Tom Watson Open To Bifurcating Rules Of Golf

/

From Steve Orme's report on Tom Watson, longtime traditionalist and passionate supporter of the Rules of Golf, sounds open to bifurcation after seeing how the belly putter kept his son interested in the game.

Asked if the USGA and R&A are on the right track, Watson said: "Yes, but I say that with mixed emotions.

"(A broomstick or belly putter stroke) is not a stroke of golf ... but it makes it easier to play.

"My son Michael, with a conventional putting stroke he couldn't make it from two feet half the time but he went to a belly putter and he makes everything.

"The game is fun to him now, so there lies the danger. Do we take the ability for people to have fun away?"

"Do we go to two sets of rules, where some people can use (long putters) in certain competitions but the PGA Tour maybe can't?

Clippings: The Last Q-School

/
Look, I know a lot of you are upset that this is the last Q-School ends the dream of every aspiring player who wants to write a massive check and have a shot at the PGA Tour.  Even more of you were upset that the Golf Channel didn't televise all or part of the event as they have in the past, but you can probably surmise that Commissioner Corleone was already stomaching the various tributes to Q-School that Golf Channel was sharing.
Read More

Minimalism Coming To Dallas, And Other Changes To The Nelson?

/

With AT&T becoming the new title sponsor of the Byron Nelson Championship in 2015, and the tournament likely to move to a new golf course designed by a minimalist to be determined, there are several storylines here.

- The PGA Tour announces a new sponsor while the current sponsor has two years left on their deal. That has to be fairly unprecedented, no?

- The many-times-renovated TPC Four Seasons Resort is a lame duck venue, even after a recent renovation supervised by the PGA Tour. D.A. Weibring was the most recent designer to attempt resurrecting the course.

- This would seem to end any chances of AT&T's long term interest in the "National" event at Congressional in conjunction with the Tiger Woods Foundation.

- The Friday news came on the same day an AT&T representative and some other suits announced a plan to build a golf course in southern Dallas, which will benefit SMU and eventually, the tournament along with a First Tee facility.

There is no truth to the rumor that the phone call listeners erupted in laughter when the Commish said "the odds are quite high," that with support from the Salesmanship Club the Nelson could find a new home.

Candace Carlisle described the project this way:

The 400-acre golf course development will include an 18-hole championship golf course, a nine-hole short course, an administrative and teaching facility, a practice facility, and a practice academy for Southern Methodist University students. The golf course will anchor the university's golf program and there's plans to pony up a significant investment in the project, said President R. Gerald Turner.

Bill Nichols says "AT&T officials have already interviewed several renowned golf course architects, including Coore & Crenshaw, Tripp Davis and Associates and Tom Doak’s Renaissance Design."

R&A's Chief Says His Organization Initiated Controversial Old Course Tampering

/
Check out Alistair Tait's interview with R&A Chief Executive Peter Dawson and understand the big picture here: one of the two governing bodies of the game, who treasure their role in making the rules of the game to protect the sport from changing in a negative way, is also playing architect to mask incredible changes under their watch.
Read More

Plateauing Distance And The 2012 PGA Tour Average

/

The NY Times' Karen Crouse takes on the delicate subject of technology and tradition and I got very excited to read that the R&A's driving distance plateau talk was debunked using a little different method than the governing bodies use: the average of the 50th ranked player.

Peter Dawson, the chief executive of the R&A, said his organization and the U.S.G.A. issued a joint statement a decade ago saying they were prepared to take action if distances increased any more. “Distances have actually plateaued since then,” he said in the same conference call.

The PGA Tour statistics tell another story. In 1997, the 50th-ranked player averaged 272.3 yards. By 2002, the distance had risen to 285.0. In 2012, it was 294.7.

Typically the governing bodies will point out that in 2002 the average was 279.8 and in the case of the most recent year, the PGA Tour driving distance average was 289.1.

Because a 9.8 yard discrepancy is much more palatable than a 22.4 yard increase!

"Golf’s shrine has been desecrated in an act of staggering arrogance by those meant to care for it."

/

All of the change-equals-progress bandwagon jumpers are on board with the R&A and St. Andrews Links Trust, but in preaching that mindless case I notice no one addresses how this wonderful progress was ushered through secretly.

As John Huggan notes in his Scotland on Sunday column, the R&A is merely arrogant, but it's the Links Trust that failed most miserably.

Yes, it is true that the R&A and Links Trust consulted with five local clubs. But those clubs, being private, are merely stakeholders who do not own the links. Instead, the proposals should have been revealed to both the people of St Andrews and, surely, golfers all around the world. Had that been the case, it is clear from the general reaction across the globe that none of the digging and scraping currently defacing the Old Course would be taking place.

So if this is indeed progress, undoing Mother Nature's beloved handiwork, why keep it a secret until a little over two days before you break the sacred grounds of the Old Course?