Tiger Woods to play Frys.com, Fall Series PGA tourney in South Bay

Tiger Woods has announced, via his website TigerWoods.com, that he will play the Frys.com Open, the only PGA tour stop in the South Bay. Oct. 6-9, at CordeValle Golf Club in San Martin, California. It will be Woods’ first appearance at the tournament.

“Obviously, we are very excited Tiger has decided to play in our event,” said Kathy Kolder, Frys.com Open Tournament Chairperson and Executive Vice President of Fry’s Electronics. “The boost in marquee value he brings will not only help the tournament and increase the tournament’s economic impact in San Jose, but it will also help us raise more funds for participating charities.”

The Frys.com Open was first played in 2007 at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, AZ. The event moved to CordeValle, a Robert Trent Jones-designed course which opened in 1999, in 2010.

The 2010 event was won by Rocco Mediate, a journeyman pro who became a household name and fan favorite after battling Woods in the 2008 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines Golf Course in San Diego. Mediate lost to Woods in the first hole of a sudden-death playoff. 

Woods has come under criticism from some members of the sports media for not playing more competitive events since recovering from knee and Achilles tendon injuries sustained at The Masters in April 2011, and the scrutiny of his competitive schedule has intensified since U.S. President’s Cup team captain Freddy Couples announced last week that he was awarding one of his discretionary spots on the United States squad to Woods.

Once the most dominant player in all of professional golf, Woods has performed spottily since events in his personal life derailed his playing schedule beginning in November 2009. Coupled with recurring injuries and a much-talked-about revamp of his golf swing, events of the last almost 2 years have seen Woods slide from the World #1 position to 38th in the Official World Golf Rankings.

A Tiger Comes Roarin’ Back

No, not that Tiger… the tiger who is roaring on the PGA Tour in recent weeks is David Toms, the soft-spoken LSU alumnus and dedicated Tiger sports fan who provided PGA fans with thrills, heartbreak, and triumph at the 2011 editions of The Player’s Championship and the Colonial Invitational.

Toms thrilled golf fans with a strong performance during the first two days of The Player’s Championship at TPC Sawgrass, braving heat, humidity, weather delays and that crazy 17th hole and posting a 69 and a 67 to head into the weekend with a 1-stroke lead over Nick Watney, 2 strokes over Steve Stricker and World # 3 Luke Donald – with a pack of other strong contenders 3 and 4 strokes back.

At the end of the 3rd round, which concluded Sunday morning due to a 4 ½-hour weather delay on Saturday when torrential rains pounded the area, Toms and Korea’s K.J. Choi were tied at 2nd, 1 stroke back of 2010 U.S. Open Champion Graeme McDowell, whose rounds of 67, 69, & 69 had fueled a steady climb to the top of the leaderboard. Seven players were sitting twp strokes back of Toms and Choi at the start of the fourth round, and eventual 3rd-place finisher Paul Goydos was sitting three back along with the long-hitting young Spaniard Alvaro Quiros.

At this point the media pundits, both print and broadcast, were starting to talk about David Toms. At 44, Toms hadn’t had a win in the past six years, though he had been playing pretty consistent golf in recent years, with two top-five finishes in 2010, seven top-10s (including a pair of runner-up finishes) in 2009, six top-25s in 2008, and an impressive 4-0-1 record in the 2007 U.S. President’s Cup… well, you get the idea. Like many Tour pros Toms has suffered his share of injuries and medical issues over the years, including wrist surgery in 2003, back problems and a heart-related scare in 2005 when we was rushed off the course to a hospital during the first round of the 84 Lumber Classic. Doctors diagnosed a non-life-threatening condition called supraventricular tachycardia which was cured through surgery the following November. All these facts were recounted by the on-screen commentators as the weekend progressed, increasing the viewers’ appreciation of what David has accomplished, and overcome, throughout his career.

The final round of play saw Toms and Choi duking it out toe-to-toe. Toms was 2 up at the end of the first nine with a 2-under 34, thanks to three birdies and a bogey against Choi’s birdie/bogey even-par 36, then Choi battled back on the inward nine, pulling even after Toms hit an indecisive hybrid shot from the right rough that fell short of the 16th green, splashing down in the hazard a yard or two short of being safe. Choi birdied the (in)famous 17th hole to go 1 up, but Toms made the shot of the round – and probably the tournament  – when he put his second shot on the green, hole high, from 180 yards out, out of a sand-filled divot, and poured in the 17-foot putt for a birdie. Choi made par after his approach shot came up just short of the green on the right – and it was back to 17 for a playoff.

