Our deepest sympathies to Josh Sens for having to take out the 8 a.m. Golf news litterings with this “strategic alliance” “news” of 86-year-old Gary Player joining with Jack Nicklaus’s firm for design resource assistance.
Essentially the Nicklaus plan factory will churn out whatever stuff Player is paid slap his name to. Sens writes:
Under the arrangement, Player will enlist the resources of Nicklaus Design to help him launch his reborn Gary Player Design business. (Nicklaus Design is an affiliate of GOLF.com’s parent company, 8AM Golf.) That business has been largely inactive over the past two years, held up by a legal dispute between Player and a company run by one of his sons.
Family.
With that dispute now behind him, Player said he was eager to get back to designing and building courses around the world, and that the relationship with Nicklaus Design would be key as his own design company starts afresh.
Amateurism, in my opinion, is entirely a matter of convenience, depending upon the financial condition of the individual. It is nice for a man to make a hobby of his favorite sport, to play it or leave it alone as he likes. But…it is fine to be an amateur if one can afford it. BOBBY JONES
Peter Alliss got away with things no one other broadcaster could. He’d grunt, gargle, mock, violate the “norms” of broadcasting and when Alliss turned serious, you knew the tournament was about to be decided. For this American viewer, he joined a cast of legends that marked the Golden Age of golf television and every year at The Open, Alliss’ solo stints were always a highlight of the championship. And it was his general gravitas and light touch that made an otherwise slow sport worth watching.
“The Great Man” was far more than a broadcaster, however, with a Royal Air Force stint, over thirty professional wins, two European Tour Vardon trophies, books (illustrated, fiction and non) and his proudest accomplishment, a long Ryder Cup run including playing on the same team as his father Percy.
He would undoubtedly have loved seeing the start of Reuters’ obituary:
Former Ryder Cup player Peter Alliss, who won 31 tournaments in his career before a successful stint as a commentator in which he was referred to as the "voice of golf," has died at the age of 89, the European Tour said on Sunday.
Golf Architecture’s Richard Humphreys updates us on construction of 2027 PGA Championship host, the PGA Frisco. The Gil Hanse-designed East course and Beau Welling-designed West course are being constructed at the same time near Dallas with a June 2022 opening scheduled after the PGA of America wisely insisted on a year of grow-in.
While the property didn’t look particularly captivating in photos and flyovers, the early images and comments about the course presentation are pretty exciting:
“The property here reminded me a bit of Southern Hills – the topography, along with the creek so prominently featured,” said Hanse. “Of course, Southern Hills is now surrounded by Tulsa. But when Perry Maxwell built it, Southern Hills probably looked a lot like our site in Frisco does today.
“This used to be a ranch, so we focused on that, along with what is some really interesting topography, good rolling ground. But everything has been done in proportion to the broad expanses we’re dealing with here. In that context the bunkers are the calling card, the most visible feature out there – and they are dramatic.”
And this too:
Like father, like son 👌 #Tiger pic.twitter.com/9m2e1dYjMo
— HowDidiDo (@HowDidiDo) November 1, 2020I was initially surprised that the (understandably) protective Tiger Woods would expose his 11-year-old to the national TV spotlight at this month’s PNC Championship (aka the Father-Son-Daughter-Stepchild, etc…).
But it’s a tribute to the well-regarded and impressively-attended 20-team event of major winners that Woods even considered his son’s request. And it was Charlie’s idea, writes Doug Ferguson, reporting Justin Thomas’s comments this week:
“Tiger and I talked about it a bunch. He brought it up a while ago that Charlie wanted to play and Charlie really wanted to play with us,” Thomas said Tuesday. “For some reason, Charlie just always wants to beat me, it doesn’t matter what it is. Although he’s never beaten me in golf or a putting contest, he still talks trash just like his dad. It will be fun.
“We’ll have that like inner tournament within a tournament, trying to shut his little mouth up, but it will be fun.”
2020 saw the opening of fifteen courses eligible for Golf Digest’s “Best New” award in what appears more like the new normal than an aberration, as Derek Duncan writes of the three courses singled out this year:
It’s humorous now to think that the 40 or so new courses that opened in 2010 didn’t form a critical mass large enough to merit the magazine’s full attention and thus an award. The course-construction recession was considered a temporary squall, but course openings have remained maddeningly scarce over the past 10 years, and this year’s class consists of just 15 graduates. But feeling that new course openings are now more newsworthy than ever, we’ve decided to proceed with the prize—though because of travel difficulties and the extenuating circumstances of the moment we gave each facility that opened in late 2019 or 2020 the option to postpone its candidacy until 2021. (A number of courses took us up on the offer; wait for them next year.)
