Sergio Leads at The Players, Wie shoots 75 at Michelob
Sergio Garcia fired a 66 to take a two-shot lead at the Players. Click here for Live at the 17th and the leaderboard.
Despite lunatics who think her head is where it should be for an 18 year old girl, Michelle Wie shot a four-over 75 to tie for 127th place in the Michelob Ultra Open.
Soccer Alert - Euro 2008 Begins!
Once again, my beloved Azzuri (that’s Italy, people), get treated like they’re Albania when it comes to the group stage. World Champs and we’re in a SECOND “group of death,” just like in the 2006 World Cup. This time we get France (runner-up at the World Cup…oh it felt good to type that), Romania (strong), and The Netherlands (always tough, especially in this tournament).
Boy this is a murderous bracket. I’m gonna play my hunches and call France to fade. Italy and The Netherlands advance.
Other brackets: Switzerland, Czech Republic, Turkey, Portugal. On paper - where too many soccer games are played:):) - the Czech Republic and Portugal outclass Switzerland and Turkey.
Austria, Germany, Croatia, Poland - Germany gets Austria, Croatia, and Poland; Italy gets France, The Netherlands, and Romania. Who did these brackets? Hillary Clinton? Germany and one of the stiffs advance. Do I really have to pick one? Fine…Croatia.
Russia, Sweden, Spain, Greece - Spain always plays well in Group play. They’ll kill Greece and Russia. Sweden should edge Russia.
Just for fun - here’s that zany Zinedine Zidane headbutting Marco Matarazzi.
Team Challenge Pro-Am Slated for June 6 at Eagle Falls at Fantasy Springs
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Mike Paul
May 7, 2008 MGP & Associates PR
917-359-1431; mpaul@mgppr.com
Pro Sports Team Challenge Golf Pro-Am Slated for June 6, 2008
at Eagle Falls Golf Club at Fantasy Springs Resort & Casino
NEW YORK - A Pro-Am tournament will kick-off the inaugural Pro Sports Team Challenge celebrity golf tournament on June 6, 2008 at Eagle Falls Golf Club at Fantasy Springs Resort & Casino in Palm Springs, California.
The Pro Sports Team Challenge celebrity golf shootout on June 7 & 8, hosted by Team Challenge Commissioner Charles Barkley pits sixteen legendary All-Stars from baseball, basketball, football and hockey against each other in a team golf tournament. A total purse of $250,000 will be at stake for their favorite charities. At the Pro-Am, fans will be able to meet and play golf with sports icons like Charles Barkley, Mario Lemieux, Ozzie Smith, John Elway, LaDanian Tomlinson, Michael Strahan, George Brett, Pierre Larouche, Jason Kidd, and many other legendary athletes.
Fans who take advantage of this rare opportunity get much more than just a round of golf. Packages include not only a round of golf with the athletes in the Pro-Am, but VIP treatment for the entire weekend and all tournament events.
The following benefits and included in the package: a ticket to the June 6th Pro-Am round with a legendary All-star or celebrity on a world class desert golf course, 2 tickets to the pairings party that night, hosted by Charles Barkley with a surprise special guest world-renowned comedian, 2 VIP gallery seats for the matches Saturday and Sunday June 7-8, as well as lunch daily at the resort, ground transport between the golf course and hotel, and four nights accommodations at the Fantasy Springs Resort and Casino. With the event being covered wall-to-wall by Fox Sports Net, participants will be at the center of the week’s biggest event in golf.
Individual packages are $7,500, and corporate packages are $20,000 for groups of four. For an “upgrade fee” of $2,500 per person, purchasers will get their preference of celebrity playing partner, (subject to availability on a first-come, first-served basis), access to private casino parties with the athletes, and backstage access to a taping of Fox Sports’ The Best Damn Sports Show.
Join the Pro Sports Team Challenge Pro-Am and shake hands with sports history.
For full details, go to www.teamchallenge.com. For more information on the Fantasy Springs Resort and Casino and the Eagle Falls Golf Course, visit: www.fantasyspringsresort.com and www.eaglefallsgolf.com.
Pro-Am spots are subject to availability.
About Team Challenge, LLC
Team Challenge, LLC was founded in 2008 to develop and implement turnkey event planning, marketing, and technology solutions for all types of team competitions with a mission to enhance the online experience of sports and entertainment fans. These team competitions highlight friendly rivalries among celebrities, colleges, corporations, countries, nonprofit organizations and global affinity groups of all kinds. For more information, visit us online at www.teamchallenge.com.
Sawgrass and the Players - The Fifth Major
While I get ready to cover the Travis Invitational at Garden City Golf Club and finish my review of great Georgia golf, let’s all celebrate Sawgrass’s rich tradition, history and golf course architecture:
Players poll: yes it is a major
Padraig Harrington agrees. (Hey Dermot Gilleece! Am I gonna get inside Paddy’s head writing about him too?:):)
Golf Observer - Is Tom Doak Twain’s Connecticut Yankee?
Thanks to Sal Johnson for running this piece that compares golf architect Tom Doak to Twain’s Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s court. From the piece:
Even his gibberish enraptures those hanging on every word. Morgan achieved “miracles” while uttering ridiculous “magic words” like “Constantinopolitanischerdudelsackspfeifenmachersgesellschafft!” (that’s “THE BAGPIPE MANUFACTURERS COMPANY OF CONSTANTINOPLE!” spoken in German). Similarly, Doak makes us scratch our heads working out mutterings like “Solving the paradox of proportionality lies at the core of golf course architecture.” That one set off every dork alarm in Michigan. When I understand that one fully, I’ll break it down for you, but you see how the Cornell education comes out in strange intellectual bursts.
Creek Club Part 2: Jim Engh’s Bunkers Evolve
The first part of this article is here.