Just as it was for Paul Goydos four years ago, when he and Sergio Garcia went to 17 for the first hole of a playoff at the Players Championship, the crazy little island green par-3 was David Toms’ downfall – though not in as spectacular a fashion. While Goydos went out with a splash when his tee ball was knocked down by an untimely gust of wind, Toms went out with – let’s face it – a whimper. His birdie putt whispered past the hole, narrowly missing going in, then he just made a bad stab at the 3 ½-foot par putt and missed it – a $684,000 mistake. Choi walked right through that open door and hoisted the crystal, becoming the first Asian-born champion of The Players Championship, and the fourth consecutive non-American winner.

The second-place finish had to be a bittersweet result for David Toms. After six years without an appearance in the winner’s circle, he was that close to hoisting a trophy (and banking a big check… ) again. In a post-round interview he allowed as how he had been thinking about the next shot, the (potential) tee shot on 18, instead of the short putt on 17. That  moment’s inattention was all it took to whiff the putt.

After six years of close-but-no-cigar Top 10 and Top 5 finishes, Toms can be excused for getting a teensy bit ahead of himself at this point, but the afternoon’s outcome should serve as a lesson to all of us, recreational, amateur, and professional alike, that golf is an exacting game, and inattention – even for an eye-blink – will bite you.

That is a lesson that David’s 13-year-old son, Carter, can take away from his father’s heart-breaking loss that afternoon. Carter, who plays on his school golf team, and is described by Toms as “a real golf nut” has been credited by his father with restoring his enthusiasm for the game. If Carter, who was visibly upset at his father’s loss, had only known what was coming the next week in Fort Worth, he might have felt better about that 3 ½-foot putt his dad missed on 17 at TPC Sawgrass…

………………………

The second-place finish at The Players Championship vaulted David Toms so high up the World Golf Rankings, so fast – up 29 places, from 75 to 46, in one week – that it probably gave him a nosebleed. The sudden ascent into the Top 50 didn’t affect him, evidently, any more than that missed putt had – because he came out of the gates the next week at the Crowne Plaza Invitational at Colonial Country Club like a man on a mission, posting a blistering pair of 62’s to once again lead going into the weekend.

The previous Friday, at The Players’ Championship, David Toms’ lead going into the weekend was only one stroke. Nick Watney was the guy sitting back there with a 135 to David’s 134, and there were a gaggle of guys you can’t afford to ignore – Luke Donald, Steve Stricker, Graeme McDowell, etc. – two or three strokes back. One week later, on Friday night at the Colonial, Toms was sleeping on a 7-stroke lead, and I imagine his head rested more lightly on the pillow that evening than it had the Friday before. Unfortunately, Saturday’s round at Colonial had Toms-watchers thinking that maybe he relaxed a bit too much, as he ballooned to a 74 and slid back to 2nd place, one stroke behind the consistent Charlie Wi, who shot a cool, collected 66 through the swirling, blustery North Texas winds for a 3-day total of 197 (64-67-66).

The increase in the wind on Saturday threw more than one player off their game; the scoring average was up by a hair over 2 strokes, and the high and low scores – especially the high score – were higher than the Thursday and Friday rounds (81/65, vs 75/62 and 74/62). With the temperature and the humidity both hovering in the 90s, ever-colorful on-course commentator David Feherty likened the winds to “…the breeze blowing off my morning bowl of oatmeal”.

Saturday night must have been a long one for Toms; he had blown up by 12 strokes compared to the two days before and turned a seven-stroke lead into a 1-stroke deficit – and the wind would probably still be blowing on Sunday. It was gut-check time for the 44-year-old former LSU Tiger, and he must have engaged in some heavy contemplation that evening. It wouldn’t help his state of mind that he had a long morning ahead of him on Sunday waiting for his tee time; time and again I have heard Tour pros talk about the difficulty in staying loose, both mentally and physically, while they waited for their turn up on the tee in the last group, especially when they are in the position of having to protect a slim lead, or in Toms’ case, regain a lead that they had squandered the day before.

Things got worse before they got better for David Toms on that hot, humid, windy Sunday afternoon at Colonial Country Club. He dropped one, then two shots to Charlie Wi. At the par-3 fourth hole he gained a stroke on Wi, with a par to Wi’s bogey, then gave it back at the fifth, with a par to Wi’s birdie. Toms got his second wind, or found his “GO” gear at the sixth hole, though – he got another stroke back on Wi, then another, and held on to close out the front nine back where he started, one stroke back.

Toms got his back nine off to a good start with a solid par against Wi’s bogey 5, closing the gap to even; and then, at the 635-yard, par-5 eleventh hole, those Texas winds came around and bellied David Toms’ sails. Two good swings left him in the fairway with 83 yards to the flag. The flag was tucked right, with a bunker between the hole and Toms’ position in the fairway, but neither the flag’s position, nor the intervening bunker impressed themselves on Toms. He lofted a beautiful wedge shot dead on line with the flag, dropping it a foot or two short and mere inches right of the flagstick; with a couple of bounding hops it carried past the hole, then thought better of things, bit, and spun back, right into the hole for an eagle 3 – and the lead.

