squeezed, blows a small cloud of talc into the air and lets the user see where the wind is blowing.

In a game where new improve-your-score gadgets come along every week, Healy believed they'd hit on something useful. "It's something that everybody can use," he said. "It's a lowbrow and simple tool, but it's affordable."

Then they ran into Rule 14-3(b) of the Rules of Golf, published by the United States Golf Association, the game's governing body.

When the two men submitted the Windage to the USGA for approval, the organization rejected it. The USGA, which allows the use of pricey laser range finders and GPS devices, branded the $6 tool an "artificial device" to gauge or measure conditions affecting play.
Unlike a rangefinder, which is so organic.
This week, Trachsel and Healy, co-owners of Rochester-based Windage LLC, took their complaint to federal court. The two sued the USGA and "unnamed co-conspirators" they claim have schemed to keep the Windage off the market and off golf courses.
"As a result of the USGA's arbitrary, inconsistent, unfair, unreasonable and unjustified actions in refusing to approve the Windage product, retail stores, pro shops and other golf retailers have refused to stock the product specifically because it is not USGA-approved, and the lack of approval is a major sales obstacle for retailers and manufacturers," the men claim in the suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis.
But at least the USGA was ready for a spirited defense.
Called for comment, the USGA's media office referred questions to Carter Rich, the organization's manager of equipment standards. Rich declined to comment, saying such questions should be handled by the media office, which did not return subsequent messages.
Where's Marty Parkes when you need him?

Got to say, the gents have a pretty strong case:
Reaching down and tearing off a few blades of grass, then letting them go is one way golfers gauge wind direction and speed. Players - or caddies - who smoke do the same thing by exhaling a puff of smoke and watching how it moves in the wind.

Both methods have their drawbacks, the lawsuit alleges:

-- Pulling grass damages the course "and forces the player to come into contact with potentially harmful fertilizers, pesticides, etc."
Okay, that's a bit of a stretch, but this isn't:
-- Puffing smoke is "dangerous in and of itself and a competitive advantage to those who smoke over those who do not."
And... 
The men submitted Windage to the USGA for approval in July 2006, and less than a month later, the association rejected it as being an artificial device for "gauging or measuring distances or conditions that might affect ... play."
The men appealed, and less than two weeks later, the USGA rejected the appeal. Undaunted, Trachsel and Healy took the matter to the USGA's executive committee, which upheld the earlier decisions.

That's because none of them were Windage investors! Get with the times guys!

Healy said the reasoning behind the association's rejection makes little sense.

"Coming from a bunch of retired lawyers, it was kind of a joke, their responses," he said. "The reason they came back with why a laser range finder or GPS is approved is it speeds up play and it's readily available information. We argued that wind condition is also readily available information.

"Our product was invented to speed up the game. Slow play is sucking the life out of the game. Who has five hours to play these days?"

"To relive this historic season..."

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 20, 2007
NBC Sports Special PGA TOUR 2007: A New Era in Golf Highlights Successful Debut of FedExCup and Playoffs

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FL– It was perceived as a particularly bold concept for such a tradition-steeped sport, and not necessarily one that was universally embraced when it was first introduced.
Oh but now...
But by the time the PGA TOUR’s season-long FedExCup competition had finished its inaugural run, and Tiger Woods had emerged as champion following a compelling run through the TOUR’s first-ever Playoffs, it was widely deemed a significant success.
And now, we get to relive all of the points permutations?
The introduction of the FedExCup with a restructured schedule, and the ensuing drama that unfolded throughout the season, is documented in PGA TOUR 2007: A New Era in Golf, an NBC Sports special that airs on Sunday, December 30, at 3 p.m. ET.