Highlights From PBA's Latest Golf Auction

It's fascinating to see prices holding pretty steady (and then some) for prized golf memorabilia, at least based on the expected prices from the latest PBA Galleries auction of 200 lots.

The Sunday 5 pm PST auction is being held in conjunction with the Golf Collectors’ Society Annual Meeting and Trade Show at the Kalahari Poconos Resort.

Standouts include letter collections from Ross and Darwin, and no shortage of great volumes by the latter named legend. If you have friends at Buffalo CC, they will want to check out the Ross item.

There is also a rare Colt and Alison in a dust jacket.

Also fun was a rare St. Andrews mystery.

And much, much more.

Davis Love Can't Imagine What It'll Be Like To Have Tiger Woods On A Golf Cart Watching A Group Of Guys Play Golf

It's the stuff that dreams are made of, really, and as Kyle Porter notes in reporting on an interview Captain Davis Love gave to Sirius/XM, Tiger Woods driving around Hazeltine during the Ryder Cup could be a spectacle.

Love:

"I sit back sometimes, I even talk to him about it, I can't imagine what it is going to be like to have Tiger Woods on a golf cart watching a group of guys play golf," said Love. "Half the fans are going to be watching Tiger watch golf, they're not going to be watching the golf. And if Tiger goes to check pin positions, how much of the gallery is he going to take with him?"

Not that much, unless Love has secured a Team USA Escalade-model cart with Galea-approved lumbar support and heated seats.

Mercifully, Sam Weinman has a pretty good idea what Tiger's week will look like and it isn't as unpredictable as you'd think.

Unless of course MJ decides to ask for a ride and we find that those comments to Wright Thompson haven't left a lasting impression.
Hopefully they'll just discuss having a charitable auction of their dad jeans (Tiger here, MJ here).

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

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.