With the wind at his back and the bit in his teeth (metaphorically-speaking), after the timely hole-out at the 11th hole, David Toms took command of the tournament. He built his lead up to two, then three strokes, going par-par-birdie-par through the 15th hole to his opponent’s bogey-par-par-par. Charlie Wi surged back with a birdie at 16 to cut his deficit by one stroke, then Toms gave a shot back when he bogeyed the par-4 17th hole. The Korean-born Wi’s surge was too little–too late, though, as the man from Shreveport, Louisiana matched pars with Charlie on the 18th hole to step into the winner’s circle for the first time since the 2006 Sony Open in Hawaii.

In a PGA season that was being lauded as the “Year of the Youngsters”, David Toms is the third 40-something to win on the Tour this year. In two weeks he has banked just over $2.1M in prize money, shot from 75th to 28th in the World Golf Rankings, and showed that hanging in there, staying cool, and bringing experience to bear when the chips are down is the key to success on the PGA Tour.

While I wouldn’t say that there are any “bad” guys on the PGA Tour, David Toms is certainly one of the “good” guys. A die-hard LSU Tiger supporter and a passionate Louisianan whose David Toms Foundation has raised millions to help underprivileged, abused and abandoned children, in addition to bringing much-needed aid to the victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, David Toms has shown the golf world that a sleeping tiger may come back, roaring, when least expected. Will o'the Glen congratulates David on a thrilling, inspiring couple of weeks on Tour, and I wish him continued success.

17 at TPC Sawgrass — Does It Belong In A Playoff?

In his Golf World Monday column this week, Dave Shedloski takes exception to the idea of beginning a playoff at the Players Championship at the 17th hole, and at least one Golf World reader, as well as Editor's Blog editor Bob Carney, think he’s all wet: http://www.golfdigest.com/magazine/blogs/golf-editors/2011/05/17th-a-bad-playoff-hole.html

I have to go with Shedloski on this one. The 17th at TPC Sawgrass is dramatic, exciting, and a crowd-pleaser – in regulation play – but it has no place in a playoff scenario. The idea of a “sudden-death” playoff is hole-by-hole – it’s like shifting from stroke play to match play, in effect – not shot by shot. The 17th at TPC Sawgrass is too fickle, too capricious, to be the starting hole in a playoff. An unexpected gust of wind or a bad bounce can literally drown a player’s chance of victory at this one hole.

Look at the playoff at the Wells Fargo Championship the weekend before the Players: on the 18th hole, a challenging par-4, Jonathan Byrd hit his tee ball into a bunker to the right of the fairway, but he had a shot at getting onto the green from there; when his shot from the bunker went left and landed on the slope across the creek from the green, his chances for a victory were slimmer, but still viable, given a really good chip onto the green. We all know how that came out, but the point is that he had a shot at it. At the 17th at TPC Sawgrass a little push right or left, or a short shot, means you’re going home – no chance of recovery.

A win-or-lose decision after 72 holes of regulation play shouldn’t come down to one shot at a tricked-up carnival ride of a hole like the 17th at Sawgrass.

Lee Westwood, World #1—Or Not?

Climbing to #1 On The Backs Of The Lowly

You know, Lee Westwood is a hell of a golfer, but his two-tournament expedition to Asia last month—where his two victories included one over a roster replete with no-names who wouldn’t cut it on the mini-tours here in the States—was cherry-picking, pure and simple. That win, in the Indonesian Masters, punted him past Martin Kaymer and back up to the #1 spot in the World Golf Rankings.

While Westwood was taking candy from babies on the Asian tour, the then-World #1 Martin Kaymer was taking a week off, and World #3, Luke Donald—who stood to vault into the #1 spot with a victory that week (and came that close!)—was teeing it up with the big boys Stateside at the Heritage Classic. Lee Westwood has whined to the media, on more than one occasion, that he really, really does deserve the #1 ranking, no matter what people say—but when he attains it by dusting off a field composed mostly of  no-name players who inhabit the lower strata of professional golf, he deserves the criticism. Like the college football establishment said to LaVell Edwards, coach of the national Champion BYU Cougars in 1984, when he complained that he coached a team to a national championship and still couldn’t get any respect: “Play a tougher schedule!” During Week 17 of the season Westwood was playing against a field which contained only five players (besides himself) who were inside the inside the Top 250 in the world, and only 1 inside the top 100; Donald was up against a roster which included 7 of the Top 50, 21 of the Top 100, and 50 of the Top 250 players in the world. I ask you—who is playing a tougher schedule?