I noticed an evolution of Jim’s bunkering at Blackstone Country Club in Peoria, Arizona, but did not consider it a permanent departure until he repeated the design at Creek Club. In Jim’s earlier work – Fossil Trace and Redlands Mesa for example – Jim’s muscle bunkers were actually sinkholes. The floor of the bunker was below the level of the fairway or green by about three or four feet. The muscled sidewalls were within the confines of the bunker.
A few people mentioned to Jim that they had difficulty getting in and out of the bunkers. Most of these players were older. “My wife and I had a problem getting in and out of the bunkers” said one expert golfer and course reviewer. “We mentioned this to Jim when we met him. We love his courses, but thought he could make them even more playable if people could get in and out of the bunkers more easily.”
Lo! and behold! – Jim actually listened to them. Starting at Blackstone and continuing at Creek Club, Jim made the floor of the bunkers level with the fairway, then he built the enormous sidewalls towering over the fairway level. “The people spoke and I listened. I could make an equally challenging hazard, yet one that you could walk in and out of in a straight line without having to climb” Engh says helpfully.
If the lesson here is lost on you, let me break it down like a fraction: the people spoke and the architect listened. “Wow!” gushed my friend. “That’s so great that he listened to us. What a super guy.”
Rock guitarist Chris Burney from gold record award winning band Bowling For Soup agrees. “Those bunkers I saw at Blackstone were unique. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s bold, yet it looked like those quirky, but charming dunes in Ireland. Blackstone is my favorite course ever because it took a lot of courage to make something that looks different, but plays like a course abroad.”
Fan approval aside, I have to respectfully dissent. I like the new look, but I like the old look better. More importantly, I think the new bunkers are actually harder to clambor through, over and around. Where before, you simply took a few steps down, then back up, I find that I rarely if ever enter and exit the new style bunkers from the level areas. The bunkers are so enormous, that my ball is frequently in the middle or near a sidewall. As a result, I think players do more trudging in, through, and around the bunker than ever before. Jim may have outsmarted himself here; I think the new style are definitely a tougher walk. The simpler answer to my friend’s dilemma was to merely add some stairs to the sinkhole style bunkers: problem solved.
Additionally, gigantic mounds in the center line of play limits airspace. Instead of having to clear a few feet of bunker lip, now you have to clear a significantly higher lip. However, I don’t find the added difficulty a negative. To me, no bunker is unfair no matter where it is placed or how deep it is. I simply note that generally more airspace helps the average player, but hey, we’re not supposed to build courses to cater to the worst player in the world, just build them to give them a fighting chance to get around such a fearsome hazard. Jim has done that. If you are scared of the new bunkers, don’t hit the ball in it. If you do, find it and hit it out. As Old Tom Morris said, “Bunkers are not places of pleasure; they are for punishment and repentance.”
Moreover, we’re counting the number of angels that dance on the head of a pin. If both rock stars and the Southern Gentlemen and Ladies of Reynolds like them, Jim’s evolution has broad appeal. Both styles are equally functional and esthetically pleasing. Purely as a suggestion, I would hope Jim might consider employing both styles, depending on the terrain of his sites and the clientele. Older clientele that might tire easily and sites that call for a little hurly-burly bunkering can have the new style of muscle bunker. At other sites, simply use the old style with stairs. That way, Jim has two different stage props in his arsenal – both equally effective as hazards and pleasing to the eye, depending on the beholder.
Team Challenge Celebrity Golf Tourney Showcases Team Golf Strategies, Fan involvement
I love when Tom Belton calls me, because he has a good idea every time. Sometimes he picks my brain for legal analysis of the confluence of sports and intellectual property over the Internet. Sometimes he asks me the writer’s view of a new wrinkle he has for competitive team golf formats. Most importantly, every time he calls, he has a groundbreaking vision for promoting team golf and empowering golf fans in America. With his track record of success, it’s no wonder both the pro golf industry and the major sports networks are listening.
This summer, Belton’s latest team golf tournament takes center stage. The Pro Sports Team Challenge celebrity golf shootout June 6th-8th, at Fantasy Springs Resort in Palm Springs, California is far more than your average, vacuous, buzz-roaching, cringe-inducing Celebrity Dance of the Sand Crabs. Here, truly timeless sports icons, (like Barkley, Lemieux, and George Brett), and present day titans, (like LaDanian Tomlinson and Michael Strahan), will collide to earn over a quarter of a million dollars for various charities. Of course, we’ll also get some humorous moments of wayward shots ending with a crash of glass and a tearing of foliage.
Nevertheless, more importantly than that altruistic and entertaining end - charity - the eyes of professional golf and the major networks will be watching how Belton’s popular “strat.e.golf” Internet platform enables the fans to make coaching decision translates in actual competition and how his “accelerated scoring,” where winners in match play get more than just one point for winning their match, makes play more exciting.
A MORE INTERESTING WAY: 2X PLAYERS, ACCELERATED SCORING
Let’s review. Two of Belton’s team golf scoring modifications will be in play for the Team Challenge: the fan vote for 2x player, and accelerated scoring. “My two greatest loves are golf and technology” Belton says fondly, relaxing and smiling a broad, sincere smile. “I always felt that the Internet, through instantaneous dissemination of information and through news sites, blogs and social networking, could have an impact on the fan’s sports experience far beyond after-the-fact, water-cooler rehashing on Monday morning. That’s why I came up with the “Strat.e.golf” Internet platform, so that fans could have an impact on the game before and during the competition.”
“Strat.e.golf”…I know, the name doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue like a T.S. Eliot poem, but we can ring up the branding department later. What Strat.e.golf does is more important – it’s an Internet platform where fans can log onto www.teamchallenge.com, register as a “ProCoach” for their favorite team – this time baseball, football, hockey, or basketball – and then vote on crucial strategy and tactical playing decisions. The results of the fan vote are then used in actual play.
