"Let's listen."

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mar25_tigersteve_299x297.jpgGolf.com's Michael Bamberger offers a fun behind-the-scenes look at why NBC's sound dudes are picking up more conversations. Now if we could only get you know how to shut his trap for a second we might hear them.
For years, the Woods-Williams discussions were off-limits. But late last year, NBC producer Tommy Roy started to notice a change. During the FedEx Cup playoffs, he had two sound men, Andre Carabajal and Frank Ricciardi, take turns working Tiger's group. Each carried a new model microphone — the Sennheiser 816, replacing the Sennheiser Mke2, for you audiophiles — that permitted them to pick up conversation from about four or five feet away, instead of three. When it comes to Tiger's personal space, every foot counts. Steve Williams wasn't moving them out.

The payoff came at Bay Hill. Carabajal, tall and lanky but unobtrusive, was assigned to the Woods — Sean O'Hair group. On the 16th fairway on Sunday, Woods and Williams were throwing grass and analyzing a make-or-break shot when Roy said into the earpieces of all his announcers, "Let's listen."
Shut up Johnny!
Johnny Miller stopped talking, and we heard Tiger say to Stevie, "If that flag changes, let me know." It was an insight, among other things, into how much Tiger trusts his caddie. Then on 18 Williams threw grass and told Woods to add 13 yards to a 167-yard shot. Tiger didn't say a thing. We watched him process the information and then play a low, fading five-iron from a place another golfer might have smashed a seven.

Golf Digest Conditioning Score To Focus On Fast And Firm

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mail02_environment.jpgThis is from the May Golf Digest:

To do our part, at the urging of some members of the American Society of Golf Course Architects, Golf Digest has redefined the Conditioning category used in our various course rankings.

The old definition asked panelists, "How would you rate the playing quality of tees, fairways and greens when you last played the course?" The new definition reads, "How fast, firm and rolling were the fairways, and how firm yet receptive were the greens on the date you played the course?"

Uh, what if the course has kikuyu fairways?

Seriously, this is a nice step. Lop off Resistance to Scoring and you might start seeing some of those dogs flopping off the list of America's Best Courses.

“These guys would bitch about ice cream.”

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Jim McCabe offers a mix of thoughts on the season to date. My favorites:
After hearing all the talk about those bad greens at the Bay Hill Club, you wanted to remind the players that Arnold Palmer won all 62 of his PGA Tour tournaments — including those seven majors — on greens that were probably worse than what they were playing on that week.

Then again, that goes along with what Ed Dougherty once said about the fickle nature of professional golfers: “These guys would bitch about ice cream.”
And...
Let me see if I have this right: Ten players who had to come back Monday morning to finish the $8 million CA Championship were then whisked off in limousines to the Miami airport where private jets took them to Orlando where helicopters then relayed them to Isleworth for a VIP corporate outing? Yeah, that sounds like the way Byron Nelson and Jug McSpaden made their way out of town after winning the Miami Four-ball March 11, 1945.

Tiger Exposes Jackson Pollack's Methodology And It Ain't Pretty

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Thanks to reader Tuco for this reminder that (A) contemporary art is a farce (B) that the ad gurus are consistently nauseating to listen to when describing the deep, hidden context of their lame ad campaigns and (C) that at least this is an upgrade from the spots with Tiger raving about the Enclave's family-friendly safety.

 

"I don't know if we're impervious"

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Garry Smits is the first to address the inevitable questions about the PGA Tour's financial well-being in the face of an economic downturn, with quotes from Tim Finchem and Joe Ogilvie.

He reported that TV ratings are up slightly over last year, mostly because of Tiger Woods being on another hot streak and stars such as Ernie Els and Phil Mickelson winning tournaments in which Woods did not appear. That keeps advertisers happy.

Tournament pro-ams, ticket sales, corporate hospitality and other tournament-site revenue, part of which flows to the Tour's charitable concerns, also remains level with 2007 or even slightly up, when taken as a whole.