And not only is Westwood cherry-picking in a glorified mini-tour event in the Third World while pocketing a $500,000 appearance fee (2/3 the value of the purse for the event!), his appearance there elevated the world ranking points available for this backwater event, artificially skewing the OWGR points upward for a bunch of no-name Asian Tour players who ended up riding in his wake (talk about a rising tide lifting all boats!). John Feinstein wrote in a Golf Channel.com article posted 4-26-2011:

“…the fact that the number of world rankings points available in an event goes up based on the number of highly-ranked players entered skews the entire process.

Westwood’s presence in Indonesia almost doubled the amount of rankings points available to him and to the rest of the field. It allowed him to beat a field that may [emphasis mine…] have been as good as a Nationwide Tour field and regain the No. 1 ranking. He got a bonus when he found himself playing against a bunch of guys who were [more] likely to ask for his autograph off the golf course [than] beat him on the golf course.”*

This isn’t always the case, but I agree 100% with Feinstein on that one. Call me cynical, but I’d bet a round of golf (twilight rate, at my local muni…) that his schedule is very carefully planned by his “management team” to maximize potential OWGR point gains—and then there are always those 6-digit appearance fees… 

No Major, No #1

There has also been a lot of talk about the fact that the current World #1 has never won a major. While there is much that is good in the manner in which the OWGR are calculated, taking into account as they do the players’ records over the previous two years, and awarding more points for majors and WGC events, where the fields are stronger than at regular Tour events, it seems to me that a no-major #1 just isn’t right. There should be a “No major championship, no # 1” factor in the calculations, or at the very least a significant increase in the weighting factor for having won a major in the previous two years. Throw something like that into the calcs (and eliminate the skewing effect Feinstein wrote of) and Martin Kaymer—with the 2010 PGA championship title on his record—is the guy, and Westwood can go back to contemplating “Best Player Without A Major” status from the #2 spot, or lower, on the WGR podium.

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* (While he got his facts right in those statements, Feinstein goes on to suggest that sports journalists be given input into the rankings—which only goes to show that the athletes aren’t the only ones scrabbling for some glory in the situation. I can’t say that I am at all comfortable with that concept. If his proposal were to be put into effect it would introduce subjectivity and bias into a process which should be based on quantifiable results. Nice try, John–go stamp out another book…

BTW—Am I the only one who notices a resemblance between Jon Feinstein and the Irv Klar character in Dan Jenkins’ novels The Money-Whipped, Steer-Job, Three-Jack Give-Up Artist and Slim and None? Just askin’…)

Book Review: “Mr. Hogan, The Man I Knew” ☺☺☺☺☺

Book reviews will be a frequent topic in my posts, and the first one I want to share my views on is the latest—and probably the best—book on Ben Hogan to hit the shelves in the “Sports” section of your local bookstore in many a year – Mr. Hogan, The Man I Knew: An LPGA Player Looks Back on an Amazing Friendship and Lessons She Learned from Golf's Greatest Legend, a heart-warming book of personal recollections by LPGA pro Kris Tschetter. 

Books on Ben Hogan are something of a minor industry in the world of golf publishing, which is pretty amazing considering the fact that he played his last competitive round of golf in 1967, and for the last 17 years of his competitive career played no more than 4 or 5 tournaments per year. The two most famous books associated with Ben Hogan are, of course, the two he wrote himself—his instructional books Power Golf (1948) and Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf (1957). 

Five Lessons is probably the best-known, and most widely read, golf instructional book ever published. Thousands of golfers have learned the game from this book, among them PGA Tour and Champions Tour player Larry Nelson, whose 10 PGA Tour victories and 19 Champions Tour victories include the 1981 & 1987 PGA Championships and the 1983  U.S. Open Championship—Nelson didn’t take up golf until he was in his early twenties; his only instruction in the game was from Five Lessons.

Besides Hogan’s two instructional books, the Hogan book list includes a couple of full biographies (one by Curt Sampson – which I highly recommend; and another by Kurt Dodson – which is a bit sycophantic and fawning for my taste), a fine collection of photographs of Hogan by Jules Alexander, a few novels which include fictionalized appearances by Mr. Hogan, and one or two other volumes of personal recollections of people who knew Mr. Hogan in one capacity or another over the years. Mostly, though, the books with Ben Hogan’s name attached are various permutations of “how-to” instruction works purporting to reveal Hogan’s legendary “secret to the perfect swing”.

Ms. Tschetter’s book is a work apart from that throng of self-serving “how-to” books, and even the other “I knew Ben Hogan”-type books. Mr. Hogan, The Man I Knew… is the story of the unlikely friendship which sprang up between a girl just starting her college golf career and a retired icon of the game, between a man who had grown somewhat shy of a world that seemed always to want something from him, and a young woman who asked for nothing but friendship.

In contrast to the generally-accepted image of Ben Hogan as a man who was reserved and unapproachable, Ms. Tschetter’s recollections reveal a man who, though somewhat shy and reticent, was capable of genuine warmth and affection.  Mr. Hogan, The Man I Knew… shows the human side of an iconic figure of 20th-Century American sports, revealing the warmth and charm of a man who has for decades been admired and celebrated for his accomplishments while being portrayed as a cold, distant “golfing machine” who was indifferent to fans and fellow competitors alike.