“We debuted the platform at the Pro team Golf League U.S.A. vs. Canada matches last year” Belton continued. “PTGL co-founder Dave Braun and I both love team golf, but wanted scoring to be more exciting and, since sports fans live so vicariously through sports, we wanted fans to have a closer experience, inside the virtual ropes and virtual locker room.”
The ropes just came down in the biggest way. After signing up for their “team,” ProCoaches will debate the identity of which player’s match will count for double the points. The line between fantasy sports and reality sports just got erased as the fans will have a say in the outcome of the matches, which may have the team captains reaching for the Rolaids and Bactine. “That’s a great wrinkle in and of itself” gushed team golf fan and lifelong Bethpage Black player Chuck Cordova energetically. “But when you factor in accelerated scoring, you’re looking at golf matches moving from soccer games to track meets. Match play for teams has become exponentially more exciting.”
With accelerated scoring, if a player wins his match 4&3 – meaning he is ahead by four holes with only three to play – he gets seven points, not merely one - four for the number of holes by which he won his match, and three more for the holes left over. Now, you get credit for not only beating your opponent, but also by how much you win by. The earlier you close out your opponent, the more points you earn. If the same winner, who won 4&3, happens to also be the 2x player as voted by the fans, he’ll earn a whopping fourteen points. “We could have ourselves a track meet” quipped Belton with a knowing smile.
This year’s celebrity Team Challenge will feature three rounds of nine-hole match play, best ball doubles matches, with each team meeting the three others one time in a round robin on Saturday, followed by a modified skins match the next day. “Sunday, there will be four groups going off, with one player from each team in each foursome” Belton explained. “The best score on each hole gets three points, second best gets two, third gets one, and last gets zero. If two people tie, they split points, so if two people tie for first, they each split the points for first and second – 2.5 each.”
With the 2x, in an eighteen hole skins match there’s 108 points in play. “That’s a lot of points” Cordova points out. “Watching a team golf match just went from watching something akin to a cross-country road race, where you know the outcome and you’re just waiting for the everyone to cross the finish, to a football game where a “Hail Mary” pass can strike from nowhere and change the outcome.” He’s right, the matches are more likely to remain exciting till the end because there are always a lot of points in play each hole, especially when the 2x players are on the course.
More importantly, the Team Challenge matches, Pro team Golf League events, and future team events that Belton organizes will continue to showcase both the strat.e.golf fan interaction platform and team strategies to a broader audience. “Last year the fans also got to pick the order in which the players went off in the matches” Belton explained fondly. “We used Nationwide and Canadian Tour players, complete with detailed stats on each played so the fans could make educated decisions and they loved that type of empowerment.
PROMOTING TEAM GOLF IN AMERICA HELPS RYDER CUP FORTUNES
More importantly, with fans and golf industry experts closely watching the analysis of match-ups and player attributes such as success or failure in four-balls vs. foursomes in team chat rooms, (virtual locker rooms), we learn more about the dynamics of putting together winning teams for doubles competitions. While such empirical data will be less at the Team Challenge since the All-star captains pick the order in which the players will tee off, the platform will be inplay at future Pro Sports Team Challenges.
“By evaluating the players’ tendancies, the fans’ decisions as ProCoaches were the same as at the Ryder Cup, and the double points added a further variable. We got a lot of good data from the PTGL matches” Belton admitted.
Therein lies the greatest value of Belton’s ideas; he is contributing strongly to the growth of team golf in the U.S. His work in the trenches – the feeder tours and the grass roots level provides analysis of team play dynamics at the speed of the Internet as fans, team owners and players interact electronically with one another. This is a revolutionary paradigm taking full advantage state of the art methods of communication (The Internet) and making it impact on course decisions.
Indeed, team golf may be the salvation of the PGA TOUR, which struggles with a loss of identity every year after the PGA Championship finishes. Since the golf industry insists on having its majors conclude in August, before Lord Football ascends its yearly throne and the baseballs playoffs heat up in thermonuclear fashion, pro golf from September to February becomes secondary, an afterthought. The FedEx Cup is universally recognized as contrived fantasy golf.
“I’d certainly rather watch team golf than Finchem’s Folly, the FedEx Flop,” snarled another lifelong golfer as he hit balls on the Bethpage practice range. “You tell me which kids would rather watch on TV or play on a video game: a team event or a slow motion points race? I don’t find the FedEx Cup interesting, let alone and exciting competition. It’s artificial” he continued, frowning. “But team golf with this accelerated scoring and double points?” he asks to himself. “We’ve moved match play team scoring into overdrive and we can take it to a national level. You tell me – do you actually think Boston vs. New York at Bethpage Black wouldn’t sell massive ticket numbers? Especially if we had Tiger for double points against Rory Sabbatini or Phil Mickelson? We would make as much noise as we did during the 2002 U.S. Open.”
The fan, who wished to remain anonymous, has a point. The Tour Championship is still struggling to find its identity and still will never have the cache of The Players Championship because it’s not played on a truly memorable gem of a golf course like Sawgrass. The rest of the fall season is a let down: tourneys on courses no one heard or cares about. Team golf – be it LPGA, PGA or mini-tour offers a highly competitive, meat-and-potatoes alternative to the silly season and “casino golf” tournaments for the “on the bubble” crowd seeking to keep their card.
Jack Nicklaus said back in the 80’s that team golf pitting city against city – for example Boston vs. New York – was “the salvation of the tour.” Nobody listened to him, because they were preconditioned and afraid of change. But as the Ryder Cup has grown, so too has the public’s desire to participate in similar team competitions, for college, state, local community and yes, even country. Public approval is a currency that Tim Finchem repeatedly fritters away but men like Belton and Steve Czaban, founder of the Potomac Cup matches - which pit the best amateurs in Maryland vs. the best in Virginia in a yearly Ryder Cup match – have attracted the imprimatur and well-wishes of state and national tours and golf associations.
