Home rulings let couch potatoes be part of the action too
It’s just Week Three of the TV golf season and already we’ve had two home rulings. Maybe this is the way of the future. Should the Rules Officials be worried about their jobs?
I doubt it. In fact I think you’ll see both the PGA Tour and the European Tour move quickly to make modifications that eliminate these retroactive disqualifications.
Obviously too late for Camilo Villegas or Padraig Harrington. Or countless other players whose cheating ways were picked up by the viewing public.
The first instance of a player getting caught that I can recall goes back twenty-five years to Craig Stadler, who found his ball under a pine tree and had to make his next shot on his knees. Stadler placed a towel on the ground, knelt on it and hit the shot.
There’s no way that Stadler was trying to gain an advantage by building a stance with his towel – he just didn’t want to get his pants dirty, which is pretty ironic since most of the time Stads looked like an unmade bed.
However, some rules vigilante sitting at home noticed Stadler’s egregious breach. Between handfuls of party mix and well into his second glass of merlot, the couch potato managed to call the PGA Tour office and report the cheatin’ bastard. It was after the round, and more importantly, after Stadler had signed his scorecard, so he was disqualified for signing for an incorrect score, having not assessed himself the requisite two stroke penalty for building a stance.
There was no suggestion that Stadler intentionally cheated, he just had an uncharacteristic bout of poofiness. But apparently that’s grounds for disqualification on the PGA Tour.
The home ruling is distressful in several ways. Only players in contention are likely to get caught with the home ruling because they’re the only ones who get seen on TV. (Unless you’re Tiger Woods but that’s a different topic). So it’s not a level playing field since some players are more scrutinized than others.
In almost every case the player is unaware that he did anything wrong, so he signs his scorecard in the sincere belief that it is correct. The home ruling usually occurs well afterward, so under the current rules, the only option is disqualification. I think this is where the fastest remedy can occur. Both Tours should institute a rule that permits a retroactive penalty instead of disqualification if it can be shown that there was no intent to cheat.
The final issue I have with these home rulings is they almost always involve niggling obscure rules. OK, let’s take a moment for the purists to gather themselves here. Yes, I know – a rule is a rule is a rule. But let’s get real here. The Rules of Golf didn’t get handed down from Mount Olympus, so we’re not heading into uncharted waters here when we suggest some re-thinking of the rules might be warranted.
For those who saw the video from Abu Dhabi last week, Padraig Harrington’s ball did move – about half a dimple. He thought it oscillated, which is OK. A viewer said it moved, which is not. Did it make a difference to Harrington’s position on the green? Obviously not. But, a rule is a rule, so Padraig had an extra few days off to enjoy the sights and sounds of the United Arab Emirates instead of contending for the title after his opening round 65.
In the NFL, even the on-field officials admit they could probably call holding on every play. Can you imagine if they allowed viewers to phone in infractions? They’d need a call centre in India to handle the flood. The same goes for hooking and holding in hockey or travelling in basketball.
Golf is unique among sports for a lot of reasons. Players are responsible for policing themselves. With relatively few exceptions, they make the right call almost all the time, even when it is to their detriment. Until the Stadler incident, professional golfers had the matter pretty much under control. However, constantly improving technology has made it possible for golf to come under greater scrutiny from home based viewers and this will only increase as the technology gets even better. Home rulings are bound to increase too.
I expect announcements maybe as early as this week from the PGA Tour and the European Tour to amend the disqualification provision for players caught retroactively. It’s likely that a 2-stroke penalty will be added to the player’s score but no disqualification.
Of course that doesn’t address the ongoing issue of home rulings. It’s a very strange situation. In a sport that has always insisted it didn’t need referees or umpires, TV has spawned a whole new game where home viewers are part of the action too.
No tournament is really over until the last viewer has signed off.
STRIKE THREE!
STRIKE THREE! You’re outta there!
That should be it for the FedEx Cup. Tim Finchem and the PGA Tour have had three attempts to get it right and none of them have resonated with real golf fans or the players either for that matter. So let’s bid it farewell.
