"Golfers want to play by the rules. They just find it challenging at times for the book to allow them to do that."

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The first rollout of efforts to simplify the rules of golf and their decisions was regretfully hailed as a grow the game opportunity.

Mercifully, that is not the message the USGA's Thomas Pagel brought to AP's Doug Ferguson in explaining what the world's foremost experts on golf rules have been up to.

"You can't change one piece because the tentacles ... it's going to break something else," he said. "It's tough to handle something in isolation. So let's look at everything, step back and take the puzzle part and see where we can make improvements."

The result could be the most comprehensive overhaul of the rules, which in this case might shrink the book.

The first set of rules was published in 1744, but that was specific to one club. As golf grew, and the number of clubs increased, so did the rules. The Royal & Ancient took over and produced a set of rules in 1899, which the USGA adopted. The R&A and USGA issued the first joint code of rules in 1952, and there were significant changes in 1984. Not to be overlooked is the "Decisions on the Rules of Golf," which amounts to a Q&A of specific incidents.

The most recent edition has 1,200 decisions.

"I don't like the size of the book, but it's one of those deals where you try to address the questions that come up," Pagel said. "In the future, how can you provide guidance to committees so they can get to the correct answers without having 1,200 Q&As? And that's one of our objectives."

Most exciting? Pagel reveals the first draft will be made available so that all golfers can do some beta testing.

Take That Barkley: "He looks more like he’s giving a Charades clue than making a golf swing"

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While Charles Barkley's backswing hitch/pause/dance move will always be tough to top, Jack Van Meerbeeck manages to add himself to the Golf Swing HOF with a move that looks a tad painful!

Tom Stinkney at GolfDigest.com with the analysis of a swing that once broke 80.

Jack’s swing actually starts out pretty routine, but when his hands get about chest high, things get nutty. He flips his wrists over his right shoulder, and the shaft goes upside down and dips toward at the ball. I have to pause and say, anytime your hands block your view of the ball at the top of the backswing, something very special is happening. He looks more like he’s giving a Charades clue than making a golf swing, but the man finds a way to get back to the ball—and that’s all that matters.

And it repeats!

Here goes...

This is the swing of 58-year-old Jack Van Meerbeck. More on it at GolfDigest.com.

A video posted by Sam Weinman (@samweinman) on

"Rio deserved a more balanced, less hysterical prologue, just as it deserves a more balanced, less triumphal epilogue."

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Two respected journalists and Olympic Games veterans tied up the loose ends of Rio and suggest that the pre-Olympics coverage was badly overblown given Rio's winter time weather (and therefore, no mosquitos).

Alan Abrahamson was the longtime Olympics beat reporter for the LA Times and now has his own site, 3 Wire Sports, devoted to Olympics coverage.

He writes:

The developed world’s assessment and pre-Games judgment of developing Brazil smacked, in many instances, of smug privilege if not the very worst strands of colonialism and imperialism. Why expect Rio to be London or Vancouver?

Social media amplified the predictions of catastrophe. A threat on Reddit was dedicated to the “Apocalympics.”

Consider the Zika thing — which, among other consequences, purportedly led to the withdrawal of many top male golfers from golf’s debut at the Olympics.

The World Health Organization said last Thursday that no one appears to have caught Zika at the Games. That means, according to WHO, “spectators, athletes or anyone associated with the Olympics.”

To be even more direct — not one worker at the Rio golf grounds.

Yet the world’s top guy pros wouldn’t or couldn’t go?

Turns out, you had a better chance of dying from running into a swarm of angry capybaras who had just tasted the press room coffee.

(The on-course lack of a Zika issue was pointed out here first (June 29, 2016) that no members of the crew had been infected, yet, the world's top golfers who stayed away didn't get a link sent their way.)

Christopher Clarey of the New York Times, who has covered the Olympics since 1992, admits to falling for the pre-Games coverage and laments it.

Exhibit A was the four cans of mosquito repellent, bought in the United States, that were sitting unused on a table in my hotel room, a still life to fear.

This is not to imply that the Zika virus has not been a major issue in Rio or that water pollution in Guanabara Bay does not remain one. But it is to make clear that a lot of us in my business got it wrong when it came to the impact those issues would have on the Olympics themselves.

“All we do is read what’s in the headlines, and the headlines always scare you,” said Bubba Watson, one of the leading golfers who did elect to play in the Games when many opted out.

Rio deserved a more balanced, less hysterical prologue, just as it deserves a more balanced, less triumphal epilogue.

Ryder Cup Team (And Other People Visit) Gillette Stadium

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I see most of Team USA's Ryder Cup 2016 players, the Captain and Vice Captains. And there's Jim Furyk, whose fate as player or cart driver is TBD (but he's sporting an appropriate 58 jersey, but a not so appropriate Patriots jersey for a lifelong Steelers fan(atic)).

