Spending More Time in the Sand Than David Hasselhoff

Very good article on Street & Smith’s SportsBusiness journal on why there are fewer golf blogs than in other sports, written by Jon Show. Couple of interesting points:

There is less controversy in golf, unlike in team sports where crazed Packer fans (for example) wanted the heads of the entire defensive coaching staff after the Pack’s miserable performance on D the second half of 2008. Who are you going to fire in golf – the caddy? You can see the absolute biggest that can get when Steve Williams, Tiger’s bagman, made his inappropriate comments about Lefty earlier this year.

Lack of passion. The so-called “motor” for online sports blogging and activity is passion about a sport and golf is, at best, quietly passionate. I think in this case that the word “passion” isn’t used correctly. It should be “psychotic” in reference to some of the talk radio and blogging goofballs who populate MLB, NBA, and NFL fandom. Bloggers need to be crazy to attract big audiences. Those of us who write about golf maybe don’t care so much about the big audience – or we’d write about NASCAR.

Interesting to me, as a blogger. I get the arguments, but if there are blogs about every topic under the sun (politics being a prime example, the history of economic theory being another – yes, I’ve listened to a podcast and seen a blog about that), shouldn’t there be several about a topic like golf, that people really enjoy?

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When I was younger, I used to like watching the early season celebrity pro-ams – the Hope, the “Clambake” at Pebble Beach. It was fun for me to watch the nice weather and see some famous people hack around with the pros while I was sitting in the midst of winter in the wonderland known as Wisconsin.

As I get older, I like them less and less.

First off, I don’t live in the frozen tundra anymore so the early PGA season isn’t a preview of spring like it used to be. I don’t drool looking at the overseeded fairways in Tucson or the Pacific Ocean off the Monterey Peninsula. Maybe I’m maturing . . . [insert punchline here].

Second, I just don’t like watching B and C List celebs swinging the stick with pros who are trying to do their jobs. I like Ray Romano just fine, but I’d rather not see him chop it out from a fairway bunker with JB Holmes watching. Same for Kevin James. And I certainly don’t want to see some corporate CEO who is a member at Pine Valley and sandbags to a handicap of 18 while looking all the world like a 2 cheat on national TV either.

But the thing that has come to bother me the most is the way that the Hope courses are destroyed by the pros. Remember Duval’s 59? It was at the Hope. Every year, the 5 rounds of the Hope give up more birdies than the Badgers gave up passing yards this year. It is ridiculous. And this year is even crazier. Pat Perez set a consecutive round PGA tour record for low score in the first two rounds. This was such an incredible standard and worthy record that it was broken the next two days by Steve Stricker’s 61 and 62. That’s 123 strokes for 36 holes. To break it down even further, Stevo had 21 birdies, 15 pars, and nothing else except an uncontrollable case of the giggles during those two days. 6 more birdies than pars! 33 under par after four rounds? Are you kidding me?

Maybe it is because I can’t make birdies like that in any situation, even in those courses with windmills and clown mouths. I can’t appreciate 11 birdies in one round because it is beyond my mind’s ability to comprehend, much like the path our Secretary of State took to her current position.

I love professional golf. And I am a huge fan of Stricker’s, so it isn’t that I’m upset Steve did this. Someone would have, so it might as well have been the fellow Cheesehead. But I would much rather see these guys challenged. I like tournaments where birdie is not that easy and bogey is a definite possiblity on most holes. I want to see them work a bit – make the spectacular shot to save par, not the boring play for birdie. The US Open is the classic example, but the Player’s and the Wachovia in Charlotte are good ones too. This is one of the reasons I never got too excited about my hometown tournament, the Greater Milwaukee Open (now, the US Bank Open, at least this week). Brown Deer is a very good course, but pros just kill it.

Bottom line: As I get older, I just don’t want the game to look that easy for anyone.

The only good thing about today’s round: no celebs.

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It seems that PGA Tour players are in an enviable position for potential endorsements.

