"You will always define events in a manner which will validate your agreement with reality."
- Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

Tiger Woods walks, talks and looks basically the same as he did when he won the US Open by 15 strokes in the summer of 2000. He wears red on Sundays, just like he did when he won the PGA Championship by five strokes in 2006. But anyone with more than a cursory interest in professional golf knows the Tiger Woods of 2012 isn't the Tiger Woods of 2000 or 2006. 15 years of golf at the highest level has taken a physical toll, leading to multiple knee surgeries. The public airing of his multiple infidelities turned his name from one companies lavished millions to be associated with to one that matched Kim Kardashian and Jesse James as late night joke fodder.

So why would the international golf media treat the 2012 Tiger Woods like the 2006 Tiger Woods?

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It was not a racist comment

Rude?  Yes.  Vulgar?  Check.  Racial?  Uh-huh.  Racist?  Nope. 

Tiger Woods does have a black ass (or at least 1/8th of a black ass, depending on the how Tiger is describing his racial makeup these days).  Williams wasn’t making an editorial statement about all black people with his subdued acceptance speech or repeating stereotypes for a laugh (coughFuzzyZoellercough). 

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Steve Williams' Adam Scott's victory at the WGC-Bridgestone has been dissected by almost every golf pundit from every direction.  The award for the biggest stretch goes to Cameron Morfit of Golf Magazine.

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Golf Magazine released their Top 100 Courses issue recently. Lead by Pine Valley, the bi-annual list is meant to determine the finest courses in the United States and worldwide.  So what does that have to do with the debate of whether advances in golf equipment are good or bad for the game?

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am•a•teur
Noun: A person who engages in a pursuit, esp. a sport, on an unpaid basis.
Adjective: Engaging or engaged in without payment; nonprofessional.

Above is the definition of amateur supplied by Google. Fairly straightforward, unless you are Tom Watson:

The amateurs today are pros; they're not amateurs. They play a lot of competition. They have the trainers like the pros do, they have the coaches like the pros do, they have the video equipment like the pros do.
They're AmNOs - amateur in name only.

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I'm beginning to think golf agent to the stars William ‘Chubby' Chandler has a sort of spidey-sense that alerts him whenever there is an opportunity to critique Americans as a whole. He never misses a trick.

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Dear Tiger:

I just wanted to get this off my chest.  I know things haven't been great between us, so this shouldn't be a surprise.  It's over. 

I just can't deal with your moodiness, your inability to share, to really be a part of this relationship.  I've tried and tried to get you to open up, to show you actually cared about me and the things I do for you.  All I get are bland generalities and when I try to find out what is really wrong, you give me than death stare and shut down.

I want to be fair and tell you this before you find out from someone; I've found someone else.  His name is Rory.  I always thought he was cute, but he has opened up to me more in the last few days than you have in the last few years.  I can just ask him stuff without it becoming a big thing.  With you, I get more insight lately following your twitter feed than in person.  And (I apologize if this sounds catty) he gives me what I need like you haven't in a long time.

I hope we can be cordial after this.  Part of me will always love you, but I have to do this for me.

The Golf Media

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As the US Open approaches, three recent articles lament the performances of high profile golfers in majors.  Not golfers who never won (like Kenny Perry) or one time winners (Davis Love III) or even two time major winners whose talent took a back seat to excesses (John Daly).  Instead, the articles speak of the ‘failures' of Ernie Els (three majors), Phil Mickelson (four) and Tiger Woods (fourteen).  What these articles forget are facts every one of us knows inherently but has been blurred during the Tiger era (4/10/1997-8/16/2009); golf is hard and winning majors is harder.

For fun, I've looked at the major records of Mickelson and Els and pulled out every time they finished in the top five without winning to determine how many can be ‘blamed' on respective failures.

