It’s back!
Twenty years later Tatra Press has kindly allowed me to bring back Grounds For Golf now that golf architecture is of more interest to the masses. A new Introduction looks at what’s driven the interest growth and two new chapters I had a blast adding (plus a few edits to keep things up-to-date).
The Amazon purchase page for the book arriving June 15, 2026.
We're about to start getting some whacky suggestions for the broken FedEx Cup, and while I've heard lots of fun stuff about the not very original idea I proposed last year and argued about with Steve Dennis this year, SI's Gary Van Sickle raises the loopiest idea yet. This is in an interview with Dennis, who doesn't sound like he's buying it either.
After all, how do you try to win a tournament each week when you are also worrying about your cumulative score?
With all of this gloom and doom I thought I'd share a few photos sent to me by John Kemp, an aspiring architect who worked on The Prairie Club's Horse Course project with us this summer. John was part of the crew that built Castle Stuart with Gil Hanse, Mark Parsinen and Jim Wagner. He recently played the course on what looked to be a stunning day and captured these shots. I don't know much about the holes, so hopefully John or someone else will chime in.
I believe this is the fourth hole. You know the drill, click on the images to see full screen versions.
In a roundup of miscellaneous LPGA items, Beth Ann Baldry notes a surreal scene for Hwanhee Lee, first reported by the Golf Couture blog.
One week after a major brand, uh, refurbishment and platform expansion, Kenny Perry worked ably to reestablish his image as a spoiled tour professional by pointing out the sheer awfulness of having to appear in a 30-man, $7 million+ giveaway as millions of Americans worried about paying their electric bill.
Jeff Rude reminds us why Kenny will always be Kenny:
Perry shot 76-75 the first two days and wasn’t happy he had to submit to a random drug test for the second time since the program’s inception in July.
“This has ruined the greatest week of my life coming here,” said Perry, adding he’d rather be home celebrating his Ryder success. “It really has.”
It’s refreshing that a professional athlete in effect is saying big money isn’t everything.Well that's certainly one unusual way to look at it.
Commissioner: when you fine him, fine him good.
Which reminds me, I guess the horror of peeing in a cup at the Tour Championship probably means that Ryder Cup drug testing we heard about never happened?
Granted, it was year two, but the worst traditions have to start some place.
Bob Harig at ESPN.com:
Meanwhile, Singh was being congratulated on his $10 million haul despite never breaking 70 during four rounds, never contending for the tournament title and finishing tied for 22nd. With an hour to go in the tournament, Singh was collecting the hardware from PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem in a strange, made-for-TV ceremony.Steve Elling at CBSSports.com on the oddity of Camillo Villegas winning just as many playoff events as Vijay, including the final event, and coming away the runner up:
That scenario was always a danger in this new-fangled system that has the PGA Tour crowning a season-long champion on the same day it gives a trophy to the winner of one of its supposedly prestigious tournaments.
What happens when the winner of the FedEx Cup is not the winner of the Tour Championship?
Had the rest of the four-week playoff series played out the same way, Villegas could have won the first-place $10 million had he not missed the cut at The Barclays, the FedEx opener, by one thin shot. In fact, had he just played on the weekend, he could have finished dead last among those who made the cut and still earned enough points to ultimately slide past Singh into first place at the end of the rainbow, assuming all things remained equal elsewhere.
Breaking it down, Singh won the first two FedEx events and Villegas won the last two. At the second, won by Singh in Boston, Villegas played in the final group and finished tied for third. In other words, throw out the missed cut and he arguably outplayed Singh over four weeks. Singh, who was T44 and T22 in his last two starts, just didn't miss a cut and scored points at all four venues.
Villegas didn't much want to talk about the details.
"That was an expensive cut," he said. "That's the way this game goes. If I knew that was the case, I don't know what I would have done different. But you've just got to be in the present.
"Again, the FedEx Cup, it's great for the game. We need to get the points system better, and I'm not saying this because I finished second. I've been saying this since Day 1. I had a chance to sit down with the commissioner this Wednesday and share some ideas.
"We just need to make it fun for the fans and fun for us. So FedEx has done a great job in putting all this together, and I'm sure the tour is grinding and trying to get it as good as they can."
