"It also is likely that there will be less of a need for long, punitive rough."

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There is a USGA.org Q&A with president Jim Vernon about the state of the USGA and his first year in office. I liked his answer on the groove rule change, which could be the first time I've seen someone from the USGA suggest that it could lead to less rough.

How do you expect the rules changes concerning grooves to impact how courses are set up for tour-level and championship competitions?

Vernon: For those setting up courses for players of this level, I think you’ll see a whole array of opportunities. If you look at the PGA Tour, the major championships, or the European Tour for that matter, you’ve seen a trend over the past 15 years showing hole locations have gotten closer and closer to the edge of the green each year, and that won’t need to be as much the case anymore. The rules changes may well reopen greens to some different hole locations that will still reward accuracy, but you won’t have to put it three or four paces from the edge of most of your greens. It also is likely that there will be less of a need for long, punitive rough. 

"As a professional golfer we have to adapt to that by playing more internationally because that is where the opportunities are and that's where they will continue to grow."

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Martin Parry reports that Phil Mickelson really likes the idea of playing overseas. Why do I think Tim Finchem reads this and says, "why weren't you so eager to play overseas when we played WGC's on foreign soil?"

Phil:

"Certainly, the dollar weakening over the past few years has made foreign currencies much stronger, which makes the purses much larger, so there's been a lot of international wealth being created," he said.

"The US golf industry has been stagnant for quite some time so all of our growth has been occurring on a global basis.

"As a professional golfer we have to adapt to that by playing more internationally because that is where the opportunities are and that's where they will continue to grow.

"So I look forward to having opportunities to continue to play more internationally and I understand that that is going to be an important part of being an international golfer."

The 38-year-old, who has won twice on the US Tour this year, added that he hoped other golfers recognised the importance of not just playing more overseas but helping popularise the game in under-exploited markets.

"The States' market is stagnant so the more opportunities we can have where top players play throughout the world and expose those places to golf I think will help grow the game," he said.

"That's an important part of what we do. The (season-ending) FedEx Cup ending in September has given us much more opportunity to do that now."

"Is it Harry Vardon we have on our new Tour thing [logo]? Why isn't it Seve?"

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James Corrigan talks to Padraig Harrington about Seve's contribution to European Tour golf and offers this intriguing idea.

Said Harrington: "Is it Harry Vardon we have on our new Tour thing [logo]? Why isn't it Seve? He is the man when you think about it. He is the European Tour, and it is at times like this that you kind of say, well, we wish we had more of Seve."

Imagine if he proposed that in branding obsessed America? Let's hope this idea, uh, gains traction.

FedEx Cup Fix Update!

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Doug Ferguson looks at the 54-hole cut policy that only has one serious detractor in Charles Warren, and which has been successful in helping lighten the load for Sunday play. He also shares this on the FedEx Cup fix in the works. Naturally, it's drifting close to the ADT (RIP) model some of us love.

One solution that appears to be getting a lot of attention is not to reset the points until the Tour Championship, which could mean any of the 30 players at East Lake would have a chance to win. Plus, it would be decided over 72 holes and protect the integrity of the competition.

A decision is not expected for another month at the earliest. 

Walters Wins Suit Against TravelGolf

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Jeff German reports for the Las Vegas Sun. This can't bode well for the future of TravelGolf.com:

District Judge Jennifer Togliatti has awarded Las Vegas golf course developer Billy Walters a $9 million judgment against the owner of a large Arizona-based Internet company he alleged had defamed him.

Walters charged in a 2006 lawsuit that Robert Lewis, a Flagstaff businessman who runs Travel Golf Media Inc., had falsely disparaged him and two of his golf courses, Stallion Mountain and Desert Pines, on the Internet after he refused to sign a new agreement to promote the courses on the company’s many Web sites.

The new contract, the suit alleged, required Walters to pay three times the promotional fees he had been paying Travel Golf Media.

Lewis published a series of posts with critical reviews and unflattering photos of the golf courses over two months in the spring of 2005, the suit alleged.

Walters’ lead lawyer, James Pisanelli, argued that the defamatory statements had caused Walters emotional distress and injured his personal reputation.

Stevie's Rebranding Complete! Your Captions Please...

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Wow, releasing a bird into the wild without attacking the person taking the photos! What restraint shown by Tiger's luggage looper Stevie Williams. His image rehab is complete, I say! And nice branding for NBC Sports too. (Images courtesy of our friends at BZA PR, who are handling the Kiwi Challenge.)

 

The Demise Of The L.A. Times

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In a couple of years when the largest paper west of the Mississippi is relegated to nothing more than a news website, they'll be asking how a once proud and highly profitable operation was destroyed. While I can't comment on the overall operation (LAObserved has covered it well), one department near and dear to this blog has been recklessly destroyed.

Thomas Bonk, a 27-year staffer was part of this week's staff buyouts, leaving us with just a handful of newspapermen and women covering golf. Bonk had been covering golf full-time for at least 12 years by my faulty memory count.

Here's what's most astounding about this: the most famous athlete in the world and one of the planet's most visible human-beings is Tiger Woods. He is a southern California native and part-time resident who hosts a tournament here, where, incidentally, the Los Angeles Times is published.

Along with the AP's Doug Ferguson, no writer was more consistently breaking news or demonstrating some form of access to Team Woods than Bonk. And recently, Bonk was regularly breaking news and offering important information related to the game with a weekly online column. For a paper that has touted its need to be breaking news online and in general beefing up its website coverage, Bonk delivered. It makes little sense that you would release someone fulfilling the stated mission, particularly someone with access to and a relationship with one of the world's most newsworthy and inaccessible figures.

And remember, this is a paper with six sports columnists. Not one has a clue about golf.

Peter Yoon, a talented and developing golf writer, was a victim of an earlier staff purge. The only other Times staffer capable of covering golf is Chris Dufresne, one of the top college football writers in the land who better serves the paper taking advantage of his arsenal of sources covering college football or his old beat, college basketball.

Of course, this is a paper that just fired one of its two primary film critics and numerous talented entertainment writers in the same town where there's a multi-billion dollar industry called Hollywood, so I suppose the beat writers for UCLA basketball and USC football might just be doomed too.