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3 Reasons Golf Falls Short Compared to Other Sports

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It's hard for golf to compete with other sports...
It’s hard for golf to compete with other sports…

About two weeks ago I was scanning through some radio stations and stopped at the sports radio show I tune into once in a while.  The hosts are talking about March Madness and how, in they’re opinion, the NCAA Tournament is the best sporting event going.  Meanwhile, they’re fielding calls from listeners agreeing or disagreeing with their choice.  Some say it’s the Super Bowl.  Some choose the World Series.  Others give their opinions on the NBA Championship or the Stanley Cup.  But one caller chose to take things in a different direction than the rest.

One caller asked why no one, other than he, were considering The Masters to be the greatest sporting event going.  While one of the hosts at least took it into consideration, the other practically laughed him off the line.  The host paying attention and going along with it even interjected that he actually prefers the U.S. Open over the Masters and considers that to be a worthy choice.  But his co-host?  Not a chance.  There was no way this guy was going to consider a golf tournament to be one of the greatest sports events of the year.  But why not?  The Masters is one of the four biggest events, arguably the biggest, in the golf year.  It’s loaded with stars of the PGA Tour, tradition and fanfare.  So why could he be talking it down?  I have a few ideas.

1. It’s too boring.  Let’s face it, watching a golf tournament on TV doesn’t really hold a candle to watching the other major sports, even if it is a major.  It’s quiet, slow-moving and honestly, we see the balls more than we see the actual players.  There’s plenty of skill and technique involved, but that doesn’t translate to the average sports fan because for all of the skill and technique there is, it doesn’t really require much athletic ability.  It’s just a tough sell, especially to sports fans who live in or close to a bigger market where professional teams from the big three sports play.

2.  The timing of The Masters.  There are two things wrong with the time of year the Masters occurs.  For starters, it happens right after The Final Four.  You can certainly argue that the NCAA Tournament is the greatest sporting event year-in and year-out.  So it’s incredibly hard to follow that up – and when you follow something as exciting as the Final Four with golf?  Well, you see the problem.

The second problem is that it occurs right at the beginning of the golf season.  We asked this a couple of weeks ago – why would the biggest tournament of the year happen right at the beginning of the season?  The timing of the sports biggest tournament just doesn’t make much sense.

3. There is no championship.  We’ve been down this road several times as well, but it matters!  There are four majors, but somehow none of them represents some type of tournament championship.  So when there are four “big” tournaments, they all end up discounting each other.  And if we can’t even decide which of the four is the most exciting in that particular sport, then how could we even try to compare it to any others?

It’s funny, but as much as I enjoy playing golf, I’m just not all that interested in watching it.  Is it possible that it’s because of the reasons above?  Maybe.  See, I need to know that the tournaments are going to mean something at the end of the year.  I don’t care who won the most money.  I don’t care what some complicated ranking system says.   I need a championship.  Now get me one of those installed at the end of the golf season and then you can start to convince me that it’s among the most exciting sporting events of the year.

Swing ’til you’re happy!

What I Took Away From The Masters

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For starters, I guess it was a pretty great tournament.  I didn’t take the time to watch much more than a few minutes of the final round (for the most part, I got my updates from ESPN), but I’ll take everyone’s word for it.  Lot’s of stories – a 14-year old makes the cut, Tiger’s two-stroke penalty, a dramatic playoff win…lots of stuff to talk about.  But I don’t want to do that.  Everyone is going to be talking about the obvious stuff.  Instead, I have a couple of questions.

Let’s starts with the 14-year old.  We’ve asked before if it’s good to have a kid playing in a tournament when a 16-year old played in the 2011 U.S. Open.  But a 14-year old at The Masters?  Are you kidding?  This kid’s mother was packing his lunch and meanwhile he’s keeping pace with Phil Mickelson at Augusta!  Great story, but my question is the same as it was two years ago – when a 14-year old is going stroke-for-stroke with some of the greats of the game, does that cheapen the sport or, at least, the tournament?  Does it make you look at the pro’s with a little bit less respect?

My next two questions though involve the Tiger controversy.  I’ll start with the ruling itself.  So everyone was hung up on the “as closely as possible” part of the rule.  The only real voice of reason I heard was from Curtis Strange when he said that as closely as possible could be determined as 6-8 inches – not 3-4 feet!  I have to agree.  When I hear “as closely as possible” I think “right beside.”  So to stand 3-4 feet behind where your shot was, you’re opening up a can of worms.  I mean, where is the “as closely as possible” line drawn?  What if his original shot was on a downhill lie and he then dropped 3-4 feet back onto a flat part of the fairway?  What then?  Would that be fair?  Would that be judged differently?