For a defective product, it was as good as could be expected.
Yes, Chubby Chandler is Darren Clarke's agent and probably not too thrilled his client was left off the Ryder Cup team. But this shredding of Captain Nick Faldo appears on LeeWestwood.com... Lets the inevitable drama begin!
I have been asked innumerable times for my thoughts on Nick Faldo’s captaincy and they have not changed after the event from what they were before. To me, he was mediocre and failed to understand the duties of a captain. He didn’t put the work in before, didn’t do anything to bring the team together and didn’t consult his senior players. He also showed a complete lack of man-management skills.
With Lee Westwood two up after nine holes of Friday afternoon’s fourballs, who on earth thought it would be a good idea to tell him that he was going to be left out of the following morning foursomes. Unbelievable.
I’m sure Lee was completely deflated particularly since he was told during his 27th consecutive match. I’m sure it also affected his concentration while hitting his confidence levels for the next two days. A captain really has to understand what makes players tick, but unfortunately Nick Faldo did not see this as a pre-requisite for the job. He didn’t do anything in the build up to discover how his best players perform and under what circumstances they perform best. Unfortunately the Ryder Cup turned out to be all about Nick Faldo.
Paul McGinley chimes in on Faldo, as does Mark Reason, author of the piece:
McGinley has no beef with Faldo, but he believes that Europe has to return to the formula that was so successful for the three winning captains under whom he played. McGinley says: "That 10-year window in history was our most successful period ever and the template for that success was pushed aside. By Nick doing it his own way, a lot of players probably didn't realise what was going on. There's an art to doing the solid, consistent, obvious things.
"Azinger was very clever. He looked at our template and he played it. He played similar pairings throughout. Stewart Cink and Chad Campbell were awful on the first day and he still paired them on the second day. He trusted them. "Azinger said 'I have confidence in you', and when people have confidence like that, they tend to perform. You have to ask the question why our top players didn't perform.''
And here's Reason's take:
Never mind all the tactical bloopers, just take the criticism over the dearth of assistant captains. You may think that is a trivial point. But at least two players to my knowledge remarked on the absence of European assistants during the singles.
When Oliver Wilson was taking on a rampant Boo Weekley, there was mean Ray Floyd, with his tight mouth and shaded eyes, looking on from the red buggy beside the seventh green. On the blue buggy was DJ Spoony.
From Doug Ferguson's third round Tour Championship game story:
Lawrence Donegan follows up on a story quietly emerging as a major headache for the PGA Tour, which already has enough problems to worry about. Regarding Phil Mickelson (oh and Vijay too...not that anyone cares) considering playing more in Europe, Donegan explains how this could play out after talking to Dubai Director of Golf Tourism and European Tour head George O'Grady:
In this instance O'Grady's reticence is understandable because there is one more hurdle to be negotiated before any American superstar will commit to playing more events under the European Tour banner. Mickelson aside, there are believed to be other members of US Ryder Cup team contemplating such a move, as well as the likes of Australians Geoff Ogilvy, the 2006 US Open champion, and Robert Allenby. But all are waiting for the outcome of next week's meeting in St Andrews of the European Tour's players committee, headed by Thomas Bjorn, in which a decision will be reached over the minimum number of tournaments required to gain Tour membership.Something to ponder here: the FedEx Cup has been a mess as a playoff but with the right adjustments could still work. However, beyond points permutation debates, we're going to see more stories about its timing and the shortened season. No one seems to see an improvement in ending the PGA Tour season when the NFL and college football are just starting out. But more than that, the well-intentioned big fall opening to get golf off the radar screen seems to have strengthened the European Tour's prospects of drawing some of the marquee players listed above.
To outsiders this might seem like an esoteric point, but within the European Tour it is of historic significance. Currently, a player must compete in 11 events to qualify for membership but there is a strong push from the committee's members to have the minimum number of events increased to 13 in order to protect the interests of the rank and file, who play all of their golf under the banner of the European Tour.
Such self-interest is understandable but it threatens the Tour's prospects of attracting the likes of Mickelson and Vijay Singh, another who has expressed an interested in adding European Tour membership to his membership of the PGA Tour in the States.
