PGA Tour may finally get into the spirit
A lesson the PGA Tour seems to be learning, and probably a little later than most, is that beggars can’t be choosers.
With prospective sponsors not exactly banging down Tim Finchem’s door with sponsorship contracts in hand, rumour has it the PGA Tour is giving some serious thought to loosening its grip and allowing spirit companies to pursue both tournament title sponsorship and major endorsement deals with its players.
Some experts suggest the change of heart could mean up to $50 million in the PGA Tour till annually, which is an awful lot of beer money. And don’t be fooled. It isn’t mere coincidence that the suits are mulling over the change at a time when the economy is in the toilet.
South of the 49th, most car companies and financial outfits currently can’t sponsor a kid’s walkathon, let alone a golf tournament.
On the other hand, people still tend to tilt the odd glass or two. Or, these days, three or four. Who hasn’t heard a recent tale of Jimmy down the road staggering out of a bar sideways, pink slip in hand?
The PGA Tour, according to reports, didn’t want to seriously pursue the change because of the, er “stigma attached to the category.” Evidently Finchem hasn’t closely perused the beer sale figures at PGA Tour events.
Sure, there may be a fine line between beer and spirits, but ask anyone that has tossed back six or seven glasses of either the night before. The headache is pretty much the same.
Booze companies, whether it is beer, spirits or any other outfit that can create headache in a bottle, are big-money players on the sports sponsorship scene. It’s no wonder the PGA Tour is getting with the program and considering getting a little more lenient with their rules.
These days, options are somewhat limited.
Canadian Tour makes right call by pulling out of Mexico
The Canadian Tour made the right call.
News came down late Tuesday that Commissioner Rick Janes had temporarily pulled the plug on the final two events of its Mexican swing, throwing a schedule, not to mention travel itineraries, into complete disarray but protecting the safety and health of its players.
For those figuring this was the only sensible conclusion, try to remember this is a professional golf tournament, not a ballgame that can be wiped out and rescheduled for the next day. Sponsors have put up the bucks, volunteers recruited, players have mapped out their travel plans and travelled down south, a golf course all set to shut down for the week.
The swine virus scare made all those plans rather moot but in golf a postponement is not as simple as shaking a few hands and saying “See you next week.”
Not being privy to what went on in the meeting between Canadian Tour officials and players in Mexico Tuesday night, one can only assume the players were beginning to get a little uneasy watching the news, reading the papers. Several had pulled out of the event, with more likely to follow, and odds are the players voiced their concerns.
Nothing, certainly not a golf tournament, is worth jeopardizing health and safety of anyone. The easy thing, the convenient thing, would have been to stay in Mexico, play the tournaments inside a bubble if need be, and head back to Canada in a few weeks. But Janes and the Canadian Tour players didn’t take the easy way out.
They took the right way.
Eight years ago, Lewis Chitengwa, a promising rookie on the Canadian Tour, passed away suddenly in Edmonton as the third round of the Telus Edmonton Open was being played. The Tour, under a different administration at the time, played the final round with heavy hearts in memory of Chitengwa the next day, but more than a few outsiders wondered aloud if staging the final round was appropriate.
A couple of months later, the Canadian Tour took some heat for playing the Bayer Championship in Sarnia, Ont. during the week of the 9/11 attacks. One well-known Canadian scribe even suggested the playing of the tournament was insensitive, given the enormity of what had happened in the U.S. and considering the heavy ratio of American-born players on the tour. The fact that players were stranded in Sarnia due to iron-fisted border security and all flights were grounded didn’t occur to many.
Often, these decisions aren’t easy, the situation not as black-and-white as most believe.
But this one, travel headaches, schedule woes and inconvenience be damned, was pretty clear cut.
Rick Janes and the Canadian Tour got it right.
Math lessons needed in Argentina, swine flu concerns and Buzminski shows what is right with sport
They’re putting something in the Argentina water that is helping breed some of the best players on the planet.
Now if they could only learn to add…
One would think 41 years after the largest brain cramp in Argentine golf history – whenRoberto De Vicenzo signed for a wrong score and ended up costing himself a shot at a green jacket – his countrymen would be a little more gun shy than most and make sure the darn number on the card is right before scrawling his name and leaving the scoring tent.
Apparently not.
Andres Romero, who was defending his title at the Zurich Classic, followed in De Vicenzo’s footsteps Friday and while there was not nearly as much on the line, Romero got himself disqualified for, yep, signing a wrong card.
