2010 PGA Tour preview: The Cases
If you thought the only place they monitored scientific stuff like lands and grooves was in the ballistic labs on various CSI-style shows, guess again.
The telltale etchings on irons in golf as of Jan. 1 became just as crucial as it relates to a key new rule change in the professional game. Even the largely retired gods have had climb down from Mount Olympus to get their equipment checked against the new 2010 specs.
None other than Jack Nicklaus, set to make his lone playing appearance of 2010 at the Champions Skins Game in Hawaii, had his clubs probed and approved this month.
"I have been going through that myself, for my one event," Nicklaus cracked. "I had my clubs legally scanned last week and I found out that they all passed."
This week, we can begin passing judgment on what it all means, too.
As the PGA Tour moves from wide-open Kapalua to claustrophobic Waialae Country Club and the Sony Open in Honolulu, this week should provide a revealing glimpse as to whether the grooves revision is "much ado about nothing," as Davis Love characterized it last fall, or a significant step toward re-emphasizing finesse and accuracy in an increasingly power-centric game.
The new-look clubfaces aren't the only elements of the 2010 script worth putting on a fan's watch list, either. The economy continues to limp along, forcing the tour to schedule four events despite not having title sponsors; it's a Ryder Cup year; Phil Mickelson is turning 40; and fans face an uncertain season without Tiger Woods.
Last week, we examined the principal cast members of the 2010 plotline. This time, we'll eyeball the script particulars for the upcoming season.
Spin doctoring
Funny, but the two biggest early stories on the PGA Tour relate to spin control. Silent star Woods didn't make use of it during his growing sex scandal, and the professionals aren't getting as much of it as they'd like on the golf course.
The new grooves, said to impart 30 to 40 percent less spin out of dicey lies than the toothier box grooves of the past, should lead to a different mindset off the tee, placing an emphasis on hitting fairways and avoiding rough. It will make the dump-and-chase, bomb-and-gouge gang think twice about reaching for driver and blithely whaling away. So goes the theory of the rulesmakers.
Whatever happens, it represents the most significant backward step in technology of the modern era, and while reviews have been mixed on what the change will accomplish, it has largely been applauded by the old guard who have long bemoaned what the game has become.
"The game is going to change for some of the guys," Nicklaus said last week. "They are going to have to change how they play a little bit. They are going to want a softer golf ball, and the game's going to change because of what's happened and it's going to be a domino effect. It's going to domino right into a different ball, into the driver.
"I think [it's] for the better. As I have said many times, we have had too many golf courses, particularly in the United States, that have become obsolete because of equipment. The grooves are going to move it back in the other direction."
That's quite a different mindset for the Golden Bear, who three years ago, when the rule change was first proposed, equated the grooves revision to tossing a "deck chair off the Titanic." But as the notion has been fleshed out, the trickle-down impact has become downright intriguing, if somewhat theoretical.
By midseason, fans should have an idea of which players will be most affected by the groove revisions, but make no mistake, players with a lower ball flight will suffer first and worst. Players who hit towering shots will be able to keep balls on greens more often, while the others will struggle to spin the ball enough to find putting surfaces. Short games will suffer, and in an attempt to generate spin, some players will switch to soft-cover balls, which means more potential for disastrous hooks and slices.
As for who it favors, well, it was an unintended consequence, but no player should get a bigger boost from the change than Woods, who for years has already been using the softest ball on tour. Woods can hit a 3-iron up a chimney stack when he wants to. He won the Australian Masters last fall with a fully conforming set of clubs.
Nike's Bob Wood, who started the company's golf division from scratch, said that when Woods heard of the proposed rules change three years ago, his reaction was classic.
"He was like, 'Advantage, me,'" Wood said.
Equipment aside, the tour will have the option of experimenting with course setups, since players will presumably be using their brains, not just brawn, off the tee. Many players have added more loft to their wedges, since the high lobs in the short game will suffer from a reduction in spin, too.
"I think it will bring the ball back, because we will have a softer ball, so without changing anything other than the grooves, it's going to have a tremendous effect," Nicklaus predicted. "A premium on accuracy is going to increase greatly in their minds."
Nicklaus used to play with a set of Slazenger clubs overseas in his prime, and for years used a smaller golf ball that flew through the air like a bullet when playing at the British Open. Players used to make the adjustments in a week, he laughed.
"How long is it going to take them [to adjust]?" he said. "I don't think very long. I don't think it's any big deal, frankly, and they'll get used to it pretty fast. "
As a semi-educated guess, we predicted last week that the tour-wide scoring average would climb perhaps a half-stroke per round over the season. Last week, Geoff Ogilvy's winning score at Kapalua was exactly two shots higher than the number he posted while winning there a year earlier, so it will be interesting to monitor as the sample size grows.
Follow the money, stupid
Sponsorships and TV revenue aren't just the lifeblood of the tour. They are the red corpuscles, carrying oxygen to the body proper.
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| Both Buick (among other sponsors) and main draw Tiger Woods were missing when the season began. (Getty Images) |
As it stands, eight sponsorships expire after 2010, including at key locales like Doral, Boston and Atlanta. Four other '10 tournaments are already scheduled despite the lack of sponsors, including this month's Hope and Torrey Pines stops in successive weeks. But given the overall carnage, the tour has stopped the bleeding and moved forward as well as anybody could have envisioned. Indeed, in many ways, '09 was the worst year in golf history economically, although moving ahead in 2010 minus the services of Woods will be bruising, too.
