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  • Let her grow, let her grow, let her grow

    Submitted by raphael on Sun, 06/10/2007 - 00:00

    I'm sitting here with a copy of Golf World open to the Wie story. The pullquote on the story is from Paula Creamer: 

    It's sad we have to do that. The LPGA shouldn't get involved with players on the golf course unless it is a ruling or something like that.

    Well, you're close, Paula. The LPGA (or the PGA or the USGA) isn't supposed to be involved on the course even for "rulings." They do so because they don't want you to embarrass yourselves.  Brief digression: a few years ago, a PGA player got fined for slow play when he held up his round because he didn't get a ruling -- it was about a drop, if I recall correctly, and he was looking for some kind of edge. He complained loudly enough to the writers to get a column written about it. I never saw a followup, but I'd wager that as a result of his whinging he managed to overturn the fine. I suppose it should be considered a small victory that he got nicked in the first place. Because of course, the point is, Paula and Jeff, that golf is different because one of the rules is you have to know the rules (6-1: "The player and his caddie are responsible for knowing the Rules.")  Well, at least it used to be different.  I'm not the first to point out another queasy aspect to the Wie episode -- that the very best thing that could have happened to Michelle Wie, teenager, would very likely have been for her to have blown herself out of the season. No one should doubt why she might be better off just leaving the game alone for a while -- but if you do, here's a very obvious reason: everything about her play suggested she was neither mentally nor physically ready to compete.  But apparently no one around Michelle Wie thinks it's important for her youth, or what remains of it, to resemble to a typical adolescence. Instead, her agent, her parents, and the LPGA feel it's more important that they cover their own butts in the guise of looking out for their client/daughter/leading television personality.  Unfortunately, Michelle Wie simply seems to be a pawn in other peoples' games. When you get down to it, this was an instance of an agent probably fearing that he'd be blamed for not doing his job -- and an LPGA desperate to preserve one of its more brilliant and attractive stars. The greed of everyone around her trumped the rules, and probably her own best interests. 

  • Bring back the stymie!

    Submitted by raphael on Sat, 06/09/2007 - 00:00

    There is something ironic about Jack Nicklaus insisting on long-pronged rakes in Muirfield's bunkers for the Memorial tournament in order to make it tougher for the players. Golf fans old enough will remember that no one argued more often or vociferously for immaculate course conditions than Jack (or "Carnac," as the writers called him for his propensity for holding forth) did back in his prime.

    The problem isn't the old guy trying to make things more difficult for the young guys -- that's alright. He's on the mark about bunkers being too easy to play out of. Of course, it might not be an issue if he hadn't led the call thirty years ago for golf courses around the country to use to fluffiest, easiest mix to play out of. 
     
    But American golfers feel entitled. Poll golfers at every level and ask them what they do when finding a ball sitting in a divot-hole. I'll wager, 80% roll it over, while another 15% play it down, while grousing about the USGA and claim that a divot-hole should be ground under repair.
     
    Listen, golfers: golf isn't supposed to be easy or fair, no matter what the magazines or commentators tell you. Or what you feel like when you're hitting your sixth shot out of a bunker. It's not about you. There is something called "the rub of the green." 
     
    What's especially disturbing as it pertains to golf is that in the last few years I've heard more and more people blaming the rules for holding golf back. Even traditionalists have said golf ought to consider a "lite" version, not governed by the traditional rules of the game -- though more often you hear it from people who want to foster growth in the game, and decry the snobbery they see implicit in the elaborate and painstakingly evolved rules of golf.
     
    To which my response is: the last 15 years have seen every quarter in the golf industry do its best to (ugh) "grow the game" -- from making clubs and balls longer and easier to hit straight, to recruiting kids from the less moneyed neighborhoods, to getting hot models to do 15-second advertising spots. 
     
    Naturally, all this missionary work isn't done for the sake of seeing more people enjoy themselves -- it's in order for the golf business to make more money off of them. But there is no sign that it's doing any good, since the game's popularity has flattened. 
     
    There is, however, every sign that these and like efforts are eroding the very rigorous and particular nature of golf itself, at least the way it's played in this country. After two decades of the USGA for all intents yielding to the demands of the clubmakers, what has golf got to show for it? 
     
    Hey, Jack, you want to make your bunkers hard to play? Pull out all the sand and make'em play out of dirt, just like in the old days. Then we'll really find out who the best golfers are.
     

