Golfing News & Blog Articles

Stay up-to-date on golfing news, products, and trends from around the world.

Hoffman's Rant: Waste Of Time Management

The perfectionist who tries to play golf for a living usually ends up saying to hell with it. I'm a perfectionist, and I had some success, but only because I was persistent and had some talent. In the end the game ate me up inside, and I retired earlier than a lot of guys do. Perfectionists are determined to master things, and you can never master golf. TOM WEISKOPF

  331 Hits

Bohannan: This Time The Tour Is Listening To Players But In NIL World Is That Enough?

The Desert Sun’s Larry Bohannan considers the latest players v. brass showdown in golf. He highlights some of the differences between the last 1960’s battle the players had with the PGA of America that led to the breakaway PGA Tour and brings up a key point.

While the stakes and issues have changed—no TikTok and NFT’s back then—Bohannan notes that this time the leadership has listened and made adjustments with more money that comes in going out to players. While it’s debatable whether PIP’s and Comcast Biz Solutions Top 10’s do much to make the sport more fan friendly, they have satisfied some players into supporting the PGA Tour model.

However, something else may be driving player thinking (or greed?).

Mickelson’s point is that images of Mickelson, or any player playing in a tour event, are controlled by the PGA Tour. If you want to use a photo of a PGA Tour player for commercial purposes, well, the PGA Tour controls that image, not the player. So the tour has to be paid for use of the image.

That might seem normal, since other sports have similar regulations. But in a day when college athletes are making hundreds of thousands of dollars since the U.S. Supreme Court announced it is the athletes that control their name, image and likeness, should PGA Tour players have the right to control their NIL rights, or is that something the tour must control to operate successfully?

Continue reading
  455 Hits

A Tradition Unlike Any Other: The Quest For The Slime Green Jacket

I’m not going to quibble with Nickelodeon’s success in reimagining live sports in a way that’s fun for the kids since their NFL reviews have been glowing slime green.

Still, I’m not envisioning a scenario where the Lords of Augusta

Brian Steinberg of Variety reports on Nickelodeon teaming up with producer Bryan Zuriff of The Match fame, Excel Sports and players like Jon Rahm, Collin Morikawa, Justin Thomas and Lexi Thompson to bring us the Slime Cup. The final “match” will be played in the Rose Bowl and the winner is to receive a Slime Green jacket .

“We are inventing our own golf match,” says Brian Robbins, president and CEO of Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon, in an interview. “It’s definitely different.”

Confirmed participants include: top-ranked professional golfers like Jon Rahm, Collin Morikawa, Justin Thomas and Lexi Thompson; NFL superstars, Saquon Barkley and Justin Herbert; Terry Crews; and Nick stars Isaiah Crews, Kate Godfrey, Jaidyn Triplett and Tyler Wladis. Nickelodeon’s Gabrielle Nevaeh Green, who has provided commentary for the network’s Wild Card game-casts, will do the same for “Slime Cup.”  Other participants could be named at a later date.

Continue reading
  400 Hits

PGA Tour "Executives" Respond To Mickelson...Anonymously

Golf.com’s James Colgan spoke to multiple PGA Tour executives who took issue with Phil Mickelson’s “obnoxious greed” remarks from that liberal democracy, Saudi Arabia. But at least he signed his name to his opinions even if they suggest he’s only about the money at this point.

A rebuttal was surely warranted given some obvious fibs and exaggerations by Mickelson. Yet not finding one Tour executive willingly going on the record highlights how much the organization is all bluff and no backbone.

Just like giving players waivers to play in Saudi Arabia with almost no meaningful strings, rebutting anonymously only says to the world: Phil was wrong but not wrong enough to sign our names to it.

Regarding the Global Home’s return volleys, Colgan writes:

In conversations with GOLF.com, PGA Tour executives painted a far different picture of the economics of golf’s largest professional tour, characterizing it as a highly successful, multi-billion-dollar business model built around its media-rights deals — and with constituents who’ve largely been content with that structure. (It should also be noted that the Tour operates as a federally registered non-profit, which means though it donates large sums to charity it also is sheltered from paying hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes.)

Continue reading
  464 Hits

ESPN, Omaha Productions To Develop Golf Manningcast

And let me make myself clear on desert golf. I don’t just not like it. I despise it. The courses are all the same. Fairways meandering through phony mounds and airlifted boulders, papier mâché mountains in the distance, slow greens, fake waterfalls, decorator palm groves, Brooke Shields lagoons, reptile exhibits and much cactus can you do? DAN JENKINS as Bobby Joe Grooves

  417 Hits

Quadrilateral: Major(s) News & Notes, February 10, 2022

And let me make myself clear on desert golf. I don’t just not like it. I despise it. The courses are all the same. Fairways meandering through phony mounds and airlifted boulders, papier mâché mountains in the distance, slow greens, fake waterfalls, decorator palm groves, Brooke Shields lagoons, reptile exhibits and much cactus can you do? DAN JENKINS as Bobby Joe Grooves

  390 Hits

David Cannon To Receive PGA Lifetime Achievement Award In Photojournalism

Congrats to the man who's covered some of the great golf images in the modern era.