Kris Tschetter came to know Ben Hogan when she was a college golfer practicing at Shady Oaks Golf Club in Forth Worth, Texas. Ben Hogan was, at that time, an elderly past champion, retired from both competitive golf and a successful career in business, who enjoyed his quiet daily routine at the golf club. A legend in the world of golf, over the years Mr Hogan had grown leery of those who wanted to get close to him for their own gain, and could present a forbidding public façade, but he revealed a warm and generous personality to Ms. Tschetter, who, as a college freshman on Texas Christian University’s national-caliber women’s golf team, was interested in getting to know the man behind “Hogan’s Secret”, and not the secret itself.

The key to Ms. Tschetter’s friendship with Ben Hogan—and the spark that makes this book different from the other books of personal recollections of Mr. Hogan—is the totally unselfish, non-self-seeking nature of her association with Mr. Hogan. Early in the book she relates how she and her older brother were told, when they became junior members at Shady Oaks, not to bother Mr. Hogan: don’t approach him, don’t talk to him. It went against her nature and her upbringing, however, to ignore a person whom she saw every day at the golf club, so she greeted him as she would any other older gentleman at the club. The real connection came into being when Mr. Hogan began to see her out on the club’s “Little Nine” 9-hole course nearly every day, practicing a variety of golf shots, working on her game the way he had when he was a competitive golfer – “digging it out of the dirt” – and realized that this young woman was a golfer cast in his mold.

Ms. Tschetter passed many casual afternoons of golf practice with Mr. Hogan in attendance, friendly sessions during which Mr. Hogan passed along tidbits of golf wisdom which any golfer would have paid a princely sum to be privy to, yet it was the friendship and company she sought, not the priceless wisdom of a master of the sport. Though she certainly benefited from Mr. Hogan’s advice and support during her collegiate and professional golf careers, she never sought to gain from her association from him, hesitating to even mention to other golfers that she knew him; it is evident from her stories that his friendship and moral support were more important to her than his professional wisdom. 

The anecdotes Ms. Tschetter relates in her book paint a well-rounded portrait of a complex man. From the grandfatherly figure who mugged for the small children of other club members to the brusque, elder statesman of golf who politely refused a request to watch Nick Faldo hit golf shots on a visit to Shady Oaks (because the man who brought Faldo to the club that day pretended to a level of familiarity with Mr. Hogan which didn’t exist); from the Ben Hogan who reputedly turned down a request for swing advice from South African golf great Gary Player because Player used Dunlop clubs and not Hogan’s brand, to the generous Ben Hogan who passed a genial hour or so with the pilots of the Air Force Thunderbird Flight demonstration team at Shady Oaks after a member brought them to the club for a round of golf (Hogan was an Army Air Force veteran, having served in the USAAF during World War II)—through Ms. Tschetter’s anecdotes you will learn about a side of the great Ben Hogan that you will not have heard about elsewhere.

Though Ms. Tschetter saw Mr. Hogan less frequently after she moved away from Fort Worth (initially based out of Fort Worth after she graduated from college and began her career on the LPGA Tour, Kris later moved to Virginia with her husband, golf coach Kirk Lucas), she remained in touch with him to the end of his life – like a granddaughter with a grandfather who was removed in physical distance but still close in her heart – sharing her life and achievements with him through phone calls and personal visits, when possible.

This wonderful little book (the reader will wish it was longer once they have turned the last page, I guarantee) paints a more complete picture of one of the most talked about, yet enigmatic, figures not only in the game of golf, but in all of 20th-century sport, than popular legend has supplied over the years. Forget the mostly apocryphal tales that have circulated for years about the cold, forbidding “Hawk” and the “Wee Ice Man” – read Kris Tschetter’s book and learn about the affectionate, humorous side of the man who defined excellence in the game of golf in the middle of the 20th Century.

Don’t have a bookstore with a good “Sports” section nearby? Get it here:  http://www.kristschetter.com/buynow.html; Kris will even autograph it for you!

Flogton – “Alternative Golf” or “Golf for Dummies”?

“Flogton” is an “alternative form of golf”  dreamt up by a consortium of Silicon Valley wunderkinds calling themselves the Alternative Golf Association. The group includes Scott McNealy, one of the co-founders of the former computer software/hardware giant Sun Microsystems and a 3-handicap who should know better – he apparently doesn’t have enough to do now that Sun has been bought out by Oracle Corporation, leaving him with a lot of time, and money, on his hands.

