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
Sean Martin talks to coaches and others in the golf world about the new amateur status rules. The takeaway: college coaches are dreading the issues that will come along with the new rules, while international coaches like Golf Australia's Brad James are concerned about added pressure from agents on young players.Why so many rules for a game whose basic principle is to play the course as you find it and not touch the ball until you lift it from the hole?
“We could issue a more simple rule book, but I’m afraid it would fail the fairness test, and what good would that do?” Mr. Rickman said.
John Daly was in the group at 69 along with Lee Westwood, Retief Goosen, Y.E. Yang and Robert Karlsson.
"With a small field like we have here, and I think I may get in trouble for saying this, but I'm kind of glad it's not sanctioned by the European or PGA Tour," Daly said. "It shows that China is doing something on their own. They're saying, 'Hey, we may not need the PGA Tour or European Tour, no disrespect."
When did China become IMG? Or IMG become China?
Greg Stoda covers an array of topics with Jack Nicklaus who spoke at a charity event.
Two of interest in the architecture world:
On the weak global economy and its impact on golf ...
- "China, for example, is shut down right now golf-wise. We were over there about a month ago with a course two weeks from being finished that was shut down. They put a satellite up to monitor it to see that nobody was working."
Or maybe they just played the Ritz Carlton Dove Mountain and don't want you to get carried away again?
On the situation in the United States ...
- "I haven't been to a country in the last year where the outlook is as bad economically as it is here for us."
So we got that going for us. We're at the top of the bottom of the charts.
Norman Dabell reports that Graeme McDowell is claiming no role in Rory McIlroy's decision to leave Chubby Chandler, saying McIlroy's split "seems pretty amicable" before citing Corleone family philosophy.
Slate's Seth Stevenson tries to better understand why Rolex would sign Tiger Woods and ends up profiling the company, revealing many interesting and surprising things about this $5 billion company.
Privately held since its formation in 1905, Rolex is a notoriously tight-lipped company. It doesn't release revenue figures, or explain leadership transitions. (It had a total of three CEOs from 1905 until 2008, when then-CEO Patrick Heiniger resigned under mysterious circumstances.) Even the corporate structure is a bit murky. Rolex founder Hans Wilsdorf died childless in 1960, leaving control of his company to a charitable foundation he'd established. The Hans Wilsdorf Foundation runs Rolex to this day. When I emailed a polite-but-elliptical media-relations woman to ask whether Rolex is essentially a nonprofit, and who the foundation’s major beneficiaries are, she responded with this sentence: "The principal focus of the foundation is to support a variety of philanthropic endeavors."
And regarding the Tiger signing, Stevenson concludes it all comes down to the Asian markets.
Instead, he argues, this move is in large part about Asia. That’s where the growth in luxury watches will come from in the future. Right now, Rolex’s nemesis Omega dominates China—Omega is the other “mass class,” entry-level luxury timepiece—simply because it’s better-established there. Rolex hopes that Tiger, with his Thai mother, will be demographic catnip for the golf-obsessed Asian market.
Geoff Shackelford is a Senior Writer for Golfweek magazine, a weekly contributor to Golf Channel's Morning
Copyright © 2022, Geoff Shackelford. All rights reserved.