Yesterday’s version of a tournament within a tournament was just further proof that the PGA Tour’s convoluted process of choosing an annual champion doesn’t work. As a golf tournament it had plenty of excitement – Phil Mickelson putting on a charge to win, hapless Kenny Perry fading in a big event once again and Tiger Woods struggling to get something going. Anytime you have the two biggest names in golf monopolizing the airtime it’s got to be good for viewers, ratings and sponsors.
Oh and by the way, in case you missed it, since Tiger finished second all alone and Steve Stricker finished in sixth, Tiger accumulates 8,327.889 points to Stricker’s 5,975.002 points thereby maintaining his slim lead over Stricker in the FedEx Cup points race while Mickelson’s 9,114 ½ points for winning isn’t quite enough to catch Tiger but is enough to move from fourteenth spot past Stricker into second place. And if you find that a bit confusing let me refer you to this projected points list once again. Aaaaaagh!
So the bottom line is that Phil wins but finishes second and Tiger finishes second but wins.
I’ve racked my brain to think of a parallel situation in another sport where someone can win the season championship without winning the final game. I can’t think of one. Maybe one exists but I doubt it, because all other sports recognize the ridiculousness of that scenario.
The PGA Tour has pushed an assortment of playoff formats at us over the past three years thanks to the deep pockets of Federal Express. But even the FedEx folks must be tired of the negative feedback that their sponsored program generates. Pardon the pun, but this package is undeliverable.
Nobody will remember or care how many FedEx Cups Tiger or anybody else won after their career is over. Quick, how many Money Titles did Jack Nicklaus win? I suspect relatively few people can answer that but most every golf fan knows Jack won 18 professional majors. (Correct answer is 8).
The truth is that golf, like tennis, is measured by major championships. No amount of fiddling by Emperor Finchem is going to change that.
So assuming that my voice, like so many others, falls on deaf ears down in Ponte Vedra, and 2010 sees yet another version of the FedEx Cup, let’s see how we can make it better.
First, let’s eliminate FedEx Cup points. Players play for money, not points. And the whole points system is confusing. Currently the Tour uses the Top 125 on the Money List to determine who gets a card for the next year so why not use the same number for the playoffs.
Second, to be a true playoff, winners have to advance and losers go home. This scares the Tour because some of the biggest stars (Tiger) might not be around at the finish. Too bad. At least it passes the smell test with most fans, something that the FedEx Cup points re-setting formula never did.
Third, scale the playoffs back to three events and complete the whole thing by the week after Labour Day. If you’re so afraid of going head-to-head with the NFL, then don’t.
In my version of the playoffs, the field gets cut from 125 to 70 after the first event, down to 30 after the second and then gets cut twice more to 16 and 8 after Round 2 and Round 3 of the final. On Sunday, eight guys start even and play for ten million.
Now that’s pressure!
The Tiger Factor
It’s Sunday morning with one round left in the CA Championship at Doral. Tiger Woods is 9 strokes back of the leaders and – this may be going way out on a limb – HE WON”T WIN!
Of course, this minor hiccup won’t deter the folks at NBC. Today’s telecast will invariably carry the full complement of Tiger references, Tiger sightings, Tiger trivia. Someone, probably Mark Rolfing, will predict that if Tiger can get off to a quick start today, he’s right back in it.
“If Tiger can eagle his first five or six holes he can put some pressure on the leaders. A 57 this afternoon gets him right back in this. That will put him at 22 under and after that, anything can happen.”
Rolfing won’t be the only idiot. Miller, Hicks, Maltbie and Koch will put the Over/Under on Tiger references well into six figures while the producers deliver the usual melange of Tiger glory, past and present. There will be the required replay of how Tiger won the US Open last spring on one leg with a fever of 108, just days after donating most of his organs to Famine Relief.
Then of course, we will watch for the umteenth time all those “Great Moments in Sport” featuring, you know who, each with their own catch phrase now seared into our memory banks. “Better than most!” “One for the Ages!” “Oh my!”
