Over the Green

XCG5 from Tour Edge
Tour Edge has been on a run in recent years producing some very good fairways and the latest to be included on that short list is the newest fairway in their line up, the XCG5.

This newest refinement is the only fairway wood to have a titanium cupped face and tungsten sole which are perhaps the “secret” of the exceptional length all the previous XCG fairways have provided. Also unique is the use a combo-brazing process to put the club head together which eliminates the typical welds other makers use and gives company engineers more discretionary weight to move around for just the right placement.

However, combo-brazing is expense. For example it is done in a vacuum chamber to ensure Tour Edge’s very tight manufacturing standards are met but it does provide a very high quality joint between the tungsten and titanium pieces of the head.

As with previous models Tour Edge guarantees the Exotics XCG5 fairway wood is longer than your current fairway wood and if not return it under their 30-day “Play Guarantee” for a store credit or refund. The XCG5 is available in a Graphite Design Tour AD 40, Exotics Fujikura Blur 65, or Aldila RIP 70 Sigma graphite shaft for an SRP of $299.

Wilson adds new models for 2012
On the road to again achieving the greatness of the past, Wilson Golf has announced four additions to their model lineup.

FG Tour V2 irons – Tour staff members Padraig Harrington, Ricky Barnes and Kevin Streelman helped with the design of this new players iron with a thinner top line and minimal offset.
Ci11 irons – In its fourth generation, the black Ci11 irons are aimed at the game improvement category with a design featuring a thinner, harder face.
FG Tour X Golf Ball – Wilson’s new ball for better players is a multilayer urethane cover construction ball with a 93 compression core.
Duo Golf Ball – Duo is Wilson’s entry in the soft but long ball category and they say 8 out of 10 golfers who try Duo, switch.

Nike VR Pro Limited Edition Fairways

The VR Pro Limited Edition fairway woods being played by Stephen Ames, Stewart Cink, Simon Dyson, Francesco Molinari and Tiger Woods are now available to the rest of us. The slightly pear-shaped head with a mid-to-low face height is made from 455 stainless steel. Nike’s Compression Channel technology is part of the head design to increase speed at more spots on the club face. A MRC Diamana ‘Ahina shaft is stock. MSRP is $275.99 with a street price if $225.00.

The golf media is filled with similar headlines; some variant of, “Tiger Woods Clinches President’s Cup.”
Phooey.

In fact and just as accurately it could be said by only winning one match of the five in which he participated, he contributed to the Internationals point total.

Let’s face it, Woods played poorly and was fortunate to be on a team that played very well, but then isn’t that the idea of a TEAM format?

Give kudos to Mickelson, Furyk, Mahan and Toms plus even maybe Watney for beating the opposition. Additionally the Internationals really never got it together, as they never seem to do in these matches and contrary to some of the media voices leading up to the contest.

Bottom line – great play by four or five Americans and lousy play by just about all the Internationals was the reason we won…not because Woods made his one single point on the final day.

The King and the Mouse
The Walt Disney Co. (NYSE:DIS) and Arnold Palmer Golf Management have signed a 20-year agreement to have the King’s company mange and promote Walt Disney World’s five golf courses located at the suburban Orlando, Fla. resort. Disney’s deal with Palmer takes the Mouse completely out of the very competitive central Florida golf market substituting an ongoing lease payment from Palmer Golf.

Disney has had a long standing business strategy of leasing hotel, restaurant and concession locations to outside companies. As part of the lease agreements lessees are contractually required to provide services and products meeting standards set by Disney.

As part of the new deal over the next two years Palmer and his course architects will take on a renovation of the Disney’s Palm course.

Arnold Palmer Golf Management, based in Addison, Texas, is owned by Century Golf Partners and the Disney courses will be added to the 70 private clubs in its portfolio. They will be promoted within the Palmer Golf network with a website and in the “Kingdom Magazine” published by the company.