In all fairness, it was a DQ in name only, seeing how Romero wasn’t going to be around on the weekend to defend his crown anyway as his 5-over total was nowhere near the cutline.
But it will still go in the books as a disqualifications and not a missed cut.
Dan Halldorson used to tell his young protégés on the Canadian Tour that golfers really have to worry about two things: making it to the tee on time and ensuring all the numbers on the card are right before you sign it at day’s end.
Something, with apologies to Angel Cabrera, they haven’t seemed to, um, master in Argentina just yet.
***
If you haven’t heard of the swine flu virus out of Mexico, you need to pay a little more attention to the news.
You can bet the LPGA and Canadian Tours are keeping a wary eye on what is happening down south these days.
The LPGA just finished up the Corona Championship in Morelia and the ladies are jetting back to the U.S. today but the Canadian Tour will spend another three weeks in Mexico as part of their 2009 swing.
The Tour will be within 500 km of Mexico City this week as they get set for the San Luis Potosi Open but that is as close as they will get to the big city.
Rick Janes are Co. have put together an appealing schedule south of the border, but one has to wonder if players will start getting edgy and pulling out of tournaments to head back home.
***
Best golf story of the week, bar none, comes from the Duramed FUTURES Tour, where Angela Buzminski won her fifth career crown Sunday at the Historic Brownsville Open.
Turns out Buzminski made a promise to her ailing friend and fellow Canadian pro Heather Wilbur, who lost an 11-month battle with leukemia back in 2003, giving her word that her next victory, whenever it came, would be dedicated to Wilbur.
It took a little longer than expected, but Buzminski kept her word – and likely shed a few tears in the process.
In this me-first era where far too many athletes think of only themselves, players like Buzminski remind us what is right about sport. There are more than a few who could learn a lesson or two from Buzminski, and others like her.
It is all in the way you say it
One afternoon late last summer, as Woodington Lake was in the process of bringing me to my knees and I was struggling to jump off the bogey train, I delivered my best shot of the day.
Standing on a tee deck late in the day – really, the hole numbers became a blur after my fourth or fifth three-putt – one of my playing partners looked out over the sprawling fairway to search out a target when he asked “What are we aiming for here?”
I said the first thing that came to my mind.
“Double bogey.”
The boys in the group doubled over in laughter, so I was feeling pretty good about things seeing how I had, up to that point, tacked on about an hour to their day. The problem was, I was only half-joking and, as it turned out, the double-bogey was nothing more than misguided optimism.
I’ve always tried to be one of those guys that didn’t take the game too seriously and try to avoid the club-smashing temper tantrums. Using basic math skills, I figured if I threw a hissy fit on a club every time I hit a bad shot, there’d be nothing left in the bag by, oh, about the fifth tee.
There was no way I was ever going to make it as a professional golfer, so why not use my wit to cover up my shortcomings. Well, what I consider wit, anyway.
Some are much better at it than me. Case in point, twelve of the best one-liners of all time:
12. “If a lot of people gripped a knife and fork the way they do a golf club, they’d starve to death.” –Sam Snead
11. “They call it golf because all of the other four-letter words were taken.” – Raymond Floyd
10. “If you’re caught on a golf course during a storm and are afraid of lightning, hold up a 1-iron. Not even God can hit a 1-iron.” – Lee Trevino
9. “The first time I played the Masters, I was so nervous I drank a bottle of rum before I teed off. I shot the happiest 83 of my life.” Chi Chi Rodriguez
8. “It took me seventeen years to get 3,000 hits. I did it in one afternoon on the golf course.” – Hank Aaron
7. “A ‘gimme’ can best be defined as an agreement between two golfers, neither of whom can putt very well.” – Author Unknown
6. “Yeah, after each of my downhill putts.” – Homero Blancas, asked if he had any uphill putts
5. “The golf swing is like sex. You can’t be thinking about the mechanics of the act while you are performing.” – Dave Hill
4. “You can make a lot of money in this game. Just ask my ex-wives. Both of them are so rich that neither of their husbands work.” ~Lee Trevino
3. “Fifty years ago, 100 white men chasing one black man across a field was called the Ku Klux Klan. Today it’s called the PGA Tour.” – Author uncertain, attributed to Alex Hay
2. “I have a tip that can take five strokes off anyone’s golf game. It is called an eraser.” -Arnold Palmer
1.”Golf is a game in which you yell ‘fore’, shoot six and write down five.” -Paul Harvey
Golf in the Olympics now a foregone conclusion
Nothing in life is a sure thing, or so it is said, except death and taxes. You can add another to that list: Olympic golf.
