When you come to think of it that is the secret of most of the great holes all over the world. They all have some kind of a twist. C.B. MACDONALD
"Do we ever go back to the way things were?"
/John Garrity files a lengthy Golf Magazine story titled "The Gilded age of golf design is dead." The piece is mostly quite productive and focused on talking to productive, interesting folks like Bobby Weed and Chris Monti who are trying to reimagine how the golf course will fit into a future with increased energy and water demands. And then there's Tom Fazio.
Read More"This groove change was a knee-jerk reaction to distance gains that have mostly leveled off in the past six years, and it takes us into the dangerous territory of making the game more difficult for amateurs."
/It's been way too long since Peter Kostis wrote some non-sensical, credibility-crushing fluff for his friends at Titleist, but the "Golf Products Design Consultant" for the company put together quite possibly the lamest and most inevitable argument one could make about the groove rule change: you're hurting the average man who won't be affected by this rule change anytime soon!
Read MoreTiger's Been Spotted Clippings, Vol. 1
/Benoit Denizet-Lewis appears to be a bit naive about what being on the New York Times Magazine masthead means, and about proper online formatting (who centers text!?). Anyway, he's really sorry for possibly having compromised Tiger's rehab by confirming the sketchier reports on Tiger's whereabouts.
Read MoreRory Crashes Car Into Neighbor's Cabbage Patch: "I didn't have anyone chasing me!"
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Karl MacGinty reports on the young Irishman crashing his Audi A6 (Thank God it wasn't the new Lamborghini!) after an ice patch sent his car sideways.
When the irony of his New Year's Eve mishap is pointed out, the 20-year-old says: "I didn't have anyone chasing me!" Instead, compacted snow had made an ice rink of the driveway at his luxury Co Down home and McIlroy simply span off.
"I was crawling down the driveway," he explains. "There's a sharp left-hand bend and as I braked to turn into it, the car just slid. As it did, I thought to myself, 'I know where this is going' – straight into the hedge. I ended up in the neighbour's cabbage patch." There was one consolation. He had left his spanking new Lamborghini in the garage.If only all bizarre car accidents could be so innocent. A fan of Woods since he was six and first glimpsed the young Tiger on telly at the 1996 US Amateur Championship, McIlroy admitts he was taken aback by the revelations that followed Tiger's crash that fateful November night in Orlando. "Even I was disappointed when I heard what happened," he says. "Everyone thought 'Aw no'. They were shocked because, obviously, he'd been doing it for a while."
“This was very clearly a decision by IMG to allow these sponsors to leave the fold."
/Richard Sandomir reports in the New York Times that IMG and Mark Steinberg released both Accenture and AT&T instead of battling them for a Conan-like payout.
Read More"On a typical day you're going to find caddies playing with members. It's not some snobby, elitist golf course."
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Nice work by Farrell Evans to track down Bill Evans, the 62-year-old American GM of Petionville Club, a nine-holer on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince that has since become a refugee camp for earthquake victims."We wanted to build a nice, inexpensive, lay-of-the-land style course."
/Matt Ginella files a sad but compelling Golf World cover story on Bob Lang and the Erin Hills saga that now sees the course on the verge of receiving a U.S. Open despite the founder's money problems and a subsequent sale.
Read More"A lot of people who have been afraid to ask questions for 10 or 12 years won't be quite as hesitant to ask questions"
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More interesting in Geoff Ogilvy's comments about Tiger needing to have an off-golf course press conference when he returns was this:"The big boys are meant to play the same game with the same equipment as the rest of us."
/Add BBC's Iain Carter to the list wondering about the manufacturer-driven bifurcation of the game. In a column on golf's current "moral maze," he writes:
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