Walt Disney World, which attracts about 50 million visitors per year, has been pulling back from operating golf courses at the resort since it became apparent there were too many courses and too few golfers in the Orlando area. The first move in implementing that policy was back in 2007 the well regarded Eagle Pines course (Pete Dye 1992) was closed. The land is now a residential development that upon build-out will have 450 multiple-million dollar homes.

The Waldorf Astoria hotel also operates a golf course on Disney property, a Rees Jones design opened in 2010.

The PGA Tour’s Children’s Miracle Network Hospital Classic played on Walt Disney World’s Palm and Magnolia courses for 41 years, is part of the Tour’s Fall Finish. There is no word what affect if any the deal with Palmer Golf will have on the Tour stop though Palmer does already have a Tour event annually at his nearby Bay Hill golf course, the Arnold Palmer Invitational.

Golfsmith to South Korea
Golf retailer Golfsmith International will open retail outlets in the fastest growing golf market in the world, South Korea in partnership with GOLFZON Co. which specializes in indoor golf simulators.

Golfsmith says profits from this venture will be reinvested back into retail operations in the United States.

The majority of golf in South Korea is played on indoor simulators and GOLFZON with 4,000 screen commands 84% of the market. Plans are for GOLFZON to operate Golfsmith stores at the simulator locations.

Tiger’s moves
Tiger Woods has moved to his new $54.5 million home built on the ocean on Jupiter Island, Fla. and reports in the Palm Beach Post say his company ETW Corp. will move as well.

Woods lived formerly in the Isleworth development outside Orlando and according to public records he has not sold his home there. ETW Corp. will occupy space in an office building formerly the headquarters of Greg Norman’s companies.

Tiger’s return
Tiger Woods finish at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational, his first tournament since May, was just that – a finish. As expected his game was not sharp and the T-38 in the 76-man field, in which there was no Friday cut, has some flashes of his former greatness. The best news for Tiger-fans though was his physical injuries seem to be all healed and he says he is enthusiastic about playing.

With the PGA Championship this week he obviously is looking to improve his competitiveness and get more “reps” to use his word for tournament rounds.

Both he and former caddie Steve Williams (on winner Adam Scott’s bag – talk about poetic justice) were questioned over the circumstances surrounding Woods firing Williams with Williams relating a different version than Woods. And under the heading extreme trivia, Woods wore for the first time plastic cleats in a pair of Nike prototype golf shoes based on a training shoe the company had made for him for use during his rehabilitation.

New shoes
Speaking of shoes, adidas Golf has extended their very popular TOUR360 line with the TOUR360 ATV and says it is “the company’s most technologically-advanced shoe to date.”

“This shoe takes all of the advancements of the TOUR360 line and pushes it one step further,” said Kevin Ross, VP adidas Golf. “We’ve taken feedback from our Tour players and combined it with our experience from the previous four versions to make ATV even better – the best performing TOUR360 yet.”

ATVs (All-Terrain Versatility) have a 10-spike sole specifically designed for stability and traction on uneven ground. The MSRP is $190 and they will be in shops Sept. 15.

The saga of Tiger Woods’ fall from grace has all the trappings of tabloid fiction. But a two-author team was able to overcome the challenge inherent in writing a fictionalized account of Woods’ image suicide without resorting to sensationalism.

Michael Bamberger and Alan Shipnuck are certainly known to golf fans. Both are with Sports Illustrated and both have written exceptionally well about the game. Bamberger’s first golf book was “The Green Road Home,” a 1986 accounting of caddying on the PGA Tour and he’s gotten better since. Shipnuck’s best can be read in “The Battle for Augusta National” and “Bud, Sweat & Tees.”

That is until now with publication of THE SWINGER.

The hard part of writing a novel about such a high profile event was not the changing the names of the main characters nor tweaking circumstances without loosing relevancy; it was doing so without going overboard.

The main character in THE SWINGER is Tree Tremont, a clever play on Woods’ name and Tremont doesn’t live in splendid isolation in suburban Orlando but in St. Petersburg. His wife is Italian not Norwegian as Woods’ ex-spouse is and so on.

