When you come to think of it that is the secret of most of the great holes all over the world. They all have some kind of a twist. C.B. MACDONALD
Oh we enjoyed the slaughtering their Cousin Eddie/nurse/lawn bowling shoes took when Rory unveiled his 2019 pair last week, but come on, you have to love the originality here from the Swoosh folks! If nothing else, they are not white. Golf has enough shoes in Pat Boone’s favorite color.
Expected retail price is $140 with no release date yet set.
View this post on InstagramNike is set to release Air Max 1 Golf “Grass” kicks this year. 👀 Thoughts?! 🤔
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In light of Matt Kuchar possibly stiffing his celebrated caddie at last fall’s Mayakoba Classic, Golfweek’s Eamon Lynch posed the question of what constitutes proper payment for a winning bag week loop.
Impressively, 10% is dominating while the $3000 Kuchar possibly paid his man brings up the rear.
Matt Kuchar getting roasted for allegedly paying a local caddie $3,000 after winning $1.3m at a recent Tour event in Mexico. Curious what folks think would be fair in that scenario.
— Eamon Lynch (@eamonlynch) January 12, 2019
The glorious (and big!) Augusta National Women’s Amateur invitations have started arriving in mailboxes of the players who have earned exemptions to the inaugural event. Beth Ann Nichols with Anna Redding’s story of opening the big invite.
Of special note is the glee with which Lucy Li celebrated her invitation as the USGA weighs the 16-year-old’s amateur status following an Apple Watch ad appearance.
Feels so surreal... Thanks @anwagolf for making my dreams, and the dreams of girls all around the world come true! pic.twitter.com/ZCyvrnTGEf
— Lucy Li (@_lucy_li) January 14, 2019
Former PGA Tour player Tom Gillis took to Twitter suggesting Matt Kuchar, 2019 Sony Open leader, former Players Champion and winner of $45 million in his PGA Tour career, might want to pay his caddie this week more than the $3000 he claims Kuchar paid “David” upon winning last fall’s Mayakoba Classic.
The win garnered Kuchar a $1.3 million winner’s check plus presumed bonuses. You may recall that David was a local caddie Kuchar used when he entered last minute and his normal looper, John Wood, had a previous engagement.
Gillis’ Tweet:
If Kuchar wins this weekend let's hope he pays his man more than 3k like the last win. 45 mil in earnings. Could've changed the mans life. 👎
— Tom Gillis (@tcgillis) January 12, 2019
To his credit, Gillis answered and Tweeted questions from skeptics unsure of his sources or motivations.
Following his third round at the Sony, Kuchar denied the amount quoted and said it was not a story. From Rex Hoggard’s GolfChannel.com story:
“That’s not a story,” Kuchar said. “It’s wasn’t 10 percent. It wasn’t $3,000. It’s not a story.”
You may recall that the euphoria over David’s effort prompted Michael Bamberger to dig a little deeper, writing this following up for Golf.com back in November 2018:
10. In a qualifier for the tournament, Ortiz caddied for a Mexican golfer, Armando Favela, who made it into the tournament and finished in a tie for 16th, making him the low Mexican. Favela earned $108,000.
11. Asked if he made more money than Favela last week, Ortiz said, “I hope so!” He had not yet received or discussed his pay with Kuchar. He knows the standard caddie bonus is 10 percent of the winner’s share. Kuchar earned $1.3 million for his win, his first since 2014.
So far just Brandel Chamblee has come to Kuchar’s defense, suggesting the pay was legitimately fair for a local caddie.
The reason tour caddies are paid as much as they are is to offset travel expenses and the sacrifice of a lifetime on the road away from family and friends. If Kuch in fact paid his substitute caddy $3,000 (from what I read, roughly twice his normal salary) seems a fair exchange. https://t.co/Zp16KC7FGv
— Brandel Chamblee (@chambleebrandel) January 12, 2019
Depends on a great many things and none of us knows all of the details such that we are justified in defaming an individual based upon rumors or half knowledge. It happens that differences occur on the course for any number of reasons that might effect what one is paid. https://t.co/tMUDMLMzQC
— Brandel Chamblee (@chambleebrandel) January 13, 2019
While the PGA Tour Commissioner sees golf as “growing and thriving,” the Wall Street Journal’s Candace Taylor details a growing crisis in the golf course real estate community world. (Thanks reader JB for sending.)