With the International Olympic Committee to decide on which sports to introduce – or, in golf’s case, re-introduce – to the Games this October, none other than Tiger Woods has at the urging of the International Golf Federation taken it upon himself to write to the IOC urging golf to get the green light.
Yeah, that’s fair, huh? Not the best news for the other sports hoping to get the nod. Top that, karate and roller sports.
And Tiger is not alone – others hopping aboard the Olympic bandwagon include Mike Weir, Sergio Garcia, Padraig Harrington and Vijay Singh.
Gee, the clout Tiger probably holds in the IOC boardroom pretty much eliminates any drama, doesn’t it? With Woods helping with the sales pitch, it’s pretty well a foregone conclusion. Golf will be an Olympic sport seven years from now with the best professionals in the world chasing gold, silver and bronze.
And, really, that’s too bad. It’s just another twist of the knife for amateur sport, which at one time was at the core of the Olympic movement.
Yeah, I know, golf would hardly be upsetting the apple cart. There’s the Dream Team in basketball, NHL stars gunning for Olympic gold and the world’s best playing for medals in Olympic tennis. I get it.
And granted, the potential for PGA and European Tour stars to slug it out for gold certainly does sound intriguing enough, provided it is match play format. Sure, there is the risk of Tiger getting knocked out early – and TV ratings going with him – but what if Tiger, or Sergio, or Phil, or whoever, leads by six going into the final day? Rather anti-climatic, no?
Conventional thinking suggests golf, given the global popularity of the sport, deserves an Olympic return, a welcome reprieve for those who have to stomach two weeks of archery, equestrian, fencing and synchronized swimming every four years.
The issue of course – and one I am against across the board – is whether or not professionals really belong in the Olympics. Call me an old-school guy, but I still believe amateurs should have their stage in front of the world. That stage is the Olympic Games.
Professionals have four majors, WGC events, the Presidents Cup and the Ryder Cup for bragging rights. Leave the Olympics to those who pay their own freight for their one shot at glory.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – if golf was to be accepted as an Olympic sport for the first time since 1904, contest the World Amateur Championship in Olympic years. Sensible? Yes. Possible? Not a chance.
Amateur golfers in the Olympics? Wishful thinking.
The best professional golfers will play in the Olympics in 2016. Book it.
Tiger’s got the ear of the IOC and when it comes to sales pitches, they don’t come any bigger.
RBC Canadian Open could use a little help from PGA Tour
Scott Simmons, Bill Paul and the rest of the RCGA are sending a pretty loud message as to the promising future of the RBC Canadian Open.
Now if they could only get the PGA Tour to listen.
Just a few years after many were getting set to administer last rites on the Canadian Open, there was more positive news this week when it was announced the 2011 version would return to spectacular Shaughnessy in Vancouver.
Hmmm. St. George’s next year, Shaughnessy in 2011, and maybe, just maybe, Montreal the year after. It’s what is known as spreading the wealth, so to speak.
With a prominent, stable title sponsor – which, in this day and age, is much easier said than done – the RBC Canadian Open should no longer be considered a second-tier event. In fact, it never should have been.
Rotating the Open between, say, four or five courses spread out across this vast land not only attracts coast-to-coast interest but should make the PGA Tour heavyweights think twice before crossing it off their schedule. Who wouldn’t want to play a rotation like, oh, I don’t know,
Shaughnessy, Hamilton, St. Charles and Royal Montreal, for instance – four of the best in Canada? Toss in stops in Calgary and the Maritimes, should logistics allow, and you are driving home the Canadian in Canadian Open.
In a perfect world, the PGA Tour would recognize the significance of the Canadian Open and its importance as a national championship. Maybe not as prestigious as the U.S. and British Opens, but pretty darn special nonetheless.
It’s a national crown and the PGA Tour should treat it as such. Don’t stick it in no-man’s land on the heels of the Open Championship. The Canadian Open deserves better. Give players a week off, or stick another event considered middle-of-the-road in that slot. Allow the best players in the world a chance to catch their breath following the Open Championship before gearing up for Canadian bragging rights.
There are three national championships within about five weeks of one another. It should be a no-brainer for the PGA to promote it as such and push players to play for each jewel in the triple crown. The Canadian Open has a stable sponsor on board, seems intent on putting together a world-class rotation of courses and has a rich, storied tradition.
There should be no more excuses.
