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| A Look Back: Dec. 11 1960: Arnold Palmer finishes the PGA Tour season with eight victories and is named PGA Player of the Year. 1965: Butch Baird and Gay Brewer win the first PGA National Four-Ball Championship at PGA National Golf Club in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. 1977: Spain, with Seve Ballesteros and Antonio Garrido, wins the World Cup of Golf. 1986: Jack Nicklaus plays with his sons Jack II, Steve and Gary in the Chrysler Team Championship. 1988: U.S. team Ben Crenshaw and Mark McCumber win the World Cup of Golf. |
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Associations
Rules officials from the Virginia State Golf Association and Middle Atlantic
PGA will be among the instructors at five VSGA-MAPGA Rules of
Golf Workshops to be offered throughout 2003. The series begins
on Jan. 18 at Kiln Creek Golf Club in Newport News.
For
more...
Players
Ada
O'Sullivan has been named as the captain of the teams which will
compete for the 2003 Vagliano Trophy and for the Curtis Cup to be played
for the following year. As well, former Curtis Cup captain Pam
Benka accepts the position of captain of the team to compete
for the Commonwealth Trophy in New Zealand next November.
For more...
Thai star Thongchai
Jaidee and newly-crowned Asian No. 1 Jyoti Randhawa
from India will lead Asia in the inaugural Dynasty Cup against Japan at
Mission Hills Golf Club in Shenzhen, China from March 14-16.
For
more...
People
Annette
Thompson, a 27-year LPGA member who teaches golf in Palm Beach
Gardens, Fla., is the recipient of the 2002 Ellen Griffin Rolex Award,
which is given annually by the LPGA Teaching and Club Professional (T&CP)
Division. Thompson, an LPGA Master Professional since 1978, is a teaching
professional at BallenIsles Country Club in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.
For
more...
John Hanna,
84, of Chicago, Ill., an ambassador for the highly successful Chick Evans
Scholarship Program of the Western Golf Association since 1981, has been
selected by the United States Golf Association to receive its annual Joe
Dey Award.
For
more...
Briefly
Baby Golf, makers of golf-themed infant and toddler apparel,
has hired three new sales reps to secure retail accounts: Judy Fesenmaier,
Minn., Wisc. and the Dakotas; Rob Martin, South Carolina; and Jessica
DeSilva, Central and North Florida. ...
Jay Golden Enterprises releases "Kids & Golf," a 96-page, color-as-you-learn golf coloring book written by Jay Golden, a PGA Member. The book is intended for children age 4 and up. ...
Proderma Maximum Sport Formule, the sun- and skin-care product line specifically formulated for golfers, is preferred by more than 80 percent of golfers over their current brands, according to results of a test conducted over the past three months by Rankmark, the golf-product testing and consumer-feedback company. ...
Ahead hires Bob Phillips as Corporate Sales Manager. Phillips, the former National Manager - Corporate Division for Cutter & Buck, will be responsible for the development of Ahead's Corporate Sales Division, which includes overseeing all strategic sales initiatives while managing a team of Ahead sales executives. ...
Fortune Brands, Inc., parent company of Acushnet and its golf brands Titleist, Cobra and Footjoy, elects J. Christopher Reyes to its Board of Directors. The election, effective today, increases the size of the Board to 10 members. ...
Dates are unveiled for the 2003 Dave Pelz Scoring Game Tour. For a decade, the Pelz staff has brought short game and putting instruction from Dave Pelz Scoring Game Schools to clubs in U.S. cities, allowing golfers to lower their scores without having to travel to the school's luxury resort locations. ...
Pelz Golf also suggests that last minute holiday gift shoppers consider an embossed gift certificate for a school, a clinic or any Pelz product, including Pelz Wedges and Dave's books and videos. Call 800-833-7370 to purchase a gift certificate from Pelz Golf. ...
An 18-hole Championship Course designed by Arthur Hills for The Club at Renaissance, in Fort Myers, Fla., will open to its members and guests Jan. 18.