Pardon me while I gag.
Over at the Tiger Channel, Rich Lerner and Kelly Tilghman are huddled with writers trying to find a new script to top “the greatest comeback in sports history.” If you didn’t see it, try to catch the replay. After eight months away from tournament play, Tiger returns to beat the 64th ranked player in the world. Can you imagine? Number 64!
Perspective here people. Let’s get some perspective.
Did they ever hear of a guy named Ben Hogan? Had a brief layoff after a minor altercation with a Greyhound bus. Nearly died. Recovered to win the US Open. No? Never heard of it? Oh you thought it was a movie script?
I thought comebacks were when a team came from 25 points down in the fourth quarter to win the Super Bowl or when a player came back after years in oblivion and actually won something. Tiger didn’t win the tournament. He came back to play after an injury. Period!
The people who call the shots at the TV networks seem to think we can’t get enough of Tiger. In fact many of them feel that if Tiger’s not playing, then there’s no golf to report.
I recently read a blog about the impact of Tiger on tournaments and telecasts. Here’s what author Robert Bruce had to say, “Simply put: When Tiger ain’t playing, ain’t nobody watchin’. In the past eight months, golf was off the radar — even while major notables like Mickelson, Kim, Singh, Villegas and Garcia played every week. During that same period, ratings sucked.
Don’t get me wrong. When Tiger’s in contention, it’s very exciting. But when he’s out of contention or worse, when he’s not even playing, there are 155 other stories in the field that week, some of them pretty compelling. For the long term good of viewership, the suits better develop some other story lines.
After all, Tiger won’t play forever. He’s slated to run unopposed for the US Presidency in 2024 when he’s 48 and after that anything can happen. In the meantime, barring a hangnail or bunions, I guess Tiger can keep golf on TV in pretty decent shape for at least 15 more years. By then Tiger’s son Charlie Axel, (don’t get me started) will turn 16 and probably be even better than his Dad. “Oh my!”
Professional Golf Needs More Match Play
For years now we’ve all been lead to believe that match play isn’t a viable format for TV. The past two weeks should go a long way to dispelling that theory.
Both the PGA Tour and the people who run professional golf telecasts have acknowledged the excitement of match play, especially if you get two highly ranked marquee players in the final. But then they turn around and warn that a final pairing of Kevin Sutherland and Chad Campbell (my choice for two players barely registering a pulse) would cause ratings to drop lower than the Toledo Ladies 5-pin Finals.
Last week, the Ryder Cup delivered the most compelling golf all year outside the four majors. The Sunday matches were tense and exciting with most of them very close. Granted the Ryder Cup format brings patriotism into play and that’s hard to top on a weekly basis but the head to head singles matches delivered some personality clashes and raw emotion that is missing on the regular PGA Tour.
This Sunday, the final of the Tour Championship pitted four of the top ranked players in the world in a tight race to the finish. Apart from Ben Curtis sinking a couple of birdie putts and Kenny Perry making a bomb from another area code, the entire telecast was devoted to Sergio Garcia, Camilo Villegas, Anthony Kim and Phil Mickelson. With all four players in the last two groups it had a match play feeling to it.
When you think about most golf telecasts, the focus is always on the leading players and the rest of the field is pretty much ignored. If all the coverage is on the top few players anyway, then why not create additional drama by getting some personality involved. The best way to do that is with a series of matches where players go at it, mano a mano.
The Tour is headed for some serious uncertainty on the financial front in the next few years. Banks, investment companies and auto manufacturers have been the mainstay of sponsorship for many years and each of those sectors is in trouble today. The ability to attract new sponsors may mean remaking the product. Not every field can have Tiger so the ones that don’t might look to alternative formats to lure sponsors and viewers.
One aspect of marketing that is ignored by the Tour is the relationships between the players themselves. There are real rivalries between some players and they could be exploited in a match play environment if the TV announcers had the guts to talk about them. It seems to work for NASCAR, WWE, Ultimate Fighting and tennis. Unfortunately the PGA Tour wants to deliver the saccharine version to America so the rivalries and feuds are never discussed. Wouldn’t it be more interesting if pro golf had a bad boy?