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The conventional wisdom from the golf powers regarding decreasing golf rounds over the years are either the length of time a golf round takes or the cool factor of golf are the main culprits.  To that end, recently a number of initiatives have been championed (Tee It Forward by the USGA, the 12 hole round by Jack Nicklaus, Power Play Golf by IMG among others) in order to reverse the trend.  While I don't begrudge attempts to shake things up in the golf world, I believe the attempts mentioned below ignore the three main obstacles that keep people from taking up the sport we all know and love/hate/love:

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As the days become longer and hotter in the Washington DC area, a (ahem) young man's thoughts of course turn to...the future of AT&T National?

Sure, there are those in this area are shortsightedly thinking about the US Open at Congressional in less than a month's time.   But a tweet reminded me of true intrigue surrounding Capitol City golf:

Lets talk about the players, shall we?

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"Faster, Higher, Stronger" is the current official Olympic motto (as opposed to the unofficial "How much will you give me for my vote" the IOC has taken to heart).  The obvious idea behind the motto is the athletic goal of constantly getting better at your pursuit.  How ridiculous would it be if the powers that be determined no track star who can run an under four minute mile or no basketball player over seven feet in height should participate because of the unfair advantage it would provide against other participants or the history of the game.  You can probably figure out where this is going.  More prevalent than any other hot button topic in the world of golf (more than even whether Tiger Woods should be boiled in pitch or merely tarred and feathered) is the distance issue.

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I don't know where Barker Davis is these days.  Wherever he is, I hope he has his favorite condiments close by to help the heaping pile of crow he should be wolfing down right now. 

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Chubby Chandler annoys me.

Chandler, the agent for Ernie Els, Lee Westwood and Rory McIlroy (among others), was the topic of an interview* where he continued his tireless defense for the ability for European golfers ranked in the top ten to play whenever and wherever they want.  Chandler is doing his job as agent, using any pull or publicity he can to better the work conditions of his clients, I just wish he wouldn’t shroud his goals as Gandhi-like struggles against an oppressive regime.

*It was less an interview and more John Huggan opening up his recorded, asking Chandler if there was anything on his mind, and every once in a while acting as a literary Flavor Flav, hyping Chandler’s comments.  Of course, now I want to see Huggan with a baseball cap turned to the side, over sized Batman sunglasses, wearing a clock around his neck.  Damn, I wish I knew how to use Photoshop.

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Dan Akroyd - Alvaro Quiros won the Omega Dubai Desert Classic today, beating a field that included the top three ranked golfers in the world.  Meanwhile, Dustin Johnson is coming off a two win season on the US PGA Tour.  Which under 30 bomber would you choose?  This will be the subject of tonight’s Point/Counterpoint; Jane will take the Dustin Johnson point and I will take the Alvaro Quiros counterpoint. 

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Besides incredible golf talent, what do Alexis Thompson and Greg Norman have in common?  They both want to be given special rights and privileges.

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The editorial staff of Golf Digest posted a letter (e-mail?) recently from a reader lamenting the amount of coverage Tiger Woods receives.  This Tiger Fatigue is a topic that has come up here on various Waggle Room posts; that irrelevant of Tiger's standing in a tournament, every one of his shots is shown, and undue attention is placed on him even if he isn't at a tournament. 

Unfortunately, the points the reader makes couldn't be more wrong without (enter Sarah Palin here if you are liberal, Nancy Pelosi if you are conservative) being involved. 

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As reported elsewhere in the blogosphere (what up Ryan?), David Feherty has been hired by The Golf Channel, joining Nick Faldo and Peter Oosterhuis as CBS Sports golf analysts moonlighting there.  At first glance, this appears to be good news for Feherty's accountant but nothing more. 

Then remember TGC is owned by Comcast, which is in the final stretch of buying merging with NBC Universal, the only other network covering PGA Tour action.  Combine that with the fact Feherty regularly is at the top of the list of favorite golf commentators, and the possibility of contractual tug of war for the Ulsterman's services.

Feherty has reportedly recently resigned with CBS, so speculation might be moot.  But what if NBC/Comcast, now that they have regular access to Feherty, casually mentions Johnny Miller isn't long for the 18th tower (a possibility some dope on a golf blog mentioned recently).  Can Feherty (who I'm sure has some sort of out in his CBS contract if a more visible position is offered by a another company) turn that down?  How about if he is also offered a presence on whatever Versus becomes? 