With Plaxico Burress slamming all NFL players’ reputations with his non-pistol holding waistband and poorly executed “cover-up”, Alex Rodriguez divorcing his wife to hang with an old pop icon, and Sean Avery of the Dallas Stars mouthing off about his former girlfriends and current NHL players, where are companies with endorsement dollars to turn?  It seems the public almost feels that each of these distinct incidents is just more of the same for all the major sports. What is a company to do? No matter the economic climate, companies are going to spend money on endorsements. They just will have to spend them much more carefully. And taking a chance on an NFL’er or hockey player might seem like too much risk nowadays. Who would want to take a chance on anyone in the NFL? Even Tom Brady, Mr. All American quarterback, has had children out of wedlock (is he in the NBA too?).

Golfers, like Davis Love, Justin Leonard, Ernie Els, and many, many others, have squeaky clean reputations. Tiger’s not perfect in endorsment land – he swears occasionally when he “mishits” a shot – but people sympathize with that and don’t despair at the foolishness of it. Golfers are the current athletic role models most parents should be pointing their kids to. And companies should be very aware of that if they want to maintain healthy reputations themselves.

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Further info on the aforementioned lawsuit regarding Pro V1 golf balls:

“At issue was a series of patents referred to as the “Sullivan patents,” a reference to Michael J. Sullivan. Sullivan is the former vice president of golf-ball research and development for Top-Flite who left that company in 1999 and went to work for Acushnet as vice president for intellectual property. The patents covered, among other things, solid-core golf-ball technology used in Titleist’s Pro V1 and Pro V1x balls.”

So, like all good corporate espionage stories, it comes down to stealing intellectual property and technology. It isn’t a whole lot different than Red Hat vs. Microsoft, just with a non-geeky aspect. Maybe it will become a movie thriller starring John Cleese, Kevin Costner, or some other well-known golf-related actor, like P. Mickelson.

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Callaway has been successful in a ruling this week in US District Court in Delaware, of all places. They’ve had a longstanding dispute with Acushnet (the parent of Titleist, along with Footjoy and Cobra) regarding 4 Callaway patents that Callaway feels has been infringed by Titleist in making their Pro V1 brand.

Callaway originally filed suit in June of 2007, alleging that Acushnet infringed on their patents. The jury in December of 2007 found for Callaway on 4 of the 5 patents. It has been disputed back and forth over the last 11 months, but on Monday, the court granted an injunction to Callaway regarding production of Pro V1’s. Now, I’m no lawyer, but an injunction just sounds bad, doesn’t it?

The bottom line is probably this – Pro V1’s in their current form will not be produced any more and Titleist will make a new ball that clears the patent infringement problem but is essentially a Pro V1 in a mustache and sunglasses. They actually started this process in September (writing on the wall, I guess) and state that this will be the Pro V1 line, but they also claim that they have created new products in the Pro V1 line that will be available in first quarter 2009 as well.

What does this mean for Pro V users? For the Tour pros, they’ll still get the balls they want. With the new products, maybe they’ll be happier, maybe they won’t. Some might want to change if there is a significant performance change in the new Pro V’s.

For the hacks who like to use Pro V’s (and, in spite of their expense, they are a great ball for most amateurs), get them now. Maybe the existing stock will become collector’s items in the next few weeks. Or maybe, like most golf equipment, the shinier, newer product will become the hot ticket and the shabby old one will become cheaper.

I’m like most others in North Carolina – when the hurricane is comin’, I’m loading up on water and bread. In this case, I’m stocking up on the pellets right now!

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Our federal government has to take over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – have to, because they will crash and burn otherwise. Wouldn’t financial discretion be the watchword for those left in those companies? Apparently not.

“Documents obtained by CBS 11 show at least 14 people in a recent Fannie Mae outing teed off at Cowboys at 1:30 p.m. on September 29 — 22 days after the federal government took over Fannie to save the massive mortgage company from failure. The taxpayers tab for the golf outing was $6,279.26.

