Times Pencils Monty In For 2014 Captaincy; First The Great Scot Must Write Unprecedented Apology Letter

John Hopkins and the Times headline writer give Monty the gig based on Monty's presumptuousness. Quite generous for a paper of record, I must say. Funny, I can't seem to find an official announcement anywhere.

Oh, that's right, they need to pick Captains for the two Ryder Cup before 2014!

Meanwhile, Lawrence Donegan isn't quite ready to write Monty's name in yet.

Less reasonable, however, were his thoughts on the captaincy of the European Ryder Cup team in 2014, when the event will be staged in Scotland. "I will do my best to play in 2010 and possibly in 2012," he said in response a question about his prospects of becoming captain. "Then [I'll] do something else in 2014."

The implication was obvious, just as the presumption underlying the comment was outrageous. There are other candidates for the job - Sandy Lyle being the most obvious one - who might argue they deserve a shot at the captaincy in 2014. Montgomerie's legion of fans and media cheerleaders will no doubt view such interventions as "Monty being Monty" and, in some respects, they would be right. His outspokenness is part of what makes him such a fascinating sporting figure.

Meanwhile, seems Monty got a little carried away last week and will be sitting down to craft a doozy of an apology letter. Donegan again:

Less easily brushed aside, however, is his behaviour during the second round of last week's European Open in Kent, when he chided a Sky television sound man who wandered into his gaze as he lined up to play a shot. "I am the reason you are here and don't you forget that," he said, a remark which drew a stinging rebuke yesterday from Ewen Murray, who heads Sky's commentary team. "When he boards the first tee he is akin to an angry incredible hulk," said Murray said yesterday.

Montgomerie seemed suitable chastened when confronted with his friend's unfriendly view of his conduct, saying he intended to write a letter of apology to the sound man. "You know what I am like. I say these things on the spur of the moment. I don't mean them," he added.

Dear Sound Man, I say these things spur of the moment and I don't mean them. What I meant was, we are all here for the same reason and we must not forget that: to watch me play golf. Remember, we are in this together my friend. Yours in harmony and car detailing heaven, Monty

"I'm already in the British Open, and I'm still not going."

I guess I'm not surprised by Kenny Perry's ambivalence toward the Open this year. When he fired a course record 62 at Riviera I was in the final stages of the club history, I asked him if he would pose with a sign that read 62 and the day's date, course, etc.... You'd think I had asked him to read the Torah....backwards, on camera, for Golf Central. 

Since then I've always seen him as Bobby Joe Grooves of Dan Jenkins' You Gotta Play Hurt (not the more refined Bobby Joe of later years). Bobby Joe would have skipped the Open in heartbeat for a chance to play in Milwaukee, as Perry will be doing next week.

Doug Ferguson tries to understand Perry's thinking and concludes that Perry is a bit batty for skipping next week.

Why would anyone skip a chance to play one of four major tournaments that define a career? How does it look when one of the top Americans ducks a major to play against the B-Flight in Milwaukee?

The most peculiar part of Perry's decision is that he finished 16th or better in three of his last four Opens. His best finish was at Royal St. George's, where he wound up four shots behind Ben Curtis in a tie for eighth. That was in 2003, the best season of Perry's career.

Anyone playing this well - and few are better at the moment - can win anywhere.

Such a decision contrasts with Sean O'Hair going through hoops to get a passport to St. Andrews in 2005 after winning the John Deere Classic, or Bob Estes flying across the ocean as an alternate and leaving without ever hitting a shot.

And...

Besides, his captain is squarely behind him.

``I don't care and he doesn't care,'' Azinger said about the British Open flap. ``So why should it bother anybody else? The guy has the guts of a burglar. He's going to be 48. He can do whatever he wants. I'm happy for him.''

There's a metaphor Kenny's wife will want to stitch on a throw pill.

Kenny has the guts of a burglar. -Paul Azinger

Reading today's press conference, Perry comes off as less Bobby Joe and more genuine in his thought process, however limited you may think it sounds.

Q. The pundits are always telling you what you should do. You should have not been in the TV booth at Valhalla at the PGA, you were supposed to play the British Open next week. Are you a contrary guy and do you get tired of people telling you how to run your business?

KENNY PERRY: Well, you know what, I'm not going to lie; it kind of bothers me a little bit. But you know what, I'm an independent contractor. I can do whatever I want, and I like that. I like being able to make the decisions I want to make, and I think it's best for me and my family, and that's the way I want to live my life. If they don't like it, that's fine. They can say all they want to.

But my only goal was to make that Ryder Cup team, and if they're going to -- for me if I was going to play the British Open, I'd have to miss this week, and this is a week I love playing. I was going to have to miss Milwaukee next week, which is a tournament I've won. I've had eight Top 10 finishes there.