As younger generations do not take to golf or have little interest in golf course-fronting homes, values are plummeting and closures are commonplace.
“There are hundreds of other communities in this situation, and they’re trapped and they don’t know what to do,” says Peter Nanula, chief executive of Concert Golf Partners, a golf club owner-operator that owns about 20 private clubs across the U.S. One of his current projects is the rehabilitation of a recently acquired club in Florida that had shut one of its three golf courses and sued residents who had stopped paying membership fees.
More than 200 golf courses closed in 2017 across the country, while only about 15 new ones opened, according to the National Golf Foundation, a golf market-research provider. Florida-based development consultant Blake Plumley said he gets about seven phone calls every week seeking advice about struggling courses, from course owners or homeowners’ associations. He said most of those matters end up in court, and predicted that the U.S. is only about halfway through the number of golf-course closures that will eventually occur.
Growing and thriving…
Rod Morri, Mike Clayton and I kick around the Lucy Li amateur status situation, the dangers for the governing bodies, the PGA Tour’s athleticism push and the early returns on golf’s new rules.
As always, the show is available at the usual podcast locations like iTunes or below…
Nice to see Eduardo Molinari and friends doing a little study on the benefits or lack thereof for putts with the flagstick in.
You need to swipe through the slides to see the results, but some good food for thought if you believe the COR of the flagstick will absorb any speed putt. It will no.
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As the USGA sorts our Lucy Li’s starring role in an Apple Watch ad, Steve Eubanks of Global Golf Post recaps the story and notes the no-win position faced by the governing bodies.
There aren’t many rocks and hard places much bigger than the ones they’re between.
While he suggests that’s based on past reputation, I’d counter that their biggest hurdle is a society seeing no issues with amateurs taking freebies or payment for endorsements. The lines have certainly been blurred by the Olympics and even things as seemingly innocuous as allowing amateur golfers to wear scripted corporate logo gear.
Still, no matter how you feel Eubanks makes a key point that mustn’t be forgotten in the debate.
But before you jump to conclusions, think about this: Li is listed in the field for the AJGA Buick Shanshan Feng Girls Invitational on Feb. 15-18. She will be playing against girls who know the rules; girls with parents who have shelled out small fortunes to keep their daughters competitive in the junior game.
How will those girls and their parents look at Li? Will anyone call her a cheater to her face?
Others played by the rules and while they may not have been offered endorsement opportunities, many or most of those players likely would have followed the rules. Li’s parents did not and while it’s a shame, clearly all involved were not concerned with her amateur status. For that alone, it’s time to let her pursue a professional career.
With Augusta National Women’s Amateur invitations going out this week, it will be interesting to see if the good folks in Augusta are holding on to Li’s automatic invite (based on world ranking) until a decision is handed down?
We discussed on this week’s Alternate Shot:
Anyone who has looked at the new PGA Tour schedule sees weak spots on the list where top players will be tempted to stay home. Mexico City sits awkwardly before a busy run of Florida events, the Match Play still very close to the Masters and the WGC moving to Memphis after the major season and before the playoffs.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if the WGC’s, field killers to so many longtime PGA Tour stops, were to start taking hits because of the schedule?
Adam Scott admitted in his Sony Open press conference that he’s focused on majors and WGC’s will be a casualty. From Dave Shedloski’s GolfDigest.com report:
As for the WGCs, Scott, ranked 41st in the world, might change his mind as the season progresses, but for now he seems set on there being no deviations from the plan.
"I feel like there are good tournaments right around them that are a preferred option," he said. "It is tricky. I thought that was interesting for my schedule change. I wouldn't have thought that was the case, but that is the case at the moment."
Like many, Jordan Spieth can’t comprehend the notion of being penalized from dropping at shoulder height, as the rules revamp currently calls for.
From Joel Beall’s item at GolfDigest.com:
“What if they just take a drop from the cart path. I don’t think they probably care. They will still drop it from the shoulder. Technically, you take a drop from your shoulder and play out, you could be penalized for that. Doesn’t make much sense.
“It’s a disadvantage to drop it that high, so that one I didn’t really understand fully. It was cool that you’re able to get lower to drop it. I thought you would be able to do it at any height.”