According to this receipt, Fannie paid for 20 golfers. The 14 listed on the tee sheet included three Fannie executives from Dallas, two Fannie execs from Chicago and one from Washington, DC. The cost for golf alone was $3,316.

According to the contract, golfing included a mango towel service. The contract also shows additional guests joined the golfers for dinner where they dined on over $1,700 worth of buffet food.

Then came the bar tab. According to this receipt, they drank 49 bottles or cans of domestic beer, five Grey Goose vodkas, six Absolute vodkas, some Tanqueray, and 31 glasses of the house red wine. The total bar tab was $555.”

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I subscribe to the editor’s blog on Golf Digest and one of their recent entries interested me.

It was the readers’ reaction to Golf Digest putting Justin Timberlake on the cover. Obviously, the story was how Timberlake has gotten involved in the PGA Tour by putting his name on the latest version of the Las Vegas tournament. And the reactions quoted in the blog were hyper, to say the least. One called the cover “tasteless”, another made a reference to G.D. as “People Magazine”. This same reader, actually, went further and instructed the Digest staff to put people on their cover who matched the demographic of their readers – read that as white, middle-aged, and rich, apparently.

What?!!

J.T. has stepped up to put his photo, fame, money and time where his golfing jones lies. I admire him for it and, yes, I’m jealous. If I had the chance to put my name on a PGA event and hang around it all week with the pros and the Tour staff, the equipment reps, etc. – I would do it too! Is that bad? Does it make Justin a bad guy? Not to my eye. It makes him seem more like a normal guy and not a former boy band loser like so many others of that ilk. He loves golf. Great! Shouldn’t we, as golfers, be trying to grow the game? Not just to others like us (remember and fear Shoal Creek, ladies and gentlemen), but to other demographics? If Justin heightens interest in a game we love, is that bad?

And as for Golf Digest only putting people like their demographic on the cover, I’m sorry, but I don’t think a 31 year old Cablanasian billionaire freak of nature is in my demographic by age, locale, job title, or salary. But I still like him enough to want to see him written about. And, to translate it into other arenas, I remember a fairly popular magazine named Time that put Saddam Hussein on its cover. That certainly wasn’t to match the cover to a coveted demographic, but because it was news. And so is the arrival of a boy bander onto a position of influence in the elite tour of pro golf.

Lighten up folks! Geez, you’re “Tearin’ Up My Heart”!

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I went to Carolina Custom Golf’s Cary Store at lunch today. They are closing their 6 stores, including the Cary store and two Raleigh stores (see the article for details) and having a closeout sale to beat all closeouts. The store was pretty picked over but I managed to find some nice shoes at over 50% off for my son and some great Adidas golf caps for me.

I have mixed feelings about this. I’ve been a customer at CCG since we moved to the area. It used to be the only golf retail store near our house. In fact, it was really the only retail store in the area, until Golf Galaxy moved in across Buck Jones from it. I never really enjoyed the store much. Unlike how I like to wander around Golfsmith’s monster store in North Raleigh, I never liked the atmosphere. Customer service was tepid at best, and semi-antagonistic at worst. Prices weren’t great and selection wasn’t real good either.

But, as a former small business owner whose business struggled and eventually succumbed to cash un-flow death, I sympathize. It was pretty sad to see so much empty floor space, with club and clothes racks pushed off to the side. Looking at the inventory, I just kept thinking about how much each item, now on huge markdowns, must have cost the owners originally. I wondered how they’re doing with this whole process. How are they taking care of their families? What about the employees? The ones in the Cary store today were pretty down, that’s for sure.

I better stop – I’m starting to sound like an Obama speech about the economy.

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As I ran into Golf Galaxy to reload on some pellets yesterday, I saw a lot of clearance items, and it got me thinking. The golf business (big B on business) is supposedly tanking, according to the media. The current economic problems are hitting an already struggling industry is the story one hears often in the lay press. So how are some big parts of the mainstream golf industry doing at closer inspection?

