EA 14's "Historic" Edition May Need A 14.1

I want to say I'm still very much looking forward to EA Sports' Tiger Woods PGA Tour '14 game because of its heavy focus on history, with the opportunity to play legends like Young Tom Morris, Bobby Jones, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus in historic settings.

That said, this YouTube video with "Ryan the product manager" for EA's Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14 does have me hoping there is a 14.1 update at some point. Because while I can deal with Arnold Palmer playing the Hootie-ized 11th hole in the 1950, complete with the confining pine trees planted this century to destroy the hole, it's when Ryan shows us the Old Course scenes with Young Tom Morris that I get concerned.

Identifying him as Old Tom--which I can deal with because, well, I don't know--the Young Tom creation by the EA team is using a steel shaft about 65 years before anyone knew what they were. But worse than that, we see him teeing off on the first hole and what's in the distance?

Why it's the Old Course Hotel, erected in horrifying fashion about 100 years after the historic scene depicted.

Anyway, Ryan also shows up clips of the 1934 version of Augusta National--which we also saw in a preview video--and it still looks ridiculously accurate in detailing the original MacKenzie-Jones design, so that's good enough for me to shell out the necessary dough to play Augusta as the architects created it.



A few of the more horrifying (to historians) screen grabs, starting with Young Tom playing the Old Course in the late 1800's with the fairly recently renovated Old Course Hotel in the distance:


Young Tom Morris, using steel shafts...if only...

And Arnold Palmer, playing Augusta National's 11th hole in the 1960s, about forty years before Hootie Johnson and Tom Fazio turned it into a Christmas tree nursery because, you know, it wasn't hard enough.

Doak & Urbina Reunite For A Bandon Himalayas Course

Matt Ginella reports that Mike Keiser has reunited architect Tom Doak with the longtime associate he let go about the time the duo opened the magnificent Old Macdonald course.

This time Doak will be designing and Jim Urbina will be shaping a Himalayas-style putting course at Bandon Dunes resort.

Punchbowl will utilize 125,000- to 150,000-square feet of dunesland between the clubhouse at Pacific Dunes and the Pacific Ocean. The eighth green at Old Macdonald is 25,000 square feet and is currently the biggest single green on property. The Himalayas at the Old Course is roughly 140,000 square feet.

The land is being cleared now. Urbina says the goal is to have it seeded by May and the first putt might be as soon as the fall.

"It was like the Old Testament story of Samson offering to buy linen garments and a set of clothes for his 30 wedding guests if they could solve his riddle."

The story is long but it's a fun one involving Bubba Watson, the Masters, caddie Paul Tesori, a palm tree and a $10,000 engagement ring.

Hey, that could be a pitch for The Hangover 4. Only none of the above drink. Oh well.

Doug Ferguson explains.

Letter From Saugerties: Tim Finchem & Anchoring Edition

Former USGA Executive Director Frank Hannigan saw PGA Tour Commissioner's appearance on Sunday's WGC Match Play telecast and felt compelled to analyze the tour's surprising decision to not support the proposed ban on anchoring putters. You can read Frank's past letters here.

Letter from Saugerties                                                                                    February 27,2013

PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem gets away with murder.

During his endless interviews throwing the USGA under the bus last weekend on the anchoring issue, nobody asked him the right question: when did you first know that the USGA was moving in the direction of a ban on anchoring and what did you say in reaction?

The PGA Tour is represented at USGA Rules of Golf committee meetings by an employee named Tyler Dennis. It is surely his job to tell Finchem where the USGA is heading. My point is this: Finchem last year, long before the USGA made known its position on anchoring, could have stopped the movement cold by telling the USGA and/or the R&A at the British Open that he did not know how his members would react to a ban on anchoring.

The USGA exists to offer a set of rules that it believes make sense, accompanied by an argument that the game is best served if those rules are broadly accepted. Nobody has to buy that argument but virtually everybody does.  As former USGA Executive Director David Fay once said, "We govern by all the power not vested in us."

Albeit unhappily, the USGA recognizes that the influence of the PGA Tour is enormous because golfers think what they see on television is the genuine article. This has been so since the 1960s when the Tour was first invited to participate in the rules making process.  The consequence has been worldwide uniformity, a most unlikely achievement given the money and egos of modern golf.

The USGA would never have moved to ban anchoring had it known the Tour would diverge. The average male golfer has about a 17 handicap and struggles to break 100.  Do you think the USGA cares what method he uses to putt?  Hypothesize that anchoring had somehow caught on in everyday golf but was used by no Tour players. There is no chance the rules would have been changed.

Finchem evidently misread his members - who are his employers. That can happen. He's dealing with 300 relatively young people who have a lot of money and very insular views of the world. Few of them have ever done a lick of work other than hit golf balls. It's a pure recipe for fickleness.

Meanwhile, the USGA is hardly blameless. Given their policy of rules uniformity as the Holy Grail, they should never have gone where they did without an iron-clad agreement from the Tour. Instead, they end up with golf's version of sequestration.

Since the ban was not to take effect until 2016,  along with a 90-day period inviting comments, I figure the USGA was racked with internal dissension. Finchem could have made it easier for them to back off by voicing the opposition of the players quietly - even last week. Instead, he opted to go as public as possible, accompanied with wild specious arguments such as claiming  20% of amateur golfers are anchorers. Evidently he got that number from his new best friends at the PGA of America. Why he chose to play it as he did, whereby there must be a winner and a loser, is beyond my comprehension.

I see much of the USGA clumsiness as a consequence of systemic foolishness. All power is granted to a volunteer executive committee of 15.  Some are golf sophisticates. Some are golf ignorant. The USGA by laws say that the president of the executive committee, who lives nowhere near headquarters and already has a full time job, is the CEO. The same by laws refer to the USGA staff as "clerks."  The executive director of the staff of some 300 has no job description.

But let's suppose that the president happens to be a gem, a genuine prize. (As USGA Executive Director I was lucky enough to have three).  USGA presidents serve two years and then depart. (The USGA has had only one one-year president. That was Prescott Bush, father and grandfather of US presidents, in 1935.  I have no idea why he bailed out early.)

Has anyone ever heard of a viable institution that has a bona fide winner as CEO and then dumps him after two years? Even college presidents hang around for four or five years as their agents search for higher paying jobs.