Even further…how is this giant loophole left open by the rule-makers?  How can you leave something like that up to interpretation?  If someone else did the same thing but moved 3-4 feet closer, is that the same?  What if they moved 6-8 feet one way or the other?  That certainly isn’t as close as possible either.  But…that’s all up for debate I guess, right?

But the whole controversy brings me to another issue.  Why is it that this day in age, with all of the officials, rangers, scorekeepers, etc. on the course that the player is responsible for keeping his own score?  Granted, we all keep our own scores when we play, but this is the pros, man.  Every professional sport has an official scorekeeper.  Why not golf?  A golfer is expected to sign his scorecard (in a designated area mind you) and remember the entire round?  Why wouldn’t an official be doing that for him?  This sport really needs to move out of the dark ages and update some of their rules.  It’s just silly and leads to stupid controversies such as this that take away from the game itself.

And just on a side note…inputting a rule to protect the players who don’t know the rules is absolutely ridiculous.  Seriously, is this a professional sport, or is it me and my buddies playing on a Sunday morning at the local muni?  If you’re going to play the game, you’d better know the rules.  Ignorance is not an excuse.  In the NFL, if a player doesn’t know something he did is a penalty, do the refs say “Oh, you didn’t know?  OK, well then instead of a 15-yard penalty it’ll just cost you five.”  If an NBA player didn’t realized he traveled before hitting a layup, do they let him keep one of the two points?  Of course not!  The rule is enforced!  They don’t implement another rule because the guy didn’t know!

We’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – for a sport that shouldn’t be nearly as complicated as it is, the rule-makers sure do their best to make it that way.  I mean, if you need to have a rule book, and then a separate book to, more or less, decipher the rule book…you have a problem.  This all boils down to the reason I don’t carry, don’t own and have never even thumbed through the rules of golf…nor do I have any plans to do so.  You could drive yourself nuts!  Don’t drive yourself nuts – know the basics and play for fun.

Swing ’til you’re happy!

Augusta National: The Good, Bad & Ugly

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"The
The Masters (by Torrey Wiley via Flickr | CC BY 2.0)

Augusta National Golf Club. The very name conjures up emotions deep within us. For some, those emotions might excite and inspire; while for others, they might sicken and disgust.

The Good
Augusta National is perhaps the epitome of golf courses. Despite not being in the birthplace of the game, the course is as symbolic as St. Andrews…perhaps more. We golfers daydream of walking its fairways; of turning Amen Corner; of being immersed in a golfer’s total paradise.

Of course, the club hosts The Masters every April – a tournament rich in history. Marking the start of the golf season for many, The Masters sends us images of Augusta in full spring bloom – lush green grass and floral (mainly magnolias and azaleas) bursting full of color. It’s no wonder there’s a huge marketing push surrounding the tournament – golfers of all levels yearn to go out and play after viewing just a few minutes of the action. Surely the golf industry as a whole benefits through the publicity of such an inspiringly beautiful course.

The Bad
Make no mistake, the course really is in pretty good shape. But Augusta groundskeepers are working with smoke and mirrors too. For example, the course spent half a million on an underground vacuum system that removes excess water. And according to a post here, Augusta National…

“…reportedly dyes ponds blue or black to hide algae bloom, spray paints grass to make it look more green in years when the newly planted ryegrass isn’t flourishing and even refrigerates, or warms, the azaleas so that they’ll be in perfect bloom for the second weekend in April. Rumors have it that this year [referring to 2012] Hollywood set designers have been brought in to Augusta to hide damage caused by the lawn chemical weed killer Imprelis that was found last year to kill trees as a side effect.”

Due to this addiction of perfect grooming (which apparently involves some degree of deception), we have something called the “Augusta Effect.” The notion that every course should strive to be as impeccably maintained as Augusta National – and anything less is less than perfect. This notion has led to other courses overseeding to keep greener longer; led to more pesticide use within the industry; and ultimately led to courses going belly-up – all in an effort to meet the expectations of average hacks everywhere, who have come to expect conditions like those they view on TV.

The Ugly
Unlike the cradle of golf in Scotland, Augusta is no Mecca – You will not find golfers on a pilgrimage to these links like they flock to St. Andrews. This is, of course, because we are not allowed to play there. Augusta National Golf Club, hallowed as it may be, also represents everything that is wrong with golf. It is the very root of negative golf stereotypes: closed-doored, sexist and filthy rich.

Sure, the club recently allowed its first female members, but that gesture made for good PR more than anything else. So the USGA and PGA Tour are faced with a conundrum: On the one hand, Augusta National helps stoke the golf economy every spring. But on the other hand, the club flies in the face of what the governing bodies of golf want to do – which is to grow the game beyond the average white male. They want to reach more women and minorities. They want to reach more inner-city youth. But should Augusta really be their poster child? That’s a tough sell.