The authors also achieved the difficult middle ground between exposé and worshipping-fan apology slash excuse by resorting to the old standby of humor. THE SWINGER at times evokes a smile and sometimes outright laughs reflecting both the authors’ innate empathy for someone who really messed up and the hope he will recover his former greatness.

THE SWINGER
By Michael Bamberger and Alan Shipnuck
Simon & Schuster/Sports Illustrated
254 pages
$25.00

Let’s be clear, Padraig Herrington’s two infractions of the Rules of Golf resulted in two penalties: two strokes and don’t bother to show up tomorrow.

A pretty stiff sentence for a ball that rolled a couple of dimples forward while he was retrieving his marker but didn’t roll quite the same number of dimples back after the coin was gone. Harrington of course didn’t see the ball had not returned to its original spot and was correctly penalized two strokes for hitting a ball not in its original position. Then, and also correctly, since the two stroke assessment was not determined until after he had left the scoring tent, according to the Rules of Golf the future Hall of Famer was disqualified from the European Tour HSBC Classic in Abu Dhabi for having signed what now was an incorrect scorecard.

The villain in this and the Camilo Villegas DQ at the Hyundai Tournament of Championship two weeks ago has been made out to be the television viewers who called in the errors. In both cases (but there have been many over the years) someone called or emailed officials to report what they had witnessed. Perhaps it was revealed after running the episode several times in slow-motion from recordings made on their digital video recorders but nonetheless there are a couple of things clear; Harrington and Villegas broke the Rules of Golf and neither did it with the intent of gaining an advantage.

The fans that reported the rules breaches are not villains. They may be puffed up with their own importance or delighted inflicting pain on those rich toursters or whatever, but they aren’t villains. They are part of the game or at least the professional game that’s shown to millions weekly on television.

Golf is the only sport where the spectators are part of the playing field and routinely determine a competition’s outcome be it getting struck by a wayward shot or calling tournament brass to tattle on an infraction no one on site could have seen. But that’s the situation anyone faces entering the play-for-pay arena to win money and gain fame.

So be it.

What isn’t really fair is only a few get that kind of armchair scrutiny because they are the ones, i.e., the top stars and tournament leaders, on television. The rationalization is, fan scrutiny is an opportunity cost to be the next Tiger Woods.

The second reason the villains in this little golf drama are not the guys salivating into their salsa at the prospect of catching Phil or Kooch messing up is, the rules are the rules. There is little wiggle room or interpretation for circumstances or intent. (This of course is not true, just look at the quad-annual Decisions of the Rules of Golf revision last November: 28 new Decisions, 51 revised Decisions and one withdrawn Decision for more than 1,200 entries). The problem for amateurs or professionals is there are too many often obscure and arcane rules. Let the professionals and elite amateurs deal with that though.

What’s much more important is the state of the rules is such that 99 plus percent of the rounds played do not follow them. Almost all amateur golf certainly could be described as ‘casual rounds’ and many of these scores are posted into the handicap system thus becoming part of another of golf’s shibboleths. Because the scores are from rounds that didn’t follow the Rules they are not reflective of the player’s skill not to mention they shouldn’t be used to figure a handicap.

It might be something obvious as a mulligan or “breakfast ball” off the first tee or conceding a putt even though it’s a medal not match play round or how the old, “Well, I guess that one’s out of bounds so I’ll just drop a ball here” line.

Whose fault is it? Certainly the player for not caring he or she is violating the Rules but also the USGA for having created a monstrous mess putting even well intentioned recreational players in violation sometime in every round they play.

Even Jack Nicklaus agrees they should be rewritten, making that point in a recent interview. The Rules of Golf are too complicated…way too complicated, with penalties disproportionate to the infraction, such as being disqualified for the ball moving when you didn’t see it and the movement was caught after the round and you had signed your card.

The attitude of amateurs towards the Rules of Golf is not disrespectful but that they are pretty much irrelevant most of the time.