Flogton (“not golf” spelled backwards – clever, eh?) is touted as “… the golf equivalent for (sic) what snowboarding has been to skiing – an exciting option that can energize those frustrated with the old sport and attract an entirely new audience, yet settle into a value-added existence with the existing participants and venues.” (That little mission statement scores 3 on my Buzzword Bingo score card – what did you get?) What “Flogton” actually is, is a dumbed-down perversion of the game of golf.

The stated mission of the Alternative Golf Association is to “… return innovation and invention to the sport and encourage a style of play that stresses performance over conformance.” The AGA decries USGA rules as “conformance”, but their idea of “performance” includes:

• One mulligan per hole, any shot – play the best ball

[Old joke: An American went to Scotland and played a round of golf with a Scotsman he had just met. After a bad tee shot, the American played a mulligan which was an extremely good shot. He then asked the Scot, “What do you call a mulligan in Scotland?” The Scot replied, “We call it hitting three.”]

• Six-foot bump, any hole – move your ball up to six feet (no closer to the hole) to get out of trouble, like out of a bunker
• No OB, any shot – drop in the rough at the edge of the fairway, one-shot penalty
• 3rd-putt gimmes – 3rd putt is good, no more than three putts on a hole

But wait, it gets worse:

• Lubricate – Apply lubricant (Vaseline, etc.) or low-friction face material to driver face; reduces spin, correcting hook or slice
• Tee up – tee the ball up anywhere but on the green
• Change balls – change ball during play of a hole to use optimum ball for required shot
• Hazard bump – remove ball from any bunker or red-or yellow-staked hazard area, replace no closer to hole
• Gimme putts – any putt “inside the leather” is good

Their other ideas include such fun-loving innovations as requiring one throw per hole and tripling the diameter of the cup (un-be-liev-able!). 

Remember that Kenny Mayne commercial for the Top-Fite Gamer – their low-cost, 3-piece golf ball? The one where he’s asking this guy questions out on the course to see if he’s a “gamer” (and therefore worthy of playing the “Gamer” golf ball)?

Kenny: “Winter rules?”

Golfer: “Cheating.”

Kenny: “Gimmes?”

Golfer: “Make the putt!”

Kenny starts to hand the guy a Gamer, then hesitates and asks one last question:

Kenny: “Mulligans?”

[Golfer gives Kenny a dirty look]

Kenny hands the Golfer a Gamer, then turns to look off-camera and says, “I think we’ve got our guy!”

That’s what golf is about – learning the game, playing it correctly. Golf is about aspiring to be better – to keeping it in the fairway, hitting greens, and sinking putts – not “do-overs”, picking up out of trouble, or greasing the club face to compensate for a lack of skill. 

Remember that line from Tin Cup? “A tuning fork goes off in your heart and your (vitals) – such a pure feeling is the well-struck golf shot.” That’s what golf is about.

Remember the feeling the first time you pured a mid-iron shot close to the flag on a par-3 and rolled the putt in for a two? That’s what golf is about. 

Remember the first time you got on in regulation, from the fairway, on a long par four or a par five (of any length) and two-putted for a regulation par? That’s what golf is about.

The satisfaction of golf comes from improving your skills and lowering your score – not from lowering the standards of the game. Where is the satisfaction in picking up out of trouble, dropping in a clean lie, and putting close to the hole – good enough? Slamming a high fade 240 yards around the corner on a dogleg right, 498-yard par 5, nailing a 225-yard 3-wood to the edge of an elevated green – on in two! – what sensation beats that? Even if you don’t make the 65-foot eagle putt, or the birdie putt (OK, I admit it… but I made the par putt – it was my first five on a par 5), would it feel as good, as right, if you got there by hitting a hot ball off the tee with a greased club face and teeing it up in the fairway? I don’t think so. 

Just learning? Play easier courses, play nine-hole courses, play pitch-and-putts. One of my favorite local municipal courses, Santa Teresa Golf Club in San José, CA, includes a par-27, nine-hole short course that is interesting and challenging – hole lengths ranging from 76 yards to 132 yards, water in play on five of the nine holes, and greens with slope and undulations that allow a range of hole positions from easy to difficult. It’s a great short game workout, but no walkover – and it’s walk-on play, $11 weekdays, $15 weekends. Hit from the grass in the tee boxes (as I do) and it’s like playing nine holes with every shot but the drive, and the second shot on par 5s – a great way to strengthen your short game. (My favorite hole on Shortie? The 124-yard 4th – elevated tee box, big eucalyptus tree intruding on the left, water right, water long, bunkers left and right front. Hold a high soft draw into the left-to-right breeze that’s threatening to drown your tee ball, over that big overhanging branch of the eucalyptus, right to the center of the green  – that’s a moment you’ll remember like your first kiss…)

Slicing or hooking the ball? Use the harder-cover balls for high-handicappers – they spin less so they hook or slice less, and they’re less expensive too, so less traumatic to lose; take a lesson; improve your skills. There is a word for employing antics like picking up, teeing up, or tricking out your clubs with plastic faces or Vaseline to reduce spin from mis-hits – cheating.