In an item unusually light on details by Keith Kelly standards and feeling more like a reminder to interested suitors that Golf Digest is still for sale, the New York Post media writer says new PGA Tour International TV distributor Discovery is interested.
The billionaire Newhouse family has a minority stake in publicly traded Discovery, but the family connection is not necessarily giving the programmer any advantage. It will come down to price and Discovery’s long-term strategy on golf.
Discovery actually has some live-streaming golf in Europe connected to the PGA tour but does not have any golfing channels in the US and currently has no print within its empire.
Someone get Kelley the memo that Discovery’s GOLFTV is the Netflix of golf!
Conde Nast had set a year-end 2018 deadline to sell Golf Digest and two other publications.
Reading Ron Kroichick’s SF Chronicle account of Steph Curry’s proposed PGA Tour event falling through, it’s hard to understand what exactly went wrong other than the looming deadlines involved with a September event.
But negotiations with potential title sponsor Workday, the finance and human resources software company in Pleasanton, unexpectedly broke off. Tour officials didn’t have time to find another title sponsor, especially given the course changes Lake Merced would need to make in eight months.
“We are still committed to bringing an event to San Francisco,” Curry told The Chronicle. “It just won’t be this year.”
The question then may be, why didn’t the PGA Tour just sponsor this in year one to ensure they’re in the Steph Curry business.
The NDA’s are flying so we won’t know how many more forced social media posts we’ll have to endure as the irrelevant Vijay Singh takes up spots in PGA Tour fields, but he at least indicated to GolfChannel.com’s Rex Hoggard what we all know. He settled more than amicably with the tour in his lawsuit over a deer antler spray suspension.
Although a confidentiality agreement prevented Singh from disclosing any terms of the settlement, he did seem pleased to move beyond the distraction of the lawsuit.
“I can get on and do my own stuff and not worry about anything anymore,” he said. “I think both sides are happy, although I might be just a little bit happier.”
Ahhhh…maybe one of the guys can ask him this week on the range how much Vijay’s win took out of the retirement accounts! That’ll liven up the range chatter.
As previously noted, Vijay has only made 11 cuts in his last 28 PGA Tour starts and hasn’t snipped a top 10 finish in that time.
Good stuff here from Geoff Ogilvy on a recent fun trip to the linksland.
He thankfully praises the New Course at St. Andrews, Elie and lived to not hate the game after having to play the Castle Course.
There was also this on the supposed redundancy of links golf.
That actually got me thinking. When people talk about “links golf” they tend to suggest that every seaside course can be thrown into the same basket. Not so. We played six courses on this trip and they were all very different. Links golf is actually more varied than parkland golf. Because there are no rules. You can have 600-yard par-5s and 230-yard par-4s. You can have stone walls crossing holes. And you can have any number of blind shots. Almost anything is possible. And that is the fun of it.
The voting suggest the new drop rule is not going over well so far.
After we discussed today on Morning Drive today I heard from several asking the genesis of a lower drop height, answered here in the Golf.com roundtable:
Michael Bamberger, senior writer: The knee-drop looks ridiculous. It exists for a very limited purpose, to stop multiple drops on slopes. I think the professor has it right: a better rule would be to drop anywhere from knee to shoulder height.
The USGA’s Thomas Pagel also explained to Rex Hoggard at GolfChannel.com that the new drop location, changed from a 1-inch above ground height in the first proposal to knee height, was part of a “package deal.”
“It’s not just a drop from knee-height, but now it’s a focus on the relief area. People say that dropping from shoulder-height is simple, and it is, but under the old rules, there were nine different times you had to re-drop. We wanted to eliminate all those complications,” Pagel said.
“In order to focus on that new relief area, we said, 'Let’s get the player closer to the ground, and if you drop it from knee-height, that ball is going to bounce a little less.'”
Ultimately, however, the act looks awkward. Any player wanting to drop from higher up whether for personal, political or pure inflexibility reasons should be allowed to without the potential for penalty (which is incurred after playing a shot if the drop was not from knee height).
Geoff Shackelford is a Senior Writer for Golfweek magazine, a weekly contributor to Golf Channel's Morning
Copyright © 2022, Geoff Shackelford. All rights reserved.