Hey, if it’s good enough for past champions like Armour, Snead, Nelson and Palmer, it should be good enough for the rest of them.
Scott Simmons and Bill Paul get it.
If only the PGA Tour would follow suit.
Sergio Garcia just can’t seem to grow up
Some things never change for Sergio Garcia. Yet another major comes and goes without a victory speech, and Garcia pulls the spoiled little princess act.
Just when you think Sergio Garcia is actually growing up, the immaturity factor rears its head again and the arrogance meter tops out.
Seems Sergio wasn’t overly-impressed with the way Augusta National presented herself and had no problem letting everybody know it after Sunday’s final round.
“I don’t like it, to tell you the truth,” he whined. “I don’t think it’s fair. It’s too tricky. Even when it’s dry you still get mud balls in the middle of the fairway. It’s too much of a guessing game.
“They can do whatever they want. It’s not my problem. I just come here and play and then go home. That’s about it.”
Boo hoo.
Hey Sergio, suck it up, buttercup. If you want something to whine about, come 9-to-5 it with the rest of us ham ‘n eggers. In this day and age, trust me, that’s tricky.
The act is growing thin.
There were some special moments at Augusta Sunday afternoon. Phil and Tiger going toe to toe, almost defying the odds to storm back and win it all. Shingo Katayama winning over the crowd, just happy to be there. The class of Kenny Perry, the persistence of Chad Campbell, the graciousness of Angel Cabrera.
And the typical arrogance of Sergio. Surprise, surprise.
Dry those eyes, Sergio. It’s Augusta National. It’s supposed to be a test, not lie down for a 22 or 23-under winning score. It’s part and parcel of what makes The Masters so special.
Well, for some anyway.
Most consider Sergio the best player to never win a major. To others, he’s a spoiled brat who believes too much of his own press. Truth is, he’s probably a lot of both. It’s too bad. Garcia, almost 30 but going on 12, is a heck of a golfer.
Nothing that a mute button can’t fix.
Here’s a novel thought. Don’t like it, don’t play. Or play better golf. Thirty-seven guys finished ahead of Garcia at Augusta, probably because they didn’t shoot 75-74 on the weekend when things really start to matter.
Maybe next April, Garcia should make other plans and skip the most storied tournament on this side of the pond. Evidently it’s too hard.
Honest, The Masters will survive. No matter what he thinks.
John Daly deserves one last chance to get this right
Down and almost out, John Daly spent last week in Augusta, trying to keep his head above water long enough to give himself one last chance.
A final chance to save a career, perhaps more. When it comes to Daly, no one knows what is around the corner.
With the world’s best players just a few hundred yards away competing in the most prestigious golf tournament on the planet, John Daly – a two-time major champion himself – set up shop on the wrong side of the Augusta National gates, hawking t-shirts and anything else his still-adoring followers would scoop up.
Daly has made more than $9 million in PGA Tour earnings alone over the course of his career. Never mind endorsements, appearance fees and playing overseas. A report in the New York Post says Daly lost close to $8 million last year thanks to sponsors no longer picking up the tab.
So there he was, back at Augusta, looking to sell anything from his motor home in the hope of avoiding bankruptcy. Looking for work, close to broke with not a single sponsor in the fold.
One of the most popular athletes on the planet not all that long ago, reduced to essentially asking for a handout.
Now after apparently knocking 40 pounds off his 280-pound frame, Daly is back hoping for one more chance, one that will undoubtedly be his last.
With his six-month suspension from the PGA Tour about to expire, Daly needs to forget the sideshow and focus on doing what made him a cult hero in golf. There is still time to get this right.
There was a time when Daly was one of us, which is why so many were drawn to him. The chain-smokin’, Coke-and-beer-guzzlin’common man with a killer golf swing. Those times, right now, seem so long ago.
By his own admission, he’s lost between $50 million and $60 million in the casinos. Gone through four marriages. A couple of trips to rehab. And reduced to taking sponsors exemptions overseas.
John Daly, always the longshot, always the guy you couldn’t root against, can still pound a golf ball with the best of them, but that is not enough anymore. He admits he no longer has to prove anything to his followers. Now he’s got to prove it to himself.
If he can do that, the support will follow. The fans are still there. They’re just in waiting.
Through thick and thin, people will always have a soft spot for the underdog. But the time has come to leave the circus behind for good. Daly is out of mulligans in that regard.
“There’s nothing I can do about yesterday,” Daly told the Post. “And tomorrow hasn’t happened.”
For Daly’s sake, let’s hope tomorrow brings one last chance.