Rewriting, simplifying and clarifying the Rules of Golf need not do a thing for Padraig or Camilo – they’re pros expected to know and live by the Rules – but could make them more relevant and more enjoyable to the typical amateur.

Powerbilt Green Grass
Powerbilt Golf has an interesting angle on golf club marketing. In this case they are taking a venerable brand name, Citation, and making it exclusively available in golf pro shops. Also starting is a program so each club will be individually fitted by a professional to each purchaser using the Club Pro fitting system which has 51 interchangeable shafts and 28 club heads. Club Pro Inc. will then build clubs to order.

This is an innovative idea for a company the size of Powerbilt who do not have a custom-build operation of their own. The Citation line includes CP forged face insert irons for $599 in Apollo steel shafts or $699 with Black Magic graphite shafts. Citation drivers have a forged beta titanium cup face and also are available with the Black Magic shaft at $199.

Adams says YES
YES putters were among the first to use a grooved face for better roll of the ball and for a number of years were a player in the putter market segment reaching a sales of over $10 million in 2007. Since then a combination of events including the recession saw sales fall by 75 percent to the point where the company could not sustain itself and this past November filed for bankruptcy.

In a U.S. Bankruptcy Court auction on Tuesday, Adams Golf purchased all the assets, patents and intellectual property of YES for $1.65 million. YES should be a good purchase for Adams who has a solid place as one of the top hybrid club makers.

Duval gets to Scratch
David Duval is now a part-owner of Scratch Golf the high-end iron maker located in Chattanooga, Tenn. Duval had been on the Nike tour staff for over ten years but was dropped in 2010 and the 2001 British Open champion was looking for a new deal.

Scratch is tiny though. Its 2010 sales were $1.5 million so they have done a good job just surviving where many other club makers have failed. They are mostly known for their line of wedges and can be found in some custom shops plus big box retailers PGA Tour Superstore, Golf Town and some Edwin Watts Golf stores.

This is the second Tour star to be an owner of Scratch Golf. Ryan Moore had a similar deal and backed out last year.

Tiger not only endorser in trouble
The much chronicled troubles off the course, on the course and in his business have put Tiger Woods into a spotlight he would like to get out of and have cost him probably hundreds of millions of dollars in the divorce settlement and lost endorsement income.

Now Ad Age magazine reports a study naming Tiger as the least effective celebrity endorser but also bringing the whole idea of there being a value to celebrity endorsement into question. The study found creative content was more important in television advertisements and any help a celebrity might bring to a product was often severely compromised by viewers’ perception of the celebrity.

Celebrities generally were ineffective and did not give the benefits previously thought.

The other celebrity endorsers at the bottom with Woods were Lance Armstrong, Kenny Mayne, Dale Earnhardt and Donald Trump.

The PGA Merchandise Show starts in Orlando, Fla. two weeks from now but many equipment makers think they get an advantage by announcing new products early. Here’s a few of the avalanche coming across my desk plus a couple of notes of interest.
White is right
For some time there’s been the Odyssey White Hot putter and even the Mitsubishi Diamana White Board shaft – a Tiger Woods favorite. You can’t overlook Ian Poulter’s limited edition Cobra ZL Driver with a white shaft and head. And of course TaylorMade has the Burner SuperFast 2.0 with a white crown and soon will have the R11 also with white crown plus the Rossa Ghost putter line, a huge success for them.

The strangest thing though has been what amounts to a stampede to white grips. All the major grip makers Golf Pride, Lamkin and Winn have a version and reports say all are selling very well.

Since color has nothing to with performance except perhaps as a psycological factor does this mean white is the new macho color?

Bushnell Hybrid
They are billing it as the “ultimate distance measuring device,” which remains to be seen until some field testing is done, but it is intriguing. The Bushnell Hybrid is both a laser range finder and a GPS device. It will come with 16,000 courses preloaded with no membership fee which is excellent news. MSRP is $499.

On the course the GPS function gives yardages to four points on each hole, like the front and back of the green and carry over a hazard. The laser can then be used to get exact distance to the pin or to any other point not measured by the GPS.