  • Shinnecock, Shminnecock! (Golf & Jews, II)

    Submitted by raphael on Sun, 02/11/2007 - 00:00

    Not that you should care, but I chose to live in Flatbush, out in Brooklyn's ass-end, for two reasons: to be near be near a pool where I could swim laps a couple times a week, and to be close to a golf course or a driving range.

    Oddly enough, the place where I chose to rent this spacious but slightly dingy apartment, near Brooklyn College, was a golf course back in the 1920s, according to the old Brooklyn websites. Nowadays there's Marine Park, just down Flatbush Avenue, and a perfectly fine driving range a mile past that, so I'm living closer to a golf course than I have since I went to Haverford, not that I ever managed to get onto Merion.
     
    So I was excited when a couple of months ago the golf architect Stephen Kay mentioned he had been inspecting Marine Park for a renovation. Opened in 1962, this Trent Jones design sits on inlets near Jamaica Bay on windswept land very suitable for links: sandy soil (though some of it seems like landfill), relatively flat but comparatively useless for anything but golf -- which is the way it should be. From the tips it plays at over 7,000 yards, and, with some investment and upgrading, could be a first-rate municipal golf course.
     
    Last week the city announced it had terminated the contract of the winning bidder, Dominick Logazzo, thanks to Logazzo's connections with the Columbo organized crime family.
     
    Which sucks. Marine Park is potentially a wonderful golf course -- the holes range from simply appealing to remarkable: the fourth, for instance, a very long and narrow dogleg-left with trees left, playing uphill to a pretty mound of a green. The land it's on is distinctively South Shore Long Island, and remarkably unsullied considering it sits at the corner of Flatbush Avenue and the Belt Parkway.
     
    I'm not defending them, but ain't no two ways about it: Southern Brooklyn is thick with mob activity. From Bay Ridge to Sheepshead Bay, you might say the Italian mob isn't as well-ensconced as it used to be, but the Russians are doing ok, or so I hear.
     
    So here's the problem; in a way it's almost hard to imagine anyone who 1) knows or cares about Marine Park and, 2) could afford to pay for the renovations and 3) is NOT in some way connected to the mob.
     
    Well, anyone say, except some of my landsmen, the orthodox Jews, many of whom I often see hitting golf balls, enthusiastically if not particularly well, at the driving range down the block from Marine Park, at the Brooklyn Golf Center across from Floyd Bennett Field.
     
    Lots of Jews play golf, you know, apart from Jesus and Moses. For some reason (outcasts striving to make it?), it's funny even if it's not Larry David doing it. As Alan Sherman, the oracle of mid-20th century Jewish life, put it in "76 Sol Cohens," sung to the tune of "76 Trombones":
    Seventy-six Sol Cohens at the country club
    And a hundred and ten nice men named Levine
    And there's more than a thousand Finks
    Who parade around the links,
    It's a sight that really must be seen!
    Out in the Hamptons, not long after Atlantic Golf Club came into existence twenty years ago -- membership cost $100,000, unheard of at the time, but now cheap -- the snoots liked to rattle off the names of the prestigious local clubs: "Maidstone, Shinnecock, National, and Hebrew National."
     
    Al Barkow, my first golf editor, has never made a secret of his own origins as a Lithuanian Jew from Chicago, but used to point out with some spiteful satisfaction that Herbert Warren Wind, dean of American golf writers, was originally Jewish. At least one U.S. Open champion, Corey Pavin, was a member of the tribe, at least for a time -- even before he became 'born again" long even before he won the Open, people said he was uncomfortable discussing his "family origins." Morris Hatalsky, a fixture on the PGA Tour during the 70s and 80s, was also Jewish before he converted, thanks to the efforts of Don Pooley in what, despite my own skepticism is a genuinely touching story. (Gosh, I might not have like the Billy Graham part but the possibility of winning an Open -- now, that might get me into church.)
     
    One might be tempted, if one cared to delve in these sorts of matters, that conversion was the price for social acceptance, but that is a risky business. On the other hand, speaking of miracles: Sandy Weill actually managed to get into Augusta National after he ran Citibank, which owned The Travelers, allied with the Masters since forever. To my knowledge, there has never been a Jewish USGA executive; however, in 1997 Quaker Ridge hosted the Walker Cup (joining a spectacular list of architectural gems) which counts as an achievement, and Atlantic is set for the 2010 Mid-Amateur.
     