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Reader's Forum Last week, Tiger Woods got so annoyed at an amateur photographer in the gallery at the Skins Game that he spoke sharply to him while his caddie Steve Williams confiscated the man's camera and threw it into the nearby lake. Sunday at his own Target World Challenge Woods refused to speak with NBC commentators after hitting a poor approach shot at the 18th and losing to Padraig Harrington by two shots. Do you admire Tiger's intensity no matter what is on the line, or should he tone it down for these unofficial, "Silly Season" events? Let us know your opinions by sending your responses to info@gpagolf.com with the subject line RE: Intensity. Also include your first initial and last name, along with your city and state or country. |
Commentary
Looking
Back
December traditionally is the time when we take stock of the year, sorting out the good, the bad and the indifferent in the quiet time of one year's end and another's beginning.
Golf, probably sports' most reflective game, doesn't have much of an offseason to sit around and mull over the previous 12 months. Here we are two weeks from Christmas and one more important tournament, the EMC2 World Cup, remains on the schedule. The first event of 2003, the Mercedes Championships, begins on Jan. 9, hardly time for most of us to shake off the bloatedness of Christmas and New Year's festivities, not to mention the hangovers.
So with the holidays bearing down on us, here's a quick look at a few of the happenings of 2002.
• Hootie Johnson and Martha Burk square off over Augusta National's all-male membership. This saga, while tedious for many golf fans, has become the top story of the year. It's a rarity that golf news is dominated by something that doesn't take place on a golf course. Since Johnson has said Augusta will not admit a female to its membership before the 2003 Masters, we'll all have our fill of this one for months to come, particularly since The New York Times has made a cottage industry of the feud.
• Tiger Woods wins two majors, a handful of other tournaments, misses no cuts, takes no side in the Masters flap and pockets bundles of money. Although it came in a Silly Season event, his 14-shot victory in the PGA Grand Slam of Golf was incredible, considering that his competitors were Rich Beem, Davis Love III and Justin Leonard. His win was nothing short of a butt-whipping.
• If you had put down some money on Rich Beem winning a major this season, you would have plenty of reasons to celebrate. The odds on Beem, whose career had not taken off after taking the 1999 Kemper Open, winning any tournament, much less the PGA Championship in a duel with Woods, would have been substantial. In addition to winning the PGA and The International, Beem gets a bucket load of style points for his blue shoes at the Grand Slam of Golf.
• Eighteen players won their first PGA Tournaments. That beat the old record of 13 in 1991 by five. The most stunning was Craig Perks' victory in The Players Championship when the New Zealander played the final three holes at the TPC at Sawgrass in 3 under, with a two chip-ins (one for eagle, another for par) and a long birdie putt at No. 17.
• If Perks pulled off the most surprising win, then Len Mattiace's victory at the Nissan Open over storied Riviera Country Club would have to rank as the top feel-good moment of the season. Mattiace had played seven years and 219 events before gaining his first event. He backed it up with another title at the FedEx St. Jude Classic.
• Phil Mickelson won two titles; neither one of them was a major. That makes the left-hander 0-for-41 lifetime in majors. He played well in the Masters and U.S. Open, placing third and second, respectively, but was only so-so at the British Open and PGA. Mickelson, by the way, finished first in the all-around statistical ranking on the PGA Tour.
• Neither David Duval, Davis Love III nor David Toms won in 2002. Duval's best finish was a tie for fourth in the Memorial. His last title came in the 2001 British Open and his last U.S. title in the 2000 Buick Challenge. Love started very slowly, got better, had two runner-up showings and earnings of nearly $2.1 million. Love hasn't won since the 2001 AT&T at Pebble Beach and has only two titles in the last five years. Toms, who won three times in 2001, played very well. He just didn't win. Still, he managed earnings of almost $3.5 million and had 12 top-10 finishes. Toms missed the cut in only two of his 27 events.
• Nick Price wins again at age 45. Who couldn't feel good about that one?
• Greg Norman works out a deal to return to the PGA Tour. The tour needs him.
• Two tournaments, the Volvo Masters Andalucia and the Australian PGA Championship, end in ties. This is not a good thing. Ties for first place should not be allowed in golf.
• MTV announces that Hootie and Martha will be the latest pairing in the network's Celebrity Death Match. Wait a minute, I dreamed that one. Still, it's not a bad idea.