I’m not suggesting that the PGA Tour needs to follow the route of professional wrestling but they might learn something from those sports that are able to exploit personality as part of their marketing. “These guys are good” is OK but a “Vijay Singh / Phil Mickelson Smackdown” sounds like a lot more fun.
Blogging, lynchgate and spineless media companies
Before we begin, a brief comment on my extended hiatus from blogdom. It’s been about six months since I last blogged and a few of you even noticed. After trying to write something relevant on a daily basis for several months I got frustrated. The writing was forced, as were my daily efforts to find new and interesting topics. I finally realized that I don’t need to share my opinion on every subject - I can yell at the radio for that and I certainly don’t need to burden readers with more clutter. As we move forward, if I feel like I have a different perspective on an issue or the explosive urge to unburden myself I’ll do it, otherwise there are ample voices on blogs, talk radio or in print to cover all sides of any given argument. Having said that, I suspect blogging will become a weekly ritual and we’ll see how that goes.
******
Kelly Tilghman is back on the air today after her two week suspension. Frankly I don’t get the idea of suspending a golf announcer. It’s not like she hammered Tiger Woods from behind in the corner or used a flying elbow to knock Nick Faldo into tomorrow (although that’s not a bad idea). What’s the purpose of suspending her other than to let the Golf Channel prove to all the politically correct types out there that they are right on top of this egregious gaffe. Presumably a suspension is supposed to make Tilghman more careful about her choice of words in the future. It’s more likely that it will make her even stiffer than she already is. If the Golf Channel had any balls they would have let the matter rest after issuing an apology instead of caving in to Al Sharpton and the rest of the crazies. Or they should have canned her sorry ass immediately if they felt that strongly about it. Next time she says something inappropriate will they up the suspension to four weeks for being a repeat offender?
As a white Canadian I obviously have a different perspective on lynching than African Americans. Personally I don’t find the word to be the least bit offensive but then my experience with the word comes from growing up watching westerns where lynching involved a vigilante group heading out of town on their horses to catch some bad dude and string him up from the nearest tree. Before that happened the good guys usually caught the real bad guy and the sheepish vigilantes had to turn the dude loose. To me there is nothing racial about the word and I’m pretty sure Tilghman didn’t imagine there was either.
In the media storm around this whole issue, most of you will be aware that Golf Week Magazine ran a cover with a noose on it. I got a copy of the offending issue at the PGA Show before it was pulled in favour of next week’s vanilla offering. Senior Editor Dave Seanor took the fall on this one as the Magazine hustled him off the property for good. I can appreciate the attempt to put out a provocative cover to attract readers. However, the statement issued with Seanor’s firing implied that the Magazine in no way condoned his actions and suggested that he used poor judgement. Are we to believe that Seanor snuck into the printing plant in the dark of night and put a noose on the cover all by himself. In a large publication many, many people are involved in the creative and decision-making process before anything goes to print. With a controversial cover like this I strongly suspect that the parent company, the publisher and probably some legal types all weighed in with a chance to kill the idea. Instead, they threw Seanor under the bus in the ensuing firestorm. Another great example of a media giant that fell under Bob Barker’s knife.
Fore Inventors Only
Not sure how many of you caught that new reality series called “Fore Inventors Only” on the Golf Channel last night (Wednesday 8 PM) but it is hilarious. The premise is that so-called ordinary people bring their golf inventions on the show and a panel of 3 judges votes on whether the invention goes to the next level which is field testing. (Similar format to American Idol).
After watching an hour of this, I can attest that few of the inventors are ordinary people. Apart from their nervousness some of them really thought their inventions would work. For instance:
One guy brought out a tee that had a notch in it about half way down the shaft. He explained that if the notch was parallel to the swing line, the tee wouldn’t break. However if the notch was perpendicular to the swing line, then the tee would break. Billy Harmon, one of the judges asked what the point of that was, to which the inventor explained that once the tee broke, you would then have a short tee for iron shots. When Harmon stated that he just used a broken tee found on the ground, the inventor tried to sell him on the idea that at the clubs he played at there were no broken tees, thereby forcing him to buy both short & long ones. (Notched tee did not get the required 2 votes to go to the next level.)
