Wasn’t the Skins Game fun at one point in the not-too-distant past?
Watching the Skins Game this weekend, I couldn’t fight the feeling that something’s changed about the Skins Game. Maybe I’m completely off or remembering something else, but this year’s Skins Game – highlighted by four golfers who barely spoke, playing for a significant chunk of change in a somewhat charity event – didn’t have the feel of Skins Games of old.
Or, maybe I’m just getting old…
With Phil shooting a 59 in Hawaii, is it time to revisit the older courses, or are they destined to end up as quaint, low-scoring footnotes in golf history?
Last week at the Grand Slam of Golf, Phil Mickelson shot a thirteen-under 59 in Hawaii. This adds his name to the list of the Under 60 club: Duval, Chip Beck, Al Geiberger, Annika Sorenstam and Phil Mickelson. (As an aside, Shigeki Maruyama shot a 58 in the US Open qualifying rounds in 2000, but neither his 58 nor Phil’s 59 will count in the ‘official’ record books since neither event was an ‘official’ PGA event. Whatever.)
Regardless of whether Phil’s 59 will count, it’s an amazing achievement. But, is it the start of a trend where the young players and longer technologies combine to shatter old records and leave old courses hurting from an onslaught of double-digit sub-par rounds?
In other words, is the ‘perfect’ 18-under round of 54 that far off?
Golf is an awesome game.
If golf did not exist, and I were to cut a 4¼” hole in the ground, give you some metal sticks and a small ball, put you 400 yards from that hole, and tell you that a decent “player” of this new sport would expect to get the ball in the hole in about four strokes, you’d surely laugh.
Sometimes, I struggle to fathom “golf.” I play to less than a 9 handicap. I break 80 fairly regularly on a course sloped at 135 or so. In fact, I am disappointed if I don’t break 80. 80 strokes to bash a little ball with metal sticks over four miles, holing it 18 times along the way.
A long home run might travel 450 feet. That’s a 7-iron for many people, and good players expect to hit their “home run” 7-irons to within three to four bleacher seats of the hole. I stand in awe sometimes, not of my own ability, but of mankind’s. Of a beginner’s ability to get their first par, of Tom Kite’s ability to get up and down from nearly anywhere inside of 100 yards, and from Daly’s or Woods’ or Kuehne’s ability to blast a ball. 300+ yards. On the fly.
With a metal stick.
Gary Player a cheat? What’s the world coming to?
Gary Player cheated, so they say:
Recent conversation on RSG about Gary Player. What started off as a fairly innocent question – “Just how did he win all those majors?” – became colored instantly when someone dropped the hammer with two words.
“He cheated.”
Gary Player, a common cheat? I didn’t want to believe it. This same Gary Player…
…is a firm believer in doing things the right way. He recalls a time when he could have gotten away with a minor rules infraction. Instead, he reported his innocent error and was disqualified from a tournament he easily could have won. “If I had not turned myself in, I would have had to live the rest of my life with the knowledge that I had cheated… Much better is the feeling I have today that even though I left a trophy and check behind… I still have my dignity and honor.”
What’s going on here?
Blatant sexism? Whatever you call it, The Golf Channel and other reporters need to get it right.
The Golf Channel, and much of the golf journalism world, has been going ga ga over Vijay Singh’s season. He had a great year – we grant you this – but headlines like “Sorenstam Having a Vijay-Like Year” are despicable. The headline should read “Singh having a Sorenstam-Like Year.”
“Sorenstam has won nine times around the world this year, same as Vijay Singh.” Annika Sorenstam has won at least five events each of the past five years. Neither Tiger Woods nor Vijay Singh can say that, nor could they ever.
Blatant sexism? Whatever you call it, I don’t understand what’s so difficult about understanding that some players are better in their respective arenas than others, and Annika stands above all men in that regard.
Annika Sorenstam has endorsement deals, but does anyone else on the LPGA Tour? Why the disparity?