I mean, the British Open is a great tournament, don't get me wrong. If you win, you know, a major, everybody looks at all the people in the world when they win majors on your résumé. That is the ultimate.

But it's just at this stage in my career it's just not a goal of mine. I love my family, and I want to play the golf at the courses I enjoy playing at these last couple years, and I'm going to go out on my terms, not on their terms.

Q. If you win this week and get a spot in the British Open, you'd pass it up?

KENNY PERRY: I'm already in the British Open, and I'm still not going.

Oops.

Q. How hard is that -- how different would your perspective have been 20 years ago making the same decision?

KENNY PERRY: I wouldn't have made the same decision 20 years ago.

The World's 10 Most Expensive

Matt Spector of ABCNews.com (!?) pieces together an unofficial list of the world's 10 most expensive courses. The Royal Melbourne inclusion (and cost) really surprised me.

"How to solve the problem of the 'ball going to far' is not easy. Liability is not an issue. Doing it correctly is."

Ran Morrissett talks to former USGA President Grant Spaeth for a GolfClubAtlas.com feature interview. It's all very enjoyable, but as always I can't resist clipping a few highlights:

9.  What are your thoughts on classic golf courses, like Stanford, that are subject to continuous renovations?

Regrettable. We are in the midst of an “updating” which means pushing tees back.  Some modernization is inevitable, given how far we hit the ball. And one is forced to wonder whether there should be two sets of equipment rules, because distance is not a factor for non-tournament players, or older ones. But the foregoing suggestion of two sets of rules is sacrilege in many quarters.

This surprised me as an answer, but speaks to how much the game has changed:

10. The State of California was blessed with numerous outstanding designs during the Golden Age of golf course architecture. Time has not been too kind to many of the courses. Is there one course in particular that you lament, either its passing, or wish its original playing character could be restored?

Cypress Point, clearly. I am told the Stanford Golf Team went down and to capture the way the course originally played, each player had to take his drive and go back 40 yards and play. Awful shame that it is pitch and putt for the good players although the greens still hold up for today’s play.

And...

20. You have mentioned the ball numerous times.  It was an issue when you were President and still and issue today.   Is it inevitable that a tournament ball must be implemented sometime soon?   Is the liability issue to the USGA the reason it has not been implemented?

The process must be thorough and fair.  How to solve the problem of the “ball going to far” is not easy.  Liability is not an issue.  Doing it correctly is.

TCC and USGA Finally Come To Terms

Joe Gordon reports that the 2013 U.S. Amateur has now been officially awarded to The Country Club.

"Then someone confused equipment advances in golf with juicing as an explanation for soaring drive lengths."

Troy Phillips in the Star Telegram gives PGA Tour execs a column that'll turn them into bobbleheads this morning, doing a nice job of piecing together how drug testing came about but naively assuming that it's the silliest "witch hunt" ever.

Yes, the dumbest, most unnecessary witch hunt in sports is finally here.

For more than a year, it has been forthcoming. It was inevitable in 2006 when Woods issued a challenge that golf should test to validate its cleanliness in the sports era of steroid/performance-enchancer cheats.

Then and now, golf had no steroid issues. No regular drug issues have surfaced. Aside from John Daly’s massive alcohol consumption and consequential stupefying behavior, even booze seems barely a concern on the Tour, if at all.

So, how did golf get here?

Maybe it started when baseball, cycling and track and field scandals, as well as national drug surveys indicating widespread steroid use among high school athletes, became a high-profile issues in sports.

Then someone confused equipment advances in golf with juicing as an explanation for soaring drive lengths.

Someone? I think that would be the Commissioner, actually.

"Energy costs are going up, and the cost of fertilizer has doubled in the last two years"

Matthew Rudy pens a lengthy examination of the state of the golf industry for Golf Digest and Businessweek. I didn't finish it yet, because I can see there's a lot in it worth considering. Starting with this...

This sophisticated research shows that course operators are facing problems more complicated than just a reduced flow of customers. Courses' peak fees have gone up at the same rate as inflation, but off-peak rates -- which account for a majority of the rounds played -- increased 33 percent more than the CPI. In other words, prices have risen even in the face of flat or reduced demand. That doesn't bode well for attracting new and younger golfers in a weak economy. "Energy costs are going up, and the cost of fertilizer has doubled in the last two years," says Longitudes President Sara Killeen. "Course operators had to raise rates or go under -- and the number of daily-fee courses has dropped 2.5 percent in five years. They're feeling it from all sides. The successful ones are working very hard on their business 365 days a year and managing the details very astutely."

I'm thinking (hoping?) one of those details might be less fertilizer if indeed it's doubled in cost? Or are we going to go down with the ship making sure that turf is pumped up on stuff?

