Ramifications Galore From Spieth's Plan To Remain Titleist-Loyal

There were some intriguing remarks by Jordan Spieth to CNBC's Jessica Golden about his plans to remain loyal to his Titleist sticks. Three primary reasons: one, he's not helping his negotiating position going into a contract renewal. Two, he's exhibiting unusual loyalty and foresight compared to many of his peers who made costly switches And three, he doesn't sound like someone laying groundwork for Under Armour to join the golf equipment industry.

From the story:

When Nike announced it's getting out of the golf equipment business, Spieth said that caught many people off guard. "That was a bit of a shock when that came down," he said. However, Spieth said his PGA tour colleagues sponsored by Nike, most notably, Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, enjoy the flexibility of playing with what they want. Spieth says they frequently talk shop to each other about the different equipment brands and clubs.

Despite that, Spieth has no plans to give up playing with his Titleist clubs. "I have played Titleist my whole life, so I just trust it," he said. Acushnet, which owns Titleist, had an IPO this month. Spieth said he didn't get any stock with the offering but he imagines he'll be a shareholder at some point.

"In golf trusting what you are wearing and playing with is first and foremost so you don't have to worry about anything but your game."

Q&A With Ted Bishop, Author Of Unfriended

Ted Bishop's Unfriended opens like a media crisis thriller, but ultimately is worth reading because of the gentle way the former PGA of America president shows how golf's five families work and takes you behind the scenes of Tom Watson's Ryder Cup captaincy. While serving as a golf tell-all that only genuinely exposes a few PGA of America officers as short-sighted given the absurdity of his offense, the book never makes you want to run for the shower. In fact, it's often hard to put down thanks to Bishop's brisk, breezy style that only occasionally slows down.

The book documents Bishop's extraordinarily productive two years as PGA President, which saw the organization's profile raised and the membership defended by Bishop. Things have flat-lined since with the PGA and it's little wonder that the downward trend coincides with Bishop's removal with 28-days to go.

Ted answers a few questions via email below. You can buy Unfriended here at Amazon that includes a Kindle edition, or should you support non-Amazon retailers and want a signed copy from Ted, visit this page.

Also, Ted recently joined us on ShackHouse pre-Ryder Cup. Here is The Ringer's page for the show.

GS: What was your goal in writing this book?

TB: My departure as the President of the PGA of America is unprecedented and historic. Political correctness has taken on a life of its own with the 2016 Presidential election and it makes my impeachment look even more bizarre. Unfriended was simply an opportunity for me to tell my side of the story with no filters from anyone, including the media. It was also a chance for me to share some of the great stories and memories that I have been privileged to be part of in golf.    

GS: Did the PGA Of America attempt to stop the book from being published?

TB: The PGA made it difficult to write and publish my book. Ultimately, I had to seek the services of Levine, Koch, Sullivan & Schulz, one of the top First Amendment firms in the U.S. My lawyers determined that I had not violated any of my confidentiality or fiduciary duties to the PGA. That allowed me to press on with the book. I was fortunate that Classics of Golf publishing stuck with me through the PGA threats. In the end, I allowed the PGA to preview the book before it was published. In my opinion, that validates the integrity of the content in Unfriended.  

GS: What’s the feedback been like since you published?

TB: People tell me the book is extremely interesting, entertaining and easy to read. They enjoy being "inside the ropes" on things such as the Ryder Cup plus getting to know the biggest names in golf like Tom Watson, Arnold Palmer, Tim Finchem, Donald Trump, Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods. Golfweek said that the book "raises the curtain on the insular world of those who rule the game and offers rare insights." 

But, I would also say that the politics in golf have worked against Unfriended to some degree. There is no question that certain media outlets won't touch the book because they don't want to get sideways with the PGA of America. That's too bad because the book does not reflect poorly on the PGA. People need to give Unfriended a chance. I suppose the title might have given some readers the wrong impression about the book's message, but Unfriended is a pretty fitting way to describe what happened to me.   

GS: The book opens as a firsthand account of how not to handle a modern media crisis, which you openly share. Was this a bit of therapeutic writing or your effort to help someone down the road in a similar situation?

TB: It was definitely therapeutic to a degree, but the first couple of chapters were also very painful for me because I had to relive the events when I wrote about my departure. You are absolutely correct about helping other people out. Unfriended is far more than a golf book. It's a case study on corporate media relations, political correctness and social media usage. I would like to use the book as a spring board to speak at the corporate level about the responsibilities of leadership in the 21st Century. There are many valuable lessons that I can share and they are very interesting given the people that I associated with in golf.     

GS: The account of the 2014 Ryder Cup is particularly interesting and puts the U.S. performance in good perspective. You also detail the beginnings of the Task Force concept, but now in hindsight you think it was unnecessary?

TB: The Ryder Cup Task Force was absolutely necessary. We had to change our approach and it obviously paid off with a U.S. victory this year. PGA Tour players are A-3 members of the PGA of America and they deserved a greater voice when it came to the Ryder Cup. That being said, I will always defend the PGA of America on its choice of past Ryder Cup Captains. However, Larry Nelson and Hale Irwin are certainly glaring omissions from several decades ago.  

GS: Have you gotten a thank you from the Task Force you helped start, post-2016 Ryder Cup?  

TB: Phil Mickelson left me a voice mail after Hazeltine and said, "I like the fact that you went out on a limb and brought the Task Force together even though you are not getting a lot of credit for that. It's a whole different feel than I have ever experienced before in my 20 years prior. l will never forget that first call I had from you about it. It's just one Ryder Cup, but we have something to build on now thanks to you." I appreciated that from Phil.  

GS: You dealt with Donald Trump quite a bit during your tenure as President and speak highly of the interactions you had with him. What should the USGA and PGA of America do, if anything, with regard to events hosted at his courses? I was disappointed when the PGA chose not to play the Grand Slam at Trump LA.

TB: At the time, I thought that was a mistake.

It has been surprising to me that more of the media are not asking the PGA questions about the 2017 Senior PGA at Trump D.C. and the PGA Championship at Trump Bedminster in 2022 given his past comments that are certainly degrading to women. As the guy who was exiled from the PGA for calling Poulter a 'lil girl, I have been surprised that the PGA has softened its stance on political correctness with Mr. Trump.

But, like Mr. Trump, we have all done things or said things that we certainly would not want the public to know about. Trump has great courses and is a great host- so I say play on!

Nominate Golf Courses Thinking Outside The Box...

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"

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.

State Of The Game Podcast 69: Catching Up

Rod Morri, Mike Clayton and myself decided we'd been away so long that we needed to just catch up on a few topics, vent on a few others and resolve absolutely nothing.

Happy listening!

Or happy MP3 downloading.

Or iTunes.

Or below:

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

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?