    To me, the most amazing triumph happened eighty-five years ago, when Inwood CC, a nice course out near Far Rockaway, hosted the first of two majors, the PGA Championship, in 1921, won by Walter Hagen. Two years later, the US was played here, which Bobby Jones won, for the first of his 13 majors. Thanks to Tom Doak's good work, Inwood's design virtues are still apparent and make it quite an enjoyable course to play lo these many years later, but I believe it's a tribute to the Inwood members as well as the PGA and USGA brass -- and the golf course -- that good golf triumphed over the social prejudices of the day. But I'd still be curious how this happened, and the Inwood club history doesn't give a clue.
     
    Jews and golf makes for quite a remarkable social history, though it's one that will probably remain largely untold, because people, quite understandably, prefer their private indulgences to remain that way.
     

  • show and tell, part ii

    Submitted by raphael on Wed, 01/31/2007 - 00:00

    Thursday morning the PGA kicked off the show with a Global Economic Summit featuring speeches from the PGA heads from Scotland, Australia and the US. The format changes from year to year but generally the center-stage presentation consists of 1) big shots reading the tea leaves and seeing big numbers ahead, and/or 2) some equipment guys taking potshots at the USGA, and/or 3) flagwaving. TV talking head Jim Huber got the latter out of the way with a cute but pointless story about being in the Sudan and seeing a little kid hit a rock with a stick, "just like Tiger." Amazingly, Huber's story was as political as the speechifying got this year: the PGA of America is arguably the most politically conservative governing body in any sport -- for instance, I'd guess there's hasn't been a Democratic captain of our Ryder Cup team since oh, maybe Sam Snead (who probably charged ten bucks for his vote) which, heh-heh, might be one reason we keep losing -- and the fact that politics was kept out of this keynote presentation is a rather amazing sign of some understanding among the PGA brain trust just how much people hate this President and his administration.

    No rosy forecasts this year, either, because everyone knows the golf business is in the toilet with no way out for the moment. After a period of intensive course-building and promotional efforts such as "Play Golf America," the golf business is flat with the number of rounds played annually decreasing and course development at a standstill. Instead, the speakers at the PGA's "Global Economic Summit" polished the brass with testimony about the trickledown benefits golf brings to local and national economies.
     
    The stagnation in golf might not be puzzling, except we're in the middle of the zenith of maybe like the greatest golfer in history, who appeals to just about every demographic there is. Plus equipment has easier for bad golfers to play than it's ever been before (unfortunately, as far as I'm concerned).
     
    I suppose I should care about the growth of the game, since I'm in the business. Except that for all the trickledown talk, the magazines -- the ones that aren't going out of business -- have steadily been paying less, if anything, and that's not going to change whatever shape the business is in. And so as a golfer and a bit of an elitist, what I personally like about the game of golf hasn't got much to do with making money from it. But I'm not the only golfer who thinks that golf has become expensive and time-consuming. At most public courses you are lucky to finish in five and a half hours. If the course is pleasant enough you might not particularly mind, except the better golf courses are charging at least $75-85, $100 a round. To the degree it's a leisure sport, it's okay for golf to be a waste of time, but not if it's also waste of money. If there's one thing the Scots understand it's that as soon as the game becomes spendthrift, it loses a good deal of its charm. The way that much of the golf industry has come to predicate its success is upon getting golfers to buy equipment every year and pay more for golf as an amenity. Which may work for high-end golfers but doesn't do much for people on a budget. No one is going to feel stupid about shooting 111 on a scorching day in July if it cost 35 bucks using dad's old set of Wilsons -- on the other hand, if you just spent $800 on a new set of clubs and another $125 to get onto the course, your frustration might be incentive enough to cut your losses and not waste that $125 again anytime soon.

  • show and tell, part i

    Submitted by raphael on Tue, 01/30/2007 - 00:00

    When the alarm went off at 5AM Wednesday I was this close to rolling over and skipping my flight to Orlando for the PGA Show. A lot of golf people have good reason to go down to the show and almost all of them, including me, would agree I'm not one of them. 

    Every January everyone in the golf industry with something to sell goes to Orlando. A lot of golf media types tag along, ostensibly to see and report on the latest in equipment -- but also just to be seen. It doesn't hurt that there's still room on the editorial calendars in January -- the only reason to wait on line for the odious pressroom lunch is a chance to side up to an editor who might pay you $125 for a quick sidebar on that course in Finland you visited back in '02.
     