Congressional and The U.S. Open

In wrapping up last week's AT&T National, Len Shapiro reminds us (well me and my bad memory) that the event will have to find a new home in 2010 and 2011 to allow Congressional to rebuild its greens and host the U.S. Open.

I know I raised this before, but I still can't fathom how the USGA is allowing them to redo greens so close to the Open. And it's even more bizarre that the club is working around the needs of a 2009 tour stop before ripping them up, when the USGA committed to Congressional long before the AT&T National was even a bad Jack Vickers dream.

Either way you shake it politically, agronomically it means one growing season before the U.S. Open at a site that has always struggled with turf.  Sure seems like they are setting themselves up for a possible disaster...

Finchem Asked To Take Drug Test By Policy Board?

Rex Hoggard drops this little mini-bombshell on the Golfweek Tour Blog:

According to a member of the Tour’s Policy Board, Finchem was asked to be the first person tested and before an opening ceremony for the AT&T National tournament he obliged.

I don't know about you, but I got the impression from his press conference that this was an executive decision to better understand the process, not something he was asked to do. 

Gee, I wonder who approached the Commish and said, "Uh, Tim, we think you need to be tested too."

Cink? Toms? Faxon? Ogilvie?

"Condé Nast To Close Golf For Women Magazine"

A shame...

Condé Nast To Close Golf For Women Magazine

Golf For Women magazine will cease publication with its July/August issue, it was announced today by Charles H. Townsend, President & CEO of Condé Nast Publications.

"We came to this decision because we feel the magazine will not support our long term business objectives," Mr. Townsend said. "I would like to thank Susan Reed and Chris McLoughlin and the entire staff for their efforts throughout the years. Golf For Women attracted a loyal readership and we were proud to publish it."

Golf For Women was launched in 1988. Condé Nast purchased the magazine in 2001 from the Meredith Corporation. It publishes six times a year and has a current ratebase of 600,000.

Update on 2008-07-08 16:00 by Geoff

MagazineDeathPool.com wonders if Golf For Women Editor Susan Reed's departure yesterday for Oprah's O rag may have expedited the demise of the magazine.

Women's Wear Daily (a member of the Condé Nast family) confirms:

Upon learning of Reed's departure, Condé executives considered replacing her but instead decided to fold the magazine entirely, according to sources. Condé Nast chief operating officer John Bellando and executive vice president, human resources Jill Bright broke the news to the Golf for Women staff late Monday afternoon. Townsend and group president David Carey, who oversees the Golf Digest properties, were both out of the office yesterday. About 30 people will be affected by the closure; those that are not placed within the company will depart by early next week.

According to sources who attended the meeting, Bellando said that the magazine had the support from endemic golf-related advertisers, but non-endemic advertisers such as beauty, fashion and automotive didn't come around. Through the July/August issue, Golf for Women ad pages declined 7 percent, to 336 pages.

Update on 2008-07-10 15:49 by Geoff

Nancy Berkley, a Golf For Women contributing editor, explains what happened from her perspective.

"Supporters of the course say the soul of Austin golf is at stake."

Kevin Robbins does an excellent job of detailing the fascinating (and depressing) saga unfolding in Austin where battle lines are being drawn over the fate of Lions Municipal, which sits on University of Texas land and is leased to the city through 2019.

But some supporters of Lions said they fear the lease could be broken. If that happens, the 141-acre course could be little more than gauzy memories and scrapbook pictures by 2019.

Supporters of the course say the soul of Austin golf is at stake.

They wonder where the next Ben Crenshaw or Tom Kite, who played junior golf at Lions, will learn to carve tee shots around a wooded dogleg. They ponder the civic benefit of providing a fair and inviting golf ground to people of all ages, abilities and incomes.

They question where those who play the 67,000 rounds of golf played annually — 3,200 of them by youths 18 and younger, 15,000 by people 62 and older — at Lions will go. They see a relic, worth preserving, that makes Austin Austin.

And...

By early June, when Kemp and the other Save Muny organizers staged their rally, principals with the New York master-planning firm Cooper, Robertson & Partners had spent enough time in Austin to begin to appreciate the sentiment behind the effort to spare Lions.

But they also had a charge from the regents, who agreed to pay the firm up to $5.14 million, to explore a number of possibilities.

Including the golf-course lease, revenue from the 345-acre Brackenridge tract amounts to about $940,00 a year for UT-Austin. The land could be worth far more, a suspicion articulated in 2006 when James Huffines, the chairman of the regents at the time, ordered a 10-member task force to devise a plan "to utilize the asset to the maximum benefit" of UT-Austin.

Oh boy...