Watching the PGA and LPGA pros on TV can give a beginning golfer an inferiority complex, but if you play within your game you will have fun; try to duplicate theirs and you will just get frustrated. Leave the driver in the bag for the narrower fairways and hit the more accurate 3-wood, or a hybrid, off the tee (even the pros do that sometimes – it’s just that their standards for “wide” and “narrow” differ from ours), lay up instead of trying to cut the corner, use a bump-and-run up on to the green instead of the more difficult chip shot. As you get better, well, go ahead and pull the “Big Dog” and bomb it sometimes – when you pull it off it will make your day.

Besides their teardown of the playing standards of the game, the AGA folks decry the stuffy, country-club atmosphere of private golf courses (though some of the AGA’s founders are rich enough to own their own country clubs, let alone join one) with “no jeans” rules and other genteel restrictions. Courses like that are the exception anymore – and folks who belong to clubs like that want to be there anyway. There are plenty of easier-going semi-private or public courses where dress codes are relaxed – or non-existent – and muni hackers by the thousands are having fun playing them every weekend all across the country, so that’s no argument.

The AGA also whine about the complex rules of golf, but the basics are simple: Play the course as you find it, and the ball as it lies – and when in doubt, take relief and add a stroke to your score. The more complex stuff is for tournament play (or when there’s money on the game) so don’t sweat it.

The AGA folks pitch their concept to golfers on the basis of having more fun on the golf course, and to course owners on the basis of attracting more players to their courses. They contend that the difficulty of the game is driving players away, and while there have been a lot of high-end courses built by ego-stroking course architects in the last couple of decades which aspire to grandeur and eye-watering levels of difficulty, there are still plenty of playable, affordable courses in this country. You have to be pretty far out in the sticks not to be within range of a decent muni course in the USA: find one, take a lesson, hit the range, play the course as you find it and within the rules – and have fun. Play with friends, or make friends when you play, and as you play more and your game improves your level of satisfaction and feelings of achievement will increase too – and you will laugh at the AGA clowns and their “goofy golf” concept.

And if golf finally defeats you, and you just can’t hack it, what then? Well, you can always take up tennis…

Hogan’s Alley — Riviera Country Club and Bantam Ben

Ben Hogan was a man who left his mark on the history of golf in many ways and in many places. He “…brought the monster to its knees…” at the 1953 U.S. Open at Oakland Hills, where the penal rough and narrow fairways had Tour pros shaking their heads. That same year, in his one and only appearance in the Open Championship (known on this side of the Atlantic as the British Open), he tamed the windy linksland of Carnoustie, where the 6th hole is known as Hogan’s Alley for his bold play to a narrow stretch of the fairway between OB left and a pair of dangerous bunkers. This approach to the challenge of the daunting 567-yard hole allowed him to reach the green in two – driver, wood – while other competitors, including then-defending Open Champion, South African Bobby Locke, were hitting something like 4-iron, 3-iron and a pitch to get on in three.

Of all the golf courses, all over the world, which were analyzed, dissected and overcome by the genius of Ben Hogan over the years, the Riviera Country Club golf course is second only to Colonial Golf Club in his home town of Fort Worth, Texas in being deserving of the moniker “Hogan’s Alley”. Back-to-back victories in the Los Angeles Open in 1947 & 1948, plus the 1948 U.S. Open victory, put Hogan’s stamp on this George C. Thomas masterpiece for all time. From the elevated tee at the 503-yard par-five opening hole to the uphill run to the final green overlooked by the massive Spanish-style clubhouse, Riviera is a stern test of shot-making which rewards precision play. Players who bomb it long off the tee but lack accuracy will find their time on this storied course a death march as they scramble to carve recovery shots out of the vicious kikuyu grass rough.

Besides the ball-swallowing kikuyu, Riviera boasts meandering barrancas, stands of leafy eucalyptus trees, and a multitude of well-sited bunkers – many with overhanging edges that make a clean up-and-down a chancy endeavor. The most famous of Riviera’s bunkers is the pot bunker in the middle of the 6th green, a feature which turns an ordinary-enough 166-yard par-three into a strategic conundrum, especially when the flag is situated back-left. Clusters of ghostly pale sycamores, still leafless in midwinter when the PGA Tour comes to Riviera, are featured at the western end of the course, standing guard around the 15th green, all of the short par-three 16th, and the 17th tee. More stage dressing than obstacle, the sycamores cast long, eerie shadows across the fairways and greens in the slanting winter sunlight.