So in other words, the FedEx Cup concept may be viewed in upcoming media coverage as a failure all around, and a colossal one if it leads to even fewer PGA Tour appearances by name players. Of course, this is what the big names wanted and the Commissioner gave it to them. But at the expense of the PGA Tour's standing as the premier tour in the world?
Thanks to reader Chris for catching Bill Simmons paying tribute to Bill Maher and issues a beautiful "New Rule" related to last week's Ryder Cup:
"New Rule: U.S. Ryder Cup competitors can give each other only fist bumps. Like so many others, I looked forward to the recent Ryder Cup. Anytime America has the chance to beat Europe in something, I'm in … even if it's a leather-jacket-wearing Rob Lowe's outrowing of snotty English dudes in Oxford Blues. But after two days of watching awkward high-fives, dorky fist pumps and, worst of all, the dreaded two-handed high-five—"perfected" by Jim Furyk and Kenny Perry, who obviously spent months studying tapes of Judge Smails and Dr. Beeper—every big putt had me sweating simply because I was petrified of the ensuing celebration. "No, no, don't go for the two-handed high-five … Nooooo!"
So let's switch to fist bumps. If anyone wants to pull off a three-step handshake/ hug thing after the 18th hole, fine. But only after we name Will.i.am and 50 Cent as assistant captains to teach them. No more Smails/Beeper moments. Please."
I always go to John Hopkins' Spike Bar column for my weekly golf instruction, so I was disappointed that this edition left out the vital information I need to get through the weekend.
Instead, my heart was warmed by his "Hero of the week."
Hero of the week: Me. Well, why not? I watch golf, cover it, read about it, write about it, listen to it, listen to others talking about it, watch it on television, cock an ear to it on the radio. What I do not do is play it. Not often at least and not as often as you do, I am willing to bet. Now that the Ryder Cup is over, I am going to go and play at my club, Royal Porthcawl. Fore!
Take that Bernie Darwin!
Lewine Mair (here) and Lawrence Donegan (here) play up the likelihood of Phil Mickelson becoming a European Tour member, and the chances of many more players playing less in the U.S.
The best part came from this Robert Allenby comment in both pieces, but elaborated on more in Donegan's piece:
But among those who have said they will play more on the European tour next year is Vijay Singh, and the Australian golfer Robert Allenby, ranked 33rd in the world, said yesterday that he was increasingly disillusioned with life on the PGA tour in the States.And...
"You'd be stupid not to join [the European tour]," he said. "Some tournaments over here get a bit monotonous, with the thick rough. I miss the fairway by two feet and I'm screwed. My body hasn't been handling it very well, particularly my tennis elbow. The other thing is to freshen my mind up."
Allenby may be motivated in part by personal issues but he, like others, is responding to what is widely perceived to be a shift in the balance of power in golf from the PGA tour in the States towards the European tour.And...
With the credit crunch affecting many American financial institutions the long-term prospects for sponsorship of golf in the US are gloomy, in stark contrast to the opportunities enjoyed by the European tour. The latter has a long tradition of staging events in the Middle East and Asia, where next year will see the start of the European tour's "Road to Dubai" series which culminates in an end-of-season tournament in the Emirates where the players will be competing for a $20m prize fund - the biggest in the history of the game.
Well there's one easy way for Tim Finchem to stop the bleeding pretty quickly here. Cut some rough!
I think it's important to recognize that we view the FedExCup competition as a big part of our future. We are committed to it; it's a long-term proposition. We're not going to get hung up at the start if we have to make a few changes the first few years. Who knows how many years we'll have to make changes until we're at a point where we're very, very comfortable.
I always like, when we talk about changing things, drawing an analogy to Donald Ross and building Pinehurst No. 2. He moved there, and I think he made 213 or 220 changes in the first 12 years of its existence. Sometimes to get perfection you have to keep working at it, and we intend to do that.I've never known that someone was keeping track of Ross's changes! Maybe the contractor tracking change orders? Or perhaps someone knew it'd make for a killer FedEx Cup metaphor some day?
Before I throw it open to questions, let me briefly comment on five other items.Okay...
First of all, I've been getting a lot of questions over the past months, and certainly in the last few weeks, on the economy. We are impacted by the economy and the economic challenges like everybody else. We have a lot of customers and sponsors in economic sectors that are impacted negatively by the volatility in the economy.
