A Look Back: Oct. 10 1970: Jack Nicklaus defeats Lee Trevino 2 and 1 in the final of the Picadilly World Match Play Championship in England. 1982: Wayne Levi wins the Southwest Golf Classic by six strokes over Thomas Gray. 1993: Jeff Maggert closes out a 23-undr 265 week to win the Walt Disney World/Oldsmobile Classic for his first PGA Tour victory by three strokes over Greg Kraft. 1993: Darren Clarke wins the Belgian Open by two strokes over Nick Faldo and Vijay Singh. 1999: Notah Begay III defeats Tom Byrum in a playoff to claim the Michelob Championship at Kingsmill, his second PGA Tour win in his rookie season.

Equipment
The Strata golf ball line for 2002 will include the new Strata Professional Control and an improved Strata Tour Professional that travels 8 yards further than its predecessor. Both will be available Oct. 15, with the Strata Tour Professional selling for $44 and the Strata Professional Control retailing for $39.
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Bridgestone Sports and Callaway Golf Company sign anagreement allowing Callaway to use a number of Bridgestone Sports' three-piece golf ball patents. Patent litigation between the two companies in the United States and Japan will be dismissed.
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Events
The Golf Course Superintendents Association of America books its 73rd conference for Feb. 3-10 in Orlando. The GCSAA holds the world's largest golf course management conference/trade show, which will feature a member's meeting, golf championship and more than 120 seminars.
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In the next Shell's Wonderful World of Golf match, to be televised on ESPN Oct. 16, Jack Nicklaus takes on Ben Crenshaw at Las Companas Country Club. Crenshaw will debut on the Senior Tour in 2002, following his 50th birthday in January.
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Business
The board of directors for National Golf Properties declares a 46 cents per share dividend for the quarter that ended Sept. 30.
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Fortune Brands, parent company of Acushnet and its golf brands Titleist, Cobra and FootJoy, plans to announce third-quarter earnings Oct. 18 and follow up with a conference call and live Webcast to comment on those results.
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Technology
To improve its customer service, TaylorMade-adidas Golf hires KANA to create an automated help system for service representatives and provide targeted information to consumers and retailers. TaylorMade-adidas officials say the system has reduced staffing needs and improved response times.
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SirenServ, parent of GolfServ, launches a new alliance program that gives Web sites three ways to add GolfServ's content and services: a linking option, a branded version of GolfServ or a fully customized GolfServ Web site. Partners can receive up to 25 percent of membership subscriptions and 5 percent of pro shop purchases that come from their sites.
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Guest Commentary
Barney Adams: How Golf Fits In

The Wire spoke to Barney Adams, founder and CEO of Adams Golf, for a Five Questions feature that will run in Thursday's issue. But Adams' thoughts on the Sept. 11 attacks and how the golf industry fits into the fabric of the United States at this time were worth special attention. Following are his comments.

What happened is the worst thing I have ever seen in my lifetime. It's the most horrible, the most moving (thing) and as a result, to talk about golf in context with that doesn't even bare in the same sentence. You've got a national tragedy on one hand and you've got a game that we play for fun and relaxation on the other. So I want to make that part of it absolutely clear going in.

At the same time the purpose of the people who did this to us was to disrupt our society, make us afraid, to pose their will upon us, so to speak.

My answer to that is you got to be kidding me. Who the hell do you think you're dealing with? This is America, this is not some little scared-to-death, starving-to-death colony of people in some remote part of the Middle East. We're not only going to take care of the people who did this, but we're going to come back stronger as a country.

I think that is one of the great attributes of America, that we fight amongst ourselves and we act like morons and take things for granted and so on and so forth. When threatened at a certain threshold we get it and we come together and when we come together, it's an awesome thing to see. I like to believe that is where the country is, I would like to believe we got our wake-up call, tragic as it is. I have personal friends who died there and the wake-up call is you live in the greatest country in the world and you have got these incredible freedoms. Just stop taking them for granted.

Now where does golf fit into that framework? It's one of the things we do. It's almost like saying to them: Let me show you what a bunch of piss ants you guys are. Not only are we going to kick your ass, but we're going to play nine holes first.

So golf is a very important part of the fabric of this country just like baseball, football and other sports because it is who we are, it's what we do and we will return to that and and I think we will return to that bigger and better than we were before.

Now the specific answer to how did it affect us or what have we done? Prior to Sept. 11 (Adams Golf) made a decision that we didn't like what we saw coming up in the second half of this year and we made significant cost cutbacks, people, programs, etc., because we just added it all up and it didn't spell mother to us.

If I look at the golf industry and I look at the sales, how flat the sales are -- that means bigger, more powerful companies then (Adams) are going to be doing some product dumping, special pricing and so on. And Nike is ready to jump into the market place.

When you add all that up the message to us was cut your costs, hunker down, get ready for the long play. That is what we did. So a terrible irony -- we were prepared for this before it happened.

Where we are going forward, I suspect -- I hope dearly anyway -- that by the Christmas holidays and going into the first part of next year it will be business as normal. We're going to be out there, we're going to have the best product lines we ever had as a company. We haven't cut ourselves to the point that we can't do business, just cut ourselves to a point where it's harder on the ones who are there because we just got to bust our hump a little bit more, but you got to do what you got to do.