The Save Muny movement has expressed no interest in rebirth or rejuvenation. Advocates of Lions prefer to salvage the 6,000-yard course as it looks today, preserving everything from the massive tree in the middle of the No. 2 fairway to the modest green fee that gives access to anyone with a shirt, a ball, a bag of clubs and the desire to play.

"It's owned by one group, it's used by another group and you're not maximizing the value of the property. The University of Texas has basically given golf to the citizens of Austin since Muny has existed," said Kite.

You go Tom! You need that money!

But Crenshaw, who lives a short stroll from Lions, said: "There's no question the atmosphere would change."

Crenshaw and Kite were rivals in junior golf. They won national championships at Texas before their long and decorated careers on the PGA Tour. They're both enshrined in the World Golf Hall of Fame. They hold very different opinions on the future of Lions.

They tried earlier this year in Hawaii to resolve them. While playing a tournament there. Kite and Crenshaw met over lunch to talk about the new design. By that time, Crenshaw already had announced his position. He wanted to save Lions.

"I'd made up my mind," Crenshaw said.

The debate underscores a broader issue affecting municipal golf in many American cities. Around the time of the Save Muny concert and auction last month at Lions, Golfweek magazine published a report describing a crisis in municipal golf.

The report suggested that many of the trends coloring the Brackenridge tract situation have been responsible for a slow decline in the number of municipal golf courses.

It cited factors such as "strained city budgets" and "increased real estate development pressures."

"You just can't continue to lose these inner-city golf courses," argued Kemp, who rallied supporters at the concert and auction in June.

Kemp, the Austin developer, served more than 30 years as chairman of the city golf advisory board, which helps set policies governing Austin's five municipal courses. Kemp said the goal of Save Muny is to acquire Lions — with the help and authority of the city — once and for all.

"We can pay cash. We could trade land," he speculated. "We don't want to penalize the university. We just want to save the golf course."

Monty Wants To Reach Out To Scottish Youth And Show Them How A Professional Acts

Douglas Lowe finds Monty in a chatty mood as he ponders out loud why the youth of today--namely young Scottish amateurs Callum Macaulay and John Gallagher--have not come to him for advice.

"They need help," said Scotland's top world-ranked player, who has more than two decades of experience as a tournament professional on which to draw. "There is a big, big difference between what they are doing in amateur golf and the professional game.

"Very few make that transition easily. It is a tough one. If it was easy we would all be doing it," said Montgomerie, who was never a shrinking violet when it came to picking other players' brains.

"I was wise in many ways. I was asking questions of players who were better than me and I am surprised that more people have not asked me about the transition and how it was done, what happened and how you felt.

"There are a lot of golfers who hit the ball better than I do but can't get the ball round the golf course. There is a lot more to it than hitting the golf ball straight a long way and I hope they realise beforehand I am going to be there and can think about the questions they are going to ask me."

About diet, about marriage, washing your own car, about playing in front of large crowds. Just think of what they can learn!

"I have played in the Walker Cup and Eisenhower Trophy so I know how they are. It's the same in your own family; your own kids don't see you as children but they forget I was their age once and I know exactly what they are thinking," he said, adding with a laugh: "I just didn't like rap music."

Your own children don't see you as a child, Monty? They obvious haven't watched you interract with a gallery!

"Barely registered"

Thomas Bonk with Monday's overnights for the AT&T National and the worst titled LPGA event ever:

In a word: bad. The overnight ratings for Sunday's fourth round of the AT&T National on CBS were down 48%, from a 2.9 to a 1.5. The third-round overnight ratings were down 35%, from a 2.0 to a 1.3.

Meanwhile, the overnight ratings on CBS for the weekend's LPGA event, the P&G Beauty Northwest Arkansas Championship, barely registered. Saturday's rating was a 0.7 and Sunday's rating was a 0.6.

"You're targeting an affluent crowd, a computerized crowd."

This isn't golf related, but you know how I just love to share MBAspeak at its finest.

From Dylan Hernandez in today's L.A. Times, writing about the Dodgers latest ticket promotion to bump up their attendance numbers:

Steve Shiffman, the Dodgers' vice president of ticket sales, said the method of distributing tickets wouldn't attract the kind of fans who misbehaved and prompted the cancellation of the once-popular promotion that included $2 right-field pavilion seats on Tuesday nights.

Because this promotion is Internet-based, Shiffman said, "You're targeting an affluent crowd, a computerized crowd."

Does that you make you feel good? You're reading this on a computer and therefore you are affluent!

I knew it would brighten your day.

"Do you know who Titleist's top salesman is? This guy right here."

Early reviews are in on Pete and Perry Dye's Pound Ridge and other than questions about difficulty (see the headline quote), Sam Weinman seems to like it while Hunki Yun appears very impressed.