Belton’s bright ideas sweep in like a galleon in full sail, ready to instantly be implemented by any level of competition, from the Ryder Cup right down to the local, beer-swilling scramble. This year, the Pro Sports Team Challenge will be featured on Fox Sports Net for two hours on Saturday and Sunday June 20-12 and have six hours of pre-event coverage as well. Fox has identified two key personalities to co-host, (announced soon by Fox), and a well-known golf-loving celeb will co-host the star-studded “pairings party” the night before the competition with tournament commissioner Charles Barkley. Sweepstakes winning fans will not only participate in the pro-am, but will get to hand the results of the fan votes to the All-star team captains before the pairings are finally revealed. Moreover, for each ProCoach who signs up to participate, the total charity purse increases by one dollar, with a minimum of $250,000 in play.
Sure, other team leagues and events have come and gone. But the Team Challenge is not some left-handed, squirrelly, corporate shill gig. I am not being paid to gush about this event, just observe and report – and “brutally frank” is right in my power zone. The questions of 1) team golf strategy and 2) the intersection of golf and its media presentation that are at issue here are too important to be glossed over in some vapid puff piece that trades probing introspection for fawning adulation. The stinging losses in the last three Ryder Cups illuminate these proceedings like a halogen torch. Tom Belton is sure doing his part to make sure it never happens again. With his ideas, the decades of Team USA being crumpled like paper-mache before the cameras on the grandest stage may be in the past.
Reads of the Day: Joe Logan on Cobbs Creek, NYT on Links Golf
Two important Reads of the Day dominate the golf world today.
First, I’ll see The Philly Inquirer’s Joe Logan at St. Andrews tomorrow (the one in Hastings-on-Hudson), so we can talk more about how mutual friends of ours are restoring Cobbs Creek. Hey Joe! Mike Cirba! We should do a “home and home” of Cobbs Creek and The Knoll Club (West).
Next, the NYT discusses some excellent links courses such as two of my favorites, Royal New Kent and Bandon Dunes.
This week on AWITP: St. Andrews and Garden City Golf Club
Tim Rosaforte Examines Tiger Woods’s Knee
Well, figuratively, not literally. Tim Rosaforte didn’t actually take any x-rays or hit the patella tendon with a rubber chicken or anything. He’s not a doctor, but he plays one:):) The only thought I have is after watching Woods roll his ankle at Tulsa in person, I wonder if that might not be the excta date, time, and place of injury. I’ll get the video and see if I can post it, but from what I saw, I was more scared about his ankle.
Anyway, Rosie writes another article with exceptional analysis and interesting details and insights into Tiger’s life.
By the way, the headline punctuation is correct. Form the singular possessive of nouns by adding “s’s” even if the last consonant is “s.” So it’s “Clemens’s glove,” not “Clemens’ glove.” Two exceptions: ancient names like “Jesus” or “Isis” and where the noun possessed (i.e. modified), also begins with “s.” The second of the three esses may be elided, so “Clemens’s steroids” may be shortened to “Clemens’ steroids.”
Isiah Thomas Banned from Contact with Knicks Players
I’m normally not into schadenfreude, but in his case, I’ll make an exception. Isiah, PLEASE let the door hit you on your worthless bee-hind on the way out the door.
Georgia Golf - The Creek Club, Long Shadow are excellent choices for vacation, Masters week
I’ll write longer pieces over the next few days, but Masters week was made even more memorable by two excellent days of golf not far from fabled Augusta. About ninety minutes away, Mike Young designed an excellent, affordable public course, Long Shadow G.C. in Madison, GA, just one mile off Route 20, the Interstate that connects Atlanta and Augusta.
With center-line bunkers, steeply undulating greens, and a routing which - rather than being the cookie-cutter doctrine of symmetry - showcases the strongest holes on the most interesting pieces of the property, the course should instantly make the list of must plays in Georgia. Moreover, at $39-64, it’s a steal. You can get in three or four rounds here for the same price as the latest Tom Fazio design.
I’ll write more on Long Shadow soon, but today let’s start the duscussion of Jim Engh’s The Creek Club at Reynolds Plantation.
THE CREEK CLUB at REYNOLDS PLANTATION
1100 Creek Club Drive
Greensboro, GA 30642
706.467.1681
Design: Six stars (all ratings out of seven)
Natural Setting: Five and ½ - six stars
Conditioning: Six stars
Value: N/A Private. Memebrships are $65,000 for the all courses at Reynolds except Creek Club, $90,000 for all five course including Creek
Overall: Six stars
People always ask me what the first rule is in evaluating a golf course. The answer is somewhat altruistic: judge a course on its value to the game of golf, not on what it cost to attain. The owners of Reynolds Plantation may have known this as they planned the fifth course at their idyllic Georgia resort; they simply told the architect, “give us something different.” They already had courses by Jack Nicklaus, Tom Fazio, Rees Jones, and Bob Cupp. They weren’t pipe dreaming of hosting a TOUR event. They weren’t interested in bragging rights from magazine rankings. They wanted a unique course. They wisely selected Jim Engh.
People are slowly coming to understand the nuances of Jim Engh’s designs. After winning three “best new course” awards in a row, people still thought it was because his courses were pretty. “He gets all the sites,” said one of his friends, a golf architect himself. “But Jim has a flavor all his own which is a really bold and creative interpretation of the design features he saw in Ireland and Scotland,” he continues. “That’s the real reason why his courses are so good. Sure, you’d have to trip over yourself to blow it on one of those sites, but Jim creates designs that are unique. No one looks like him and it’s growing on people. Plus he always comes in on time and under budget.”