Hogan’s first victory at Riviera, in 1947, came at a point in his Tour career when he was hitting his stride, finding success on the Tour and acclaim in the press. An opening round of 70 started him off in good shape, in second place behind Marvin (Bud) Ward and Toney Penna, but it was the blistering 66 that he stitched on the place in Saturday’s round—tying the course record—that put the rest of the field in his wake. A pair of 1-over 72’s on the weekend were all it took to cinch the win, as he posted a final score of  280 that bested 2nd place finisher Penna by three strokes.

Hogan’s success in the 1947 season had come despite signs that his relentless practice regimen was taking a toll on his body, even at age 34, but as the 1948 season opened he appeared to have put his physical problems behind him. In those days, well before the modern season openers in the Hawaiian Islands, the return to sunny Southern California was a welcome start to a new year’s round of tournament play. In 1948 Riviera once more lay at Hogan’s feet. He played the tournament in four under-par rounds, 68-70-70-67, for a nine-under total score of 275, a record that wasn’t equaled until 1975, when Pat Fitzsimmons again posted a 275, and wasn’t bettered until Hale Irwin’s 272 in 1976. (Lower scores for the tournament had been posted in the interim, but not at Riviera. From 1954 through 1972 the tournament’s venue moved between four other L.A.-area courses.)

The tournament that tied the names Riviera and Hogan together once and for all, though, was the 1948 U.S. Open – only the third time that the national championship was played west of the Mississippi River, after the 1938 Open at Cherry Hills CC in Denver and the 1941 Open at Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, Texas, and the first time on a West Coast course. Despite the USGA’s penchant for toughening up a course in preparation for hosting the U. S. Open – increasing the height of the rough, narrowing and/or skewing the fairways, and rolling and shaving the greens to lightning speed – Riviera’s longtime pro Willie Hunter convinced USGA Executive Secretary Joe Dey that the planned 6-inch rough would be too severe given the course’s wiry kikuyu grass; the rough was cut to three inches – enough to snag a mis-played tee shot, but not overly punitive. The course was considered to be sufficiently challenging as it was to provide a championship test – Bobby Jones himself, after playing to a two-over 73 during a visit in 1931, said, “Fine course – but tell me, where do the members play?”

After his victory at Riviera in January, Hogan predicted in his syndicated newspaper column that the course would play six to eight strokes harder for the USGA Championship in June, but after a couple of practice rounds on the U. S. Open setup, he commented that the course was playing no harder than it had for the Los Angeles Open. He underscored his comments with an opening round 67 (which included a 31 on the front nine). Hogan’s Saturday round was not as scintillating; an afternoon tee time and increasing winds off the ocean (the western end of the course is a scant mile and a quarter from the beach) gave him a bit more trouble. He came in with a one-over 72 – and considered himself lucky to get it. At the end of Saturday play Hogan was one shot behind Sam Snead, who followed his Friday round of 69 with another for a two-day total of 168 – a new 36-hole U.S. Open scoring record.

Sunday’s two-round conclusion put Snead out of the running, however. His U. S. Open curse struck again, and putting woes dropped him down the leaderboard with a morning round of 72 and an afternoon 73, for a final score of 283 – only good enough for 5th place. Sunday at the ’48 Open belonged to Ben Hogan and Jimmy Demaret – a flamboyant dresser and bon vivant who was a good friend of Hogan’s off the course. The pair came into the final day two strokes apart, Demaret’s Saturday round of 70 not making up all the ground he had lost with a Friday round of 71 (against Hogan’s 67). After matching 68s in the morning, Hogan still led Demaret by two at the lunch break. Hogan’s morning round included a dramatic recovery on the par-3 6th hole, where he blasted out of the peculiar little pot bunker in the middle of the green and sank a must-have putt to save par.

Tournament pairings were not re-aligned for the final round in those days as they are now, when TV coverage dictates the need for dramatic finishes. Demaret went out 30 minutes ahead of Hogan in the afternoon, and looked poised to make a run at the title when he went four under for the six-hole stretch from #7 through #12. A lipped-out putt from four feet on the 13th seemed to take the wind out of Demaret’s sails, though, and he wasn’t able to press home in the stretch. The best he could do was a 3-under 69, which turned out to not be enough to overtake Hogan.

Hogan played the final round of the Open in the precise, focused manner for which he was justly famous. Unruffled by a 3-putt on the 17th green, he matched Demaret’s 69 to stay two strokes ahead for the tournament, setting a new U.S Open record of 276 – five strokes better than the previous record, Ralph Guldahl’s 281 at Oakland Hills in 1937 – in the process. The record would stand for 19 years, until Jack Nicklaus’ 275 at the 1967 U.S. Open at Baltusrol.

After his success in 1947 and 1948, Ben Hogan never stepped into the winner’s circle at Riviera again; in fact, his next outing there, in the 1949 Los Angeles Open, saw him come home in a rather dismal tie for 11th place. Still, his place in Riviera’s history was secured by two successive, successful years, and the posh hangout of the Hollywood elite will be forever associated with Bantam Ben.