Thought for the Day
The sooner you fall behind, the more time you’ll have to catch up
Riveting
In the last few weeks you may have learned that Luke Donald watched the movie Gravity in 3D, that Michelle Wie loved the fact that her pink Nike sunglasses matched her pink Nike shirt and that Lee Westwood had a five hour flight with Singapore Airlines. Is your life any the richer for knowing these things, courtesy of Twitter?
Reckless
The shutdown of the US government over the Senate’s inability to pass a budget meant that many golf courses run by the National Park Service had to close. To bring the world’s economy to the brink of collapse is one thing but to deny golfers the chance to play – simply unacceptable
Radical
It may have taken a while (97 years to be exact) but the US PGA is considering staging its championship event, the last major of the season, outside America for the first time.
The organisation’s chief executive officer Pete Bevacqua, told GolfWorld magazine: ‘It is far from a fait accompli that we are going to take the PGA Championship international [but] when we sat down to map our strategic plan to service our members and grow the game, the question arose as to what impact it would have to take the PGA Championship to an international local once or twice a decade.’
There are numerous hurdles that would need to be cleared before we could see, for the first time ever, two of a season’s four majors played outside the USA, most obviously the agreement of the US and other worldwide tours. But the fact that the PGA is even considering such a move is to be applauded. The Masters clearly cannot relocate, being the only major played at the same venue each year. And the USGA, which stages the US Open, would probably still prefer to see competitors in plus fours wielding hickory shafted clubs, so obsessed is it with ‘maintaining tradition’.
But encouragingly, Bevacqua also said: ‘Many pieces would have to fall in place. We need to push ourselves to think outside the box. What I have said internally is, “Shame on us if we don’t consider it and go through the exercise.”’
Regrettable
I yield to no-one in the depth of affection, admiration and gratitude I hold for Seve Ballesteros, whose loss I still mourn. But the competition created and named in his honour, the Seve Trophy, does his memory no favours. It was established in 2000 to give us a team matchplay event, similar to, and hopefully recreating the drama of, the Ryder Cup, which Seve helped transform. But it’s time to admit that the experiment hasn’t worked and to ditch it in favour of something that does.
This year’s staging was more notable for its absentees (including Sergio Garcia, Luke Donald, Rory McIlroy, Lee Westwood, Justin Rose and Ian Poulter) than those who took part, which has been a feature of the competition for some years now. The event struggles to attract sponsors or fans but most damningly, it completely lacks the spark, fire, energy, drama and excitement of the Ryder Cup.
Like the Presidents Cup in America, it is a pale shadow of the tournament it purports to emulate. The American event has been staged 10 times and team USA has won eight of those, with one victory to the International team and one tie. The Seve Trophy has been held eight times and team GB and Ireland has triumphed six times. It is hard to get excited about a wannabe event where the outcome is almost always the same.
Paul Lawrie, for whom I have the greatest respect, was critical of this year’s absent European Tour stars (all of whom, incidentally, are now based in America), saying that he was prepared to walk to Paris to represent his team. He added that by staying away they failed to honour Seve’s memory but I beg to differ. It is the insignificant, unexciting, lacklustre event itself which does that.
Reactionary
And while we’re on the subject of the Presidents Cup, earlier this year the International team captain, Nick Price, suggested reducing the number of matches during the competition (it has 34, over four days, rather than the Ryder Cup format of 28 in three days). He argued, quite rightly, that the greater number of matches strongly favoured the American team, which always has much greater strength in depth. His words seem to have been supported by this year’s result, in which team USA strolled to an 18.5 to 15.5 win that was a lot easier than the scoreline suggests.
In response to Price’s remarks, US Tour commissioner Tim Finchem said it was too early to be tinkering with the format of such a young event. He seems to be the only person in golf who regards making a judgement about an event’s format and future, after 10 stagings held over two decades, to be premature.
Quote of the Week
The Royal Hong Kong Club caddies hit the nail on the head. Their term for golf is ‘Hittee ball, say damn’
Dick Anderson