Tour Edge has built some big buzz around their high-end Exotics line. The company’s new driver lives up to the hype.
The Bag Drop is live on the scene in Orlando, gearing up for the 2006 PGA Merchandise Show & Convention. The Show gets started on Thursday, but there are already happenings to report upon.
Tuesday brought a big media outing for Tour Edge, a company trying to make the leap from value brand to premium player. I had a chance to try their new Exotics driver and a cool new putter, and lots more. Also, I heard some interesting scuttlebutt from my fellow media types.
Tiger Woods is about the show us what 10 years on the tour has taught him as we enter the 2006 Buick Invitational.
The 2006 Buick Invitational starts today with defending champion, Tiger Woods making his 2006 season debut and hopefully with as good a start as last year. Tiger won the event after taking the lead from Tom Lehman in the third round in a weather delayed event. Tiger has finished in the top ten in all eight of his Buick Invitational starts, including seven top five finishes and three wins. He will face Phil Mickelson, who will be the only other player in the top five to make the event. Phil knows the course and event well winning back to back in 2000 and 2001 and coming off a T-5 finish at last week’s Bob Hope he looks to be in good form to defend his West Coast Swing title. That’s all great but what we really want to see is a repeat duel between Tiger and Phil like the 2005 Ford Championship at Doral.
This year players will face the North and South course at Torrey Pines Golf Course where the South Course recently underwent a 3.2 million dollar renovation and lengthened to 7,607 yards in anticipation to host the 2008 U.S. Open.
What else will players face in this year’s Buick Invitational?
The top two female golfers in the world are in the news this week. Annika consents to build a family-friendly golf course in South Africa and Paula agrees to play a Precept golf ball.
There were two reasons why Annika Sorenstam played golf at the World Cup this week. Not only was she intent upon winning her first tournament of the new year but she also had an announcement of grand proportions.
Sorenstam wasn’t the only LPGA golfer to create a buzz in South Africa although her news was directly related to this small country. The number-two player in the world created headlines of her own.
Paula Creamer is now playing golf with a Precept ball. Her intent? “Everything I do, I do with the goal in mind of becoming the number-one ranked women’s player in the world.”
The problem is that nobody told this to Annika as she soundly trounced Team USA.
Continue reading “Sorenstam and Creamer Create Buzz in South Africa”
Upper Deck has tarnished my boyhood passion with its grotesque inflation rate of the all American hobby.
I don’t know if I am particularly pissed or suddenly sullen. It has come to my attention as of late that there is a matter that needs to be addressed in a public forum. This issue has been festering itself in the sports card business for years now and it’s about time we do something about it, or at least try.
It appears that there are fewer companies with the cash and/or balls to manufacture golf trading cards. In fact, as of right now, there is only one such company, Upper Deck. Upper Deck is a private company whose headquarters is located in Carlsbad, California and has been printing sports cards since 1988 and issuing golf trading cards since 2001, when they saw their next latest and greatest serving of bread and butter vis-à-vis Tiger Woods.
The PGA Merchandise Show may not be what it once was, but it is still the greatest (golf) show on earth.
The Bag Drop is on the way to the Super Bowl of the golf industry. The PGA Merchandise Show opens this week, running from Jan. 26-29 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Fla. In addition to the thousands of equipment, apparel, accessory and gee-gaw manufacturers showing their wares to club professionals and golf shop buyers, us media types will also be kicking the tires of the gear you’ll be buying this year.
This week’s links are sure to jump-start your week.
Hope you all enjoyed the celebrity-infused golf this weekend. I sure did. There’s something about watching celebs play golf that completely entices me. I get sucked into the television and lose hours of my life watching A-C list celebs hack it around the course.
I think I need to see someone about this problem. Now, on to the links.
The Swedish team of Annika Sorenstam and Liselotte Neumann easily take the World Cup from last year’s defending Japanese team. Team USA was no threat.
It should not be surprising that the world’s number one female golfer in the world grabbed the World Cup this weekend in Sun City, South Africa. Annika Sorenstam was the driving force behind the Swedish team today as her defining eagle on the 492-yard par-5 set the stage for a singles score of 70 which was the certain reason for her team’s three stroke victory over Team Scotland.
Her partner, Liselotte Neumann scored a 77 and did not contribute today as much as in earlier competition. “It’s nice to have the number one player in the world as your partner,” said Neumann.
The Swedish duo will each receive a check for $110,000 and the glory of having the first unoffical victory of the 2006 season.
What do Michelle Wie, Bubba Watson, Paul Azinger, and David Duval have in common? They’re topics in this week’s podcast.
Michelle Wie bombs out again in Hawaii, and Jeff and Erik show no sympathy. Is Wie a choker? When will Wie missing cuts simply become “same old, same old”? We also discuss the impact of Bubba Watson, Paul Azinger’s soon-to-be interesting 2006 in the commentator’s booth, and getting your kids involved in the game of golf. Plus, David Duval’s comback in this episode of “Golf Talk Podcast.”
You can subscribe to the RSS feed for our podcasts here or download Episode 010 as an AAC file (see note below colophon). For those who want to subscribe to us in iTunes, click here.
For this week’s Show Notes – links to articles we discuss in the show and additional information – just read on.
While Bart Bryant is a new face to many fans he’s been banging around the golf landscape for many years. He’s earned exemption and a regular PGA job by sticking with his game for nearly twenty years.
The ability to stick with something when you don’t see results is a noble quality. For every player who’s won an event on the PGA Tour or risen to join the ranks of the very best in the world there are hundreds who never make it. Whether its finances, nerves, or lack of talent or perseverance, not everyone succeeds on Tour. For every glory story there are many who find other ways of making a living, other ways of enjoying the game of golf.
Of course there are those who stick with golf through lean years, years in which success is only a fleeting thought. Bart Bryant, like a lot of guys on Tour, had to stick with the game through some very lean years before finding more security in the game he loves so much.