Close to home, The Players Championship is seeing corporate tents, sky boxes and other forms of hospitality at nearly the same pace as last year, with ticket sales a bit ahead of last year, said executive director Ron Cross.

But even Finchem agreed that the PGA Tour, like any other business, probably could not avoid being affected if the economy continues a downward trend.

"I don't know if we're impervious," Finchem said recently. "We have a lot of long-term stuff with fundamental building blocks at the tournament level. Ads and TV ratings are on a shorter leash, but so far we haven't seen any falloff."

Finchem said the economic outlook for the Tour is not as dire as in 1999 and 2000, during the dot.com bust. For example, the Tour had to fill nearly 10 title sponsorships within a year, including an umbrella sponsor for its developmental tour to replace Buy.com.

And...

"Anything to do with residential development might be a problem pretty soon," Ogilvie said.

"You look at retail, like cars, which would be a problem, but we have a great relationship with Buick, and they have Tiger on their team. They're one U.S. car brand that is doing well.

The Tour season also has six months remaining, and more bad news from the economy could start having ripple effects.

"When businesses suffer, they put on the brakes," Finchem said. "They don't entertain, and advertising is easy to cut. But some are cutting back now and some remain aggressive. We might come out OK."

"I don't need a coach. I need a woman in my life."

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Okay, John Daly's drinking is a concern, but going through divorce number four and saying things like this takes it to another level. From an unbylined Irish Independent story:

"I don't need a coach," said Daly, reportedly going through his fourth divorce. "I need a woman in my life.

"Once I start playing great golf again, everything will be all right. Now I'm getting poured on, but when I'm playing great, everybody talks about how great I am. That's the way it's always worked.

"I'm hitting the ball great. I'm close now. New Orleans is going to be a great week."

Read it and weep!

One of the most sober assessments of Daly's current predicament was made by Pat Perez, probably one of his closest friends on Tour.

"It used to be cool to hang out with JD and go out and party ... but now you can't drink with him because you're really contributing to something really terrible."

 

Tiger Has An Index?

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From a reader whose identity will be protected because really, who wants the world to know they were watching the Tavistock Cup?

Anyway, this brave viewer passed along this mind boggling anecdote from Golf Channel announcer Gary McCord:

Tiger's index at Isleworth (Course rating 77, Slope 142, length 7,500 yards) is +13.5. Which means that he'd have to give a 5 handicap a stroke a hole.

Of course I looked on GHIN and could not find an index listing for Tiger, so take that one for what it's worth. 

"The groove rule as proposed should be implemented on the PGA Tour for a five-year evaluation period."

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GolfDigest.com's Bread and Grub look at some unfortunate shilling by Johnny Miller before launching into a discussion on U-grooves. You know, the thing the USGA and R&A can't agree on and which the PGA Tour won't get near.

A couple of things they wrote caught my eye. From Bread:

I find it difficult to believe the USGA will just walk away after three years of research without doing something. But I think that is exactly what they should do. Driving distance on tour this year is down three yards from the same time last year. Sure, it's a small sample, but I think everyone would agree that by year's end it's not likely we will see an increase of any substance, if any at all. And that would make it difficult to defend implementing a groove rollback, don't you think?
And from Grub: 
As for grooves, there's no question this issue, which appeared all but signed, sealed and delivered last fall, is about as near a resolution as me not wearing a seat belt anytime soon. Fact is, the best thing that could happen won't. Namely, the groove rule as proposed should be implemented on the PGA Tour for a five-year evaluation period. Only then will we see if it makes a difference.

So let's consider this for a moment. The PGA Tour is all about it's "product," right? And as was noted in my course setup story for Golf World, tournament director Mark Russell believes a groove change would allow for less rough on the tour and the return of the flier lie. Firm greens would also have more meaning. All of that would be more entertaining to watch and a better example for the game.

Yet the Commissioner keeps deferring (understandably) to the governing bodies because he knows what happened to Deane Beman when he raised a stink about grooves.

So how can the PGA Tour be convinced to adopt something along the lines of a tour-specific evaluation period? Thoughts? 

"The next time a photographer shoots a !@#$%&* picture I'm going to break his !@#$%&* neck."