"All in all, we are pleased about where we are, and we feel like if the economy comes back we can cautiously be able to say that after two years of this we are starting to see a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel," Finchem said last week. "We have a long way to go. We've got some challenges."
Of stage and scream
When it comes to movies, nobody said it better than Woods himself when asked a few years back about his favorite golf flick of all time. "There's only one," he said.
That hasn't stopped Hollywood from looking for this generation's version of Caddyshack, the movie to which Woods referred. Reportedly in the production pipeline are golf-themed comedies about Q-school and a screen treatment of a 14-year-old book by Rick Reilly.
For those who include films made a few miles away in the San Fernando Valley, two porn flicks relating to the Woods scandal are also in the works and the golf double-entendre figures to be excruciating. For instance, one of the porn flicks, supposedly a spoof, is titled "Tiger's Wood."
Goodbye to Dubai?
Bad as the dollars and decimal points have been in the States, it's even worse in Dubai, which had imploded as a result of the dwindling dollars in the upscale vacation-home market.
The sponsor of the inaugural Race to Dubai, the European Tour's season-long money race, had to cut the purse by 25 percent even before the first iteration of the finale was held last fall, and print reports in Europe continue to hint at further carnage. A multiyear contract is in place, but as evidenced by Buick and Chrysler on the PGA Tour, bankruptcy filings and insolvency usually means you can't squeeze money out of a turnip.
Hopefully, the R2D endures, because as far as understandable and palatable calendar competitions go, it's a darn sight easier to digest than the Americanized version.
Transitioning nicely to ...
For the first time, the FedEx Cup competition hasn't undergone a complete retooling in the offseason, which is what was expected when Woods and Mickelson stood side by side at the series finals last year, representing the Cup winner and tournament victor.
Gaping holes remain. Woods for the first time played in all four FedEx series events and then learned afterward that he could have again skipped The Barclays opener and still won the overall title. He all but groaned. Then again, Woods has to play a decent number of events, period, to qualify for a shot at the $10 million overall bonus, and that's no certainty at this point.
With 2008 winner Vijay Singh's career seemingly in flux and Woods out of business for an indefinite spell, it's hardly a stretch to suggest that the FedEx will have a third different winner in its four years of competition. Maybe a left-handed one at that.
Lefty and Tiger, delayed
Without question, the rivalry between Mickelson and Woods was nearing a fever pitch, if not the top rung.
Mickelson beat Woods twice last fall, in Atlanta and China, and in terms of the head-to-head play, had a record of 5-1-1 vs. Woods in the last seven pairings. Mickelson, working with new putting guru Dave Stockton, seemingly had reverted to the form he flashed years ago, when he was brilliant in long stretches.
The last couple of years, his putting was clearly obscuring the progress he made through the bag with Butch Harmon, his swing coach.
Rivalry revelry is always good for the game, especially when the players are more closely matched. Lefty was 4-0-1 at the Presidents Cup and seemed better positioned than at any point in years to give Woods a run for his reign. Now we'll have to wait and hope the magic is there when Woods returns.
Will opposites attract?
It's a Ryder Cup year, for those who haven't already heard the mounting levels of hysteria overseas, where the biennial matches trump nearly every other sport in popularity. Soccer fans, note the use of the term nearly.
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| It remains to be seen whether low-key Corey Pavin can extend the American team's Ryder Cup success. (Getty Images) |
Somehow, we don't envision the intensely vanilla U.S. captain, Corey Pavin, ever uttering the phrase, "it was like a crack house for foosball players," in a Ryder press conference, as Azinger did while leading the Americans to victory two years ago in Kentucky.
European Ryder Cup captain Colin Montgomerie has already been in fine form, offering bold opinions on Woods' damaged aura among other occasionally plucky verbal asides. If Pavin has said anything interesting about Woods or other salient topics of late, it was barely worth writing down.
Europe also switches to a new selection system, a clear tip of the cap to Azinger, who was granted four captain's picks in 2008, double the previous total of at-large selections. Monty will get another captain's pick this year, raising the Euro total to three, in an attempt to find the hottest players available.
Azinger and Pavin might ultimately have something seriously in common, though -- the absence of Woods on the roster. There has been increasing speculation, though none of it emanating from sources offering more than their gut feeling, that Woods might skip the entire 2010 season.
If it happens, the timing is doubly awful. In addition to the incredible drawing power Woods brings to TV broadcasts, Woods went 5-0 at the Presidents Cup matches and for the first time was dominant in a team format.
Forty is the new 20
An increasingly large number of graying tour stars are hoping that 40 is nothing more than a state of mind and that middle age is mostly a myth.
Last year, Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, with five major titles between them, each turned 40. This year, Phil Mickelson and Jim Furyk, with four majors and a million Ryder Cup berths to their combined credit, enter their fifth decades as well. Els has one win since 2004 in the States, while Furyk hasn't won an official event since 2007.
Singh turns 47 next month and didn't win in the States last year for the first time since the 2001 season. Kenny Perry turns 50 later this season, though he keeps plugging along and winning meaningful events. Steve Stricker, seemingly reborn at 40, turns 43 next month.
An increased emphasis on conditioning took root about a decade ago, lengthening the careers of many veterans, the milk-carton expiration date at some point becomes unavoidable. It might not be this year, or in 2011, but six players in the current world top 20 will be 40 or older by midseason.
So let's pose a crucial question regarding the game's true top dogs, not just as it relates to this season, but the entire future -- who is going to replace them? With Woods stuck in neutral, now would be a good time to start finding out.
