Ridley And Driver: Theeeeyyyyy'rrrrreeee Back!

Only last night did I try to dig up the USGA nominating committee folks who chipped away even more of the USGA's credibility by nominating a trophy wife while ejecting a quality committee member. Finding no names online, I emailed USGA communications and they kindly supplied the info.

Now that I've cleaned up the ejected beverage from my keyboard and screen, I give you those names from the past that many hoped they'd never see again in a USGA-related item.

Fred Ridley
Walter Driver
Youngsuk Chi
Sarah LeBrun Ingram
M.J. Mastalir, Jr.

Okay, we know how these boys work. You might as well not even bother with the last three names. The chairs in the room had more influence. Those three poor souls voted how Chairman Ridley and Father Driver wanted or faced possible jail time or whatever misery Goldman Sachs' security team cooks up.

For those of you new readers to the blog, these two are the most reviled least appreciated USGA presidents of all time who jump-started several destructive internal policies that have corporatized the organization and expedited the departure of quality individuals. They also used golf course setups to mask regulatory buffoonery to disastrous effect, making Shinnecock a verb and helping the world understand just how far some will go to protect imaginary margins over the best interests of the game. And as first revealed here, Ridley and Driver parlayed the job of president into a perksfest highlighted by private jet travel. (The rest of the jet saga was detailed here, here, here and here.)

Driver, of course, is the mastermind of so many of these dreadful policies. A Goldman man who hilariously used his Blackberry at USGA events and majors even when they were banned, he was so lovingly profiled by Furman Bisher, who swooned over the man's "awesome name" and handsomeness "in a rustic sort of way." (And you thought the Tiger email chain saga was embarrassing!)

That's about where the compliments ended.

Driver now apparently continues to be behind the overall shift in USGA culture that places power and money as priority one, no matter the human costs or impact on the game. And that's ultimately what's so sad about this latest hiccup. They've placed another member on the executive committee who is married to one of the driving forces behind disastrous USGA policies. (Reg Murphy was a big fan of shuttering Golf Journal, which ushered in the decline of the once powerful membership program.)

I'll never understand the dynamics of that whole Sea Island-Atlanta cabal, nor do I care. I just wonder what they get out of it? Because so few people respect what they do and how they do it. And the results speak for themselves. It still goes back to how the USGA governs the game and the more you take bright people out of the room and replace them with undeserving types, the more the game suffers.

Hall Thompson, RIP

One of the stranger and sadder chapters in the game's history ends with the passing of Hall Thompson.

Goats Are The Future!

Julie Williams follows up with a story on the goats thinning native grass areas at Pasatiempo and shares this from Terry Hutchens.

Terry Hutchens, extension goat specialist at the University of Kentucky, notes that employing goats for brush clearing is a West Coast idea making its way east. But then, so are goats.

“It’s been used in the West for years, but east of the Mississippi River, it’s a phenomenon,” said Hutchens, who predicts that using goats for brush management (on golf courses or otherwise) will be common practice in 10 years.

For the past two years, Hutchens has been involved in a student research project that introduced goats to three landfills located on Bluegrass Station, a former Army base in Fayette County, Ky., now operated by the state. Groups of four goats first were released in quadrants slightly smaller than a half-acre to assess their land-clearing capabilities. The project was taken one step further when goats ended up at Avon Golf Course, a public nine-hole facility on Bluegrass Station, on a two-month trial basis.

The Caddy's Compendium...

Thanks to reader Bill for this "Caddy's Compendium" by Margaret Erskine Cahill and posted on the Schott's Vocab blog at NYTimes.com. They were mostly new to me!

The jungle means the rough. While a day in the clouds is used to describe working on a hilly course. The Scotchman is the appellation bestowed upon professionals, regardless of country. Big house is the club house. Matinee loopers are so stigmatized because of their habit of reporting for duty late or in the afternoon.

Ice cream caddies are schoolboys who earn spending money through caddying, but who do not depend upon it for a living. A looping fool is a caddy who holds the record for doing the most caddying per day, per week or per season at any particular course.

Golfweek Debuts Top 40 Best New Courses List

Who knew there were enough courses for a list? Actually, forty may be the entire list of new courses which looks hefty considering next year's will be a much shorter list.

What struck me more than a couple of startling slights was the sheer comedic value of some of the course names. And I'm not referring to the ones named after their developers. In the interest of kindness, I won't name names.