And then there were four
In case it makes a difference to you, the eighth annual Tavistock Cup charity exhibition is back at Isleworth G&CC in Windermere, Fla. and will be held March 14-15. Instead of just Isleworth and cross-town rival Lake Nona CC, the field has been expanded to include two other high end country clubs, one owned by Tavistock Group who also own Isleworth and Lake Nona.

Albany, a Tavistock Group resort being built in the Bahamas and Queenwood Golf Club outside London, England with participate in the 36-hole made-for-Golf Channel event. In past years some big name players have teed it up giving lots of publicity to Tavistock Group, owner Joe Lewis and of course the high-end real estate they are peddling in these golf course developments. The past playing list includes Tiger Woods, Ernie Els, Mark O’Meara, Paula Creamer, Annika Sorenstam and 2010 U.S. Open champion Graeme McDowell.

Annika a la Carte
Since retiring Annika Sorenstam has been building a family and busy designing courses, running her Orlando, Fla. golf academy and doing charity work. She now is venturing into the television arena with a series entitled “Golf a la Carte” hosted by Tom and Sonja Horan of radio’s “Speaking of Golf.”

Sorenstam says she will introduce each segment and sometimes appear on the show itself which will be shot at resorts and golf clubs. The show’s cooking segments will feature the facility’s head chefs plus celebrity cooks.

No word which network will carry the show but the Food Channel and the Golf Channel are obvious possibilities.

STX Golf
STX putters have a devoted following and for 2011 the company is updating the popular Sync Tour Mallet as the STX SS2 Putter. The head is smaller and the heel-toe weighting has redesigned but overall weight is up to 355 grams. It will be available soon at a MSRP of $110.

TMaG’s Seeding
Though not strictly a new idea (both TMaG last year and others previously) TaylorMade Golf is doing what they are calling “a seeding initiative” to give away 20,000 Burner 2.0 6-irons to golfers who register their web site. The Burner 2.0 model was introduced in October 2010 to great reviews and became the number one selling iron on and off course in November.

Traditionally known for their industry leading drivers, TMaG has made significant inroads against the competition with the Burner iron line. This spring aiming at the better player segment there will be three new forged iron models-TPMB (Tour Preferred® Muscleback), TPMC (Tour Preferred Muscle Cavity) and TPCB (Tour Preferred Cavityback).

As 2011 approaches three golf stories from 2010 will have an impact in the New Year and beyond.

First is the comeback of Tiger Woods. Fans, other Tour players and certainly golf businesses want the former world’s number one player, in words of the Golf Channel, “on the first page of the leader board.” As has appeared here in previous columns, golf needs a winning and personally engaging Woods.

It is self-evident also Woods needs golf even more.

Next, the spin-off of Acushnet Company by Fortune Brands may set the equipment business on a new course. Several possibilities exist for new ownership of the world’s largest golf equipment company and golf’s iconic brands, Titleist and Foot-Joy.

Acushnet could become part of another golf company. A move in that direction would most likely mean anti-trust scrutiny, maybe lawsuits or other entanglements and lots of ‘fooling-around.’ Probably enough fooling-around that any competitor would think twice (or maybe three times) before raising their hand to make a bid.

The makers of the market dominant golf balls and golf shoes could go to someone outside the industry. Acushnet has been and still is very profitable and thus attractive though the golf industry has at best only modest growth prospects. In fact, Acushnet does have some of the characteristics prized by an avid golfer named Warren Buffett, so Berkshire Hathaway might even be a candidate.

However the most likely deal is using private money and perhaps even Acushnet CEO Wally Uihlein is putting together the necessary billion to billion and a half. Presumably the idea would be to either keep Acushnet private or take it public to recover the investment. Proven, profitable management would stay in place and there would be a minimal impact on the equipment business competitive landscape. But the most important factor, for the company and the golf industry, would be continuation of Acushnet’s decades-long commitment to product quality and innovation.