Thus far, we have not suffered any major damage. But clearly, if the instability were to continue for a sustained period of time, we will have real challenges. We are encouraged by the steps that are being taken, and we'll do everything we can to continue to drive value and communicate that invest in our sport with the hopes that we can get through this with very little damage.The PGA Tour supports the bailout! If Congress only knew...
Television ratings are awfully good this year.Awfully, yes.
We attribute that largely to two things: missing our No. 1 player for two big chunks of the season, number one problem; number two problem, the Olympics during three weeks got higher ratings than normal. Tough competition and took away from our ratings a little bit.Darn Olympics...yet another reason that...oh wait...
Next year our assumptions are based on, A, all of our players are going to be back, including our No. 1 player; and number two, we get to wait three more years for the Olympics.You're getting your number one player for 15 events, maybe.
The other long-term issue on the Olympics is that of course if we are successful in having golf added as an Olympic sport or schedule tournaments around the Olympics, including some golf competition in the Olympics, which will change that dynamic somewhat.See, if you add golf to the Olympics it can't hurt the ratings starting in 2016.
Q. I don't know about everybody else, but I followed this as closely as anybody, and I couldn't follow the points system this year. I'm not sure Henry Paulson could have. I'm just curious if that's something that has been up for discussion, and is it going to be simpler or are we still going to be looking at Camilo Villegas trying to make a six-footer to try to get somebody else in the field?
COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: Well, I have a great answer for you. We have a book coming out, and it's called, FedExCup Points For Dummies (laughter).Banging fist on desk here.
But the reality is the model we looked at -- seriously, the model we looked at was NASCAR. You know, some people say, You know, you can make it simpler by going back to the Money List.
Well, the Money List isn't any more simple than points, because you still have to analyze why one tournament generates this many points versus another tournament. The difference between money is you have a lot more fluctuation in dollars than you had points, so points we can control and focus on the Cup.
We like the points system. We're not sure many fans really care how many points a guy has. They want to see what relationship -- our research tells us in focus groups and polls is that fans want to see how -- you, know, what kind of lead Vijay has on Phil Mickelson. What's the spread? How can he win it back? What's at stake this week? That's most of it.The PGA Tour ran the FedEx Cup by focus groups and this is what they came up with? Shocking.
Q. Two questions, please: One player just told me that this tournament has the wrong name. It's not the TOUR Championship, it's the FedEx Final, and that its name should be changed. Is that something you might consider?Isn't there a VP of Brand and Nomenclature Suturing to figure this out? The FedEx Cup Final Brought To You By Coca-Cola. Works for me. I'll just call it The Crosby anyway.
COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: Yeah, I've heard that from a couple people over the last few months. We're going to -- we'll consider everything. I mean, to this gentleman's question, tying the branding and the nomenclature of what's happening in the playoffs to what the competition really is important. So we'll be looking at all avenues to get to a desired goal.
Q. Just one short follow-up. In the short-term what you're seeing cropping up in various places such as Atlanta, some problems with gas availability, I imagine that hurts on-site attendance and other ancillary services that you have going on.
COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: Yeah, we've noticed some softness in attendance.Well that's why Cial...sorry, I promised no more erectile dysfunction jokes. Continue...
Even in markets where ticket sales are up, a little softness in the people that are coming out.That's rude!
There's no science to this.That's why they created Cial...
We don't have a lot of metrics. Anecdotally our tournaments are telling us that some people are buying a week pass, they usually come out three days and they're coming out one or two days and it's because of gas. People are just driving less.
It hasn't really been that noticeable. And like I said, it's not huge on admissions at this point. But we have noticed that in some markets. It's an interesting phenomenon. I don't know where that goes in the long-term, but it's not a good thing, gas prices.
You know, I think that's the least of the PGA Tour's concerns.
Lots of great stuff in this Q&A with the former USGA President, now posted at GolfClubAtlas.com.
Geoff Shackelford is a Senior Writer for Golfweek magazine, a weekly contributor to Golf Channel's Morning
Copyright © 2022, Geoff Shackelford. All rights reserved.
