Thoughts thought:
Dustin Johnson will be next headliner
Some thoughts thought while watching snow melt:-- Why do I keep thinking Dustin Johnson will be the next big breakthrough guy? I guess because he looks like he doesn’t give a damn. Also, blowing the U.S. Open and the PGA Championship last year didn’t sink him. Didn’t even dent him. Also, he can really play.
-- But Johnson won’t be the Tiger Woods kind of dominator. Nobody will. Not even Tiger Woods.
-- Remember Johnson, grounding his club in that remote patch of sand last year at the PGA? Is there anything sillier in golf than the all-sand-is-bunker thing at Whistling Straits? I’ll get back to you on this if I can think of anything.
-- I guess you had to be there for the rush and the chills, Jack Nicklaus playing that sizzling back nine to win the 1986 Masters at age 46. For those who weren’t, John Boyette, marking the 25th anniversary of that stunning moment, does the next best thing in his book, “The 1986 Masters – How Jack Nicklaus Roared Back to Win” (Lyons Press), coming out April 1. Boy, do the memories come rushing back.
Boyette captures my favorite episode perfectly – Nicklaus in the champion’s interview wryly thanking the late Tom McCollister, Atlanta golf writer, for writing that he was washed up and couldn’t win, and McCollister, not batting an eye, replying, “Glad I could help.” Boyette’s book ($24.95) is available at major retailers and at the online dot com’s – Amazon, BarnesAndNobel and Borders.
-- The U.S. Golf Association really got this one right – naming Mike Davis executive director. Davis is a good mix of intelligence, a pleasant demeanor and not only a profound knowledge of golf, but golf savvy. Davis, as senior director of rules and competition, is the guy who brought the risk-reward notion to the U.S. Open a few years ago. So now, instead of 18 holes on Devil’s Island, the golfers get a hole or two where they can name their own poison.
-- I missed something somewhere. Will someone please explain why that two-day inter-club frolic called the Tavistock Cup gets so much attention?
-- England’s Oliver Wilson, who played in the most recent Tavistock, was quoted as saying, “We’re trying to raise some money for charity …” (What’s that noise back there? Could that be the sound of appearance money being folded?)
-- Surely someone else has noticed that the Golf Channel’s Brandel Chamblee, failed tour golfer, is an outstanding TV commentator. He’s incisive, intelligent, well prepared, knows what he wants to say and says it well. And with a touch of humor.
-- Time was in Britain anyone could walk into a betting shop and get down on, oh, which bird would fly first. But it just got harder for European Tour golfers and caddies to get a little action. The tour has this new policy forbidding them from betting on any tournaments they’re in. This is a preemptive strike. The tour wants to head off the kind of fixing that’s popped up in cricket and snooker. (Snooker?)
Said Thomas Bjorn, chairman of the tournament committee: “We’ve had big scandals in cricket, there’s stuff going on in snooker. You have to protect yourself against the inside stuff.”
Tour executive David Garland put an interesting and finer point on it. “What we’ve seen in other sports,” Garland said, “is that it’s the individual who’s not at the top of the game that gets involved. It starts with information. Then it goes to, ‘Can you do this for me and do that for me?’ In the world of illegal gambling, these are high numbers people are talking about, and it may become tempting.” The individual not at the top? Could he possibly be hinting that caddies might start fixing tournaments?
“Not at all,” Garland said.
No? Then somebody better start watching those club cleaners.
-- The sweetest sound in golf was that sharp “crack!” of persimmon meeting ball.
-- A pity Mark Calcavecchia isn’t getting into the interview rooms much anymore. We’ve been deprived of some of the pithiest answers and most eloquent language in the game. Like years ago, Calc explaining how he managed to double-bogey after hitting the green in regulation: “I four-jacked it, and had to scum in a three-footer for the six.”
-- Golf is the universal game of the world, and money is the universal language of golf. Herewith a news release from the R&A: The British Open at St. Andrews last year “delivered a combined £100 million benefit to Scotland.” That’s about $165 million. And we thought the British Open was all about tradition.
-- Former pro football star Jerry Rice again will play in the Nationwide Tour’s Fresh Express Classic. I can hardly wait.
-- Peace reigns on the PGA Tour. The money’s too good for there ever to be a Mac O’Grady today.
-- Adam Scott, the one-time next-Tiger Woods, has gone to the long broom putter. He’s 30. Awfully early for the terminal yips.
-- The only thing more exciting than watching Seve Ballesteros fail was watching him succeed.
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