For his part, Engh was thrilled with the freedom and used the vast expanse of the plot to refine some of his older ideas and experiment with new ones. He’s always loved his one-of-a-kind “muscle bunkers,” (where the sand is flanked by mounded sidewalls), large greens with distinct tiers, and player friendly sidewalls that kick errant shots back into play making the course easier for amateurs and providing many different ways to get close to a hole. But with an easy-going, open-minded client, Jim could take some chances and create a design that stands out not only at the facility, but in the entire country.
How successful was Engh? I had the following conversation with one local PGA professional from a nearby course. He has years of experience playing all the layouts at Reynolds:
“What course has the best architecture?”
“Creek Club.”
“OK, what’s second?”
“Creek Club.”
“Well, which has the best greens?”
“Creek Club.”
“Second best?”
“Creek Club.”
“What other course should I play besides Creek Club?”
“Creek Club.”
I got the picture and so did the members. At first, they were concerned with the different look – the center-line hazards with imposing sidewalls rising out of the ground dramatically - assuming by implication that because it looked puzzling, it would be too hard. But once they played it, they fell in love with it. Many members have posted the best scores of their lives at the Creek Club in cluding two women, one who never before broke 80 and shot 78 and another who never broke par and shot 1-under.
Though the 6-1 drubbing his North Dakota Fighting Sioux suffered at the hands of Boston College during the 2008 NCAA Frozen Four hockey tournament was still fresh in his mind, even watching the team from his alma mater get squashed like floppy grapes in a Sonoma County winery couldn’t quench the fire in Engh’s heart for great golf course architecture. He brightened instantly when we began to discuss how much his work at The Creek Club – the fifth and only fully private course at the Reynolds Plantation Resort.
“They told me right at the get-go, ‘build us something completely different’” explained Engh. So just like a master sushi chef whose patron says “Omakase” (“Surprise me”), Engh obliged. “I tried to take conventional expectations of golf course design and pull their nose a little bit” he says, meaning it in an endearing way, not as an iconoclast. “I just like showing people things they’ve either never seen before, or that they might have seen before, but just not quite the way I reproduced it.”
Coming soon: Is it the Creek Club or the GREEK club? Exactly how long a shadow will Long Shadow cast?
Video of the Week: Bowling For Soup - I Melt With You
Bowling For Soup, The Clown Princes of Rock and Roll rock the house with a slammin’ version of the Modern English masterpiece. Look for the new video, Live and Very Attractive, in stores soon.
Rock on, honorable ones.
Team Challenge Unites All-Stars from Four Major Sports for Charity Golf Competition
This is a project that I am working with both as an attorney and as a writer. We’ve discussed how team golf events would benefit from some of Tom Belton’s ideas such as accelerated scoring, (where when you win your match 4&3 you get seven points, not just one), and fan participation in coaching decisions really turns fantasy sports into reality sports. Now All-Stars like LaDanian Tomlinson, Mario Lemieux, George Brett, and Dr. J will battle it out in a televised showdown. From the press room:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Mike Paul
April 17, 2008 MGP & Associates PR
T: 917-359-1431; email: mpaul@mgppr.com
Team Challenge Unites All-Stars from Football, Baseball,
Basketball and Hockey for Charity Golf Competition
New Social Networking Platform Offers
Fans Participation in Coaching Decisions
NEW YORK – Sixteen legendary all-stars – four each from football, baseball, basketball and hockey - will collide on the golf course in a two-day Pro Sports Team Challenge in golf at beautiful Eagle Falls Golf Course at Fantasy Springs Resort in Palm Springs, California on June 7 and 8, 2008. Tournament Commissioner Charles Barkley is bringing together four superstars from each sport and pitting them against one another in a struggle for both bragging rights and the top charity prize of $100,000.
“Athletes from each sport think that they are the best golfers. It’s high time we found out who really is: baseball, football, basketball or hockey,” said Team Challenge spokesman, Mike Paul.
The sports superstars already committed to participate include:
Baseball Basketball Football Hockey
Ozzie Smith* Charles Barkley* Drew Brees* Mario Lemieux*
George Brett Jason Kidd LaDanian Tomlinson Brett Hull
Vince Coleman Julius Erving, “Dr. J” John Elway Grant Fuhr
TBA TBA Michael Strahan Pierre Larouche
TBA
Barkley will also serve as the non-playing captain of the Team Challenge basketball team.
“The playful smack talk regarding which sport and athlete are the best started months ago,” said Tom Belton, founder and managing partner of Team Challenge, LLC. “These sports legends look forward to the challenge and to raising significant money for charity. Nothing makes them happier than playing sports to raise money to help others in need. Moreover, this competition might also depend on who has the most loyal and knowledgeable fans.”
Belton is right. In an inspired twist using a new technology known as Strat.e.golf TM, fans can directly participate in coaching decisions for their favorite team by logging on to the Internet or using their cell phone text messaging to vote on coaching strategies for a team of their choice. “It’s sort of like American Idol,” Mike Paul explained. The fan vote will determine which player in each of the four rounds of competition will play for double points. Fans, called “ProCoaches™” in the Team Challenge vernacular, can log on to www.teamchallenge.com, or text on their cell phones to sign up to coach their favorite Team Challenge team, vote on coaching decisions, and engage in social networking with other ProCoaches™ on their Team Challenge team website and through text messaging. “This is a tremendous chance for fans to not only support their favorite athletes in the competition, but to have a direct impact on the outcome. The earlier they sign up, the more influence they can have in coaching decisions, so man up everybody!” continued Paul.
“Fantasy Sports just became Reality Sports,” said Tom Belton. “The Team Challenge will, for the first time ever, provide fans with the opportunity to make real strategy decisions in a high profile sports competition. Blogs and chat rooms will allow fans to strategize together to make their choices. Strat.e.golf TM brings the fan inside the locker room as a true coach.”