Oh, and because he's not on the team, PGA of America President Derek Sprague.

ICYMI: Herm Edwards On Callaway Live

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Coach Herm Edwards was guest on Callaway Live this week and if you catch any part, make sure to see his locker room pep talk on the state of golf.

Also, the pleated pants (they're coming back in style!) and his Cypress Point story are quite fun. Though when someone is telling Crosby Pro-Am stories from Cypress Point and playing with Peter Senior when he was a rookie, you know he's been at this golf thing a while.

The full show:


Two other very recent shows of note: Greg Maddux and Akbar and Megan Christi, purveyors of Seamus Golf.

Vandenburg A.F. Base Golf Course Closing Over Water Costs

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One of the best military base golf courses in the country is another casualty of California's drought and rising water prices.

Dave Alley of KEYT files a full report from the nearly 60-year-old course.

"It's the price of water," said Col. John Moss, 30th Space Wing Commander. "The price of water and what it requires to water the course has just gotten to the point where it's prohibitive for us to be able to afford that. This year alone would have cost us several hundred thousand dollars to water the course and it's just money we don't have."

The course, which opened to public play in 2005, has been sustained by non-appropriated funds during that time span. However, escalating water costs has made operating the course financially unsustainable. As the price of water has risen steadily over they years, the base has had to tap into MWR funds to cover costs.

"We are taking immediate action to ensure we are good stewards of our funds," said Josie Cordova, 30th Force Support Squadron (FSS) deputy director. "When the MWR Fund is in danger of bankruptcy, that threat includes potential closure of our other base support functions."

To help cut costs, the course implemented a series of measures over the past several years to conserve water, including installing more efficient water infrastructure.

"We stopped watering the middle of the fairways and reduced the amount of water we were putting in the course overall and ultimately we're at the point we're at now and we were only watering the greens and the tee boxes and even that wasn't enough," said Col. Moss.

I've played the course many years ago and saw it again in recent years and it's a gem on great terrain. Really a shame.

Special Olympics Golfer Has His (Plainly Marked) Clubs Stolen

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Good spot by Kevin Casey at Golfweek.com to get your blood boiling, as we learn that Special Olympian athlete Keith Kee had his clubs and Special Olympics-marked bag stolen at a Bartlett, Tennessee golf course. Kee was there to play golf with his coach John Sprott.

“With Special Olympics on the bag, whoever stole them must have known who they belong to. For me, that’s more egregious than just stealing someone’s set of clubs,” Sprott told WMC Action News 5.

The full WBTV report from Chris Luther includes a full description should you live in the area and spot the heathen who committed this act.

R.I.P. Ken Carpenter

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If you've been around golf long enough, you know Ken Carpenter's name and work from the pages of Golfweek and Golfweek.com.

While he had moved on to teach journalism at Valencia College, Golfweek's Jeff Babineau says Carpenter, who died Sunday at age 59 after a battle with cancer, left behind many friends in golf after he and his wife established a legacy of generosity and giving.

Carpenter befriended a caddie at Cruden Bay in 2000 that began a long friendship.

When former Golfweek senior writer Jeff Rude and I visited Scotland years later, it was Chris’ late dad who picked us up. Chris wrote Monday about Ken’s last trip to Cruden Bay, in 2000; he wanted so badly to break 80 that day, and was 3 over with two holes to play. But he’d finish 9-6 and shoot 80, managing to chuckle about it later, as only he would.

This morning, halfway across the world in Scotland, the flag flies at half-staff at Cruden Bay, an honor the venerable club usually reserves only for members. That’s how Ken Carpenter touched people.

Also warming are the many stories flowing in from his former students at Valencia College, where Ken was a journalism professor for 12 years. It was one thing to spend many years at newspapers and magazines pounding in agate, editing copy and writing catchy headlines. But as a professor, he truly was able to impact lives and steer kids toward a passion, his passion, bringing refreshing life to an industry most view as fading to black in a hurry.

Luke Donald As A Ryder Cup Pick Story Gets More Interesting

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Alex Miceli at Golfweek.com with the explanation from William Hill's Joe Crilly as to why they got suspicious and cut off bets on Darren Clarke's three Ryder Cup picks.

Miceli writes of the action on longshot Luke:

The betting came not from its web or mobile sites, but from differing Hill retail locations throughout England, mostly in the northeast of England.

“They were only small bets, the biggest of which was I think 200 pounds,” Crilly said of the Donald bets. “They were only small bets but they were of the frequency on a special market like that that you wouldn’t necessarily see on a special market and thus somebody had an inkling that something was going to happen.”

Both Tim Rosaforte at Golf Channel and James Corrigan at the Telegraph are reporting that Donald will not be a pick. Instead, Lee Westwood, Martin Kaymer and Thomas Pieters will be the 2016 captain's picks. Clarke makes the picks Tuesday at 7:30 am ET.