Next week, Golf Channel will premiere the third season of their successful ‘Haney Project' series, with wildly successful political talk show host Rush Limbaugh.  And at first, I didn't understand why.

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Ian Poulter holds membership on both the US and Euro PGA Tours.  This may change soon:

"I have a house over in the States and my family is well settled over there, but then you can't deny playing two tours is becoming increasingly difficult, especially with the European Tour number you have to play going up," he added.

"It was 11 events two years ago before it went to 12 and now it's up to 13, and that's on top of having to play the mandatory 15 across the 'Pond'."

(By the way, Poulter has given a perfect example of how to pledge allegiance to a home tour without putting down the opposing tour.  No griping about the demands of the FedEx Cup tournament, no statements of the lack of camaraderie on tour.  Just a statement of numbers and a subtle inference that the Euro Tour is his home.)

Can a top player maintain membership on both tours without burning himself out?  Let's give it a shot:

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I have a 3 ½ year old daughter.  Because she is still at the age where hanging out with Dad is a good thing (my neighbor has a high school age daughter, so I know this won't last), she sees me play and watch golf regularly.  Sometimes we go into the backyard and ‘hit' restricted flight balls together.  I even took her to the local driving range a couple of weeks ago when my wife demanded I get her out of the house and out of her hair just to see how it would work out.

Fast forward to Saturday.  I take The Bean to the 3 year old birthday party for one of her classmates.  There are the traditional activities (mini moon bounce, swings, cupcakes, pizza, plays room, etc.) you'd expect at such a function.  The finale of the event was the breaking of the piñatas.   

Most of the kids when given the stick did not have the clubhead speed to do anything besides lightly tap the hollow candy filled victim (the piñatas were actually the type where you pull a string/ribbon and pulling the correct string opens it up, but that is less fun that whacking the heck out of it the hosts determined).  Then The Bean stepped up and, with a swing that may have been a little more over the top than optimum, tried to hit the piñata 300 yards plus.  Other parents commented about the velocity of the strikes; I mentioned she plays golf with me as a reason. 

Now The Bean is closer to 4 than she is to 3 and the majority of the children at the party were around 3, so that had something to do with it.  But maybe those smug First Tee commercials have a point; golf does teach things you use outside the course.

Rocco Mediate had three choices regarding his future:

• Grind it out on the PGA Tour for a couple of years, maybe have to go through Q-School, until he turns 50, then join the Senior Champions Tour for the easier money.
• End your career as a full time golfer and take the full time gig as an on-course reporter for the Golf Channel I'm sure exists.
• Win.

Who knew he would take door number 3.

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In the spring of 1986, Jack Nicklaus surprisingly won The Masters.  It was an emotional victory due to his history at Augusta National, his status in the game, and the fact that this was widely believed to be his last hurrah as a major champion (in fact, the victory was his last on the regular Tour).

In the spring on 2010, Phil Mickelson unsurprisingly won the Masters.  It was an emotional victory due to his history at Augusta National and the fact Mickelson's wife and mother were both battling cancer (making him a particularly heroic figure in comparison to the returning philanderer, Tiger Woods).  

Will history show this to be Mickelson's last hurrah as a major champion as well?

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A regular comment topic in various Waggle Room post is the need for a World Tour, where the elite professional golfers play against each other. 

It exists already.

Jan.        Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship

Feb        WGC-Accenture Match Play 

March  WGC-Doral Invitational 

March   Arnold Palmer Invitational  

April     The Masters Tournament  

May       Players Championship (US)

May       BMW PGA Championship (European)

June      The Memorial Tournament  

June     U.S. Open   

July        Barclays Scottish Open

July        British Open Championship  

August  WGC-Bridgestone Invitational                

August  PGA Championship                            

Nov.      WGC - HSBC Champions

Each of the 14 tournaments will have the majority of the elite professional golfers in the field.  This unofficial World Tour spans four continents and goes from late January to early November. 

Why do we need an official World Tour?