Kenny Perry had his chance but will he get another?
For Kenny Perry, this one is going to sting for a while. No concession speech, no rah-rah pat on the back can sugarcoat what happened in the shadows of Augusta late Sunday afternoon.
Think of the guy that hits the lottery and then gets struck by lightning on his way to cash the ticket. That’s probably how Perry feels this morning.
But, if nothing else, Perry proved that, yes, guys his age can indeed win majors, contrary to his reasoning last summer when he passed on a berth in the Open Championship and U.S. Open qualifying to stick it out on the PGA Tour in the hopes of rubber-stamping a spot on the U.S. Ryder Cup team.
As far as green jacket heartaches go, what unfolded in the waning moments Sunday will rank right up there with anything we’ve seen before on Magnolia Lane. With Norman’s collapse in ’96, with Scott Hoch’s monumental meltdown seven years prior to that, with Roberto De Vicenzo signing for a wrong score 41 years ago.
This one was as shocking as any of them.
There were two holes to go. Perry, who had just four bogeys over the previous 70 holes, needed one par. In the playoff, he needed a couple more rotations of a ball on the first extra hole to become the oldest major champion ever. It was that close.
Forget how impressive he was all week. Now Perry will be remembered as just another one of those guys who snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, allowed someone else to steal his green jacket. Harsh, but that is the story history will tell.
Several players openly questioned Perry when he opted out of those two majors last summer to continue his quest for Kentucky. Unfair perhaps, seeing how Perry skipped qualifying for the U.S. Open, and not the tournament itself, and passed on The Open Championship to honor his commitment to sponsors of the U.S. Bank Championship.
To Perry, it was no big deal and he openly suggested it was unrealistic for guys his age to win majors, which isn’t exactly looking prophetic this morning. The brass ring was in his pocket at Augusta. He just dropped it.
Kenny Perry could have won a major last summer, no doubt. He should have won another yesterday.
But Perry is probably hurting enough this morning. No sense second guessing.
If nothing else, he proved himself wrong. Guys his age can win majors.
Time will tell if he gets another chance.
Gary Player gives us one last Masters memory
Don’t look for Gary Player’s name on the leaderboard in this his final Masters. You won’t find it.
These days, shooting his age would be considered a minor miracle for the 73-year-old Player and he gave it one heck of a go with a 78 Thursday as they started to play for keeps at Augusta.
But Player gave us something to remember this week and in the process helped us appreciate why the Masters is just so darn special.
Sure, as I mentioned yesterday, getting through those front gates at Augusta could lead to living off wieners and beans for a few weeks, but once you’re there, those memories, those ghosts sure give you a sense of what has happened there in years past. Some would say that alone is worth the price of admission.
Player gave us another of those moments for the memory banks in his Masters swan song.
To those who don’t follow the game and can’t understand why seven days in April would seem so sentimental to so many, you should have been watching Wednesday afternoon.
As they so often do, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer – about as close as you will get to royalty in golf – teamed up to thrill the masses in the annual Par-3 Tournament at Augusta National.
If getting a chance to see the trio together once again wasn’t enough, Player, who announced this week this will be his final time playing The Masters, sent the crowd into a frenzy by acing the ninth. Kinda, sorta. Problem is, it was actually his third shot, moments after putting one in the drink.
“Nice par,” quipped the Golden Bear, probably not the only time Nicklaus has said those words to Player over the decades.
But it was the reaction, from the crowd, from Nicklaus and Palmer, from Player himself, which made it a memorable moment.
Player has had bigger moments in his career, to be sure, but that look on his face took us back a couple of decades when golf, or sports in general, was so much simpler. For those of us who weren’t lucky enough to see Player or Nicklaus or Arnie in their prime, it was the next best thing.
This little shindig known as the Par-3 Tournament is one of the staples of Masters week, where players get their kids to caddie, where legends walk together, where, for one day at least, there isn’t the pressure generally felt when players stroll the fairways during Masters week.
It’s part of what makes this tournament so unique, so special. And Gary Player gave us another reminder with a shot they won’t even count.
It goes without saying Player won’t contend in his final Masters. He doesn’t have to.
He gave us one heck of a memory late Wednesday afternoon.
Fairways Web Editor Marty Henwood spent more than six years as the Media Relations Director with the Canadian Tour and has been involved in sports journalism for more than a decade, including stints in newspaper, radio, new media and media relations. He will offer his unique take on the world of golf, with nothing and no one off limits.