For years I believed Augusta National Golf Club represented everything a golf course should be: Lush, beautiful and steeped in tradition – It really did make me want to go out and play. To be sure, seeing images of the course this week will inspire me once again. But over the years, I’ve come to realize the industry is using the Augusta legacy as a marketing tool – a facade, which exists mainly to excite the imagination.

Nowadays my inspiration doesn’t come from Augusta, but rather from the beginning of a new golf season – the excitement of getting out there and playing again after a long, cold winter and the thought of hanging out with good friends while enjoying the game we love. And, I guess, the possibility of finally hitting that elusive hole-in-one.

So my advice to you is to enjoy the tournament; the competition; the phenomenal golf. But take all the pomp and circumstance with a grain of salt. After all – most of us golf in the real world; not in fantasy land.

A Masters Party…Yeah!

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Is this how you'd envision a party for The Masters?
Is this how you’d envision a party for The Masters?

As the Masters gets closer I’ve been thinking; Why not have a Masters party! Normally, when we associate throwing a party for a sporting event it’s usually the Super Bowl. It’s time to change that. I understand baseball and basketball could have scheduling conflicts with their championships because they are best out of 7 and fall on any given day. Not golf, my friend.

Golf tournaments start on Thursday and 99% of the time end on Sunday. It’s a set schedule we can plan around. As an added bonus there are 4 majors. That’s 4 opportunities if you ask me. It couldn’t work out any better especially considering the warmer weather during golf season.

So how does this thing go down? It’s simple, just like in golf we can approach this like a hack, amateur or pro.  As a hack,  you invite your buddies over on Sunday, throw out some grub and play drinking games that coincide with the tournament. For instance, when Tiger or whoever misses the fairway, you drink. As an amateur,  you follow the same outline as a hack but the festivities run from Saturday to Sunday. Also, you class it up a bit.  You know, have different flavor wings instead of just Buffalo and maybe a couple imported beers as well.

As a pro, it is our job to perform as such. We must adhere to very strict rules. So, following the basic outline of an amateur, we again raise the standard. No paper plates, plastic cutlery or plastic glasses. We begin on Monday and continue to Sunday. This includes “practice rounds” and the tournament. Most importantly, we are pro’s, a green jacket must be worn the whole week.

I think I’m on to something here…

Hit’em long…yell FORE!!!

Has Tiger Become Just An Average Golfer?

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I want to start by giving some praise to ESPN.  I’ve been tuned into Sunday Night Baseball for about 30-40 minutes as of right now, and the only time I’ve seen the word “Tiger” is in reference to Detroit. 

Not for nothing, but when a golfer finishes tied for 40th, fifteen strokes off the lead and doesn’t break par once in four days…that’s the way it should be.  I should see the names Watson and Oosthuizen more than any other name today.  I should see those names so often that I’ll actually learn how to correctly pronounce Oosthuizen! 

But that brings me to my actual point.  Has Tiger fallen far enough that he can now be considered not much more than an average golfer on the tour?  When you really look at it, the stats show exactly that.  Despite a second place finish at the Honda Classic and his win this year at The Arnold Palmer Invitational, that’s his only win since 2009.  Follow his win with a +5 showing at The Masters, and his last win at a major dates back to the 2008 U.S. Open, though he has had some strong showings in between.

Could it be due to the knee injury suffered in 2008?  I think many people would attribute it to exactly that.  Couple that with the distraction of his more recent off-course issues, and you can see an obvious decline.  Even worse is that he is now 36 years old, right around a time when most pro athletes begin, or are already into, a physical break-down.  Obviously though, golfers are in a different category as there is not the same serious physical strain on the body as with some other sports.  But with younger players joining the tour every year, Tiger appears more and more beatable all the time.

I’m certainly not saying that Tiger is done.  I believe he’s far from it.  But what I am saying is, though the media will have you believe we are still watching the Tiger of several years ago, he is no longer the threat to win every time he sets foot on the course as he once was.  But to me, that’s good.  I prefer to see a wide open field in a tournament that anyone can win on any given weekend.  With so many great golfers on the tour, it’s nice to see some attention being given to them rather than the guy who finished so far back that he didn’t even matter.

But I’m sure many will not agree.  Many believe there needs to be one dominant player on the tour for others to gun for.  However, I don’t believe it’s about the other golfers.  It’s about the fans.  The fans need to be introduced to other golfers on the tour.  And by having a field that’s much more open than it may have been in the past, what better time or way to get it done? 

Tiger worked miracles for the PGA and they have reaped the benefits for sixteen years now.  But sooner or later, he’s not going to be there anymore.  So before it’s too late, they may want to take action to promote these many other golfers who have caught, and soon, will surpass the great Tiger.

Swing ’til you’re happy!
                     

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