“It’s as though half of the action will be on the golf course and the other half of the action with be online or from mobile advices,” echoed Mike Paul. Additionally, the total purse for the event, already $250,000, will increase by $1.00 for each fan that registers as a paid ProCoachTM for the winning team. “The more people that sign up and participate, the more money we can raise for worthy charities, so sign up and play,” he finished.
Team Challenge will release more information soon about the additional sports legends participating, the charities, our television broadcasting partner, super sweepstakes, the Pro-Am in Palm Springs on June 6, 2008, more online and mobile participation info, future events and much more.
About Team Challenge, LLC
Team Challenge, LLC was founded in 2008 to develop and implement turnkey event planning, marketing, software and technology solutions for all types of team competitions with a mission to enhance the online experience of sports ad entertainment fans. Team competitions highlight friendly rivalries among celebrities, colleges, corporations, countries, nonprofit organizations and global affinity groups of all kinds. For more information, visit us online at www.teamchallenge.com.
Rerun! The Magical Masters
Thanks not only to PGA.com and Cybergolf, but all my readers who sent me emails about this piece. Here it is for this website. I hope you had as much fun with the Masters as I did. Congratulations also to Marino Parascenzo, (thats pronounced PAIR-a-SENDS-O for those of you scoring at home), for winning the PGA Lifetime achievement award for journalism.
THE MAGICAL MASTERS
Like the bright promise of a new dawn, The Masters Tournament awakens golf in the hearts of the whole sports world. Yes, ardent golfers watch Kapalua to abate January’s chill, and some fans may pay attention to the California swing, but only the magical Masters banishes winter from our minds, brings forth flowers from the frozen ground, and stirs the golf roots in our souls to take root and bloom for another year.
The sports world’s annual rite of spring not only informally heralds the arrival of golf season across America, but showcases America’s most iconic club; Augusta National, an emerald whose dazzling iridescence casts its entrancing spell over casual fan and lifelong golfer alike. The legacy of Bobby Jones, the greatest amateur in the game’s history, and Clifford Roberts, the tenacious, self-made entrepreneur who willed the club through the Great Depression, Augusta National is not just a major championship host, but the most venerable course in American golf, the brightest jewel in the diadem.
It wasn’t always this way. Jones, Roberts, and golf architect Alister MacKenzie were brimming with hopeful optimism on July 14, 1931 at the Bon Air Vanderbilt in Augusta when Jones announced he was building his ideal course in his beloved south, “a golf course embodying the finest holes of all the great courses on which I have played.” But born in the teeth of the Great Depression, Augusta survived financial crises so dire Roberts wrote to Jones in 1934, just before the inaugural “Augusta National Invitational Tournament,” the club was “One jump ahead of the Sheriff.” “Oddly enough, being broke provided Augusta National with its best defense,” wrote venerable golf scholar Marino Parascenzo, “the large creditors weren’t demanding payment because they knew they’d get nothing from a bankrupt club….[and] the club did in fact get protection from creditors for the benefit of the Georgia Railroad Bank and Trust Co., holder of the first mortgage – a move that more than any other, kept Augusta national in being.”
Looking back through the decades, it’s astonishing to see how much of we’ve been preconditioned to believe about Augusta’s reputation is all wrong. Money, power, and elitism didn’t build Augusta; courage, faith, and perseverance in the face of insurmountable odds built Augusta. Men who, at times, couldn’t rub two nickels together built Augusta. “Dissipation of energy, fragmentation of vision, loss of momentum and lack of follow through are the vices of the herd” wrote British author Ian Fleming in his masterpiece, Dr. No. Yet in the chaos and carnage the Depression wrought on other clubs – even Pine Valley, Cypress Point, and Pasatiempo suffered terribly – Jones, Roberts, and MacKenzie endured and showed what vision, singular focus on the task at hand, and hard work can achieve.
Though at times in her early years, she was seemingly held together with duct tape and popsicle sticks, Augusta had the two most important elements for success in place: gorgeous, rolling terrain on which to build fiendishly intricate greens and hole designs that tempt the player into hitting an unwise shot, and Roberts’s wisdom to run a large scale, modern professional sporting event by focusing on the comfort and enjoyment of the patrons.
Regarding golf architecture, Jones and Roberts were faced with a dream decision, but a difficult choice: hire Donald Ross or Alister MacKenzie. Golf writer Tom MacWood explains that, “Ross was without question the most famous and prolific golf architect in America, the problem was Jones didn’t want an American course.” That meant the logical choice was MacKenzie, an Englishman who marketed his Scottish sounding name with such fanfare and decoration that Parascenzo once joked you might find MacKenzie wearing “a sandwich board reading ‘I AM A GENUINE SCOT!’ on one side and ‘Please see me now about designing your golf course’” on the other.
MacKenzie’s showmanship and the nation’s love affair with Jones were two excellent draws, and the land for the golf course, built on an old indigo plantation turned Fruitland Nursery contained thousands of exotic, stately, and exquisitely beautiful trees, shrubs, and flora. Moreover, the choice of MacKenzie ensured that Augusta, as she was originally built, rejected penal architecture and the “doctrine of framing.” MacWood wrote that Jones, “felt that American courses were generally penal in nature, for they did not allow for options. There was one safe choice and the ball must be played there. The result was an unthinking player who had the ability to play only one way.”
Despite what some pundits have recently said to the contrary, that was not what Jones had in mind at all. David Owen makes that abundantly clear in his book The Making of the Masters. Donald Ross, despite all his years in Scotland, still preferred hundreds of bunkers lining fairways, blurring what was ornamental with the strategic. In music, that results in harmony. In golf design, it leads to making every shot on the course a mindlessly dull center line play.