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Lawrence Donegan reports on Tiger's latest unfortunate incident with photographers.
The world No1 made birdie at his penultimate hole but was then reliant on others slipping up. They did not, and he finished on 15 under par, two behind Ogilvy's winning score. "I thought seven birdies in a row," he said afterwards when asked if he had any idea of what was required to extend his streak before play started. "But I made too many mistakes. I had four three-putts in the week, two bad lies in bunkers and a photographer got me on the 9th hole yesterday. All in all, to only finish two shots back was a pretty good effort."

The photographer in question fired off some shots on his backswing at the par-three hole on Sunday, and Woods ended up making bogey. It is debatable whether or not the incident cost him the tournament, but it will have cost him a few thousand dollars in PGA Tour fines after he hurled a few epithets at the snappers, the most of choice of which was: "The next time a photographer shoots a fucking picture I'm going to break his fucking neck."

The PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem takes a dim view of such tantrums and has fined the famously foul-mouthed Woods a fortune over the years. He will do so again.

"Maybe sometimes you bounce it through a fairway and get into the rough, but really it's not that bad a spot."

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ogilvy-big1.jpgAfter his WGC win at Doral, Geoff Ogilvy was asked about hitting just 44.64% of his fairways.

GEOFF OGILVY: There's a lot of holes, I mean, the fairways hit stat can be a little bit -- like 16, you go for a green, that's a fairway you're going to miss but it's the right play. That's four fairways that I missed that I would have maybe hit.I don't know, I mean, the fairways bunkers are very playable. If you hit it in a fairway bunker, especially after they pat them down, they're actually a nice place to be. There's no massive penalty being in a fairway bunker. The Bermuda rough, when you're in the thick bit, it's horrible. But when you're in a not-so-thick bit you can advance to the green and at least give yourself a chance for up-and-downs or pars.

The greens weren't firm enough or they weren't fast enough this week, especially after round 2. They really get fiery if you start getting flyers over the greens out of the rough, but actually to hit it out of the rough and stop it on greens and stuff, it's just one of those things.

I don't think it's a bad thing that you can miss fairways and make birdies. You should obviously have to think about where you should hit your tee shot, miss them in the right spots, get penalized for missing fairways on the wrong sides. But out here if you miss the fairways on the correct sides you've got a chance. I don't know, I mean, maybe I just had one of those weeks where I just always had good lies and always had a chance.

And...

Q. And even with that kind of run going, because of the way your driving wasn't quite on, did you ever feel comfortable with the fact that you were getting away with pars?

GEOFF OGILVY: I never really felt like I was getting away with them. There's a certain -- there's five or six holes out here that are really hard and really key holes. 3, 4, 13, 18, holes that you really have to hit proper golf shots on. You can't miss the fairways. You've got to hit real golf shots. Every single time I played one of the really, really tough holes, I hit proper golf shots. I hit the 18th green four times in a row. Well, I was on the fringe, I think, maybe Friday. Actually I missed the 18th fairway on the second round, but it was in play, it was not a bad spot. Today I got a lucky chip and I played 13 quite well.

I hit the key holes well, and then the other holes, like the 1st hole you can miss the fairway, get away with it. Sometimes you get a shot at the green. The second hole, it's a smash driver up, and sometimes the rough isn't that bad.

The holes there were important to hit good shots off the tee, I did most of the time, and maybe when I was slashing away at a few of the drivers -- some of these holes you just want to get as close to the green as you can, get as far up you can. Maybe sometimes you bounce it through a fairway and get into the rough, but really it's not that bad a spot.

And this was a nice anecdote unrelated to the above...

Q. Speaking of family, have you had any contact with your parents this week?

GEOFF OGILVY: Early in the week.

Q. I was just wondering, were they going to stay up until 2 a.m. to watch the finish today? Was it on live?

GEOFF OGILVY: My dad probably was in bed. My mom would have been in front of the computer. If it was on TV she would have been watching. If it wasn't she would have been watching the screen on the computer. She doesn't sleep much when I play.