Bill Fields, the PGA of America’s lifetime achievement award winner in journalism, saluted David Cannon at The Albatross. And Brian Wacker profiled Cannon a few years ago and it’s worth checking out.

For Immediate Release:

DAVID CANNON TO RECEIVE PGA OF AMERICA LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD IN PHOTOJOURNALISM
Cannon’s career to be celebrated on May 18 at PGA Championship in Tulsa, Oklahoma

PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. (Feb. 8, 2022) — The PGA of America today named David Cannon of Sussex, England as the second recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award in Photojournalism. Cannon and his work will be celebrated on May 18 in the leadup to the 2022 PGA Championship at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Continue reading
  472 Hits

"For Mickelson, actions will speak louder than words"

Tour pros would rather go through an IRS audit than play in a pro-am. Publicly they say they love meeting interesting people and how great the pro-ams are. In truth, they loathe them. They're out there for six hours, see countless bad shots and hear the same stale jokes. If Tim Finchem announced next Monday that pro-ams were henceforth eliminated, he'd find 200 cases of champagne on his porch Tuesday morning. TOM WEISKOPF

  393 Hits

2022 AT&T Ratings Down, Continuing A Trend For The Event

More length and innumerable bunkers do not prevent powerful players from making golf courses look silly. TOM SIMPSON

/ Geoff Shackelford

In a new date one week earlier than normal, the 2022 AT&T Pebble Beach took a ratings hit.

According to Showbuzzdaily.com, the 1.87/3.1 million average viewership was down from the Waste Management Open’s 2.10 on the same weekend last year.

Over the last four years, the AT&T’s final round numbers:

2022 1.87/3.1 million
2021 2.55/4.2 million (no pro-am)
2020 2.27/3.5 million
2019 2.39/3.7 million


Continue reading
  524 Hits

Bamberger: "If Mickelson really wants to affect change..."

Golf.com’s Michael Bamberger assessed Phil Mickelson’s attack of the PGA Tour and majors making money off the player backs and suggests Lefty’s never talked better but also may be going about this the wrong way. In making his point, Bamberger also inadvertently hinted at another potential problem Mickelson created for himself.

The fellas playing MLB, in the NFL and in the NBA, have an appealing level of individuality, but they are union workers playing team sports. They have, really, a completely different mentality.

If Mickelson really wants to affect change the most effective thing he could do is get 150 or so Tour players to stage a sit-down strike on the eve of, say, the Waste Management Phoenix Open. Then get that group to agree on media rights, purse distribution, governance structure and a million other things.

Good luck with that.

There has been some talk about Phil getting Tony Romo money to talk golf on TV. He’d be good at that, but it would bore him. It’s easier to imagine him as the commissioner of a golf league. Which one is hard to say just now.

Continue reading
  459 Hits

Jordan On A Special Week At Pebble: "You don't want to leave."

It seems to me that a mad puppy threatens golfers. The gentility that wants its course called a “championship course”. I am not thinking of any particular course, but I hear this foolish phrase constantly used. Most courses are not fit for a championship, never will be fit for one, never will get one and nobody wants to see one there. Then, why in the name of goodness should we set up this nonsensical standard and then spoil our courses trying to live to it. BERNARD DARWIN

  359 Hits

SiriusXM Moves Quickly To Can Mark Lye

It seems to me that a mad puppy threatens golfers. The gentility that wants its course called a “championship course”. I am not thinking of any particular course, but I hear this foolish phrase constantly used. Most courses are not fit for a championship, never will be fit for one, never will get one and nobody wants to see one there. Then, why in the name of goodness should we set up this nonsensical standard and then spoil our courses trying to live to it. BERNARD DARWIN

  381 Hits

Winners And Losers: The Clash With The Clambake

It seems to me that a mad puppy threatens golfers. The gentility that wants its course called a “championship course”. I am not thinking of any particular course, but I hear this foolish phrase constantly used. Most courses are not fit for a championship, never will be fit for one, never will get one and nobody wants to see one there. Then, why in the name of goodness should we set up this nonsensical standard and then spoil our courses trying to live to it. BERNARD DARWIN

  349 Hits

In Appreciation Of Pebble Beach's 11th Hole

I’m frequently asked, by journalists and others, what event, achievement or success has been the most gratifying in my lifetime. Well, the answer is immediate. The golf tournament. BING CROSBY

/ Geoff Shackelford

It was a lively Saturday at Pebble Beach but with most of the amateurs sent home Sunday should make for a fun finish. I hope we get to see a good pin on the 11th hole, an unfairly maligned par-4 in my view.

I took to The Quadrilateral to detail how the hole was intended to play, its evolution and what we can look forward to in upcoming men’s and women’s U.S. Opens.