The Sheep Ranch by Coore and Crenshaw won, with some comically-artificial Tom Fazio real estate play called Troubadour finishing second. Nothing says natural like a creek atop a mountain guarding six tees boxes:
Over at Golf Magazine they’ve posted their top 100 already and now add a state-by-state list. I have no profound or even mundane observations about the lists. But I will apologize to all of California’s high-end clubs (and their stocked comfort stations) for getting beat by little daily fee Rustic Canyon (16th in the Golden State).
Enjoy…
Now that I’ve gotten your attention…yes, actually, it takes no imagination at all to picture the above-mentioned in the headline. But that was the one “reveal” Keith Pelley gave Sportsmail in a Monday interview following last Friday’s news dump of a PGA Tour-European Tour alliance.
This should have happened ages ago in the form of WGC’s or when geographically logical:
Starting in 2022, look for co-sanctioned events in Britain for players on both tours built around the Open at St Andrews and in the autumn following the end of the FedEx Cup.
‘Those are areas offering great opportunities where we’ve agreed to look closely to see what we can do,’ said Pelley.
‘I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to sit in the room as partners rather than competitors. It totally changes the dynamic.’
With the USGA Executive Committee essentially a cast of living, breathing bobbleheads I doubt most care who they nominate these days. Nonetheless, the latest three to join the group of 15 have impressive careers still going and will surely add to a committee filling two outgoing seats—a subtle reminder to those with a sense of humor that the nominating process is never over until the big black tie dinner.
2021 USGA Executive Committee Nominations Announced
Fifteen-member group serves as the Association’s volunteer board
LIBERTY CORNER, N.J. (Dec. 1, 2020) – The United States Golf Association (USGA) today announced three new nominees to its 15-member Executive Committee: Chuck Brymer, chairman of DDB Worldwide; Cathy Engelbert, commissioner of the WNBA and former Deloitte CEO; and Anthony Petitti, president of sports and entertainment for Activision Blizzard.
I have no idea if the organizers find the .21 for last week’s The Match 3 a success or not given the bizarre sports ratings of 2020. As Mitch Salem’s roundup of last Friday’s cable numbers highlights, The Match was just edged out by WETV’s Love After Lockup with the coveted demo and landed 8th on the list of November 27, 2020’s most watched cable telecasts.
After the streaming debacle that was The Match 1, the absolute ratings stunner that was The Match 2—a higher rating than the final round of the rescheduled U.S. Open—the average of a million viewers is probably about right for a celebrity golf match.
For the historians who fled the spectacle—and there were many—Phil Mickelson and Charles Barkley defeated Peyton Manning and Steph Curry 4&3.
Back in April Keith Pelley was lamenting the difficult financial times. Job losses were predicted, etc.
In abruptly announcing a new PGA Tour alliance, Pelley scoffed at a Twitter assertion that the European Tour was in poor financial shape.
It’s a particularly strange stance given how there would be complete understanding amidst a pandemic that things were not perfect.
The result of Pelley’s obvious truth distortion now leaves him open to some pretty and deserved criticism. Not for joining forces with the PGA Tour. No as Alistait Tait writes in a superb post, the lying seems crude given the spector of the Tour letting go of off a huge portion of the staff. It’s 68, Tait writes.
Since the tour is in “robust financial health” any chance of those 68 getting their jobs back? Or maybe the Tour IS in “robust financial health” because it shed those jobs.
While one more fall event is to be played this week in Mexico the West Coast Swing is not far away. And outside of a smattering fans in Maui and (gulp) a downscaled but still-amtitious Waste Management Open, fans will not be in attendance in early 2021. (The viability of the events remains in question as California has traveler quarantine rules in some counties and other lockdowns coming).
The Sony Open will not have fans.
And the first of three California tournaments announced Monday their plan to play the Farmers Insurance Open without fans. From Tod Leonard’s GolfDigest.com story:
The blow of no fans will be lessened, Gorsich said, because the County of San Diego did give its approval last week for pro-ams to take place on Monday and Wednesday of Farmers week. “To not have pro-ams would have been another big hit,” he said. “Getting pro-ams was a big win for us.”
The Tournament of Champions, Sony Open and American Express also will have pro-ams, and it figures that Riviera and Pebble will, too, if their local governments approve.
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