MacKenzie, on the other hand, loved The Old Course at St. Andrews and, more importantly, knew that the holes there were among the most cunning ever designed, looking relatively easy, but playing much harder. Moreover, the bunkers there were ingeniously placed – frequently in the center line. Jones wanted spacious fairways, but severely undulating greens and cleverly placed hazards that cruelly punished improperly struck or planned approaches. Therefore, he chose MacKenzie over Ross.
The Good Doctor was more than worthy to the task. MacKenzie borrowed from at least five holes of the Old Course in designing Augusta National. The par-3 11th, known in golf circles as the “Eden Hole” as its lays serenely by the banks of the River Eden, became the source for Augusta’s par-3 4th. The fabled Road Hole became the inspiration for Augusta’s par-4 5th, the centerpiece of what has been called Augusta’s other Amen Corner. MacKenzie loved how the bunker at the Road Hole was carved so deeply into the curve of the green, the bunker even affecting putts, making the player use the internal green contours to “cut” or “slice” a putt around the bunker edge. He repeated this theme at many courses, most notably at Michigan’s Crystal Downs, until the design feature was unfairly shouted down as too “difficult.”
At least three other holes at Augusta are derived from The Old Course: the 6th became Augusta’s 14th, (the only hole on the course without a bunker), the 18th became Augusta’s 7th, (MacKenzie admitted it was a superficial resemblance only. This year six feet were added to the left side of the green generating at least two additional hole locations), and the 14th became Augusta’s 17th, (which is more famous for Eisenhower’s Tree, an otherwise unremarkable pine that invariably confounded the former president’s slice).
Other fabled UK courses provided inspiration to MacKenzie and Jones as well. MacKenzie wrote in 1931, “At Augusta we are striving to produce eighteen ideal holes, not copies of classical holes, but embodying their best features, with other features suggested by the nature of the terrain.” To that end, MacKenzie explained the following similarities:
“#15 [Author’s Note: Now number six as the nines were reversed after MacKenzie wrote this piece. This is now the 6th.] – This will resemble the Redan Hole at North Berwick….
#17 (now 8), – it may be compared to the seventeenth green at Muirfield, Scotland….
#18 (now 9), – This will be a Cape Hole played slightly downhill….
#1 (now 10), - This hole will embody the most attractive features of the 13th hole at Cypress Point, California and the 4th Alwoody, one of the best British inland links….
#7 (now 16), This hole, over a stream, is somewhat similar to the best hole (seventh) at Stoke Pages, England.”
But MacKenzie didn’t stop at merely recreating good holes he saw elsewhere; his greatest skill was strategic placement of hazards. Did any other architect accomplish so much with so few bunkers? For example, one design trick MacKenzie learned from both the Old Course and from his experience as WWI camouflage expert, was to position hazards in such a way as to tempt players into hitting too dangerous a shot. Therefore, Jones’s decision was a fateful one whose repercussions echo through the decades. By rejecting the Doctrine of Framing, which “dumbs down” a golf course to require only certain shots, and embracing the Doctrine of Deception, luring the player into trying a shot outside his skill level, players skyrocket up and down the leaderboard like fireworks and the fans’ excitement multiplies because lightning can strike anytime, anywhere, triggering the fabled “roaring on the pines.” Unlike the U.S. Open, where players percolate downward slowly and the winner is often merely the last man standing after seventy-two holes, you have to go out and win the Masters with birdies…and that makes for exciting golf. By succeeding or failing at that borderline, tempting shot – the difference between making a 3 or a 6 – the Masters fosters an exciting synergy of romance, tragedy, and triumph. If you want major championship excitement, the Masters has the freehold, owns the trademark.
Moreover, Augusta rewards recovery shots and creative short games. While players at the U.S. Open spend the week with their 60-degree wedges in their hands, Augusta’s shaved chipping areas and fiendish rolling contours let players “cut their coat according to their cloth” and play a multitude of creative recovery shots: bump and run, pitch and check, lob, putt or anything else the situation requires.
Nevertheless, Augusta has also gone through more changes since its inception than any other of the world’s twenty-or-so greatest courses.
Changes were made to the golf course in forty-one different years. Interestingly, and to some, alarmingly, the most extensive occurred in 2002. Tom Fazio extended nine different holes, each an average of 25-30 yards, (and the eighteenth alone by 55-60 yards). In 2006, Fazio lengthened six more, each an average of 20-25 yards. “Refinements to the golf course and grounds have been made almost every year since the tournament’s inception” Tournament Chairman Billy Payne said in a release from Augusta National. But now with the addition of trees and rough to provide narrow landing areas off the tee, many believe the course design has forever changed to the opposite of what Jones wanted.
In this writer’s opinion, narrowing the landing areas turns Augusta National into a center-line course more akin to a U.S. Open set-up than a Masters. Many pundits joked last year that Zach Johnson won the first U.S. Open ever held in March. “We think last year’s exceptionally high scores were an anomaly due to the frigid, windy weather” explained Payne. He has a point. The winning score was what’s known in the sports industry a “statistical outlier,” a result so far away from normal that it should be discarded from consideration. However, the weather was a statistical outlier too. Perhaps Augusta never saw worse weather in spring since the ill-fated Official Opening in 1933 which, according to the Augusta Chronicle article from the next day, featured “near freezing weather which came in with a cold rain” and where guests ate barbecued chicken and bootleg corn liquor in a tent.
Ignoring last year’s anomaly, consider this fact; there are fewer one-time major championship winners who won at the Masters than at any other major. The PGA Championship has thirty-one winners who claimed it as their only major, the U.S. Open has twenty-two, the British Open twenty one, but the Masters a mere fourteen. Many golf scholars believe that course set-up – the rough, the fairway width and the speed of the greens – impact how many players in the field will contend. For example, wayward drivers rarely win the U.S. Open. (Last year was the statistical outlier with Cabrera shooting 69 on Sunday after hitting only five fairways. That’s the stat of a man who shoots 79 at the U.S. Open, not 69).