    My own noxious personality notwithstanding, the problem I have with this particular trade show is -- well, the very same problem with my, um, profession: sellers vastly outnumber buyers. Plus, experience has taught me most editors would rather deal with me at arm's length if they must deal with me at all. There was that 45 minutes I spent chatting with a magazine honcho last year, watching him nod cheerfully through half a dozen pitches as I dropped the names of destinations like Paramus and Scranton before walking away confident I'd scored four feature gigs from him. Since then he's never so much as acknowledged receiving a single e-mail. Well, pal, it's 2007, and I am going to ignore you to within an inch of your life!
     
    On top of all that I seldom write about equipment, even gewgaws as ludicrous as 90% of the stuff on display here. I end up walking the show floor for a couple of days until my feet can't stand it anymore, then in the evening go to a reception I've been invited to, or find one to crash if I haven't, and then wind up in a bar with some other writers where we drink and compare our vast hauls of swag and snubs.
     
    If it didn't take place in Florida at the end of January, I wouldn't even consider going. The woman at the Hertz counter asked me if I wanted to upgrade -- waning to give voice to my cruddy mood I muttered, "No, I'm here under duress." She persisted in her friendliness and it turned out her husband works at the Orlando Sentinel, and we chatted, which is maybe that's why she upgraded me to a mid-size gratis. When I finally made the turn out of the rental lot in my Toyota in the 68-degree gray weather I felt better already, and an hour later I was actually feeling close to pretty good, having changed into my golf shoes to swat balls at "Demo Day" at the monstrous driving range at Orange County National out in Winter Garden. I pretended like I could place a story about getting fitted for a driver with the Nicklaus Golf people, who were happy to put me on the swing speed monitor (96 something) -- they seemed to think I'd benefit at least as much from getting new irons fitted, since the set I've been using are MacGregor from 20 years ago, bearing Jack's signature as it happens. I hit some Mizuno irons, too, which tempt me quite a bit, and hit a few Taylor Made drivers, but as far as drivers go, there are so many shafts available now you need a physicist to help you pick one out. Mostly I was out there to try to get some swings under my belt, and it started to drizzle, so I drove back to the Reunion resort where I was staying with some other writers. I had a beer, then went out to join a dinner the Wales Tourist Board was putting on: the Welsh are pulling out all the stops for the 2010 Ryder Cup, and they've got an deft and amiable speaker in John Jermine, chairman of Rydder Cup Wales, who knows how to make a point and nothing but -- not easy for me to say after hearing a guy bragging about playing Augusta National from the podium.
     
    Thursday morning I woke up with a nasty hangover. Okay, I thought as I headed for the shower, it was partly because of the beer-on-an-empty-stomach at Reunion, but then I remembered I hadn't looked at the wine label at dinner, and then I recalled that onetime PGA Tour golfer, South African David Frost had donated the wine -- I had drunk the red wine he'd donated at another reception at the show last year, in fact 3 or four glasses out of sheer, thirsty boredom, while noting that everyone else's teeth were stained a shade of black raspberry. Next day my skull felt hollowed out like a canoe. 
     
    Nevertheless after a long, hot shower I exchanged some quick pleasantries with my roommate and got onto I-4 with roommate David Cornwell, who lives way the hell up in Vermont and looks like it, even though he's originally from the Maryland D.C. suburbs -- sort of a chunky mountain man with no butt. I am pretty sure he is a writer though I've never seen his byline on a story, on the other hand I am a golf writer living in Flatbush so who am I to poke fun at Corny, who's played Muirfield, Carnoustie, and about fifty other of the greatest courses in Scotland, and I don't want to think about the Ekwanoks, Myopias, and Nationals he's played on this side. Unless he can get me on.
     
    I-4 starts to jam up near Orlando and there must be about 20,000 people clogging up International Drive, and it's already past 10AM. It's kind of like World Series Game 7 game traffic except nobody here can play this game, and I am starting to think, "I could be wasting time in Brooklyn reading Reverend Jen's blog instead of wasting my life stuck in traffic on International Drive." After parking and riding on the shuttle bus we finally get to the Media Center at the OC Convention Center to check in. This year, the badge around my neck lists my affiliation as "Forbes Traveler," although said affiliation consists of me having sent an editor there half a dozen pitches he never even troubled to reject, which I construed as practically inviting me to be a contributing writer. Last year my official media affiliation was "The Flatbush Golfer," earning me 1) a laugh from the head of Callaway PR, but then 2) the boot from Tehama's golf apparel booth from an alarmed publicist -- after seeing how she looked at my chest, I think I now know what small-breasted women have to go through. Next year I am thinking of "The Drudge Report" or maybe even "The Gutenberg Bible," except does that sound too Jewish?
     

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