Nominate Golf Courses Thinking Outside The Box...

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Coming to you today from The Links at Petco Park got me thinking about something in Ira Boudway's Bloomberg story on Topgolf, which included this info-graphic on other golf courses attempting to shake things up.

Besides the fun of playing stadium golf, Blue Sky in Jacksonville sounds like the most creative...anyone been?

Are there good examples out there not mentioned above trying to do something fun and different to the golf experience?

Bloomberg: "To Make Golf Fun, Just Add a Nightclub"

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Topgolf gets the Bloomberg treatment and while there have been many profiles of the indoor-golf-driving-range-hipster-21st-Century-bowling-alley, Ira Boudway's story features plenty of fresh anecdotes.

A couple of highlights, starting with this on how CEO Erik Anderson, founder of private equity fund WestRiver Group brought the idea stateside and made a key move: TV's in the hitting bays.

In 2009, Anderson and a group of U.S. investors bought Topgolf’s technology for an undisclosed fee and decided to overhaul the floor plan for future locations. They added a third level, tripling the size of each venue to 65,000 square feet; replaced the buckets with motion-sensing ball dispensers; and, in a key change, put TVs and lounges—effectively, the entire sports bar experience—at each bay. “We realized that this was really an integrated entertainment and sports experience,” Anderson says.

There was also this on the financing side...

In September the company lined up $275 million in financing to build 7 to 10 locations a year. (Each costs $20 million to $25 million to open.) “We think there’s room for 100 or so in the U.S. and an equal amount globally,” Anderson says, though other than the original locations, the company hasn’t yet opened any outside the U.S. Revenue last year was about $300 million; this year it will be about a half-billion dollars.

The HSBC-WGC, 72-Hole Stroke Play Oversaturation & An East Lake Cup-Inspired Alernative

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The World Golf Championship concept brings an international together four times a year, including the PGA Tour's lone match play event, so it's hard to criticize a concept forcing the best players in the world to show up.

HSBC pours a lot of money in golf, generates discussion about the industry of golf with its business forum, and wants to see the game expanded beyond its current borders, so it seems unfair to blame a company going above and beyond the normal sponsors.

And top players did show up in Shanghai at the end of a year when they've been asked to play even more weeks than normal, so there is no way they can be criticized.

Yet in trying to watch the WGC-HSBC Champions, won in resounding fashion by Hideki Matsuyama for his third PGA Tour win, there may be no finer example of the oversaturated product that is elite professional golf. A limited field, no-cut rankings and cash extravaganza watched by few people in person or on television is the product of...too much "product."

The recent analysis suggesting oversaturation and over-extension of the NFL and Premier League should serve as a reminder that unless a pro golf tournament this time of year has something fresh and entertaining to offer the fan base, it should not be played. Too many events are serving the needs of players, executives and sponsors, and needlessly denying the fans a chance to be entertained.

Consider this week's 72-hole, no-cut WGC-HSBC. To say it was lifeless would be an insult to life. The competing Sanderson Farms PGA Tour stop in Mississippi offered a more compelling event because the players, who genuinely need these dollars and points to retain their tour status before the next re-shuffle, appeared more engaged. The event exuded a certain small-town charm lacking in Shanghai. (Left-hander Cody Gribble won and added his name to the list of emerging young players.)

And it's not as if alternatives are unavailable.

This week's collegiate East Lake Cup, while obviously a made-for-TV event highlighting top Division I teams, at least promises to entertain thanks to the team match play format. What if the WGC-HSBC did something similar, offering two or three days of stroke play to determine an individual winner and to make some seedings. But instead of binding players as a team by their country, allowing them to play for a corporate alliance?

Might we stand a better chance of watching and being entertained by seeing Team Nike featuring Rory McIlroy, Paul Casey and Jhonattan Vegas, taking on Team Srixon with Hideki Matsuyama, Russell Knox and J.B. Holmes.

Team Callaway's Henrik Stenson, Patrick Reed and Thomas Pieters could take on Team Taylor Made's Dustin Johnson, Sergio Garcia and Daniel Berger in another early tournament match? And why relegate it to manufacturers? If the RBC-endorsees are going to get appearance fees elsewhere on the schedule, let them field a team based on having enough players high enough in the world ranking.

Some sort of twist on existing formats are presumably squelched in the name of FedExCup points and world ranking points prioritization, which reminds us once again: too often professional golf tournaments are played at the pleasure of the golfers, executives and sponsors, and not for the fans.

Is it any wonder so few were paying attention this week, even with a leaderboard like this?

Pebble Beach: High Schoolers Find Thousands Of Golf Balls On Ocean Floor

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KSBW's Caitlin Conrad highlights the great work done by two Monterey area high school students and outdoor enthusiasts who discovered how many golf balls are polluting the Carmel Bay sea floor, including rubber-core balls dating back to the 1980s. When presented with the findings by Alex Weber and Jack Johnston, the Pebble Beach Company responded in fine fashion, with plans to be more aggressive with sea floor clean up and making a contribution to help the two students further their marine science education.

From Conrad's story...

Mathes said Pebble Beach Company was unaware of the pile up in the cove until the teens brought it to their attention.

“You know we’ve had decades of scientific researchers, recreational divers out off the coast and no one has brought this to our attention, it’s really these two students who have discovered something, and we are really quite proud of them,” Mathes said.

Weber said Pebble Beach Company is doing a good job stepping-up to the task of removing the balls but she said she was surprised no one knew about the problem earlier.

“It is almost common sense, like you should understand that if you’re hitting a golf ball off a cliff into the ocean, it’s going to end up under the water,” she said.

The Pebble Beach Company gave each of the students $500 scholarships to The Island School, a high-school marine science and sustainability-based study abroad program in the Bahamas. They are funding the rest through this GoFundMe page.

Their video showing the Pacific floor next to the course. Warning, it's disturbing!