• Golfsmith
  • Stock price has fallen by about 60% over the last year
  • 9.3% decrease in online revenue reported for last quarter
  • The company expects earnings growth to be driven by “reduced operating expenses and marketing costs” – that doesn’t sound particularly encouraging to me
• Callaway
  • Stock price dropped from $16 to $11 from one year ago to July but has rebounded lately to just over 14
  • Declared a dividend of $.07 per share – may not seem good, but usually a good sign from an investor standpoint
  • Announced record sales for first half 2008 globally
  • Halle Barry joined the Callaway Golf Foundation as ambassador – ’nuff said
• Dick’s Sporting Goods and Golf Galaxy
  • Dick’s reported 5% loss of net revenue in 2nd quarter 2008
  • Same store sales decreased by 3.7% at Dick’s; 4.5% at Golf Galaxy
  • Dick’s CEO, Ed Stack, stated, “We anticipate the golf business is going to be a little bit difficult through 2009.”
    • Ed. note: Hey Ed, when wasn’t the golf business “a little bit difficult”?
• Ashworth is considering a sale or merger to “enhance shareholder value”
• The USGA couldn’t get any of the Big 3 automakers to bite on being it’s “Official Car”, so chose Lexus instead. Buick and Cadillac have long been synonymous with the PGA and Senior Tour respectively, so that is a big moment in the relationship of Detroit and big time golf.
  • Ford has even cut it’s relationship with Lefty Mickelson (gasp!)
• In a not-so-official survey by Golf Digest, 41 of 60 private golf clubs contacted felt they were in a membership “crisis” and were offering incentives of various types.

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On the other hand, a recent study has shown that golf’s economic impact in the US has increased by $14 billion in the last five years (up to $76 billion from $62 bill.) This is a larger segment than the motion pictures and video industries. Now, how that’s measured can be construed in many ways, but it is obvious that golf remains a major force in the economy.

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I hope you weren’t looking for some grand conclusion, were you? ‘Cause I just present the numbers, ma’am.

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The BMW Championship
The Sony Open
PODS Championship

Why do big corporations shell out huge money to have their name attached to a PGA tour event? Is it the fantastic corporate hospitality tent where they can entertain a bunch of pseudocustomer fatcats with the fried okra in Greensboro, the beer-soaked brats in Milwaukee? That’s part of it, I think.

But how about a pure businessman’s look at it. Do Beemers fly off the show floor on the Monday after any of the myriad tournaments sponsored by BMW? I would think not. I’m not sure the beancounters in Bavaria could show a spreadsheet that demonstrates a huge spike in sales just after a telecast of JB Holmes or Sergio winning one of the BMW Championships. They couldn’t (I’m guessing here) give a strict accounting that shows for every dollar spent on corporate schlock for a golf tournament that over $1.00 is seen in return. They’ll tell you that it is building the brand, that they want to be associated with the best, and the PGA Tour is the best. I think something else is going on.

Here’s how I think it goes:

CEO: Jimmy, I think we need to get our name in front of the public. At, say, the Andy Williams Invitational. We can rename it the Waste Management Dumpster Open. Think of the brand recognition!

Jimmy (CFO): But boss, the money is huge! The economy is tanking, our employees are losing more and more benefits. We just laid off 1,000 guys last week. How can we afford it?

CEO: Jimmy, life isn’t all about the money. It’s about prestige, the gin and tonics at the 16th tee Skybox, the free rounds at Rivera for you, me and the fellas. Heck, we might even get a glimpse of Elin Woods!

Jimmy (getting excited): Not to mention the trinkets and trash! Yeah, let’s do it!

Corporate guys tend to love golf, and Tiger. 84 Lumber loved John Daly. But they’re kidding themselves if they say sponsoring the tour brings their shareholders more value. Just check Verizon’s subscriptions after next year’s Verizon Heritage at Hilton Head – they won’t budge. And Traveler’s isn’t going to run out of paper writing up policies in the week after “their” tournament.

Shareholders should revolt.

(Editors note: the author of this blog got confused – he still thought he was writing a business blog. Forgive him – he is elderly and somewhat senile. A thousand pardons.)

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