Lastly David Fay, executive director of the United States Golf Association retired. He became USGA’s leader shortly after the Ping/Karsten Solheim law suit fiasco over the association’s ruling concerning iron grooves and ends his tenure with the disappearance of the so-called ‘great grooves controversy’ as the USGA mandated the end to box grooves.

Fay had some credible achievements during his 21 year leadership such as seeing the U.S. Open booked on courses the public could actually play (i.e., Bethpage State Park’s Black Course) and putting the finances of the organization on very firm ground. In fact, there is lots of money in the bank to fund a variety of programs “for the good of the game” though some critics question why a not-for-profit organization whose stated purpose is to determine the rules of the game and conduct a national championship needs all those millions.

The new USGA executive director will take on a major question. He or she may continue down the path placing evermore restrictions on golfers and their equipment or allow the game to continue to evolve and grow as it has for over five centuries while embracing appropriate new ideas. That’s a big task.

Woods anniversary
A year and a few days after the infamous car wreck at the end of his home’s driveway in Orlando’s Isleworth CC development just about everything that possibly could be said or written about Tiger Woods has been written or said. The situation now has to be improved by his returning to form on the course not a public relations campaign.

LPGA folds to Lawless attack
During the season ending tournament week for the LPGA Championship starting Monday, the LPGA will hold a player meeting to vote on removing the “female at birth” clause from the membership requirements of the organization. In response to a suit by Linda Lawless in federal court charging discrimination, the former police officer who was surgically changed to a female five years ago, says there was discrimination by the LPGA in rejecting an application for membership.

Big Bertha turns 20
It may be hard to remember golf before the Big Bertha but the first of the ‘large headed’ drivers was introduced in 1991 and a revolution in golf club technology was begun. At the time Callaway Golf made a logical extension of the thinking behind those battered metal number one clubs then found at driving ranges and said why not make a well designed quality club that will help the average golfer hit the ball further?

The 190cc (or about 40 percent of today’s typical head size) Big Bertha quickly became the best selling driver and after five centuries of traditional clubs it marked the end to the wooden club most recently crafted from persimmon or maple. The performance difference was startling to pros and amateurs alike and soon other club makers jumped on the idea. As an aside, recent Euro team Ryder Cup captain Colin Montgomery fueled the claims of astounding jumps in distance over persimmon with the hyperbolic assessment he hit the ball 30 yards further. Of course he was a paid Callaway spokesman at the time and his much publicized statement helped rocket Big Bertha sales.

The Big Bertha and its offspring however did make Callaway the dominant driver brand for more than ten years only relinquishing the spot when TaylorMade Golf brought out with the “r series” of titanium alloy drivers which became the most used driver on Tour.

Finally, with 19th-hole wagers in mind, the name Big Bertha comes from a giant howitzer cannon used by the Germans in World War I that fired a 16.5-inch 1,800 pound shell almost eight miles.

Wie ends a frustrating year
Many were looking to 2010 to be Michelle Wie’s breakout year – a major win or two and an assault on the top spot in the world ranking.

It didn’t happen for a number of reasons with injuries restricting her play and practice. The most recent was her WD (bad back) from the Lorena Ochoa Invitational two weeks ago where she was defending champion. Her one 2010 win was the CN Canadian Open by four shots but she displayed a less than scintillating performance on the weekend.

Listening to her it did seem the Stanford University senior had found some balance between her personal and professional lives with an attitude that signaled her readiness to challenge the best players every week. That was not to be and Wie will not play in the LPGA Tour Championship in Orlando since the event was moved to the first week in December making a conflict with college finals.

This is a problem for Wie, not just that she won’t play but that the LPGA is putting on a massive publicity campaign in Orlando that even includes players making personal appearances everywhere from Walt Disney’s Magic Kingdom to Orlando Magic basketball games. Wie has not been there.

The following week is the Omega Dubai Ladies Masters and since Omega is one of her biggest sponsors it’s a cinch she will play. Is it any wonder some may resent Wie?