Among some of the other inventions:
A carry bag with built in seat. (Approved)
A travel cover with front wheels as well as back wheels. (Approved)
An e-caddie electronic device that gives you a morale boost after bad shots. (Rejected)
A golf ball launcher for handicapped people. (Rejected)
A tunnel visor similar to what race horses wear to keep out distracting sights. (Rejected)
A golf cap with the crown cut out so golfers can still wear a hat but have it function like a visor. (Rejected)
Super sensitive impact tape that can even record the impression of a 2 foot putt. Apparently the inventor had already invested over a million dollars on this one. (Approved)
While the inventions and inventors are pretty strange, it’s the interaction of the panel – Harmon, Stina Sternberg of Golf Digest for Women and former PGA tour player Fulton Allem – that really makes the show quite funny. Usually Harmon and Allem are in agreement while Stina comes across as the female version of American Idol’s Simon Cowell – a women with serious attitude and not a lot of tolerance for the inventors or her fellow panelists.
The next show is Tuesday July 17 at 10 PM but you can see video of the last show on Golf Channel’s website at www.thegolfchannel.com It’s worth having a look.
What’s the over/under on Johnnie’s 63?
The USGA must have had some sort of media day at Oakmont recently as the golf news and websites are all full of the impending US Open. While no one is forgetting Jack’s tournament at Muirfield Village this week, writers are tripping over themselves to get in a mention about the Open. I randomly skimmed a dozen articles and 9 of the 12 mentioned Johnnie Miller’s famous 63 on that Sunday back in 1973. With the NBC crew doing the US Open telecast in a little over 2 weeks, Dan Hicks, Roger Maltby et al won’t miss an opportunity to suck up to Johnnie by reminding viewers of the feat. Even old squishy face himself will drag his tired old act out one more time.
Miller is the king of self promotion, often in a Jim Brown sort of way. Many old time football fans revere Brown as the greatest running back ever but when he was doing colour commentary on TV after his retirement he had trouble acknowledging that any other player was his equal or, God forbid, better. When his co-anchors would heap praise on another player, Brown would grudgingly give him his due but you could almost hear him say, “but he’s not as good as me.” Miller has the same attitude.
I’m thinking of a little contest to give away some sort of golf prize to a reader picking the correct over/under number on how many times Miller’s 63 will be mentioned during the US Open telecast. I’ll figure out the details over the next two weeks and post them here.
“Huh Rog?”
“Right Johnnie!”
Stones in the Bunkers?
If you were watching the telecast of The Players yesterday you no doubt caught the exchange between Nick Faldo and Johnny Miller. It’s unusual that they would be in the booth together since Faldo works for CBS and Miller for NBC but because Faldo also doubles on Golf Channel for coverage of the first two rounds, there they were on Friday barely able to hold back the insults. Miller tried to convince viewers that they were buddies since they both went into the Hall of Fame together (Miller is the Master of self promotional plugs) but it was very uncomfortable to watch. Miller has verbal diarrhea and is also a “have-to-have-the-last-word kind of guy. The best exchange was when one player’s bunker shot came out with no spin and Miller implied it was because there were stones in the bunker that prevented the grooves from imparting spin. Faldo appeared dumbfounded by the suggestion but managed to restrain himself. Later in the telecast he did ask Roger Maltbie if there were stones in the bunkers to which Maltbie said no. Great piece of reality TV. Faldo’s a witty newcomer and Miller’s an old blowhard whose time is up. I’m sure Finchem would have been pleased to learn he had stones in his bunkers after he spent a gazillion bucks rebuilding the course.
Peter Mumford is the Editor and Publisher of Fairways Magazine in Toronto. Fairways is intended for avid golfers and this blog site is an extension of that same philosophy - we don't dumb it down for the uninformed!