At Augusta, the wider fairways, yet tiny second-shot targets, coupled with the ability to allow the players to recover from trouble, allow the best players to use their entire array of talents. They are not limited to hitting irons of the tee and wedges to the fairway after finding the rough. Additionally, the pressure at the Masters, the weight of history and the future of his career on his shoulders, may ultimately reward the more experienced player.
I proposed this theory to pre-eminent golf course architect Tom Fazio in a recent interview and he rejected the notion that the architecture of the course contributed to fewer unknowns breaking through at Augusta. Instead, he cited the limited nature of this invitational tournament and the players’ familiarity with the course. “It was an invitational for a long time” he explained, “a limited field. To qualify for Masters, you had to be tournament winner. I don’t think it has to do with architecture, I think it’s the importance of the event and that great champions are more familiar with the course since it’s played every year. If they played the other majors on the same course all the time, the same effect might take place because the golfers are more familiar with the venue and there are more opportunities for the best players to win.”
Many students of golf architecture disagree with Fazio. Further, they argue that because many of the original design concepts and strategic elements have been changed, much of MacKenzie and Jones’s elements were lost and the course has become one-dimensional. The lengthening of holes may make sense to offset the advances in equipment, but fast and firm conditions plus narrower fairways through tree planting turns the course into the dictatorial type of design Jones wanted to avoid. Moreover, lengthening and narrowing should not create a strategic disconnect – that is change completely the way the hole was originally designed and should not eliminate options available to the player. That is the open question yet to be determined.
If you want to win the masters, you should have to put the pedal to the metal on the back nine. I have no problem with fast and firm conditions, but last year, fast and firm coupled with zany weather acted like a restrictor plate on the field and the winning score resembled The U.S. Open. This year’s event will be a closely watched litmus test for the direction the course set-up has taken. If back-nine birdies are down again this year, the changes may have taken much of the inherent excitement from the Masters.
Still, while some argue that the constant tinkering has undermined the uniqueness and original intent of the designers, the tournament is still the flagship of American golf and the hugely influential standard to which all professional sporting events should still be held. The patrons come first, all their needs are anticipated and provided at a reasonable price. The Masters was the first golf event to park 10,000 cars, provide daily pairing sheets, supply diagrams of the golf course on the reverse side, rope off galleries, use the “over-under” method of scoring, and erect on course scoreboards, among other innovations. Roberts made the tournament a success by focusing on the exact things preyed upon by the Jim Dolans and Dan Snyders of the world. He focused on the needs of his customers.
The genteel, restrained, and dignified way in which the Masters Tournament is run is an integral part of its allure with casual and fervent fan. Despite modern society’s efforts to dumb down the rest of the sports world to the lowest common denominator, we still have something pure, inspiring. That will continue for decades, no matter what the winning score.
South African Lobster Tails next year for Dinner at Augusta National?
AUGUSTA, GA - As we got to press, Trevor Immelman leads the 2008 Masters by six shots with just four holes to play. With Amen Corner behind him, it looks like Augusta National officials will be grabbing a size 40 regular for the ceremony at the Butler Cabin. Immelman will be the second South African champion and, even more astounding, he’ll go wire-to-wire, no mean feat at Augusta.
South African Lobster tails would go over well for dinner next year, paired with some of the regions excellent wines. There are also other seafood choices like salt cod and crayfish. Sometimes locals make fish pates as well. Experts in South African cuisine offered some other suggestions:
“Bobotie, the mainstay of the Boers, is a “pie” of chopped beef or lamb mixed with raisins, almonds, apple, and curry powder, and topped with a custard—not exactly the bland fare of England. Frikkadels, or little hamburgers that are subtly seasoned with nutmeg, are popular as well. They are sometimes wrapped in cabbage leaves and served with yellow rice, a cousin to West Africa’s jollof rice. Other popular meat dishes include Bredie, or stew. These “one-pot meals” contain mutton and vegetables.
Curries—sweet, mild, or hot—are popular, and served with sambals (chopped vegetables), atjar (pickles), or blatjang (chutney). Each of these is evidence of the Indian and Asian influences on this multi-cultural cuisine. The atjar and blatjang “condiments” are made with local fruits cooked with garlic, hot chile peppers, onions, and often curry powder, and then pickled to some degree. Some of the Eastern-influenced sambals are prepared with vegetables such as carrots and cucumbers.
Local vegetables that play an important role in South African cooking include tomatoes, potatoes, green beans, cabbage, mealies (corn), and pumpkin. Fruits such as quince, peaches, mangoes, citrus, apricots, grapes, pomegranates, and melons are eaten fresh, dried, and also preserved . The naartjie is a variety of indigenous tangerine from which a regional liqueur, Van der Hum, is made. Because of the mild climate, almost all vegetables and fruits that were not native to South Africa were introduced successfully to this fertile land. Thus produce is common in this diet, which adds a fresh and incomparable quality to this diverse cuisine.
One cannot read a South African menu without noticing the obvious Dutch, or Afrikaner, culinary presence. This is especially the case with baked goods such as the desserts that are an integral part of a South African meal. With names like Soetkoekies and Krakelinge and Klappertert, it’s easy to see the influence from Holland, even though this sister-country is thousands of miles away.
Drinks served with a South African meal can include a native beer called mechow made from a fermented, corn-based brew. If wine is preferred, the Cape vineyards produce a variety of internationally acclaimed wines, from Muscadel to Burgundy and Cabernet Sauvignon.”
Hat tip: Global Gourmet