  365 Hits

DeChambeau Denies He Was Offered £100 Million

Pebble Beach in 80-degree weather with no wind howling off the Farallons, no clouds scudding in low and gray, no foaming surf crashing over the greens and fairways is like Samson shorn, Man o’ War limping, Muhammad Ali hanging on the ropes and bleeding. I can’t look. It’s enough to make you gnash your teeth when you see players hitting 4- and 5-irons to No. 17, to see them teeing off with 3-woods on 18 and in general insulting the course as if it were some pitch-and-putt in Chillicothe. It’s like seeing the USS Missouri aground, the Titanic hanging off an iceberg. Golf at Pebble Beach was never meant to be a walk in the park, a dance with your sister, a trip to the moon on gossamer wings. JIM MURRAY

  383 Hits

Early Reviews Are In And Phil's Obnoxious Greed Comments Going Over Like You'd Expect

Phil Mickelson’s “obnoxious greed” claims have not gone over well in a variety of ways, namely that he’s in Saudi Arabia collecting a hefty appearance fee from some pretty shady characters.

His comments were posted on Golf Digest’s Instagram account and earned this reply from Brooks Koepka:
DK if I’d be using the word greedy if I’m Phil…�””

The Daily Mail offered this headline to Derek Lawrenson’s story, which ran for some time on its home sports page.

After his opening 67 in the PIFSIPSIA, Mickelson was sort of asked about his comments to Golf Digest.

Q. There's a lot of buzz this week; is the sport itself the true nature, the competition, something to lose, to gain?

Continue reading
  355 Hits

Golf Channel Is Back In Orlando And No, A Nuclear Bomb Did Not Go Off

Pebble Beach is the Louvre. It isn’t just the Louvre, it’s everything in the Louvre, too, with all the artists gathered around. BING CROSBY

/ Geoff Shackelford

Nothing screams corporate passion like returning to your old stomping grounds the way Golf Channel has this week. Apparently the return of studio shows to Orlando is due to the bleak Winter Olympics in already awful Beijing necessitating NBC use of the lavender-tinged broom closet in Stamford, Connecticut.

While some might see a post-Chernobyl vibe to the former newsroom emptied of people, it’s also a fitting way of saying, “yes, we know a lot of people are paying attention to golf with no NFL and with the Saudi and Pebble events this week, but guess what? We just don’t care, plus we’d have to pay camera people and electric bills to go in the old studio just over their shoulders. And our partners, sponsors and viewers don’t deserve quality!”

Or, maybe it’s a way of signaling to a buyer? You know, one who’d like to return to where Arnold Palmer started the channel and it remained until his passing? And they tried to put out a good product? If only we the sport of golf could be so lucky.


  449 Hits

Mickelson: Tour's "Obnoxious greed that has really opened the door for opportunities elsewhere."

Phil Mickelson unleashed a torrent of criticisms at the PGA Tour from the Saudi International. After a fairly benign press conference session, Mickelson told GolfDigest.com’s John Huggan that he’s been forced to consider various business opportunities because of the Tour’s “obnoxious greed.”

The us vs. them stance, even though players appear to have more control and influence over the PGA Tour’s operation, may not resonate very well with fans. Mickelson is aware of this danger but forged ahead with some incendiary comments.

“It’s not public knowledge, all that goes on,” Mickelson said. “But the players don’t have access to their own media. If the tour wanted to end any threat [from Saudi or anywhere else], they could just hand back the media rights to the players. But they would rather throw $25 million here and $40 million there than give back the roughly $20 billion in digital assets they control. Or give up access to the $50-plus million they make every year on their own media channel.

“There are many issues, but that is one of the biggest,” he continued. “For me personally, it’s not enough that they are sitting on hundreds of millions of digital moments. They also have access to my shots, access I do not have. They also charge companies to use shots I have hit. And when I did ‘The Match’—there have been five of them—the tour forced me to pay them $1 million each time. For my own media rights. That type of greed is, to me, beyond obnoxious.”

Two parts to this stand out. The rights to “my shots” would seem motivated by a desire to cash in on NFT’s. More concerning is the claim of personally paying $1 million each time he’s played The Match and the “beyond obnoxious” green of the Tour.

Continue reading
  439 Hits

Quadrilateral: Major(s) News & Notes February 3rd, 2021

Saudi week highlights the problem with Ryder Cup leveraging.

Plus, the Vic Open steps in for Open qualifying, the ANWA field is set, tech and tracer news, the week in ageism, reads and an old Pebble Beach photo.

  358 Hits

PGA Tour and Trackman Expanding "Use of club and ball tracking and tracer technology" for nearly every shot to help enrich the fan experience

I don’t have much to add until we see how this plays out, but you know the old saying: you can never have too much tracer on a golf broadcast. By most accounts, Trackman remains by far the best and most accurate of the launch monitors, so kudos to the PGA Tour for pushing this technology and hopefully making the fan viewing experience even better.

The most exciting potential revealed may be in the second to last paragraph, with the announcement of a mobile system to catch more shots from the fairway. Or, perhaps, the trees when a player has to shape a shot and viewers theoretically get to see the bend of the ball traced.

Overall, this means more data, better tracer coverage and more of it on PGA Tour Live coverage. How much is adopted by the networks using the Tour feed remains to be seen.

For Immediate Release:

PGA TOUR selects TrackMan™ tracking and tracing solution beginning in 2022

Continue reading
  504 Hits

GolfLynk.com