The Sun-Sentinel says that “Annika Sorenstam distorts the picture in women’s golf.” Quality of play? Tenacity? Training? Ability to close out opponents with a 54-hole lead? No – ad dollars.
Replete in Callaway visors and sleeves, Mercedez-Benz/Cutter & Buck shirt fronts, Kraft collars, ADT bags, and Oakley sunglasses, Sorenstam “…looks like a NASCAR driver,” LPGA Commissioner Ty Votaw declares proudly.
The article then mentions Hall-of-Famer Beth Daniel, logo-free. Daniel, 48, has won 33 events and is 10th on the money list this year. “I buy… hats myself,” Daniel said. “I buy… shirts.”
Charlie Sifford was one of ten African-Americans on the PGA Tour in the 1970s. Today there is only one: Tiger Woods.
Charlie Sifford, the first African-American to play regularly on the PGA Tour, is now the only African-American in the World Golf Hall of Fame. Things are looking up for black and African-American players, right? Vijay Singh, Tiger Woods – the top two golfers in the world are black. Right?
Yes and no, according to Ron Sirak at ESPN. Singh and Woods are the only two black players on the PGA Tour, and Woods is the only African-American (Vijay is full Fijian, and even Woods is half Thai).
Sirak wonders why, when during Sifford’s days upwards of ten African-Americans played the tour and today only one does, but concludes quickly:
The dilemma is not one of race as much as it is one of class. Despite all efforts, and until recently those efforts have been dubious at best, golf has become more expensive, more time consuming and less welcoming of new players. It is a closed fraternity and the secret handshake has been denied to most.
Sirak then goes on to point out that The First Tee, founded in 1997, has already reached 395,000 children and created 178 facilities nationwide. Golf outreach programs are involving hundreds of thousands of children. Greens fees have risen, but municipal course rates have actually trailed the inflation rate. Tiger Woods alone has involved more youth in the sport than we saw any group of people doing 30 years ago, including caddie programs – which ESPN cites as the primary reason for the lack of African-Americans on tour today.
Rick George (“I’m Rick George, b**ch!”) and the board of the Champions Tour bullheadedly move forward with their plans to ban carts on the Tour next year.
So says Rick George, president of the Champions Tour. “… to look at everything critically. We looked at [changing] the minimum age. We looked at carts. How do we make this product better?”
When you think Champions Tour, do you still mentally substitute “Seniors Tour”? Do you think of players who’ve started to decline in their physical abilities, but who still both love to compete and are fun to watch as athletes and personalities?
Do you think to yourself, “Those old bums should be walking, not loafing about in their golf carts!”
Evidently, the Champions Tour board seems to think that’s exactly what we think, and they’re out to change our minds.
In what could best be called a counter-intuitive decision, Champions Tour president Rick George is moving forward with the decision to ban golf carts during Champions Tour events. He’s nice enough to ‘accomodate’ golfers like Casey Martin who must ride in a cart due to physical disability.
It’d be so much easier to appreciate his season as a historic achievement if he weren’t such a prick.
All those nice things I wrote about Vijay Singh not more than three days ago? I take them all back.
After posting a less-than-stellar score of two-over par through Saturday at the Tour Championship, Vijay Singh had this to say when asked about his performance:
“You’ve got to be in contention to be 100 percent into it,” he said, pausing outside the historic clubhouse. “I’m just not too into it.”
Last I checked, the people who keep Vijay’s “salary” paid – the sponsors and the fans who attend these events he’s so lucky to play – spend so much money on tickets to see their favorite players put 100 percent of their game on the line every round.
Since when do you have to be in contention to put in 100 percent?
“It just didn’t happen for me,” he said. “I couldn’t get any momentum. Anytime I tried to get something going, I went backward.”
Poor baby. Most of the time, when something doesn’t go right for me the first time, I just give up too, Vijay. I think that’s exactly the attitude I want my kids emulating, too.
